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The Syndicate
A cult of immortal humans trying to resurrect their alien "gods", who were killed by humanity in the Great Betrayal. They live on a series of islands custom-built for the cult's purposes, which house them luxuriously and their thousands of mortal slaves ("Citizens") considerably less so. When one island breaks, they massacre its Citizens in a bloody sacrifice to empower those gods, then move to a new island and abduct more humans from Earth.
In spite of these sins, Syndicate members are still, at heart, very human. They love their families, they appreciate good music, and they get frustrated with their bosses. (Perhaps more so than ordinary humans, because grudges are so much stronger when they've festered for millennia instead of mere decades...) Most of all, they are obsessed with perfection, nigh-addicted to their Sisyphean effort to create a true "Paradise" island.
They haven't achieved it yet, but maybe next time...
The group as a whole
- Acme Products: Masahiro Heavy Industries, which makes cars that can travel through dimensions and sanctified crates that can hold giant knife-clawed demons.
- Appeal to Tradition: They use slave labor to build their pyramids, reasoning that it was good enough for the Ancient Egyptians.Lady: We have enough pyramids.
- Arch-Enemy: The God Hunters, who the Syndicate fled from after the Great Betrayal. (They caught up, much to the horror of Island 10's inhabitants.)
- The Beautiful Elite: There's no doubt that they're a very attractive group of individuals, and many of them are in stylish outfits that show off their attributes fairly well. Even Sam might count for certain people thanks to his affable demeanor.
- Casual Kink: Their acceptance of healthy BDSM practices is probably the most progressive thing about them. Flirting about such is portrayed as natural and fun for both parties, unlike the real slavery that goes on just a stone's throw away.
- Child Soldiers: They force everyone belonging to New Night into the military from the moment they're born. If they're too young to hold a weapon, they're trained until they can.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Nobody shares an occupation, unless they are specifically rewarded with subordinates for some impressive deed. This is to prevent individuals from gaining enough power to threaten the Council, but it means the society has no redundancy: if someone's assassinated or exiled, it'll be a long time before anyone replaces them...even if their job was vital.
- Eldritch Location: The Islands they create are invariably lush, beautiful Arcadias, with a few tweaks like "nobody takes Falling Damage" or "here is a gate to outer space". As an Island breaks down, things get weirder: birds fly backwards, the sky's colour changes abruptly, and random screeching fills the air.
- Everyone Has Standards: Some of their rules are in place for good reasons - especially the ones meant to prevent demonic possession, which always makes the possessed human's life considerably worse.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: They genuinely don't understand why all their attempts to build a "paradise" on the backs of slaves keep failing, or why anyone would prefer the real world to their surreal, static, tiny bubble of an island.
- Extranormal Institute: The Syndicate had at least one school before the Great Betrayal. It offered courses in ancient texts and chromatography, among other things.
- Fascist, but Inefficient: Every Citizen is supplied with painkillers, because otherwise they would refuse to perform the grueling manual labor forced upon them. The Syndicate could easily mechanize said labor, speeding it up and saving on pills... but that would require innovation.Lady: (hacking into a computer) The Syndicate never upgrades.
- Gilded Cage: Everything they take the effort to weave into reality is beautiful. Prisons are spacious gold-and-white towers open to the sky, filled with artworks and fountains. Slave quarters are immaculate many-roomed apartments equipped with TVs, couches, and personal bathrooms.
- Glory Days: The Syndicate is pathetic. The gods they serve were killed ages ago, the cult itself is tiny (around 3,000 people, most of whom are its sacrifice fodder), and they're pretty content just dicking around in their little pocket of reality. If the Syndicate was wiped out, nobody in the "real world" would notice.
- Gold Makes Everything Shiny: All Syndicate weapons and armor are golden.
- Heroic Sacrifice: During the Great Betrayal, the Silent Goat was defeated and tortured by Nay-Theists. In response, he burned himself out to send his power to a few loyal stragglers - the first Syndicate members, who have served him loyally ever since.
- Immortality Promiscuity: Marriages are as monogamous as on Earth, but otherwise Syndicate members do not take sex very seriously.
- Insistent Terminology: Slaves are not slaves, they are Citizens.
- Island Base: No one has ever doubted that Paradise will take the form of a tropical island. More philosophically, each Sequence is an island of physical form in a sea of Primordial Chaos.
- Jerkass Realization: The oldest Syndicate members have taken one of two paths: they've become murderously obsessed with politics, the only outlet left to them... or they've become sick of all the slaughter and loneliness and want to build a new Syndicate, not just rule the current one. A Syndicate that doesn't need slavery anymore.
- Klingons Love Shakespeare: Syndicate members are human - immortality, weird religion, and occasional supernatural powers aside - but they are banned from mass-producing any media that doesn't have an obvious practical use (e.g., posters that aren't propaganda, sculptures that don't depict religious figures, pornography). Therefore, whatever games or music they take off their captives are very valuable.
- Perfection Is Impossible: In private, a lot of characters admit that they like the cycle of island-building. It gives them scope for their creativity, new things to look forward to, and the sort of bittersweet nostalgia which comes from memories that can never be recreated. An example given is Syndicate whisky, which has a distinctive flavour unique to the Island it was brewed on.
- Power Source: The Reality Folding Drive, a gift from the Silent Goat that produces a nuke's worth of power every second. It enables the Syndicate to do pretty much anything - including reality warping- but Citizens working with it tend to go insane, and the excess heat it produces means Islands must be strictly tropical.
- Practical Currency: Blood Crystals, the name of which is quite literal. They're solid gems, but they either contain liquid blood or can be converted into it. (Don't think about it too hard.) Useful in a cult whose gods appreciate human blood.
- Pragmatic Villainy: They give their slaves some degree of healthcare, with the goal of keeping them at peak working efficiency.
