Characters / The Order of the Stick: Azure City

Main Character Index | The Order of the Stick – Human Party Members – Non-Human Party Members | Team Evil | The Linear Guild | The Order of the Scribble | Azure City | Greysky City | The Empire of Blood | Northern Lands | Animal Companions | Divine Beings | Others

---

Elan: Did you guys know that Azure City is the largest trading port in Southern lands? Thousands of ships come from all around the world to barter for fine Southern goods like silk, spices, and video games. The average temperature for this season is 63° F, with average yearly precipitation of 26.43 inches.
Roy: Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a successful Bardic Knowledge check.

In General

• Aerith and Bob: As a result of being a melting pot of ethnicities from all over the Ancient Empire that preceded it, different characters reflect various Asian-esque naming patterns, including Japanese (Shojo, Miko Miyazaki), Chinese (Zhou), Korean (O-Chul, Gin-Jun), Vietnamese (Ho Thanh), and Indian (Saha Kapoor).
• Citadel City: Azure City was a powerful and wealthy city that needed defending even before they discovered a rift to a world-ending monster.
• Culture Chop Suey: Contains a mish-mash of various Asian cultural elements. In-universe, this is because Azure City is one of several realms created from the fracturing of the Ancient Empire, a polity that once united most of the tribes and cultures of the Southern Continent under its banner.
• Decadent Court: The daimyo of Azure City are known for their rather Byzantine games of courtly intrigue.
  • For starters, it's heavily implied that Miko's parents were nobles who were on the action end of an assassin's blade, leaving her an orphan.
  • Shojo has to fake his own senility in order to avoid assassination by other nobles.
  • Last but not least, a nameless cleric's reaction to the rumor that Hinjo killed Shojo to ascend to the throne is "Politics as usual."
• Descriptive Ville: Azure City is entirely azure.
• Fantastic Racism: Only individuals with human blood are permitted to hold citizenship in Azure City.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: It's basically Japan in the D&D setting. There's samurai and ninja and Sabine wears white face paint as a disguise. Although Miko has never heard of this "Japan" Roy speaks of. O-Chul's prequel story reveals that it was once part of a vast empire that absorbed a number of different cultures and ethnic groups, making it a counterpart to East Asia (arguably one to China as it has subjugated Korea and Vietnam before though not Japan).
• Far East: Lots of Japanese influence here.
• Gratuitous Japanese: Several of the names, probably to parody the random use of the language "because it's cool" (Lord Shojo being a case in point, since Shojo is Japanese for "girl"^note More precisely, it means "virginal maiden", which is even more hilarious.).
• Land of One City: While bonus content maps show some other towns nearby, the main comic treats Azure City as the only settlement worth mentioning in the region.
• Please Select New City Name: After nearly one year of occupation by the hobgoblins, Azure City is renamed Gobbotopia City.
• Single-Palette Town: It's all varying shades of blue.
• Vestigial Empire: By the end of Book 6, what used to be one of the most powerful forces for Good in the world is reduced to a makeshift city on an abandoned elven colony, exiled from their homeland.
• Weapons Kitchen Sink: The soldiers of Azure City use Japanese Katanas alongside Chinese Ji and Greco-Roman tower-shields.
• World of Technicolor Hair: Hair in Azure City ranges from black to blue to green to purple. invoked Word of God says it's all natural, too.

The Sapphire Guard

For Soon Kim, see The Order of the Scribble.

For pets (Mr. Scruffy) and paladin mounts (Windstriker, Argent, and Razor), see Animal Companions.

In General

• Duty That Transcends Death: They swear to protect the gate on their honor as paladins, and makes good on that vow. Sadly, their vow only extends as far as protecting the gate, and with it destroyed, they are forcibly relieved from their duty.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Soon's rift was small, and capable of being contained in a single sapphire. The Azure City palace was built around this sapphire, with it mounted in the Lord of the City's throne. This allowed the Guard to hide the Gate while also surrounding it with defenses that no-one would think to question, assuming they were to protect the Lord.
• Honor Before Reason: Despite many people claiming how foolish it was to diminish their knowledge like that, the Sapphire Guard followed Soon Kim's vow to not interfere or even go near the other gates. Even Shojo thought it was ridiculous while Redcloak was amazed that the Sapphire Guard would be so sloppy in such an area.
• Informed Ability: Supposedly the Sapphire Guard is a secret organization, but there are times where its members would run around loudly proclaiming its name and mission, particularly in the prequel comics.
• Irony: The Paladins of the Sapphire Guard are often criticized for being rigid and stubbornly hidebound by more chaotic characters. It's not entirely untrue, in that there are things their honor codes do compel them to do and believe, but with the rule-proving exception of Miko, most of them are actually less judgmental, self-righteous, and close-minded than the people criticizing them. It's practically a running gag as of the final arc.
• Meaningful Name: With the rift contained in a single gemstone, the Sapphire Guard literally guards a sapphire.
• The Paladin: The Sapphire Guard notably features the archetypical Lawful Stupid paladin juxtaposed with several much more positive examples of Paladins. They work for the Southern Gods to smite evil.
• The Remnant: After the fall of Azure City, they're reduced to just Hinjo, O-chul, Lien and Thanh. And the last one doesn't survive the later fall of the Resistance.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: The Sapphire Guard used to be exclusively nobility which had upsides, in that it put the city's aristocracy to work defending it from threats, and downsides, in that the Guard was insulated from the needs of the common citizenry and growing more arrogant and zealous. O-Chul was the first commoner inducted into the Guard, a move that had a dozen members resign in protest.
• Secret Police: Of a sort. As the Gate is top secret, the order of paladins whose primary duty is to protect that Gate is also a secret. They don't do much actual policing, though, at least not in the present day.
• Sins of Our Fathers: In the past, the Guard launched purges of those deemed threats to the Gate. One such purge targeted the bearer of the Crimson Mantle and wiped out the Goblin village he was living in. With his dying words, the bearer passed the Mantle to his acolyte, who would go on to be known as Redcloak. The same Redcloak that leads a huge hobgoblin army to stomp all over Azure City and whose sorcerer lich ally nearly wipes the Guard out.
• Took a Level in Kindness: The Sapphire Guard of the present is a far different beast than the one that was around a few decades ago. Back then, paladins like Miko were the norm and a big reason she turned out the way she did is because she was mentored by the then-commander who was a maniacal and arrogant zealot. Now, the Guard has mellowed significantly, opened their ranks to commoners, and that same overbearing zeal has made Miko decidedly unpopular.
• Vetinari Job Security: Even after the Guard had nearly provoked a war through their unsanctioned strikes at hobgoblin villages, Shojo immediately rejects the idea that they should be disbanded as their role in protecting the Gate is too important.
• Would Hurt a Child: The Sapphire Guard Paladins may be various shades of morality, but they won't spare even children in one of their crusades, as shown in Start of Darkness.

Lord Shojo

Lord Shojo

"Paranoia? I rule a city where I have to fake senility just to avoid being assassinated. I took Improved Paranoia like 5 levels ago."

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Aristocrat
Alignment: Chaotic Good

Former Sapphire Commander and sovereign of Azure City. Shojo's father, Lord Ronjo, was the first sovereign of Azure City to also serve as commander of Soon Kim's Sapphire Guard. Shojo inherited both titles, but is in no way a paladin nor member of the Sapphire Guard himself (instead, he is a 14th-level aristocrat, a NPC class). He fakes senility to keep the nobility from assassinating him while keeping them in check, and devises complex schemes to get what he wants done without ticking off the paladins and violating their code of honor.

---

• Anti-Hero: His goal is the preservation of the world, his city and his gate. He helps the heroes to make this happen, but his methods involve lies, manipulation, and subterfuge.
• Apparently Powerless Puppetmaster: He pretends to be senile so to give the impression of being easily manipulated. If one noble or other fails to convince him of something then they assume some other noble got to him first.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Averted. Despite him being an aristocrat, he is of solidly Good alignment and does a lot to help out the heroes, even if he has to skirt the law to do so, heavily implying he isinvoked Chaotic Good. Belkar even notes it when explaining why Shojo would refuse being resurrected. He's already old so had little time left anyway and he earned his rest after having to deal with everything. Why come back to face the potential of being charged?
• Armor-Piercing Question: "What are you?", aimed at Belkar to provoke some soul-searching in the halfling.
• The Chains of Commanding: A more subtle example, but it's clear he had to do a lot of deception and tricks to rule Azure City properly despite the Decadent Court while keeping the Gates safe. It's implied it wore him down and presumably why he refused to come back to life when Miko killed him. Belkar figures he's happy in the Chaotic Good heaven.invoked
• The Chessmaster: He arranged for the Order to come to Azure without arousing suspicion that he wanted them for a job.
• Consulting Mister Puppet: He regularly pretends to consult Mr. Scruffy for advice.
• Cool Old Guy: Belkar thinks so because he has paladins cleaning up after his cat. And he's certainly a pretty all right guy despite the nature of his job.
• Deadpan Snarker: Beneath the mask of senility is a dry-witted old man who bears a large burden that is made worse by insufferable nobles.
• Decoy Trial: He staged one to have the Order traverse an entire continent on foot to offer them a job. The jury is Roy's father.
• Dirty Old Man: Tells Hinjo in a bonus comic "not forget to knock some honey up" and offers some racy scrolls if there are any problems. At Shojo's funeral, Sangwaan comments that Shojo would often look at her breasts.
• Fatal Flaw: His paranoia is a two-edged sword. It serves him well in avoiding assassinations by the city's daimyos, but it also gets him killed, in a roundabout way. His elaborate scheme to get the Order to Azure City relies on deceiving the paladins about his true motives and staging a fake trial. Miko finally loses it when she learns the truth, and murders him. One thinks he would have done better to just send them an invitation, though given how Kubota spoke of Elan as foreigner, it's possible it would've been something too suspicious to try directly.
• Go Out with a Smile: His last words are said with a light smile on his face as it means the Gods considered his murder an evil act.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Miko kills him by bisecting his torso almost all the way.
• Helpful Hallucination: When he appears to Belkar; it is left unclear whether it is really Shojo's ghost, an illusion created by the Mark of Justice, or a figment of Belkar's feverish imagination.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Shojo's willful deception of the paladins gets him killed. It's confirmed in the commentary from "War and XPs" that, while Shojo is portrayed sympathetically, no-one forced him to use deception to attain his goals, and when the secret gets out, he pays the price for his actions.
• Killed Off for Real: A cleric uses resurrection on him and confirms the spell is working properly, but he stays dead. Belkar theorizes this is because Shojo is at peace in Chaotic Good heaven, that he would have likely died of old age soon anyway, and that he had no reason to return to the world just to face arrest and imprisonment. He's not coming back.
• Morality Pet: His nephew Hinjo. Shojo cares deeply for Hinjo and worries about how Hinjo will handle the pragmatic choices that may come with ruling a city with a Decadent Court. Furthermore, when Hinjo calls him out on lying to him about the senility, it's the only time we see Shojo regret his deception.
• Mr. Exposition: His initial role is to deliver a lot of backstory through the tale of the Order of the Scribble. And he knows it, too:
  Shojo: Hey! Who's the wizened old man dispensing valuable plot points here? You? Didn't think so. Now pipe down!
• Nephewism: His nephew Hinjo is his successor. Apparently, Shojo focused so much on running the city when he was younger he didn't make any time to sire an heir. He tells Hinjo not to make that mistake and offers him a few racy scrolls if he needs them.
• "Not So Different" Remark: When Shojo (or the hallucinated version of him, whatever you want to call it) speaks to Belkar during his Mark of Justice fever dream:
  Shojo: We're rather alike, you know. We're both individuals who don't fit into the preconceptions others might have about our roles in life.
  Sure, I'm a scheming benevolent dictator and you're a bloodthirsty killer, but I find that after one is dead, distinctions like that don't matter as much anymore.
• Obfuscating Insanity: He fakes senility to make others think he is easily controlled and thus avoid assassination.
• Properly Paranoid: He took the Improved Paranoia feat 5 levels ago in order to survive assassination attempts. If nothing else, it's easy to see why he makes the decisions he does.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: He believes that Soon Kim's oath is more detrimental to the Sapphire Guards' intended role than helpful. This is given further weight when it turns out that, for decades, the Sapphire Guard have been wrong about the true position of Girard's Gate.
• Spirit Advisor: When he appears to Belkar, he guides the halfling in some soul searching; it is left unclear whether it is really Shojo's ghost, an illusion created by the Mark of Justice, or a figment of Belkar's feverish imagination.
• To Be Lawful or Good: An interesting take on the topic. In essence, Shojo's character arc in the story is based on the idea that he decided Good was more important than Law and that Soon Kim's oath was pushing the Sapphire Guard into Lawful Stupid territory. So he secretly hires the Order of the Stick to do what the oathbound paladins under him cannot. This is helped by the fact that he has always been, as far as we know, on the opposite side of the Ethical axis to Law. In an unusual play with the trope, the downside of this is shown when his deceptions run him afoul of Hinjo and Miko, the latter of whom kills Shojo for this.
  Shojo: I don't have the luxury of putting Soon Kim's obsolete morality ahead of the safety of this city. It's all well and good for you paladins to stick to your convictions, but if I make a mistake, half a million citizens pay for it.
• Unreliable Expositor: An apparently unwitting example; it's become increasingly clear as the strip has progressed that the information he gives the Order about the Snarl is at the very least heavily flawed and incomplete, if not outright inaccurate.

