As the Equestria of the CDA has turned into an involuntary interdimensional crossroads, it's possible for characters to arrive from anywhere and everywhere. (Excepting Westeros, which is banned.) Some of the revealed parties are detailed below.
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CDA Agents
Bree Daniels
- This isn't personal.
A twenty-six year-old (twenty-seven at the start of her sequel) Euthanatos from the original World Of Darkness who initially got into Equestria by accident: she was trying to use the Tempest as a teleportation substitute and crash-landed in the wrong dimension. (Her travel process is repeatable, two-way, and can be aimed, but only transports her own living body and inanimate or dead matter.) She spent eight months using Equestria as nothing more than a place to have quiet, hidden lunches and maintain her sanity before a decidedly more violent incursion threatened nearby ponies, and she went public to stop it. Luna directly recruited her as one of the original human agents — a job which Bree managed to perform until the end of the world. As of Soul Survivor, her reality has reached its inevitable self-destruct, leaving her as one of just four survivors, the last Tradition mage, and with no home she can return to.
- The Ageless: Mastering entropy has certain effects on the body, which includes the slowing of natural decay: actual birthday aside, medical tests will show Bree as still not having reached her twenties.
- Amazonian Beauty: Depends on your perspective: she's described as being six feet tall, solidly built, and works out. However, she describes herself as "a dark chocolate truffle with sour lemon filling and marzipan trim with gumdrop buttons added to licorice stripping. At best, one person out of a thousand has been seeking that exact combination all their lives and the other nine hundred and ninety-nine order the baker to start cutting ingredients off until they aren't offended any more."
- Asian and Nerdy: Well, half-Asian, and just a little. She may be under fire and at direct risk of immediate death, but she still has to take this test run interdimensional call for science!
- Soul Survivor eventually reveals that prior to her Awakening, Bree was an engineering student.
- Cardboard Prison: How she regards New Cynosure, at least for herself. Having enough entropy to weaken a hole into the border shield means Bree can effectively walk out any time — but she has nowhere to go.
- Catapult Nightmare: Suffers them on a regular basis, along with having periods of insomnia. She won't bunk with anyone in New Cynosure because waking someone up with your screams often offends.
- Combat Pragmatist: By both training and necessity. She can't run for very long, and the only sphere she has which allows any means of quick escape (Spirit) usually winds up with someone following — so if she can't run, she has to fight.
- Conveniently an Orphan: Averted. It's not exactly convenient to have your family murdered during a completely mundane home invasion, and following the Euthanatos Chodana meant she wasn't allowed to take any form of revenge on the killers — not for a crime where she was truly personally involved.
- Doomed Hometown: The original World Of Darkness was a doomed reality, and the timer eventually runs out.
- The Dreaded: The main effect of her resonance: unless she makes a major effort to shut it down, normal humans in her homeworld can't look at her without perceiving a stalking predator. (It doesn't work in Equestria or, at home, on anything supernatural.) Between that effect and the discrimination normally shown by the mage community against a Euthie, her shaky relationship with Crossing Guard may be the closest thing to a friendship she has — and she's willing to have a serious conversation with a Technocrat in part because she's just that desperate for someone she can talk to.
- Soul Survivor then seemingly obliterates any connection she might have with the former. However, it also shows that at least a few New Cynosure residents took to her during the prior stay.
- The Engineer: As of Joanna's story, this is Bree's role in New Cynosure. She's now heading up construction, along with carefully recreating a few pieces of technology.
- Friendless Background: Her parents effectively raised her in isolation to keep her from being recruited or hurt by the local gangs. It kept her off the streets, but she didn't make her first friend until she went to college. And once she Awakened, her resonance kept the sleepers away from her, while the stereotypical Euthanatos reputation drove off the mages.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Partially averted. Like most Tradition mages, the majority of the things she builds are simply foci channeling her internal magic. However, she has a strong grounding in normal science, a workshop (which also serves as her Sanctum), and can put together some decent real tech at need.