- Schizo Tech: Forklifts and instant DNA tests exist alongside hand-built pyramids.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Unusually for the trope, the Syndicate sealed themselves away, because it was the only alternative to total defeat by the rest of humanity. Even thousands of years later, leaving the island(s) is absolutely forbidden, except for occasional trips out to abduct new Citizens. It's the one rule that no known character has managed to break.
- Self-Inflicted Hell: The punishment for being a Syndicate member is being a Syndicate member; you're trapped forever with a bunch of bored, backstabbing, cultists who are just as crazy as they are violent.
- Space Nomads: They don't have a home, just a series of impermanent islands built out of the ether. They ''want' to stop wandering someday, but not enough to go back to Earth... or any place that isn't sculpted in their image. A lot of members have lost hope they ever will.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Syndicate members are not allowed to have relationships or children with Citizens, which causes all the unrest you might expect.
- Tragic Villain: The Syndicate members are given a lot by their patron deities, including supernatural power and immortality, but somehow never get what they want most. Lady Love Dies lost her relationship with Isiah. Carmelina is denied recognition. Yuri is denied respect. Lydia and Sam Day Break are denied ordinary lives. Doom Jazz and Akiko have to watch people they love die. Witness is alone in his worship. Crimson is forced to be a celebrity instead of a demon hunter.
- We Have Reserves: An aversion. The Council only permits one mortal-abducting expedition per island, so a lot of effort is put into keeping the captives alive (if not healthy) and creating ideal conditions for them to breed the next generation.A number of apartments were knocked down and replaced with houses as an experiment. Would the Citizens stop killing themselves and each other if they have a better quality of life?
- What You Are in the Dark: The Syndicate is a conflicted, crumbling edifice being picked over by usurpers and fanatical rebels. Which only makes it all the more glorious when a few truly good people go, "Fuck you, we're not doing that," and commit themselves to saving it - both literally and morally.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Syndicate members are immortal. Their children are not.
Lady Love Dies
Lady Love Dies
"The investigator is here!"
- Voiced by: Lorraine AnsellBirthsign: Kiss Me To The Moon
The protagonist; an experienced investigator nicknamed the Investigation Freak, she served the Syndicate well until a god tricked her into making Island 13 vulnerable to demonic invasion. She was punished for her failure by being exiled, for the rest of her immortal life... until three million days later, the mysteries surrounding the massacre of the Council on Island 24 required that she take up her old role.
Visually, she's a red-robed human of British ethnicity who is never seen without her AI laptop, Starlight.
- Above Good and Evil: She scoffs that "evil" is just a meaningless insult people use when they don't want to think about the reasons people have for committing crime, like her reasons for helping a cult that slaughters thousands of innocent people. Shinji notes how convenient this belief is for her.
- Anti-Hero: None of the stuff she does is bad, but it's all to preserve one of the most selfish, sadistic societies the world has ever seen. It is possible for the player to make conversation choices that imply she's starting to see just how bad the institution she serves is, though.Shinji: The Syndicate worships alien gods who want to drown the world in war and blood.
Lady: I don't see how that makes us the bad guys. - Asinine Alternate Activity: If her jail cell is any indication, she passed the time by potting plants.
- Big Beautiful Woman: Her thighs are noticeably chunky and she has a noticeable stomach roll - not that this stops several characters from admiring her, or inhibits her ability to run and jump all over the island.
- Catchphrase: One so frequent that she may have been renamed after it."When love dies, all that remains are the facts."
- Constantly Curious: She hated her exile to the Idle Lands because it was so boring. No places to explore, no people to talk to, nothing.
- Cryo-Prison: The usual penalty for a crime like Lady's is death, but she was very popular, so instead they put her in a sort of suspended animation. Like most examples of the trope, she's shocked by what the Syndicate has become during her absence.
- Drowning My Sorrows: She knows it's irresponsible to drink while working, but her work can involve examining horribly murdered corpses, so...
- Due to the Dead: She utters a prayer over each of the Council's corpses, and tells Witness that "I hope paradise is everything you want it to be" if she finds him guilty of the second conspiracy.
- Even Evil Has Standards: She is visibly horrified by Dainonigate's wounds and tries to get help for him, although she's ended many other criminals' lives over the years. Presumably she finds her swift executions more palatable than the bloody, prolonged death he was suffering.
- Evil Will Fail: She firmly believes that criminals want to be exposed; all she does is gather the clues they're subconsciously leave behind. Given how many Motive Rants she witnesses during the trial, she may have a point.
- Fantasy-Forbidding Father: She always knew she wanted to be an investigator, but her parents wanted her to get married and carry on the family business. Eventually she ran away from them to follow her dream.
- Gentleman Detective: Lady acts like one: composed, confident, and unwilling to put up with suspects' bullshit. ("Don't. Test. Me"). It's not stated whether her family were aristocratic, though.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: Averted. After spending three million days (more than 8200 years) in the Idle Lands in social isolation, she's perfectly coherent, and not even particularly bitter about it.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: She picks up everything, relevant to the investigation or not: whisky bottles, garden tools, rotten eggs... A conversation with Shinji implies that it's her way of coping with the Citizens' inevitable deaths. By hoarding the trash they've left behind, she can remember them.
- Immortal Breaker: Her beloved gun, with which she executes the guilty.
- Incorruptible Pure Pureness:
- Subverted. She - and everyone else - arrogantly believed this of herself, but despite her integrity she was still human, and no match for a god's manipulations.
- The outcome of the trial may reconstruct this trope. Even though Lady isn't perfectly just, she's as close to being such as a human can be, and close enough to make a world of difference to the corrupt, crime-ridden Syndicate.
- Internal Reformist: In her max-level conversations with Henry and One Last Kiss, she acknowledges that the Syndicate is rotten and promises to do whatever she can to redeem it.
- Plot-Sensitive Snooping Skills: She lived beside Crimson Acid for centuries, minimum, and never knew that Crimson loved her romantically.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Other than the fact that she serves gods who demand mass enslavement and Human Sacrifices, she's not that bad a person. Her involvement is the main reason that Henry Division isn't executed instantly, even if it's motivated more by curiosity than compassion.
