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The Overcity
The Haywards
Brett
Verona's father.
- Abusive Parents: He never shows Verona any appreciation or thanks for what she does, breaks her things when she displeases him, uses his daughter for emotional venting (by ranting/yelling at her), as an emotional crutch, and as a glorified maid, and gets mad if she doesn't live up to his expectations or shows any resentment. Verona says that while she still loves her dad, she doesn't like him a lot of the time.
- Hope Spot: Verona flips her shit with him in Out On A Limb 3.1, and he seems to realise that something important's going on. For a second, it looks like maybe he'll be a better parent... but no, he's back to his old ways by 3.6.
- It's All About Me: Everything always comes down to how it affects him, no matter how big or small. Even when Verona begs him to give her one night to help her friends when Avery's in trouble, and tells him how important it is, he immediately turns it around to how she never does anything for him and never makes him her priority.
- Kick the Dog: In Shaking Hands 9.9, when he and Verona get into an argument, he breaks her things merely to get even with her, all the while negatively comparing her to her mother.
- Locked Out of the Loop: He's the only parent who doesn't learn about magic, since he doesn't pay enough attention to Verona's actual emotional state to realize something is up.
- Manchild: He's so emotionally immature he throws a tantrum over not being given a birthday present. Verona even refers to him as 'Manbaby' in the 15.2 Extra Materials.
- No Name Given: His first name wasn't revealed until the 7.8 Extra Materials.
- The Resenter: He seemingly resents the whole world, and constantly rants about how unfair his life is, how bad his job is, how ungrateful his daughter is, and so on.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: He constantly rants about how Verona is ungrateful and never does anything for him, and doesn't realise that doing so is not going to make her want to help him out more, especially since he doesn't so much as say 'thank you' or 'good job' when she does help. Verona avoids him as much as possible, and he hasn't figured it out, even after she called him toxic.
The Ellingsons
Jasmine
Lucy's mother.
- Mama Bear: She flips her shit when the trio have to come clean to their parents about the practice and Jasmine finds out just how much danger her daughter's been put in.
- Parents as People: She is a good mother to Lucy, and Parental Substitute to Verona, but her own depression and problems with employment prevent her from really reaching out to Lucy.
- Shared Family Quirks: Like Lucy, she also kicks Toadswallow away after meeting him for the first time.
Booker
Lucy's older brother, who goes to university outside of Kennet.
- Welcomed to the Masquerade: He's clued in on Kennet's nature as an Other haven sometime between Epilogues E.5 and E.6.
The Kellys
Connor
Avery's father.
- Parents as People: He's genuinely trying to be a good dad, but it's made pretty clear that he doesn't really know how to deal with a lesbian daughter. He also doesn't handle Declan very well, which causes a lot of trouble between him and Avery.
Sheridan
Avery's older sister.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She doesn't normally get along with Avery, but is supportive of her coming-out.
- Shared Family Quirks: Connor believes she inherited her stubbornness from Grumble.
- Welcomed to the Masquerade: After setting up cameras in her room, she gets Avery using the doors on video. After this, she becomes Aware, and Awakens as a Loser during the Finish Off arc. By the epilogue she's acquired a raccoon familiar named Smudge, implied to be a boon companion like Snowdrop.
Declan
Avery's younger brother.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour: Declan displays some downright misogynistic and worrying behaviour throughout the story, to the point that Avery has fights with her father about his not seeing it as a problem and not doing anything about it.
Grumble
Connor's father.
- Cool Old Guy: Zig-zagged. On the one hand, his family love him very much and he loves them back, but on the other hand, he spends most of his time watching various conservative shows, which hasn't done much for how he sees things. Avery doesn't want to come out to him because of that.
- Innocently Insensitive: He tells Avery that all he wants is for her to have a good life, which includes finding a good man and having children.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: He's only ever called 'Grumble'.
- Your Days Are Numbered: He's pretty old and not in good health, and there's a few moments in the story where Avery speculates about a serious situation and wonders if Grumble has died.