Miko Miyazaki

Miko Miyazaki

"By the Twelve Gods and in the name of Lord Shojo, I demand to know: Who removed the tag from this mattress?!?"

Race: Human
Gender: Female
Class: Monk/Paladin
Alignment: Lawful Good

A dutiful and powerful paladin of the Sapphire Guard whose conviction is, perhaps, too great. Reared in a monastery, she'd taken a few levels of monk before becoming a paladin.

---

• The Ace: She might be too blind to think straight, but she is the most powerful physical fighter yet seen, capable of taking down the entire Order of the Stick with only Windstriker at her side. Even Fallen, she's stronger than Hinjo, who's a solid paladin in his own right.
• Action Girl:
  • The most powerful (living) paladin of the Sapphire Guard. She defeats the entire Order (albeit without Durkon, and Roy doesn't have a sword) twice, with only her horse as backup. She singlehandedly defeats Redcloak, who would have died without Xykon's intervention — Redcloak, who curb-stomped Hinjo, the second-or-third most powerful paladin in the Sapphire Guard, and according to Durkon, could have done the same to Elan even when low on spells. And even without her paladin powers, she manages to put up a good fight against Roy and later nearly kills Hinjo. She once decapitates Jirix with a kick and kills a second goblin mook in the process.
  • In the O-Chul backstory, she beats O-Chul in a hand-to-hand fight and casually snaps the neck of her recently impeached commander when he breaks the rules of an honorable duel by attacking a third party. Keep in mind that at that time, she was sixteen — and at that point, she wasn't even trained as a paladin yet.
• Alliterative Name: Miko Miyazaki.
• Ambiguous Situation: Her ultimate position in the afterlife is left deliberately unclear. She undeniably lost the favor of the Twelve Gods, she isn't seen among the other Azure City residents in Heaven, and Soon's last words for her suggest that she isn't going to the same place as her fellow paladins or her mount. Nonetheless, whether this means she stopped being Lawful Good, and if so, where she ended up on the spectrum afterward, is never fully elaborated on, and Burlew has remained largely mum on the subject. The closest thing to an answer is a piece of Kickstarter backer art that showed her judgment, with the Bureaucratic Devas carting over whole filing cabinets of paperwork from just the past week.
• Anti-Hero: She's willing to kill evil beings in cold blood, but only evil beings. Her ability to define evil beings, on the other hand, is somewhat... iffy.
• Anti-Villain: After she goes insane, she kills Shojo in a fit of knight-templarism.
• Believing Their Own Lies: One of Miko's critical flaws is she invents justifications for her actions, and refuses to contemplate for a single second that they might simply be invention. This is, predictably, what causes her Fall; she would rather kill the defenseless Shojo rather than accept even for a moment that she's fallible.
  Lord Shojo: [after Miko is stripped of being a paladin by the gods] It appears... not everyone... agrees with your... analysis.
• Big Damn Heroes: Snaps the neck of Gin-Jun, saving O-Chul's life.
• Black-and-White Insanity: Miko is built on this trope, growing increasingly delusional over the course of the story arc. As her insanity increases, it changes her from a mere Knight Templar into a total Windmill Crusader — handwaving even the fact that the Gods have stripped her of her paladin powers.
• Broken Bird: Discovering her liege lord (and adoptive father as revealed in "How the Paladin Got His Scar") was faking senility and working behind the paladins' backs and then losing her paladinhood hit her really hard.
• Broken Pedestal: Miko's pedestal for Shojo breaks when she discovers he's faking his senility. She reacts... violently.
• Brought Down to Badass: Losing her paladinhood doesn't seem to affect her combat ability too much. The biggest hit she takes is no longer being able to summon Windstriker.
• Character Development: Miko's arc over the course of the series is mostly a form of negative character development: over the course of the story, she goes from a socially-inept and zealous but well-meaning Unscrupulous Hero to an unstable murderer driven by sunk cost and a desperation to not have been wrong. While she fails at her redemption in her dying moment of becoming a paladin again (and having it explained to her in crystal-clear terms by the spirit of the founder of her order why she failed... that she couldn't admit she was in the wrong)... she does compromise for the first and last time in her life that at least she'll be reunited with her paladin steed in the spirit world.
• The Chosen One: A recurring claim of hers. She thinks that the gods have set aside a special destiny for her, and every step on that path, however circuitous, is in some way a fulfillment of it. This isn't the case — it's more of a coping mechanism for her troubled upbringing, lack of a support structure, and increasingly miserable straits, bolstered by an albeit well-founded arrogance.
• Combat Pragmatist: One of the first indications of her stretching of the code is that Miko is very willing to play dirty in a fight. In both her battles with the Order, she goes for an ambush and a surprise round, her "honorable challenge" to the ogres turns out to be a ploy to wipe out as many as possible with area-of-effect spells, and when in the midst of fighting, she tends to throw as many assets as possible at her opponents, including using her horse as a secondary combatant. After Falling, this gets taken to a particularly nasty extreme in her Curb-Stomp Battle with Hinjo, where, upon forcing him to the ground with repeated attacks and disarming him, she just keeps hitting him.
• Comically Missing the Point: In "Dirt Farm": "The proper term is 'smite evil'..."
  Roy Greenhilt: It's like she has that monk class ability that lets you jump as far as you want, only to her, it applies to conclusions.
• The Comically Serious: She's serious as a heart attack about everything, even mattress tags.
• Deadpan Snarker: Her sense of humor, when it manifests, runs very dry. Ironically, she's also Sarcasm-Blind.
  Miko: A paladin never compromises.
  Roy: Does a paladin ever remove the stick from their ass?
  Miko: No. It's a class feature.
• Death by Irony: She bisected Lord Shojo and later dies of the same cause. And she did it trying to earn the favor of her gods and strike a blow against evil, when in one fell swoop she took the forces of good from the closest they've ever come to destroying the main antagonists of the comic for keeps to putting the bad guys in charge of her city and ensured that she would never live long enough to regain her good standing. Additionally, the thing that set her on her path was investigating the Order under accusations that they had destroyed a Gate—the very thing she would ultimately do herself, to more lethal results.
• Death Equals Redemption: Defied. While she was specifically trying to gain redemption to be restored to the paladin class, in her dying moments, Soon's spirit explains why and how she failed at this, specifically saying that it does not grant her redemption because redemption requires she acknowledge she was wrong and work to atone.
• Deconstruction: Miko is intended as a commentary and deadpan parody on people who playinvoked Lawful Good characters as Lawful Zealous. This becomes especially clear when she's contrasted against other Lawful Good characters in the comic, such as Hinjo and Roy.
• De-power: Her immediate punishment for killing Lord Shojo is losing her status as a paladin and its associated bonuses.
• Despair Event Horizon: When Soon Kim tells her that she hasn't earned redemption, even after her Heroic Sacrifice. Just look at her face.
• Detect Evil: Tries and fails to detect any evil in the Order. Belkar, who is evil, blocks the ability with a lead sheet, and sues her for it.
• Determinator: Never ever gives up in her eternal quest to smite evil (or rather, whoever she considers to be evil).
• Dramatically Missing the Point: "Fallsville, Population: 1". After losing her paladinhood for cold-bloodedly murdering her liege lord, instead of considering that this may have been an incorrect thing to do, she assumes that, somehow, the gods are doing this to test her faith.
• Dual Wielding: A dai-sho (katana and wakizashi). Although she loses the latter later on.
• Egocentrically Religious: She truly believes that the gods have a special purpose for her.
• Fallen Hero: Literally, as she eventually loses her paladin powers. Played with it at the same time, as she never turns to evil. She keeps trying (and failing) to determine what's right.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Bisection.
• Famous-Named Foreigner: Hayao Miyazaki.
• Fatal Flaw: Miko's pride is by far her biggest flaw, as it keeps her from questioning her actions or acknowledging the idea that she might be wrong about some rather important things.
• Flanderization: Her jumping to conclusions. While her initial fight with the Order is arguably an example of this, and there are a couple of early gags of her Comically Missing the Point, it wasn't presented as an especially dominant trait during her initial extended period in the comic (strip #s 199-298), never cited as one of the reasons why the Order hated her so much during this period. Neither the phrase "jumping to conclusions" nor anything like it is ever even mentioned in connection to her during this period. When she returns to the comic (after an absence of 80 strips), she's jumping to wrong conclusions all the time, always in ways that seriously, disastrously affects the plot. From then on, it's the only way she affects the plot. This now dominant trait of hers is Lampshaded by Roy by implying that this has always been so typical of her. A cut strip, restored in War and XPs, seems to have been meant to ease in the idea somewhat, revealing that the outcome of the trial had left her morally shaken and constantly looking for signs of the Order's guilt, to the point of borderline apophenia.
• Foil: O-Chul; Miko was created from the ground up to be the absolute wrong way to play a Paladin, while O-Chul was described by the Giant as "everything right about the paladin".
• Freudian Excuse:
  • Reading between the lines suggests that Miko's parents may have been murdered in Azure City's extremely nasty noble power games (she reveals she was noble-born, but orphaned in an early strip). Given that There Are No Therapists, and lacking any information on whether Miko's demonstrated lack of friends is her own fault or not (did she have a swelled head to start, or was she still traumatized by her life's events and rejected by her peers due to any issues that derived from this, causing her to double down on her devotion to her gods?), and the fact that her own organization dealt with her issues by constantly sending her far away, and Miko's actions start to make a lot more sense. Even her Flanderization makes sense in this assessment, in that she encounters the Order, who are Good, but not in a way her deeply rigid idea of Good could understand, and the fallout from this encounter and the fact that life seems to support them instead of smite them unhinges her even further.
  • "How the Paladin Got His Scar" furthers this interpretation by revealing that at the time she was training as a paladin, the Sapphire Guard was a much nastier organization that considered Knight Templar practices to be a matter of course, and that her commander and master, Gin-Jun, was, if anything, even worse than her. Given that the Guard decided to send her away so frequently, she would also have missed much of Hinjo and O-Chul's Internal Reformist efforts. Additionally, Miko killed Gin-Jun when he went mad and was excommunicated from the order, which saved the lives of O-Chul and Zhou, something O-Chul tentatively approved of. The narrative all but states that this was the exact same logic under which she acted with regards to Lord Shojo.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Miko's zealotry and social ineptitude have made her a pariah in the Sapphire Guard, including with her own adopted cousin Hinjo. The closest anyone comes to having a positive opinion of her is O-Chul, who credits her as the Guard's finest warrior. And after she kills Shojo and becomes a Fallen paladin, no one has anything kind to say of her.
  Hinjo: Let's just say there's a reason Miko gets picked for long missions. In foreign countries. Which keep her away from home for months at a time.
• Good Is Not Nice: She is wholly committed to the goal of smiting evil and protecting her home... and she is not nice.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: She gets torn in half by the explosion of the Sapphire. Ouuuch. Unsurprisingly, she dies not long afterward.
• Hated by All: At the time of her death, it's hard to name a person she interacted with who didn't dislike her at bare minimum. The forces of evil considered her a loathsome enemy, the Sapphire Guard and Order of the Stick considered her a deranged traitor (and before that, they considered her an unpleasant Jerkass), the various lesser criminals and villains actively cheered on her Fall... even O-Chul, whenever he recalls her, cites Never Speak Ill of the Dead and then doesn't elaborate further. In fact, the full list seems to consist of Soon (who considered her a failure as a paladin, but only pitied her for it rather than hating her), the Monster in the Darkness (who doesn't really have it in him to hate anyone), Xykon (who gives her the same nothing-personal treatment as all his erstwhile nemeses), and Windstriker (who is a horse).
• Healing Hands: As a paladin, this is one of her skills. Belkar jokes that Roy would love to have her use that skill on him.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: She does try to become a paladin again after falling, but her incomplete realization of what it would mean to do so means that she gets nowhere with it, only continuing her current trajectory rather than trying to course-correct and reconsider herself. When she hears Soon's deathbed lecture, she does accept his reasoning without protest, but by that point, she's bleeding out and can only manage a few Ironic Last Words. Soon muses that she might have managed it if she'd had more time, but he doesn't know for sure. Rich himself claims that he thinks Miko's tragedy isn't that she was Beyond Redemption, but that her poor luck, recklessness, and lack of a support structure led to her throwing away her life before she could get a proper chance at it. It's worth noting that Vaarsuvius committed a far worse act than she did, and similarly turned down a chance to make amends for it after receiving a very immediate and obvious rebuke, and yet still managed to start turning things around when given time and a Morality Chain.
