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Main Characters
Alexander Horatio Jardin
- Bullying a Dragon: Once it becomes clear that Fireblade isn't going to make any attempt to be civil to him, Jardin takes whatever opportunities arise to needle her. As they're preparing to depart Tempest, when she appears to ignore some questions he asks her, he insults her intelligence, then snarks "Just checking." when she turns and glares at him. Later, after he and most of the crew have shared memories of their homeworlds, he pesters her into doing the same, although she's clearly annoyed and relays her memory through Tempo. He also flips her off when she gives him an Eye Am Watching You gesture as everyone is preparing for Highland-Seven to be boarded by the Umiak.
- Deadpan Snarker: Jardin's sense of humor is quite active and tends towards the irreverent, but it's a liability he can't afford to voice aboard Tempest.
- Everybody's Dead, Dave: Jardin was Bellarmine's only survivor, leaving him with the unenviable task of attempting to gather intel and conduct diplomacy with potentially hostile aliens on behalf of the entire human species.
- Field Promotion: Jardin gets one in a rather unusual manner—when Tempo officially designates him as humanity's ambassador to the Loroi
, she also recognizes him as military attaché for his mission, which comes with the honorary rank of Captain. The other Loroi take to addressing him as Captain, although this eventually chafes on him. - Flirting Under Fire: The actual "flirting" is downplayed, but when Beryl ends up in Jardin's lap in the fore of Highland-Seven as they're escaping the Umiak incursion, his comments indicate that he's perfectly fine with the seating arrangement.
- Get Out!: He gives Beryl and Talon an irritated look when their response to his wanting privacy to change into the pressure suit they give him is basically "Why?" Beryl gets the hint and pushes Talon out the door with her.
- Going Commando: Averted. As Jardin changes into the pressure suit, he decides to keep his underwear on, partly because he doesn't quite want to just be wearing the suit and partly because he suspects the suit isn't designed for a male body (or at least, a male body of an alien race with genitalia unknown to the suit's designers).
- I Always Wanted to Say That: He plays this straight in his narration of the mental interrogation, where he shouts "get out of my mind!".I've always wanted to say that.
- Meaningful Name: Discussed in-universe: Loroi personal names have very direct meanings in the Trade language, leading them to ask what Jardin's own name means. As "Alexander" translates roughly as "defending man" from Greek and "jardin" is French for "garden", he gives his name as "Defender of the Garden". Apart from Stillstorm commenting that this is a warrior's name and Jardin does not look like a warrior, the Loroi largely adopt this name (translated into Trade as Ristan Enzin, "Garden Guardian") when referring to him afterwards.
- Messy Hair: Invoked when Cloud, instead of returning his handshake, gives him a fancy comb.
- Oh, Crap!: Jardin thought humanity was prepared to take part in the war. Then he sees a space battle where the smaller of the two fleets, one described as noticeably understrength and in what was explicitly just a small skirmish, is larger than the entire human military.
- Plagued by Nightmares: Jardin has problems sleeping because he keeps having nightmares about his experience of being adrift in space after Bellarmine's destruction.
- Smart People Play Chess: During a flashback to Capt. Hamilton interviewing Jardin about his qualifications before he's assigned to Bellarmine, Hamilton mentions that Jardin received top marks in tactics courses and wargames, would've been valedictorian of his class were it not for behavioral demerits, and was Academy chess champion.
- Take Me to Your Leader: He includes this when he starts broadcasting his distress message in Loroi Trade after Bellarmine is completely destroyed.
Beryl
Listel Tozet Eilis
- Catching Some Z's: While Tempo explains the history of the war between the Loroi and Umiak to Jardin, they're interrupted by Beryl conking out.
- Flirting Under Fire: As with Jardin, the "flirting" is downplayed, but after seeming a little bemused by ending up sitting in Jardin's lap, Beryl settles in almost immediately and doesn't seem perturbed about the circumstances at all. Later, her taking Jardin's hand to test their telepathic connection and apparently trying to broadcast directly into his head has sensual visual cues but nothing comes of it.
- Letting Her Hair Down: Inverted; after Highland-7 avoids being destroyed, Beryl pulls her hair back into a short ponytail before beginning to make preparations for the group's possibly long stay in dormant mode.
- Oh, Crap!: She looks horrified when a lot of Umiak ships start showing up out of nowhere, in a location where the Loroi should have been alerted to their presence.
- Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Beryl shows shades of this attitude regarding Talon and Spiral explaining the significance of the diral-seii knife blade Spiral wears. She's hesitant for Jardin to even hear the explanation at first due to its superstitious nature, has a disapproving frown as the pilots talk, and tells Jardin that he can ignore what they told him as it's an artifact of Taben culture being serious about tradition even by Loroi standards. When asked, she explains that she was raised in a research colony by scientists.I have not seen evidence of fate, and when I die, I expect that I will not know that I am dead. So I do not find any comfort in supernatural fables.
- Photographic Memory: She has eidetic memory like the rest of her caste, and states that she can recall every word that Jardin has said since they first met. The "pocket Historian" warns Jardin that this means that she'll eventually pick up English from him and begin to recall it as well, meaning he'll have to be extra careful about not letting her see their conversation on his data pad.
- Ship Tease: Her fascination with Jardin can sometimes come off as clingy, and she sometimes invades his personal space. She's put off that Jardin developed rapport and touched hands with Talon, looks perturbed when he reminds her that they couldn't have done it when they first met since he was restrained, and from then on seems irritated when his attention is more focused on Talon than her. Also, after sitting in Jardin's lap for several pages, her intense mental broadcasting to test Jardin's sanzai resistance looks from the outside like she might be about to kiss him, as well as putting his hand on her thigh. Later, she seems to be very happy when Jardin says that she can call him Alex, and has a slight smile on her face as she snuggles up to him to sleep. After the Umiak capture the shuttle, she is frequently touching him in some way, which Jardin particularly notes at one point. The biggest tease, however, is a picture the author drew for Valentine's Day 2013 in the site's Outsider Insider section that had an apparently naked Beryl kissing a surprised Jardin.
- Underground City: She was raised in an underground research colony on Mezan, a harsh and barely habitable planet whose surface environment is mostly desert; fittingly, its name means "sand". As she puts it, the best memories of her life have been her time away from there, even in the dire circumstances of the moment this is revealed.
- Younger Than They Look: Her GURPS profile on the Outsider Insider page gives her age as 14, but due to the Loroi's rapid aging she looks and acts like a human woman in early adulthood.
Fireblade
Teidar Pallan Leinol
- Cyborg: She has plugs set into her head behind her ears which connect her brain to her amplifier and allow her to focus her telekinesis through it. Beryl later explains that all Unsheathed get this upgrade.
- Eye Scream: Subverted; when Jardin is listening to Tempo describing Fireblade's most fond memory, one detail he includes in his mental visualization is that she has a scar running down her face and is missing her right eye. However, she clearly has both eyes and no scar, although whether or not this is an old injury that was repaired or something else hasn't been revealed.
- Fiery Redhead: Inverted, as she's stoic and only speaks with facial expressions.
- Jerkass: She shows signs of this early on, as she uses Jardin losing his balance as an excuse to shove him to the floor with her telekinesis and gives a slight self-satisfied smile as he realizes she was waiting for an opportunity to do that.
- The Silent Bob: She never once speaks aloud, as like many other Loroi she feels that spoken language is inherently deceitful and prefers to communicate exclusively through telepathy. Consequently, her communications with Jardin are limited to messages relayed through other Loroi and a series of disapproving and suspicious facial expressions. Page 173 adds a twist, in that her silence is also due to a tradition of the Unsheathed: they remain silent unless they're about to be in a fight.
- Unskilled, but Strong: She's an exceptionally strong psychokinetic and can shove considerable amounts of mass around, but she lacks the skill and focus needed for fine manipulation or handling delicate objects.
Tempo
Mizol Parat Sedel
- Character Tics: She tends to place one hand palm-first over her chest when talking, either out loud or by sanzai, and to stand with her arms crossed and her left foot placed in front of and angled with respect to her right.
- Commonality Connection: Her homeworld, Perrein, has a diverse native ecosystem and thus makes heavy use of domesticated animals for food. Thus, she doesn't see anything weird about Jardin drinking an animal's milk, while the other Loroi find the mere idea gross.
- Mind Control: She has enough telepathic strength to apparently overwrite an Umiak Hardtroop's mind and keep it from seeing her and the other Loroi in the room they're hiding in on Highland-Seven. Also, Jardin begins to suspect that she's figured out that his resistance to sanzai isn't as total as it appears, and is feeding him telepathic images to try to sway him into siding with the Loroi.
