Characters / Red Alert 3: Paradox

aka: Red Alert 3 Paradox Expanded Universe

Red Alert 3: Paradox has a good many characters appearing in-lore or in-game. Those are usually important politicians, commanders and commandos, generals and officers serving in the various armies.

Paradox

Allied Nations

A global coalition of dictatorships of the bourgeoisie, the Allied Nations were founded to work as a single force against communism. Since then, they have developed into a World Police Force and aid in humanitarian and military projects around the globe. They have very high influence everywhere and are very, very PR concious. They are idealistic but also love to be in control and often do things that are fundamentally right, regardless of what everyone else actually WANTS. A wide range of scientific advances grants them a technological edge against all other factions next to the Soviet Union and their military focuses on precision strikes and air force.—-

• Airborne Aircraft Carrier: The Mesofortress Gunship has a complement of Lamprey Parasite Fighters for protection against hostile aircraft.
• Amazon Brigade: Riot Agents are one of the few exclusively female units in the game.
• Arch-Enemy: The Allied Nations and the Soviet Union have been arch-nemeses for as long as Red Alert has existed.
• Attack Drone: Aircraft Carriers have Sky Knight and Paladin drones. The Claymoore Drone Missiles and Quasar Drones are independent from other units but with human controllers at the base instead. Averted with the Mesofortress Gunship's Lamprey manned anti-air fighters.
• Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: The Allied Rifleman wears a kilt.
• Awesome Personnel Carrier: The Assault Striker is a massive transport with room for up to 5 infantrymen who can fire out.
• Badass Longcoat: The Heavy Defenders have pinned-back, WW1 style trenchcoats.
• Beam Spam: The Allies employ a multitude of laser-style weapons that damage, disable or otherwise hinder their enemies.
• Bifurcated Weapon: Pathfinders have underbarrel grenade launchers.
• Bigger on the Inside: How the Carryall Transporters' fuel tanks work, allowing them to carry absolutely everything without problems.
• Blinded by the Light: The Riot Agents' flashbang grenade launchers.
• Bulletproof Fashion Plate: The Rocketeers have a bulletproof dress uniform and stylish hair at all times.
• Cast from Hit Points: A Barkhausen Projector can disable the safeties to fire continuously at the cost of damaging itself.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: The Allies fight for world peace and fundamental human rights without being asked to. This has bitten them in the ass many times since many regions do not actually want their meddling.
• Colour-Coded Timestop: Effects that play with time are red or blue depending on if they speed it up or slow it down. Justified by the Doppler Effect changing the wavelength of light.
• Control Freak: The Allies are very PR conscious and really do not like media working against them. They also have far more influence in their member countries than they like to admit and enjoy that position.
• Cool Plane: Sort of their thing. The Achilles, their coolest planes, are actually fusion-powered rocketships with wings.
• Cryonics Failure: One of the reasons of freezing enemies in the first place.
• Defenseless Transports: Armoured Response Vehicles are capable of transporting infantry and have no way to defend themselves outside of crushing enemy infantry.
• Dressing as the Enemy: Spies can disguise themselves as enemy infantry. Subhunter Frigates can disguise themselves as enemy ships.
• Dual Mode Unit:
  • The Valkyrie has to unpack into an immobile form before it can fire.
  • Javelin Soldiers can toggle between using or not using their target painters, taking longer to acquire a lock but boosting the range and power of each shot.
  • While on the move, Heavy Defenders use grenade launchers good against light vehicles. Once deployed, they switch to using heavy anti-infantry machine guns.
  • Rocketeers can switch between flying and punching aircraft, or landing on the ground and punching infantry and light vehicles.
  • Rocket Pathfinders can switch between anti-tank and anti-air modes to defend against whichever threat is most pressing.
  • Guardian Tanks can switch between a conventional cannon and a target designator to paint enemies, doubling the damage they take.
  • Icarus AA Guns must deploy its weapon before firing, reducing its speed in the process.
  • Stewart Tanks can switch between tracking missiles most effective against tanks and HE rounds better suited to destroying fortifications.
  • Instead of firing in bursts, a Particle Expeller can switch to using superheavy elements that deal less single-target damage in a bigger area.
  • A Planck Compressor can switch between slowing down a targeted unit, or speeding them up.
  • Hydrofoils can switch between normal anti-air guns and scrambleguns, which disable the weapons of their targets.
  • The Swan Amphibious Plane, being a seaplane, can both fly and move on water.
  • The Pion Isospin Array can clear garrisons and pick off individual infantry from long range, or switch to generating a field that kills all infantry in the area surrounding it.
  • The Bohr Wavefunction Adjuster has two settings which will switch the target's armour from infantry to tank armour or tank armour to infantry.
  • The Falcon Command Helicopter can freely take off and land on all terrain. All of its guns remain functioning when landed, but it is unable to move.
• Elite Army: In comparison to other armies, they are highly on the quality side of Quantity vs. Quality. This however means they are almost always undermanned.
• Enemy Exchange Program:
  • Spies can bribe enemies for a price, causing them to defect to your side.
  • The Pavlov has a sonic signaller which cause enemy animals to have a change of heart and turn against their masters.
• Every Man Has His Price: The Spy's special ability bribes surrounding enemies into joining you.
• Everything's Better with Rainbows: "Hahaha! That tank shoots a rainbow laser... oh dear, where my tanks go?"
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Attack Dogs are German Shepherd dogs in armoured sweaters that can sniff enemy spies and stealth units.
• Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: Reducts' shotguns can only fire within a limited arc.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Are straight up called this in their faction bible. They simply have yet to figure out the fact that the Red Alert universe is weird and probably never will.
• Food Pills: Since real food is difficult to come by in war-torn countries, many branches of the Allied Peacekeeper Corps have started issueing food pills containing all vitamins, minerals and whatnot to keep their soldiers fed. Many soldiers are developing chronic depressions because they aren't actually eating anything.
• For Science!: After defeating Communism, this is the Allies' main motivation.
• Freeze Ray: The Cryocopter, Alert Icebreaker and Cryo Tower are capable of freezing targets to sub-zero temperatures.
• Friendly Sniper: The Riflemen are cheery 1960s swingers. Yeah, baby!
• He Who Fights Monsters: After fighting two wars against Communism, the Allies are adopting increasingly Sovietic policies. They appointed the next U.S. President, for one.
• Human Popsicle: Convicted war criminals are kept frozen in Allied cryo-prisons. Maybe forever.
• If It Swims, It Flies: A mundane example are the Swans, which are flying boats.
• Jet Pack: Rocketeers wear these so they can fly around.
• Kill Sat: The Athena Sat Net and its related systems. The Athena Cannons point at the target, the satellites fire.
• Laser Sight: Guardian Tanks and Cardinal Copters use these to improve friendly units' Rate of Fire.
• Life Drain: An Assault Striker can ride over enemy vehicles with its tracks, breaking them down and using the raw materials to repair itself.
• Limited Loadout: A Pulsar Missile Drone carries a single Singularity missile that is monstrously effective against structures and can never be reloaded.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Peacekeepers are equipped with riot shields that they can deploy to protect against bullets, while they slowly walk towards the target.
• The Medic: Allied engineers can set up medical tents to heal friendly infantry in the vicinity.
• Night-Vision Goggles: Pathfinders have night vision gun sights, Rocket Pathfinders the classic googles.
• No-Sell: The Bohr Waveform Adjuster messes with the traditional counter system, so bullets bounce off infantry and tanks ignore AT weapons. It works on enemies, too.
• One World Order: One of their goals.
• Powered Armor: Peacekeeper armour is a sealed suit with an unpowered exoskeleton.
• The Power of the Sun: The Athena Cannons direct solar powered space death rays, while the Ares are solar-powered tanks with similar death rays.
• Power Fist: The Rocketeers' Proton Gauntlets can punch through tanks.
• Ramming Always Works: The Alert Icebreaker freezes groups of enemies and then rams them to finish them off.
• Ray Gun: Sepctrum cannons are armament of the Mirage Tanks, Spectrum Towers and various other units. Also act as targeting systems.
• Raygun Gothic: It's dubbed "Jetpunk"; a more modern take on Raygun Gothic tropes.
• Read the Freaking Manual: Turns out the Pion Isospin Array has a friend-or-foe designator, but only the most experienced operators have read that far in the instructions to know that.
• Reality Bleed: GAP technology. It's safe. As far as they know.
• Sapient Cetaceans: Sentient sonic-armed dolphins.
• Science Hero: Captain Rocket and the Rocketeers. The whole faction sort of plays this angle.
• Science Is Bad, useless and wrong: They defy and discuss all of these and are convinced that science is both in itself good unless when misused and the tool necessary to improve humanity.
• Schizo Tech: Freeze weapons, space ships and time manipulation, yet only 1960s computers. They're also looking into nuclear fusion because they find fission too complicated.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Peacekeepers' shotguns can kill regular enemy infantry in two shots, and when very close to their target, even vehicles might be in trouble.
• Sizeshifter: MASS tech, which allows the Allies to shrink and grow their units, as well engage in internal surgery.
• Sniper Rifle: Allied Riflemen use these to pick off enemy infantry from far away.
• Someone Has to Do It: Who else will police the world?
• Squishy Wizard: Experimental vehicles tend towards serious, game-changing effects, but they have paper thin armour.
• Sticky Situation: "GOOP" is a sticky, rapidly expanding oxygen-permiable pink foam that the Allies have taken to spraying on everyone who disagrees with them that they aren't allowed to kill.
• Taking the Bullet: Singularity Towers draw enemy fire towards themselves, protecting units and structures within their radius of effect.
• Tele-Frag: (Ab)use of the Chronosphere against infantry results in this.
• Teleporters and Transporters: The Chronosphere and Rosen Bridging Tanks teleport troops past rough terrain, enabling them to emerge unscathed on the other side.
• Time Travel: The Chronosphere works based on this, but is effectively more like a mass teleporter.
• Totalitarian Utilitarian: Those critical of the Allies tend to see them as this.
• Tsundere: Parodied with Athena-tan, an anthropomorphic Athena Cannon.

Rupert Thornley

• Demoted to Extra: Just like in canon, he was responsible for green-lighting many FutureTech projects. Unlike in canon, they all ended up in failure, forcing him to resign. That's why he's a background character in Paradox and not the Big Bad he was in Uprising.

Field Marshall Gunter Von Esling

General Erwin Rommel

Field Marshall Nikos Stavros

General René Lyon

Field Marshall Robert Bingham

Air Marshall Curtis Le May

Field Marshall Alex Manning

• Easy Logistics: Is an expert at providing it, and wins wars with superior supply chains.
• Enemy Mine: At first Subverted: Unlike in Red Alert 3, the Red Alert 3 Paradox timeline has Cherdenko refuse to ally with the, well, Allies against the Empire of the Rising Sun, meaning the missions where the Non-Entity General for the Allies teams up with Soviet Commanders against Imperial forces never happen in this game. However, this later gets Double Subverted when Alex Manning teams up with Cima Len Davidova (who was the Non-Entity General in the SOVIET'S Red Alert 3 campaign) to help her depose of Premier Cherdenko during the Second Battle of Leningrad.
• Four-Star Badass: Served as the Non-Entity General in the Red Alert 3 timeline, and as such racked up an impressive amount of victories against both the Soviet Union and the Empire of the Rising Sun, from the Battle of Brighton to the Battle of Tokyo and Second Battle of Leningrad.
• Non-Entity General: In the original game.
• Word of Gay

General Warren Fuller

• Four-Star Badass: Not just as a commander: when Warren Fuller was captured by the Soviet Army when they managed to overrun his base, he breaks himself out before returning to the Allied front, using his wrestling training to kill Soviet patrols completely unarmed, and stopped President Ackerman from escaping by shooting his limo and CIA bodyguards up with a machinegun before shooting Ackerman in the head. Even after Warren had an emotional breakdown over how he had to kill the President, and was put on leave by the Allies to recuperate, the Confederates don't dare go near him out of fear of his fighting ability.
• Heroic BSoD/My God, What Have I Done?: Killing President Ackerman in this timeline caused this reaction for him, as "-he had to destroy one symbol of freedom to preserve another". The Allies currently have him on indefinite leave so he could eventually regain his senses.
• Non-Entity General: Was heavily implied to be this during Red Alert 2, as Premier Cherdenko ordered the KGB to not just assassinate his rivals in the Soviet Union, but also Warren Fuller and his intelligence officer Eva Lee (along with other RA 2 Allied characters, including General Benjamin Carville, Tanya Adams, and President Michael Dugan (except since Michael Dugan was only a Senator in the Red Alert 3 timeline, his entry on Cherdenko's kill list completely confused the Allies).