- Retired Badass: Implied. No matter what she says to the suspects, no matter what secrets she tells them to their faces that she knows about... no one ever tries to attack her. Justified by the fact that Starlight records every conversation she participates in, and Judge is currently connected to Starlight; if anyone attacked her, it would be known.
- Ring on a Necklace: She wears a ring - presumably the one Isiah gave to her when they got engaged - on a thin chain over her robes. They've been broken up for a very long time, but she has difficulty moving on. Antagonists know better than to tease her over it, though.
- Scarf of Asskicking: It's long and white, perpetually rippling in Lady's character sprites. Presumably tropical heat is no reason to sacrifice coolness.
- Schrödinger's Question: Many of her dialogue options are mutually exclusive, and need not be consistent with gameplay choices.
- Seeker Archetype: It doesn't matter who's in power or how many years pass, Lady will always seek the truth. (She may not always share it, though.)
- Single Woman Seeks Good Man: The only characters she can have Optional Sexual Encounters with are Crimson Acid and Doom Jazz, who rank among the most innocent suspects on the island; however, it should be noted that almost everyone else on the island is dead, already taken, openly contemptuous of her, or too caught up in their own business.
- Spell My Name with a "The": In one of her flavor quotes, she proudly declares, "The investigator is here!"
- Sugar-and-Ice Personality: A Syndicate investigator must also personally execute people they find guilty. Lady will do this if she has to. Even to her friends.
- Super Drowning Skills: If Lady steps into any non-shallow water, she immediately blacks out and gets washed up next to the nearest fast travel point.
- Took a Level in Kindness: If the player chooses heretical dialogue options, Lady explains that she had a change of heart after millennia of introspection in the Idle Lands. Other characters' reactions imply that the Lady they knew pre-exile was quite different.
- Unwitting Pawn: She's so relieved to be out of the Idle Lands that she ignores the possibility other people might feel the same way. Maybe enough to have caused the crime that got her back in.
- Vetinari Job Security: Lady's obsession with truth makes her almost incorruptible, and one of the few Syndicate members trusted with a weapon. After her exile, they never tried to replace her... a weakness multiple criminals took advantage of.
- With This Ring: Around her neck, she wears a thin chain attached to a ring, presumably the one Isiah gave to her when they got engaged.
- Workaholic: She happily goes to work for the Syndicate again - despite how they treated her the first time - because a job is a job. If she accepts sidequests, it's because she can't pass up the chance to solve a mystery, however busy she already is.Lydia: Is the old fire coming back?
Lady: It never left. I was born to investigate.
Crimson Acid
Crimson Acid
- Portrayed by: Ria JenkinsBirthsign: Endless Moon
A Knowledge Broker who has recently taken on the role of an idol. She and Lady Love Dies are old friends.
Visually, she is a goat-headed human of English origin.
- Be as Unhelpful as Possible: As a Knowledge Broker, she'll ask for Blood Crystals in payment instead of just freely giving information like every other suspect. Additionally, some of that information isn't even useful, such as being able to recognize that a call wasn't to a cell phone (as every phone on the Island is registered) but having no clue what else the receiver could have been. She does, however, adjust her price based on how valuable she thinks the information will be, and even offers refunds if Lady can respond with some intel of her own.
- Blood Knight: She was a soldier for a long time, and she loves fighting demons, even petitioning to become a Marshal (and, later, a member of the new Paradise Psycho Unit) so that she can do so again.
- Charm Point: Her head is considered quite attractive In-Universe, as the Syndicate have weird standards of beauty. It's the main reason they wanted her as a poster girl.
- Constantly Curious: She went to great lengths to learn what the Second Holy Seal was and how to pass through it... simply just because wanted to know. Apparently she lost sleep over it. In a case of Gameplay and Story Integration, she will pay Lady if the latter has uncovered secrets Crimson hasn't.
- Did Not Get the Girl: Crimson was one end of a polyamorous relationship with Lady, with Isiah Bullet at the other end. When the latter two married, Crimson got cut out under the assumption that her relationship with Lady had been casual. It wasn't. Lady's exile only made things worse, as Crimson thought she'd never get to confess her feelings.
- Good Bad Girl: She manipulated K. HX sexually to get what she wanted... but what she wanted wasn't all that bad. Compared to the actual criminals infesting the island, she's a saint... who's a visual reference to a demon in Ars Goetia. Irony!
- Good Fortune from God: Crimson didn't always have a goat head: one of the gods blessed her with it after she showed great courage in battle. Because Paradise's society is so theocratic, her receiving a visible sign of divine favor was - and is - a big deal. (Ironically, it resulted in the Council taking away her dream job as a demon hunter, and shunting her into the role of the Syndicate's poster girl.)
- Knowledge Broker: Her main role in-game and on Island 24: pay her Blood Crystals, receive leads to investigate or upgrades for Starlight (which Lady needs to get past the security systems).
- Ms. Fanservice: While all male members of the Syndicate don't seem to understand the purpose of a shirt, she is the only woman wearing some very revealing robes.
- Navel-Deep Neckline: She wears a pink pantsuit with a deep slit, showing off her prodigious "assets" and part of her midriff.
- Old Flame Fizzle: Crimson had plenty of time to get over her love of Lady, covered under Did Not Get the Girl. After informing Lady of the true feelings she'd had at the time and where she is now, she explicitly states she'll sleep with Lady as, and only as, emotional closure; then they can start again fresh at just friendship.
- Red Baron: She's known as "the Glamour Of The Battlefield" for her beauty and grace in battle.
- Red Herring: A minor example. There's a mountain of evidence pointing to her as the one who murdered K.HX, but his true killer was Yuri Night, who's incriminated only by his ring in K.HX's hand and the other facts surrounding the conspiracy.
