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Important Characters

    The Player 
A graduate of the Protector's Academy on Earth. Your journey begins at the graduation ceremony, which you're running late for. Then, a large, tentacled monstrosity known as the Ruin attacks and destroys the planet, forcing you to escape with only a Matter Manipulator- the symbol of the Protectors- and a broken-down ship at your disposal.
  • All Up to You: Unlike most examples, this is Justified — not only is the player the Sole Survivor of the Protectorate, but they're the only member of the main group to have both the ability and motivation to take on the Ruin — Esther is too old to fight, Nuru has no personal interest in fighting the Ruin, Koichi is a Non-Action Guy, Tonauac is not athletic enough to help and a Nice Guy besides who wouldn't hurt a fly, Lana is focused on defeating the Miniknog and is implied to still be recovering from injuries, the Baron is too old and scatter-brained to help out, and while Captain Noble wasn't added until a later update, it's implied he has to help take down other threats as one of the last surviving Peacekeepers.
  • Back from the Dead: At the end of the game, the player defeats the Ruin but dies in the ensuing planetwide explosion. Thank goodness the Cultivator is able to revive them and bring them back to the Ark.
  • Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: While they manage to destroy the Ruin, they fail to escape its cataclysmic destruction and are killed in the process. Thankfully, the Cultivator revives them.
  • The Call Knows Where You Live: The Ruin attacks Earth on the day of the player's graduation, destroying the planet and leaving the player stranded in space.
  • The Chosen One: Well, chosen by Esther Bright, at any rate, to find the six artifacts from each of the races and bring them together to stop any more planets from meeting the fate of Earth.
  • Cyborg: Once you unlock Techs, your character essentially becomes one, capable of dashing, double-jumping, and curling into a ball to get into tight places.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Defeats several monsters and eldritch beings over the course of the story, including the Ruin itself.
  • Doomed Hometown: Earth and the Protectorate Academy.
  • Empowered Badass Normal: You can go toe-to-toe with some of the nastiest planet-side fauna even before unlocking Techs if you're careful, acquiring Techs and their powers simply give you an extra edge.
  • Heroes Prefer Swords: Your first weapon is the Broken Broadsword. If you hang onto it and give it (plus a few tech cards) to the Baron before the final mission, it'll be upgraded to the Protector's Broadsword, one of the best weapons in the game.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: While your inventory is limited, you can easily carry around twelve assault rifles, a sword three times the size of your body, and some bombs for good measure.
    • As well as forty thousand cubic feet of dirt, rock, tar, or any other substance you might come across (including liquids such as scorching hot lava or deadly poison, which you can carry by hand, apparently), enough furniture to decorate a small mansion, a farm's worth of exotic crop seeds, enough tree seeds to plant a forest, and veritable mountains of food.
  • Instant Expert: You can use any weapon you find, whether it's a sword, spear, machine gun, grenade launcher or pseudomagical wand. Possibly justified, since as a Protector the player would probably have been trained in using a wide variety of weapons and technology.
  • Sole Survivor: The only known member of the Protectors to survive the destruction of Earth. This becomes Downplayed after the Bounty Hunters update, where a couple of Protectors from the Peacekeepers are revealed to still be alive and kicking.
  • Space Police: What your character was about to become, before the untimely end of Earth.
  • With This Herring: After the destruction of Earth, the PC is left stranded over an alien world with only the Matter Manipulator, a damaged sword, a flashlight, a handful of torches, a few cans of preserved rations, a broken-down spaceship and the clothes on their back.
    • Unlike the trope, however, it wasn't much of a choice. This happens to be the bare-bones supplies for any space-faring ship on the Protectorate, and according to the logs it was supposed to be complimented with extra equipment, depending on the assignment. But, y'know, beggars can't be choosers, especially when you're trying to Outrun the Fireball on a planetary scale!

    S.A.I.L 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sail.png

The onboard computer of the ship the player commandeers to escape Earth. It keeps track of your missions and crew, and provides advice on survival and space travel. It's genuinely helpful, but is possessed of a slightly disparaging sense of humor.


  • Artificial Intelligence: It's right in the name.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Among the original S.A.I.L designs were a talking horse (Novakid), a wizard that treats its own functions as sorcery (Glitch), and a corrupted Human S.A.I.L with Cloudcuckoolander tendencies (Floran). Despite their eccentricities, they functioned no differently than other S.A.I.Ls.
  • Data Crystal: The Avian S.A.I.L, pre-Cheerful Giraffe, was a mound of avolite crystal.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Fond of sarcastically complimenting your bravado if you start browsing dangerous planets.
    "If you wish, I can calculate your likelihood of immediately bursting into flame on beam down..."
  • Divergent Character Evolution: Inverted. Each race originally had a unique S.A.I.L design, but Cheerful Giraffe replaced them with a single shared design and personality, separated only by color.
  • Exposition Fairy: Mostly in the beginning of the game, and occasionally during story missions.
  • Fun with Acronyms: Its full title is Ship-based Artificial Intelligence Lattice.
  • Lovable Coward: Its sarcastic quips indicate it does not envy the player at all and prefers to be far from the action, but in its role, this is where it is anyways.
  • Palette Swap: Originally, each race's S.A.I.L possessed a unique design and personality. The Cheerful Giraffe update, however, removed this in favor of S.A.I.L simply adopting one of the race-specific colors.
  • Talking Animal: The Novakid S.A.I.L, pre-Cheerful Giraffe, was a talking horse.
  • Wingding Eyes: The pre-1.0 Floran S.A.I.L had spirals for eyes, and they would spin if an error occurred.

    The Cultivator 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/clipboard01.png

A god-like entity that wandered the galaxy an untold amount of time ago, The Cultivator helped to uplift the main six races through powerful artifacts it gifted to each of them. Aeons before the story began, it vanished after battling the Ruin, leaving behind grand, dilapidated structures such as the gateways, the Ark, the challenge portals and the Ancient Vaults.


  • Benevolent Precursors: Fostered life throughout the galaxy, and ultimately sacrificed itself to defeat the Ruin and protect its creations.
  • Big Good: An unquestionably noble being responsible for uplifting all known life in the galaxy, which stood in opposition to the Ruin.
  • Body Motifs: Its hand is the most prominent feature of its statue in the Ark — held carefully over the galaxy hologram, and splayed out as though sheltering it. The smaller holograms in the chamber depict the Cultivator holding planetary bodies aloft in its hands, and later using one hand to force the Ruin into a portal. When it addresses the player at the end of the game, it appears as a hand made of energy, held in the same pose as the statue.
  • The Faceless: All of the statues and holograms in the Ark depict the Cultivator with a head that's completely smooth and lacking in detail; not unlike a Novakid without a brand.
  • God Is Good: The closest thing to a genuine, benevolent god the Starbound universe has.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Sealed away the Ruin, but the damage to itself was so catastrophic that it "shattered" afterwords. These fragments would later form the first Novakid.
    • After the player defeats the Ruin and dies in the ensuing explosion, the essence of the Cultivator expends its remaining power to bring them back to life and return them to the Ark.
  • Neglectful Precursors: While benevolent, the guy did make some mistakes. Unfortunately, those few mistakes had disastrous consequences, including the creation of the Kluexian faith, and the eternal medieval tech-level the Glitch are stuck in.
    • As the Apex artifact is a double helix, the Miniknog may have derived their initial power from studying it.
  • Sentient Cosmic Force: Implied to be this, although the statues and holograms of the Ark show it to have a humanoid appearance.

    The Ruin 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/clipboard02.png

A massive alien monstrosity that was sealed inside the Ark for untold millennia, the Ruin somehow manages to partially escape its weakening prison and destroy Earth. The story of Starbound is dedicated to stopping it before more worlds are attacked.


  • Big Bad: Stopping it is the focus of the game's story after all.
  • Combat Tentacles: Its primary motif. The first time you ever see the Ruin is when it uses skyscraper-sized tentacles to destroy Earth from the inside-out. It uses said similarly-sized tentacles in the final boss fight.
  • Creative Sterility: Subtly Impliedas showcased during the final battle, the Ruin can create other creatures, but all of them are surprisingly weak compared to other creatures, with the most dangerous entities it can summon being ones you've fought on other planets, indicating that the Ruin is not very good at creating things on its own. Fitting for what essentially a Destroyer Deity.
  • Earth-Shattering Kaboom: A planet-shattering one in this case, which happens to it when it's destroyed. Unfortunately, with no way for the player to escape, it takes them down with it too.
  • Eldritch Abomination: It's a gigantic monster older than recorded history, capable of destroying entire planets on a whim, and is intelligent enough to target and destroy Earth and the Terrene Protectorate, the group likely most capable of stopping it, as soon as it is able to and with no warning whatsoever.
  • Faceless Eye: Its secondary motif, being bright gold with a slit pupil. The tentacle biome and its native creatures feature these eyes prominently, and the Occasus cultists wield swords that feature the Ruin's eye on the hilt.
    • Notably the "Eyepatch" biome does not, in fact, bear any of the marks of the Ruin. The eyes that grow on trees or the Oculemons have more benign-looking, round pupils, and are blue or light pink, making them look weird but not demonic, like the Ruin's eye.
  • Genius Loci: Its true form is a massive, living planet inside the Ark.
  • Genocide Backfire: It intended on destroying Earth and killing every member of the Terrene Protectorate and succeeded for the most part, although at the very least the protagonist and Esther Bright managed to escape the devastation of Earth. And ultimately this remnant of the Protectors with the help of other races track down the Ruin and kill it, putting an end to it before it fully awakens and escapes the weakening Ark.
  • May Contain Evil: It's heavily implied that erchius, the miracle fuel the races of Starbound rely upon for space travel, is derived from the Ruin. After the Ruin emerges on Earth, all the moons where erchius is found start crawling with lesser Eldritch Abominations born from the erchius, which includes the Erchius Horror.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: According to Esther's research, it seeks to eradicate all life, not just in the Galaxy, but in the entire universe.
  • Poison Is Evil: The only fluids on its surface and its inside is deadly poison.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Is trapped inside the Ark, but it's stated that the Ark is slowly weakening, with the Ruin's emergence on Earth being a sign of things to come.
  • Unwitting Pawn: It's heavily implied it played on Asra Nox's human supremacist viewpoints in order to use her to carry out its goals. And considering its view on life, it'll be all but certain that she will become another body in its wake once she overstays her usefulness.
  • Womb Level: The only way to slay the Ruin is to dig your way down to the very core of its 'planet' and attack its heart.

Main Races

    Humans 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/raceportrait_human_9.png

As the founders of the Protectorate that the Player Character is a member of, the peaceful, diplomatic Humans were entering a golden age of space travel when their dreams were dashed by the destruction of Earth. Now an endangered species with no home planet to call their own, Humans wander the galaxy as nomads.