Air Marshal Giles Price II

• Continuity Nod: His official reason for not returning is that he intends to take a break to write his memoirs. This is probably a nod to when he mentioned wanting to write a book about his experience with the Allied Commander at the end of RA3's "The Great Bear Trap" mission.
• Five Star Badass

Major Lissette Hanley

• Action Girl: During her days as a Spy Catsuit-wearing spy.
• Ax-Crazy: Committed into an insane asylum for attempting to make a garden with statues made of cryo-frozen enemies and civilians. Before then, she was reportedly being a Mood-Swinger with a Hair-Trigger Temper, with the Allied command overlooking these "minor problems" as not worth benching one of their best field commanders.
• Everyone Looks Sexier if French/Europeans Are Kinky: Was a lot more sexually-charged during her Spy Catsuit-wearing spy days, although this ultimately got her in trouble when she was caught sleeping with another ACIN spy.
• Omniglot: She has a quirk where she'd speak to a person in their native language and accent, and she does that to almost everyone she meets.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Inverted: She is an an expert at nearly every language, and one of her traits is to not just speak the language of whoever she's talking to, but give a near-perfect imitation of their accent: in Alex Manning's case, who is Canadian, that meant she talked to Alex "exclusively in her Canadian-accented English instead of her "real" French".
• There Are No Therapists: Deconstructed: While the Allied command overlooked Lissette's bursts of anger to keep one of their top commanders in the war - however, all the built-up stress resulted in Lissette's mental breakdown, forcing the Allies to commit her to an insane asylum.

Douglas Hill

• Cool Old Guy: Despite his age, he is still active in the field, to the point he's terrorizing the Vietcong and NVA after the end of WWIII.

Major Lydia Winters

• Brainy Brunette
• The Smart Guy: She is the founder of the Athena SatNet.
• Smart People Wear Glasses

Major Seraina Lar

• The Medic

Major Ralph Volte

• Player Character: Possibly.

Tanya Adams

• Action Girl
• Adaptation Modesty: Although she's shown wearing a tank-top that exposes her midriff as part of Allied propaganda (for obvious reasons), she wears a full bulletproof vest in Paradox - when the truth of this leaked out, the Allies were worried that it would result in morale drop, most polls showed she still remained as pouplar.
• Guns Akimbo: Dual wields "Black Buzzard" custom pistols.
• Gun Twirling
• Historical In-Joke: In the Red Alert 3: Paradox timeline, she's the one to kill Che Guevara: she makes a point of bragging about how "Guevara begged for his life like a coward before she shot him". Considering his famous "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner is the exact opposite of that, either Tanya was lying, or she TERRIFIED Che that much.
• The Gunslinger
• Time Travel: Can travel back a few seconds in time, this regenerates her as well.

Dr. Wernher von Braun

• Historical Badass Upgrade: Up to over 9000. In real life he was just a talented aerospace engineer, but in the Red Alert universe, he became an Ironman Expy. After he and his family was kidnapped and forced to design weapons for the Soviets, he managed to escape by creating a personalized rocket pack, launching himself high into the air and wreaked havoc on the guards, even managing to kill the commando Boris in the process. He then became the super hero Captain Rocket and spends the rest of the war being an one-man army fighting to Soviets.

Captain Bayard Fournier

• Ace Custom: His custom Achilles Superiority Fighter (And any other Heroic Achilles) have Splash Damage added onto their already powerful Spectrum guns.
• Ace Pilot: He used his Achilles to pulverize Kirovs during both the Battle of Cuba and the Second Battle of Leningrad, and routinely flaunts Improbable Piloting Skills on his missions.
• Beyond the Impossible: Repeatedly desynced an atomic clock in his black box.
• Cool Plane: The Achilles Superiority Fighter, literally a fusion-rocket powered Avro Arrow with 4 laser guns.
• Duct Tape for Everything: Managed to fix up his Rocket Fighter while in low orbit (with only friggin' duct tape!) enough to land after being ambushed.

Soviet Union

The communist powerblock and traditional arch enemy to the Allied Nations. The Soviet Union is a technological and industrial powerhouse with a military consisting of hundreds thousands of vehicles and even more soldiers, supported by advanced weapons usually based on electricity and magnetism. They believe in the "World Revolution" to better the world, but usually fight anyone resisting their idea of it. Like the Allied Nations, they have supporting states around the globe, but their central region is Russia and its surrounding countries. Their military consists of endless rows of infantry, tanks and artillery, various aircraft and airships and high tech weapons.

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• Airborne Aircraft Carrier: Zhukov War Zeppelins house missile armed LaGG-68 interceptors to swat away helicopters.
• Amazon Brigade: Soviet Snipers are exclusively female.
• Arch-Enemy: The Allied Nations and the Soviet Union have been arch-nemeses for as long as Red Alert has existed.
• Army of Thieves and Whores: Flak Troopers are convicts given freedom in exchange for having to do community service.
• Bears Are Bad News: War Bears are armoured and can be man-cannoned and parachuted.
• Break Out the Museum Piece:
  • Anvil Heavy Tanks are the same old Heavy Tanks from the first Red Alert, pressed into service again in order to augment Soviet tank divisions.
  • Elephant Tanks have sat mothballed since the end of the Second Great War until being repurposed as mobile command centres for Soviet commanders.
• Butt-Monkey: Essentially an entire faction of these. They try real hard, but nothing ever seems to go right for them.
• Cast from Hit Points: Microhammer Tanks can overclock their engines and autoloaders, increasing rate of fire and speed, but damaging the tank over time. Dreadnoughts, Kirov Airships and Zhukov War Zeppelins can do the same thing, which does not increase speed (for Dreadnoughts) or rate of fire (for Kirovs and Zhukovs).
• Commie Land
• Conscription: Guess. Then we have the obvious Conscripts.
• Continuity Nod: The Anvil Tanks, designated as "Cannon Fodder Battle Tank", are the Red Alert 1 Heavy Tanks.
• Cool Airship: The Barrage Ballons, Kirov Airships and Zhukov War Zeppelins.
• Cool Tank: Many, MANY cool tanks. One for every task imaginable, in fact.
• Defenseless Transports: Dump Trucks serve the Soviet Union as cheap and unarmed transports for infantry.
• Deployable Cover: Combat Engineers can set up makeshift bunkers which can be garrisoned by friendly infantry.
• Diesel Punk
• Dirty Communists: The Soviet Union looks like something right out of a Red Scare B-movie, though they are more seriously treated than in vanilla Red Alert 3.
• Dual Mode Unit:
  • Flak Troopers can switch between anti-air flak cannons and anti-tank magnetic mines.
  • Threshers can temporarily trade speed and the 50mm guns to deploy a 75mm anti-tank gun more effective against tank grade armour.
  • The Perun Tank Destroyer is effectively a walking gun. Helpless while on the move, the Perun can only fire once unpacked into turret mode.
  • The Mag-Lift Tank can switch between pulling enemy vehicles towards your tanks and lifting them up and put them at the mercy of anti-air.
  • The Flaming Ivan can switch between assault gun mode, where it specialises in destroying defences with its cannon, and mortar mode where it specialises in clearing garrisons and creating firestorms with Molotov cocktails.
  • The Manta Ekranoplan is able to switch between a pair of anti-air flak turrets and an anti-sub depth charge launcher.
• Extra-ore-dinary: Their magnetic weapons can actually rip armour off enemy tanks and reinforce their own armour with it.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: The Scythe can be ordered to charge. Due to the sheer bulk of the Scythe, it can literally send tanks flying backwards.
• Going Critical: What a Super Reactor does when sufficiently damaged.
• Hollywood Acid: Desolator Defoliant is not "just" acidic; it's a cocktail of potent chemical agents, it produces toxic vapours, and it's primarily capable of breaking down things like rubber and flesh.
• Instant Armor: Soviet Ore Collectors and low-level defences can instantly cover themselves in armour, greatly increasing durability and repairing themselves in exchange for being unable to perform their normal functions.
• Kill Sat: Magnetic satellites that can suck up armoured units.
• Life Drain: Vampire Leech Walkers can leech enemy vehicles, draining them of their health while repairing friendly vehicles within its radius of effect.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: Zap enemy infantry down to the skeletons? Check. Charge up nearby Tesla Coils? Check. Jump from target to target? Oh yes.
• Lightning Gun: Tesla weapons.
• Limited Loadout: In addition to jet aircraft, a Hammerhead must return to base to rearm when it has expended all five of its missiles. Downplayed with Yaks, which only need to return to the base to reload their bombs, not their chain guns.
• Molotov Cocktail: Conscripts are armed with Molotov cocktails to burn buildings and clear garrisons.
• Muggles Do It Better: Everyone else is experimenting with psionic powers as fast as they can, but the Soviets have already figured out how to burn out telepathic intrusion with doublethink.
• Noble Demon: "They'll use Desolators to slow the Allied advance in Normandy, but they'll make damn sure everyone is evacuated first."
• Not-So-Badass Longcoat: Conscripts. Alone, anyway.
• The Paralyzer: The Potemkin Warship can use its magnetic harpoon to lock a ship in place while letting the very slow Potemkin close in.
• The Political Officer: Commissars are used to spread the Revolutionary spirit throughout the ranks by propaganda and example.
• Powered Armor: The Gagarin X is a man in a heavily armoured space suit that grants him enhanced strength and a surprising resilience to small arms fire.
• Pretext for War: Cherdenko invades Europe using the shooting down of Gary Power's spy plane as an excuse.
• Selective Magnetism: They base weapons, including "orbital weapons", on this principle.
• Shiny-Looking Spaceships: Chromed even.
• Shed Armor, Gain Speed: Alkonosts' Psych Up ability increases the speed and ferocity of nearby units but lowers their defence with every use.
• Shock and Awe
• Smoke Out: Grenadiers have a supply of smoke grenades, which they can use to create smokescreens that protect those within from being attacked, although they are unable to fire out.
• Soviet Superscience
• Space Marine: Conscriptnaughts are glorified conscripts in spacesuits; the protocol that deploys them is called 'Space Marines'.
• Spider Tank: Sickles, Threshers, Vampires and Alkonosts are quadrupedal walkers; Scythes are hexapodal.
• Suicide Attack: A weird case is the Crisis Drone, because when it explodes it heals stuff around it.
• Taking the Bullet: The Scrapper Tank's giant plow can be used to soak up the attacks of enemies.
• The Tunguska Event: Origin of magnetic weapons.
• Tractor Beam: Magnetic harpoons suck enemy vehicles towards the grinders of the Apocalypse Tanks. If the target is a large vehicle or a structure, the Apocalypse gets closer to it instead.
• Vodka Drunkenski: The whole lot of them are implied to be drunks. A sniper's final test is supposedly to shoot an empty vodka bottle from nearly a kilometer right after emptying aforementioned bottle.
• Weapons That Suck: The Vacuum Imploder, true to its name, creates a sphere of perfect vacuum which sucks in everything in range to destroy.
• X-Ray Sparks: Again, thanks to tesla tech.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Mag-Lift and Apocalypse Tanks can pull enemy ground vehicles towards themselves (and in the Apocalypse's case, their grinders).

