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Authority Figures
Basileus
The Organizer
Basileus the Organizer
- Ambiguously Human: Since Basileus only shows himself at night, it is not yet clear whether he is a sybal himself or something else entirely.
- Big Bad / Big Good: Depending on your side.
- Blob Monster: He is made of an ink-like substance, causing arrows and the like to pass right through him.
- Casts No Shadow: Despite being blacker than black ink.
- Complete Immortality: His Nigh-Invulnerability gives him one up on the rest of the cast in the immortality department.
- Dark Is Evil / Dark Is Not Evil: Again, depending on your side.
- Epileptic Trees: In-Universe, it's speculated whether he might be Theo or a particular member of the Eidolon.
- God Guise: Some citizens, including Darshil, view him as a deity.
- Imagination-Based Superpower: Basileus appears to be able to create anything he can think of, including life forms.
- Immortal Ruler: He is just as immortal as his citizens.
- Infinite Supplies: He can create matter from thin air, which is the source of much of the city's resources.
- Large and in Charge: He is absolutely massive when "standing" at full height, towering over even the largest of sybals.
- Meaningful Name: Basileus is a Greek term commonly translated as king or emperor.
- Monster Lord: Ruler of a city full of sybals and possibly one himself.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: Thanks to his liquid composition and his immunity to sybal powers, he appears to be impervious to all harm.
- No-Sell: Basileus is completely immune to sybal powers.
- The Older Immortal: He is at least 4000 years old.
- Physical God: Basileus can create anything he wants out of thin air, is impervious to sybal powers, and is Nigh-Invulnerable. He might also control the weather. The only possible avenue to bringing him down would be take him out while he is human. If he is human.
- The Power of Creation: See Imagination-Based Superpower above.
- Weather Manipulation: It is suspected by some citizens that Basileus controls the weather and that is why the city has such a pleasant climate.
Othello "Theo" Tomaras
The Hound of the Organizer
Theo Tomaras
- Authority Equals Asskicking: As The Organizer's right-hand man and the one who personally greats every newcomer, he's become an expert fighter who can add new maneuvers to his repertoire just by observing them.
- Ambiguously Brown: It is not entirely clear what ethnicity he hails from.
- Large and in Charge: He's 6'2" without boots, which is especially tall for the time period he would have come from.
- Our Were Wolves Are Different: All that's been implied about his sybal is that it's some kind of canine.
- Smart People Play Chess: He's developed an impeccable talent for it in his many years.
- Tall, Dark, and Handsome: It's no wonder Tristine fell for him.
- The Older Immortal: Theo is sitting at around 4000 in a setting where everyone else is generally under 2000.
- Time Dissonance: His standards for the passage of time have been altered somewhat by his age. Bringing someone into the city a decade ago still feels like it was just yesterday to him.
Darshil Sethi
The Venine Paladin
Darshil Sethi, Disciple Faction Leader
- Authority Equals Asskicking: The leader of the Airavata, he keeps himself to the same standards of combat capability as them.
- Badass Bookworm: He hosts a book club.
- Bird People: His sybal retains a humanoid shape and dextrous hands.
- Breath Weapon: His poison breath.
- Flight: He is a bird after all.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: He has scars all over his body from the leprosy that his entry into the city cured.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: At night he grows to 7'5", while Tris stays at 5'6".
- Large and in Charge: His sybal is on the larger side.
- Logical Weakness: His large size means he can't make sharp turns, and since his wings are made of cloth he becomes incapable of flight while wet.
- Mr. Fanservice: He sure has some nice muscles.
- Poisonous Person: Paralytic, not lethal.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: It isn't uncommon for him to go shirtless.
Erina
The Bitter Rón
Erina, Insurgent Faction Leader
- An Ice Person: She conjures fish made of ice.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Her motivation for leading the Irizima appears to be to return to her children, who are long dead and grew up thinking their mother abandoned them.
- Pink Is Feminine: Her sybal has pink frill.
- Sweet Seal: Her sybal is a fancy-looking seal-like creature.
