Witches "raised" (i.e. brainwashed, tortured, indoctrinated, and otherwise abused) by The Church.
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In General
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Through drugs, massive indoctrination, torture, and repeated rape, "The Purified Witches" were not only completely unstable, but so tied up in the belief that The Church is righteousness incarnate that there was absolutely no way to reason with them. Isabella somehow broke free of this, but was powerless to do anything other than go along...
- Child by Rape: Implied. The Church rounded up little girls from orphanages, war refugees, abandoned "noble" children, or anywhere they could be found, and upon reaching child-bearing age, would be taken into rape chambers to try and maximize the number of witches that could be "harvested".
- Human Resources: Any witch whose power wasn't considered "useful" was instead put into a coma from which there would be no recovery to fuel the horrifically inefficient Super-Soldier program.
- Hunter of His Own Kind: "Purified" witches hate and hunt "wild" witches with the highest possible priority, and will do anything they can to exterminate them. No amount of reasoning will change their minds. It took Roland delivering an overwhelming and undeniable defeat in battle to make this pattern stop.
- Impractically Fancy Outfit: As can be seen from Isabella's full illustration below, it must be some unknown magical ability that allows them to wear their official church uniforms and take to the battlefield without falling out all over the place, at best.
- Knight Templar: Aside from Isabella, all "Purified" witches wholly believed The Church was righteousness incarnate, and "wild" witches were the spawn of demons. No amount of empirical evidence would convince them otherwise.
- One-Shot Character: Combined with We Hardly Knew Ye. For the vast majority, they would be introduced as named characters only to be killed off in the same chapter.
- Tautological Templar: Since The Church is the paragon of righteousness to them, any act The Church commands of them must in itself be righteous. The only way to convince them otherwise is to kill them.
Zero
Welcome to the battle of souls! Winner take all!
One of the most, if not the most, dangerous of the "Purified." She's one of the only two antagonists to give Roland a hard time.- Admiring the Abomination: She worshiped the Red Moon, thinking it must be god because of the fact that magic comes from there.
- Ambition Is Evil: She was somewhat easier to control before she took down Garcia
- Ax-Crazy: Whatever The Church did to her over her centuries' worth of life left her clearly unhinged...Then Mayne decided to torture her for "insolence."
- Assimilation Backfire: Her final fate when she tries her "Battle of Souls" against Roland; she got assimilated by Roland instead.
- The Assimilator: Every time she wins a "Battle of Souls", she consumes and gains everything that made her victim... human. She can then comb through that person's memories as if she lived them.
- Beat Them at Their Own Game: How Roland was able to defeat her, with him using her own "Battle of Souls" against her.
- Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Her torture under Mayne certainly made her worse off, and the narration states Mayne isn't the first...
- Cast from Lifespan: How the Battlefield of Souls operates. Of course, she's got far, far more than her opponents...
- Deadpan Snarker: Innocent she may be, timid she is not, in Roland's Dream World.
- Death by Irony: For a Witch that consumed countless people who lost against her in her "Battle of Souls", Zero herself was consumed by Roland when he defeated her in her own game.
- Expy: The author has noted he based her appearance, name and initial personality on Zero from Drakengard 3.
- Fair-Play Villain: She took great pains in explaining the rules of the Battle of Souls to her opponents. When she found herself in Roland's soul and could not make any sense of the terrain, with Roland not being forthcoming in explanations, she decided to make him an exception.
- Innocence Lost: Inverted. She becomes an innocent little girl in Roland's Dream World.
- Kick The Son Of A Bitch: To both Mayne and Garcia.
- Mystical White Hair: Illustrated with silver hair and is a powerful Pure Witch.
- Out of Continues: How she loses to Roland in the Battle of Souls.
- Outside-Context Problem: How she sees Roland in the Battle of Souls, and hates it.
- Parental Abandonment: In Roland's Dream World, Roland stumbles upon her diary to learn she was dumped on him to take care of... along with a very small allowance.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: She is illustrated with red eyes and is extremely dangerous as a Pure Witch.
- This Cannot Be!: When Roland turns the floor underneath them into a friction-less surface and summons infinite guns...
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: After her ability causes her to be absorbed by Roland, and she's freed from the effects of the thousands of souls she assimilated, the formerly sadistic leader of the church shows herself to be a very innocent, friendly and caring child in the Dream Land Roland gains from her.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The more people she absorbed, the crazier she got.
- Would Hurt a Child: In the prelude to invading Wolfheart's capital city, she played a sadistic little "trial" game, forcing people to fight her, promising freedom if they could survive for a certain time. If they tried to flee, she'd just sigh and "Soul Battle" them. Children were not exempt.
Isabella
The enemies of "god" must die!
One of the Zero's lieutenants. She later joined Roland because all she really cared about was winning the war against the demons.- Anti-Magic: Her innate ability can negate Stones of Divine Retribution.
- The Atoner: Invoked. Roland forces her to repent for her crimes.
- Good Feels Good: When she's being honestly thanked by nuns and orphans she helped rescue from the depravity of Appen Moya and the corrupt remnants of The Church, she begins to weep with joy, despite herself.
- Heel–Face Turn: Since Zero lost to Roland in the Soul Battle and thus absorbed into him, Isabella drops her allegiance to the Church for Roland's side as she believes him to be the best chance for humanity to win in the Battle of Divine Will.
- I Fight for the Strongest Side!: The only moral compass she has is that she'll join with whoever has the better chance of winning the Battle of Divine Will. She doesn't care about the motives or methods of said group.
- Metaphorically True: She tells surviving nuns and orphans that she's trying to rescue that Mayne tried to usurp the Pope throne from Zero, and is the reason The Church was utterly stomped by Roland. She's not entirely wrong.
- Ms. Fanservice: Isabella is an incredibly beautiful and voluptous woman wearing a Stripperific outfit.
- Redemption Equals Life: Roland forces her to live until she's atoned for her crimes... She's going to need a long lifespan.
- Trapped in Villainy: She didn't like The Church, but she could not see a better way... until she learned about Roland, but by then her "comrades" had already gone to full-out genocidal war.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: She's done, and is still willing to do, horrible, horrible things to win the Battle of Divine Will. Justified in that losing the battle means almost certain extinction for humanity.