Grand Marshal Akiko 14
Grand Marshal Akiko 14
- Portrayed by: Catalina CroitoruBirthsign: New Night
The leader of the God Justice Marshals, who enforce order and the rule of the Syndicate.
Visually, she is a golden-armored human of Romanian origin.
- Bad Liar: It's very difficult to get a straight answer out of her for most of the game due to her position of authority, but if she's called to the stand without her troops or her clout to back her up, she's terrible at deflecting any of the evidence against her, reduced to little more than accusing Starlight of glitching or making up all the facts.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Inverted. She's an asshole to everyone but her troops.
- Hot-Blooded: Most of her voice clips have her shouting very dramatically, and merely trying to strike up a conversation with her as Akiko threatening Love Dies' life.
- Inappropriately Close Comrades: She's had relationships with several of her subordinates over the years, breaking Syndicate law. She never abuses her power, as far as we know, but... could a Citizen really say "no" to a Syndicate member?
- Morality Pet: Literally; her ownership of two goldfish serves to humanize her.
- Powered Armor: Wears a golden set of power armor.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: She really doesn't like Lady, and uses Foreign Cuss Words to make a point about it — at least a good half of her voice clips are swearing in Romanian.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Like all members of the Syndicate, she is immortal... but her beloved troops are not.
Carmelina Silence
Carmelina Silence
- Portrayed by: Roberta MussatoBirthsign: Blood Dancer
The architect of many Islands, which she weaves into existence with psychic power and determination. Due to the sudden murder of the Council, she's the acting leader of the Syndicate until the Crime to End All Crimes can be successfully solved.
Visually, she is an elaborately garbed human of Island heritage, always accompanied by her pet dog.
- Ambition Is Evil: She tried for a long time to get onto the Council legitimately... and then she stopped. The "legitimately" part, at least; she still desires recognition for her hard work.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: She and Witness each put plans in motion that killed the council, making them the masterminds behind their murder.
- Embarrassing Cover Up: If Lady confronts Carmelina about her hidden bunker, she'll claim that it's a place for her and Witness to have sex.
- Entitled Bastard: She has convinced herself that nothing other than a spot on the Council is suitable reward for her hard work.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: A gender-inverted example. Part of her Motive Rant involves anger over her father being wrongly condemned, and it's implied he inspired her to follow in his footsteps as an architect."My father was a victim treated like a criminal. You people never appreciate what others do for you!"
- Faux Affably Evil: She is relatively friendly at first but can be easily provoked to anger, especially if you successfully get her and her conspirators declared guilty during the trial.
- The Gift: Her islands have lasted much longer than any other architect's, something the 23rd Island's historical tablet gushes about. If she is proven guilty, Judge will sadly ask why she betrayed the Syndicate after serving them for so long.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Everything she says about the Council is right, but none of it justifies ruining her innocent son's life to get revenge on them.
- Legacy of Service: Her father was an architect too.
- Short-Lived Leadership: Carmelina has been promoted to temporary leader of the Syndicate, due to the entire Council being dead, but this position is only in place until the murders are solved - which might very well be less than a day.
- Sins of Our Fathers: The Silence family has been permanently banned from ever being members of the Council, as punishment for Carmelina's father Romeo Silence being deceived by a god.
- Superpowerful Genetics: Her ability to build Portal Networks is shared by her son, Dainonigate.
Doctor Doom Jazz
Doctor Doom Jazz
- Portrayed by: Barry "Epoch" ToppingBirthsign: Cosmic Deceit
The Syndicate's doctor, who lost both his arms to torture in a past event.
Visually, he is a human of Scottish origin, identifiable by his pink mohawk and metal prosthetic arms.
- Ace Custom: He maintains his prosthetics himself, and has personalized them with activist stickers. (He also updates their touch functionality every so often, for... recreational... reasons). Presumably his motivation is to make them feel less alien.
- Amazon Chaser: "I have a weakness for women in power armor."
- Cool Old Guy: He doesn't act it, but he is much older than Lady and was around in the first days of the Syndicate. He is also a genuinely Nice Guy who lives on a yacht and tries to help her catch the Paradise Killer.
- Cyborg: Lost his arms, and had them replaced with robotics.
- Favors for the Sexy: He knows that he shouldn't tell people secrets, but he just can't help himself. Admittedly, all suspects do this to some extent, but Doom Jazz starts spilling what he knows after literally one conversation.Lady: Are you breaking patient confidentiality to flirt with me?
Doom Jazz: Is it working? - Handsome Lech: He seems to genuinely love the women he takes up with, but he won't be loyal to them.
- Jumped at the Call: He always dreamed of becoming a doctor, and regularly snuck into a medical school's library to study their texts. Eventually, he convinced them to let him enroll there for real, rapidly becoming their best student.
- Let the Past Burn: If he survives the Trial, he's last seen burning down and sinking his personal yacht, and comments that it's something he does at the end of every Island sequence in order to not carry past burdens into the next Island.
- Loveable Rogue: Everybody knows that he's broken the "no sleeping with mortals" rule and the "repair broken security systems" rule, but he's never faced censure for it because he's so charismatic and the Syndicate has much more important crimes to deal with. He does, however, make an effort to abide by the important rules."I'm sorry, Akiko. I am duty-bound to assist an investigation."
- Love Hurts: He has spent his whole long life losing people he loves (by all definitions of the term): his father was killed in a fruitless battle, his best friend committed suicide, and he has romantic feelings for Lady Love Dies, who is unreceptive/married to someone else/exiled. Now, he's developed feelings for Akiko, who is similarly unavailable.
- Martial Pacifist: He has no grudge against people who kill, but he insists that "nothing in this world" could make him do the same.
- Power Dynamics Kink: He suggests flirtatiously that Lady might want to "investigate" his body, which she can agree to, depending on player choice. More serious conversations, however, make it clear that both fully understand the weight of her job.
- Precious Photo: He has an explicit photograph of Akiko attached to his yacht's dashboard.