Ministers
Chaska Palla
La Vicuña del Destino
Minister of Heiros
- Being Personal Isn't Professional: Minister Chaska's ministerial style.
- Living Relic: A member of the Inca empire, her survival in Sybal-Heim makes her one of the last of her people.
- Pink Is Feminine: Her pink hue matches that of the morning sunrise in her homeland.
- Relationship Values: A rare non-Video Game example; her power allows her to see threads connecting the target of her power to everyone with whom they have some sort of relationship within a one mile radius. The thicker and brighter the thread, the closer the relationship.
Colo
The Savage Eel
Minister of Seele
- Being Personal Isn't Professional: To a lesser degree than Chaska, but still there.
- Flight: Levitates himself with his power. He's quite proud of it.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: Puts on an arrogant front to mask being The Napoleon.
- Mind over Matter: His power is levitation, which he can apply to himself or on other persons and objects.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: The Eel has a lot of teeth.
- Spock Speak: A minor case. Tends to speak with exacting language and completely avoids contractions in order to emphasize that no, he is not a child.
- Survivor's Guilt: Struggles with this, since entering Sybal-Heim saved him from the fate of the rest of his family.
- The One Guy: After Necalli's death, he is the only minister that is clearly male.
- The Napoleon: Colo is sensitive about his height.
- Not Allowed to Grow Up: He's stuck in the body of a child despite being over a century old.
- Opinion Myopia: Seeing other people's perspectives doesn't come easily to him.
- Young and in Charge: In addition to looking like a child, he became a minister in his fifties, which is younger than the norm for the setting.
Necalli
The Tecuani Grimalkin
Former Minister of Doxa
- Absurdly Sharp Claws: His sybal power.
- Mentor Occupational Hazard: Minister Necalli, in the process of mentoring his successor, Sila, was assassinated right when he was about to announce the date of his retirement.
- Parental Substitute: He was a father figure to both Colo and Sila.
- Ret Irony: It's possible that the date he would have picked was actually several years down the line, but Necalli's assassination took place just before he was scheduled to announce the date of his retirement.
- Sacrificial Lamb: His assassination is what makes the threat posed by the Insurgents clear to the city.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: His death kicks off the escalating conflict that comprises the main story.
Silatuyok "Sila"
The Garrison Roe
Minister of Doxa
- Hair Color Dissonance: Her black hair is drawn with a blue tint.
- Hard Head: It's Made of Indestructium.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Her power is her shield for a face.
- No Mouth: She just has a plate for a head, so unless you count the carving a mouth on it, she doesn't have one.
- Precision-Guided Boomerang: Her shield when thrown.
- Shipper on Deck: Pushed for Tris and Theo to get together.
- Sole Survivor: The only survivor after her tribe was wiped out by a misunderstanding with Western traders.
- Throwing Your Shield Always Works: She discovers she can do this just in time to save the day in the final chapter of the Solomon Cipher.
- Use Your Head: When she has to ram someone.
- Young and in Charge: She was selected by Basileus as Necalli's successor when she was still a minor, and even now that she has taken the role in her twenties, that's still unprecedentedly young by the city's standards.
Tristine "Tris" Serral
The Astral Moth/The Falling Star
Minister of Ambrotos
- An Arm and a Leg: She lost her leg in an accident as a child.
- Disability-Negating Superpower: One of the things she loves about her sybal is that she gets it back for the night.
- Dream-Crushing Handicap: Her injury impaired her marital prospects in the outside world.
- Everyone Loves Blondes: She's arguably had the most love interests out of anyone in the cast.
- Good Prosthetic, Evil Prosthetic: She eventually gets a prosthetic leg, given to her by Theo and maintained by Rose.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: A compassionate minister with golden locks.
- In a Single Bound: She commonly uses her telekinesis to launch herself in this fashion.
- In Love with Love: She holds this as a philosophy, which per the trope, leads to Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places.
- Little Bit Beastly: Her sybal is mostly human except for the moth antenna.
- Magic Hair: Minister Tristine's hair is imbued with her power and usually floats.