- It Gets Easier: Averted for her personally. She specifically states that for her, the duty remains exactly that - a duty, something that she does only because it must be done. But she does admit that there are those of her order for whom the duty became a need. She's had to kill two of them herself.
- Last Of Her Kind: The end of her world leaves her as both the final Tradition mage and one of only four survivors: herself, Jake, and two children whom she barely managed to bring with her into Equestria.
- Magitek: The only focus we've seen her use is a custom-built tablet. The story demonstrates that she's capable of working Entropy and Spirit without it. (Between this and the fact that she's capable of making physical crossings into the Shadowlands, she's clearly pretty high up the mage power scale — and during her first meeting with the Princesses, still instinctively knows her options come down to 'tell the truth or die'.)
- Older Than They Look: As said in Bree, she looks younger than her, at the time, twenty-six years of age. "she often wondered if she always would".
- Origins Episode: Soul Survivor serves as one for her. As might be expected, it's not a happy story.
- Parody Sue: As mentioned on the main page, Bree hits a number of sue-ish traits, but these are both a tongue-in-cheek poke at the tendency for OWoD players to make such characters and given a hefty dose of realistic consequences— her boobs cause her problems rather than making her sexy, her physique attracts scorn and derision rather than admiration, etc.
- Popcultural Osmosis Failure: Played for drama. After her world ceases to exist, Bree spends some time trying to pull its accomplishments out of her memory: the great novels, the best movies, any positive things it might have contributed. She quickly realizes that a combination of isolated childhood and adult years spent in assassinations and magic study add up to someone who's barely done any reading or viewing outside of her chosen subjects: she can't record the best works produced by her world because she never saw any of them.
- Serial-Killer Killer: Comes with the territory. However, working as a CDA agent has significantly stepped up her activity. When the Princesses first spoke to her, she had been an active Euthanatos for five years, and her count was at twenty-seven. Since beginning to work for Equestria, she's been averaging one kill every eight days — and she's been doing the CDA's work for nearly three years, putting her well into triple digits.
- The end of Soul Survivor sees her reveal the final count: with her assassinations added to self-defense and acts of mercy, she's killed two hundred and eighteen people. Jake does not take this well.
- Shadow Archetype: There's an argument to be made that she's one for Twilight: intelligent, often socially awkward, dedicated to her studies, incredibly late to her first true friendship, and ultimately shaped by the connection she made. It's just that in Bree's case, that first friend was effectively murdered.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: It takes some time to fully manifest, but the end of her world has left her as an emotional wreck. She ultimately winds up attempting Suicide by Cop — but Jake doesn't cooperate. Soul Survivor ends with her as walking wounded: she's aware that she's deeply depressed, and all she can do is try to find her way out of it.
- Signature Move: Appears to favor killing via strangulation, eventually explaining that it's one of the few methods which allow her to essentially change her mind at the last second.
- Significant Green-Eyed Redhead
- Story-Breaker Power: Averted. If viewed from a game perspective, the fact that she's operating on what may be Correspondence 0 takes away one of the biggest advantages mages had: she's incapable of scry-and-die tactics, has to be physically present for anything she's doing, and can't just leave when things start going wrong. (And if she'd been able to learn the sphere, she never would have wound up in Equestria at all.)
- Survivor Guilt: The end of her world has left her dealing with a massive case of it.
- The One Who Made It Out: From both her D.C. ghetto and her world.
- Was It Really Worth It?: Following her world's demise, has this view of her assassinations. Remove the right people and you just might save everyone else? She did everything she could. Seven billion people still died.
- With Great Power Comes Great Hotness: Averted. Most other mages assume her boobs and other exotic-to-the-point-of-parody features are the product of Life spells, and tend to find it hilarious when they learn she has no aptitude for Life magic and her looks are entirely natural.
- You Can't Go Home Again: Because home no longer exists. Additionally, the policies of the CDA state that any incursions must be returned to their world of origin and no other, because it would be easy for those sent to the wrong places to cause the same kind of disruptions taking place in Equestria. Now they have someone who has no world she can be returned to — and that human is an agent.