Premier Cima Len Davidova

• Enemy Mine: She works with Alex Manning (who was the Non-Entity General in the ALLIES' Red Alert 3 campaign) during the Second Battle of Leningrad, where they both work to depose of Premier Cherdenko.
• Iron Lady
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: When Davidova was betrayed by Premier Cherdenko, she rallied her forces to oust him from power, and even worked with Alex Manning in defeating him.
• Non-Entity General: In the original game. Although the Soviet Union's victory achieved in the end of the RA 3 Soviet campaign obviously never happened in the Red Alert 3 Paradox timeline (the Battle of New York still happens, but Davidova was not present during the battle, and Nikolai Moskvin got blown to smithereens during the battle by Tanya Adams), Davidova did undertake missions in the opening half of the Soviet Union's campaign, such as routing the Imperial Japanese during the First Battle of Leningrad, and assassinating Emperor Yoshiro in the "Mount Fuji Incident".
• Reassigned to Antarctica: She was held up as The Scapegoat after the events of Red Alert 1 (since trying to do the right thing in the Soviet Union doesn't give you a lot of friends), being blamed for lost battles in Poland she never even participated in (to which General Nikolai Krukov responded with "Precisely!"), and got "Kicked Upstairs" to Leningrad. However, when the Empire of the Rising Sun besieged the city, Davidova rallied the defenders to route the Imperials, getting hailed again as a true hero of the Soviet Union, and pushed on to driving the Imperial Japanese out of Russia, and grinding the Allied offensive in Germany to a halt.
• Smart People Play Chess: In this alternate timeline, Josef Stalin banned Chess (claiming the game had themes of monarchism, with expendable "pawns" being sacrificed to defend members of the royalty, nobility and clergy), and replaced it with Formation which was inspired by the marching formations of parades in the Red Square. Cima was born on the exact same day Stalin banned Chess, and she got noticed by the Soviet Army for her skills in Formation(A Tetris Expy as a two-player board game.) during the 1945 Youth Formation Championship, where Davidova (barely only 9 at the time) cleaned house against her other competitors, and even beat Mikhail Botvinnik, the then-reigning champion of Formation.
• Sweet Tooth: She has a habit of eating chocolate, which she picked up while on station in Heidelberg. It's even created a new variation of Russian Humour, where Soviet citizens joke that the weekly chocolate ration is directly related to how much stress Premier Davidova has had at the office.
• The Political Officer: Cross-trained as a Commissar
• Token Good Teammate: She is one of the few high-ranking members of the Soviet government that: (1) Isn't a total murderous Jerkass that suffers from Chronic Backstabbing Disorder; (2) Sincerely believe in the ideals of socialism and is work toward combating the hypocrisy and corruption within the system; (3) Genuinely work towards improving the standard of living for the common Soviet citizen.

Natasha Volkova

• Action Girl: As the Soviet Commando unit, she is this to a T: most notably during the Mission in Krasna-45, where she faces off against Yuriko Omega, the Commando for the Empire of the Rising Sun. Often crosses over with Dark Action Girl, considering she is a Cold Sniper who fights for the Soviet Union.
• Cold Sniper: Carries this over from the original Red Alert 3, in both ability and attitude. One of her "Known Activities" was blowing an Allied Major's head off from over 2,500 meters away, setting a new world record in the process - the Allies only knew it was Natasha because she deliberately left her spent cartridge behind with her signature on it.
• Glorious Mother Russia: Believes heavily in this.
• Old Soldier: Volkov from the first Red Alert is this to Natasha.
• One-Hit Polykill: Is capable of killing multiple infantry units with a single shot of her Sniper Rifle.
• Pervert Revenge Mode: She hospitalized a Conscript who was peeping on her when she was changing clothes: When said Conscript was asked if it was worth it, he replied with "Absolutely!"

Empire of the Rising Sun

The islands of Japan, this long-forgotten archipelago surprised both Allied Nations and Soviet Union with a global-scale surprise attack and ran into and changed the course of World War III. Extremely advanced robotics, mecha and nanotechnology as well as a focus on mobility allow the Empire to attack before the enemy can shoot back. Originally under Emperor Yoshiro their goal was to conquer the whole world to fulfill their "divine destiny". When this did not work out, they became friends with the Allies and started selling their weaponry and various other technologies to everyone interested, becoming an economical juggernaut in the process. Their new motivation is to beat their economical enemies like the Mediterranean Syndicate while staying true to a balance of modernism and traditionalism.

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• Action Bomb: The Burst Drone can self destruct while attached to an enemy vehicle to damage it. Final Squadron summons a squadron of suicide drones armed with kinetic weapons into the enemy position while shooting everything they can.
• Airborne Aircraft Carrier: The Masakari Drone Command is armed with a variety of drones. In both naval and aerial modes, the Aerial Battleship Musashi has a complement of Stellar Angel Fighter Bombers providing air cover and scouting.
• Amazon Brigade: Rocket Angels and Battle Psychics are exclusively female.
• Animeland: Their military units include psychic magical girls in Sailor Fuku and Humongous Mecha. Their superweapon is a psychic explosion, and the engineer is a salaryman.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Shinobi are armed with nothing more than regular steel swords and throwing stars.
• Artificial Intelligence: They are the leaders in this science field thanks to their Nanotechnology.
• Barrier Warrior: The Tedate can lay down a short-lived Nano-Shield, which will fend off most attacks of ground units, but cannot move when doing so.
• Base on Wheels: The Incredible Mobile Fortress Tatsu is a mobile airfield that can construct and support up to six dedicated aircraft, repair and rearm friendly units and transport a large number of ground vehicles.
• Because Destiny Says So: Their war motivation under former Emperor Yoshiro.
• Beehive Barrier: Nanoswarm shields.
• Bifurcated Weapon: An oversized version, the Hanzo Zs' Hyper Rifles can have underbarrel electrospectrum guns.
• Cast from Hit Points: Th Hot Blooded protocol causes all affected mecha units to gain speed, armour and attack power as they are slowly but steadily damaged.
• Charged Attack: The Wave-Force Artillery can fire at different energy settings. By default it always fires at max-capacitance, but can be ordered to discharge its weapon prematurely at the cost of reducing damage.
• Combining Mecha: The Sentai Command Mecha is formed from the combination of seven custom vehicles.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: An actual mechanic for the overhauled Shinobi. Alone, they are incredibly badass with shuriken deactivating vehicles, smoke bombs making them invisible, several weapons completely failing to hit them and chain-slashing infantry with their ninja-to and lightning speed. However, if two (or more) friendly Shinobi are in the same area, they heavily nerf each other to the point of being even worse than they were in vRA3.
• Cool Boat: Lots, like the Naginata Torpedo Cruisers or the Shogun Battleships.
• Cool Shades: Tsukumogami Proto-Suits have Kamina shades.
• Defenseless Transports: Sudden Transports and Ikiryo Mini-Mechas have no weapons to defend themselves.
• Delayed Explosion: Ashigaru Bombardiers can set explosive charges that will instantly destroy buildings, though this takes a few seconds to do.
• Ditto Fighter: The Tsukumogami Proto-Suits can copy enemy or friendly weapons.
• Dressing as the Enemy: The Sudden Transport can project the external appearance of any vehicle, friendly or enemy.
• Drone Deployer: The Tanuki can release small drones to intercept vehicles and slow them down with electromagnetic pulses to allow the Tanuki to escape.
• Dual Mode Unit:
  • Tankbusters can bury into the ground, which prevents them from being crushed and makes them stealthed, but prevents them from moving or firing.
  • The Masamune can switch between anti-air rocket pods and shock paddles that can temporarily disable enemy vehicles and buildings.
  • Rocket Angels can switch between firing rockets and using a whip to disable ground targets.
  • Battle Psychics can take down both ground and air targets with telekinetic darts or switch to psychic shields to intercept enemy attacks.
  • The Jishin can burrow into the ground, turning itself into a powerful anti tank turret. Obviously, it is immobile in this state.
  • In wheeled form, the Izanagi can move fast and use kinetic-burst autocannons and missile pods. Switching into walker form sacrifices its speed and allows it to use its Fujiwara cannon, a weapon of devastating power.
  • The Tengu can switch forms between an amphibious anti-infantry walker and a swift air superiority fighter.
  • The Kitsune can transform from a fast but unarmed quad to a mecha, armed with a sniper cannon.
  • The missile armed VX can go from anti-air walker to anti-tank helicopter.
  • When in water, the Samehada Buster Mecha can transform into a submarine, which prevents it from firing on land vehicles.
  • In tank mode, the Nezumi uses a heavy machine gun turret, before it deploys into the slow mecha form, which is armed with a large, indirect artillery piece.
  • The Sea-Wing anti-aircraft submarine can transform into the Sky-Wing ground attack aircraft.
  • In its default state, the Musashi cruises across the sea, and despite its massive size, it can take off into the air and stay aloft.
• Facepalm: One of the animations of the Hanzo Z.
• Fragile Speedster: The Empire army focuses on mobility, with fast, amphibious units that lack durability.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: The Isha Vector Jet Tank is an amphibious and extremely fast flanker with limited ammunition designed to attack the enemy, then rush back.
• Honor Before Reason: Shinobi show the full extent of their powers when alone, but refuse to work with each other, even if means certain death.
• Hot-Blooded: An actual ability which increases combat effectiveness of all mecha units.
• Hot Sub-on-Sub Action: Yari Mini-Subs are very good against other subs.
• Humongous Mecha: Prime unit class. Has a dedicated building only for Mecha production.
• If It Swims, It Flies: The Sea/Sky Wings and Tsurugi Submersible Fighters can do this.
• Jack of All Trades: Their units, especially the Transforming Mecha, are quite versatile but none really excel in any role that much.
• Japan Takes Over the World: It did not work with military means, so they are trying it with economical means which works quite well.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Imperial Warriors and Shinobi are armed with surprisingly lethal katanas.
• Laser Blade: Imperial Warriors use superheated Katana to One-Hit Kill enemy infantry.
• Limited Loadout: An Isha Vector Jet Tank's ammunition is limited, and it has to return to base for reloading.
• Locked Out of the Fight: Its secondary allows the Tedate to shut down a unit completely, turning it indestructible in the process.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Hanzo Z mecha wear shields, in true Gundam fashion.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Missiles are a Japanese speciality and comes in rapid fire and volley fire varieties.
• Mini-Mecha: Ikiryo Mini-Mechas, which are used to hijack enemy vehicles and are piloted by champions of the boot camp's obstacle course.
• Motion-Capture Mecha: Hanzo Z suits.
• Ninja: Shinobi are the Japanese infiltration unit, armed with a giant sword and throwing stars.
• Nobody Here but Us Statues: The Holotree Sniper can deploy a sniper perch equipped with a holographic projection device, which makes the perch resemble an unassuming object.
• One-Hit Polykill: The Wave-Force Artillery fires blasts of energy that can pass through multiple targets.
• The Paralyzer: The Masamune can deliver a shock to temporarily disable vehicles and buildings.
• Psychic Powers: Psychic powers are used by Battle Psychics, Yuriko Omega and the Psionic Decimator.
• Roboteching: Almost everyone in the setting uses dumbfire rockets or primative early IR or radar tracking missiles. The Empire have A.I.s dedicated to controlling missile swarms. It shows.
• Rocket Punch: The Kintaro, using traditional rocket punchs, but attached to a chain for retracting: allowing them to grab enemies from a distance.
• Schizo Tech: Giant Robots? Check. Nanotechnology? Check. Radar? Not so much.
• Smoke Out: A shinobi can throw a smoke bomb to cover his tracks and escape.
• Spider Tank: In wheeled form, an Izanagi moves with six legs.
• Spy Bot: Burst Drones are robots that serve the role of scouting and snuffing out spies.
• Squishy Wizard: Although they can bolster the durability of friendly units with psychic shields, Battle Psychics are rather lightly armoured and squishy by themselves.
• Transhuman: A good variety.
• Worker Unit: Nanocores unfurl into structures at any given location but are very barely armoured.
• Yakuza: Makes a load of problems for everyone.
• You Will Not Evade Me: A Kintaro can launch its right hand as a deadly rocket to strike enemy vehicles and reel them in.

