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Main Character Index | The Mother And Her Son | Companions Of The Mother | The Hospital Staff | The Hospital Patients And Visitors | Burgrr Inc. Personnel | The Abyss | The Morgue | The Library | The Cafe | Inert Sub-Concept Vessel MG-0908-BN/SK/HL-3900438093990 | The Worms | The Parliament | The Dolphins | Unaffiliated Entities

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bacteriatown.png
A whole wide world is you, Fern.

Noteworthy individuals found in the Inert Vessel of Fern's whose neck was snapped by the X-Ray Skeleton.


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     Dr. Everton Morteus Balmer 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/everton.png
Embalms cadavers to be used for "recreational purposes." …By which we mean "made into tourist traps."
Flawless buns 
Dr. Balmer: There is a bad thing polluting this environment, madam. A bad thing so contrary to the matter-law that you would be familiar with, it could very well thrive under conventional decontamination procedures, unless of course we can correctly identify a sample and adapt our formulation. One miscalculation, one pseudo protein away from perfection, and this entire vessel could undergo a Category D Extrapaisley Reconfiguration Event! The chaos! The exquisite madness! I'm simply swooning with UNIMAGINABLE terror! Mmmm....yesss....

Head mortician of The Morgue. For some reason, he's set up a well-stocked facility out on one particular Inert Sub-Vessel of Fern's. NOTE: For tropes focused on his 'Ascended' form, click here.


  • Animate Inanimate Object: Clearly a walking, talking, sentient embalming machine (although Fern thought he was a blender).
  • Accidental Misnaming: He's ridiculously terrible at remembering others' names.
  • All Love Is Unrequited: Dr. Phage won't amalgamate zones with him. This leaves him pouty.
  • Arc Villain: Of Phase One, Chapter Two.
  • Brain in a Jar: Possibly the liquid inside his jar. There's no question that this liquid is just as emotionally expressive a part of his body as his eye-like dials are.
  • Burger Fool: Something he is less than happy with when the Morgue is given a merger with Burgrr Inc, leaving him stuck flipping burgers.
  • Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: Showcased by the hilarious gag items Balmer leaves for Fern to find in the trash can.
  • Fighting a Shadow: The version of himself in the Morgue is extremely displeased by the Balphin fiasco within the biovessel.
  • Frankenstein's Monster: The rather tall and muscular new body which Balmer attaches himself to, in Phase 2 of the story.
    Commentator: Just occurred to me Balmer's Frankenstien-ass body is made up of the brightly coloured patient parts. Oh no.
    Bogleech: Only ones that already slobbified.
  • Greed: The primary motivating force behind all of Dr. Balmer's actions.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: He was planning to use an Exovironater to corrupt the Hospital out of commission and force whatever was left to have a merger with the Morgue. Instead, the Exovironater ends up animating all the corpses in the Morgue, getting them an offer to merge with Burgrr Inc and demoting him from doctor to fast food chef.
  • "It" Is Dehumanizing: Dr. Balmer does recognize that Fern is female, straight away; (check his quote up above; he calls her 'madam.') Yet, whenever he's NOT attempting to beguile her into performing favors for him, he's loathe to acknowledge her femininity, vastly preferring to call her by the objectifying 'it' pronoun.
    Dr. Balmer: I'm sure some egghead out there would love to cut it up and find out how a grey-zoner initiated post-developmental branchination. Maybe the Recombinators can farm it for sausage scraps and the Effluvious Conglomeration can patch their silly moonsponge with what's left of its core!
    • Though when the dolphin endangers his life, he does briefly switch to the gender-neutral 'them.' But this too, amounted to situational brown-nosing. And Fern was never a gender-neutral sort of woman, anyway.
  • It's All About Me: On top of being swollen with self-importance, Balmer lies, betrays and plots mass murder without remorse, all to profit off the corpses.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: One word; DOLPHIN'D.
  • Large and in Charge: Comes naturally when your minions are molecules.
  • Meaningful Name: Morteus is very befitting of a mortician, as is Everton, since he keeps his corpses in everlasting preservation.
  • Mechanical Lifeforms: A walking, talking, perfectly sapient embalming tank.
  • Nightmare Fetishist: Dr. Balmer's a mortician, sworn to keep his cadavers sterilized and well-preserved. And though he's sincerely committed to his duties, the thought of decomposition and infestation, (indeed, of catastrophe in general,) still fills him with perverse glee.
    Dr. Balmer: Can your feeble head-stuffings even fathom the delectable horror of an entire perception zone simply rotting away to nothing? Devoured from within by insatiable vermin!? Oh, the very thought of it tickles my wires with such decadent revulsion!
    • When he fuses with the dolphin, his stated goal is to eat the world, just like the worms were doing.
  • Noisy Robots: Though he's not actually a robot, Dr. Balmer's body is still a great, bulky metallic contraption, and he CLANKS loudly whenever he walks.
  • Properly Paranoid: Initially, you might find Dr. Balmer's delfiniphobia to be perplexingly out-of-place, given where he works. Initially being the key word.
  • Punny Name: Dr. E.M. Balmer. 'Embalmer,' folks.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Balmer's an interesting variation. When he's TRULY furious, the 'white' of one dial turns all-red, while the other dial turns all-blue.
  • The Secret of Long Pork Pies: As a Burgrr worker, one of the things he cooks is human flesh.
    Dr. Balmer: So you're with the Fern, was it? Well...you can tell her that her rancid hide cooks like garbage. Not like that other strain scurrying around, now that's tender.
  • Sour Grapes: Says nothing nice about The Hospital, calling it a 'wasteful diversion' and 'delaying the inevitable,' yet is clearly still upset that Dr. Phage turned down a merger of The Morgue and The Hospital.
  • Starter Equipment: Helpfully furnishes Fern with a new satchel to stow inventory in, after her old Hammerspace tote bag becomes inaccessible.
  • Stealth Insult: Possibly. The satchel Balmer gives Fern is a "MY FIRST JUNIOR BIOVESSEL EXPLORER'S KIT FOR BABIES."
  • Techno Babble: He's as susceptible to this as any of his Hospital counterparts.
    Dr. Balmer: We're detecting quasimaterial, paraconceptual and even antivibrational wavelengths as deep as the sub-seething in some cases, and our current paradox may even carry traces of hose warblation.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Pickled cucumbers, according to Word of God. Balmer even stored the anomaly, itself, inside an empty pickle jar.
  • Treacherous Quest Giver: Assigns Fern to 'retrieve' an 'anomaly' from a nearby community of 'contaminoids' and return it to his facility so that he may destroy it. When she and her companions succeed, he has her taken prisoner, with the intention of selling her off to whomever will pay the highest price for her.
  • Your Size May Vary: In the Inert Vessel, Balmer and Fern are about equal height. In The Morgue, he's the size of a chipmunk, next to her.