• Hero Antagonist: In the commentary, Rich wanted to know if he could pull off ainvoked Lawful Good character who is an antagonist. Miko opposes the Order and hampers their progress, but she also helps the dirt farmers without hesitation, helps to organize an evacuation of the inn when the danger appears, goes back into the inn to make sure there were no stragglers, attacked the Order as harshly as she did because her information gathering had yielded information on their evil counterparts, their genuine bad behavior (the flumphs, Belkar's actions in the barbarian guild, the weasel thrown down the troll/ogre's gullet), and certain extenuating circumstances (the crown causing its wearer to register as strongly evil). Later on, she makes life difficult for the Order again by killing Shojo — but again, she did it because she genuinely believed she was in the right to do so, thinking Shojo to be The Quisling.
• Honor Before Reason: Played with. In the battle with the ogres, she looks like she walked into the ogre camp and alerted the entire group in order to have a fair fight, but it is just an excuse to clump them all together so the spellcasters can nuke them more easily. However, when Belkar is raising havoc in Azure City dungeons, rather than call a host of troops to track him down, she let him goad her into fighting him on his terms.
• I Am X, Son of Y:
  Miko: I am Miko Miyazaki, samurai of the Sapphire Guard, loyal vassal of Lord Shojo, daughter of Eyko, and paladin of the Twelve Gods of the South.
  MitD: Neat! It must be hard to fit all that on your business cards, though.
• Informed Attractiveness: She's a stick figure, like everyone else, but Roy makes it clear that he finds her very attractive before eventually being put off by her Jerkass personality.
• Inspector Javert: For the entire Order. Borderline between Javert and Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist for Lord Shojo. She had him dead to rights, but went a bit Off the Rails in dealing with him.
• In the Hood: Her initial appearance shows her wearing a traveler's hood, until her face is revealed during her first fight with the Order. This facilitates the Samus Is a Girl of her introduction.
• I Reject Your Reality: Her conviction that she's always right escalates into outright delusion, to the point where she still thinks she's right after the Twelve Gods revoke her paladinhood.
• Ironic Last Words: After over three hundred comics of her defining trait being her utter refusal to compromise to the point of denying her own Fall, her last words are to sadly accept that she'll never be a paladin again with an "I can live with that."
• Jack of All Stats: Despite being a Dual Wielding monk/paladin (a build that requires a lot of stats to be high), she's never shown to have any obvious Dump Stats. Even her Intelligence (the one stat that none of her abilities rely on) seems to be average at worst.
• Jerkass: Whatever your opinion of her is, it can't be denied that she has quite a few sticks up her ass.
• Killed Off for Real: She's bisected, Xs for eyes, when Soon Kim's gate explodes. Tsukiko passes her over when looking for corpses to re-animate. She's not coming back, either resurrected or undead.
• The Kingslayer: Ends up murdering Lord Shojo.
• Knight of Cerebus: Her introduction is the point where the story starts getting serious about its Myth Arc.
• Knight Templar: Overzealous do-gooder that unwitting sails into antagonist territory.
• Lawful Stupid: Believes she is chosen by the Twelve Gods for... something, and therefore everything she does is right. Miko is very quick at jumping to conclusions without ever slowing down to think first.
• Loners Are Freaks: She's not exactly the most social character, she's a massive Jerkass, and she's suffering from a severe case of Black-and-White Insanity. And that was before she Fell.
• Magic Knight: As a paladin, she has both sword skills and a Holy Hand Grenade or two.
• The Millstone: Vaarsuvius's opinion of Miko. Then again, that's sometimes Vaarsuvius's opinion of anyone other than themself.
  Vaarsuvius: As the shrew has perished, we are no longer bound by the anchor that has hung around our neck for weeks! Let her death ring in a new era of freedom for the "Order of the Stick".
  [pause]
  She is, naturally, directly behind me.
  Miko: Naturally.
• Misery Builds Character:
  • Wanted to set up camp in the side of the road when there was a random high-class inn less than 100 feet away. She calls the Order decadent for wanting to sleep there.
  • Tells the new High Priest of Thor when offered a seat that standing builds character. (Of course, she also mentions that she had been riding a horse for four days.)
• Molotov Cocktail: Miko creates one out of her cloak and a bottle of dwarven brandy to escape from her forcecage.
• Moral Sociopathy: Miko does broadly understand right and wrong and try to keep to the code, but shows little in the way of empathy, and her ability to understand others is limited at best.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: She favors killing "evildoers" herself over bringing them to justice.
• My God, You Are Serious!: She lampshades how ridiculous it is that Elan's explanation (which is entirely true) for "his" actions is that his Evil Twin Nale was actually responsible.
• Mysterious Mercenary Pursuer: Miko is introduced as a hooded stranger tracking the Order before she catches up to them.
• Never My Fault: Miko is so attached to her perceived status as the Chosen One that she refuses to believe that she can make any mistake. When the gods strip her of her powers for killing Lord Shojo, she immediately decides it wasn't her own fault, but a product of a conspiracy by the Order. When she dies, the spirit of the paladin Soon tells her that her inability to admit responsibility for her deeds is one of the reasons she will die unredeemed.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Twice; first when she kills Shojo, believing him corrupt, and then again by destroying the Gate and thus any chance of victory for the paladins during the Siege of Azure City.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Redcloak points out that her lack of fear due to being a Paladin makes her just as unnatural as Xykon. Though how much of this was his actual opinion and how much was part of Xykon's plan isn't clear. Redcloak's accusation about being unnatural also applies to him as much to her, as his immunity from disease and aging is as much a divine gift as her immunity to fear.
• Obstructive Zealot: She believes the twelve Gods have a "special mission" for her and utterly and vehemently refuses to listen anyone or anything that doesn't fit her delusion. Even when the twelve gods explicitly disavow Miko by stripping her of her paladinhood and their divine favor.
• Offhand Backhand: Kills a hobgoblin mook with her bare hands without bothering to look at him.
• One-Man Army: After the events of the Weary Travelers Inn and Tavern, she takes out the entire Order (minus Durkon) off-screen when they refuse to follow her to Azure City. The Giant has written a detailed description of how the fight would have gone were it played out on-screen. Without her paladin powers, she remains a strong foe, but between losing her powers, her rapidly deteriorating mental state, and Roy being armed with his upgraded Ancestral Weapon rather than a common club she's brought down much easier even with only Hinjo to help.
• Paint It Black: In her case, Paint It Tan after her Fall, since her Sapphire Guard uniform is magical and only works for a paladin. Sabine once suggests that she would look sexy in black leather, and gets her neck snapped non-fatally for her trouble.
• The Paladin: This is her class; warrior in service to the Twelve Gods. She's also an absolutely shining example of how not to play a paladin — she's self-righteous to the extreme, completely incapable of self-reflection or admission of fault (to the point of outright self-delusion), and just a jerkass in general.
• Pet the Dog: She gets a character scene in a bonus strip where she tries to invite a couple of acquaintances to celebrate the New Year with her, but when they ask her to come with them to a bar, her Black-and-White Insanity leads her to decry it as a den of sin, which annoys the others enough to withdraw the invitation. She goes back to her quarters, where we see that she has personally prepared a nice dinner for all of them, which she ends up eating alone with her horse. It shows that even as Miko's distance from the other paladins is self-inflicted because of how judgmental and self-righteous she is, she is also deeply lonely because of it, and her holy mount is also her only friend.
• Pride: Miko is so full of herself that she will never question her actions, her judgement, or her belief that she is "special" and has a great and prestigious destiny.
  Miko Miyazaki: The gods have a plan for me, I know it! I am special, the most powerful paladin in the Sapphire Guard! They wouldn't do this to ME without a reason.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: "Let's just say there's a reason Miko gets picked for long missions. In foreign countries. Which keep her away from home for months at a time."
• Redemption Equals Death: Again, defied. Soon Kim explains that while she kept the Gate out of Evil hands, a true redemption means overcoming what caused her fall in the first place. As she did not acknowledge her own faults or work to correct them, she is denied redemption.
• Samurai: This is her social class, but not her character class. The Order expresses some confusion, though she tries to make the point very clear.
• Samus Is a Girl: The mysterious blue-cloaked, hooded figure tracking down the Order is a girl. Roy knocks off her hood in their first battle and his reaction to the revelation is "wow". He is accused of wanting to "bone" her afterwards.
• Sanity Slippage: She becomes increasingly irrational and impulsive after the Order of the Stick is brought to Azure City. After she kills Lord Shojo, she goes into extreme denial and comes up with crazy (and at times contradicting) theories about the Order of the Stick.
• Sarcasm-Blind: In the words of Shojo, "Good gods, they can teach you how to detect evil, but not sarcasm?"
• Ship Sinking: Roy had expressed interest in her, but in the end, when Miko considers the idea of dating him:
  Miko: Perhaps in the future, if you approached the prospect of a romantic relationship from this more mature perspective, I would not be so dismissive of the possibility.
  Roy: Oh. Oh, no. I wouldn't touch your skinny uptight ass with a standard-issue 10-ft pole, you overbearing self-righteous bitch.
• Sixth Ranger: She is a Guest-Star Party Member for the Order of the Stick, causing lots of group tension in the process.
• Smite Evil: One of her class abilities is extra damage to evil.
• Surrounded by Idiots: She's less than thrilled to be stuck dealing with the Order's eccentricities while escorting them to Azure City. Roy sympathizes with her.
  Miko: Truly, this journey shall be the greatest challenge to my alignment yet.
  Roy: It's like I'm watching my life, but from the outside.
• Sword and Fist: Being a monk/paladin, Miko mixes up her masterclass swordplay with kicks, stunning fists, and the occasional Neck Snap.
• Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: For Belkar, after his jailbreak. Despite working with heroes, Belkar is an evil criminal who is on the run from the law. Of course Miko has to bring him in.
• Tautological Templar: She is convinced that, being the most powerful member of the Sapphire Guard, she must have the Twelve Gods' favor. Therefore, anything she does is right by definition and anything that happens to her including falling from paladinhood is part of the gods' greater plan for her. Later goes into Insane Troll Logic, when Miko determines that because the gods could easily stop her from breaking out of prison but don't, they clearly want her to do so.
• Together in Death: She is granted the small mercy that she is rejoined with her beloved paladin steed in the spirit world after she lost the ability to summon him when she lost her paladinhood.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: Early on, she showed some clever strategy in defeating a band of ogres. She never does anything that clever again, bar maybe escaping Xykon's forcecage. Instead, the Flanderization of her jumping to conclusions, Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, Unwitting Instigator of Doom, etc. Then again, Sanity Slippage is likely a factor.
• Too Much Alike: One comic explicitly points out that at first, her and Roy should have a lot of common ground: they're both experienced warriors, they're both Lawful Good but often go the Pragmatic Hero route in the execution of that, and they share a number of key flaws (arrogance, disdain for those around them). However, beyond surface-level physical attraction, they can't stand each other.
• Tragic Hero: She tries to do what's right, but her self-awareness evaporates in the face of her paranoia and zealotry. They lead directly to her death, and her inability to even acknowledge her flaws means she cannot find redemption there.
• Trauma Conga Line: In the span of a couple days she learned of an impending attack on her homeland, learned that her adoptive father had been lying to her her entire life, executed him for treason, learned he was innocent of said treason, lost her powers, lost her homeland, was thrown in prison, and finally died in disgrace.
• Try to Fit That on a Business Card: Lampshaded when she gives her I Am X, Son of Y speech.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Just as the ghost of Soon Kim is about to finish off Xykon, Miko comes in and destroys the gate, allowing Xykon and Redcloak to escape.
• Warrior Monk: Because she was reared in a monastery, she has a few levels of Monk.
• What the Hell, Hero?: She gets hit by several of these speeches. By Roy, and also Redcloak, in a case of a "The Reason You Suck" Speech. Apparently she gets it a lot. (You'd think she'd take a hint.)
• Windmill Crusader: Her quest to smite evil takes strange turns.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: A minor example, but being the most powerful paladin in the Sapphire Guard clearly went to her head, disconnecting her from reality. Always being far away from Azure City didn't help.