- Magic Pants: One of the sybals for whom this is averted, since her clothes carry over between day and night.
- Massive Numbered Siblings: She's the second daughter of five, which just barely qualifies her for this trope.
- Morphic Resonance: Minister Tristine has more of her human features than she doesn't.
- Mundane Utility: Uses her telekinesis to reach the top shelf.
- Not Quite Flight: Minister Tristine's massive telekinetic leaps do not qualify her for the flyer-exclusive restaurant, much to her chagrin.
- Pointy Ears: Has them in sybal form.
- Power Glows: Her hair and other objects subject to her telekinesis are subject to a visible golden aura.
- Sensory Overload: Her antennae's sensitivity to changes in air pressure aid in her nighttime escapades, but cause her immense pain if manhandled.
- Smart People Play Chess: One of her pastimes.
- Super-Senses: Her sybal has enhanced senses of smell and balance and, to a lesser extent, hearing.
- Wanted a Son Instead: Her father wanted a son but got several daughters instead. He still loved them, but some of them ended up with masculine names.
Yul
Black Opal Panthona
Minister of Heilig
- Ambiguous Gender: Invoked Trope. Yul keeps their sex a secret because it amuses them.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Is a giant moth.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: They often skip out on the paperwork they're supposed to be doing, and have spent centuries letting people guess their sex, but they are on the whole a competent ruler.
- Energy Absorption: Yul can do this, releasing the absorbed energy as light.
- Head-in-the-Sand Management: In contrast to their predecessor, Yul's administration does not police the Heilig stormways at all, which has turned them into Sybal-Heim's hotbed of illegal activities. However, it's implied this is to make it easier to monitor.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: All four of their arms can channel their power.
- Light 'em Up: Their power.
- "L" Is for "Dyslexia": One reason they prefer to avoid paperwork.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Being about 3 feet tall doesn't stop them from having...
- Super-Strength: Much like Spider-Man, their sybal possesses strength proportional to a regular-sized moth.
- Troll: The reason for their Ambiguous Gender.
- Winged Humanoid: Has a generally humanoid body shape with wings sprouting from their back.
Citizens
Deyri
The Ebony Herbalist
Deyri
- Abusive Parents: Her father forced her to perform child labor and intended to sell her into marriage.
- Alien Blood: She leaks tree sap when severely injured.
- Cast from Stamina: She can only use her power so much before it tires her out.
- Green Thumb: Her power to create and enhance plant matter.
- Horned Humanoid: She sports goat-like horns with strings of pearls hanging from them.
- Oblivious to Love: Failed to notice Ta Yeh's attraction to her, despite it being obvious to Nadiya.
- Our Demons Are Different: Her sybal bears resemblance to a demon, which is ironic since she entered Sybal-Heim to avoid being executed as a witch.
- Nature Lover: She loves plants and owns a greenhouse.
- New Old Flame: Despite entering the cast during the second group opening, after he did, she turns out to have been a romantic interest of Ta Yeh's in the past, unbeknownst to her.
- Parental Substitute: Tuku considers her one of her mothers.
- Planimal: Tree demon goat.
- Plant Person: Her sybal.
- Poisonous Person: The plant matter she can create includes poisons.
- Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: She stands at 5'10" against her boyfriend Tahiry's 5'0". This becomes even more pronounced at night, when she grows to 8'6" and he shrinks to 3'6".
- Transflormation: She turns into a Plant Person at night.
Hoshimoto Kenshin
The Anklyosaurid Dragon
Kenshin
- Cannot Talk to Women: Provided those women are sufficiently feminine. Rosette Fueller and Tisiphone Furia don't cause him any problems.
- Cannot Tell a Lie: His power makes him incapable of lying.
- Dinosaurs Are Dragons: His sybal is an anklyosaur with elements of Eastern dragons. He just calls it a dragon because he has no idea what a dinosaur is.
- Fridge Logic: How can his sybal have been named The Anklyosaurid Dragon when anklyosaurs haven't been discovered and named yet?
- Honor Before Reason: Takes this to an art form.