- Older Than They Look: Per her GURPS profile on the Outsider Insider page, she's 54 years old but looks nowhere near that old.
- Took a Level in Cynic: When Jardin asks Tempo whether or not she shares the others' lack of a fear of death, she replies that she's old enough to pre-date the war, and that what she fears is that her generation's courage, already eroded by the cruel realities of war, will finally be exhausted.
- Weak, but Skilled: Her telekinesis isn't terribly impressive — she can't lift more than a kilogram of mass at a time, in contrast with how the more powerful Fireblade can shove Jardin around like a ragdoll — but she can wield what power she has with a great degree of skill, allowing her to manipulate delicate objects and perform complex tasks.
The Loroi
Commander Stillstorm
Torrai Lashret Dellasoni
- General Ripper: Stillstorm's behavior suggests she may be in the early stages of this. Certainly she wanted answers from Jardin and wasn't too fussy about how she got them, and seemed about to say that she would have done worse if she hadn't been interrupted. Later on, Beryl gives a bit more detail about Stillstorm's unpleasantness and says she's happy to be away from her.Beryl: Well, the commander sometimes gets... tired of looking at some of her officers. When this happens, it is beneficial to be out of her line of sight as quickly as possible.
Jardin: I see. I had a commander like that once. - "It" Is Dehumanizing: She refers to Jardin as "it" when speaking, making it painfully clear that she is convinced that he's at best a simple threat to the Loroi due to his sanzai resistance and at worst something created by the Umiak.Stillstorm: "Captain", is it? How convenient.
Tempo: Captain Jardin, I believe you have already met our commander, Torrai Lashret Dellasoni. Her spoken name means "Stillstorm". She asks to know the meaning of your name.
Jardin: I suppose my name means..."Guardian of the Garden."
Stillstorm: Sounds like a warrior's name. It does not look like a warrior. - Lean and Mean: She's noticeably thinner than the other Loroi aboard her ship, and proves herself to have a rather... acid personality.
- Living Legend: She's a veteran of the majority of the Loroi-Umiak war and one of the few captains to have survived twenty-five years of continuous front-line fighting. As a result, she's become a living legend among the Loroi forces, and is greatly admired by her subordinates.
- Painting the Medium: Her dialogue is written in italics, something not done with any of the other Loroi. Per
Word of God, this is done to suggest that her voice is harsh and her speech is far less nuanced than someone like Tempo, reflecting her deep dislike of speaking at all. - Red Baron: She's known as the Storm-Witch among the Umiak, who fear and respect her for her military prowess and the losses she has inflicted upon their forces.
- Villainous Cheekbones: Not really a villain per se, but Stillstorm's sharp, angular cheeks are a visual cue to her aggressive, bellicose and tactless nature.
- Witch Classic: One Halloween artwork depicts her in classic witchy attire as a reference to the Umiak referring to her as the Storm-Witch and possibly lampshading her personality quirks, complete with black robes, big pointy hat and bubbling "cauldron" (actually the Historian's projector).
- Worthy Opponent: Kikitik-27 seems to regard her as such, referring to her as "the respected enemy" and claiming admiration for her tactical skills. She doesn't give a hoot.Kikitik-27: Humbly we are gratified to be recognized by an opponent such as [the Storm-Witch] known to us with certainty credited for murders uncountable which we must respect..
Stillstorm: I meant no compliment, so keep yours. I will not be bargained with.
Talon
Tenoin Arrir Nesin
- Cluster F-Bomb: She lets loose a furious tirade against Clearbrook's comm officer when said officer tells her that their rendezvous is being broken off due to an incoming Umiak force and insults her when she objects. Referenced a few pages later when Jardin refers to her as "Arrir Pottymouth".
- Commonality Connection: She quickly figures out that Jardin is also a pilot just after bringing him onto Highland-Seven, saying that pilots have a natural feeling for each other.
- Early-Bird Cameo: She's first seen in #41, passing by Jardin and Beryl in a hallway. She doesn't reappear until #111, where she's revealed to be the group's assigned pilot.
- Facial Markings: She has a tattoo on her right cheek which is a symbol of her training in the diral at the Tenoin Academy.
- Greeting Gesture Confusion: When Jardin properly meets Talon, he offers a handshake, not yet knowing about the Loroi's taboo against physical contact. Talon is confused at first, but when Jardin explains that it's a human greeting custom, she quickly takes his hand, apparently pleased to make the connection and noting how warm Jardin's hand is.