• You Need to Get Laid: Roy says she wouldn't be so uptight if she were regularly receiving "treasure type O".

Hinjo

Hinjo

"Yeah, well, you probably shouldn't have discussed how you're going to beat the system in front of the guy charged with upholding the system. I still get to make Listen checks when I'm three feet away, you know."

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Paladin
Alignment: Lawful Good

Nephew and sole heir of Lord Shojo, and therefore the new Sapphire Commander and sovereign of Azure-City-in-Exile. After his uncle's death and Redcloak's conquest of Azure City, he and most of the city's civilian population have fled into exile, and have settled in an abandoned Elven settlement on the Western Continent. He hopes to one day reclaim his home, and leads the remnants of the Sapphire Guard with that goal in mind. A powerful paladin, he is considerably more easygoing and personable than Miko and prefers mounted front-line combat with his wolf, Argent.

---

• Ambadassador: He's an ambassador before he joins the Sapphire Guard, which is perhaps a reason why he does far better at navigating the world of political scheming and is more affable than most of his fellow paladins.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: He refuses to retreat from Azure City after it has been overrun by hobgoblins, but is convinced by the Order.
• Berserk Button: "NOBODY HURTS MY DOG!!!"
• Can't Catch Up: While he stays back to oversee the refugee fleet, Lien and O-Chul have leveled up.
• Celibate Hero: He doesn't seem to have much interest in the dating scene, as seen in two retail-only strips where Shojo and Elan attempt to try and set him up with a woman. During the former's conversation, Shojo remarks that Hinjo should put forth the effort: After all, Shojo had to adopt Hinjo. He then offers some "racy" scrolls if he wants any "magical assistance" in the matter.
• Deadpan Snarker: Hinjo tries to stay positive.
  Lien: Lord Hinjo!! You're-you're alive!
  Hinjo: As are you, thank the Twelve Gods. I guess that doubles the current resources of the Sapphire Guard.
• Foil: To Miko. Commentary in the books remarks that Hinjo's presence contrasts with Miko's when Shojo is revealed to be deceiving the paladins. Hinjo's response is of someone "who believes in the law", while Miko's is someone who "believes herself above the law." They're also foils in combat, as he's a Constitution-focused tank while she's a damage-dealing Glass Cannon.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: While this mostly isn't too big a problem for him, he does occasionally suffer from this trope.
  • Before the Battle of Azure City, he gives Belkar a special bit of leniency due to Belkar blocking Miko's attempt to escape after killing Shojo. Hinjo thinks that Belkar did this because it was the right thing to do even though Belkar was helpless to defend himself and certain to be killed by Miko due to the Mark of Justice. He doesn't realize that Belkar would do it, even at the cost of his own life, just to spite Miko.
    Hinjo: When Miko was charging at you, swords drawn, you stood there and blocked her path, even though you were almost certainly going to be cut down. That says to me that your time with the Mark has taught you something about yourself. That maybe you're a better person than before it was put on you.
    Belkar: I am so confused right now.
    Roy: He's doing it because he thinks you've learned your lesson, and with my guidance, you'll stop resorting to violence to solve your problems.
    Belkar: Ohhh, I get it. [waits until Hinjo walks away] So he's doing it because he doesn't really know me at all then.
  • During the Battle of Azure City, he believes that sufficient losses will force the hobgoblins to retreat rather than risk losing too many soldiers, completely oblivious about how villains like Xykon (and, at that point, Redcloak, who hasn't overcome his hatred for hobgoblins yet), are willing to spend and even waste lives as long as it gets them what they want. Indeed, Redcloak's response is to simply send in clerics to turn the dead hobgoblins into zombies and use them as a second wave against the outnumbered and exhausted Azurites.
  • In "How the Paladin Got His Scar", a young Hinjo's attempts at diplomacy with the hobgoblins falls completely flat, and almost fails entirely because he tries approaching with high-minded thoughts about peace and preventing mass death because it's the right thing to do. O-Chul, of all people, has to come to his rescue by instead framing the actions as a sort of pragmatic vilainy on the part of Azure City, a selfish motive which the hobgoblin leaders of the time could understand.
• Guile Hero: Hinjo seems to be both intelligent and wise. When he overhears Shojo admit that he's lying to the Paladins, he puts all the pieces together and isn't fooled by Shojo's back-pedaling. Later, he realizes Elan is lying about Kubota's death, but he has Lien search for the body and he doesn't arrest Elan because he lacks evidence. Earlier in the same arc, he promotes Daigo and Kazumi Kato to nobles. It is implied that one of the reasons he did this was because none of the other nobles were trustworthy. While not downright devious, he will bend the rules so that he can accomplish his goals.
• Healing Hands: "Lay on Hands" is a paladin power.
• Hero of Another Story: Cut-aways to him after the "Don't Split Up the Party" arc imply that he is having plenty of adventures of his own in the new home for the refugees of Azure City, fighting giant ant-like monsters.
• Honor Before Reason: Not like Miko, but Hinjo is still a stickler for the rules, and his uncle states in a bonus comic that he hopes Hinjo will grow out of this mindset by the time he takes command of Azure City.
  Shojo: Hinjo has grown up into a good, honorable man — which unfortunately makes him singularly unsuited to the task of governing Azure City and its territories. I'm not worried, though. Give him another ten years of instruction, and his naïve idealism will fall like kobolds before a high-level fighter.
• In Its Hour of Need: Refuses to leave Azure City during Xykon's siege even after the battle is clearly lost, saying he must be there for the city in its hour of need. The Order points out he was there for the city's "hour of need" when the fight started, and that there's nothing to be gained by going down fighting a battle that he can't win.
• Innocent Innuendo: He never, ever notices the humor involved in his junk.
• Internal Reformist: Much like O-Chul, his first encounters with the Sapphire Guard during the events of "How the Paladin Got His Scar" cause him to decide it's desperately in need of reform, and that he should get a perspective from inside the unit to best know how to command it in the future. In the same story, he also shows an interest in reforming the inequities of Azure City's social structure.
• Magic Knight: Due to being a paladin, he has both fighting and magic skills.
• The Men First: He cares very deeply for his people, spending all of his time helping them in their exile.
• Missing Mom: He and his lord once mention Hinjo's mother, who was Shojo's sister. The dialogue makes it clear she is departed from this world.
• Modest Royalty: After becoming the ruler of Azure City, he wears the same paladin armor he did before he ruled. Perhaps Justified by the fact that he becomes Lord very soon before his city comes under siege and then he is forced to evacuate his city and rule on a ship, so he has good reason to keep his armor on.
• Mr. Exposition: From his very introduction, he starts conveying information to the Order (and thus the audience) about Azure City and the Sapphire Guard — to the point Miko admonishes him for fraternizing with prisoners. The Kato's marriage is an opportunity for him to recap many events following a Time Skip (and makes Elan cry from the beautifully weaved plot exposition).
• Nephewism: He is Lord Shojo's heir, with Hinjo's mother being Shojo's sister. It's not known what happened to his parents, though given the cutthroat political climate of Azure City, it's likely "accidents" fell upon them. And as noted above, Shojo was too busy running the place (which included increased paranoia and an eventual front of senility) to have a kid, so he dotes on Hinjo instead.
• Nice Guy: He's always friendly and polite and when the Order is being taken to their trial, he tells them some funny stories. After Miko kills Shojo, he tries to offer her a second chance to redeem herself despite her just killing his only known living relative.
• Odd Friendship: He sorta forms this with Elan, given how Elan was the one mainly communicating with him of the Order.
• Only Sane Man: When dealing with his uncle's fake senility, Kubota's scheming, the zealousness of Miko and the antics of the Order, he has an aura of I'm-Not-Going-to-Tolerate-This-Nonsense.
• The Paladin: A holy warrior that is far more sane than Miko.
• Pragmatic Hero: Hinjo is under no delusions. He knows that the nobles will try to assassinate him the first moment they are able. When he discovers Shojo's lies, his first order of business is to bring him in for trial. He stands in direct contrast to Miko who acts on impulse to the discovery. He also carries silver and cold-iron katanas for dealing with any planar trouble.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: He can't condone his uncle's backroom dealing but nevertheless recognizes that the Gates must be protected.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: He is front and center for the Siege of Azure City and the later settling of the refugees.
• Samurai: Like Miko, but he's closer to a Warrior Prince than a Warrior Monk.
• Sheltered Aristocrat: In his younger days, he didn't see much of the city or its troubles. Un-sheltering himself was the main reason he became a paladin in the first place.
• Smite Evil: His duty and power as a paladin.
• Supporting Leader: He's the leader of the forces opposing Xykon, but the Order are the main characters and heroes of the story.
• Take Up My Sword: After Shojo's death, he takes over Azure City. Unfortunately, not everyone is happy about it.
• Took a Level in Badass: In his earliest chronological appearance during O-Chul's prequel comic, he has training in how to fight but he's so inexperienced that O-Chul explains Hinjo would actually be a liability in combat, and thus require another member of the extremely small group to protect him. By the time of the main comic, Hinjo is a capable warrior and leader.
• Unfit for Greatness: Halfway through War and XPs, he ends up in the unenviable position of having to replace Shojo in the role of Lord of Azure City and Miko in the role of Sapphire Guard ace. Though he's generally a better person than either of them, he struggles to fill their roles. As a leader, he fails to keep Azure City's nobility under control, to the point that they were sending assassins after him within minutes of him getting the job, and his honorable attitude means that he has to be talked out of doing something stupid multiple times. As a warrior, the gap between him and Miko is shown to be significant enough that he couldn't beat her while she was fallen, badly injured, missing one sword, and in the midst of a psychotic break, and this record has carried into multiple other fights (most notably, being nearly killed in one shot by Redcloak, who Miko soundly trounced). Commentary points out that while Hinjo is well-meaning and far from stupid or talentless, he's way out of his depth, which was necessary for the Order to take the central role in the arc that they do. A chapter in "Good Deeds Gone Unpunished" has Kazumi and Daigo muse that he actually seems to be happier in his newfound role as Lord of the government-in-exile, which is a much smaller responsibility.
• Who's on First?: A flashback reveals he got tied up in this when trying to teach Elan Go. It lasted about an hour and a half, though Elan eventually got it. At some point, however, he lost patience and tried to get Elan to actually go, which led to another twenty-five minutes of thus.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Shojo believes Hinjo to be too honorable and idealistic to be an effective leader in regards to politicking, though he figures that Hinjo will grow out of it after a while.
• The Wise Prince: Hinjo knew that his paladins probably couldn't take on Xykon, but gave them the chance anyways, knowing that Soon's spirit would bring them back for the final battle. He also refuses to execute Shojo and wants to bring him to the courts first. When Miko murders Shojo in anger and loses her paladinhood, he tries to talk her into surrendering despite his anger. When she attacks him anyways, he arrests her when she is knocked out instead of executing her on the spot. Later on, he realizes that his uncle was right about the oath the paladins took to not interfere with the gate. He is unable to help the Order directly in their quest but he gives them his support and the resources to proceed. During the battle for Azure City, he is also shown to be effective at placing his troops.