Aware
Melissa Oakham
A fellow student to the Trio at Kennet Public and one of Avery's teammates on the hockey team. Originally Innocent, she becomes Aware after stealing Verona's bag of magic tricks exposes her to some of them, though she has not Awakened into a full practitioner and serves as a blackguard for the Kennet trio.
- Career-Ending Injury: Breaks her ankle as the partial result of Nicolette's Omens, which prevents her from being on the hockey, dance, and soccer teams. It ends up being so bad that even weeks later she's still in pain.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Is jealous of Verona for getting to kiss Jeremy, and it leads her to steal her bag containing magic items. Once she learns about magic, she becomes deeply envious of the trio.
- Handicapped Badass: Training under Guilherme gives her an impressive degree of martial arts skill with her cane.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: For all her outward unpleasantness, she chooses to prevent Raphael Tindall from shooting Lucy by standing in front of him while he has his rifle drawn, likely saving her life.
- Jerkass: After her injury she sinks into self-pity and poor coping mechanisms hard, making her unpleasant to deal with and hampering the Trio's attempts to discourage her from digging deeper into the supernatural.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: She reveals to Avery in Shaking Hands 9.6 that as a result of her Awareness, she somewhat remembers Gabe's existence, though she can't remember his name.
- Shadow Archetype: To Verona, being someone who also wishes to make their life better through magic. Their similarities are even highlighted when Verona has an Alpeana nightmare consisting of her and Melissa just ending up drug abusers together.
- Weak, but Skilled: Verona notes that before her injury, while she lacked natural talent, she'd work on something until she was quite good at it.
- Welcomed to the Masquerade: As a result of stealing Verona's bag and the Trio needing the help of Kennet's Others to get it back, Melissa has inadvertently become Aware and desires to learn more about magic, mainly to fix her injury. The Trio is reluctant to tell her more due to the karmic responsibility they'd take for her if she were to Awaken, and Charles has been trying to dissuade her as well, using himself and Clem as examples of how magic can mess people up. Eventually, she ends up becoming the Trio's Blackguard.
Louise Bayer
A woman dying of terminal diabetes who inadvertently witnesses the Carmine Beast's final moments, who has become Aware as a result of her terminal illness.
- Children Raise You: Meeting Snowdrop has caused her to cut down on smoking and generally take better care of herself.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: She witnesses the Carmine Beast's last moments in Kennet, but forgets them as part of a deal right up until she meets the Trio for the first time. As a quirk of her Awareness, she can cry away her Connections to Others and magic via her tears of blood, making her fundamentally Innocent until such things are mentioned around her again.
- Nice Guy: Upon hearing that Snowdrop is homeless, Louise tells her that if she ever needs food or somewhere to sleep, she can go to Louise's place anytime. As of Leaving A Mark 4.1, Snowdrop's been taking her up on the offer.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: Part of her deal with Kennet's Others to make her forget is that they take some of her pain and sickness away from her. It will likely extend her lifetime, but it does so by transferring this pain and sickness to Matthew (who later transfers it to Charles off-screen).
- Tears of Blood: Gets them from seeing the Carmine Beast. Gone and Done It 17.3 reveals that this comes and goes based on her current Awareness.
- Welcomed to the Masquerade: Louise gets brought onto the Kennet Council to be a voice for ordinary humans.
- You Are in Command Now: Gets thrust into a leadership position by the Kennet Trio so that the human members of Kennet will have representation on the council.
- Your Days Are Numbered: She's dying of complications from diabetes.
Reagan
A student at the trio's school and a participant in the Hungry Choir's ritual.
- Action Survivor: Lasted up until the eighth night of the Hungry Choir's ritual, despite missing several body parts.
- Eye Scream: Gave her blind eye to a friend during his eighth night. Later, Brie took her other eye.
- Killed Offscreen: She and all the other participants in her round lost the ritual.