- Living Lie Detector: His power.
- Mistaken Nationality: An NPC at one point mistakes him for Chinese.
- Shout-Out: His name is one to Rurouni Kenshin
- Were Dragon: Human during the day, dragon-ish at night.
Marron O'Taite
The Insatiable Puddle/Water Thing
Marron O'Taite
- An Ice Person: He can freeze the water he controls, though he can only control it while it's liquid.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: The Puddle's "minnow thoughts" have a short attention span.
- Beware the Nice Ones: A lighthearted prankster most of the time, when sufficiently provoked he becomes a force to be reckoned with.
- Big Brother Instinct: Towards Rose.
- Book Dumb: He's never had the patience for reading or education in general, but he's actually quite clever.
- Cheshire Cat Grin: Mischievous smiles are the Puddle's favorite.
- Emotional Regression: His feral temperament is more child-like.
- Flechette Storm: Pulled this off against Xana in the climax of the Solomon Chronicles by hurling water and then freezing it into daggers as it flew through the air.
- Glass Cannon: Marron's sybal possesses powerful hydrokinetic abilities, but in terms of physical ability he's slightly more durable than a water balloon.
- Graceful in Their Element: Human Marron is a graceful gondolier, but his size can make him cumbersome in closed quarters.
- Harmless Freezing: Averted. Marron's ability to freeze the water he controls makes him incredibly dangerous, should you get on his bad side.
- Ice Magic Is Water: Played with, since he loses control once the water freezes.
- Like Brother and Sister: With Rose.
- Making a Splash: His power is hydrokinesis.
- One Head Taller: He stands at 5'11" compared to his ex-girlfriend Tisi's 5'1".
Phan Thi Chau
Karuṇā / Luminous Joy / Firefly
Phan Thi Chau
- Aura Vision: Phan Thi Chau
has the power to see emotions like this. - Emotion Suppression: She later learns to temporarily absorb them into herself to help calm others down.
- The Empath: Via Aura Vision.
- Cast from Stamina: Absorbing emotions fatigues her, and she can only hold them for a few seconds.
- Colour-Coded Emotions: Different colors in her aura vision correspond to different emotions.
- Flying Sea Food Special: Chau is a winged otter that swims through the air.
- Fool for Love: Chau can't help but fall in love.
- Mind over Manners: She asks people for their permission before examining their auras too closely.
- Third Eye: As is appropriate for her Aura Vision.
Rosette "Rose" Fueller zi Tai Ying
Der Alptraum/The Sapling Shade/The Consummate Silhouette/The Twilit Paragon
Rosette Fueller
- Abusive Parents: Her mother thought she was possessed by a demon as a child and was the cause of her depression, so she whipped her to try to drive it out.
- Addiction Displacement: Tones down her alcoholism with the help of workaholism.
- Afraid of Doctors: One of her phobias.
- The Alcoholic: Some characters consider this her primary trait.
- Bad Powers, Good People: Rosette Fueller dealt with no small amount of shame for her sybal's Emotion Eater tendencies, since Bad Powers, Bad People is the norm.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Her new sybal form lacks nipples or genitalia.
- Blank White Eyes: Her sybal has no pupils.
- Brainy Brunette: She has brown hair and is a capable clock smith and engineer.
- Cuddle Bug: She loves giving and receiving physical affection, which made her sybal's predatory embrace all the creepier.
- Curtains Match the Window: She has brown hair and brown eyes.
- Cute Mute: Her sybal after her change.
- Cuteness Proximity: Her sybal's reaction to Chau's sybal.
- Delicate Is Beautiful: Ta Yeh thinks so.
- Drowning My Sorrows: What her approach has traditionally been to coping with a feral sybal.
- Emotional Regression: Her feral personality is more childlike, both before and after her sybal change.
- Emotion Eater: Her power allows her to absorb positive emotion for gratification and to enhance her Voluntary Shapeshifting.
- Everyone Knows Morse: Ta Yeh taught her the Sybalian equivalent he developed.
- Expressive Ears: Her Pointy Ears perk up or droop according to her mood.