Emperor Shirow Kamina

• Combat Pragmatist: From an early age, Kamina relied on this trope, in both his personal fighting style and his tactical leadership. His Establishing Character Moment has him accidentally tripping a bigger kid trying to bully him, and realizing that Kicking Him While His Was Down would not be considered honorable... and then kicking the bully in the ribs repeatedly before stomping on his hand, leaving him with six broken bones. This was because Kamina realized "honor was meant to protect the bullies from the bullied. If you didn't want to be bullied, you had to defeat them completely, and let nothing stand in your way."
• Confusion Fu: The resident master.
• Cool Shades
• Cyborg
• Non-Entity General: In the original game.
• The Emperor: Is given the position after Emperor Yoshiro was killed by the Soviets during the Mt. Fuji Incident, and Crown Prince Tatsu was killed by the Allies during the Battle of Tokyo, to prevent a crisis of succession from arising without Tatsu having a direct heir to the throne.
• The Trickster

Yuriko Omega

• A God I Am Not: Everyone who does not fear her (mainly Emperor Kamina and his staff) thinks she should take the role of a goddess of war, but Yuriko only laments her powers. Considering her tragic back story filled with constant abuse, this is understandable.
• Ax-Crazy: Often depicted as this.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: At one point she propels herself straight into space to punch out a Kill Sat that scorched her arm.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: It's implied that she's only loyal to Emperor Kamina post-World War III, (especially since she was confirmed to have annihilated the entire Shiro Sanitarium complex on her mission to kill Dr. Shinji Shimada prior to meeting Kamina), partially due to this trope, as indicated by this exchange featured on her Paradox Wiki character page:
  Yuriko: "You know I would not hesitate to turn on you if you showed any signs of weakness. Why do you let me stay?"
  (Beat)
  Kamina: "Even monsters can feel emotions, Yuriko."
• Brought Down to Badass: After WWIII, the mental strain on Yuriko left her unable to pull aircraft out of the skies. Double-Subverted in that her pent-up rage makes her Psionic Scream even more powerful than during WWIII, to the point that she can kill the crewmen inside of vehicles within her radius, and training with the new Battle Psychics of the Paradox timeline allows Yuriko to learn their powers, and use them on the battlefield, such as shooting infantry and helicopters with "psychic darts", and powering up other Battle Psychics when in their presence.
• Creepy Child
• Cursed with Awesome: She laments her powers, mainly because everyone only wants her to fight against their enemies.
• Cute and Psycho: She looks like a cute girl, but if her Death Glare doesn't let you know something's wrong with her, her ability to level entire armies with her mind will.
• Dark Action Girl: Apart from being the Commando of the Empire of the Rising Sun, the events of Yuriko's Campaign in Red Alert 3: Uprising ARE Canon (even after the other campaigns and units from Uprising aren't considered canon in Red Alert 3: Paradox, with all the new units from Uprising having extensive reasons provided in their lore as to why they were written off as "failures" and thus won't return in Paradox), from breaking out of Camp Dakota, an Allied prisoner camp in Guam, to going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge in the Shiro Sanitarium, leveling the entire complex and killing both Dr. Shinji Shimada and Izumi, after she tried to kill Yuriko out of spite for Yuriko's power.
• Girlish Pigtails
• I Just Want to Be Normal
• Little Miss Badass
• 90% of Your Brain
• Person of Mass Destruction: You do NOT want to mess with this school girl.
• Power Limiter: Without it, she would be unbeatable.
• Psychic Powers: Her MO. She can crush house-sized tanks into tin cans this way.
• Reality Warper: What she would be without the Power Limiter.
• Sailor Fuku: Changes to a blue and white version in Paradox compared to the more modern variation used in the original Red Alert 3. This leads to an In-Universe discussion of why she has changed uniforms, with the Soviets thinking the new uniform is meant to further enhance Yuriko's psychic powers, while the Imperials thinks she just got the new uniform on a girlish whim (in either case, both sides agree it was Worth It).
• Tsundere: Yandere is also possible.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: Yuriko is fully aware that Psychic Powers work on this principle and only a Power Limiter prevents her from using them in ways other than what the Imperial officials want.

Continental Revolutionaries

The result of killing US President Ackermann, the Confederates want to get the Allied Nations out of the USA, get rid of their influence on America as a continent and generally do things they feel are right. Without a proper military, they utilise Allied technology from World War II to great effect, modifying and improving those obsolete designs with their own technology and cleverness. They believe to know what is right and they will fight for it until they have liberated the USA. They lack a proper idea for after they liberated the USA, but as they say, first things first.

---

• Action Bomb: RC Cars can explode via ability. Their power can be increased with the bombs of the Bomb Trucks, which however is not a suicider himself.
• Amazon Brigade: The aptly named Amazon Warriors, which while not as elite as Minutemen or Delta Rangers can pack a punch on the units the other two cannot effectively fight.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: The vast majority of their equipment are aging WW2 vehicles.
• Combat Pragmatist: To make up for their obsolete tech, they use the dirtiest tactics in the game. Several types of land mines and booby traps, ambushes, fake structures, RC cars with bombs on them, invisiblity, electronics jamming, tunneling and stealing enemy resources are all fair game.
• Continuity Nod: The Confederate equipment is the over-15-year-old tech left over from the first "Red Alert" game.
• Custom Uniform: Everyone. The Confederates have no official uniform; the closest to it are grey overalls, and they can't even get everyone to wear those. Notable for being the only side where infantry of the same type have different appearences.
• Deep South: Used as a theme, though their members come from all over America and all walks of life.
• Defenseless Transports: Jackson APCs, Transport Trucks and Omni-Landers have no weapon whatsoever.
• Eagle Land: Both types 1 and 2 are present.
• Earthquake Machine: The Resonance Jackhammer offensive superweapon shatters enemies with a pulse of seismic energy.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Doberman Guard Dogs can sniff spies and stealth units.
• Incredibly Obvious Bomb: Bomb Trucks lay those.
• Invisibility Cloak: PAWI Tech paints over people and the machinery they use with "blank" images.
• Mass Super-Empowering Event: The counterculture's experimentation with LSD has created a whole bunch of psychics.
• Mundane Utility: Radar Domes are used as hydroponic bays when not otherwise in use.
• New-Age Retro Hippie: Tunnel Rats and Flower Children are this.
• Nose Art: Many Confederate air planes have Nose Art that ranges from subtle to fairly blatant. Some units even have multiple of them selected at random when the plane is build.
• Patriotic Fervor: The Confederates are a rag-tag assortment of Americans who are mad as hell about Allied interventions into American politics and just won't take it anymore.
• Reality Bleed: PAWI technology. Like GAP, it's (mostly) safe.
• La Résistance: If the Allies are the Establishment, the Confederates are the Anti-Establishment. They define themselves by resistance and revolution, by what they aren't rather than by what they are. And what they aren't is the Allies.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: The Mortarmen carry revolvers that can punch straight through a Peacekeeper's shield and send infantry flying.
• Sea Mine: They can deploy versions of these from their torpedo boats that move under their own power.
• Super Serum: LSD gives you psychic powers.
• This Is a Drill: "Spiral Tech" is a mathmatical oddity that allows improbable levels of mechanical effienciency with certain patterns of rotating machinery such as drills or fans. They use it to dig tunnels, make drill-based projectiles, and create tornados/whirlpools.
• Too Many Belts: A more western example, Confederate infantry are covered in bandoleers, low-slung holster belts, and other straps for equipment instead of more modern webbing.
• Worker Unit: Dozers and Construction Trucks create main structures and fake structures, respectively. They and defenses are built by the Construction Yard.
• Wrench Wench: Both their standard engineer and their commando, Dixie, are female, and both are repair specialists. The mechanic can repair single vehicles in the field, which Dixie has a sizable repair radius and can heal damage nearly as fast as it's dealt.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters

President Howard T. Ackerman

• Actually a Doombot: It was found out after his death that Ackerman was a Japanese spy android.
• Our Presidents Are Different: President Action, with an overlap with President Evil with his plan to vaporize Moscow with the giant spectrum laser inside of Mount Rushmoore and the fact he was a robotic duplicate created by Emperor Yoshiro and Crown Prince Tatsu.

President Dennis Hoffhassle

• Non-Action Guy: Except you count the job of life-saver as action filled.
• Our Presidents Are Different

General of the Army Benjamin Carville

• Historical In-Joke: He appeared in Red Alert 1 and 2 working for the Allies.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Subverted. The Allies merely took away his official rank for defecting to the rebels.

Colonel Wolfgang Krause

• Colonel Badass
• Historical Domain Character: A weird case. In Real Life he was a moderately known German politician, in Paradox he is basically Solid Snake.
• Improbable Age: He's 33 and a senior special-ops commander?

Colonel Christian Therrian III

• Colonel Badass
• Eagleland: Representing Type One.
• Fiction 500: Therrian Oil isn't just an oil company, it's the oil company. He ends up siding with the Confederates when the Allies come around to do some monopoly breaking.

&&* Everything is Big in Texas: Where he's from.

• Non-Idle Rich: Helps bankroll the Confederacy while fighting for it.
• Obfuscating Stupidity
• Southern Gentleman

Colonel Patricia "Goliad" Jones

• Badass Boast: To the Allies before the Curb Stomp Battle below.
• Colonel Badass
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Earned her nickname after inflicting one of these on the Allies.
• The Smurfette Principle: The token female Confederate commander.

Dixie

• Action Girl
• Cain and Abel: It's implied her "sister" is none other than Tanya, who, being the Allies commando, is probably put at odds with her. Whether they're reluctant or enthusiastic to fight each other in battle has yet to be seen.
• Cool Big Sis: When asked about where she gets her Improbable Aiming Skills, Dixie mentions that she got shooting lessons from her sister. She's quick to change the subject after mentioning this though...
• Deep South: Deliberately styled as a pin-up girl from the Deep South.
• The Engineer
• Farmer's Daughter
• Southern-Fried Genius
• Wrench Wench: And a very good one at that.

Order of the Talon

An 800 years old order of Knights, the Order of the Talon secretly control great parts of the world from the shadows, fighting an ominious enemy known only as "The Cult". They possess impressive Steam Punk technology, including walkers and moving castles. Able to move from place to place with their castles and armoured with the strongest metal known to humanity, they fight everyone they deem heretical despite their outdated tech. Most Talon personnel are unwitting of the greater scheme behind the Order's actions and those who know at least something prefer to command from the shadows to avoid being targeted. They are not afraid of assasinations or leading countries to war if it helps them - in fact, they are responsible for World War I. However, they are noble and pragmatic enough to not abuse others too much, because their goal is to fight the Cult, not the rest of the world.