  • After the End: On Earth, at least. In-universe, they're known to be hardy, so it's probably a new beginning.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Judging by some remarks upon examining certain things, humans are quite the bunch of goofballs.
    (Examining a small turbine) "I believe these are here so that the USCM can quickly convert anything into a flying fortress. I may have made this up."
  • The Federation: Humanity led one called the Terrene Protectorate, which had apparently existed for over 500 years before the Ruin destroyed Earth. With their homeworld destroyed, the current fate of the Protectorate is unknown.
  • Future Imperfect: According to one codex, many famous details of Human history have been forgotten or attributed as myth:
    "Human history dates back so far that many records have been lost. Old tales speak of our ancestors somehow venturing into space without the aid of warp travel, but there is no real evidence for this."
  • Homeworld Evacuation: Earth has been destroyed by an Eldritch Abomination, leaving humanity scattered across the stars.
  • Humans Are Survivors: They don't seem particularly bummed out about losing their home planet.
  • Humans Are Ugly: Some Glitch NPCs certainly think so. Florans, on the other hand, seem to find them absolutely adorable.
  • Humanity Is Advanced: According to item descriptions, at the time Earth was wiped out, Human computational technology was beginning to rival the Apex.
  • Naïve Newcomer: In Early Access, they seemed to be this, and were treated as such by other races. Subverted as of the Story Update, in which they are shown to be a notable presence in the universe, prior to Earth's destruction at least.
  • Nightmare Fetishist: The human PC, judging by some of their Investigate dialogue, has little problem with sleeping in creepy beds adorned with Spikes of Doom, would gladly hang out with florans, and in general seems more awed and entertained by stuff other races find creepy.
  • Penal Colony: U.S.C.M prison facilities are scattered across the galaxy. After the destruction of Earth, however, the isolated prisons have been overthrown and occupied by the inmates.
  • Pungeon Master: Of all the PCs, they seem the fondest of (usually bad) puns when examining objects.
  • Retcon: During Early Access, it was implied that humanity had a conventional interstellar empire called the United Systems, with offworld colonies protected by the United Systems Colonial Marines. In the release version, the only remnant of this concept was the USCM logo visible in prison dungeons. A later update revived the USCM as the Universal Space Corporate Military, which seems to be a downscaled version of the United Systems Colonial Marines that competed (somewhat unsuccessfully) with the Terrene Protectorate.
  • Settling the Frontier: Conspicuously averted. According to a census, humanity apparently had no interest in spreading across the galaxy en-masse. The biggest "colonies" were typically just individual families that decided to adopt a simpler life on alien worlds. This means that when Earth was destroyed, it most likely took the majority of the human race with it.
  • Space Nomads: Human "towns" are gatherings of tents, parked spaceships, and (inexplicably) RV Campers. Since Earth was only just destroyed, and humanity apparently never bothered establishing proper colonies elsewhere in the galaxy beforehand, this is totally justified.
  • Whole Costume Reference: The Seeker, Wanderer, Adventurer and Trailblazer sets for Humans strongly resemble Spartan armor, while the Universalist set resembles Isaac Clarke's engineer suit. Similarly, the Scouter and Scavenger armor sets are dead ringers for Colonial Marines.

Esther Bright

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cnfnun0wyaiuiw7.png

A retired Grand Protector. Having been off planet during The Ruin's attack, she is the only surviving member of the Protectorates leadership. Serving as the main quest giver, she comes out of retirement to finish what The Cultivator started and destroy The Ruin.


  • Handicapped Badass: Stuck in a hovering wheelchair.
  • It Was with Me All Along: Her Matter Manipulator is actually the Master Manipulator, i.e. the Cultivator's gift to humanity, i.e. the final Plot Coupon.
  • Mission Control: She updates you on quest progress as you go, and comments on some story developments.
  • Retired Badass: She wasn't just any protector, she was the Grand Protector. She must have been quite the hero at her prime.
  • Voice with an Internet Connection: Though a few other members of the "New Protectorate" also talk to you remotely, they only have three or four dialog windows' worth of commentary. Esther, on the other hand, gives S.A.I.L. a run for their money.

Occasus

The most common enemy faction in the main quest, Occasus was originally a Human supremacist group obsessed both with ejecting other races from Earth (thus ending the protectorate) and with making Humanity the galaxy's dominant species no matter the cost. After the arrival of The Ruin, they have transformed into a cult that worships it like a god and seeks to hasten its escape from The Ark. They are led by Asra Nox, a powerful warrior who harbors a bitter grudge against the Protectorate, and Esther Bright in particular.
  • Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: During "The Baron's Keep" mission, all of them use archaic weapons, such as swords, bows, ballistae, and even a Leonardo da Vinci-styled aerial screw!
  • Cult: What the Ruin has basically reduced them to.
  • Mook: For the main quest, Occasus are the main reoccurring enemy.
  • Zerg Rush: They assault the Baron's Keep in huge numbers.

Universal Space Corporate Military

A nationalistic, expansionist faction of humankind, which was dissolved an unknown length of time prior to the events of Starbound. Remnants of the USCM's influence can still be found both drifting in interplanetary space, and peppered on various worlds.
  • Bad Boss: They sent underperforming employees to private prison colonies. They also predicted ahead of time that their prisons might collapse into anarchy... and then, obviously, did nothing about it.
  • Penal Colony: Operated countless private prison colonies across the galaxy. These can be found by the player, still occupied.
  • Posthumous Character: The USCM is dead and gone before the player runs into any of their facilities.
  • Private Military Contractors: If the phrase "Corporate Military" is of any significance.
  • The Remnant: The inmates in the prison colonies are all that's left of the USCM's staff. Depending on how long ago the USCM disbanded, they might not even be that.
  • Unwitting Pawn: They thought they were getting a sweet deal when they purchased bioweapons technology from the Miniknog. What they were actually getting was a crippling blow.

    Avians 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/raceportrait_avian.png

One of the older races in the Galaxy, the Avians have greatly matured technologically thanks to the head-start Kluex granted to them in their ancient history, but have not progressed socially for a very, very long time. Avian society revolves around the worship and adoration of Kluex, a god who first granted them their technology, and is said to grant them wings in the afterlife. Unfortunately, worship of Kluex involves both sacrifices of sentient beings and ritualistic suicides. Some grow weary of the constant blood sacrifices, violence, and stifling nature of the religion, and find a way to escape Avian society but at the cost of becoming exiles (or "Grounded", as they call themselves). Due to its Hierarchical, theocratic, and militaristic nature, Avian society is led by its warriors and priests.


  • Berserk Button: Do not trespass in graveyards if you don't want the guards to attack you.
  • Bird People: They lack wings, however, and instead seem to have hands.
  • Data Crystal: In contrast to the circuitry most other races use, or the biotech of Florans, Avian computing is based around crystals of "Avolite".
  • Descriptively-Named Species: The Avians look rather avian.
  • Energy Weapon: Avian Blasters, which come in pistol and assault rifle variations.
  • Green Rocks: "Avolite", which runs all their tech from their weaponry to their FTL drives to their bookcases. It is solely distributed through the Stargazers, which is more or less why their rule is unshakable.
  • Heaven Seeker: The Kluexian faith is entirely about trying to get back into the heaven they were kicked out of for their hubris.
  • Human Sacrifice: Or rather, Avian sacrifice, but Kluex does demand a sacrifice every now and then, judging from the bloodied altars you can find.
  • Proud Merchant Race: The Grounded have this as one of their hats. Their villages are usually full of merchant compared to the one most settlements have. Individiul Avian merchant are also often Grounded.
  • Proud Warrior Race: Known for being militaristic, Avians think the only thing better than giving your own blood to Kluex is forcing someone else to give theirs.
  • Low Culture, High Tech: The initial result of giving spaceship tech to a race that exiles and shuns atheists, and sacrifices their own in altars.
  • Mayincatec: Plenty of their furnishings and housing has this theme.
  • Scary Amoral Religion: Worship of Kluex seems to involve plenty of living sacrifices. When exploring planets you can also find Avians being pressured to jump off high towers. According to their faith, this is to get their wings.
  • Sky Pirates: Grounded who choose to violently get back at mainstream Avian society become this as a way to spite the Stargazers. It's a cardinal sin to forsake Kluex and build your own wings, after all.

Tonauac

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cnqjamhxyaa68mo.png

The guard of the Great Sovereign Temple, one of the largest temples to Kluex in the galaxy. He gives visitors tours, though he doesn't know much about the hidden depths of the temple. Friendly to a fault, he exists to show that a kind soul and strong faith in Kluex are not mutually exclusive traits.


  • As the Good Book Says...: Constantly quotes the Avoscript.
  • Big Fun: Noticeably bulkier than other Avian temple guards, and the most friendly Avian temple guard you'll meet in the game.
  • Cute Giant: He is very tall and bulky, but has cute Black Bead Eyes and Blush Stickers on his face.
  • Gentle Giant: He's taller and bulkier than other Avians, making him look imposing from a distance, but he's anything but.
  • God Before Dogma: He's a devout Kluexian, but seems to have rejected all the violent parts of the religion. He's one of the friendliest Avians you meet.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Tonauac regularly offers blessings from the Kluex after arriving at the Ark. The thing is, said blessings appear to be real, as interacting with Tonauac provides you with a buff that lasts for half an hour, the longest any buff lasts in-game.
  • Minion with an F in Evil: Unlike the guards of the other temples you can find on random planets, he doesn't get even slightly angry when you dive into the catacombs. He's just relieved to see you're safe, lets you keep the artifact once you find it, and abandons his post to join your universe-saving cause.
  • Nausea Dissonance: Does not bat an eye when explaining how Avian sacrificial altars have grooves to channel the victim's blood down them.
  • Nice Guy: Way too friendly to be an effective temple guard.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: He navigates the depths of the Great Sovereign Temple independently of you, knowing exactly as much as you do about it (he had never left the upper floors before).
  • Overworked Sleep: He's asleep on his feet when you reach the temple gates, and he falls back asleep (still on his feet) at the end of his little tour.
  • Stout Strength: Implied. His arms are noticably muscular and brawny looking.
  • Token Religious Teammate: He makes a point of reassuring you of how devout he is during the temple mission. In the Ark, he's constantly talking about how Kluex is protecting you.

Kluex

The singular god of the Avians, who first granted them their technology aeons ago, helping them secure their early foothold in the stars. likely of the physical variety. According to the Avoscript, Avians once all lived alongside Kluex, but grew jealous of his perfection, and wished to outdo him by doing the one thing he never would: exploring the universe. But in their moment of spite they were stripped of their wings, and the entire Kluexian faith is about the self-punishing quest to earn Kluex's love back, and through it, their wings.
  • Ancient Astronauts: He's heavily implied to be the Cultivator. He would probably be horrified at how they honor him.
  • Deadly Euphemism: No, it's not "ritualistic suicide", its "Ascension".
  • Human Sacrifice: Uniquely, their sacrificial doctrine is closer to the Mayan interpretation (where it was the only guaranteed way of sending someone to a beautiful afterlife among the gods), than to the "if we don't do this the gods will be upset" variety usually seen in fiction. "Ascending" is seen as a wonderful honor among fundamentalist Avians.

    Florans 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/raceportrait_floran.png

A primitive, tribal species of carnivorous humanoid plants, Florans are notorious across the galaxy for possessing a high aptitude for violence and a rather low aptitude for impulse control. Acquiring the secrets of space-faring technology from ruined ships, Florans have spread across the stars and entered bloody conflict with many races; culminating in a devastating invasion and subsequent sacking of the Hylotl homeworld. Despite such a negative first-impression on the galaxy, however, the Florans are not completely evil savages, and many of their kind are slowly adapting to live peacefully in the greater galactic community.