- Fairy Sexy: Becomes more like this after her sybal change.
- Forgets to Eat: Her absentmindedness can make it hard for her to take care of herself.
- Godiva Hair: Rose's new sybal form tends to have her Barbie Doll Anatomy covered up this way.
- Hates Being Alone: Rosette and her sybal, which make the circumstances of her feral nature all the more distressing.
- Horrible Judgeof Character: She thought Hoshimoto Kenshin was a trustworthy friend. Depending on who you ask, this also applies to her choice in spouse.
- I Know What You Fear: In order to feed on their happiness Rosette's sybal has to induce a proportional amount of fear.
- Incurable Cough of Death: Justified Trope. That cough was due to the fluid in her lungs.
- Innocent Fanservice Girl: At night only. And she didn't acquire a no nudity taboo when she took on a more humanoid sybal form.
- Insecure Love Interest: Even after marrying Ta Yeh, she struggles with feelings of inadequacy.
- Lady Drunk: She may not look it, but Rosette is 60.
- Like Brother and Sister: With Marron.
- Magic Hair: Her hair after her sybal change became the only object Ta Yeh's winds can affect other than himself.
- Nature Lover: Fond of flowers and forests. She ran away to play in the forest often as a child.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: Inverted Trope. She lost her Voluntary Shapeshifting.
- Oblivious to Love: Both of her suitors had to be quite explicit for her to notice their interest in her.
- Parental Favouritism: Her parents preferred her older sister, who wasn't a troublemaker like Rose.
- Pointy Ears: Often manifested them in her original form, and gained them permanently in her new one.
- Rail Enthusiast: She is fascinated with trains, and her parents even hired her a tutor one year to try to satisfy her interest in them. Unfortunately, Sybal-Heim has no need for trains, so she has to make do with tiny models.
- Rebellious Spirit: Growing up with an Abusive Parent left Rosette instinctively averse to trusting authority. Over time she has grown more comfortable with listening to her husband and respecting the Ministers.
- Riches to Rags: Went from a wealthy heiress to someone struggling to pay rent. Subverted when she marries the wealthy Ta Yeh.
- Security Cling: Her sybal does this to her husband's.
- Shameless Fanservice Girl: The acquisition of a shapely figure didn't change her lack of a nudity taboo, which bothers her husband even though she has Barbie Doll Anatomy.
- The Tragic Rose: One of her motifs.
- The Voiceless: Her sybal cannot speak, only make a few noises like chirps and growls.
- Victorian Novel Disease: While not tuberculosis, her lung scarring had a similar effect on her life before Sybal-Heim. Bonus point for actually coming from the Victorian era, though from Germany rather than Britain.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: After feeding, Rosette Fueller's could solidify her gaseous form into solid tentacles and blades. She lost this ability after her sybal change.
- The Watchmaker: Her day job at the Rosen Bridge.
- Weakened by the Light: Rosette Fueller's sybal was burned by light prior to her sybal change. She couldn't even be out in the open at night comfortably, since moonlight alone was enough to bother her.
- Workaholic: Shares this trait with her husband.
- Your Heart's Desire: Rosette Fueller's sybal combined her Emotion Eater and Voluntary Shapeshifting abilities to take the shape of people her victims yearned for. When she lost the Voluntary Shapeshifting, she lost this technique with it.
Santiago "Tiago" de Campos
The Wandering Corcel
Tiago
- A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: Dating Nadiya. Dating Tristine. That one time he kissed Deyri and almost sank her ship. Biting Cayo.
- Badass and Child Duo: Tuku. Which one is the badass is up for debate.
- Blackmail: Was blackmailed by Bael within his first few years in the city.
- Book Dumb: He came in with no formal education, and his dyslexia has made him avoid rectifying this. He’s intelligent, but not educated in almost any capacity.
- Born in the Saddle: Horseback riding was a huge part of his life and his identity, which manifests as turning into a horse himself at night.
- Butt-Monkey: Misfortune is constantly befalling him.