---

• Action Bomb: Sappers and Priests of Judas via special ability.
• The Aesthetics of Technology: They have fun with this one. Talon units "look" archaic and primitive compared to, say, the Empire, but this is the Mighty Glacier faction.
• Amazon Brigade: The Chevaliers are all women personally trained by Lady Maria.
• Ancient Conspiracy: The Order of the Talon is a secret, worldwide extra-governmental religious organisation with intelligence, disinformation and military focus based on real-life conspiracy theories.
• Arch-Enemy: To the Cult of the Black Hand.
• Arrows on Fire: Sort of - they prefer red-hot crossbow bolts.
• Awesome Personnel Carrier: They've got a battle locomotive.
• Ax-Crazy: Fanatics are Catholic zealots who follow the Talon's Crawlers around in the vain hope of pleasing Him by smiting the soldiers of Satan. Armed with an ambiarically-heated sword, the Fanatic rushes into the fray of the battle, slashing and hacking at anything within reach.
• Badass Creed: The Iscariot Vow.
• Badass Preacher: Hospitallers. A flamethrower-armed priest WILL make you confess.
• Base on Wheels: Master Crawlers, castles on tracks, produce every single unit they have. In addition, Mini-Crawlers, which are mobile tech buildings/refineries.
• Belief Makes You Stupid: Averted. They might be using old technology, but Talon equipment generally equals or outperforms it's conventional (not to mention unconventional) counterparts. Also, they had computer software in 1842.
• BFG: Apostle bombardment ships mount a 914mm cannon, the largest in Paradox.
• Black-and-White Morality: In a setting of Grey-and-Gray Morality where everyone does good and bad things, sometimes more of one than the other, the Talons believe in this one instead. This leads too...
• Black-and-White Insanity: ...with them being white and everyone else being black and/or potentially compromised. The only faction where this is actually true is the Black Hand.
• Brainwashed: A fair number of Talon officers were military officers from around the world who were kidnapped and brainwashed/indoctrinated into serving the Talon.
• Brown Note: In offence mode, the Calliope Track plays eerie, discordant sounds that rattle teeth and chill the soul.
• Catapult to Glory: The only way out of an Emissary Track for the passenger is the catapult mounted on top, enabling the Emissary to insert infantry over long distances into otherwise unreachable areas.
• Church Militant: Started as a knightly order in the Catholic church, has since become independent.
• Clock Punk
• Clockwork Creature: Automatons are delicately crafted clockwork war machines in the shapes of men.
• Conspiracy Theorist: They are an Ancient Conspiracy group fighting at least one other ancient conspiracy group.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Their colour of choice is black, but they're still good[ish] guys.
• Deadly Gas: Emissary Tracks launch censers filled with mustard gas.
• Deadpan Snarker: Cannon Turret gunners call their turrets "Saint-Maker".
• Death from Above: True to their nature as expies of Assault Marines, Templar Lords can do jetpack jumps that crush anyone they land on (and who stand near them when they start). Rocket Jump indeed.
• Decapitated Army: You start with a Master Crawler, whose loss equals an automatic Game Over.
• Defector from Decadence: A lot of Talon personnel start as this.
• Determinator: Their history is basically eight hundred years of failure. They're still going strong.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: They have a lot of flamethrowers.
• Gale-Force Sound: Jericho Cannons work this way, though they shake things apart rather than directly blowing them to pieces.
• Improvised Weapon: According to the backstory, a couple of the Talon's weapons like the Altars of Light and Consecrator Tracks started as this.
• I Shall Taunt You: Chevaliers can do this. Notable in that it inspires friendly units rather than demoralizing enemies.
• Judge, Jury, and Executioner: If the Talon decides that you're guilty, you will die.
• Kill It with Fire: The Talons LOVE flame weapons.
• Kill Sat: They hijacked both Athena Sats and Mag Sats and then combined them into something even worse.
• Knight Templar: Varies by the individual Talon, but the Order as a whole tends towards this. The actual, literal Templars among their ranks do not, ironically.
• Land Down Under: They've basically taken it over, but haven't informed the Australians or their government of the fact.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Metatron Gunboats are armed with an oversized rack of rockets.
• Magnetic Weapons: And not the usual kind either. A more conventional coilgun is the Apostle bombardment ship's ultimate upgrade.
• Medieval Stasis: Not quite, but they are very, very slow to adopt new technology. Thanks to Talon Steel, this doesn't stop them from being a major threat.
• Mind Rape: The Order is not above indoctrinating and brainwashing new recruits to make them loyal to the organization.
• Minovsky Physics: Talon Steel fits, more or less.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The Holy Triumvirate.
• Pillar of Light: The Firestorm Generator, their Ultimate Weapon.
• Properly Paranoid: They're an ancient conspiracy fighting other ancient conspiracies. Paranoia is both a given and understandable.
• The Power of the Sun: Like the Allies, the Order has solar death rays, but these are more inspired by Archimedes' Mirror.
• Ramming Always Works: The Tempest Torpedo Ram can use a thermobaric ram to accelerate into and destroy any target.
• Rocket Jump: Templars Lords' thermobaric jets allow them to escape danger, and burn those around them when they take off.
• Science Is Bad: Discussed. They are centuries behind the times technologically, but this is mainly because their existing technology is still competitively effective. Their is however no innate aversion to science or technological progression itself.
• Spider Tank: The Cataphract Land Ironclad is an armoured battle station on four legs.
• Starting Units: Pawns are unbuildable infantry that spawn for free from the Master Crawler while it is deployed.
• This Is a Drill: Have a submarine fitted with a drill for attacking other submarines. It uses spiral tech stolen from the Confederates.
• Training from Hell: Their elite military training school is in Death Valley, USA. 'Nuff said.
• Unknown Rival: Aside from the highest levels of The Necrocracy running from behind the scenes, most of the Mediterranean Syndicate has no idea why the hell the Order has them pegged as the Antichrist, and can only try their best in holding them off when they come around for one of their executives head on a pike.
• Unwitting Pawn: Lower Talon personnel don't know who they are really serving. Also, there's the aptly named Pawns, who are unwitting soldiers duped into aiding the Talon, and the Barracuda crews.
• We Are Everywhere: Unfortunately, so are their enemies.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Their goal is to fight a truly evil faction. They're still willing to perform unethical and questionable acts if necessary in pursuit of this goal.

Banneret Albin Canavan

• Colonel Badass
• Fighting Irish: Ex-IRA, at that.
• Improbable Age: One of the Order's senior military leaders and he's not even 30.
• Military Maverick:

Domina Arianna Matella

• Action Girl
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: The Order's most directly aggressive commander.
• Colonel Badass
• Improbable Age: Slightly older than Canavan, but still very, very young for her job.
• Kill It with Fire: Stated to love flamethrowers.

Saint Veritan the Thunderer

• A Father to His Men: And thanks to Talon veterancy upgrades, this is a good deal scarier for the enemy than it seems.
• Colonel Badass
• Cool Old Guy: He's 83 and still fighting.
• Military Maverick: He used to be this, but has since settled down.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: "The Thunderer".
• Only Sane Man: Seems to be developing into the most level-headed and diplomatic of the Order's senior leadership.

Sir Harold Moore

• Colonel Badass
• Defector from Decadence: A former Allied officer who was used as a scapegoat for the quagmire of Vietnam.
• Eagleland: Represents Type 1
• Happily Married
• Historical Domain Character: In real life, a distinguished US Army officer prominent in Vietnam who lead the first large-scale deployment of airmobile cavalry. In Paradox, this ended in disaster and Moore was held as a scapegoat for the Allies' failure in Vietnam, leading to his defection to the Order of the Talon. Many other elements, such as where he was born and who is wife is, also appear to have changed in this timeline.

Deirdre Winters

• Mission Control: Appears to be this for the Order.
• Sassy Secretary
• Straight Gay: Romantically involved with Okamura below.
• Violent Glaswegian: Averted. She's Scottish, but she's a secretary and intel liaison.
• Voice with an Internet Connection: Apparently.

Masoko Okamura

• Asian and Nerdy: Rare female variant.
• Defector from Decadence: She's Japanese, but considers the Empire of the Rising Sun to be corrupt and decadent.
• Rebellious Princess: Not a princess, but from a wealthy and influential family.
• The Engineer: The variant who stays at headquarters and builds new weapons. She specializes in naval technology.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: Lampshaded and averted.

Lady Maria

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Her sword can cut tanks.
• Action Girl
• Chainmail Bikini: Lampshaded and averted. She wears full plate.
• Cool Sword
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic
• Jeanne d'Archétype
• Lady of War
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me
• Powered Armor: Wears a suit of Clock Punk powered full plate.
• Raised by Dudes
• Wings Do Nothing: Except glowing and looking cool.

Atomic Kingdom of China

The remaining population of a 30 years long civil war that ended in a nuclear holocaust, the Atomic Kingdom of China is lead by a man only known as "The Viceroy" and his right hand, a young appearing girl genius. With nigh impenetrable defenses, energy shields and strange vehicles, hordes of cloned soldiers and all sorts of radiation technology resembling 1960s scifi, they strive to take revenge on the world. Their longtime goal is to leave Mother Earth and preferably before others decode the secret of nuclear weapons. For the voyage they need technology from Allies, Soviets and Japan alike, but it is not their goal to kill everyone outright when leaving - and neither is their goal to take the clones with them.

---

• Acquired Poison Immunity: Courtesans have poisoned saliva and tears but are themselves immune to the effects. They actively use this as an assasination method.
• After the End: They arose from the ashes of a nuclear civil war in China.
• Alien Geometries: To represent the classic era of science fiction, Royal Chinese constructs tend to look very, very strange.
• Atom Punk: The basic premise and any kind of it.
• Attack Drone: Great Wing Ships produce Little Wing Patrol Boats, who in turn attack the enemies with their ray guns.
• Child Soldiers: Chiren Kilong is 15 years old and acts as second in command of the space fleet under Yuming Oshang, who is just 18 herself. This is because they, like all commanders, belong to the very few non-cloned humans who have a natural resistance against radiation which was turned into a requirement to be commander by The Viceroy. Chiren also shows great potential in strategy and tactics so wasting her talent would be out of the question.
• Cool Starship: Loads, like the Eclipse Star Destroyer.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The House Colour for the Chinese isn't painted onto them, but instead glows off their radiators and shows up in the colour of their beam weapons. Yes, this even allows pink or black ray guns.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Even though they want revenge on pretty much every other world power, they still have a strict policy of only targeting military forces with their atomic bombs. Understandable, consider that they've seen the horrors of nuclear holocaust first hand.
• Expendable Clone: Clones are used as grunts, for slave labor and for getting rid of mine fields. There also are no plans to take them along when leaving earth.
• Fantastic Racism: Treatment of clones.
• Great Offscreen War: The Chinese Civil War is this.
• Green Rocks: Jade, the radioactive alien mineral that enables nuclear fission, is effectively Tiberium and also one of the reasons their colour of choice is green.
• Historical In-Joke: Their entire existence represents the power shift caused by nuclear China in the real 1960s.
• Homage: To Star Trek.
• Jiang Shi: In Name Only since they are more like the Hulk than zombies.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Inverted. China is the only side not to follow this; their weapons are in fact far better than everyone else's, and are almost always some form of Death Ray or other beam weapon. However, they tend to suffer from shorter range, which forces their units to take a beating while closing in to their adversaries before they can bring their beams to bear.
• Mundane Utility: Mantis War-Walkers can be used to plow land with their heat rays and War Thrones can grow plants there via healing radiation.
• My Name Is Inigo Montoya: My name is Captain Lei Lun, you have humiliated my country. Prepare to eat atomic fire.
• Nuclear Mutant: Jiang Shi. Chinese Tigers are similar, in that they are generally better than their non-augmented brethren.
• Nuke 'em: Should be obvious by the name; their Ultimate Weapon is just as obviously an air-dropped nuclear bomb.
• Our Clones Are Identical: Most infantry are mass-cloned from the genes of warriors who died in the previous war.
• Out with a Bang: As mentioned above, Courtesans can kill with poisoned saliva or tears, which is usually done during intercourse.
• Panthera Awesome: Chinese Tigers, irradiated and mutated to be bigger and tougher.
• Pointy Ears: Clones have these as a way of segregating them from the population.
• Radiation-Induced Superpowers: Radiation usually kills, but every so often you become an Expy of the Hulk.
• Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: Their ray guns are hampered with a short range ingame, but it's caused by a total lack of any sort of gunsights.
• Sickly Green Glow: Green China is associated with the green of the Jade, the key to unlocking atomic fission, the substance that had ended their civilisation.
• Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: Subverted with truely horrifying effects! A dropped nuke has far more power than any other Ultimate weapon in the game, being powerful enough to eradicate a complete base, leaving massive amounts of radiation that will prevent any life in the area for a while and turn the very ground into glass from the heat. Add map-wide EMP effects and gale force winds of about 350 km/h and the game will be completely reversed after the bomb fell.
• Spectacular Spinning: The Fortress Gate looks like a Stargate and naturally it spins.
• Space Elevator: Space Elevators are impossibly tall structures that literally reach up into the heavens. Two classes of space elevator exist. The first one is of the kind that one might see on the battlefield, and is typically used to deliver troops to the surface and processed ore to the duplicators in orbit. They can be deployed anywhere, as long as there is a Command Yard on the surface to join up to. Of the larger second class, only six examples exist. These elevators serve as the main method of getting men, cargo and equipment into orbit.
• Teleportation: Teleportation technology splits a person or object on the molecular level, transports the atoms, and recreates the object/person at the designation.
• Threatening Shark: Mutated sharks also use radiation-infused guns to add to their threatening factor.
• Tower Defense: They've been deliberately designed to play like a Tower Defense game, with upgrading defenses and walls designed especially for "mazing".
• Tractor Beam: Traction beams draw matter towards the projector like a screw.
• Tripod Terror: Mantis War-Walkers are hundred feet tall tripods that look like the sort of thing out of a science fiction film.
• We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: How clones are usually used.
• Why Am I Ticking?: One of the protocols lets a turret explode for massive damage.
• Yellow Peril: Deliberately played as Flash Gordon style pulp sci-fi villains.