  • Arboreal Abode: Some Floran villages (specifically, Treetop types) contain tall structures that mimic trees (bark-like structure, wider floorspace at the top, bamboo supports to complement the integrity, etc.) that have been hollowed out and furnished.
  • Ax-Crazy: Even the peaceful ones can get some stabby urges every now and then.
  • Badass Adorable: Regarded as such by the playerbase, with their huge eyes, colorful foliage and childlike behavior.
  • Black Eyes of Evil: Subverted. Florans have large, inky black eyes, but most of their outright villainy is the result of a serious Lack of Empathy rather than universal malice.
  • Book Dumb: Played with. For the most part, Florans are illiterate due to their culture, but there are exceptions. Ones that break away like Greenfinger and the PC Floran (whom largely has barren vocabulary) can be exceptionally intelligent, as shown when reading the Geometric Screen. Both a Floran and a Glitch will read the exact same thing in BINARY: 'Stab a Meatman'. Some of the Florans you meet in the Outpost can speak properly-constructed sentences as well.
  • Buffy Speak: Due to being fairly ditzy and primitive, a lot of Floran dialogue is like this.
    Floran PC: (On a jack-o-lantern) Floran approvesss of ssscary plant face thing.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Smarter Florans seem to realize their race is viewed as Always Chaotic Evil. They buy into it.
    Floran PC: Obsssidian. Black like Floran sssoul.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: Before 1.0, they were frequent practitioners, to the point examining a torture rack sends the PC into a gigglefit.
  • Comedic Sociopathy: Most dialogue between them and other races has them thinking about eating them, and they tend to react to torture devices with glee.
  • Cute Little Fangs: Or Fangs Are Evil, according to the Hylotl. Florans have prominent fangs, but due to the limitations of the game's pixel graphics they can only been seen in official artwork.
  • The Ditz: The Floran PC is by far the least cultured of the PCs, and yet this tends to make him somewhat endearing despite his stab-happy tendencies.
  • The Dreaded: Thanks to their past and their reputation as violent cannibals, even the calm ones are feared to an extent. Fittingly, however, Florans themselves are uncomfortable around Novakid due to their resemblance to fire.
  • Fantastic Drug: One codex entry details how a U.S.C.M battalion attempted to wipe out a hostile Floran tribe by air-dropping Agent Orange on them. It failed to kill the Florans, but they ended up becoming so drunk on the chemical that weren't able to fight back anymore.
  • Fantastic Racism: They never, ever pass up a chance to call Hylotl "sssstupid frogmen". Their races have a very bitter history with each-other, and skirmishes between the two still happen often.
  • Genius Ditz: The Floran PC may be the most culturally inept, but said Floran is smart enough to read BINARY.
  • Green Thumb: The Greenfingers are Florans with greater intelligence than their peers, and possess an empathic ability to control the growth of plants. They primarily use this to repair and interface with scavenged/looted alien technology, creating organic workarounds for otherwise mechanical components, which is how the Florans are able to travel the stars despite being Insufficiently Advanced Aliens.
  • Heroic Comedic Sociopath: The Floran PC and friendly Florans in general are mostly ones who have found more useful ways to direct their gleeful love of violence.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: They gladly eat each other when given the opportunity. Even their funeral rites include eating the deceased as part of it. The tradition is said to be falling out of favor, however, due to the influence of the Greenfingers.
  • Insufficiently Advanced Alien: Justified. While its true that many Florans are sill essentially cavemen, its the hyper intelligent Greenfingers who do all the thinking, and are the ones who commandeer the technology the race at large needs.
  • It Can Think: The Florans are slowly coming to this realization in regard to other races, namely the idea that beings other than themselves can have emotions and identities beyond simply being talking prey animals. The codex Maku's Journal features an example — an Avian successfully convinces a Floran to spare his life on account of a significant other he has. Maku is genuinely surprised by the notion that a 'bird man' could have an emotional attachment to anyone, the same way Maku would care for other tribe members.
    Maku: "Bird man has feelings! Probably not proper feelings like Floran has, but bird man does have thoughts and feelings inside his bird brain!"
  • Kill It with Fire: Being Plant Aliens, Florans are vulnerable to fire and instinctively fear it. However, they still need fire to cook food and create some light sources, so many homes feature crude safety diagrams to teach young Florans how to properly prepare a fire without harming themselves.
    Floran PC: (On using torches) "Torch ssscare Floran, but Floran musst masster torch."
  • Low Culture, High Tech: They're a species of tribal barbarians who regularly loot technology from alien races.
  • Man-Eating Plant: Their most well-known trait, alongside their Ax-Crazy tendencies, is that the Florans are primarily carnivorous and see little difference between eating a deer and eating a human being. Newer codexes reveal this is due to their Lack of Empathy and general naivety, as they genuinely don't know the difference. Meat is meat, even if that meat is talking to you.
  • Nature Tinkling: If you examine a wooden toilet as a Floran they will comment that they prefer to go outside.
  • No Biological Sex: Despite being able to have Non-Mammal Mammaries, the Floran race is sexless. However, most Florans seem to identify as one gender or the other, as Nuru is referred to as female, and in Dummied Out dialogue she mentions having a father.
  • Not So Above It All: Though Floran PCs are said to have grown tired of their race's ax-craziness, they certainly aren't afraid to indulge in it themselves.
  • Odd Friendship: With the Glitch, oddly enough, which is probably due to them being inedible machines. Glitch teachers regularly visit Floran villages to educate the locals, while Florans are welcomed in Glitch villages provided they keep the stabbing to a minimum.
  • Only Sane Man: The Greenfinger of every tribe is this, not unlike the removed character they're derived from. Armor descriptions and codex entries paint a picture of them that is not unlike an exasperated parent trying to keep an army of toddlers from breaking things, stealing things, or eating things they shouldn't (like each-other).
    Armor Description for Cannibal Trousers: "Cannibalism is a tradition! A frowned upon tradition. Wear these trousers while running away from your angry Greenfinger!"
  • Organic Technology: Thanks to the Greenfingers, the Florans possess a number of technologies based around plants; including light sources, living doors and even thorn-spewing assault rifles.
  • Planet Looters: After some poor bastard got eaten by Florans and left his ship abandoned to them, they started looting other planets for tech. The original design of the PC's spaceship was an Apex spaceship with foliage, for starters. Now it is a ship put together from ship parts of Apex, Avian and human spaceships. The Ceremonial Hunting Grounds were initially meant to be an abandoned Glitch castle, but the final version replaced this with the Florans wiping out an unknown race and taking it over.
  • Plant Aliens: They can have leaves, flowers, and even mushrooms in some cases for "hair".
  • Pronoun Trouble: Their Third-Person Person speech occasionally leads to some confusion between strangers:
    Floran Guard: (To Floran PC) Floran had better not cause trouble, or Floran will eat... Floran? Floran is confused.
  • Proud Hunter Race: They're a primitive culture mostly interested in hunting, although it's less out of martial pride and more out of a love for "stabbing" and meat. The special mission themed on their culture is a hunting-competition-slash-battle-royale where a MacGuffin is the prize.
  • Proud Warrior Race: Less "proud" and more "omnivorous and voracious", but in the lore Florans seriously outmatch Apex in combat. Ten Apex versus ten Florans = nine surviving Florans and ten dead Apex.
  • Psychopathic Manchild: Florans are almost universally childlike and energetic, especially when it comes to hunting and fighting. Even the civilized and academy-taught Floran PC isn't above the idea of hiding in a bush and jump-scaring unsuspecting passerby for laughs... and food.
  • Psycho Serum: Drysap, which confers Florans the ability to survive without water for longer periods and hardens them to arid conditions. However, it tends to make regular users incredibly unstable and violent, which seems to be worse for Florans who are more intelligent than average.
  • Real Men Wear Pink: They seem to like pink.
    Floran PC: Pink isss a strong colour! Colour of strong and healthy flower!
  • Ridiculously Fast Construction: Florans "grow" their bases on other worlds out of some kind of plant biomass, so there's no need for mining the materials they need, setting up scaffolding, laying foundations, etc. Needless to say this means a Floran base goes from the planning stage to finished rather quickly.
  • Schizo Tech: The fully upgraded Floran ship is cobbled together from other races' technologies and covered in vines.
  • Sssssnaketalk: They talk like this, but it's shown to simply be an accent of their native language rather than a physiological trait — some Florans, such as Nuru, are able to speak normally with practice.
  • That Makes Me Feel Angry: They have a tendency to vocalize what they feel, even to themselves.
    Floran Villager: (To Hylotl PC) "Floran quivering with rage at sssudden fish."
  • Third-Person Person: Florans never refer to themselves by their own names, instead merely referring to themselves as "Floran" in the third-person.
  • Took a Level in Kindness: The final release has toned down their aggressive attitudes towards everything, and they even react curiously to Hylotl rather than react with Fantastic Racism.
  • Weak, but Skilled: In-game codex files indicate that Floran Greenfingers are usually less strong than average — they must rely on their intelligence (both technical and social) to remain the leader of their village.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Florans are only just starting to come to grips with the concept of "meaty" races counting as people with thoughts and feelings, rather than just animals to be hunted and eaten. Some Florans are quicker on the uptake than others, however.

Nuru

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cnaxuhjweaatnuu.png

A young Floran huntress, and undefeated champion of the annual Ixodoom hunt for several years in a row.

For tropes relating to her appearance in Wargroove, see here.


  • Action Girl: Helps you fight against the Ixodoom, and later joins the battle against Occasus to defend the Baron's keep.
  • Boom Stick: Her weapon is a halberd-like weapon that can shoot purple blasts.
  • Child Prodigy: She's claims she's "seventeen summers old", and yet is one of the best hunters among her kind.
    "I've been hunting since I was a sprout, and winning since I was a bud."
  • The Nicknamer: Refers to the player as 'Champ', after their success in the Ixodoom hunt.
  • Sssssnaketalk: She tries to subvert this by speaking proper English, but admits that she sometimes slips back into her natural accent.
  • My Species Doth Protest Too Much: She bemoans the fact that her people are little more than barbarians, and wants to set a better example for them to follow.
    "The Floran are not inherently evil. My tribe's Greenfinger taught me to respect life; a lesson many never learn."
  • Worthless Yellow Rocks: Complains about this, in regards to the prize for winning the annual hunt. It turns out to be the Florans' Plot Coupon.
    "I don't see what all the fussss is about. I win every year, and all you get is a 'sacred bone'. It's not even chewy."

Greenfinger of the Floran

A Floran scientist, respected as a genius even outside his species. As of Cheerful Giraffe, Greenfinger as an individual has been removed from the game, although his name lives on as the title of technologically-minded Florans across the galaxy.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Occasionally dipped into this while writing his notes, particularly whenever Florans are involved.
    (On Glitch teaching Florans how to write) "We are at a stage where we now have Florans running around writing words on anything and everything, with typical Floran over-enthusiasm. It is, however, an improvement over the time they attempted to learn how to paint."
  • Emperor Scientist: When the Florans occasionally mentioned him, it was with awe and reverence that suggested this. The post-1.0 greenfinger caste replacing him serve as a lesser version of this to their villages.
  • Square Race, Round Class: Florans are usually known as dim-witted and stab-obsessed. Greenfinger, meanwhile, was one of the most intelligent scientists in the galaxy. The collective greenfingers, post-Retcon, are intelligent Florans who are skilled at manipulating technology using plants.
  • Terrible Trio: The original Greenfinger was often found working with Thornwing and Big Ape.

Huntmaster Sunflower Tzu

Author of The Art of Stabbing, which can be found in five parts.
  • Combat Pragmatist:
    • Excerpt 4 endorses victory at all costs, no matter how underhanded:
      "Sunflower Tzu has observed that many species have 'rules of war'. Florans do not observe such ridiculous practices. Why face your armed enemy on the battlefield when you can stab them in their sleep? Why see the whites of their eyes when you can trick them into falling on spikes? To fail is to bring dishonor upon your cocoon-kin. There is no such thing as cheating, only failing."
    • Excerpt 5 encourages the reader to use any weapon they can get their hands on during a fight:
      "Traditionally, Sunflower Tzu recommend Floran use stabbing weapons, but only because they can stab. Anything can be used as a weapon. Bones, branches, pennies in a sock, all traditional, primal weaponry."

    Glitch 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/raceportrait_glitch.png

Part of a much larger experiment that produced artificially created species meant to simulate society, the Glitch are the only survivors of said experiment, on account of never advancing far enough to discover Nuclear weapons due to, well, a glitch. Glitch settlements are found all over the Galaxy, though most of the inhabitants are unaware they are in a simulation. Those that do make such a discovery are exiled, out of fear they might spread the "madness plague".

Even after awakening, a Glitch will usually continue to hold on to their Medieval values and aesthetics, meaning much of galactic Glitch society still revolves around the various keeps and noble families.