Melissa Gold
- If anyone else had made that first trip... any hero...
Songbird from the Marvel Universe, although not necessary the 616 variant: this iteration still seems to be putting in at least part-time work in searching for villains who can be redeemed while operating within the prison system. Travels via sonic disruption and attunement with dimensional barriers: she can take living beings with her, but only seems to be able to journey between Equestria and her home. She's been trying to recruit help, especially from the MU's scientists, but can't get through to them because no matter how most of them talk in public, they look at a reformed villain and automatically lose the first word.
- The Atoner: And appears ready to keep it up for the rest of her life, in part because she may never meet her own revised standards.
- Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Averted.
- Imagination-Based Superpower: As in canon: she can sing solid shapes into existence using a modified version of Klaw's technology.
- Informed Judaism: Averted so far, although she's a little surprised to find herself turning to Christian allegory in an attempt to teach Lyra why bringing her across would be bad.
- Make Me Wanna Shout: Her original superpower. It was later "upgraded" with the ability to generate "sound constructs".
- Odd Friendship: With Lyra: they've bonded over their mutual love of music (and certain other commonalities). When Melissa is awarded with the standard two hours in Equestria for stopping an incursion, she generally meets the unicorn on a hilltop so they can work on a composition. For Lyra, this is no longer enough.
- Professional Wrestling: Now retired.
- Reformed, but Rejected: How the rest of the MU seems to be treating her.
Jack Napier
- "None of us mean for a lot of stuff to happen. It — happens anyway. That's the joke, Vic. That's the fucking joke, and — maybe something else which wasn't supposed to happen can be the last punchline."
A high school student and former basketball star whose family was murdered after he failed to throw the city championship game — a failure which came from pure bad luck. Using two particular sets of chemicals creates clouds which allow him to travel to and from Equestria. Using another formula unlocks some of the potential of his body — while simultaneously turning it over to a laughing bundle of chemicals and complexes which roams his city's night. The two were recruited by Luna as the CDA's representative in the world identified on Equestria's charts as the shadowfell. As an agent, they're effective — but some of their power comes from madness, and Luna fears that will eventually carry a heavy price.
- Alien Blood: Only while the chemicals are in charge. It's at least mildly acidic and can cause temporary vision damage upon eye contact, although the bundle of chemicals states that a good rinse or a few hours of normal tears will fix that. This generally isn't used as a weapon because it doesn't want to inflict damage on Jack's body in order to let the blood out — but if it's hurt to the point of bleeding already, all bets are off.
- Comedic Sociopathy: The chemicals have... an interesting sense of humor. It also seems to have absolutely no objection to causing permanent injuries on anyone it's fighting, although that may partially be a matter of mostly taking on people who were planning on killing fillies and colts just to see if there was anything in pony bodies which could create a profit.
- Composite Character: In addition to his central role, he has aspects of both The Question and The Creeper: his mask is chemically bonded to his skin (and that formula turns any DNA evidence he might shed into something which can't be connected to Jack), and it's implied that on some level, Jack may need to let the other out every so often in order to personally remain sane. The bundle of chemicals also possesses a laugh which both humans and ponies find disturbing: gunmen hearing it often clamp their hands over their ears instead of sensibly firing at the source.
- Conveniently an Orphan: The central antagonist of Jack's world doesn't kill those who offend him: he arranges for the deaths of everyone around them.
- Expy: Averted. He's rather directly meant to be an alternate universe heroic incarnation of the Joker.
- Expressive Mask: Averted, much to the chemicals' ongoing annoyance. The face it shows to the world is made from a thin layer of molded plastic. Contorting its features under the mask can produce minor changes to the outside, but it has nothing approaching a normal range. Compressible plastic gears (for allowing something so minor as a raised false eyebrow) are still a ways off.
