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The Rentier Institute
Jesse Rentier
Voiced by: Derek Hagen
The son of William Rentier, and one of the Rentier Institute's best agents and vampire hunters. Among the members of the institute, he's something of the baby of the bunch, older only than Vergil.
- Badass Normal: Like all hunters, Jesse goes up against supernaturally powerful mutants, werewolves, and vampires armed only with guns and his gauntlet.
- Badass Longcoat: Sports a pretty cool armored-up duster.
- Perma-Stubble: Features a perpetual, manly stubble.
- Power Fist: His gauntlet, which has a variety of cutting-edge abilities enabled by electricity. Sadly, it is damaged early on in the game, robbing it of its more impressive capabilities.
- Like Father, Like Son: His father is both the founder of the eponymous institute and one of its top agents, and Jesse is well on his way to following his path.
- You Are in Command Now: With the vampire attack on the Institute's headquarters and his father's incapacitation, Jesse becomes the new leader of the Institute's remnants. He becomes formal director of the Institute at the end of the game with President Cleveland's blessing.
William Rentier
Voiced by: Brian Protheroe
A civil war veteran, head of the Rentier Institute, and Jesse's father. He's an experienced hunter who was badly wounded in a fight against a vampire highborn, crippling his leg and largely putting him out of action.
- Badass Normal: Like all hunters. Even with an injured leg, he's able to put up a good fight when vampires attack the institute.
- Drunk on the Dark Side: Once he becomes a full vampire under Felicity's influence, he's positively giddy with his newfound power and hams it up in both the notes that are scattered around the train depot and during his boss fight.
- Face–Monster Turn: Despite Jesse, Emilia, and Vergil's best efforts, he eventually fully transforms into a vampire, killing Vergil and several Rentier agents in the process. Jesse has to track him and put him down for good.
- Zombie Infectee: He's infected by Felicity during her attack, and a good portion of the storyline revolves around trying to find a way to reverse his infection.
Edgar Gravenor
- Fire-Forged Friends: With William Rentier, after William saved Edgar's life from a vampire attack during the American Civil War.
Emilia Blackwell
One of the only women to work for the Rentier Institute, and a fully-licensed doctor with a Ph.D in botany. Naturally, the old boys exiled her due to sexism. But when all those old boys are killed in the ambush, she becomes the leader of the survivors, directing Jesse where to go.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: She was given a promotion to the head of a cell... in bumfuck nowhere, Calico. This ends up fortuitous for her, as she ends up the only surviving senior member of the Rentier Institute and thus its director.
Vergil Olney
Sanguisuge
Felicity D'Abano
Voiced by: Emma Ballantine
A former street-urchin whose experiences in the gutter have given her a dim view of humanity and an inflated view of vampire-kind (or sanguisuge, in their parlance), she is the adoptive daughter of Peter D'Abano. Now at least several decades/centuries old, she is megalomaniacal and focused on following her father's footsteps regarding vampire enhancement to maintain their dominance over humans as technology evolves.
- Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: In one of her notes, she writes that vampires would never leave their own kind to die in the gutter, apparently heedless of the fact she sends literally hundreds of her kind to die fighting the Rentier Institute.
- Daddy's Little Villain: Ever since Peter D'Abano saved her from dying on the streets of Kingston, she has eagerly pursued his dreams of vampire enhancement.
- Dark Is Evil: Although she is depicted in a portrait with her father as wearing more normal, lighter-colored clothing, when she is encountered in the game she wears an ornate black and dark brown outfit.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Genuinely cares for her adoptive father.
- Evil Counterpart: In a way, to Jesse. They both follow in their fathers' footsteps, and both ultimately lose their fathers to the other.
- Fangs Are Evil: Even when she appears relatively normal, she sports a set of fangs.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: From a lowly street urchin to a maniacal vampire matriarch.
- Game Face: During the final battle, she transforms into her true form - a massive mutant vampire with an elongated neck, bloated pustules, and muscles for days.
- Older Than They Look: Although she looks no older than 11 or 12, like all vampires, she hasn't aged since the day she was turned.
- Psychopathic Womanchild: She continues to act childish and spiteful even though she's over 90.
- Rags to Riches: From dying street urchin to wealthy vampire nobility.