  • Brain Bleach: They're quick to override analysis mode when examining a "Dirty Toilet" item.
  • Burn the Witch!: What they do to Glitch that evolve beyond their programming.
  • Deadpan Snarker: The PC can get damn snarky at times. It helps that it starts every sentence with how it feels about the object in question, serving as an announcement of when it enters Sarcasm Mode.
  • Eating Machine: Their designers insisted on requiring them to consume food and feel fatigue, as otherwise the Glitch never would experience resource scarcity nor exhaustion and be a pretty inaccurate simulation of a society.
  • Equippable Ally: The Glitch Impervium Weapons (Minus the Dagger) have a brain installed in their hilts, possibly explaining why the Doom Lord helmet doesn't have three brains.
  • Fantastic Racism: While the Glitch PC doesn't outright hate Hylotl, s/he is rather critical of their haughty behavior.
    Glitch examining Calligraphy: Critical. Perhaps the Hylotl should frame the word 'hubris' instead.
  • Hive Mind: The majority of Glitch are part of one, which dictates their behavior and enforces the Medieval Stasis. It's implied that this hive-mind is what remains of the ancient, malfunctioning simulation the Glitch were created to serve.
  • Knight in Shining Armor: Some of their armors and weapons invoke this.
  • Medieval Stasis: The Glitch as a whole are literally unable to progress technologically or socially past the Middle Ages due to a glitch in their programming. Those who somehow correct their programming through a second glitch are persecuted as witches and troublemakers. This is the only reason they're still around, as otherwise they'd have destroyed themselves upon discovering nuclear weaponry.
  • Mechanical Lifeforms: The Glitch are robots, but they need to breathe and eat just like any other life form. They also have robotic horses and robotic chickens (which lay batteries).
  • Multiple Head Case: The latter half of armor tiers for the Glitch have the brain of a late Glitch installed in them, complete with eyes and an extra visor in the helmet for those eyes. The Templar and Legionnaire helmets specifically have two extra brains — the Doom Lord helmet is curiously missing the third.
  • Odd Friendship: Interestingly, Glitch villages are quite welcoming towards Florans. In lore, the Glitch taught them basic literacy as well.
  • Ominous Floating Castle: For a given value of "ominous," but all Glitch ships resemble flying castles.
  • Ridiculously Human Robots: Invoked by their creators, who made them feel hunger and fatigue to help create a more accurate simulation of organic society. They also have Weirdness Censors to block out all of their unique mechanical traits, such as doctors thinking they're performing medicine when they're treating Glitch patients and Glitch couples entering trances to construct their offspring manually when trying to concieve a child.
  • Sarcasm Mode: In a literal version of this trope, a Glitch player may start an observation on an item with the declaration 'Sarcasm.'
  • Science Is Bad: The non-self-aware (i.e. non-player) Glitch seen to think this. To be fair, however, the Glitch's brother and sister societies all subjected themselves to M.A.D. upon attaining nuclear weaponry, meaning it's good that the Glitch kept themselves stuck in a medieval state.
  • Strange-Syntax Speaker: Obvious. They always speak their feelings before they say their intended sentence. What's interesting is that they're not aware they're speaking like this, and when another tried to speak like this to them, they found it weird.
  • Tin Tyrant: Some of their armor, including the Impervium-tier armor, tends to invoke this.
  • Weirdness Censor: Comes equipped with a whole range of them to ensure that they don't become aware of their robotic nature. For example, Glitch doctors are convinced that they are performing traditional medicine when treating a patient, while they are actually making mechanical repairs (and will think you're crazy if you ask them to fix your toaster). Glitch couples trying to conceive will enter a trance-like state to hide the fact that they're actually assembling their offspring in a workshop. Even their quirky speech goes unnoticed by themselves; the explorer Hiraki Corale tried to adopt the mannerism as a courtesy gesture, and the Glitch just thought she was being weird.

The Baron

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cnz_r3w8aetxbo.png

An eccentric Glitch who rules a remote keep. Despite being totally harmless, the Baron still has a somewhat infamous reputation throughout awakened Glitch society for being... a bit off.


  • Absurdly High-Stakes Game: How he amassed his fortune and even acquired his keep. Many a nobleman has thought they could defeat him at jacks, even bet on it, and they were all wrong.
  • Cloud Cuckoolander: The Glitch Privy Council have to regularly send him exasperated letters reminding him that he has absolutely no authority over anything other than his own keep.
  • Retired Badass: According to The Big Book of Adventurers, the Baron was quite a successful adventurer in his youth:
    "The Baron's exploits span several decades and hundreds of worlds. He has fought swarms of Ignome in the Magma fields of Apoc, and plundered treasure from the ruins of once great civilizations. He has sailed the savage seas of Cyanine, and explored the darkest depths of the remote Ereb Forest; in all these endeavors always pursued by his arch-nemesis Count 01, the ancient and powerful RAMpire. Truly, The Baron is one of history's greatest adventurers."
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Convinced he is one of the most influential and beloved Glitch noblemen alive, when in reality he is simply the lord of a somewhat remote keep.
  • Ultimate Blacksmith: If you kept the Broken Broadsword with you and a few tech cards, he can reforge it into the Protectorate's Broadsword, one of the best weapons in the game.
  • The Wonka: Despite his eccentricities, he actually has managed his finances far better than most, and is one of the best blacksmiths in the Galaxy.

Hewlett Deckard

A Glitch bounty hunter, in actuality a self-aware Glitch who helps other of his kind escape.

Professor Irondome

A Glitch professor who attempts to teach the florans literacy. This goes poorly.
  • Too Dumb to Live: His method of teaching them literacy was through books that described them as an inferior species.
  • Gone Horribly Wrong: His efforts to teach florans literacy ended up spawning the novel 'Floran Peace', which was universally panned by every non-Floran (and also some Florans) in the galaxy. Irondome was later found with a copy of the book shoved into his mouth, and all further attempts to teach literacy have been suspended.

    Apex 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/raceportrait_apex.png

Originally a race similar, if not identical, to Humans, the Apex's love of science led them to voluntarily transform their entire species into a race of ape-men, in a bid to maximize their intelligence. The Apex race is ruled and governed by the Ministry of Scientific Progression and Knowledge (otherwise known as the 'Miniknog'), led by a shadowy and charismatic figure known only as 'Big Ape'. The Miniknog rule the Apex with an iron fist, punishing any dissent and sacrificing countless lives in the pursuit of unethical sciences. The ruthless, totalitarian regime orchestrated by Big Ape has inspired several failed rebellions, and many Apex flee from their homeworlds to live among other races.


  • Ambiguous Time Period: No Apex is certain how long it's been since the Miniknog seized control of their society, though Codex documents indicate it's been centuries, or at least long enough that no one living can remember a time before Big Ape's regime.
  • Apes in Space: The species resemble apes, and they travel through space.
  • Beast Man: They resemble anthropomorphic apes.
  • Big Brother Is Watching: Their government was inspired by that of 1984.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: The Apex PC frequently mentions the experience of being tortured, fear of torture, and comrades being tortured, when selecting some of the more questionable items found across planets.
    • "How many of my brothers have been strapped to this table…"
  • Crapsaccharine World: Their towns: Idealized, homey goodness circa The '70s... inside of gray, imposing military bases and torture devices.
  • Conditioned to Accept Horror: According to the Apex PC, life under Big Ape includes public executions, house raids, and fearing you'll hear your family members summoned for torture and experimentation when you listen to the radio. And Apex NPCs still greet you with, "Big Ape is my homeboy."
  • Emergency Transformation: The line fed to the Apex public by the Miniknog is that, centuries ago, in order to combat a virulent contagion in their water supplies, the entire populace underwent the forced devolution that turned them into their current state. Whether the threat was faked or was real and just a handy excuse to force the process is unclear.
  • Evolutionary Levels: How they became ape-men: The Apex deliberately allowed their bodies to "devolve" into gorillas as a side effect of causing their brains to become hyper-evolved living supercomputers.
  • Evolution Power-Up: The Apex of old de-evolved themselves physically in exchange for superior intellect.
  • The Exile: Apex PCs, if their remarks on past experiences at the hands of the Miniknog are any indication, having fled their home and found sanctuary in the Protectorate.
  • Fate Worse than Death: Thought Reassignment :)
  • Genius Bruiser: Both the most technologically advanced of the races, and the most physically imposing. Apex PC descriptions explain their hands and bodies are much bigger and stronger than the other humanoids.
    "A fingerprint scanner. Smaller than an Apex hand."
    "A cute little bath. Looks pretty small for an Apex."
  • Girls With Mustaches: Since most of their bodies are hairy female Apex have beards too.
  • Happiness Is Mandatory: Those NPCs who don't whisper at you to watch out for mics, get out, or take them with you, exclaim how much they ADORE Big Ape! Praise Big Ape!! Big Ape will crush that awful resistance any day!!
  • Human Aliens: What they originally were, before becoming Apes in Space.
  • Husky Russkie: The Apex name generator uses solely Russian names.
  • La Résistance: Pre-1.0, the Apex Player Character was a member of one, until it got crushed and s/he had to make a run for it. One assumes her/his experience with certain devices one can find in Apex planets is related to this, as well.
  • Lightning Gun: Lightning Coils, which are the primary weapon of Miniknog troopers.
  • Meaningful Name: "Apex", as in, the top of the food chain. And also because they're Apes, hence Apex.
  • Mighty Roar: According to NPC dialog, Apex are capable of roaring. Which is awesome. And true enough, the projected head of Big Ape does this whenever it starts an attack.
    Floran NPC: "If monkey roar, Floran call Green Guard!"
  • Monochromatic Eyes: According to the Wiki.
  • Real Men Wear Pink: Upon examining an arcade prize counter, an Apex PC remarks that he hopes to win the Unicorn plushie.
  • Rebel Leader: Pre-1.0, the Apex PC has a message from La Résistance- a plea for you to become this, as a survivor of their failed rebellion. With a stolen Miniknog ship, you are asked to comb the galaxy for those who would help you and return with an army- to free all Apex from Big Ape!
  • Room 101: Lovely Apex torture facilities are scattered on planets in-game.
  • Rubber-Forehead Aliens: According to the description of the Miniknog China cabinet, Apex once looked like totally hairless humans.
  • Science Is Bad: There is some seriously morally grey, non-consensual genetic experimenting going on in the Apex research labs.
    • Using the "Chosen" from society's lower classes, who are literally raised being told the greatest honor you can achieve is sacrificing yourself For Science!.
  • Sinister Surveillance: According to the Apex description of televisions found in Apex towns, if you watch TV long enough, you can see yourself on the TV watching you see yourself on the TV.
    • There's a mic behind every clock.
    • There's an alarm that can go off in every home, triggered by unacceptable behavior.
    • Glitch PC's will detect that ubiquitous Apex lighting fixtures are passively monitoring all biometric data in the room.
  • Space Cossacks: Some Apex have fled from their homeworlds to live among other races to escape the totalitarian, science-oriented Apex regime. As a result, they are a fairly common sight in the Protectorate and are at least as numerous as the Hylotl. The former Rebel Leader begs the player to a stolen Miniknog ship and rove the galaxy to recruit allies.
  • Stockholm Syndrome: Some Apex are honestly sympathetic to Big Ape's regime. They are even disgusted you, the PC, would rebel against him.
  • 2 + Torture = 5: If you don't love Big Ape, friend, you will. The Apex PC claims to have nightmares about it.
  • Vast Bureaucracy: Nearly every Apex settlement has at least three large office buildings if not more, and since there is no such thing as private business in Apexian society these all serve the Miniknog.
  • Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Loyalist Apex would see your behavior, yon revolutionary, as terrorism against their way of life and their beloved Big Ape.
  • You Cannot Kill An Idea: Despite fear and brainwashing and executions, such as your failed homeworld rebellion, talk of freedom persists in every Apex town and bandit camp across the universe. The Report on Rebel Bases codex reveals that the "talk of freedom" has evolved into active rebellion cells based in every Miniknog-controlled city in the Apex civilization. The bigger cities even have multiple cells; one for each precinct.

Lana Blake

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cn5svlfw8aaos0e.png

One of the leaders of the Apex Rebellion, Lana is first met when the player happens to beam down in the middle of her assault on Miniknog Stronghold #1.