- Really Gets Around: There are only two female characters in the game he hasn't slept with: Lydia (married) and Carmelina (recently divorced).
- Stepford Smiler: Lady notices that he's serious when he stops flirting with her.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
- He agreed to keep Carmelina's newborn son a secret, because he had no idea what she would do to him.
- Similarly, he accidentally provides Lady with information that incriminates Akiko, because he never thought Akiko would commit a crime.
Lydia Day Break
Lydia Day Break
- Portrayed by: Elle Osili-WoodBirthsign: Beautiful Spectre
The Syndicate's Ferry Woman, who transports them between realities as needed. Like her beloved husband Sam, she used to be an assassin.
Visually, she is a human of Kenyan origin who wears colorful modern clothing.
- Genre Refugee: In the artbook, the writers comment that if they had enough money, they'd make a expensive epic-scale action game where Lydia is the protagonist and kills at least one god by the end. For now, her exploits are limited strictly to backstory.
- I Love the Dead: It's unclear if she and her husband (an animate skeleton) have any sort of sex life, but given the rest of the Syndicate, highly likely.
- Stepford Smiler: She insists that she and Sam are totally happy, and they would've had no motivation to kill the Council, none at all.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Lydia and Sam are both tired of being part of the Syndicate - they want to leave and travel the real world. It's ultimately their motivation for assisting Witness.
Yuri Night
Yuri Night
- Portrayed by:Birthsign: Dire Rose
Carmelina's secretary and Lydia's handler. Although he was born on Island 15, he only recently joined the Syndicate. Supposedly he was very unattractive when he was younger, but during his teenage years he transformed overnight into a male beauty.
Visually, he is a black-clad human of Island origin who wears a flowery hat.
- Bullying a Dragon: He's more disrespectful towards Lady than the other characters; unlike them, he's never met her, and doesn't know (and doesn't care about) what she's capable of.
- Devil in Plain Sight: Which is honestly an accomplishment, considering how morally dubious everyone in the Syndicate is. He's openly smug and antagonistic, practically no one has a good word to say about him, and he frequently talks about how he values ambition above all else. It would honestly be a shock if he wasn't guilty of anything. He is, in fact, guilty... but he's the triggerman, rather than the mastermind.
- Disproportionate Retribution: When the Council rejected his application to join them, he tried to physically attack them. It's amazing he wasn't executed right there.
- Good Fortune from God: He claims his current body is a blessing from the god he worships, which might not be as narcissistic as it sounds. His god is known for deceit, and since the deceptions of a god can kill Islands, Yuri worshipping that one is a red flag.
- Hate Sink: Yuri is just a douche. No Freudian Excuse, no hidden softer side, no change of heart. He's a ruthless Obviously Evil minion who exists to help more sympathetic villains carry out their plans, and give the player catharsis when they inevitably - and easily - take him down in court. Possibly also to establish that the Syndicate, who employ him, are not good people (even if many of the other Syndicate members in the game are sympathetic so some degree).
- It's All About Me: He only cares about himself and his ambitions. If he's successfully incriminated during the trial, he immediately throws Carmelina under the bus just to spite her.
- Jerkass: Yuri is an insufferable jerk to everyone he meets, and absolutely nobody on the island has anything good to say about him.
- Small Name, Big Ego: He's a newcomer to the Syndicate, but already acts like the most important person on the island, even though his attempts to earn himself a higher position have consistently ended in failure.
- Smug Snake: Completely insufferable and far less important or intelligent than he believes himself to be.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Yuri's top leaves his entire chest exposed.
- Wine Is Classy: Yuri tries to invoke this trope by only ever ordering expensive wine from Sam Daybreak's bar, despite Sam's experience with bartending meaning he could mix Yuri a custom drink he'd find far more enjoyable. Yuri does this to be classy, but it instead makes him pretentious. His god Enchanted Blue is known to be a 'connoisseur of fine food and wine', which may be related.
The Witness to the End
The Witness to the End
- Portrayed by:Birthsign: Destroyed Eden
The overseer of the Islands' ends, who records every failed Paradise. He is fanatical even by Syndicate standards, and has repeatedly petitioned the council to shift their goals from achieving perfection to resuscitating more gods.
Visually, he is a human of Irani origin whose head is covered by a golden, skull-like mask.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: With Carmelina. The two of them had separate plans to murder the council and can each be found guilty of their own conspiracies.
- Cool Mask: Never seen without it.
- Don't You Like It?: Witness likes to give people obscure, high-maintenance plants as gifts, and gets very offended if the recipient doesn't take care of them properly.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Even when taking the game's bizarre aesthetic into account, Witness is the only character whose name indicates his role - he's the last person to leave the island, and witnesses its destruction. It is unknown if Witness is his actual name, in which case one could argue His Name Really Is "Barkeep".
- Fictional Disability: He can hear "death screams", the psychic scream released by a mortal when they die. There's no cure, but he takes prescribed medication for the migraines caused by it.
- Framing Device: A rare meta example. Paradise Killer itself was first conceptualized in a brief story written from Witness' point of view.Oli Clarke Smith: [Witness] was the first named character.
- The Fundamentalist: He's the only member of the Syndicate who remains focused on their original goal of resurrecting their gods, and considers the others to have gone astray for their focusing on other matters.
-
Genius Bonus: His chest has the Code of Hammurabi painted across it, as the artbook confirms. In the original cuneiform, of course.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: His evangelizing is rooted in genuine religious faith, but he's so happy when people go along with it that it's likely also a backwards attempt to relate to people and share his interests. In his max-level conversation, he more-or-less sells out Carmelina because he values his friendship with Lady that much, even though he's only known her a few days.
- Sleek High Rise Apartment: His personal apartment has all sorts of security on it, since he's a devout worshipper of a God. Of course, that gives him an alibi for the exact time of the crime.
