Characters from The Ascent.
The Indent
The main character: an indent working out of Cluster 13, under Stackmaster Poone. Bristling with ambition and with a taste for mindless violence.- Character Customization: The character's appearance, name, and gender are up to the player.
- Cyborg: Every skill you take slowly alters their appearance as they replace flesh with chrome, until half their face is metal and the other half is synthetic skin.
- Everyone Has Standards: Despite their enthusiasm at killing, they feel sick about selling karlan sweat as mineral water and claim they'd rather peddle Snooze."[[Scrubbing Off the Trauma: Wash hands. Wash hands. Wash hands.]]"
- Featureless Protagonist: Zigzagged. The game doesn't actively provide any background information or other characterization for the Indent, making it easy to take them for a completely blank slate. However, the quest log is written from their perspective and paints the picture of a pretty carefree person who's having a blast for much of the game, hinting at a serious sociopathic disorder.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: You start out as basically just a total nobody at the lowest rung of society in garbage recycling/management, barely above being unemployed and homeless. By the end of the game? You've travelled to the top of the Spire, slain armies of gangers, mutants, robots, and corporate mooks, taken out various flavours of Mini-Mecha, and shut down a portal that was about to let some kind of Eldritch Abomination invade reality. You are armed with cutting edge weaponry and powerful abilities, ranging from a basic slugthrowers and grenades all the way up to man-portable wave motion guns and your very own (time-limited summon) suit of Power Armour with a chaingun.
- Hired Guns: Sidelines as this through various sidequests.
- One-Man Army: Invoked by your handler in the Cyber Heist DLC (paraphrased): "Our enemy has an army with unlimited money and resources. We... have you."
- Silent Protagonist: Aside from the dialog interface options (which are not worded as actual dialog), the player character never says a word.
Your IMP
An AI installed in the player character's head, which is near-universal in the setting.- Axe-Crazy: Your IMP likes violence, explosions, and especially thinks that having blood splattered everywhere makes for excellent interior decorating.
- Deadpan Snarker: Picks up shades of this later on, such as observing that your enemies seem to have something against doors after one crashes a shuttle through the boardroom window just to reach you.
- Insistent Terminology: Refers to you as their "flesh".
- There Was a Door: Reacts like this after the boss fight in the Ascent Group boardroom, which begins with the enemy crashing in through the window in a shuttle.
- Mad Bomber: Your IMP really really loves explosions and expresses regret whenever they're not the solution to the current problem.
Stackmaster Poone
The supervisor of cluster 13. A notoriously cheap man with a crude disposition who behaves more like a local crime lord than the local supervisor for the megacorporation.- Everyone Has Standards: He's abrasive, rude, corrupt, and generally a piece of work... but he doesn't want people starving to death or Cluster 13 descending into catastrophic violence; his first concern when it's clear that the Ascent Group has collapsed is to secure bare necessities like food and energy, followed by a degree of freedom so another corp doesn't just march in and take these things away.
- Jerkass: He's abrasive and rude to everyone, including the player character. He's also infamous for not paying people.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite the general first impression he gives, of being a pampered asshole who shortchanges his indents (which he does), Poone does for the most part care about the Indents under him. Most of his initial quest revolve around trying to make sure Cluster 13 has the resources to keep everyone warm, fed, and alive. If not for the untimely appearance of yCorp, he might have succeeded in his ambitions to free everyone from their Indent contracts by preventing another corp from claiming the contracts before they expire.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: While he's rude and abrasive, he genuinely cares about keeping everyone under him alive in the face of a potentially catastrophic situation, and even tries to figure out a way to secure their freedom.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: After Kira and yCorp roll in, Poone is relegated to one or two minor scenes after that, and then one brief voice call after the credits.
nogHead
A hacker operating out of the abandoned Black Lake district near Cluster 13, nogHead is first encountered when working for Poone but continues to play an important role in the plot from there.- Crazy-Prepared: He expects the worst from people, especially corporations. His foresight to set up a back door on the gate saves him and the main character from being killed by yCorp at the end from knowing too much.
- Deadpan Snarker: Sells you out to Onyx Void, or so it seems - but is really on your side the entire time. When they complain at him;nogHead: Hung, my man! What the fuck are you talking about? You got your little ambush. Not my fault your people got wasted 'cause they sucked!
- Playful Hacker: A textbook case, more or less. He enjoys challenges and likes taking the corporations down a peg or two.
- Some Call Me "Tim": nogHead isn't his name, his real name is unpronounceable to humans.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: His role for most of the game.