  • Action Girl: Holds her own fairly well against the Miniknog and Occasus.
  • Does Not Like Spam: Surprisingly for an Apex, she really doesn't like bananas.
  • I Will Only Slow You Down: She's pretty badly injured once she finishes storming the front gate of the Miniknog Stronghold, and tells you to go on without her.
  • Rebel Leader: Commands the assault on Big Ape's mansion.
  • Rugged Scar: Has a scratch mark over her eye. Which eye? Well, her dialog portrait has it over her right eye, her official art puts it over her left eye, and her in-game sprite is unhelpful. So the answer is... no?
  • Scarf of Asskicking: Wears a bright red scarf, and is the only major NPC aside from Nuru who can fight.
  • Sniper Rifle: Her weapon, as seen in the Baron's Keep mission. She's less of a sniper than a sharpshooter, though, since she runs around alongside Nuru instead of firing from a distance.

    Hylotl 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/raceportrait_hylotl.png

An ancient race that values knowledge, beauty, art, and peace. At one point, the Hylotl were at home on both land and sea, but their near-genocide at the hands of the Florans drove them far beneath the waves were they could not be followed. Despite taking quite a battering and even losing their homeworld to the Floran Horde, the Hylotl have more or less fully recovered and have established huge metropolises on countless ocean planets, though they have yet to forgive the Florans. Seeing themselves as enlightened, they want nothing more than to "uplift" the other races.


  • Can't Argue with Elves: The PC displays some rather haughty behavior now and then, but it's the other races' comments that tend to paint them as intolerable in a distinctively ... elfy way, for lack of a better word. Case in point, the PC Hylotl insults every flag except their own, calling the Florans horrifying, the Glitch childish, the Avians stuck to old ways, the Apex barbaric, and the Humans crude and garish. With the exception of the Novakid Flag, in which they admittedly say are a "strange, but interesting species".
  • Cool Ship: In the early alpha their ship resembled a koi fish and had a Japanese theme with oriental lanterns, but as of Upbeat Giraffe it's been changed to look like a shark.
  • Cultural Posturing: As far as the Hylotl is concerned, their culture, art and philosophy is the greatest in the universe; everyone else is just a savage, and their accomplishments are at best a nice try (though they do have genuine appreciation for classic human art, such as the Mona Lisa). This snobby attitude does not win them many friends outside their species.
  • Does Not Like Sweets: The Hylotl, or at least Hylotl PCs, have a severe aversion to overly sweet things; they revile fruit like pineapple and kiwis, and find the concept of using sugar to make things sweeter mindbogglingly strange. Although they do like reefpods, which are sweet and salty, and consider them "just right".
  • Distracted by My Own Sexy: The occasional Glitch NPC will tell you their shoulder is not for checking your own reflection in it if you're playing a Hylotl. It's unknown if it's a preemptive statement, or your character just went ahead and did that, but all considered it wouldn't be too surprising.
  • Fantastic Racism: Sort of justifiable, considering Florans sacked their homeworld and nearly drove them to extinction. But Hylotl refuse to believe, despite mounting evidence, that the Florans are not Always Chaotic Evil, and even the PC Hylotl has seriously considered the idea that committing genocide on the plant people might be the only answer to Hylotl-Floran relations.
    Hylotl PC: (Examining a floran "diagram" on making fire) "The Floran may be doing the Hylotl a favour by teaching their young to make fire."
    • Zig-zagged; one codex found in Hylotl villages say that they forgive the Florans for the genocide, albeit with an undertone of "because we are morally superior".
    • They are also extremely uncomfortable around Novakid, because Novakid don't understand historical significance and can end up damaging priceless artifacts thinking they can easily be replaced. Though this zig-zags a bit since the Hylotl consider the Novakid's odd culture and behavior interesting and are generally mesmerized by a Novakid's body, finding the lights and colors calming and inspiring.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture: To Japan. The hylotl have Japanese names and often use Japanese terminology, their buildings on the surface commonly take the form of traditional Japanese pagodas and palaces, and their flag is even largely identical to the Japanese Hinomaru (albeit with three red dots instead of just one). Interestingly, there are also elements of modern Japanese pop-culture, such as the popularity of arcades in their cities, a movie poster heavily implied to be for a Kaiju/Humongous Mecha flick, and the presence of a playable renai-style Visual Novel.
  • Foreign Queasine: Judging from the PC's reactions to a Hylotl restaurant sign, their food isn't exactly good for alien palates. Hilariously enough, the Hylotl PC is completely unaware of this, thinking it's beloved in the whole galaxy.
    Glitch PC: Critical. Hylotl cuisine is an... acquired taste. One which very few have actually acquired.
  • Fish People: Played with. They are amphibious and possess fins and gills, but also have many froglike traits. However, they still can't breathe underwater without the aid of an EPP.
    • Fridge Brilliance: Most amphibians lose their gills when they reach adulthood, and have to breath through their skin when they are underwater. The human sized Hylotl are far to large for this to be sufficient to sustain them.
  • Genocide Dilemma: The Hylotl have been struggling with whether they should wipe out the Florans for centuries. On the one hand, it would make the universe a far safer place for all Hylotl, and they would get their homeworld back to boot. On the other hand, it goes against everything they believe in as a species, and it would eliminate any chance for Floran redemption and induction into the galactic community.
  • Not So Above It All: The PC, who sounds... quite full of themselves, to say at least, judging from their description of an arcade as something for the unwashed masses to entertain themselves. And then they spot the prize rack full of plushies and you can practically hear the Squee Ironically enough... .
  • Proud Scholar Race: Hylotl culture revolves around learning and self betterment, and comments made by the Hylotl PC indicate they spent a large part of their life in one library or another. They even decided to build a library around the gift The Cultivator granted them.
  • Race Fetish: One can surmise from the fact that "Floran-Hylotl" romance films are a popular but controversial genre that a sizable group of Hylotl are attracted to their ancient enemy.
  • Samurai: Quite a number of their armors and weapons invoke this.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: The PC, whenever they break out the Cultural Posturing, if not the race as a whole. There's no denying they've got some advances, but to put themselves as the epitome of fine art and culture is... iffy. The other PCs never pass up an opportunity to send snark in their general direction in this regard.
  • Space Elves: The oldest known race in the galaxy (barring The Cultivator or The Ruin), who love peace, art and nature and are composed of prideful scholars and intellectuals.
  • The Friend Nobody Likes: On a species-galaxy scale, they're occasionally mentioned to be one of the friendliest, most accepted races. Listening to your PC on anything hylotl-related for a while soon reveals it doesn't seem they actually like them. That, or those mentions were written by the Hylotl themselves, which is also possible.
    Human NPC: What's a Hylotl, and why does everyone despise them?
  • Third Eye: And, judging from their decoration and even their flag, damn proud of it.
  • True Art Is Incomprehensible: In-universe, this is how their calligraphy is treated. Other races make fun of how, to a Hylotl, viewing random inked words (like "bubble" or "ribbit") is so beautiful it can bring tears to their eyes. A codex states this is due to their third eye granting them a more acute sense of light and dark to perceive the world in, but it could very well be just them being overdramatic.
  • Underwater City: Hylotl took a liking to these when they discovered Florans would not chase them under the ocean. The now have countless underwater cities throughout the Galaxy, and they are hands down the absolute largest of the randomly generated settlements.
  • Wutai: Even their original spaceship design had paper-screen walls and paper lanterns.

Koichi

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cnpn7bpw8aaj_od.png

Librarian and researcher at the Grand Pagoda library, one of the Hylotl's most important cultural heritage sites. The library had been neglected for centuries due to the Floran conflicts, something which upset Koichi. He was in the middle of restoring and recording texts when the Occasus knocked on his door...


  • Amazon Chaser: Develops a crush on Nuru the Floran, and tries to impress her with his plans for a museum; though it falls a bit flat when it turns out Nuru has no idea what a museum even is. They're seen enjoying a candle-lit dinner on a moon during the credits sequence, however, which suggests that Koichi's feelings were eventually reciprocated.
  • Bookworm: Enough of one that he devoted his life to the restoration of books everyone else had long forgotten.
  • Distressed Dude: When you encounter him, he's locked himself in a room deep within the Grand Pagoda Library to escape Occasus, and begs you via hologram to rescue him.
  • Interspecies Romance: Has feelings for the Floran Nuru.
  • Non-Action Guy: Is well aware of this. During the Assault on the Baron's keep, he tells you that he won't join in because he'd just get in the way, but he's okay with sending in the girls instead.

Hiraki Corale

An oblivious Hylotl adventurer, her exploits are recorded in a number of codexes.
  • Cloud Cuckoolander: It seems she doesn't really understand the gravity of the situations she's in, as evidenced when she visits an Apex city and — in order — ditches her Miniknog-issued charge, accidentally walks into a resistance meeting, considers it "so rebellious" and then gives a "Big Ape" jacket to somebody who appeared to have Ape Flu.
  • Crazy-Prepared: The most likely reason she's still alive. She tends to carry, among other things, a grappling hook, jetpack and a rocket launcher. She also rescued a reporter from a group of Agarans by setting off a cache of explosives she had tracked down earlier.
  • Dissonant Serenity: She never loses her cheerful attitude, even when hiding for three days atop a tree to escape bloodthirsty Florans.
  • Invincible Incompetent: She has managed to tame an undead dragon (though she forgot how) and somehow survived an Avian ascension (read: suicide leap).
    • She's not quite as foolish as she looks, however — the reason she survived the Ascension is because she happened to own a jetpack she 'borrowed' from the Miniknog. A Dummied Out Avian codex, which lists the day's attempted Ascensions, lists Corale as 'disqualified' despite being successful. Not because she had the jetpack, mind you, but because they realized she was a Hylotl.
  • Meaningful Name: Corale is one letter away from "coral"; the Hylotl are an undersea race.
  • Not So Harmless: She may be a Cloud Cuckoolander, but she's a Cloud Cuckoolander with a rocket launcher. She also does know when to fight and when to run.

The Letheia Corporation

"Why live life without Letheia?"
An Hylotl corporation which, among many other things, controls a large part of the Galaxy's Erchius fuel trade — their mines are (apparently) a common sight. The dangers of mining Erchius fuel are many, and Letheia has maximized profits by minimizing safety. One of their facilities is the location of the first story mission.
  • Acme Products: Erchius fuel, furniture, video games, TV shows, space stations... it's implied that even the player's ship is a Letheia product.
  • Bad Boss: Letheia will cut loose and quarantine any facility where an Erchius lifeform manifests, dooming everyone stuck inside. Although in the one you are sent to, you can go in and save their lives.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: We are told that Letheia operates many lunar mines across the galaxy, but we only ever get to visit a single one.
  • MegaCorp: One of the biggest corporations in the galaxy, and certainly the most visible one.
  • Open Secret: No one seems even remotely surprised at the revelations found in the classified lunar base documents, so their total lack of morals must be relatively well known despite their PR.
  • Karma Houdini: Hundreds died in the awakening of the Erchius Horror, and this isn't even the first time it's happened, judging from the fact they have a corporate speak codename for it. Yet Letheia is still selling fuel by the end of the story missions, no worse for wear.
    • They even have the audacity to advertise that their mines suffer "6% fewer mysterious accidents than the next leading competitor," after this.

    Novakid 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/raceportrait_novakid.png

Succinctly described as a race of "interstellar gas-bag people", the Novakid are a bit of an oddity in the galaxy. Despite being on average even more intelligent than the Apex, their forgetful and easily-distracted nature results in a culture almost as stagnant as that of the Glitch. The Novakid have no charted settlements, no recorded history of any sort, and even the best xenobiologists have little clue how their bodies work — being made entirely of star material save for a metallic brand in the center of their faces. Most Novakid wander the stars aimlessly, doing mercenary work or odd-jobs for the 'fleshy' races, and never settle down in one place for very long.


  • Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: One of their defining traits, and the reason why they are so backwards culturally and technologically. The Novakid have the intelligence of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, but have such short memories and attention spans that they're stuck in an endless cycle of re-inventing hyper advanced tech and never bothering to write it down.
  • The Blank: Novakid have no ears, noses, eyes or mouths — The only detail on their faces is a metal crest that doesn't emote. It's also possible to create a Novakid who has no brand at all, playing the trope completely straight.
    Novakid NPC: "You ain't gonna look me in the eyes, partner? I'm just foolin' with yer — I ain't got any eyes!"
  • Book Dumb: Despite their huge intelligence, Novakid are known by the Galaxy as being fairly dense.
  • Celestial Body: Though instead of looking like they're speckled with stars, they're actually made of star material. They even turn big and red when they're old, and die by way of explosion.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: By way of having low attention spans.
  • Ditzy Genius: Their introduction states that they're actually more intelligent and intuitive than other races, but their short memory and weak attention span results in stunted technology research.
  • Energy Beings: Described to be "interstellar gas-bag people".
  • Gratuitous Greek: The omega and sigma symbols are available as facial brands, with omega in particular serving as a recurring Motif.
  • The Gunslinger: Unlike other races, Novakid cannot craft melee weapons by default. Instead, they craft guns.
  • Humanoid Abomination: Faceless, humanoid beings made from plasma that are born from fragments of the Cultivator.
  • Motifs: The most common symbol associated with the Novakid is an omega, wrought from iron like a horseshoe. It's one of the possible facial brands for Novakid characters, it appears as decoration on doors and walls in Novakid settlements, and the Novakid face on the Ark Gateway has an omega brand. Interestingly, none of the player characters identify the symbol as an omega, not even the Human.
    Novakid PC: "This ol' symbol is a surefire sign of folks like me bein' nearby."
  • No Social Skills: Part of their short attention spans, and the reason why other races tend to dislike them somewhat. One example given during development was of a Novakid outright asking an Avian priest if his god existed. Naturally, he wasn't pleased.
  • Out of Focus: Despite being a playable race, the Novakid are the only ones who don't have a Plot Coupon associated with them, or a mission themed after their culture. This is because they didn't exist until after the Cultivator was destroyed. Until 1.1, they didn't even have naturally-occurring settlements in the game world, which made Novakid NPCs extremely rare outside of player-created colonies.
  • Pieces of God: Actually the splintered fragments of the Cultivator, who sealed away the Ruin.
  • Power Echoes: Novakid voice clips have an obvious reverb to them.
  • Real Men Wear Pink: Zig-zagged. They seemed to be the only race not charmed by any of the game's plushies... at least, before Pastel Furniture was added.
    Novakid PC: (upon observing a Pastel Bunny plush) "Well ain't this the cutest thing?".
  • Semi-Divine: Any member of the Novakid race are this by default, considering that they're what is ultimately left of the Cultivator.
  • Seventh Ranger: The Novakid were the last race to be added to the game as of Upbeat Giraffe. Unfortunately, this means they're severely lacking in lore and relationships with other races, and had almost no NPCs until Update 1.0. The Novakid PC lampshades this: When faced with the Ark hologram depicting the other six races holding aloft their Plot Coupons, s/he will openly wonder why their own race isn't pictured.
  • Southern-Fried Genius: Since they never write anything down, all tech used by a Novakid is actually invented by the Novakid in question or passed down from a parent/family member who invented it. Usually they do this by casually glimpsing at the tech other races use and essentially thinking "That's cool. I should make one." and filling in the blanks.
  • Space Nomads: The majority of Novakid are either wandering drifters or part of isolated communities on wild planets. Researchers from other races have concluded that there is no such thing as a "Novakid Civilization", and there likely never will be.
  • Space Western: Their starting clothes, crafted armor, props and towns are all Wild West-themed. Their ship even looks like an old-timey locomotive train!
  • Wingding Eyes: While they technically lack eyes, among the possible brands for a Novakid are a venus symbol, a Heart Symbol and a sheriff badge.

Captain Noble

A member of the Terrene Peacekeepers, a division of the Terrene Protectorate who serve as law enforcers across the cosmos. Hot-blooded to a fault, but also possesses a strong sense of justice and takes his role as a Peacekeeper seriously.
  • …But He Sounds Handsome: "Captain Ignoble" can't help but comment on how dashing and talented Noble is upon being captured by the player.
  • Da Chief: Plays this role to the player character in the Bounty Hunter questline, though he's more easygoing than others.
  • Hot-Blooded: Ooh yeah, dude tends to get really pumped up over various things, like rebuilding the Peacekeepers or bringing criminals to justice.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: His disguise as "Captain Ignoble" consists of a pair of Groucho Marx glasses worn over his brand. He doesn't even swap out his Peacekeeper duds.
  • Starter Villain: The player's first task as a Peacekeeper, and tutorial for the bounty hunting system, involves tracking down "Captain Ignoble" — that is to say, Captain Noble wearing a Paper-Thin Disguise.

Other Races

    Penguins 
Penguins have an infamous reputation throughout the galaxy as scoundrels and rogues, and have their hands in almost every criminal empire imaginable from running speakeasies to arms dealing. Penguins seem to be the main force behind the galaxy's weapons development sectors.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Penguins are proud of their reputation as troublemakers and pirates.
  • Funny Animal: They're fully sentient, despite just being little penguins.
  • Global Currency Exception: The penguins on the outpost will accept pixels as payment, but they are the exception. The majority of the species only trades in doubloons or diamonds, and if you want to hire them on to your crew you better have some.
  • Killer Rabbit: Two bosses — Dreadwing and the Shockhopper MK1 — are penguins trying to kill you with weaponized vehicles.
  • My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Subverted. One penguin character begins a heartfelt speech to the PC about how the other races have misjudged penguins and how they aren't all thieves and criminals... before cracking up in the middle of the sentence and saying, no, the other races really are 100% correct.
  • Nonstandard Character Design: The only intelligent race in the game that isn't a humanoid.
  • Pirate Booty: For the majority of penguins, doubloons and diamonds are all they will trade in.
  • Rhyme Theme Naming: Almost all penguins have names that are only 5-6 letters long, and end with "-ggy". Examples include the Mech scientist Dr. Akaggy, the weapons shop owner Biggy, and random penguin NPCs you can hire as crew such as Joggy, Ziggy, etc. The only exception to this rule is Dreadwing.
  • Series Mascot: Images of penguins are everywhere in the game as bosses, mooks, merchants, snow-globes or even as skeletal corpses at the bottom of spike pits. They even appear on the game's window and taskbar icons.
  • Space Pirates: Their race's hat. Penguins as a species are pirate themed, with lots of eyepatches, bandanas, and ship motifs. Their societies economy even trades in pirate treasure, in the form of golden doubloons and diamonds.

    Agarans 
A mysterious race of mushroom people. Not much is known about them, as their language is still undeciphered, but they have started popping up all over the galaxy, for better or for worse...
  • The Dreaded: Inspecting the Dummied Out Agaran fungal pods quickly puts the player character on edge, and even the otherwise stab-happy Floran PC will react with an uncharacteristic level of fear.
  • Fantastic Racism: Downplayed. They wouldn't hurt a fly, but some of their nicknames for other races are...kinda condescending. This may be a remnant from when they where far more malevolent.
  • Mushroom Man: Sentient anthropomorphic mushrooms. Lacking a unique character model, they're represented in-game by Florans wearing mushroom-themed costumes.
  • The Nicknamer: Rather than refer to different races by their proper names, the Agarans create a variety of weird descriptive nicknames to use. For example, Glitch are 'clankbeast', Hylotl are 'squishfish', and Apex are 'hairthing'.
  • Retcon: While they were originally intended to be an antagonist race, all traces of their previous villainy have been quietly retconned and removed, leaving the Agarans as just another quirky NPC race.
  • Starfish Language: Their language is apparently so alien that the PC's Translator Microbes struggle to understand it, resulting in bizarre dialogue. Doubles as Black Speech in their original lore.
    <Universal Translation error. Language not recognised. Attempting to parse.>
  • The Virus: According to retconned lore and a few Dummied Out props, the Agarans were originally written to be a hostile species of fungal zombies slowly spreading across the galaxy. One of the unused props depicts a partially-mutated Apex slumped in a mushroom pod, with the description musing that the Agarans and Apex apparently "aren't compatible".

    Alpaca 
Non-playable alien race of proud warriors who can be found in the Alpine biome. They look like Earth alpacas, but with arms and opposable thumbs, somewhat resembling a fuzzy centaur. Though they are advanced enough to travel the stars, they prefer to live simple lives close to nature.
  • Always Lawful Good: Hostile Alpaca do not even exist in the games files, and as a culture they hate the ideas of subterfuge or stealth.
  • Brave Scot: An entire alien race of them.
  • Descriptively-Named Species: It doesn't get much more straightforward than this.
  • Loved by All: None of the races can think of anything bad to say of them short of the fact their furniture looks hideously uncomfortable. Even the smug Hylotl PC is fond of Alpaca culture, and waxes poetically about their runes and standing stones.
  • Proud Warrior Race: Extremely proud of their warrior heritage.
  • Scotireland: Their hat is mishmash of Celtic tropes.

    Shadows 
Non playable race of humanoid shadows, inhabiting the Midnight Biome. Nothing about them is explained, but it appears they are the prisoners of the Midnight temples rather than the creators.
  • Ambiguously Evil: Their motives are a complete mystery. They don't attack the player, but they put up banners around their structures that may be warnings, and worship at shrines with glowing red eyes. They could be a case of Dark Is Not Evil, or it could be that they just have no interest in the player.
  • Buried Alive: Sealed into various chambers across the landscape that have no doors nor any way out.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: They're creepy Living Shadows with glowing eyes, but they're also completely non-hostile.
  • Face of a Thug: Despite their appearance, they behave just like any other friendly NPCs. They don't usually have many objects to interact with, but they will "talk" and emote with other people. Occasionally you can even find them emitting hearts at each other.
  • Genuine Human Hide: The Shadow Markers that decorate their territory are described as "A mysterious flag marker. What kind of leather is that?", possibly implying this.
  • Glowing Eyes: Their entire bodies are pitch black save for their eyes, which are bright green.
  • Horrifying the Horror: Even the Floran are creeped out by their shrines.
  • Living Shadow: They're pitch black and emit a shadowy smoke effect, though it's unclear whether they literally are shadows or just aliens that happen to look like them.
  • My Name Is ???: They all have the name ???, which you can see if they are involved in a quest or join your crew.
  • Non-Malicious Monster: Shadowy beings who whisper creepily and exist in an unspeakably evil land, but are totally harmless to the player.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: Who are they? What do they want? Why are they harmless when they live in the unspeakably evil Midnight Biome? Did they create the shrines? If they did, why do the horrors of the Midnight Biome attack them? Why are they sealed underground in them?
  • Silent Whisper: They speak in inaudible whispers.
  • The Speechless: Like the Froggs, they have exactly two lines of "dialogue":
    (When being attacked) "!"
    (Absolutely anytime else) "..."
  • The Spook: Everything about them is a complete mystery.
  • Starfish Language: They communicate with sounds like softly hissing wind.
  • Suddenly Speaking: If they're involved in a quest they will use human dialogue, then go back to not speaking when the quest is finished.
  • Suicidal Pacifism: They won't fight back even if the player tries to kill them.
  • Visible Silence: They "speak" entirely in these.
  • Vulnerable Civilians: Despite being friendly NPCs, they can still be hurt by the player.