- Cannon Fodder: As an uneducated soldier, he was treated like this at first, before moving up the ranks a bit to the position of scout, however, being a ‘boludo’ left an impression on him.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Tiago has never freely admitted his dyslexia to anyone. The few who know usually had to fight over it, even though admitting it would probably mean he’d figure out it’s not just him.
- Chivalrous Pervert: Yes, he likes women. Yes, he was probably staring. No, not like that.
- Commitment Issues: Tiago goes through a string of flings. Ironically, the first time he's willing to commit, he gets dumped.
- Conscription: Conscripted in Argentina, he negotiated to being included in Uruguay’s troops instead after the battle of Curupayty, when he couldn’t get out of service altogether.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": Associates his full name and assigned last name ‘De Campos’ with his military conscription or official business in general. His maternal last name is Peña, but he does not often give that, either, unless asked.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Self medication for PTSD.
- Dueling Scar: Tiago has several cheek scars from cultural dueling before entering the city. He's actually rather proud of them, even though each one was technically a defeat.
- Every Scar Has a Story: Tiago has a few of these. He doesn’t like talking about most of them.
- Hobos: Lived homeless for a year or two.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Tiago makes friends easily but his own destructive habits make some of them hard to keep.
- "L" Is for "Dyslexia": Since he doesn't know what dyslexia is, he assumes that his difficulty reading when everyone else picked it up fine is due to his own stupidity.
- Loveable Rogue: Despite his bad judgement and multiple character flaws some people still seem to like him.
- Made Myself Sad: Self-triggering feral swings.
- Malicious Slander: Has had his sybal’s feral tantrums and his own exploits gossiped about.
- Mirthless Laughter: A common stress release response for him, however inappropriate. He often responds to dark situations with black humor or anxious joking as a form of avoidance.
- Papa Wolf: To Tuku, and to some degree, Embla as well.
- Physical Scars, Psychological Scars: The worst takeaways from war were the mental ones.
- Really Gets Around: While Tris may have him beat in total love interests, he has the most named ones, including Piedad, Adusamsi, Nadiya, Tris, and Chau. And this is in a far shorter time-span.
- Reckless Sidekick: Tuku. He’s played it himself to a number of other characters.
- Riches to Rags: Subverted. He’s made modest progress in advancing himself and improving his money habits.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Self medicates with alcohol. Much of his instability is revealed at night. He has flashbacks occasionally during the day as well, but they’re uncommon. Fought in the battles of Tuyutí, Curupayty, (and a few others including Avaí, although by this point he'd advanced to not being common infantry) in the War of the Triple Alliance and Uruguay’s subsequent civil war.
- Sympathetic Murder Backstory: Ended up killing a friend named Diego in a skirmish, that left Tiago wounded as well. This event eventually steered him toward entering the City.
- The "I Love You" Stigma: He’s had a hard time with this since he was nineteen.
- Tracking Spell: Santiago deCampos' power allows him to detect the locations of people and objects with a visible beacon emanating from the desired target. Since it works through a combination of Clairvoyance and Telepathy, it struggles if the object is not visibly apparent or is willfully hidden.
- Troubled, but Cute: Date at your own risk.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: His former friendship with Kenshin.
- Wisdom from the Gutter: He’s found himself at the lower end of Sybal Heim’s economic ladder, but has provided advice or become friends to a few characters quite a bit higher up.
- Woobie: Or Butt-Monkey. You decide.
Saul Cordell
Saul Cordell
- Animal Motifs: Bison.
- Bruiser with a Soft Center: Par excellence.
- Brutish Bulls: Prior to Characterization Marches On.
- Characterization Marches On: His initial characterization as a big jerk was displaced by his Gentle Giant characterization.
- Dumb Muscle: He's not too bright.
- Gentle Giant: But he is very friendly.
- Gravity Master: Pawing the ground allows him to manipulate gravity to pull objects toward him or launch himself forward.
- Lightning Bruiser: Quite large and strong, and his power lets him amplify his speed.
- Our Minotaurs Are Different: His sybal resembles a minotaur, especially after his sybal change gave him more humanoid forelimbs.