- Red Right Hand: She sports heterochromatic eyes in both her human form and her true form.
- Roaring Rampage of Rescue: After her father is captured, she goes on one against the Rentier Institute, storming the facility with a small army of vampires in order to reclaim her father's head, wounding William Rentier in the process.
Peter D'Abano
Voiced by: John Chancer
A highborn vampire noble who sits on the ruling council, he adopted Felicity as his daughter. Despite the reservations of the other vampire council members, D'Abano has been experimenting with creating new vampire mutations, a project that his daughter is eager to assist with.
- Bat People: Once he dispenses with his Glamour, his true form is a six-limbed humanoid bat monster.
- Mad Scientist: Has been experimenting with combining blood to create new varieties of vampire. One note even features a drawing of him in a lab coat mixing beakers.
- Losing Your Head: He is defeated and decapitated fairly early in the story, with his still-living head stuck in a jar and placed in the Rentier Institute until Felicity rescues him.
- Vampires Are Rich: D'Abano has accumulated tremendous wealth through the centuries by buying up property and mines, and re-deeding it to himself every 30 years.
- Visionary Villain: Not just for himself and vampires, but for humanity. He recognizes that mankind's scientific progress is starting to outstrip the vampires' magical powers and will lead to the vampires eventual extinction.
Chester Morgan
A vampire informant for the Rentier Institute, and a bit of a self-important social climber who hopes to rise in thesanguisuge hierarchy.
- Arms Dealer: Eventually parts ways with Felicity to make his own way after she goes completely mad, becoming a gun-runner.
- Butt-Monkey: He's amusingly tormented by Jesse and Gravenor in all of his appearances. Even after defecting.
- Impaled Palm: Gravenor pins his hand to the table with his bowie knife at one point, prompting poor Chet to whine " Aah! What the hell! I was going to tell you everything! I even got you guys some wine! What is wrong with you!?"
- Plucky Comic Relief: Despite technically being a villain, he's a funny guy.
Dominic Calvert
The leader of the vampire high council. He disapproves of D'Abano's methods, considering them a blasphemous break with vampire tradition.
- Greater-Scope Villain: As the apparent leader of the vampires, he serves as this to the game's setting.
- Let's You and Him Fight: After sentencing D'Abano to death, he simply leaves after seeing the angry vampire hunter barge in to claim the head for him.
- The Unfought: He only appears briefly early on, effectively excommunicating D'Abano from the high council during their meeting.
Lesser Vampires
Mutants created by genetic incompatability between their DNA and vampiric blood.
In General
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: A fair few of them are suckled by absolutely enormous leeches or ticks.
- Gonk: They start as emaciated, zombie-like wretches infested with ticks and leeches, and implanted with primitive cybernetics, and get ever-more hideous from there.
- No Zombie Cannibals: Averted. Some of them are purpose-bred entirely to provide especially nutritious blood.
- The Symbiote: A few have leeches as Combat Tentacles, one variant uses ticks as grenades, and one kind has enormous Spitting Spiders that they can command to gob webbing at people the Sanguisuge want captured instead of killed.
Infected Vessel
Infected Waster
Infected Proteus
Ghaul
Jenu Giant
Carrion Husk
Nagal
- Our Werewolves Are Different: They were cursed by magic to shift between human and beast, and begged the vampires to make it stop. The vampires proceeded to screw them over by making it stop on the beast form.
Leecher
Boo Hag
- Body Horror: They don't grow skin. They tend to rip the skin off others and wear it.
Gowrow
The Gaster
Hive Crone
Screeching Devil
Bruch
Stalker
Vampire Highborn
The Parasiter
A titanic leech feeding off the remains of a dead god. Familiars
Servant Sharpshooter
Servant Gunslinger
Servant Brute
United States Government
James Harrow
- Corrupt Politician: He's a former senator, has been using the Rentier Institute as his personal army, and was planning to embezzle oil fields that legally belonged to the government.
- Hate Sink: He's an utter cockwomble to be sure. He's racist, sexist, and corrupt, and grows increasingly insufferable to match his brown-nosing into political power. You'll probably cheer when Emilia punches him off his feet and gives incriminating evidence of his mass-embezzlement to the president.
Jonathon Q. Biddle