Sam Day Break
Sam Day Break
- Portrayed by: ZaferakkasBirthsign: Shadow Zero
The owner and operator of Knife Through The Heart, an Island bar. He was murdered by Lydia, his future wife, but it didn't stick.
Visually, he is a human skeleton that's colored bright red.
- The Bartender: Every nuance of his drinks is finely calculated to complement the others, and he has encyclopedic knowledge of everyone's favorite.
- Dem Bones: He is, as noted, a walking, talking red skeleton.
- Fictional Disability: For the last few Islands, he's required regular blood infusions, apparently as a side effect of not having flesh anymore. However, this may be a lie to justify the blood stored in his fridge.
- Token Non-Human: While all members of the Syndicate are not quite human, they at least look human. Sam's a walking, talking, red skeleton with a horn.
- Tragic Keepsake: He still keeps the glass used by Lady, his exiled friend, carrying it between islands.
- Verbal Tic: He tends to phrase his statements like rhetorical questions, as if seeking agreement, right?
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Lydia and Sam are both tired of being part of the Syndicate - they want to leave and travel the real world. It's ultimately their motivation for assisting Witness.
- Wingding Eyes: If accused during the trial, his eyes turn stark white with red X's for pupils.
Judge
Judge
- Portrayed by: Alysia Judge
An unknown Syndicate member who long ago erased their ego and fused with the island, so that Paradise would always have an impartial justice.
Visually, they are a humanoid chimera with multiple faces, which are covered with several amalgamated gold masks, and wires emerging from their body at multiple points.
- Not So Above It All: They are as neutral as a sapient being can be, but they're clearly fond of Lady and horrified by the Council massacre. They also dabble in poetry.
- Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous: Their voice is vaguely feminine, but everything else is perfectly neutral.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: They compare truth to many things - a feast, a highway, a riverbed... Sometimes they have to be reminded to cut the metaphors and get to the point.
K. HX
K. HX
The Syndicate's craftsman, who recently disappeared for reasons unknown.
- Posthumous Character: By the time Lady Love Dies exits her exile, he's already dead.
- Stalker with a Crush: He wasn't invasive, but secretly he held certain... delusions... about Crimson Acid becoming his loving trophy queen and ruling over the Syndicate with him. Hence the many posters of her in his house.
Dainonigate (UNMARKED SPOILERS)
Dainonigate
- Portrayed by:
Carmelina's illegitimate son, who is hidden on Island 24.
Visually, he is a human in a suit whose face is marked by a pink diamond.
- Excessive Evil Eyeshadow: He's wearing immense amounts of black eye makeup.
- Small Role, Big Impact: You are only able to have one conversation with him before he dies but it's arguably the most important one of the entire investigation, and enables you to unravel Carmelina's conspiracy. He was also conceived and raised solely to murder the council, so he was this in Carmelina's plot as well.
- Technicolor Eyes: He appears to have no irises in his eyes, just sclera and pupil.
- Tyke Bomb: His mother used him like this, training him for one specific murder and nothing else.
- Walking Spoiler: His mere existence spoils a whole lot about Carmelina and her plans.
The commentators
The commentators
Orange on the left, Blue on the right
An unnamed couple sitting in The Way of Blood bar on Island 25. They serve as something of a Greek Chorus, reacting to events in the plot and discussing Love Dies' investigation.
Visually, they are silhouettes distinguished by different colors. An orange box appears over the silhouette on the left, who wears a hat and appears to be male, when he talks. A blue box appears over the silhouette on the right, a woman with wispy hair. For wiki convenience, we will refer to them as Orange and Blue respectively.
- all lowercase letters: The way Orange speaks, even when he's laughing. Knowing the setting, this could indicate anything, from meekness to divinity.
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Orange is merely mildly curious about Blue's crime, and Blue doesn't realize at first what he's talking about.Orange: why do it?
Blue: Why do what?
Orange: the crime the murder the paradise killing - Framing Device: The game's opening shows Blue telling Orange about Lady's adventure over drinks.
- The Insomniac: There's nothing indicating that their extensive meandering conversations take place over more than one night.
- Hypocrite: Blue criticizes Orange for breaking a rule by talking to new Citizens, but she broke an even more important rule by murdering the Syndicate's leaders.
- Interface Screw: Orange's dialogue has no grammatical marks at all, unlike the rest of the characters.
- Karma Houdini: Blue's part in the conspiracies to kill council is never discovered, as there's no evidence of it on the island and she herself had moved into 25 by the time Lady was brought down. It's possible that Lady Love Dies could discover her part in it at some point during Island 25's life, but the game ends when Lady changes islands, making it speculation at best.
- Like an Old Married Couple: Orange whines that Blue is always patronizing him, yet seems perfectly happy to spend all night talking with her.
- The Man Behind the Man: Blue says that she killed Paradise, implying some relation to Carmelina or Witness' conspiracies. Lady Love Dies never finds this out, because Blue got off the island before said plans were put into motion.
- My Name Is ???: Blue's character portrait lists seven question marks where her name would normally be, and Orange's lists five hashtags.
- Mysterious Watcher: Blue has intimate knowledge of Lady's personality and investigation on Island 24. It is unclear if Lady knows about this.
- Order Versus Chaos: Orange remarks that he might like to see the Syndicate collapse into anarchy. Blue replies, deadly serious, that he really doesn't.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Orange isn't supposed to talk to the people he procures, because it messes with their "integration" (read: dehumanization into obedient slaves). He does anyway.
- Seinfeldian Conversation: They discuss wine, philosophy, video games... anything to pass their unlimited time.
- Sympathy for the Hero: Blue says with certainty that "we" (presumably the Syndicate) will always need Lady Love Dies. Yet Lady wouldn't have returned to the Islands at all if Blue hadn't killed Paradise... which may have been the point.
- Threesome Subtext: Blue says that "she" put a fire out, and Orange knows without being told that she's talking about Lady. They go on to talk about how she solved the Council murders, because that's what a man and a woman do at a bar, talk about someone who isn't even there.