    Deadbeats 
Blue skinned, horned humanoids who squat on ruined planets, Deadbeats can live comfortable lives where most races would burn alive. Not particularly good fighters, they litter their planets with ramshackle defense systems and fields of landmines, so one should be very careful when moving through their territory.
  • Demolitions Expert: They protect their structures with traps, most of which are explosive.
  • Disaster Scavengers: They have scraped together collections of rusty crates filled with medical supplies, and detritus that tenuously qualifies as "furniture."
  • Horned Humanoid: All Deadbeats have two large horns.
  • Mellow Fellow: Well, aside from the ones that are hostile by default. Due to the fact that they're coded to use humans' dialogue, they come off as incredibly nonchalant about living in a wrecked, sun-fried Crapsack World.
    "I stubbed my toe. This is the worst day ever."
  • Post-Apunkalyptic Armor: Their armor is lashed together pieces of scrap metal, and is rather spiky.
  • Trap Master: Deadbeat planets are littered with mines, laser tripwires, spikes, and all other kinds of nastiness. If you get a Deadbeat merchant in your colony, he will sell you some of their signature traps.
  • Vulnerable Civilians: Friendly Deadbeats can be hurt by the player as well as monsters and hostile Deadbeats.

    Froggs 
As the name would imply, humanoid frogs. Froggs can be found in almost any swamp in the Galaxy. Despite being almost totally silent, they have integrated themselves into the galactic economy just fine.
  • My Name Is ???: Internally, they all have the name "???"
  • Proud Merchant Race: Frogg merchants can be found in the strangest of places peddling their wares, and they always have slightly better stock than the merchants of other races. One also runs a furniture store on the Outpost.
  • The Speechless: Totally silent. Attempting to talk with them just nets you some ellipses.
  • Vulnerable Civilians: Unlike most friendly NPCs, they can be damaged by the player's attacks as well as enemies.

    Fenerox 
Friendly, humanoid-fennec-fox-like creatures who inhabit Savannah and Desert Biomes. They often live in small numbers, either by themselves or with one or two other Fenerox. Theirs is the least advanced culture to be found in the galaxy, having not yet left the stone age and only barely showing the first signs of agriculture.
  • Hollywood Natives: Living in squalid mud and straw huts? Check. Dressed sparsely in animal skins? Check. Armed with spears and bows? Check. A distinct lack of eloquence? Double check.
  • Intelligent Gerbil: Sort of fox-like, and also sort of pangolin-like, but mostly just another humanoid like the main races.
  • Punny Name: They look like fennec foxes, and they live in a stone-age (or rock-age) society.
  • Strange-Syntax Speaker: They always speak in sets of three two-word phrases, with the last one ending in an exclamation mark, question mark or ellipsis.
  • You No Take Candle: Their speech patterns boil down to two-word sentences, which they always utter three at a time.
    Meeting stranger. Being friendly. New experience!

Bosses

    Current 

Erchius Horror

The first boss of the game, encountered in the "Erchius Mining Facility" mission. A giant, living crystal found deep beneath the surface of a moon, it's responsible for all the pink alien horrors found throughout the level.
  • Body Horror: What it does to the miners, by absorbing them and turning them into Moontants.
  • Chasing Your Tail: How it attacks. It uses purple lasers that sweep the area, forcing you to keep moving or take damage.
  • Cyclops: It has a single red eye in its center.
  • Dug Too Deep: The miners were digging out the Erchius deposits on the moon and in the process unearthed this horrible thing, which then either killed or turned the majority of the miners into disgusting zombie-like Moontants.
  • Eldritch Abomination: No one knows what it is, other that the fact that it's immune to all conventional weapons, has lasers, a single red eye, and absorbs people to transform them into Moontants. It isn't called the Erchius Horror for nothing.
  • Flunky Boss: Will pause to summon a Moontant every time it completes its current attack pattern. While they can't chase you very well, they protect the mining laser you need to activate in order to damage the boss.
  • Immune to Bullets: It can't be harmed normally by your attacks. To beat it, see Puzzle Boss below.
  • Informed Ability: Although it has the ability to draw people inside itself to mutate them into Moontants, it never tries this trick on you and simply settles for trying to kill you in its boss fight.
  • Made of Magic: It's made of Erchius, which is an Applied Phlebotinum used in repairing FTL drives and also used as fuel.
  • Nigh-Invulnerable: It is completely impervious to anything you throw at it, bar the Mining laser it has camped itself over, and even then it takes three fully charged shots before it finally expires.
  • Organ Drops: Has a 10% chance to drop its eyeball, which is a weapon in itself.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: There's a reason why it has Horror in its name.
  • Power Floats: Floats in the center of the arena.
  • Puzzle Boss: It's immune to your attacks. To beat it, you must turn on four switches around the room to charge a laser, then fire the laser to damage it. 3 hits and it's down.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Well, Eye.
  • Shows Damage: It begins to crack apart as it loses health.
  • Silicon-Based Life: It's a living crystal with a single red eye, though one of the reports on it says that it is something else inside a crystal.
  • Sinister Geometry: It's a giant hexagonal crystal.
  • Stationary Boss: It doesn't move at all, other than floating in the center of the area.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: Even if you know how to beat it, its attacks are painful, and can be unavoidable unless you use a shield.
  • Wave-Motion Gun: It attacks by sweeping these around the area.
  • Zombie Apocalypse: Uses its ability of assimilating and transforming people into mutated abominations to kickstart an especially nasty one at the Erchius Mining Facility.

Dreadwing the Penguin

The first optional boss, encountered in the mission named after him. A space pirate penguin riding a UFO.
  • Airborne Mook: Flies in a UFO. He summons a swarm on mini-UFOs after he's brought down to ½ health.
  • Boss-Only Level: The entire "Dreadwing" mission takes place in a large open field, with nowhere to go and no collectibles to find.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Given a little thought, his strategy of attacking at any distress signals he can detect is a bit of a dick move. Then again, he's a pirate. The updated codex now states that he used to do this to test his early UFO design (as a shout out to older builds). After being shot down a lot, he learned his lesson.
  • Demoted to Extra: Was originally the required Tier 1 boss that you had to defeat in order to visit more dangerous sectors, could be summoned anywhere by crafting a specific item, and was the first boss to be fully implemented into the game. Is now an optional boss with no unique loot besides his codex entry and unlocked only as a side quest at the outpost.
  • Flunky Boss: He's got armed penguin soldiers, mini-tanks and even mini-saucers to deploy on your hapless character.
  • Flying Saucer: Pilots one, and can summon smaller ones to aid him.
  • Optional Boss: "Dreadwing" is an optional mission, not required to progress the main quest.
  • Ramming Always Works: One of his deadlier attacks has him teleport over the player then slam his UFO down on them.
  • Salvage Pirates: Was one in earlier builds, attacking the player after the player activated a distress beacon in order to test his early UFO design. He learned his lesson after getting his craft busted one too many times.
  • Shows Damage: His saucer becomes increasingly beat-up as his health depletes.
  • Space Pirates: Is the leader of a group of penguin pirates.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss:
    • In earlier builds, he was the first required boss, and considering the less-than-adequate warnings about the risks of a distress beacon, you were bound to call him in too early and get yourself lasered to death.
    • In 1.0 and later, being an optional boss, he can be one of the hardest early-game bosses and serves as a test for the players before they battle harder bosses, such as the Bone Dragon or The Ruin.

Ixodoom

A large, arachnid-like alien monster, and boss of the "Ceremonial Hunting Caverns" mission. The Florans host an annual competition where the best hunters try to slay one of these beasts, and you'll face one alongside Nuru the Floran.
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies: A huge, four-legged arachnid monster that resides in a chamber filled with webbing.
  • Flunky Boss: Spawns Ixolings that will crawl along the floor to harass you.
  • Giant Spider: While it actually isn't a spider, it does have very spider-like nature and motif, including spawning of brood and crawling on webbing.
  • Long-Lived: According to the information on Ixodoom and Ixolings, an adult Ixodoom is at least 200 years old.
    The Ixodoom, an Analysis: It must be 200 years old if it's a day.
    Information on Ixoling: If it survives for 200 years, it might become an Ixodoom.
  • Poisonous Person: Two of its attacks involve tossing projectiles which will poison your character.
  • Prehistoric Monster: It's actually possible to find fossilized remains of it and construct its pieces into a huge fossil. According to the complete fossil's information, they've survived for millions of years thanks to their thick exoskeleton. Either way, the live one you encounter is decidedly not cute and pretty vicious.
  • Shielded Core Boss: Its exoskeletal shell is resistant to damage, but it will eventually shatter under Nuru's sustained attacks, allowing you to damage the boss properly. The shell will regrow after a short while.

Asra Nox

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cn941rbxyaa8xij.png

Leader of the human supremacist group Occasus, Asra Nox is an exceptionally dangerous swordfighter and an able leader. While her original goal was to wipe out the Protectorate, the sudden arrival of The Ruin did her job for her, and now she is pursuing a new, mysterious goal that seems to require the same six artifacts the player character is after...


  • Be the Ball: Uses the Distortion Sphere to bounce around the area to attack the player. This is something the player can't use, but it does cost a lot of energy... enough for her to run out and become temporarily defenceless.
  • Cool Sword: The Solus Katana, which is powered by a solarium core and can fire a spread of explosive projectiles. It can also appear as a rare drop from her for the player to use.
  • Deflector Shields: Has a personal shield to nullify all incoming damage. However, it does run on energy, and whenever she uses her Distortion Sphere attack, she runs out for a short while...
  • Dragon Rider: Rides the Bone Dragon into battle in the "Baron's Keep" mission.
  • Evil Counterpart: Several of her moves are clearly based on techs similar to what you will probably possess by the time you fight her (dashing across the room, morphing into a ball, etc). Considering she's a former Protector, this probably isn't a coincidence.
  • Fantastic Racism: Seeks to exterminate all non-humans from the galaxy, viewing them as lesser life-forms.
  • Freudian Excuse: Her colony was sacked and subjected to inhumane horrors by an anti-human raider band. This was the beginning of her "us versus them" worldview, which only grew worse when she came into contact with The Ruin.
  • Graceful Loser: Allows the player to arrest her after her final defeat aboard the Dantalion at the end of the Bounty Hunter questline.
  • The Heavy: Asra is the de-facto antagonist aside from the Ruin itself, and has plenty of dialogue to prove it. And as the Ruin is essentially stuck inside the Ark, it's Asra who speeds the plot along.
  • Heel Realization: After being defeated for the final time, she realizes that her life with Occasus wasn't really much better, describing it as being surrounded by hateful people. She then asks the player to tell Esther that she's sorry for all the things she's done before being apprehended.
    Nox: Tell Esther that I'm... sorry.
  • Hero's Evil Predecessor: She was originally one of Esther's students, as well as her surrogate daughter, and was training to become a protector. However, her Fantastic Racism lead her to form Occassus, who become the primary enemy faction of the game.
  • Highly-Visible Ninja: Bright purple is not a stealthy color. The glowing katana doesn't help either.
  • Karma Houdini: Her final fate at the end? She escapes relatively intact before the player fights the final boss, and is never seen again.
  • Karma Houdini Warranty: The end of the Bounty Hunter questline sees her finally arrested and brought to justice.
  • Katanas Are Just Better: Her Solus Katana, as mentioned above.
  • More than Mind Control: She's not fully acting of her own will anymore. The Ruin has convinced her it will wipe out all sentient life 'except' humans, despite the fact it is blatantly obvious its going to kill everything.
  • Mirror Boss: Has similar techs to the player, thanks to being a former protectorate.
  • A Pupil of Mine Until She Turned to Evil: She was adopted by Esther Bright after her hometown was destroyed, and raised as a Protector. However, she turned against her mentor once they discovered the Ruin.
  • Purple Is Powerful: Like the rest of Occasus, she wears purple clothing.
  • Recurring Boss: You fight her in person twice — First as the boss of the Grand Pagoda Library, and the second time just before facing the Ruin itself. Three times, if you count her riding atop the Bone Dragon, and four times if you count her piloting the Swansong.
  • Shielded Core Boss: Has an energy field that greatly reduces the damage she takes. However, when she finishes using one round of attacks (ending with the Distortion Sphere), she tires her energy out and becomes very vulnerable to attack for a brief period of time.
  • Spread Shot: Her sword can fire out a spread of these, which stick in the ground and explode.
  • Tactical Suicide Boss: If she didn't keep spamming her attack, she wouldn't leave herself open when she runs out of energy.
  • Wave-Motion Gun: One of her attacks when you first fight her. Thankfully it is easily avoided by standing on a bookcase.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: She simply warps away before you fight the Heart of Ruin, and is never mentioned again. The 1.4 update does resolve that though.