- Friend to All Children: The chemicals definitely appear to have a soft spot for kids, whether human or equine. It's eventually revealed that their first trip to Equestria put them outside a school at recess, and they wound up dancing for the children in order to calm them down.
- Horrifying Hero: Being a Monster Clown solidly puts the chemicals into this category when in their own world. However, the effect is actually slightly moderated when dealing with Equestrians: compared to other humans, bleach-white skin and green hair is somewhat closer to pony normal.
- High School AU: For nearly all intents and purposes, he's living in one. And there are a few other people attending that school: Vic, Ozzie, Harleen...
- Jerk Jock: Now reformed. However, he's still having some trouble overcoming his previous reputation.
- Line-of-Sight Name: Played for drama. At the end of the story, the chemicals see the classic joker icon on a playing card, and the implication is that they've treated it as inspiration — taking the name Wild.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Oddly, the bundle of chemicals has taken up this philosophy. It'll beat people within an inch of their lives, but it never goes over the line. One exchange with Luna
suggests it considers life precious because it personally experiences so little of it, and so doesn't want to take those hours away from anyone else — with one possible exception.
New Cynosure residents
Ben-R-QDR- 3
- We are everything that could go wrong — everything which already has.
A Troubleshooter morale officer of some experience, who reached Equestria on a one-way passage when an R&D experiment went bad on him. Which is a lie. He's a mutant teleporter — and refuses to repeat the process ever again unless it's in an attempt to get away from something which could send him back. To the best of anyone's knowledge, he was the first to cross from Alpha Complex — and the only one to survive. In New Cynosure, he's the recreation director, mostly because he doesn't have to be. For the CDA, he serves as the authority on incursions from his world.
- Blood Sport: Or at least a former fan of them who doesn't understand why anything without balls that don't come with homing programs directing them at your head before exploding wouldn't automatically be seen as boring. Fortunately for the rest of the camp, he's willing to listen to their game recommendations. Justified because he's an Alphan; he's only ever known a world where human life was totally worthless and everyone could safely die five times anyway, so blood sports were quite unremarkable.
- Body Backup Drive: Standard for a Troubleshooter — but doesn't currently apply to him: in Equestria, no one can get your clone to you, and he doesn't know if his MemoMax technology would transmit across the barrier. (There's also a good chance his next clone was already activated — and, given Troubleshooter mortality rates, that his line is extinct.) Not that this ability is much comfort to him when it works, anyway — see below.
- Character Tics: If he's back in the reflec, he's probably adjusting the shoulder straps.
- Fantastic Naming Convention: As is standard of all Alphans; "Ben" is his real name, R signifies he belongs to the RED level security clearance, QDR is his home sector, and 3 indicates he's the third of his clone-batch to be activated.
- I Choose to Stay: Feels he can do the most good for Equestria by remaining there and educating them on what to expect and how to defend against it, especially since his most likely fate on returning would be pattern erasure. As such, he will sabotage anything which might threaten to send him home.
- Mind Rape: Has suffered this twice, because MemoMax is so effective that it also covers the memories of exactly how he died. Complete with every last sensation he felt before his old bodies shut down from the damage.
- "I remember dying. You don't — you're a Prime. They don't tell you that the tech transfers all the memories. I felt the hole being burned through my lungs, I didn't know if I was screaming from the pain or because the air was so superheated that it was venting out of my throat as steam — and they pulled me out of the tank still screaming, threw the new overalls at me and told me to get into the transport and rejoin the firefight. As my reward for turning my friend in for treason."
- Mutant: Like all Alphans are thanks to the problems in the brooding vats, though it's never admitted because being a mutant is punishable by death. It's unclear if he's explained to the CDA about Alphans having mutations or not. Even if he has, his own power has been kept secret; he's a teleporter, and so strong he managed to leap from Alpha Complex to Equestria by accident.
- It looks like he may have at least explained some of the basics: Crossing Guard is aware of potential 'internal' problems with Alphans, and that's after checking for metal under the skin.