     Methanyll & Hyde 

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He's Methanyll.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hyde.png
She's Hyde.

Dr. Balmer: Welcome, welcome! We've been expecting you! Do come in, won't you? No time to waste!
Hyde: Yeah, 'oigent bidness!
Methanyll: We've got a selection of fine cheeses!

Two members of Balmer's obedient crew of molecules.


  • Adorable Evil Minions: Hyde and Methanyll are but two members of a large crew of sapient molecules in Dr. Balmer's employ.
  • Cool Shades: Hyde wears a pair of these.
  • Food as Bribe: Methanyll tries to entice Fern into entering Dr. Balmer's workplace with 'a fine selection of cheeses,' unsuccessfully. However, when he mentions their equally fine selection of alcoholic beverages...
  • Funetik Aksent: Methanyll is described as having a thick English accent, while Hyde's is Bronx.
  • Mega-Microbes: Mega-molecules.
  • Punny Name: Methanol and formaldehyde.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: By the end of the Inert Vessel, we're not sure whether these two, and all their fellow molecules, were killed off by the dolphin or if they managed to run away to safety.

     Trichia 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/trichia.png
Funny who you meet in a bar.

Fern: So... what the heck should I do?
Trichia: If it were me? Let 'em take you to the whatchamawozzle, let Balmer contain it and let them figure out the rest on their own. Whatever you're doing this for, you gotta watch out for number one, get it?

A microbe that chatted with Fern in a tavern.


  • The Con: Trichia shilled what Balmer offered to whoever would listen to her in the bacteria village.
  • The Dog Was the Mastermind: Before revealing herself as a lady in league with Balmer, Trichia was just somebody who struck up a conversation with Fern in a tavern. Though the chat was fairly lengthy, it lasted 2 webpages in a plot arc that spanned over 200 webpages.
  • The Drifter: Describes herself as "something of a vessel hopper".
  • Hero Killer: Shot Maggie and Staph.
  • Fantastic Racism: Though it doesn't stop her from taking a shine to Fern right away. Except that really, she was buttering Fern up as part of her sales shill.
  • Killed Mid-Sentence:"I'll blast it faster'n you can say-"
  • MacGuffin Delivery Service: Trichia plays this trope out like some single-celled Rene Belloq.
  • Punny Name: Trichomoniasis... but also, Trichia is a tricky sort.
  • Ramming Always Works: When the Dolphin rams itself into Trichia, it works very well at ending her life.
  • Worf Had the Flu: Especially right after vanquishing the Immense Thing, Fern's companions were strong enough to've mowed down Trichia and her posse of molecoids under normal circumstances. Then the audience learns that fusions such as the one which formed Staphielle left their participants physically exhausted.
    Trichia: After a fusion I'm surprised you have the energy to stand.

     Magatha 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/9bb2f010d03c114f4d94624b5f6a1b1f.png
The greatest wiseass on the Inert Vessel.

Fern: So-
Magatha: A mysterious book, you say? Interesting! That's for something with an optical sense. Apprentice Maggie has been my eyes since I embedded. She will no doubt be happy to take a look at it.
Fern: O...okay...do you kno-
Magatha: -w anything about Celia?

A wise all-knowing sage who dwells in a pus marsh. Friend to Staph, mentor to Maggie, and counselor to Fern.


  • All-Loving Hero: In terms of WHO she is... Magatha has a heart and soul of 24-karat gold. The less said about WHAT she is... the better.
  • Bizarre Nonhuman Biology: Talking Maggot Anus: is a maggot who's about to undergo a metamorphosis into an adult. To that end, her whole upper body has instinctively "embedded" itself "underflesh". Her buried head has entered a mindless involuntary feeding/burrowing state. Somehow, though, all her higher brain functions have been redirected to her anus. Magatha is able to speak through her anus as though it were a mouth.
  • Blind Seer: An interesting variation on this trope. Magatha DOES possess seeing eyes, but since so much of herself has currently buried itself, she is effectively blind at the time Fern meets with her.
  • Punny Name: "Maggot", just like Maggie, her younger counterpart. In fact, Magatha represents the first instance in Awful Hospital where two names derive from the same root pun.
  • The Tape Knew You Would Say That: The Oracle Knew You Would Say That. Throughout her conversation with Fern, she answers Fern's questions before Fern has the chance to say more than a few words of them.
  • We Hardly Knew Ye: Magatha doesn't get that many webcomic pages before her transmigration.

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