- Hypocrite: A minor example. Talon says point-blank that Spiral's spoken Trade isn't very good, but her own spoken Trade has some small lapses and odd word choices and phrasings that make her sound not as fluent as the other Loroi.
- Verbal Tic: She tends to pepper her statements with "I think maybe".
- Younger Than They Look: Her entry on the comic's cast page notes that she's only 13 years old, although the Loroi's rapid maturation means that she's physically equivalent to a human woman in early adulthood.
Spiral
Tenoin Narrat Nonnos
- Early-Bird Cameo: She's first seen in #41, passing by Jardin and Beryl in a hallway. She doesn't make her first full appearance until #113.
- Good Luck Charm: Spiral bears a knife blade called a diral-seii. As she and Talon relate the story of the tradition behind it, it's revealed that she is considered a living one, with a twist: the seii-bearer takes misfortune onto herself, and thus brings good fortune to the others in her diral.Jardin: That's kind of messed up.
Talon: See, I said you would understand!
Spiral: It is the most messed up! - Tragic Keepsake: The diral-seii is an object given to the leader of a diral during training as their best tool and a symbol of their group, and is kept safe by its bearer and passed on to a successor upon her death. Spiral and Talon are the only living members of their pilot squadron, and while they're fairly stoic about their chances and Talon believes that Spiral being the seii-bearer has kept them safe, it's clear as they relate the story that they're wistful about their fallen comrades.
- You No Take Candle: She's not as fluent in the Trade Language as the other Loroi that Jardin has met so far (and is defensive about it when Talon notes this), and the English rendering of her dialogue is written in a downplayed version of this style.
The Umiak
Kikitik-27
Kikitik-27-tikhak-tikkukit
- Angrish: Implied when its translated speech turns into an untranslated wall of strident chitters just after Stillstorm has Bellarmine's wreckage destroyed, since it was very keen on that not happening.
- Red Baron: Kikitik-27 is known to the Loroi as "the Stray". It has the distinction of being one of the few Umiak commanders known to have survived an attrition assault mission, and it has done so at least twice. In both cases Kikitik inflicted heavy losses on the Loroi defenders, and then withdrew its forces from combat relatively intact when Loroi reinforcements arrived.
Humanity
Captain Carl Hamilton
- Living Legend: He had played an instrumental part in establishing humanity's space exploration program, and consequently was greatly admired among the naval and exploratory corps — even being in the same room as him was considered a privilege.
Ellen Kirkland
- Facial Markings: She has a spiral tattoo at the corner of her right eye.
Others
Rigai Mozin
A Barsam and the captain of the courier Prophet's Reason, attached to Strike Group 51 as a scout and ancillary vessel.
- Private Military Contractors: He's part of the Agumo Conference, a network of Barsam pilots working as independent contractors willing to undertake a wide variety of jobs for paying clients, and is currently employed by the Loroi as a scout, courier and, essentially, gun for hire.
The Emissary
- Artificial Intelligence: It's a "personality construct", an intelligent, software-based entity created by the Historians to interact with other intelligent races without putting themselves at risk — among other things, the fact that it doesn't have an organic mind means that it can't be targeted by Loroi telepathy. It's entirely devoted to its mission, possesses the intelligence necessary to operate for extended periods away from Historian supervision, and due to being at heart a very sophisticated computer program can perform a number of tricks such as creating a pared-down version of itself that can fit on a human-made tablet.
- Floating Limbs: Exaggerated; each piece of its projected body is separated from the others — its limbs and head all float apart from the main body, and its crest and lower jaw float separately from the rest of its head.
- Hologram: The Emissary doesn't have a physical body. Its form is represented as a hologram emitted from a projector resembling a large vase with an irising top. It grouses to Jardin about the limitations such a form imposes on it, but Tempo ignores it.
- Technopath: Its mastery of machinery allows it to download a less-advanced version of itself onto Jardin's data pad even though the wireless function was turned off. It effortlessly scans and assesses human technology from the pad and its files, and tells Jardin that it also scanned his ship's wreckage, and as a result it can communicate in flawless English. Its cast entry notes that the Loroi are unsure about what exactly such constructs are capable of, and deliberately restrict access to the computers on their ships, hence the need for the projector.
- Third-Person Person: It doesn't use personal pronouns, and instead refers to itself as "this emissary".