Mingxia

• Action Girl
• Anime Chinese Girl: Complete with a classic Chinese dress.
• Dodge the Bullet: Although vulnerable to anti-infantry weapons, Mingxia's speed can have her dodge a lot of bullets.
• Flash Step
• Having a Blast: Takes Kenshiro's abilities to their logical conclusion by causing people hit in their Pressure Point to explode with lethal force.
• Martial Arts and Crafts: Jiao Li works by activating psionic potential.
• 90% of Your Brain: What Jiao Li is based on.
• Paper Fan of Doom
• Pressure Point: Can turn enemy infantry into bombs.
• Walk on Water
• Why Am I Ticking?: Enemy infantry-turned-bombs.
• You Are Already Dead: Her motto.

Mediterranean Syndicate

A Roman-age crossed with Cyber Punk obsessed group of Mega Corporations, the Mediterranean Syndicate embody everything the Allies fear and fight - forced roboticization, drug and people trafficking, abuse of the weak and generally doing everything only for money. The Syndicate uses high-range weapons for everything, from micro rocket firing machine guns to multi-target striking railguns to weather control, battlesuits, drugged gang members and all sorts of mercenary security forces. Their sprawls, regions of eternal night illuminated by neon lights and packed with camera systems, are haunted by packs of cybernetically improved Wolves and violence is a daily occurrence. People there apparently enjoy their lot because the Syndicate educates them practically for free - in utter self-interest of course.

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• Anachronism Stew: They are The '80s in a The '60s setting.
• Ancient Grome: What they are effectively idolizing.
• Army of Lawyers: Helios Security, equipped with projectors that use "zero-point energy" hold you in place. Inspired by The Supernaturalist.
• Ax-Crazy: Satyrs are given special, irreversible surgery in the part of their brain dealing with inhibitions. Attempts to make them placid by injecting them with nauseating drugs while showing footage of violent acts against Syndicate members also fail, as the Satyrs literally could not make the link in their mind. Instead, in order to ensure their cooperation, they are now allowed free reign of the Sprawls if they do not attack Syndicate personnel in battle. Times when Satyrs are between battles are called a Bacchanalia, where locking the door is no safety if the Satyrs want what you have, whether drugs, your daughter, or your blood.
• Brain in a Jar: Man O'War cyborgs are controlled by a brain in a jar.
• Company Town: Sprawls are usually this.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Syndicate is a massive conglomerate of corporations and criminal groups united by cultural and political beliefs, funded by war profiteering, exploitation of the third world, illegal activities and technological innovation.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul
• Cyberpunk: Neon lights. Cybernetic power armour. Rogue A.I.s. Absolute lack of respect for human life. Their Hero is even an evil Expy to Ghost in the Shell Hero Motoko Kusanagi and Molly Millions from the Sprawl Trilogy.
• Cyber Punk Is Techno: If Il futuro é adesso is any indication.
• Cyberspace: The mind of the user lends the processing power needed for complicated inferfaces. Non-cyberspace interactions resemble 1980s text interfaces as a result, and connections are barely good enough to transfer MIDI music.
• Deadly Gas: Sear gas combines the debilitating effects of tear gas with the lethal effects of your eyes and throat suffering chemical burns.
• Delaying Action: Until the better guns are available.
• Drugs Are Bad: Being the local evil bastards, they of course run the drug trade. Basic infantry are drugged gang members and the drugs make them shortly invincible to automatic gun fire. Of course, they burn them out afterward.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Even the Ax-Crazy Satyrs would not automatically attack Ambulance units.
• Feel No Pain: Auxiliaries can take PCP to survive bullet wounds that would otherwise kill them and will bleed to death if left unattended afterward. Truth in Television.
• Forklift Fu: Syndicate forklifts can steal defenses and crush infantry.
• Highly-Conspicuous Uniform: Legion Security uniforms are shiny silver with holographic advertising.
• If It Swims, It Flies: Pluto Airmobile Submarines may also surface to become gunships.
• Loss of Identity: Happens to almost everyone turned into a battle suit.
• Long Game: The ultimate goal of the Board of Classics is to lure out Kane and destroy him for leaving them unable to die. They have been playing this game for centuries and centuries.
• Magnetic Weapons: Railguns, which accelerate projectiles to high velocities using electromagnetic forces, are a common Syndicate anti-vehicle weapon.
• MegaCorp: A massive alliance of corporations huge and small loosely 'ruled' by a sort of super board of directors.
• One-Hit Polykill: Railguns are notable for being able to pass through a tank and hit the one behind it.
• Only in It for the Money: The Syndicate effectively only care about profit, be it short-term or long-term.
• Privately Owned Society: The Sprawl is the main way that the Mediterranean Syndicate operates as a corporation. Basically a corporate city, the Syndicate crams as much industry, commerce and illegalities into an area it has, keeping all the workers inside the Sprawl's limits to maintain their dependency on the corporation. As semi-extraterritorial enclaves, the Syndicate is free to run it how they wish it.
• Really 700 Years Old: The Board of Classics are actually old kings and queens from ancient civilizations. Xerxes, Alexander the Great, Gilgamesh, Cleopatra... And Romulus really was the first king of Rome. Kane made them immortal and left their civilizations to crumble, and they want revenge.
• Roboteching: Like the Empire, the Syndicate has AI controlled missiles. Unlike the Empire, the AI is located inside the missile.
• Rocket Punch: The Atlas fire their fists with compressed gas.
• Science Marches On: Deliberately invoked to imitate 1980s cyberpunk; Syndicate wireless technology "sucks", being limited to infrared beams like a television remote, so pretty much everything needs to be plugged in and wires are everywhere.
• Sinister Surveillance: Since cameras are everywhere.
• Street Samurai: Satyrs, in the most insane way possible.
• Suicide Attack: Fury Combat Drones can happen to not survive diving into an enemy airplane's fuel tanks.
• Super-Persistent Missile: Syndicate missiles follow their target until impact or running out of fuel. It's usually the former.
• Too Kinky to Torture: The Satyrs enjoy receiving pain almost as much as they enjoy inflicting them.
• Unusual User Interface: All Syndicate vehicles are piloted by single man crews, who replace their sensory input and motor impulses entirely with that of the vehicle.
• Unusual Weapon Mounting: Battlesuits have weapons mounted on shoulders, under shoulders etc.
• Unwilling Roboticisation
• Urban Warfare: Their specialty. In order to ensure they can take advantage of it, they can take some city with them.
• Villain with Good Publicity: The Syndicate educate people and create jobs world-wide and build massive megacities (their Sprawls) to house them. They do that because it's easier to milk a population that loves than one which hates them. This also makes it harder for the Allies to take action against them.
• Weather-Control Machine: Their Ultimate Weapon calls on lightning and gale-force winds to tear enemies apart.
• Wetware CPU: High level battlesuits are mostly robotic, controlled by a bare minimum of wetware.
• Worker Unit: Construction Lifters work similar to Nanocores but can build their structures unlimited times to save money (exceptions are the Super and Ultimate Weapon).
• Wretched Hive: They have a way of popping up in the Syndicate's path.

Minerva

• Cyborg
• Dark Action Girl
• Electronic Eyes: Has teal-colored cyborg eyes.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Her "true" story had her be a Woman Scorned by a Hollywood movie star (THE James Dean, at least in this timeline), and asked for her "reconstruction" so she could murder him
• Heart Drive: Her entire body, safe for the brain, is artificial.
• Sharpened to a Single Atom: Has monomolecular blades in her fingers.
• Street Samurai
• Wolverine Claws

Electrical Protectorate

A group of Imperial lab castoff nanomachines who developed self-awareness and formed the Core Mind met a stranger, who gave them a goal - to accomplish the "pure state of the universe". In other words, kill everyone else, and that is exactly what they do. Hordes of robots without built times but hideously weak, the Electrical Protectorate overwhelm everyone else with sheer numbers of weaksauce units aided by bigger units with bigger guns and a commando that looks entirely human but has a heart and body of steel. The Protectorate do not care about humans as much as seeing them as an obstacle to reach the pure state. They are unknown to the other factions because they kill without asking questions or before anyone can react, ending up as a rumor in people's heads until it is too late.

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• Artificial Intelligence: What they really are is a formless group of A.I.s who can "posses" their machines at will - with all the (dis-)advantages this implies.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: As robots, they do not have to follow human conventions of "Right and Wrong"...
• Brown Note: Basilisk Patterns work by using visual and audio patterns to cause your brain to go completely insane. That is, if they don't kill you outright.
• Cool, but Inefficient: The Protectorate don't even need an army to win the war, as they could simply cover the world in Grey Goo and win the war in about a day. However, their nature makes the idea of it completely alien to them.
• Dark Is Evil: Nightmare Drones create pitch-black fog to kill enemies.
• Deadly Gas: The secondary weapon of the Protectorate Tripod is Black Gas. The chemical composition of this gas is unknown, but what is known is that any unprotected person who finds themselves inside a cloud of Black Gas is as good as dead.
• Eldritch Abomination: They made a deal with some, and it's started to change them... Their superweapon even unleashes one on their enemies.
• Going Critical: When a Singularity Core gets damaged enough...
• Go Mad from the Revelation: What happens to pityful humans seeing The Icon.
• Large Ham: Despite being composed entirely of software, they are an entire "race" of these.
• Mad Artist: They essentially want to destroy all life as an artistic statement.
• Mecha-Mooks: A whole army of them.
• Mechanical Monster: Some of the bigger EP units can be this.
• The Power of Rock: Protectorate fractal weaponry contains singularities which offer beautiful light shows. The killing, however is done by firing pure, undiluted Dubstep.
• Robot Religion: More like "Robot Cthulhu Cult".
• Strawman Emotional: Originally programmed to understand and play off of human emotion, the Protectorate as a whole borders on bipolar, in contrast to the classic emotionless machines.
• Technicolor Fire: The Protectorate use Potassium, which burns purple.
• Tin-Can Robot: Played with. The Protectorate are made out of nanites and have no real machine components comparable to contemporary human technology. They wholly embrace the Tin-Can Robot look, however, out of a combination of sentiment for the B-Movies of their "youth" and a healthy dose of irony.
• Tripod Terror: The Protectorate Tripod is a towering, massive, three legged walker that dwarfs most other vehicles.
• Turned Against Their Masters: Played with. The base A.I.s of the Protectorate were created by humanity (in particular by a Japanese experiment that went awry) but were lost and then promptly forgotten about. The protectorate as it is now has nothing against humanity (and indeed a mere human brought them back from a Despair Event Horizon), but we are in the way for them to get to the pure state.
• Walk, Don't Swim: If Protectorate units cannot swim, they walk on the sea floor towards their targets.
• We Have Reserves: Justified. Their units are almost all mindless robots that the true AIs puppeteer. Thus, they don't particularly care if they get blown up.
• Zerg Rush: Standard tactic taken up to eleven, to the point where they completely forgo build times.