- Ridiculously Average Guy: For an Alphan: average height, brown hair, slim build, not much in the way of shoulders. In Equestria, he deliberately cultivates a carefully-trimmed beard and mustache, something which the hormone suppressants of home would have made impossible.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Has elements of this: his Alpha Complex is presented with, at best, gallows humor — and an Alpha Complex taken seriously is one of the most terrifying places imaginable.
Jake Pelletier
I stand for the enforcement of what should be, Euthanatos — and in this world, magic is what should be.
A New World Order agent in his early thirties who's been in Equestria for a little over a year. He was working as lab security at a facility dedicated to sealing off the Gauntlet — and was offshift and in his bath when a lab accident reached into his onsite apartment and tossed him into Equestria. He considers himself to be New Cynosure security, helping to maintain the safety of the settlement camp — especially against anything which might show up from his homeworld.
- Friendly Enemy: As far as he's concerned, while he and Bree are both off their territory, the Trad/Tech war is suspended. And if he ever gets back home, he's still going to wipe her deviant ass off the face of the planet. Which doesn't prevent him from trying to recruit her at the end of their talk.
- By the end of Soul Survivor, the "enemy" part has been dropped. With their world gone, there's nothing left to fight over.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Averted. He's security, not research: on his own, he can just about put together a solar water heater.
- He is, however, exceptionally good at using just the right kinds of advanced technology — as long as he's convinced that whatever he's just been given is it.
- Homeworld Evacuation: If he got home, he'd love to use Equestria as a backup plan. But he also knows how the Technocracy operates, and doesn't believe there's any way to do it without losing both worlds. His current best hope is to claim a really big accident and dump a hundred or so people in — but he's in no position to arrange it.
- And it never happens. Bree manages to save two children seconds before the world's total destruction — and that's it.
- Last of His Kind: The destruction of the OWoD leaves him as the only surviving Technocrat.
- The Men in Black: Normal for an NWO agent. He wears the standard garments provided for humans, but only in black, something which his friend Ben doesn't understand in the slightest.note To top it off, he's exceptionally dark-skinned and likes to wear sunglasses at just about all times, especially as the eyewear is the only gadget he's got. (They were on the rim of the tub.)
- Naked First Impression: He was transported to Equestria by a freak lab accident. While in his bathtub. He appeared right in front of Princess Celestia. Also counts for a Noodle Incident, because there is nothing in New Cynosure which can make him discuss the details.
- Survivor Guilt: Is dealing with his own case of it. In Jake's case, he's fully aware that his own survival was based purely in luck, and he's trying to figure out why he deserves to have been that lucky.
- Virtual-Reality Interrogation: Thought he was in one for months after his arrival.
Aashita & Shanu Chaudhari
The other two survivors from Bree's world, brought to Equestria seconds ahead of the final destruction — and as might have been expected from Euthie luck, they're not normal humans. Aashita (eight) is a nocker, while Shanu (four) is a bobcat pooka. They're actual sisters, and lost at least one parent (their mother) before their mutual Chrysalis took place. So far, Aashita has demonstrated the usual nocker touch/yell with technology (along with the expected flaw in everything she works on), while Shanu's compulsive lying can take the form of exaggerations and describing things using metaphors no one understands. They're considered to be under the protection of the entire camp, to the point where even Joanna is nervous about using her typical verbal attacks. And perhaps unsurprisingly, Equestria is proving to be a favorable environment for Kithain: Aashita has suggested that her Banality is dropping.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: As a pooka, Shanu has the ability to shapeshift into an animal form. In her case, it's a bobcat and due to her youth, that form is still a kitten. Because of the limitations inherit to pooka shapeshifting, she's incapable of changing while anyone is observing her, and it takes a little energy to change — but in Equestria, Glamour may be a little easier to come by.
- Weapons-Grade Vocabulary: Downplayed, but it's mentioned in Divine Intersection that when Aashita starts swearing, grass starts to wither and die around her.
Tess Beckett
- What if it isn't random?