Tuku
Owl Golem
Tuku
- The Atoner: Her fervent support for the CAC stemmed from regret for initially blaming Basileus and the ministers for the downfall of the people instead of herself.
- Badass Adorable: A cute little girl who somehow manages to be one of the most hardcore characters.
- Combat Pragmatist: Tuku fights dirty during the day, since it's the only way she can stand a chance. Even then, she eventually acknowledges that sometimes running is the only option.
- Elective Mute: Usually chooses not to speak and instead writes what she wants to say on a slate.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Arrives in Sybal-Heim to find the civilization she had thought she was saving to be long dead.
- Heroic Sacrifice: She was in the midst of attempting one when she entered the city.
- It's All My Fault: Once she learns that entering Sybal-Heim was a choice on her part, she believes she failed a test by the gods and doomed the Inca Empire.
- Le Parkour: How she gets around the city.
- Little Miss Badass: Tuku is this during the day. She's not so little at night.
- Living Relic: A member of the Inca empire, her survival in Sybal-Heim makes her one of the last of her people. This is particularly distressing to her, since her human sacrifice was supposed to entice the gods to save them."I don't want to be a tombstone."
- Mistaken Age: She's been mistaken for an adult, since adults in child bodies are much more common in the setting than genuine children.
- Power Glows: When in the dark.
- The Quiet One: She usually refuses to speak, instead writing what she wants to say on a slate with chalk.
- Revenge: Her motivation for initially opposing the Ministry; she blamed them for the downfall of her people by interrupting her ritual sacrifice.
- Riches to Rags: She lived a life of comfort in preparation for her role as a human sacrifice, which came to an end on the day of her sacrifice and entrance into Sybal-Heim.
- Scars Are Forever: Tuku's hands.
- Super-Strength: A situational variant, proportional to the ambient darkness.
- Tron Lines: How her power's glow manifests.
- The Voiceless: Her sybal is completely incapable of speaking.
- Weakened by the Light: Bright light makes her sybal weaker.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Tuku's sybal becomes stronger the darker her surroundings. She also becomes more feral.
Wen Chi zi Ta Yeh
The Dragonroot Serpent
Wen Ta Yeh
- A Million Is a Statistic: Defied Trope. He takes issue with Basileus only allowing a small number of people into Sybal-Heim when millions are dying preventable deaths.
- Asian and Nerdy: He is essentially one of the very first foreign exchange students from China.
- Bizarre Alien Locomotion: He moves by controlling his "phantom winds" to push himself around.
- Blow You Away: In an unusual take on this trope, he can only blow himself. Later, his wife's hair gets added to the mix.
- Casanova Wannabe: His attempt to add a concubine to the mix failed miserably.
- Combat Tentacles: His whiskers are surprisingly strong and come into play in fights much more often than his comparably tiny arms.
- Doomed Hometown: It wasn't completely destroyed, but his hometown of Hangzhou was ravaged by the Heavenly Kingdom in a surprise attack during the Taiping Civil War.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: His weaknesses of fire and cold.
- Emotional Powers: His winds become harder for him to control when he is experiencing intense emotion, and they tend to reflect his mood.
- Everyone Knows Morse: Since the telegraph is one of the inventions he introduced to the city, he developed a Sybalian equivalent. He taught it to Rosette so she could communicate before they learned sign language.
- Family Honor: One of his motivations, which extends to his wife after she becomes a part of it.
- Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: His fruit most closely resemble peaches, but can take on a wide range of tastes depending on the knowledge invested in them.
- Genius Bruiser: He becomes physically powerful at night without sacrificing his intelligence.
- Green Thumb: He is made of wood and vine, and his power comes in the form of fruit.
- Harem Seeker: Invited Deyri to become a concubine in addition to his wife Rosette.
- Has a Type: The women he fell in love with share several elements in their sybals.
- Honor Before Reason: Ta Yeh and his principles often make things more difficult than they have to be.
- Ingesting Knowledge: His power is letting others do this.