O-Chul

O-Chul

"Your life is much like this Go board, my friend. You have allowed yourself to be surrounded by enemy pieces — people who wish to bend you to their will, to remove your unique voice from the board and replace it with one of... of mindless subservience.
But as you correctly point out, you are still holding on two empty places in the center.
They are your heart, and your mind. They are the places that make you what you really are."

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Fighter/Paladin
Alignment: Lawful Good

A high-ranking and incredibly tough paladin of the Sapphire Guard, O-Chul was taken as a prisoner of war after the fall of Azure City.

---

• Accidental Truth: O-Chul's lies on how Girard's gate is protected were actually pretty spot-on. An elaborate maze (in the form of the canyon and Pyramid, which are made more elaborate and confusing by the illusions of the Draketooth clan) and by answering the riddles (breaking through the Lotus-Eater Machine and recognizing the double bluff) can one reach the center indeed.
• Adopt the Dog: His friendship with the Monster in the Darkness. Also see the quote.
• And I Must Scream: He spends an unspecified amount of time paralysed by Xykon, while his fellow paladins killed themselves around him, Xykon took the gate, and Miko destroyed the gate when they were winning. Then he was blown out a window and taken to a tea party when he needed to be escaping.
• …And That Little Girl Was Me: In "How the Paladin Got His Scar", he tells Saha Kapoor a story about a sergeant who, after catching a pair of bandits, took their borderline-feral child to his sister and with her help reared him to be a good person. Saha initially assumes that O-Chul was the sergeant in that story, and is astounded when he tells her that he was the child.
• The Atoner: His backstory reveals that he used to be a bandit child who was given a second chance.
• Badass in Distress: He's put in a tank with an acid-breathing shark. It doesn't go well for the shark.
• Bad Liar: Thanks to his Cannot Tell a Lie personality.^note Paladins naturally have a high Charisma, but a) O-Chul started out as a fighter and thus Charisma was a Dump Stat, and b) it's unlikely someone like O-Chul would put any skill points into Bluff.
  Redcloak: After all this time... I have finally found the very WORST liar in the entire world.
• Bald Head of Toughness: Completely bald and a Made of Iron Determinator, having endured horrible torture. This is reflected in his Constitution stat being in the mid-20s when the average human is somewhere around 10.
• Brass Balls: "+5 Holy Cojones", as stated by resident Big Bad Xykon. He was genuinely surprised that O-Chul was going to fight him wearing nothing but his prisoner loincloth and wielding nothing but his paladin might.
• Breakout Character: He started as just a high-ranking paladin, but the increased exposure he got over the Occupied Azure City arc and the popularity he gained in that time earned him his own prequel book.
• Celibate Hero: Stated he had no desire to start a family in his prequel story.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Even without armor and in poor health, he can punch his way out of an acid shark tank. Xykon thinks his high constitution comes from training and spending xp on his character build instead of buffs.
  Xykon: Hell, the idiot paladin understands better than you do. 'Cause he got every one of those hit points I burned off of him the hard way: he earned them.
• Chekhov's Skill: From the prequels to the main comic — while he has long renounced his bandit upbringing, those skills still come in handy when he picks Xykon's pocket to steal his phylactery.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: At the hands of Team Evil for fun and information. (And as a stalling tactic.)
• The Comically Serious: Being unfailingly noble, heroic and dignified in everything he does often bounces off siller characters, especially the MITD ("No, friend, I think that earth-shattering sound did not originate in your bowels, for once."). Unlike most examples of this trope, he's aware of it and based on his "Paladin Offs" with Lien, is actively leaning into it.
• Cool Horse: Averted, likely due to his levels in fighter. He lacks a Paladin Mount, which disappoints Lien who hoped he had merely been saving it for a dramatic moment.
• Determinator:
  • O-Chul manages to get a list of all (or at least most) of Xykon's spells. When asked how, he simply replies "One saving throw at a time." His Constitution score is in the mid-twenties. For reference, the average human has a score of ten and increases are not linear.
    Xykon: He's like the Energizer Bunny, a Rollex watch, and Jackie Chan mixed together!
  • The prequel story "How the Paladin Got His Scar" starts with O-Chul holding the line completely alone against a hobgoblin raiding party long after all his men are dead. A few dozen hobgoblins end up retreating because they just can't break him. When he gives his report, he doesn't see this event as any more important than any other fact of the battle.
    Miko: Stay down!
    O-Chul: I don't... know how.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: He plays Go and other games with the Monster in the Darkness.
• Does Not Like Spam:
  O-Chul: Well, I was going to express a dislike of squid, but I guess babies top my list as well.
• The Dog Bites Back: After months of torture, he nearly kills Redcloak, and puts out his right eye.
• Dramatic Necklace Removal: With Redcloak's holy symbol; catching the chain on his impromtu spear and pulling it off can't be anything but dramatic.
• Dump Stat: Charisma — he started as a fighter. This comes back to bite him when he tries to dupe Redcloak.
• Exact Words: When questioned about the destruction of Soon's Gate, he says he made the decision to destroy the gate and it was his blade that did the deed. Both are true, but O-Chul made that decision prior to Soon's ghost leading a counterattack that neutralized Xykon as a threat, and the gate was needlessly destroyed by Miko who took O-Chul's sword.
• Exposed to the Elements: Discussed with Lien while they are in a blizzard at the North Pole, since they are both wearing their modest but normal outfits. As it turns out, O-Chul purchased a magic cloak that, among other things, confers immunity to frigid environmental temperatures.
• A Father to His Men: Lien recalls that he insisted on walking her home after she was knocked out during training. He also apologizes when he has to leave his men to destroy the gate. His prequel story, where he mentors the cowardly Zhou Bo, shows that this characteristic was already in place long before the series.
• Foil: Miko; O-Chul was described by the Giant as "everything right about the paladin", while Miko was deliberately designed to be everything a Paladin shouldn't be.
• Genius Bruiser: He has a mind for the military, and that's not all. Through months of captivity and torture, he created a running list of Xykon's spells by surviving them one at a time. He also teaches Go and espouses a philosophy centered on it to a monster who is kind of a moron. Based on the ingenuity and patience he displays in "How the Paladin Got His Scar", it's obvious his Intelligence and Wisdom scores are pretty solid, if not better than, say, Roy's.
• Go Through Me: When asked why can't he just leave a hopeless cause to save his own life in "How the Paladin Got His Scar", his response is:
  O-Chul: A lot of people are going to get hurt tomorrow. All we can do is stand in the way of that and say, "Not them. Me. If you need to hurt someone, hurt me."
• Guile Hero: Extremely adaptable. When captured, O-Chul takes advantage of the situation to get Xykon's spell list, nudge the Monster in the Darkness away from evil a bit, and when released, is in position to try to break Xykon's phylactery (but is stopped at the last second). Also capable of using Exact Words when necessary, though usually not for manipulative reasons. In his origin story, he prevents a war from breaking out between Azure City and the hobgoblins by challenging Gin-Jun to a (now outlawed) honor duel, and then using the opportunity to expose the commander's madness to his men and turn them against him.
• Happily Adopted: He tells of a story where a Sergeant sent the child of two robbers to his sister for a better life. In a Plot Twist, he was the robbers' child, who later had a well-adjusted life that led him to become a better person.
• Healing Hands: A standard paladin ability. He uses it regularly on himself to heal the wounds inflicted by Redcloak's torture regimen.
• Heroic Willpower: He is able to withstand months of torture at the hands of Team Evil without ever betraying his principles or breaking. O-Chul's reputation for this trope becomes a local legend among the rest of the Azure City prisoners.
• Holier Than Thou: Played for laughs with Lien, when she tries a "Paladin off" with him. He always comes up on top, but both are never serious about it.
• Honor Before Reason: When he learns that the Sapphire Guard has summoned a Celestial to help them attack the hobgoblin fort, his plan is reduced to "fight alongside the hobgoblins because the paladins are in the wrong." Zhou Bo calls him on how this won't accomplish anything beyond O-Chul getting himself killed to avoid a guilty conscience.
• Humble Hero: In "How the Paladin Got His Scar", he doesn't see anything special about holding the line against a hobgoblin raiding party by himself. He later puts himself into the line of fire repeatedly, saves two civilizations from a bloody war, and every time he describes it as casually as if he were deciding on what pants to wear.
  General Nhek: He's always like this. Last time I promoted him, he apologized to me.
  O-Chul: I still live with the burden of having failed to properly fulfill the duties of a lieutenant.
• I Gave My Word: He thinks it's obvious that Soon Kim kept his oath. After all, he's a paladin and it's the same thing he himself would do.
• Improvised Weapon: He can and will use anything, from a broken cage bar to bare fists, highly effectively and often powered-up with Smite Evil.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: When he first learned the secret of the Sapphire Guard, he and Hinjo had a few good drinks.
• Internal Reformist: He joined the Sapphire Guard specifically so he could be this. When O-Chul first encountered the Sapphire Guard, it was a force staffed solely by elitist nobles, many of whom were also zealots with warped priorities, and who didn't bother to consider the natural repercussions for their actions. Upon learning that the Guard could not be dismissed, O-Chul joined it in hopes of making it less extreme and out of touch.
• Interrogated for Nothing: Redcloak suspected he was telling the truth even before their session on the tower, but wanted to keep Xykon in the city so the hobgoblins could solidify their position.
• Irony: A large part of the reason Redcloak tortured him was as revenge for what the Sapphire Guard did to Redcloak's village. What Redcloak doesn't realize is that O-Chul is the primary reason that the Sapphire Guard is not like that any more. When he witnessed them doing such things he asked for them to be disbanded at the first opportunity, and when told that wasn't an option he joined them as an Internal Reformist.
• Knight in Shining Armor: All the Sapphire Guards are, but O-Chul even more so.invoked The Giant describes him as "everything right about the paladin". He was already one in all but name in his prequel story, when he was just a regular captain in the army with only fighter levels. He is honest and humble, stern but compassionate, courageous in the face of overwhelming odds, but above all else, committed to protecting the lives of everyone, human or hobgoblin.
• Literal-Minded: Not unreasonably so, but he tends to take metaphors at face value.
  Belkar: [to Lien] Ooo, still salty, huh?
  O-Chul: She always smells like that, it's the ocean air.
• Made of Iron: He survives a Castle-Shattering Kaboom, a tank of acid with a shark in it (multiple times, it's implied), being trapped in a cage filled with rabid dire wallabies, a staring contest with a basilisk (which he won, technically; he never blinked), along with months of torture. Some would argue that he borders on Implacable Man. He has a Constitution score in the mid-twenties.^note For those unfamiliar with the system: The average Constitution (health) score is ten. 18 is the normal 1st level human maximum. With normal rules and without magic items, assuming max roll at character creation you'll need to be level 8 to reach constitution score of 20, level 16 to reach score 22 and level 20 to reach score 25. All this while sacrificing all the other abilities. This means he probably has the Hit Points of an average character twice his level. Also, paladins are traditionally loaded down with class features and abilities that make them rather hard to kill — but O-Chul has mostly fighter levels. Hinjo even remarks that he is the "toughest" Sapphire guardsman. Statistically, he's on par with a dragon the size of a barn, and it shows.