- Ret-Gone: As with all other losers of the Hungry Choir's ritual, she's been turned into a waif and everyone except the trio forgot her.
Gabe
One of the trio's classmates.
- Former Child Star: He had a couple of appearances in a film and a TV series, but it never went anywhere and puberty wasn't kind to him.
- Ret-Gone: His fate at the mouths of the Hungry Choir; his classmates and even his family have forgotten about him. The movie that he appeared in glitches when it's supposed to show his name in the credits.
The Undercity
Gang Leaders
In General
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": They're referred to by their positions and not by any sort of name.
- Mark of the Supernatural: All the gang bosses have a physical trait that shows the knotting or twisting that empowers them.
- Position of Literal Power: The gang leaders get magical power and abilities from the position they occupy, and people acknowledging their leadership and their defense of their position reinforces their power.
Bitter St. Witch
A woman living downtown with her family, took to acting as an oracle to get ahead in the territorial disputes. Was the last to start working with the Kennet group.
- Big Little Brother: Her younger but larger family members make up most of her muscle as a gang member.
- Body Horror: Her twisting has caused her body to become crooked like every part of her body has been broken and healed wrong multiple times.
- Seers: Can see the future by eating birds and their intestines, which used to be just an act but became more and more real as time and the twisting in Kennet progressed.
- Sole Survivor: Is the last of the original gang leaders left alive at the end of the story, in part due to her connections to the outside making it impossible for Charles to unmake her as he did Mallory.
- Waif Prophet: Exaggerated, the BSW is unbelievably frail as part of her twisting so she's the type of crooked you get when bones are repeatedly broken and heal the wrong way. People repeatedly describe her as looking like a bad sketch that came to life or a torture victim that somehow survived having her body completely broken.
The Vice Principal
A little girl that led a successful revolution in the Undercity school, the first leader to start cooperating with the trio.
- Sapient Steed: Keeps the previous Principal as a steed who is getting twisted by his former position like the other gang leaders.
- Killed Offscreen: She's among the casualties of the second battle of the Blue Heron Institute.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: While definitely still a child and as violent as any other Undercity resident, she's much smarter than she appears, being amenable to working with the trio.
- Young Conqueror: Younger than the Kennet Witches and took down the previous school administration who were willing to kill people, from there she's expanded her territory until she's the top dog of the Undercity.
The Family Man
Leader of a breeding cult in the Undercity.
- Afraid of Blood: Invoked, part of the curses on him means he will be debilitated if he sees blood.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: He's whiter than a playing card and all of his outfits are odd.
- Breeding Cult: Runs his territory as a breeding factory and his control over the community gives him divine power.
- Humanoid Abomination: Most of the gang leaders and their various lieutenants are twisted in a way that puts them outside the human norm but The Family Man stands out, he's evolved into something that barely holds to the shape of a man and there are numerous demonstrations of this fact in his appearances, muscles impossibly shifting, bones rearranging, and various organs adopting a semi-independent existence.
- I Am a Humanitarian: Plans to have a feast of Rocky Mountain Oysters made from the testicles of underage boys and unattached men in his territory as part of his ascension.
- Mother of a Thousand Young: A rare male example but was stopped by Kennet Trio, he impregnated a lot of women who hyper-gestated but this is what elevates him as a divine force. Those kids already born are growing up fast too.
- Occult Blue Eyes: One thing constantly mentioned about him are that his eyes are too blue in a way that makes the rest of him seem washed out.
- The Loins Sleep Tonight: One of the curses he's given is a permanent inability to get an erection.
- Semi-Divine: Well on the road to being a full god with his many children being born at the same time that he and his goons plan to have a feast of the useless body parts of the non-breeding males in the territory.
- White Hair, Black Heart: Fits the trope perfectly, having white hair and being perfectly fine with torture, murder, and (heavily implied) rape.
The Foreman
Leader of the Kennet Undercity's old industrial district.