Avatar of Kluex:

An ancient Avian defense golem, and boss of the "Great Sovereign Temple" mission.
  • An Ice Person: When colored blue, it gains an array of ice-based attacks.
  • Blow You Away: One of its attack phases consists of making a tornado-like wind to blow the player in a left/right motion, while firing red energy across the floor.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Switches between red for laser attacks and blue for ice attacks.
  • Energy Weapon: When it's colored red, it fires beams of red light.
  • Giant Flyer: Is pretty large, and its second form has it fly about the area.
  • Magma Man: Fills the room with lava every time it summons columns, forcing you to stand on the columns to stay above it.
  • Sequential Boss: Starts out as a totem in the center area, and when that goes down, the Kluex statue flies off and attacks.
  • Stationary Boss: In its first phase it stays on the floor without moving.

Big Ape

The figurehead of the Miniknog regime, and boss of the "Miniknog Stronghold" mission. Big Ape is the most powerful being in the entire known universe, having essentially limitless access to the resources and wealth of the entire Apex species. Credited with saving the Apex from total extinction at the hands of the Ape Flu, control of the species was handed over to him, and he has only tightened his iron grip on the populous in recent years. It is eventually revealed that "Big Ape" is a construct promoted by the Miniknog to strengthen their grip on the population.
  • Big Brother Is Watching: He is the leader of the Apex government and the Miniknog, which is a horrific surveillance state.
  • Bullet Hell: When a projector is destroyed, he will go to the center and spray loads of blue projectiles in huge spreads. You need to find a gap in the attack to avoid it.
  • Calling Your Attacks: He doesn't say anything during his boss fight, but the two huge screens give away what attack he'll be doing next.
  • Cloud Cuckoolander: Shown to be one in pre-1.0 lore, and his subjects are apparently expected to say things like "Big Ape is my homeboy". There's also the incident where he agreed to a boxing match with Kluex.
  • Huge Holographic Head: The form he takes in his boss battle, created by a set of orbiting projectors. To defeat him, you need to destroy all of the projectors.
  • Homing Projectile: Can get his projectors to fires two homing missiles at a go. They aren't too good at tracking, but hurt a lot.
  • Kill One, Others Get Stronger: Destroying one projector will restore the health of the others.
  • Maniac Monkeys: The leader of the Apex and definitely not a nice guy, what with the crazy amounts of surveillance.
  • Malevolent Mugshot: His is often seen in Apex buildings.
  • Orbiting Particle Shield: Can use his projectors in this fashion to ram into you. Avoid it by staying in a corner and using the Distortion Sphere.
  • Shaping Your Attacks: The cannons around his boss room fire blue energy fists at you, while one of his attacks involve firing energy swords downwards.
  • Shadow Dictator: No-one has ever seen the guy in person, but it's pretty clear that he exists. Technically. In internal Miniknog reports, he's described as a construct promoted by the Miniknog to maintain a psychological grip on the Apex, created by Brain Uploading their most effective figurehead. However, decades of 'software patches' to his AI means there's a Theseus' Ship Paradox as to whether or not he is truly Big Ape the dictator. Given that he's completely insane and the Miniknog are running the show, probably not.
  • Shout-Out: As a Freeze-Frame Bonus, you may recognize a few frames of his glitched animations as Andross in his original polygon form and in his brain-and-eyeballs form.
  • Shows Damage: As you destroy the projectors operating the hologram, Big Ape's Huge Holographic Head starts to severely glitch out. It's so extreme that it borders on Nightmare Face.
  • Terrible Trio: Pre-1.0, Big Ape was said to be working with Greenfinger and Thornwing.

The Bone Dragon

Originally removed from the game, the Bone Dragon was re-added as the boss of the "Baron's Keep" mission. Actually a very expensive war robot built to look like a dragon and used by Asra Nox to attack the titular castle.
  • Breath Weapon: Spits powerful blasts of flame that linger for a time.
  • Doing In the Wizard: What appears to be a bone dragon that can breathe fire and fly is actually a robot that's covered in a bone-like substance.
  • Dracolich: Built to resemble and act like one, Of the fully skeletal variety.
  • Dragons Prefer Princesses: Back before it was a story boss, you needed a Decoy Princess to attract it.
  • Flunky Boss: Has an endless stream of Occasus mooks that keep coming in to aid it.
  • Giant Flyer: Flies around after being summoned.
  • Kung-Shui: No use hiding from its fireballs via cover, since they will destroy any cover you try to hide behind.
  • Playing with Fire: Shoots exploding fireballs at the player.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Has red Glowing Eyelights of Undeath.
  • Robotic Reveal: As you fight it, the 'bone' slowly chips away to expose its mechanical workings. The lore codex at the end of the mission reveals the Bone Dragon is a robot developed for medieval enthusiasts who wish dragons were real.

Shockhopper MKI

A weaponized penguin robot based on the design of Fatal Circuit, battled in the "Weapons Testing Site" as the game's second Optional Boss.
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Defied. The penguin scientist made sure not to use a monster brain in its creation precisely because of this.
    "The old thing was crude in design and seemed to have been piloted with an animal brain. Terrible choice, who would possibly think that was a good idea?"
  • Boss-Only Level: "Weapon Testing Site" is merely a short walk to an enclosed arena, where the Shockhopper resides.
  • Easy Level Trick: Using the Spike Ball tech to cling and move on the wall makes his punch, flamethrower and dash attacks useless, while also making it easier to avoid his Overload attack.
  • Fire-Breathing Weapon: Carries a flamethrower arm that can hurt the player at mid-range. Was based on one of Fatal Circuit's attacks.
  • Flash Step: Can charge across most of the arena like this, dealing high damage if it touches you.
  • Graceful Loser: If you manage to beat him, the pilot thanks you for helping him test the Shockhopper and gives you the Heat Protection tech, allowing you to visit the final tier of planets.
  • Homing Projectile: Can fire out homing missiles from his back. Fortunately, they can be shot down.
  • Optional Boss: "Weapons Testing Site" is an optional mission, not required to progress the main quest.
  • Sequential Boss: It goes through different attack patterns as its health reaches certain amounts.
  • Shock and Awe: Its "overload" attack, where it goes into the air and fires huge spreads of electrical attacks around.

The Heart of Ruin

The heart of the Ruin, found at its very core. The Final Boss of the game.
  • Bad Boss: Doesn't care if its own minions are in the way when it uses its huge Eye Wave-Motion Gun, destroying them without much concern.
  • Beat Still, My Heart: It's literally the Ruin's heart, and you need to tunnel to the core of the 'planet' in order to fight it.
  • Bizarre Alien Biology: The heart of the Ruin itself is inside of its own brain and has a Giant Eye of Doom on it, plus tentacles.
  • Combat Tentacles: Uses these to deal great damage to the sides of the arena.
  • Damage-Sponge Boss: Has 5000 HP, more than twice that of the previous storyline boss (the Bone Dragon). It's going to take a while to kill.
  • Eye Beams: Uses a huge conical one that deals incredible damage to the player... as well as his own summoned minions.
  • Faceless Eye: A gigantic eyeball is embedded into the heart.
  • Final Boss: Once you beat this thing, the credits roll.
  • Final-Exam Boss: Of a sort — it can summon every capturable creature in the game to assist it, which can make fighting it a hassle. Thankfully, most of them will be destroyed whenever it uses its Eye Beams.
  • Flunky Boss: Constantly spawns enemies from the sides of its arena, and periodically reaches across the galaxy to summon enemies from other biome types to join the fight.
  • Giant Eye of Doom: The main target on the heart and its weakspot, it also fires out an extremely painful laser too.
  • Go for the Eye: Its main weakspot is the huge eye on its heart. Thankfully it's extremely easy to hit, the problem is its huge amount of health.
  • Load-Bearing Boss: Once the Heart is destroyed, the Ruin dies and its body self-destructs spectacularly. The player doesn't escape.
  • Mighty Glacier: Doesn't "attack" with its tentacles and eye beams all that often, rather preferring to spawn mooks, and said attacks have a long telegraph time. But if they do manage to get you, they hurt a lot.
  • Space Master: Has some form of it, being able to create portals to different biome types where it can pull monsters from.
  • Stationary Boss: Never moves from its spot, and is a very huge target. The main problems are its gigantic amounts of health, its wide-area, incredibly painful attacks, and the huge amount of flunkies it spawns from the sides of the arena.
  • Taking You with Me: When it dies, the heart and the entire Ruin explode. Unfortunately, the player doesn't have a way out, and is killed in the ensuing explosion. Thankfully the last remaining part of the Cultivator saves the player.
  • Wave-Motion Gun: Emanated from its eye, which will often end up destroying its own Mooks as well as the player.

Vault Guardians

Ancient constructs that stand watch over the Terraforge and Weapon Upgrade Anvil at the end of every Ancient Vault. They are the only procedurally-generated bosses in the game, and can vary greatly in appearance and combat style.


  • An Ice Person: If it's in an ice-themed vault, it will have icy attacks and a resistance to ice weapons.
  • Damage-Sponge Boss: Depending on how the RNG feels, you might end up chipping away at a guardian with several times the health of the final boss (which is pretty spongy to begin with).
  • Energy Weapon: Get used to the laser sound, 'cause it's gonna be playing a lot.
  • Flunky Boss: Some of them summon minions to either chase down the player or act as turrets.
  • Gratuitous Greek: The random names they come with are very classical in style.
  • Optional Boss: Only accessible after defeating the final boss, as with Ancient Vaults in general.
  • Playing with Fire: If it's in a fire-themed vault, it will have fiery attacks and a resistance to fire weapons.
  • Poisonous Person: If it's in a forest-themed vault, it will have toxic attacks and a resistance to poison weapons.
  • Punched Across the Room: They have a few different variants of punch, every single one of which will quickly relocate the player to the opposite side of the arena.
  • Shielded Core Boss: May come with shields, helpfully indicated before you actually engage them by small balls orbiting around them. The shields can be cracked for a few seconds by goading the boss into arena hazards or exploiting their own summoned minions.
  • Shock and Awe: It it's in a desert-themed vault, it will have electric attacks and a resistance to electric weapons.
  • Tactical Suicide Boss: The ones that summon minions are often this. Either defeated minions become projectiles that break the boss's shield, or they leave behind a damage booster zone for a few moments that tremendously increases the player's damage output.
  • Tron Lines: They're covered with glowing lines that are colored according to their elemental type — blue for ice, orange for fire, green for poison, or purple for electric.

The Swansong

A mech suit that the Occasus cult found and built while spelunking in the Ancient Vaults. Piloted by Asra Nox, it serves as the last boss of the Bounty Hunter questline.


    Removed 

Fatal Circuit

Formerly the game's second boss, a constructed robot gone amok.

Jelly

A remnant boss from Enraged Koala that can only be fought through cheats. Used to be the fourth boss, encountered on Tier 4, but can now be fought at any time.
  • Anthropomorphic Food: Killer space alien jelly.
  • Blob Monster: As its name suggests.
  • Bubble Gun: Spits a stream of bubbles.
  • Extra Eyes: Somewhat fitting, considering that certain species of jellyfish do have multiple eyes.
  • Flunky Boss: Comes with two smaller jelly adds.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Everybody knows that peanut butter attracts Jelly. This is somewhat Truth in Television as real life jellyfish really do like peanut butter.
  • Zero-Effort Boss: It wasn't rebalanced for Upbeat Giraffe, and by the time you have defeated the last boss, Shockhopper Mk1, you'll be already at Level 6, two levels ahead of when it was supposed to be fought. Averted when you try to fight it at Level 4.
    • Its combat AI has since been removed, so now the Jelly will simply idle while you hack away at it.

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