• Metaphorically True: He engages in some very specific wordplay when Hinjo asks him if he destroyed the Sapphire Gate because he would Never Speak Ill of the Dead. He openly admits he's doing this.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Born to a bandit couple and hated by their victims after they were killed/arrested, O-Chul was instead adopted by the man who brought down his parents to be raised with love and dignity. This history informs most of his actions and his character.
• Never Speak Ill of the Dead: While his opinion of Miko is low, he doesn't speak ill of her after a stupid act causes a tragedy.
• Not a Game: He explains to Haley, in detail, how full-scale war isn't like a dungeon.
• Odd Friendship: He and the Monster in the Darkness are quite friendly. He refers to the Monster as "Monster-san". The Monster calls him Mr. Stiffly.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Attempting to destroy Soon's Gate has bitten him in the ass.
• One-Man Army: "How the Paladin Got His Scar" starts with a hobgoblin force retreating from a battle with Azurite troops. A battle that O-Chul was the only Azurite to walk away from. Being O-Chul, he doesn't really understand why a civilian is flabbergasted to learn that a small army retreated rather than fight him.
• The Paladin: Holy warrior that is solidly more good than lawful. His origin story shows that he holds both to equal measure. Despite being the only thing standing between two warring factions, he refuses to fight either side, his overzealous countrymen, and the innocent hobgoblins who are supposed to be his enemies. He also refuses to just abandon his duty, which would have saved his own life at the cost of allowing weaker innocents to be hurt instead.
  O-Chul: A lot of people are going to get hurt tomorrow. All we can do is stand in the way of that and say, "Not them. Me. If you need to hurt someone, hurt me."... Because the alternative is to look at someone else, someone weaker and more vulnerable, and tell them that you want them to be hurt instead of you.
• The Paragon: You could put him next to Captain America and Superman and they'd be best friends in seconds. It says a lot about how much the Sapphire Guard has progressed that he is so esteemed now, considering the circumstances under which O-Chul joined it in "How the Paladin Got His Scar". O-Chul had just clashed several times with the Guard, been a factor in the death of its leader, and in general the Guard was an elitist, extremist organization made up solely of nobles. Apparently, nearly a dozen members resigned immediately when O-Chul, a commoner, was accepted into their ranks.
• Pragmatic Hero: Unusually for a character with such a strong moral compass, O-Chul tends to keep pragmatic concerns in mind regarding his actions. This doesn't cause him to compromise, but does give him justifications for some of his actions. When he unties Pangtok and Tingtox after they nearly drowned a member of his party in an escape attempt, he explains that it was both wrong of him to tie them up if he was going to release them later anyway, and that if they want to escape it's better that they just run off rather than think they have to fight their way to freedom.
• Reconstruction: Reconstructs paladins as a follow-up to Miko's deconstruction of the class.
• The Redeemer: He spends all of his time in prison trying to redeem the Monster in the Darkness.
• Scars Are Forever: Despite receiving healing magic regularly, he's been tortured for so long that his body is literally Covered in Scars. Even more impressive, when O-Chul breaks out, Redcloak hits him with a disintegrate, showing off O-Chul's skeleton, which reveals that his skull has a scar matching the one along his temple — meaning the cut made it went all the way to the bone. The prequel story "How the Paladin Got His Scar" would eventually reveal the origin of this scar. Gin-Jun, a maddened, Knight Templar/General Ripper former commander of the Sapphire Guard inflicted the wound on O-Chul when O-Chul found a non-violent way of preventing a war with the Hobgoblins that Gin-Jun was about to start.
• Smite Evil: He charges holy power into his bare hands to assault Xykon.
• Stone Wall: In contrast to someone like Miko, O-Chul rarely displays any spectacular offense, but can instead take a ridiculous amount of punishment without going down. It fits with his mission as a paladin, a defender and protector of the helpless.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: It's implied that misinterpreting his advice on morality and duty is what eventually led Miko to kill Shojo.
• Upbringing Makes the Hero: He was once the son of a murderous bandit couple, but when his father was killed and mother arrested, O-Chul was taken in by the arresting Sergeant and the man's sister. His adopted family's persistence in raising him is what gave him his strong sense of compassion for the downtrodden, as he was downtrodden once, and he will always believe in second chances for everybody.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Why Did It Have to Be Sharks? Though in actuality he does not fear them, since being a paladin makes him immune to fear. It's more like they just make him oddly uncomfortable. The acid-breathing shark may have had something to do with this.
• Working-Class Hero: In "How the Paladin Got His Scar" he's revealed to be common-born and was the first commoner to join the Sapphire Guard, which had previously restricted its membership to members of the noble class.
• You Wouldn't Believe Me If I Told You: He has a theory as to what the Monster in the Darkness is, but doesn't think Lien or the Monster himself would believe it.

Lien

Lien

"It was pretty easy for me to put two and two together. Contrary to popular opinion, Good is not always dumb."

Race: Human
Gender: Female
Class: Paladin
Alignment: Intelligent Good

Along with Hinjo and O-Chul, a paladin and one of the only surviving Sapphire Guard officers. As the daughter of fishermen, her weapon and celestial mount keep a connection with the sea.

---

• Action Girl: During the fall of Azure City, she defends Hinjo's junk for hours from attacking hobgoblins by herself.
• The Anti-Nihilist: She sees the loss of her hometown and most of her friends as just part of how the world works, but chooses to be grateful that she's alive and able to keep fighting the good fight.
  O-Chul: Ah, so your optimism is a direct result of your relentlessly negative view.
  Lien: Haha! I guess so! The best part about always expecting the world to bite you in the butt is sometimes you're pleasantly surprised.
• Badass Boast: When fighting a group of hobgoblins:
  Lien: My parents were fishermen. When I was a little girl, I stood right here and learned how to clean the fish that they caught. I'm telling you this so that you know that when I say that if you take one more step, I will gut you like the catch of the day — IT IS NOT HYPERBOLE!
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: Defied. She gets singed by Thor's lightning when Durkon rescues her, and he preemptively apologizes for it.
  Lien: SO not complaining.
• A Day in the Limelight: Has one in the prequel book Good Deads Gone Unpunished, that shows why she was recruited into the Sapphire Guard.
• Deadpan Snarker: Of the Azurites, easily the most sarcastic.
• Detect Evil: Standard paladin power; she attempts it on Therkla.
• Exposed to the Elements: Discussed with O-Chul during a blizzard in the North Pole, as they are wearing modest, but normal outfits. As it turns out, Lien's Ring of Water Breathing also protects her from frigid temperatures, as the deep ocean is quite cold.
• Fluffy Tamer: Razor's a great white, and she manages to make him seem cute, especially in the Beach Party wallpaper.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: She is shocked to hear trolls went out of their way to save someone they traded with. She guesses it's because they'll be losing a customer and not because evil-aligned creatures can befriend good ones.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: Or Good Bard, Bad Paladin; in one of the bonus comics, she and Elan interrogate a mermaid who had known a group of aquatic hobgoblins that attacked the Azure City fleet using this technique.
• Good Is Not Dumb: Her Catchphrase. Lien would like to remind you that being good does not necessarily make you an idiot.
• Got Me Doing It: Thanks to Elan's influence, she hopes that O-Chul had an awesome paladin mount he had been saving for the perfect dramatic reveal. He doesn't.
• Has a Type: In a retail-only comic, she describes she loves the fact that her boyfriend Tam works with his hands, and as such would not like to date a nobleman.
• Healing Hands: Paladin power.
• Horse of a Different Color: A shark that she rides into battle, being that she is a fisherman's daughter and seems to regularly work at sea.
• Not Hyperbole: Trope Namer.
  Lien: My parents were fishermen. When I was a little girl, I stood right here and learned how to clean the fish that they caught. I'm telling you this so that you know that when I say that if you take one more step, I will gut you like the catch of the day — IT IS NOT HYPERBOLE!
• The Paladin: One of the only three survivors of the Sapphire Guard. In general, she's the most laidback of the various Sapphire Guard paladins, being cleanly Lawful Good but neither The Paragon nor particularly zealous, cynical and somewhat crude but not mean, and rarely discussing the nature of her own paladinhood in favor of thinking about concrete truths and the here-and-now. If Miko is the "bad" paladin, Hinjo is the "classic" paladin, and O-Chul is the "good" paladin, Lien is the sort of paladin most likely to show up in a gaming group: a warrior who keeps to the Code and never comes close to breaking it, but also doesn't let it dominate who they are.
• Rags to Riches: She started life as the child of two fishermen, and now she's one of the strongest paladins in Azure City.
• Ring of Power: In one of the bonus comics in Don't Split the Party, Lien reveals that she has a magic ring that allows her to breathe underwater. It later gets shown in the main comic. This also confers an immunity to frigid temperatures, as the bottom of the ocean can be very cold.
• Samurai: Like others on this list, a katana-wielding warrior in an Japan-ish place.
• Smite Evil: Paladin power.
• Survivor's Guilt: Averted. She considers her family making it out alive while all her colleagues die proof that she must be the luckiest girl alive, as there is no point believing the world is fair.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Hinjo sends Lien to guard the waterfront docks primarily because her shark paladin mount can turn any sea monsters the goblins summon to sushi.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Due to living on the waterfront, her entire extended family, her boyfriend, and his extended family all made it out safely.
• Virgin Sacrifice: Inverted with the virgin part. According to the orcs, Banjo prefers someone "with experience". The sacrifice itself was narrowly avoided.
  Lien: Dammit, why does my mother keep being right about this stuff?
• Working-Class Hero: Like O-Chul, she's common-born and as seen above her upbringing informs both her outlook on life and her weapon.

Ho Thanh

Ho Thanh

"Let us make hasty our escape, that we might live to fight the forces of Evil another day."

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Paladin
Alignment: Lawful Good

A low-ranking Sapphire Guard member who was out of town the day of the battle. Took over leadership of La Résistance after Haley left.

---

• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Averted, a rarity among paladins, as he knows that retreat has its value.
  Thanh: Let us make hasty our escape, that we might live to fight the forces of Evil another day.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Briefly dominated by Tsukiko. No, not that kind of domination.
• Face Death with Dignity: He takes crushing from an elemental with utmost serenity.
• Healing Hands: Paladin power, and exploited by Tsukiko while she was dominating him. It sounds bad but it wasn't like that.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Charges into a hopeless battle to distract Redcloak from noticing that a single Resistance member will survive.
• Honor Before Reason: His ability to use subterfuge leaves some to be desired. Although he does work well with Niu during his last act.
• More Hero than Thou: He disputes with Niu about her escape at the end. He has to order her to escape without him because she's faster and sneaker.
• The Paladin: Like others on this list, a holy warrior of the Twelve Gods.
• La Résistance: Would like to call it "Sapphire Liberation Front".
• Samurai: Like Lien, Miko, etc., he is a Japan-ish warrior with a katana.
• Smite Evil: Paladin power.
• That's an Order!: He invokes this trope to make Niu escape and resolve a More Hero than Thou argument.
• Turn Undead: He uses this paladin power against Tsukiko's wights. It doesn't destroy them, but does enough to prevent them from level draining.
• Unfit for Greatness: Has some Survivor Guilt for the fact that he only survived the massacre of the Sapphire Guard because he was sent away as a messenger. He reluctantly accepts that as the Last of His Kind he's a symbol for Azurite resistance. He's singularly unqualified to be a guerilla fighter, however.
• You Are in Command Now: Thanh feels he's out of his depth, but he's the only person that the other Resistance groups could agree on since they would not allow some foreigner to lead them, ruling out Haley.
• You Shall Not Pass!: He dies covering Niu's escape.

Sangwaan

Sangwaan

"In the few hours since we learned of the threat, we diviners have done our best to scry the invading army."

Race: Human
Gender: Female
Class: Wizard (diviner)
Alignment: Lawful Good (presumably)

A blind seer who serves as an adviser to Shojo and later Hinjo. Aside from Shojo, she is the only known member of the Sapphire Guard who is not a Paladin.