Kira
An Aphoran, and seemingly head of yCorp, or at least its operations in the Veles Arcology.- Even Evil Has Standards: While her concern is primarily about the potential costs and liabilities to yCorp, Kira does sometimes seem genuinely disgusted if you kill innocent people.
- Fantastic Racism: Kira has a very low opinion of humans (or "sapiens", ad they're called in the setting), and lets you know this quite frequently.
- Jerkass: She is every bit as abrasive and rude as Stackmaster Poone, coupled with a clear contempt towards humans and a casual assumption that everyone in the archology now belongs to her company.
- Top-Heavy Guy: Or girl in her case. Like all aphorans, her legs are disproportionately short and slender in comparison to the rest of her very portly body, making you wonder how the species can walk at all at times.
- Walking Spoiler: Given their role in the plot, it's hard to talk about them too much.
- You Are a Credit to Your Race: At her most congenial, she generally complements you like this.
- You Are in Command Now: Whatever their old job was, they were instantly promoted to their current position when the contingency plan was activated.
Dakyne
The human CTO of the Ascent Group who forms a group of company loyalists called the Ascenders with the aim of restoring the Ascent Group.- Affably Evil: Despite her actions, she seems pleasant and persuasive.
- Big Bad Wannabe: She's directly responsible for the game's events, as she kickstarts the plot by destroying the Ascent Group's AGI and causing the company to fail, after which she massacres the board with the aim of taking control of Project MenShen. However, the ending reveals that she was little more than a pawn for Melhorst-Gelb, her benefactors, who didn't even believe in her plan anyway.
- Did Not Think This Through: Her every action has massive unintended consequences. Her attempt to take over the Ascent Group instead causes it to go bankrupt, causing Veles to spiral into chaos and anarchy, her Ascender faction starts a war with yCorp and the Indent that gets most of them killed, and she almost accidentally unleashes an Eldritch Abomination on Veles.
- Evil Is Petty: She irreparably damaged The Ascent Group's AGI, massacred the company's board of directors, threw Veles into a state of total chaos, and started a war with yCorp... because she wasn't given the promotion or respect that she wanted.
- Fantastic Racism: Part of her motivation seems to be out of hatred for Aphorans.
- Flunky Boss: The main threat in her boss fight is her horde of followers.
- The Pawn: She sincerely believed that she was a mastermind, putting herself in a state of total control over Veles, only for the post-credits scene to reveal that Melhorst-Gelb never actually believed she would succeed, and never would have given her the power she wanted.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Only appears in two scenes, and is directly responsible for the plot.
- Smug Snake: She's nowhere near as smart or in control of the situation as she thinks she is.
438 Hung
The head of Veles' Onyx Void chapter, a private military contractor that protects VIPs and performs assaults and assassinations. Hung is a professional with mysterious ties to the fall of the Ascent Group.- Consummate Professional: Hung is extremely professional and levelheaded.
- Duel Boss: Other than his two easily dispatched guards, he faces the Indent one-on-one.
- The Heavy: He and Onyx Void are a much more consistent and antagonizing threat than his employer, Dakyne.
- Large and in Charge: As a Larkian, he's pretty damn huge already, and his massive Powered Armor easily doubles his bulk.
- The Stoic: He never loses his temper or even raises his voice.
Celine
A human resources representative for the Ascent Group who becomes a recruiter and field commander for the Ascenders, a group of Ascent Group loyalists determined to return their beloved company to its former glory.- Anti-Villain: While she does some nasty things, it's clear she's very much a victim of corporate propaganda, sincerely believing that Ascent was an ethical company and the Arcology is better off under its control.
- The Brute: Serves as this for the Ascenders. While she does have an influential position, she is little more than a blunt instrument who uses violence to achieve her objectives. Her boss fight involves fighting her in a very tough mech.
- Chekhov's Gunman: She's introduced early on as a somewhat irrelevant side character trying to convince Poone to join the Ascenders. She isn't seen again until after yCorp takes over the Indent's contract, and is seen in security footage murdering an Ascent Group defector.
- Decoy Antagonist: After being seen murdering an Ascent Group traitor and giving orders to Hung, it can lead one to think she's the Big Bad, but a few missions after she bites it, it's revealed she was answering to Dakyne.
- Irony: One of the Ascent Group's staunchest loyalists was taking orders from the woman who destroyed the company.
- Undying Loyalty: To the Ascent Group. She is willing to do anything to restore her beloved company to power.