- Visionary Villain: Blue did not kill Paradise for emotional reasons, unlike Carmelina or Witness, which is one reason she escapes justice where they did not."To reshape the world. When you pull a trigger or thrust a knife the world branches. The old world is gone. It exists in history. Then history is forgotten. The world is remade. Or reshaped. It depends. We all live in the new world after that".
Isiah Bullet
Isiah Bullet
The Syndicate member in charge of Citizen kidnapping and management. He was once Lady Love Dies' husband, but is now in a happy relationship with Madame Complex.
- High-School Sweethearts: He started dating Lady in high school, and they got married later.
- Laser-Guided Karma: After lifetimes of enslaving mortals and breaking up families, he finally learned what it felt like to lose someone.
- Love Hurts: He believed in Lady more than anyone else, and it shattered him when she was proven guilty of the accusations against her. Looking back on the situation, Lady says bluntly that she "ruined his life".
- Punch-Clock Villain: His fellow immortals pity him, if anything, although he has the most immoral job of them all.
Madame Complex
Madame Complex
The Islands' gardener, who is also responsible for certain rituals.
- A Shared Suffering: She and Isiah bonded and eventually got together because they both knew what it was like to lose a spouse. (Complex's previous lover, Gregory, died in a Heroic Sacrifice to fix reality).
The CouncilThe Syndicate's leaders, who guide them in resurrecting gods and creating new Islands.
The group as a whole
- Equal-Opportunity Evil: The Syndicate doesn't care if you're black, female, or disabled.
- Immortality Inducer: They can make people immortal with some kind of "gene-therapy" process. Of course, anyone who is less than completely devoted to the Syndicate's goals, or threatens the existing balance of power, has no chance of getting said therapy.
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: For cultists, they're surprisingly unreligious, preferring their own hobbies/status-climbing schemes/hedonism to any sort of spiritual work. (This is partly justified by the difficulty of reclaiming a god's corpse from its guards on Earth.) One benefit of having Citizens is that the burden of praying can be shifted onto them.Witness: All but one of the pyramids stand empty and we have existed for millennia!
- Resignations Not Accepted: They do not let useful people go, slave or free. The only way to escape eternal life under their thumb is to commit a capital crime.
- Too Dumb to Live: For all of their precautions, it seemingly never occurred to them that openly cosigning your army and police force to death at the end of each island was a recipe for unrest.
- Who Murdered the Asshole: People are less surprised that the Council was massacred than that one of the enslaved, tormented, mortal Citizens they ruled with an iron fist was able to do it.
Leader Monserrat
Leader Monserrat
The current leader of the Council, who slew his tyrannical predecessor and saved the Syndicate from his growing paranoia. Murdered before the start of the game.
- Bad Boss: In a world where gods invade people's minds through weaknesses in their psyche, Monserrat is enraged - at the victims of the brainwashing, because "they [weren't] supposed to have weaknesses". He tells Lady as much when she claims innocence.
- Being Evil Sucks: His lack of tolerance left him with an increasingly small amount of people he could trust, and did nothing to prevent his death by stabbing. Lady Love Dies was not the only one hurt by her exile.
- Blasphemous Boast: Lady can remark to Shinji that the Council building was designed by Monserrat to be his personal "Tower of Babel", and the only reason it isn't even higher is that the mountain was already reserved for a mausoleum to fallen Council members.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: He wasn't especially calm before he exiled the Syndicate's only detective, but that act was another nail in the coffin of his long, lonely descent into paranoia.
- Villain in a White Suit: As befits his obsession with purity and perfection.
Eyes Kiwami
Eyes Kiwami
A friend of Doom Jazz's, who took his own life several years ago.
- Driven to Suicide: Unlike the rest of the Council that was murdered on the same night, it's stated that he purposely lept to his death years earlier. After uncovering evidence relating to him, Lady Love Dies speculates he felt tormented by the fact that he had two bastard children as the result of two different forbidden romances.
Ezequial
Ezequial
The first leader of the Council, and Witness' father figure.
Gods
The group as a whole
- Ethnic God: Every immortal is born under a god, like how people are born under star signs, and they typically worship 'their' god. It's not illegal for someone to serve a cross-aligned god, but it's often a sign of serious problems. (Yuri serving Enchanted Blue foreshadows that she's seduced him away from the Syndicate, Lady sabotaged an island because she obeyed Damned Harmony, etc.) Citizens walk a tightrope: they're forced to worship the gods in general, and yet worshipping too much, or worshipping a specific god, is forbidden.
- Fictional Greetings and Farewells: When two characters say farewell, they exchange phrases based on each other's personal gods.
- Jerkass Gods: Even the Syndicate, who worships them and (in theory) does everything for them, knows better than to trust them.
- Pyramid Power: Only pyramids can contain a god, so each Island is ringed with them.
The Silent Goat
The Syndicate's patron god, who died to send them his power. The first god humanity ever had contact with. His statue depicts him as a bipedal goat-like being with six arms.
- Strike Me Down: When he was captured and tortured, he sent the Syndicate his power with his death, allowing them to escape.
Crying Grudge
Crying Grudge
The only god recovered by the Syndicate so far. He is currently recuperating in the pyramids around the island, having suffered near-fatal wounds.
Visually, he is a gigantic melting skeleton wrapped in a purple robe.
Damned Harmony
Damned Harmony
A scheming god who caused the corruption of Island 13 and Lady's downfall. Long ago, he managed to escape to space as his mountain fortress was destroyed, drifting for millennia until latching onto a comet in the outer reaches of our solar system, eventually coming close enough to Earth to learn of the Syndicate.
New Night
New Night
A goddess of warriors. She appears as a humanoid with two dog heads wearing golden armor, carrying a spear, a sword, and a shield. She once based her forces in Romania.
- Bolt of Divine Retribution: New Night insists that only soldiers worship her. The Syndicate don't build public temples to her anymore, because all the previous ones were frequently struck by blue lightning.