- Insufferable Genius: Ta Yeh sometimes flaunts his education in front of less educated characters like Tiago and Marron.
- Kryptonite Is Everywhere: The Serpent is pyrophobic, which is unfortunate since the widespread cultural significance of fire makes it an especially common sybal power.
- Like a Duck Takes to Water: While the historical Chinese Educational Mission Students took several years, many of them in poverty, to be trusted and ultimately successful, Ta Yeh gets to become filthy rich quite quickly thanks to his education and its rarity in Sybal-Heim.
- Love Makes You Dumb: His Harem Seeking was not his brightest move.
- Maternal Death? Blame the Child!: Downplayed Example. His mother didn't die in childbirth, but complications from it left her too sickly to flee the attack on Hangzhou a year later and she was killed there (along with other family members who weren't impaired). The blame on Ta Yeh went unstated and he wasn't mistreated for it, but it formed part of his motivation for striving to please his father.
- Monster Modesty: Carries his strict Confucian sense of modesty over to his sybal form, donning coats every night to cover all of him exempt his head and arms.
- Multipurpose Tongue: The Serpent's tongue is another vine that he can extend and manipulate like his whiskers.
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Sybal-Heim's population skews towards those who were downtrodden and uneducated, so Ta Yeh entering with a state-of-the-art modern education gives him an enormous leg up.
- The Nose Knows: Has the tracking skills of a viper.
- One-Man Industrial Revolution: Downplayed Example. Entering the city with an Ivy League education in engineering and a power that can temporarily enhance his memory and thought-process make him a captain of industry, but his impact on the setting is dampened by the highly controlled nature of the city's economy and by the slow pace of immortal culture.
- Overly-Long Tongue: It can extend out just as far as his whiskers.
- Photographic Memory: He can do something like this temporarily by eating his own fruit.
- Planimal: Plant snake dragon.
- Retractable Appendages: His tongue, whiskers, and limbs can all be fully retracted into his body, since they're composed of the same vines as the rest of him.
- Riches to Rags: Zig-Zagged. The Wen family fortune was lost in the attack on Hangzhou, but his father was able to re-earn something comparable by the time Ta Yeh was a boy. Then when Ta Yeh went to America he had to learn to live off of the much smaller program stipend, and then his entry into Sybal-Heim was penniless like everyone else. He was soon able to use his education and business sense to quickly rise to fortune in Sybal-Heim, even more than he had had in his life before. But then a CAC investigation froze his assets for a few months and dealt a serious blow to his business empire.
- Sensory Overload: Has to deal with this at the start of every night thanks to his suddenly acute sense of smell and thermoception.
- Serious Business: Ta Yeh's adherence to Neo-Confucianism can veer into this.
- Serpent of Immortality: One of his motifs.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Sometimes speaks this way when he's showing off to someone less educated.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: His most common outfit is Qing-era attire along with a bowler hat, pocket watch, and cane.
- Smart People Know Latin: He had to learn Latin to attend Yale.
- Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: Invoked Trope. Wen Ta Yeh believes that the mechanics behind sybals can be studied scientifically and used to develop Magitek.
- Super-Senses: His viper-like thermoception and sense of smell.
- Transflormation: Turns into a vine dragon every night.
- Transferable Memory: One application of his power.
- Treasure Chest Cavity: Since he is just vines, he can store objects and even smaller sybals inside of himself.
- Unskilled, but Strong: His sybal is physically powerful, but his odd manner of locomotion tends to make him uncoordinated, especially under duress.
- Vein-o-Vision: The Serpent has a thermographic sense, which has the downside of making fire blindingly bright.
- Weak to Fire: The Serpent is highly flammable and is pyrophobic as a result.
- Why Couldn't You Save Them?: He doesn't buy the claim that he desired freedom from imprisonment in some unique way from other hundred odd Chinese Educational Mission Students.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: The Serpent, ironically, has this with his pyrophobia, combining it with Kryptonite Is Everywhere.
- Were Dragon: Turns into a dragon at night, but is human during the day.
- Workaholic: Shares this trait with his wife.