CP-746

• The Leader: His purpose is to organize the other A.I.s and to ensure they remain on task, this translates into him being a de facto leader to the Protectorate, even though he's not strictly speaking in-charge, mainly because his job at maintaining the Collective's integrity takes too much out of his time.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Like the rest of the Protectorate he wants to attain the "pure state", mostly because it would be easier to organize.

MS-186

• Honor Before Reason: Being programmed by the Empire of the Rising Sun, he has the same code of honor as them, and in early engagements, he would try to keep as much of his robot army alive, much to the amusement of other AIs.

PA-941

• Defector from Decadence: He is seemingly the only AI to realize just what a terrible idea it is to trust Jacob and the Icon, he became increasingly horrified by the Collective's desire to destroy all mankind to achieve the "pure state" and fled to try and warn them.
• Hope Spot: Unfortunately for humanity, his only mode of locomotion was a queen nanite, and years after his escape, he moved exactly one meter away from the Dark City, so there's almost no way he could warn humanity of the Protectorate's plans in time.

#87CEEB

• Does Not Know His Own Strength: Her robotic body is so strong that every animal she tried to hug was crushed.
• Meaningful Rename: She renamed herself from CC-874 to #87CEEB, the hexadecimal code for her favorite color (sky blue).

Venus

• BFG: Her gun is very powerful and can change itself according to target.
• Cool Shades
• Dark Action Girl
• Determinator: When reduced to 25% health, she gets REALLY nasty.
• Dressing as the Enemy
• Empathic Weapon
• Evil Counterpart: Is this to Minerva, which is emphasized in a mission where Venus disguised herself as Minerva, only to bump into the REAL Minerva, leading to a bloody firefight until both of them withdrew from the fray, with Minerva herself deeply unnerved by the encounter. And if something makes Minerva look relatively sane, you know you're dealing with something completely inhuman.
• Morph Weapon
• Person of Mass Destruction: The strongest commando in the game.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: As the resident Terminatrix.
• Scary Black Man
• Sunglasses at Night
• Swiss-Army Weapon

Jacob

The "inspiration" that led the Core Mind Collective to seek the pure state. So inspired by his words, the Protectorate have kept him in stasis so he can observe their "success". Is in reality Kane.—-

• And I Must Scream: Kept in a kind of "waking stasis" that allows him to remain fully cognizant of the Protectorate's actions.
• Been There, Shaped History: Has been around for millennia, from the founding to fall of Rome. It has been his actions that have shaped nearly all of the history of the Paradox setting.
• Mythology Gag: According to the Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn manual, "Jacob" was one of Kane's aliases.

Allied Reservists

The various national militaries of the world aiding the elite Peacekeepers. They also form the bulk of units fighting in Vietnam.

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• Blinded by the Light: Like the Riot Agent, the Defender has a flashbang grenade launcher.
• Boring, but Practical: Compared to the Peacekeepers; the Reservists don't use costly experimental systems or quantum weapons, but their designs are proven and cost-effective.
• Expy: They resemble the USA faction from Command & Conquer: Generals.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: To drive home their nature as "weekend warriors", the basic Reservist has an almost completely asymmetrical uniform.
• Only Sane Man: They are the only (more or less) truly conventional army.
• Putting on the Reich: Though their tan desert and olive green jungle uniforms don't look it, their garrison uniforms are black and grey. However, the Allies are blissfully unaware due to the lack of Nazis in the Red Alert timeline.
• We Have Reserves: Again, to the Peacekeepers; where the Peacekeepers are expected to make precision strikes on the enemy line, the Reservists hold the front and support PK operations.

Army of the Republic of Vietnam

South Vietnamese national forces fighting the Communist regime of the North. They love flame weapons and idolise the Allied Nations.—-

• Ammunition Backpack: Napalm Rangers carry ammo on their backs
• BFG: The Peacock mounts six anti-tank cannons. It's based on the Ontos, a real life Vietnam-made Tank Destroyer.
• Bifurcated Weapon: The Jungle Ranger's assault rifle has an underbarrel shotgun.
• Cool Shades: The Rocket Ranger's stern look owes a great deal to her period-approprete sunglasses.
• Fan Boy: They almost worships the ground the Allies walk...
• Fashionable Asymmetry: The Napalm Ranger only has one shoulder pad, but it's on the shoulder that faces the enemy (together with the end of his weapon).
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The ARVN loves its flamethrowers.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: The Vietnamese collaborators are considerably nicer than their real-world counterparts.
• Small Reference Pools: The ARVN Jungle Ranger wears a slouch hat, one issued to the Real Life ARVN. Everyone just makes Team Fortress 2 references whenever they see him.
• Standard Hollywood Strafing Procedure: Rascal Dive Bomber.
• Useless Useful Stealth: The ARVN's job is enforcing this; it has tanks with scanners and lots of napalm to burn the enemy out.

Vietcong

An underground resistance group supplied by North Vietnam and the Soviet Union, the Vietcong fight for Vietnamese unity under their ideas.

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• All Asians Wear Conical Straw Hats: Victor Charlies wear those. Unlike most examples, these actually do serve to block the sun (and hide in the jungle).
• Bayonet Ya: NVA Regulars only use their guns to keep the enemy's head down long enough to use these.
• Booby Trap
• Braids of Action: Guerrillas sport these.
• Hipster: A running gag regarding the Vietcong, due to the puns made about being underground, and the scarfs they wore in Real Life.
• Nature Hero
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters

National Revolutionary Army

One of the two factions that fought the Chinese civil war for about 30 years supplied by the Allies, and ended it in a nuclear holocaust. There are barely any survivors of their faction, most defected to the Atomic Chinese.

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• Driven to Suicide: The Nationalists, after seeing the aftermath of the nuclear war.
• Feudal Future: Mixed a bit with Used Future; the surviving NRA warlords are stratified into a feudal system, using their remaining clones and rusting weapons to try and hold against the Atomic Kingdom.
• Gasmask Mooks: Chinese nationalists come with standard-issue gas masks.
• Hover Tank: The Indian Reservists has the Crocodile Hovertank, which is notably not very good against conventional designs. It is, however, excellent against the designs of the Atomic Kingdom and PLA.
• The Remnant: The Blue Chinese have never stopped fighting the Chinese Civil War, long after it ended in nuclear annihilation.
• The Undead: Several units have been brought back from the dead to serve via technological means.

People's Liberation Army

One of the two factions that fought the Chinese civil war for about 30 years supplied by the Soviets, and ended it in a nuclear holocaust. There are barely any survivors of their faction, most defected to the Atomic Chinese.

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• Attack! Attack! Attack!: The most common form of a Red Chinese attack is a frontal assault.
• Awesome Personnel Carrier: Gatling Crawlers.
• Bayonet Ya: Red Guard troops can either attack enemies with their peashooters or knife them to death in close combat.
• BFG: The "Armageddon Cannons" are 800mm artillery pieces and gain nuclear shells on heroic. The Overlords mount 200mm, which is almost twice the caliber of the Soviet Apocalypse Tanks.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: North Korean Commandos fight in full dress uniform and can wipe out whole squads on their own.
• Expendable Clone: Communist China started cloning people after they developed the technology to clone body parts and transfer brains.
• Expy: They resemble the Chinese faction from Command & Conquer: Generals.
• Gasmask Mooks: Justified, considering the very hostile environment they are fighting in.
• Gatling Good: Gatling Crawlers are armed with gatling guns.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: The destruction of their leadership and country did this to the soldiers at Rat Base, to the point where their only leader is a giant poster of Mao, which they pretend is actually him, to the point of having it attend meetings, speeches, and rallies.
• Harpoon Gun: Overlord Tanks have harpoons which are made to reel in enemy vehicles much like the Apocalypse Tanks' Tractor Beam. They are also lethal to infantry, unlike said Tractor Beam.
• Machine Worship: The crews of Armageddon Cannons and various people attracted to these things worship them as deities of war, sing for them, sacrifice stuff, use holy oil etc. because the cannons survived until now and are indeed among the most powerful weapons ever made.
• The Remnant: They are the few survivors of a decades long war that ended nuclear.
• Stealth Pun: General Leang met her demise with a nuclear bomb, shortly after a Courtesan seduced her and revealed her base' position to the Atomic Chinese. In other words, she went Out with a Bang.

Global Liberation Army

A group of middle-eastern terrorists, the GLA fight for their cause - whatever it is - against the Allied and Soviet infidels to gain territoy in Arabia and Africa. Outdated and ill-equipped troops meet toxin weapons and Soviet missiles.

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• Expy: They are the GLA faction from Command & Conquer: Generals, a bit modified due to the alternate history of the Red Alert universe.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Their attempts to create an effective fighter-bomber aircraft to counter the Allies failed spectacularly multiple times, as the article about their Devastation Toxin Planes shows.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics
• Hypocrite: Most GLA leaders reside in palaces, drink wine, eat caviar and watch Hollywood movies while sending men to their deaths against the 'decadent' west.
• Suicide Attack: Terrorists are armed with only an explosive vest and detonator switch.
• Terrorists Without a Cause: They fight against oppression, or so they claim. They regularly mistake their enemies, as in anyone they happen to come across, for one another, burn the wrong flags when claiming Jihad and are really terrible at English.

Cult of the Black Hand

Long-term enemy of the Talons, the ominous Cult are waiting for their Messiah and do all sorts of things they believe will accelerate his coming - fighting other people for example.

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• Arch-Enemy: To the Talons.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Many members suffered this treatment.
• Conspiracy Theorist: As the long-term enemy of the Talons.
• Dark Messiah: They are waiting for him. It's Kane, in case you haven't figured out already.
• Hate Plague: The Cult makes extensive use of this in the form of hallucinogenic chemicals, they come in many form, such as darts, grenades, or gas.
• Insane Troll Logic: They actively believe that causing suffering will make their Messiah come quicker.
• Malevolent Masked Men: Everyone wears masks when in battle.
• Monowheel Mayhem: Their version of the Ezekiel's Wheel is literally just a wheel with guns.
• Unstoppable Rage: The Cult have gas grenades which do exactly this, forcing enemy units to fire at each other. They are based on Nod's hallucinogenic grenades from Tiberium Wars.

International Inc

A Geneva, Switzerland based military contractor, International Inc are an independent arms manufacturer and send their vehicles to anyone who can afford them.

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• Law Enforcement, Inc.: Internal Inc can be hired to do police work with cheap, but underequipped mercenaries named Enforcers.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Although being shameless Arms Dealers who will sell to any country that wants their wares, the leaders of II aren't at all pleased when their patented Scorpion Tanks end up in the hands of Terrorists Without a Cause, like the GLA and the Black Hand, simply because they don't want their company name associated with their nation-destabilizing antics.
• Private Military Contractors: Will send vehicular support to anyone paying the bill.
• Xanatos Gambit: Their main shareholder is NAMED Xanatos, and he's able to prove his credentials by outfoxing the Mediterranean Syndicate too.

Echoes

African League

An African diamond mining mega corp, the African League have a thing for ancient Egyptian imagery and utilise a variety of high-range weaponry and sturdy technology to take parts of Africa under their control, which quickly prosper. Their biggest nemisis in terms of warfare as well as economy is the Mediterranean Syndicate, who happens to be their neighbor, globally speaking.