Enchanted Blue
Enchanted Blue
A scholar of different galactic races, and a connoisseur of fine food and wine. She remains imprisoned in the real world in the hidden pyramids deep within the caverns of the Sahara. Her statue depicts her as a centaur-like being wearing a black dress.
Moonlight Petal
Moonlight Petal
Lost Pain
Lost Pain
Henry Division
Henry Division
- Portrayed by: Kieran Flitton
A demon-possessed Citizen who's believed to have murdered the Council. He became possessed ten years ago, in an incident which lead to the death of both his mother, Rina Division, and the Syndicate's exorcist, Grace Bloodlines. He despises the Syndicate because it enslaved him.
Visually, he is a shackled man whose skin is grey and scorched with demonic sigils.
- Demonic Possession: Ten years ago, Henry made himself vulnerable to this, which a demon promptly took advantage of. His possession makes proving his innocence difficult; demons can do many things impossible by even Syndicate standards, and their hosts have almost no memory of anything they do while under the demon's control.
- Jerkass Has a Point: He may be a jerk about it, but he's right that his demon-induced memory loss does make a lot of Lady Love Dies' questions seem pretty pointless.
- Meaningful Name: His last name has several relevant meanings to the story: it could refer to the class division between the Syndicate and the Citizens, the inner "division" he suffers as a victim of demonic possession, and the fact that his role as the apparent murder causes a division among the Syndicate.
- Never the Obvious Suspect: As a demon-possessed Citizen who openly despised the Council (and, because of memory loss resulting from his demonic possession, can't even attempt to give an alibi or account for his actions) Henry is the most obvious suspect... so, of course, it turns out he's one of the very few characters not guilty of anything relevant to the case, not even the original murder of Grace Bloodlines.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: It's easier to say how many of his voice clips don't have him swearing than how many do.
- Trauma Conga Line: And HOW. The son of a single mother, Henry was born into basically a life of slavery, seduced by a demon, killed his own mother, and spent a decade living in a prison cell only to be blamed for a murder he has no memory of. And even if you prove his innocence, he'll still die when the island collapses... because Citizens don't get to move to the next island.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The demon possessing Henry murdered his mother Rina and created the Dead Zone on Island 24, which was the beginning of the end of the Island. Henry wanted revenge on the Syndicate, sure, but not like that.
Shinji
Shinji
- Portrayed by:
A minor demon trying to kill time by chatting with Lady Love Dies.
Visually, he resembles a blue-and-pink, four-armed humanoid coyote with a large pillar rising out the center of his head.
- Cosy Catastrophe: Shinji treats Island 24's destruction as something like a last-minute holiday vacation: he doesn't care if he disappears along with the Island, he's going to be everywhere on it before it goes.
- Deadpan Snarker: He has a lot of snark to deliver about the setting, especially the Syndicate and its beliefs.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Several of his inquiries regarding how the Syndicate operates have him commenting how messed up they are. Considering he's a literal demon, that doesn't reflect well on the Syndicate.
- Flipping the Bird: His default pose throughout the game. The middle fingers are censored, but he's clearly flipping everything off.
- Gag Censor: Shinji is fully nude, and his crotch is covered by a three-eyed emoji.
- Hopeless Suitor: He asks Lady, a human, on a date. She makes it clear she'll never be interested.
- Jerkass Has a Point: As mentioned above, he makes a lot of valid points about the Syndicate's activities and rightly questions why Lady Love Dies would even want to help them.
- Punctuation Shaker: Shin U'thk Jiggath - his full name - as befits a Lovecraftian monster.
- Trickster Mentor: While he's not as helpful as One Last Kiss, he scatters blood crystals around the island for you and does bring up important points about how corrupt the Syndicate is. He's quite chaotic and clearly enjoys messing with Love Dies, though.
- White Sheep: Demons are forces of otherworldly corruption and hatred that kill anything they touch. Shinji is just kind of an ass, though that's largely because he's too weak to cause any real havoc.
One Last Kiss
One Last Kiss
- Portrayed by: Roberta Mussato
A ghost who asks Lady Love Dies to solve her murder. When she was alive, she was the Syndicate's chief exorcist, Grace Bloodlines.
Visually, she is a black-clad human wearing a golden skull mask.
- Dark Is Not Evil: She's the ghost of a murdered woman and she dresses all in black and wears a skull mask. However, she's ultimately one of the friendlier characters in the game and is one of the few not guilty of anything (partly because she died years earlier.)
- Posthumous Character: Grace Bloodlines died during Henry's demon summoning ten years before the start of the game, with One Last Kiss serving as her Virtual Ghost.
- Trickster Mentor: If you find out who she is and locate her in the cemetery, she will drop cryptic hints about the case, including her own murder. She won't give you explicit answers because she wants you to figure things out yourself, but she will point you towards suspects and clues you may have missed.
Dead Nebula
Dead Nebula
- Portrayed by: Amy Crabtree
The A.I mascot of the eponymous beverage company.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Lady can come across a vending machine near the power plant with "Deader Nebula" trapped inside; it's a fragment of Dead Nebula that's been quarantined and speaks in philosophical ramblings, ending them with "Thus spoke Deader Nebula" while trying to breach Starlight's firewalls and leave its prison. It successfully bargains with Lady for freedom in exchange for unlocking a soundtrack.
- The Gadfly: She trolls Lady into parroting a twee corporate slogan, then mocks her for falling for it.
Starlight
Starlight
The artificial intelligence housed in Lady Love Dies' laptop.
- Virtual Sidekick: To Lady, often chiming in with advice on the data it scans, such as pointing out unusual phone logs or a notable gap in call history.
Dead Killer Demon
Dead Killer Demon
The corpse of a Killer Demon.
- Ironic Name: It is entirely possible for the Killer Demon to be found innocent of any killings - and, in fact, of any crimes whatsoever.
- Posthumous Character: The demon whose corpse you find is, in fact, dead.