---

• Blindfolded Vision: Her mystic vision spells even come out of the blindfold.
• Blind Seer: A seer with a blindfold.
• Call-Forward: In the Kickstarer reward Therkla comic, Sangwaan comments that she's tired of everyone pitying her for her birth defect that will leave her dead by age 30. She states that "I hope when it is my time, no-one will see it coming." Note that this comic came out well after we saw her killed by an invisible zombie dragon in the main story.
  Sangwaan: Heh heh, well played, Lord Rooster.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: She's killed when Xykon's zombie dragon bites her and then throws her off the ramparts of Azure City's outer wall.
• A Day in the Limelight: She has a fairly large role in Therkla's mini-comic which serves to flesh out her personality and give insight into her backstory.
• Deadpan Snarker: Has a particularly funny one in a bonus comic dealing with Shojo's funeral.
  Sangwaan: He never treated me differently for my disability. He tried to look down my shirt like any other girl.
• Face Death with Dignity: In the flashback comic, it's revealed that she laughed as she fell to her death, appreciating the irony that she's been killed by an invisible enemy, and thus "no one saw coming" and appreciates it as a "joke" by her god Rooster, as she didn't want to die a slow pathetic death, only hoping that Therkla would get a happy final year of living.
• Mauve Shirt: Like the generals, she has enough characterization that her death has more meaning than a random NPC.
• Non-Action Guy: Seer, not soldier.
• Odd Friendship: "Spoiler Alert" establishes that she and Therkla struck up a short friendship when Therkla attempted to rob her to get out of a Chain of Deals she'd been stuck in. Sangwaan foresaw the robbery and not only gives her what she needs but invites her for a drink and they have a fun time chatting the night away. Sadly nothing further came of it as the Hobgoblins advanced on the city the next day.
• Telepathy: She uses it at a few points to answer people's questions before they finish asking them.
• Your Days Are Numbered:
  • She has a degenerative disease that blinded her as a child and will kill her before she turns 30. She dies earlier due to Xykon's zombie dragon biting her and throwing her off the outer wall, which she actually appreciates. She considers it a divine joke.
  • She also foresaw Therkla's eventual death, and postponed it by a year by putting an antidote to a poison she would be exposed to in her drink.

Gin-Jun

Gin-Jun

"You have no idea what I have sacrificed for the Sapphire Guard! I have led us to glory when Shojo would have left us to wither and fade into obscurity!"

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Paladin
Alignment: Lawful Good

The commander of the Sapphire Guard during the events of "How the Paladin Got His Scar". An anti-hobgoblin fanatic, Gin-Jun led his forces on a crusade through the countryside in an effort to find and destroy the Crimson Mantle once and for all.

---

• Aristocrats Are Evil: Gin-Jun is a noble and is enraged that a commoner like O-Chul would oppose him. He even refers to himself as O-Chul's "better".
• Early-Bird Cameo: First shows up in Start of Darkness as one of the young paladins wiping out Redcloak and Right-Eye's home village. "How the Paladin Got His Scar" casts a glimpse of the battle from his perspective.
• General Ripper: Cares more about slaughtering the hobgoblins than protecting the citizens he's supposed to be defending. Tellingly, when Miko asks how to differentiate good goblins from bad (she's quite young during the story and still concerned about such things), Gin-Jun acknowledges that not all goblins are evil, but believes that the simple act of living in a goblin society and contributing to it in any way effectively makes them evil, and gives Miko an answer that amounts to "Kill them all and let the gods sort them out."
• Humiliation Conga: He's fired from the Sapphire Guard by his own subordinate after O-Chul tricks him into breaking one of its rules. He's told off and duly insulted by his former second-in-command, bluntly dismissed and rejected by the celestial he had summoned to help the Guard's efforts, and finally killed by his own acolyte for his misdeeds.
• Hypocrite: He advocates wiping out hobgoblin civilization entirely, brushing off the possibility of good hobgoblins dying because that can't get in the way of punishing wickedness, and essentially says that if any good hobgoblins survive this they can reflect on how this was for the best and how they can change their ways. When Gin-Jun is kicked out of the Sapphire Guard for his own actions, instead of reflecting on his own wickedness, how it must be punished, or how he can change his ways, he simply goes into Never My Fault, blaming both O-Chul and his own second-in-command for his own actions.
  Gin-Jun: This is all some kind of plot cooked up between you and this soldier!
  Haruna: I assure you I had no part in planning anything Captain O-Chul said or did.
  Gin-Jun: But neither did you prevent me from making a mistake that would allow you to expel me from the Guard. You set me up, you traitor!
  Haruna: If you choose to commit violence to avenge your worthless honor, then the weight of that decision rests on your conscience, not mine.
• Insane Troll Logic: He assumes that since the bearer of the Crimson Mantle is a cleric who can block scrying magic, and he is a goblin, he must be in a goblin city with blocks against scrying magic. Not only does this ignore the existence of dungeons (where Redcloak actually is), it blatantly skips over the fact that he is focused on a hobgoblin city, which he has not seen a single goblin in (and goblins are hard to confuse for hobgoblins, being green and short while hobgoblins are orange and as tall as humans). O-Chul points out his real reasoning is that he desperately wants something that fits his War Is Glorious ideology to be true.
• Killed Off for Real: By Miko, for attacking Zhou Bo.
• Mask of Sanity: The man may be an obsessed fanatic, but he's capable of keeping up a polite and courteous front, even appearing wise and mentorly to inexperienced acolytes like Miko. Not until his breakdown is happening in earnest does he abandon his courtly manners.
• Master Swordsman: He's a powerful, highly-ranked paladin, and O-Chul explicitly says that he has next to no chance of beating Gin-Jun in a duel, as Gin-Jun has almost certainly been trained by some of the greatest swordsmen in the world.
• The Mentor: To Miko, which shows where she got some of her bad ideas and fanaticism from.
• My Greatest Failure: Gin-Jun was a random low-ranking paladin of the Sapphire Guard during the events of "Start of Darkness", who took part in killing the prior bearer of the Crimson Mantle and wiping out Redcloak's village and family. However, at the time the Guard was not aware that the Mantle was an Artifact of Doom and thought it was nothing more than a signifier of rank. The fact that they missed the chance to destroy or take the Crimson Mantle on that occasion and forever end the threat posed by it has haunted Gin-Jun for over 20 years.
• Neck Snap: How Miko kills him.
• Never My Fault: When O-Chul points out that Gin-Jun's tactics will result in hobgoblins attacking Azurite villages in retaliation, Gin-Jun just says that's on the hobgoblin's heads, not his. He also blames O-Chul for him losing his place in the Sapphire Guard, even though it was Gin-Jun's own actions that caused him to be fired.
• "Not So Different" Remark: He acts very similar to the General Ripper on the hobgoblin side, to the point that they get upset over the same things and use similar ways and phrases to express that anger. O-Chul, when trying to convince the other paladins that Gin-Jun has lost his way, points this out and that Gin-Jun has more in common with a hobgoblin who is similarly eager for war than he does with those of his own people who aren't.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: His stated reason for destroying the Gorge Ravine outpost is to capture the Crimson Mantle and its bearer, or at least discover their location, and those are legitimate threats to existence itself. It becomes clear that this is more an excuse to indulge his Fantastic Racism and exterminate the hobgoblins, especially when he rejects the idea of having the summoned planetar help discover its actual location with divination.
  O-Chul: I think you're wrong. I think your feelings about the hobgoblins are exactly what's driving this mission. To the point where you would rather kill them than examine your own motivations.
• The Proud Elite: Of the type that don't have kind Hidden Depths. Gin-Jun is all too aware and proud of his societal status, rank, and personal honor. He doesn't tolerate anyone trying to point out flaws in his abilities, or anyone of a lower social rank questioning him. This is also the cause of his downfall: he could have refused O-Chul's challenge, but doing so would have resulted in him losing face. Because he could not accept that, he took part in the duel, giving O-Chul a forum to expose Gin-Jun's shortcomings and plead his case to the other paladins.
  Gin-Jun: That arrogant little soldier ant! I cannot— How dare he— He should consider himself lucky that I am too virtuous a man to even think of slashing his throat for daring to speak that way to his betters!
• Rules Lawyer: Not as much as his subordinate Sato, but he does some of this when negotiating with a disinclined celestial whom he wants to help capture the Gorge Ravine outpost. The celestial refuses to slaughter all the hobgoblins or destroy the outpost, so Gin-Jun talks her into just breaking down the front gates... at which point the Sapphire Guard can rush in and do the slaughtering themselves.
• Sanity Slippage: As events of the story keep thwarting him, he becomes more and more unhinged. Others point out, and he acknowledges that, even if the current bearer of the Crimson Mantle was in the hobgoblin stronghold — after the Guard was delayed from attacking — the bearer would almost certainly have escaped. Despite that, he refuses to hear of any way to learn for sure if the Mantle is present, and the thought of possibly spending another 20+ years chasing the Mantle's bearer causes him to go into a full-fledged breakdown, which becomes a murderous rage.
  Gin-Jun: Not another 22 years. Not another 22 minutes!
• Villain Has a Point: He thinks any innocent, Good-aligned hobgoblins that die alongside the more common Evil-aligned hobgoblins should just accept they "had it coming" for daring to be born into an Evil culture and being functional citizens in it, which is obsessive, ruthless, classist in the extremes... but he's also right that the Crimson Mantle, that contains the Dark One's scheme to blackmail the gods for equal goblin rights with a force of absolute chaos, is a universe-level threat that could leave everyone on the planet Deader than Dead and even a war might be a small price to pay for its destruction. Sadly he's also completely deaf to when one of his subordinates offers the perfectly reasonable solution of asking the angel they planar bound to divine its actual location rather than blindly attack the place Gin himself is absolutely sure (and absolutely wrong) it is.
• Villainous Breakdown: When O-Chul dismantles his attempts at war, he descends into a murderous rage that gets progressively worse until his death.
• War Is Glorious: His ideology is that Azure City ultimately is a civilization defined by warfare and conquest, and that Shojo's more peaceful ideology will leave it to fade and grow decadent. Add in his Fantastic Racism against hobgoblins, and one has a very nasty General Ripper.
• Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Oh so averted. As far as he's concerned, there is no such thing as a true civilian in a goblinoid society:
  Miko: I have a question. I am not a paladin yet, so I cannot call upon the blessed power of the Twelve Gods to determine which hobgolbins are evil. How shall I know which are fair to attack?
  Gin-Jun: An excellent question, and I am glad you are giving these concerns the weight they deserve. It is important to remember simply that hobgoblins are usually evil, and even those that may not be so still worship an evil god, or defend an evil social order, or grow food for evil warriors, or give birth to evil children. It is enough for us to destroy their evil society, and let any who survive reflect on the path of wickedness. Never hesitate to punish evil or support for evil, or tolerance for evil.
  Miko: Thank you, Master. You are wise, and I will do my best to follow your example.

Haruna Sato

Haruna Sato

"I am simply informing citizens of Azure City — to whom I have also sworn an oath to defend — of a possible danger to their lives if they should be in the area tomorrow. I have no way of knowing what you might choose to do with that information."

Race: Human
Gender: Female
Class: Paladin
Alignment: Lawful Good

Gin-Jun's immediate subordinate and the second-in-command of the Sapphire Guard.