A seventeen year-old Hoffmannite who's been in Equestria for six months, arriving courtesy of an X-Tel experiment which managed to find an entirely new way of not quite working. Generally friendly, often gregarious, and possessing no previous experience of humans away from her homeworld, let alone ponies. She's adjusting quickly, but there are still a few people who feel New Cynosure would have been better off if she'd landed in Mazein.
- Acrofatic: Six feet, seven inches tall. Two hundred and ninety pounds. Quick, somewhat agile, and only occasionally tends to destroy the scenery by accident.
- Attack Hello: Is gradually learning not to do this. Hoffmannite culture tends to be extremely physical, which is another reason some feel she would have been better off with the like-minded minotaurs.
- Cute Clumsy Girl: There are times when she doesn't quite compensate for the local gravity.
- Early-Bird Cameo: She's at one of the other tables while Ben's circle is having breakfast.
- Heavyworlder: Genetically engineered to live in well over 1G. Is still working on adjusting her reflexes to the Equestrian pull
- Huge Schoolgirl: Seventeen and already six feet seven and two-ninety pounds.
- Quirky Curls: Brunette ones which defy both logic and brushes.
- Shout-Out: You have to wonder if she's waiting for Godot.
- Super-Strength: To a degree: no one's quite sure how much she can lift, but everyone's afraid to let her near the baseball field. Balls hit through people often offend.
- The Xenophile: Has an easier time dealing with ponies than with humans, and is fascinated by the cultures of the former.
Joanna
A Holier Than Thou Jerkass from a unidentified world that has a very unpleasant theocratic nation bent on religious domination of their world.
- Achievements in Ignorance: She actually manages to accidentally earn a small sliver of appreciation from Princess Luna for not believing Luna is a god.
- Boomerang Bigot: She's a viciously opinionated bigot who condemns... well, pretty much everybody, while being a colored ethnicity herself (presumably African, given her feelings for Jake). Basically, her own system has her in the lower caste — but because she's the only person in New Cynosure who's been Saved, she believes herself to be elevated above every demon surrounding her.
- Fantastic Caste System: Like all members of the Word, her skin tone dictates her role in life — in her case, her "dark brown skin and tightly curled hair" marks her as a laborer. This is one of the major reasons why she hates Bree; as a mixed race individual, Bree is as much a social maverick as a living blasphemy.
- Female Misogynist: Her mind has been so warped by the abusive tenets of her religion that Joanna truly believes women are second-class citizens and deserve to be oppressed and subjugated — that's what her god says, after all.
- The Fundamentalist: Joanna views the world exclusively through the lens of her abusive faith. She will not deviate from her beliefs, no matter what.
- I Reject Your Reality: Joanna refuses to begin to consider that her belief that she is in Hell and trapped amongst demons and damned souls may not be accurate.
- Jerkass: She is, without a doubt, the biggest douchebag allowed to walk freely amongst the residents of New Cynosure. In Divine Intersection, Luna bluntly tells her that she has proven so hostile, unpleasant and disruptive that they are on the verge of simply throwing her into the cells.
- Never Learned to Read: Apparently, from Jake's analysis of her, in Divine Intersection - True Believer. Her faith comes from a holy book which she's never read, isn't allowed to read, and it's mentioned that whenever those of the Word meet a new group, tenets appear which explain what that group's role will be. Jake implies that those in charge are making it up as they go along.
- Phrase Catcher: Everybody who ever interacts with her ultimately says this about her: "You're the worst person I've ever met."
- Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: One of the reasons she is so tormented by her life in New Cynosure is that she is having romantic dreams about Jake and by the dictates of the Word, desire may equal sin. It's strongly implied that those of Joanna's caste don't get married: they have partners assigned to them so they can breed.
- Tragic Bigot: Zigzagged. On the one hand, Joanna is clearly so messed up by her religion it's sad. On the other hand, she's such an asshole that it's clear that her Freudian Excuse doesn't hold up enough to excuse it.