- Covered with Scars: Burns like you'd expect working in a factory without protective equipment.
- Nightmarish Factory: Runs a slave labor factory with a lot of workplace accidents and vents pollutants into the air.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: He's a misogynistic racist and a villain.
- Red Right Hand: Has metal teeth and a brutish appearance which seems to be to extent of the twisting he's had as an Undercity resident.
- Worf Effect: Killed by the Family Man to show that he's still a threat even when "neutered".
Miscellaneous Residents
Bracken
- Big Brother Instinct: Part of what makes him leave the Undercity; he wants to look out for his brother Bag.
Mallory
The first friend that Verona makes in the Undercity.
- Character Death: Charles unmakes her at the end of Go For The Throat 23.c.
- Facial Markings: Gave herself a bad face tattoo by herself.
- Tattoo as Character Type: A tattoo artist who's still learning so the ones she gives aren't.
Killwagon
A boogieman in a wheelchair with chariot-like bladed wheels. Hired by Toadswallow to provide security for the goblin market.
Type: Bogeyman
- Shout-Out: He describes himself as a "one-man Omelas."
- Resurrective Immortality: As a bogeyman he's nearly impossible to put down for good.
- Vegetarian Vampire: He's a boogieman, which means he feeds on fear and killing; but (aside from two kills sixty years ago when he was just getting started and didn't understand how it worked) he survives by spooking people and eating roadkill rather than being a slasher villain like most bogeymen.
Kennet Found
In General
- Bad Moon Rising: Due to the Carmine's influence over Kennet, when the moon bleeds (Normally around once a month, though it is possible to invoke it to deal with invaders), the normally pacifistic Foundlings turn violent.
- Cool Mask: Masks are mandated for all Foundlings and visitors. It's implied that this is due to the nature of Miss as a being that constantly hides her (lack of) face.
- Foil: They are this to both the Undercitizens and Overcitizens of Kennet, contrasting both the Undercity's grime and violence and the Overcity's banality with their whimsy and pacifism.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: While Foundlings start out as essentially props, given enough time they do end up becoming proper people.
- Hulking Out: Foundlings are whimsical, friendly, and devout pacifists...unless it's attack hour, when all the violence that would otherwise be suppressed flows freely. It makes for a fantastic defensive system for Kennet Found.
- The Needless: Most Foundlings don't need to eat.
- Truce Zone: Save for when the moon is bleeding, violence isn't allowed within Kennet Found's boundaries.
Luna Hare
One of the very first Foundlings created by Miss, a rabbit-masked girl with preternatural balance.
Type: Foundling
- Amazing Technicolor Population: She has literally white skin.
- Moon Rabbit: Apart from her name literally meaning "Moon Rabbit", she was formed when Miss crashed through the moon diving down from the Stuck-In Place during the Founding Ritual, spotted proto-Luna (Then an Echo that was Open for Interpretation) forming amongst the moon rocks, and made the connection between rabbits and the moon.
- Mystical White Hair: Luna is a Foundling, a Paths-associated Other, and has white hair combined with literally white skin.
- Never Bareheaded: Luna is almost always seen wearing a rabbit-themed mask and feels so uncomfortable not wearing one that she'll cover her face with her hands if she's forced to go without.
- Number Two: Essentially Miss' second within Kennet Found.
- Psycho Knife Nut: When it's attack hour, the normally placid Luna picks up a serrated knife and starts cutting throats. Snowdrop finds the shift in persona visibly disturbing.
- Spirited Young Lady: A dedicated and responsible young woman who quickly becomes the Founder's right hand, contrasting her friend Snowdrop, a messy kid who hangs out with goblins.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Luna Hare is very good at balancing. She can balance on vertical surfaces, ceilings, and non-physical objects.
Shoe
A Foundling who wears a shoe on his head who serves as a paper boy.
Type: Foundling
- The Voiceless: He can't talk and instead communicates with clicks and hand gestures.