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• Beam Spam: The basic idea behind the Emirates's pulse laser technology. Taken to ridiculous extremes with the Scatterbeam Cannons, which are essentially Gattling Laser Shotguns.
• Bulletproof Vest: A lot of League personnel are equipped with diamond-weave combat vests.
• City of Gold: Diamonds are an extremely plentiful material for the Emirates. Their cities do have gold and platinum as well, though.
• Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry: Diamonds are not only pretty to look at, this faction generates electrical power with diamonds and lasers.
• Guns Akimbo: The Emmissary wields dual ramjet pistols.
• Humongous Mecha: The War Derricks are giant mechs that can simply stomp and/or punch anything that comes close.
• LEGO Genetics: League Mutagens end up applying under this, even though the Emirates don't have particular control over the DNA itself.
• Psycho Serum: When League mutagens on animals fail to work properly, it acts like this. Particularly with the uberchickens for the Akachi Bomber.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The League increasingly becomes this as their hatred for the Syndicate goes out of control.
• Warrior Prince: Khalid, the Sultan for the League, prefers to command armies himself as opposed to just letting people do it for him. He isn't a slouch in combat either, and that's before the fact he gets dibs on the best stuff.

Technocratic Combine

Composed of the United Technate in Latin America and associated international groups, the Technocratic Combine was created in order to bring about Utopia and world peace as seen through the lens of 1930s Art Deco futurism. Though they greatly admire peace, they are fine with using violence, war, or questionable and dangerous means to achieve that end. Though still using outdated weapons and tactics from both World Wars 1 and 2, their capacity for scientific and technological improvement as well as their penchant for morale warfare allows them to offset their limited offensive capabilities.

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• Beast of Battle: They use more animals in their forces than any other faction.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Gigantic tank-sized ants, bees and isopods serve in the Combine's auxiliary forces. They're cheap and ferociously loyal but don't stand up well to firepower.
• Combat Pragmatist: Trench, chemical, biological, and psychological warfare are all used, both in-game and in lore.
• Evilutionary Biologist: Bat bombs, pidgeon missiles, mole mines, head-sized wasps, GIANT ANTS, enraged chimpanzees...noting a pattern?
• Mad Scientist: The Combine appear to be mentally sound in how they approach using and handling the efforts of their mad science and logically explain their reasons for doing so, but their logic is often severely distorted or paradoxical.
• Terror Hero: Types 3 and 4, attempting to become Type 5 with the (distorted) logic that if everyone is too scared to fight you, then no one will want to and there'll be no more war.
• The Virus: Fungal Zombies can turn infantry they kill into more Fungal Zombies.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The goals of the Combine are the unification of humanity and the progress of technology to increase the standard of living and end war, poverty, suffering, etc. They're willing to delve into some pretty questionable or dangerous areas to achieve those goals, and anyone who voices dissent is therefore in their minds being against humanity's wellbeing.

Industrial Guild

A revolutionary group with a love for Victorian stuff, the Industrial Guild are based in Indonesia. Huge numbers of willing soldiers and tanks equipped with all sorts of classic weaponry fight for freedom. With huge factories guzzling out material and smoke alike, the Guild reuse many classic designs.

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• Arch-Enemy: The Industrial Guild is a coalition of civil rebellions in southeast Asia, banded together by a single goal of freedom, rights and common cause in dethroning the Pahit Dictatorial.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Sleuths and inventors are generally seen as superior officers.
• Cool Airship: The Industrial Guild has a whole building dedicated to building airships.
• Drill Tank: The Turner Drill is a mobile drilling machine with an oversized engine and an equally oversized drill which tears apart larger units, while smaller units are simply crushed under its bulk.
• Elegant Weapon for a More Civilized Age: They have quite a few of those.
• Parasol of Pain: Their commando, Victoria uses a shotgun disguised as a parasol.
• Sapient Cetaceans: Sperm whales have negotiated an alliance with the Guild with the help of a dolphin translator.

Southern Contingent

A coalition of Australia, New Zealand, and a few surrounding states, the Southern Contingent were part of the Allied Nations but refused further cooperation to ensure survival on their own. Instead, they build up their own military force, using gunslinger cowboys, aircraft, and gravitational manipulation with great efforts. Good on defense and offense alike, the Contingent can react fast on various dangers and prove that their region of the world is dangerous for quite a few reasons.

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• Artificial Gravity: Gravitic control is one of the Contingent's major technological advances.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: The standard anti-armour weapon of the Contingent is depleted uranium, whose high density lets it punch through armour easily.
• Gravity Master: The Contingent have complete mastery over gravity.
• Irony: The Contingent missed out on discovering nuclear fission, but noticed Depleted Uranium's use as a weapon. Nowadays, they keep the valuable depleted uranium while disposing of the useless enriched stuff.
• Improbable Weapon User: The Contingent use cannonballs with some of their units. This is aided by the fact that said cannon balls are made of depleted Uranium and gravity-guided, however.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: All Contingent weapons (bar the occasional gravity weapon or grenade) are kinetic. Not only that, they hit HARD, thus playing this trope straight.
• Land Down Under: The Southern Contingent is comprised of Australia and New Zealand.
• Laser Sight: Of a sort: instead of lasers, particle beams are used, which have the benefit of hurting the thing you are aiming at.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Since the Contingent sees enriched uranium as useless, the stuff they don't bury is sold to American research colleges, who have a great interest in the stuff. Three guesses who they are.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: However, said research colleges find depleted Uranium useless, and so when they produce it they send it to Australia to get rid of it...
• Ramming Always Works: The Sawfish crashes into enemy ships, where its prow bursts, destroying the enemy instantly. The pieces are then attracted back by a gravity field.
• Roboteching: The Contingent uses gravity manipulation to fire CANNONBALLS this way.
• Selective Gravity: One of the advantages of controlling gravity. The Contingent use this to the point that their command centers, certain high-level military equipment, and even a Kill Sat equivalent in the upper atmosphere.

American Unionists

An American Civil Defense Force created for the sole purpose of Americanism and the stomping out of Communist influence in the USA. After being all but diminished in the early 60s, they became revitalized after Moskvin's failed invasion of New York and the Rise of the Confederate Rebellion. The CIA (American subdivision of the ACIN) has taken a great interest in this group, and has been secretly integrating it more and more into their control. Only time will tell where that will lead...

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• America Takes Over the World: Heavily implied in the lore, where they are spreading other Union organizations in both Allied and non-Allied territory (Britain, France, Cuba, Vietnam, etc.), and are also rewriting history in their territories to make it seem like America is the most important country in the planet, and only America can save the day from the scourge of communism.
• Eagleland: Stradles a fine line between the two flavors.
• Government Conspiracy: The modus operandi of American Unionists.
• Manchurian Agent: Named "Guam Candidates" for the testing done on Imperial prisoners on Guam.
• More than Mind Control: They use post-hypnotic suggestion to train their troopers.
• Stepford Suburbia: A faction of it.

Greater Indian Commonwealth

Focusing on a specialized branch unaffected by Allied Nation's regulations, the GIC has invaded Pakistan and other surrounding nations for the goal of supporting the massive numbers of poor that are part of the national population with their new Frontier Corps. They have also started taking evidence from their Reservist expeditions to what remains of China for technologies to scavenge to improve their war machine.

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• We Have Reserves: The only power bloc that has more reserves than the Soviets.

Cyberbolivaran Forum

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• Hard Light: Luminous Ultraviolet Manmade Optical Solution (LUMOS) is a technology employed by the Federation that creates a burst of solid white and ultraviolet light in a small area.

Ukrazol Ecumene

Exploratory elements of a "Meritocratic" society that has slowly deformed into a social Darwinistic and deeply totalitarian society, the Ukrazol Ecumene both use and subvert most common alien invader tropes and have come to our world. Officially the fleet parked around Jupiter is there to engage in a rather destructive method of combating creative sterility by observing, probing, and disturbing new found societies before paving the way for an eventual conquest fleet for assimilation. But it's quite difficult for the average Ecumenical Citizen to determine what is and isn't true in an ancient government with a depth of information control that Oceania of 1984 fame could only dream of.

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• Alien Invasion: A decidedly nonstandard Alien invasion, starting at first with subversive techniques, and then escalating too much more full-scale assaults as time goes along.
• Anarcho-Tyranny: The Ecumene is an individualistic totalitarian society, one where there is freedom for the strong to crush the weak and to jealously amass and guard their own power in collusion with others who have clawed their way upwards lest anyone else threaten it.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: The Ukrazol Ecumene is a despotic meritocratic parafascist intergalactic state, heavily based in revanchism, the concept of a national destiny, militarism, expansionism and hate, that ultimately craves constant growth, trying to outrace the weight of its own contradictions by shoving more fuel into its eternal fire. Left-wing ideologies are deemed moral threats and demonised at best or have their existences kept entirely hidden at worst.
• The Social Darwinist: When you peer past the claims of equality and egalitarianism, the Ecumene's political philosophy is that the strong will do as they please, the weak will suffer what they must. Certain figures such as Orlukk exemplify this much more strongly than others.
• State Sec: The Enforcers are a shining example of this trope, possessing a completely separate chain of command from the observational and military forces, being given broad and sweeping powers in both military and civilian fields, functioning as one of several kinds of secret police in the Ecumene, and being comprised out of those who value loyalty over morality. Though lacking in-game units, the Enforcers are noted to have distinctive black and green uniforms.

Pahit Dictatoriat

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• Friendly Fireproof: Pahit filters are the only known counter against Pahit gas by reacting with it to form breathable air. Equipping this makes all Pahit units immune to the effects of Pahit gas.

Mongolian Migration

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• Base on Wheels: Everything the Mongolians have is mobile, including their buildings.
• Multiple Life Bars: When any Mongolian unit dies, it stays on the battlefield, unable to participate. If not killed a second time, aenough time has passed, the unit will be restored to combat functionality.

Inkarri Theocracy

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• Earthquake Machine: The Pachamama and Titicaca pack a volcanic generator, which can create hotspots, magma wells and volcanoes in a huge radius around these units.
• King in the Mountain: One of the Cult of the Inkarri's main principles is that their leaders, after being executed and dismembered by the Spanish colonists, were returned to the land, hidden and separated, for their power was too big for the Spanish to contest them. It was a matter of waiting, hoping and having faith that, some day, all of the messiah's missing parts would be finally gathered, put together and restored, so he may restore the Inca to their position as the prime power of the world.

Movement for International Revolution

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• La Résistance: The MIR is a coalition of Latin American guerrilla warriors brought together by the ideals of Marxist revolution and the hopes of dethroning Allied puppet governments.

The Network

The eventual result of Paradox's many, many conspiracies, the Network are essentially your local conspiracy theorist packed up for war. Everyone from survivalists to storm chasers are part of the Network, centered around the mysterious "Third Eye".

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• Conspiracy Theorist: While they are right about quite a few things, like the existence of the Electrical Protectorate, the war between the Order and the Cult, and the fact that the Ukrazol Ecumene is secretly observing them. They also believe that World War II was staged, Cherdenko is a super-psychic, the Shogun Executioner's destruction of Odessa was filmed on set, the African League made a pact with aliens made of crystal...
• Historical Domain Character: Art Bell acts as one of the Network's leading voices.

Phoenix Front

The result of the Syndicate seizing power in Belfast, the Phoenix Front is the result of Irish Republicans and British Unionists focusing their collective anger on the Syndicate and Allied Nations that allowed the takeover of Belfast to occur, though no one has quite factored in how long it will take to achieve victory.

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• Arms Dealer: Of the gangland gunrunner variety.
• Combat Pragmatist: Like all the rebel groups in Paradox, the Front isn't averse to fighting dirty. They are, however, fighting dirtier than most.
• Enemy Mine: Only in Paradox would Irish unionists and republicans even consider coming together.
• Fighting Irish: The Phoenix Front is an Irish nationalist group spanning every belief, political and religious, uniting under a comon cause of Irish unification.

Arabian Coalition

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• Hypocrite: The Arabian Coalition, an alliance of absolute monarchies, consider themselves the last remaining bastion of freedom in the Middle East.

Crescent Pact

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• Chummy Commies: The Middle Eastern communists have turned their homeland from a ruin devastated by colonialism into a modern nation matching European standards of living, demonstrating that the colonised peoples are no longer slaves but now equals to the imperial core.

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