---

• Kirk Summation: She gives several short and to the point lectures to Gin-Jun about his failings, particularly his need to save face and his valuing of that more than the lives of innocent citizens he is sworn to protect.
• Number Two: Commander Gin-Jun's second-in-command, at least of the detachment he was leading and possibly of the entire Sapphire Guard.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Much more so than her boss. She immediately sees some of the flaws in his assumptions about why the Crimson Mantle must be present in this particular village, cares much more about the lives of their people, and works to remove Gin-Jun when it becomes clear he's become too crazy to effectively lead the Sapphire Guard.
• Rules Lawyer:
  • Sato warns O-Chul what Gin-Jun is planning, but refuses to actually do anything to stop it because that would be betraying her oath. When O-Chul points out she's betraying it by talking to them, Sato says she's just warning an Azure citizen (O-Chul himself) that there will be bloodshed in the area tomorrow so he can protect himself. If he then chooses to use that information to stop Gin-Jun's plans, that's not her business.
  • She also manages to oust Gin-Jun after her commander scars and almost kills the defenseless O-Chul. Attempting to kill an "unarmed common citizen" is against the paladin oath, and even though Gin-Jun acted during a duel, that technically isn't a valid exception in the oath. Gin-Jun is thus fired.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Though she was Commander of the Sapphire Guard at the end of O-Chul's prequel story, by the time of the main story she is nowhere to be found, and Miko is apparently the highest ranking paladin in the Guard. Whether she resigned, died in the interim, or perished in the fall of Azure City is unclear.
• You Are in Command Now: A brief line from Miko in "How the Paladin Got His Scar" mentions "Commander Sato," indicating she was promoted after Gin-Jun's expulsion and death.

Nobles and their servitors

For nobles who are also in the Sapphire Guard like Gin-Jun, see the above "Sapphire Guard" section.

Daimyo Kubota

Daimyo Kubota

"Well done, Therkla. You managed to weasel your way out of responsibility for your own actions like a seasoned veteran. I couldn't be prouder if you were my own flesh and blood."

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Aristocrat/(unknown prestige class)
Alignment: Lawful Evil

A scheming aristocrat and Therkla's employer, intent on assassinating Hinjo and taking over after Shojo's death.

---

• Affably Evil: See his page quote. For an evil dude, he can be friendly when he's not sending ninjas after you.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: A noble in Azure City and part of the reason that Shojo had to fake senility; he's a scheming asshole.
• Asshole Victim: As can be seen by the rest of this entry, his death at V's hand is richly deserved — or might be if V knew who he was.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Again, page quote. Also, he schooled Therkla in "evil best practices".
• Carrying the Antidote: Averted, and he tells Elan how stupid such a thing would be after he poisoned Therkla.
• Color-Coded Characters: He and his minions wear purple, while the others in Azure City wear blue.
• Consummate Liar: Not only is he a good liar naturally, but he has an unknown prestige class (probably Spymaster) that makes him immune to lie detection.
• Deader than Dead: Disintegrated into a pile of dust by Vaarsuvius, who then uses a gust of wind spell to blow the pile overboard into the ocean.
• Deal with the Devil: He enlisted the aid of an imp to help him in his scheme to seize control of Azure city. It doesn't turn out well for him personally, but the imp's presence leads to very serious plot developments for the main story later.
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: He plans to use it on Therkla after he killed her, but V isn't having any of that.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: His death is fairly ignominious. Elan comments about it.
• Dying Smirk: Has one due to being killed in the middle of his Evil Gloating.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He doesn't understand why Hinjo promoted Daigo and Kazumi to nobility for their valor, and sees no value in peasants.
• Evil Gloating: As Elan marches him to the magistrate, he gleefully explains how futile Elan's efforts are and how he'll turn the whole situation to his advantage. These end up being his last words.
• Evil Plan: Assassinate Hinjo and become the ruler of Azure City.
• Filler Villain: He has nothing to do with the main plot of the gates. He's just there to fill time while the Order of the Stick regroups.
• Genre Savvy: He's aware of minions Defecting for Love and planned for it, in addition to what heroes like Elan must do when faced with a surrendering villain. When Kubota is bragging to Elan about the sob story he's cooked up, Elan points out that there are spells that can compel him to tell the truth. He simply retorts that he took a prestige class that makes him immune to such spells.
• Hate Sink: Compared to the other villains he's neither funny, sympathetic, likable, or effective. He's just an unlikable bastard who thinks he's better than he really is. Therkla is the only character who seems to have any degree of fondness for him (and that rapidly erodes after his assassination attempt on the Katos), and he's one of a very small selection of characters who can reduce Elan to seething anger just by showing up.
• Karma Houdini: Defied Trope; Kubota plans to invoke this, by framing Therkla and using his aristocrat talents to turn around and use his trial to slander Hinjo, but Vaarsuvius defies this by simply disintegrating him.
• Killed Off for Real: Disintegrated by V, then his ashes get blown into the sea by a magical gust of wind. The only thing that can bring him back now is a true resurrection, and given that the only other person that even knows he's dead felt that he deserved it, that won't be happening.
• Manipulative Bastard: He manipulates the magistrate to avoid punishment for sending ninjas after Hinjo during The Siege, after that he uses Therkla and then his planned status as Karma Houdini.
• Non-Action Big Bad: He's mainly an aristocrat, which is a class meant for NPCs with a mediocre attack bonus and no combat abilities whatsoever. He himself admits he's a poor swordsman, with him relying on a touch attack with a poisoned ring to off one of his subordinates, and against Elan, the most he can do is count on his expensive armor letting him stall for time.
• Not The Face: During his explanation of how he plans to sustain a serious but non life-threatening wound to make it look like he was defending the Katos, he turns to one of his ninjas and tells him to "make sure it's not on my face."
• Pride: In his status as a noble and his oratory skills.
• Sadistic Choice: Invoked twice. First he has Therkla choose between helping Elan and serving him, then he has Elan choose between saving Therkla and stopping him.
• Slimeball: Almost everything he does to try to usurp Hinjo's position is just plain hateful, culminating in him ordering the assassination of a pair of former commoners who were promoted to nobility. The wife is pregnant. When the plan fails, he murders his own number two with poison just to give himself time to escape.
• Smug Snake: His status as this is cemented by the fact that he just doesn't stack up against Xykon and Redcloak. He's also horribly naive, and thinks taking the city back from Xykon will be a trivial matter.
• Take Over the City: His villainy is entirely geared toward usurping Azure City's rulership. Even when there isn't even much of a city to rule anymore.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The imp that he made a deal with is the same one that ultimately pushes Vaarsuvius into their own Deal with the Devil, which ends up having major consequences for the main plot.

Therkla

Therkla

"Actually, it's completely true. Our master DID order us to lure you here and kill you. I was just hoping... I was hoping you could be my boyfriend instead."

Race: Half-orc
Gender: Female
Class: Ninja
Alignment: True Neutral

Half-orc ninja, under the employ of Daimyo Kubota. She is poisoned by Kubota so he could escape and dies in Elan's arms.

---

• Action Girl: Ninja/assassin and all-around strong.
• Character Alignment: True Neutral.invoked She's an active, balancing kind of Neutral, as opposed to the disinterested kind. Her proposed solution to the fleet's struggle between good and evil is that the two groups and their respective followers split up and go their separate ways, and she seems genuinely confused that neither finds this acceptable. This becomes more explored, and more leaning toward Neutral Good, in the bonus comic. She intentionally avoids killing people, taking it as priority over her single day off in fourteen months, and the one person she does kill is trying to kill both her and the people she's trying to save. She merely wants to repay Kubota for helping her when no one else would, and Kubota's fatherly facade when around her fools her from seeing just how cold-blooded her boss is. She bonds with Sangwaan about this.
• Child by Rape: Elan and Kubota think this is the only way a half-orc could be created but the opposite is true; her parents were Sickeningly Sweethearts. It's an allusion to what D&D says is often the case with half-orc children.
• Cute Little Fangs: From her orc side, she has fangs and they do make her look cuter.
• Cute Monster Girl: The other orcs in this comic are ugly but she's cute as a button. On one hand, she's only half orc. On the other hand, her full-orc mother could definitely also be sorted into this category; her father definitely thought her mother was a "cutie pie".
• A Day in the Limelight: She received a Kickstarter comic centered around her called "Spoiler Alert". It centers around her trying to read her supernatural romance novel and being interrupted to perform a theft which was how she became Kubota's right hand.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: She was happy about it because she thought it was the only way she'd get into his arms.
• The Dragon: To Kubota. She's his head ninja and the most powerful minion in his employ.
• Eating the Eye Candy: She spies on Elan because she wants to watch him, not to gather information.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Half-orc/half-human.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Elan almost convinced her to join Hinjo, then Hinjo sprang an ambush and arrested her. Averted with her death, which only happened after she was forced to choose between her master and Elan, and switched sides for good.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Elan is clearly upset about letting her die and learns the neutralize poison spell to prevent it happening again.
• In Love with the Mark: Her introductory scene has her gushing about Elan's attractiveness.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Averted. Elan is in a relationship at this point and she wants him to break up with whoever it is for her.
• Killed Off for Real: After being poisoned by Kubota, she says she would refuse to be raised unless Elan becomes her boyfriend. He couldn't betray Haley, so she decides to stay dead.
• Klingon Promotion: She was salutatorian at Ninja School. Guess how she became valedictorian.
• Lady of War: As much as the limited art style can allow. As a McNinja, she always favors stealth and opportunistic strikes over direct confrontation, and in the rare moments she's in direct combat she tends to use acrobatic maneuvers and grappling far more than any other female character.
• Love at First Sight: One-sided infatuation as soon as she started spying on Elan, later partly reciprocated.
• MockGuffin: The Mik-Guh Fan she's sent after is a meaningless trinket whose only purpose is to test her deadly ninja skills against her rival.
• Neutrality Backlash: For much of her arc she's torn between her loyalty to Kubota and her love for Elan, and in the end she suggests the two parties (Kubota and his ninjas versus Hinjo and his friends) leave each other alone as a compromise. And then Kubota kills her for her disloyalty.
• Ninja: This is her class and she does a lot of sneaking and spying.
• Redemption Equals Death: She starts off as an antagonist working for Kubota, but when she throws a wrench in his plans to save Elan, he kills her with poison.
• Satellite Love Interest: What would she be like without Elan? She was a subject of debate on the forums when she was alive and her detractors often used this as an argument.
• Square Race, Round Class: Half-orcs in 3rd Edition generally aren't associated with stealth and cunning, being mostly oriented towards barbarian and similar brute-force classes (as exemplified by Thog). That said, Therkla would be entirely at home in 1st Edition, where the favored class for half-orc was assassin and their only penalty was to Charisma.
• Take a Third Option: She wants an outcome where her boss and her crush survive the arc. She tried to convince Kubota to separate from Hinjo and form his own kingdom somewhere else. Kubota didn't like that idea and poisoned her for it.

"Wizard Guy"

"Wizard Guy"

"I coulda been a baker, you know."

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Wizard
Alignment: Unknown

A wizard whom Shojo loaned to the Order in order to teleport them to and from Cliffport.

---

• The Alcoholic: Gets drunk while waiting for the Order to fight the Linear Guild.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: His drunkeness causes him to both screw up a teleport spell bad enough that he drops the group in a roc's nest, and then to ignore it even as it noticed them.
• In Vino Veritas: After getting drunk, he went on a rant about how he didn't even want to be a wizard and would rather have been a baker.
• Jaded Washout: Hates his life, seeing himself as an unimportant random wizard who ferries around more important Player Characters, and wishing he'd taken the chance of going after his true passion — baking.
• Killed Off for Real: Is eaten by a roc because he teleported the Order into its nest. While they managed to bring his skeleton back to Azure City for a raise dead, Xykon's invasion and subsequent conquest interfered with that.
• Only Known By His Nickname: Never receives a full name in the comic, and so is just called "wizard guy" by the other characters.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: He's a parody of this, in that PCs tend to treat NPCs, no matter how important they might be, as minor assets to be ignored when not relevant. Despite the fact that he's evidently a pretty powerful wizard, the Order completely forgets about him within seconds of reaching Cliffport.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Only appears for a few panels before being killed and eaten by a roc.

Shojo's personal wizard

Shojo's personal wizard

"I didn't write the laws of magic, you know!"

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Wizard
Alignment: Unknown

Shojo's personal wizard, whom he loans to Vaarsuvius in order to help complete the elf's spellbook.

---

• Insane Troll Logic: Vaarsuvius can't understand why he insists that they have to leave several pages of their spellbook blank after scribing a one-word spell, and Shojo's wizard isn't able to come up with a rational explanation to mollify them.
• Mr. Exposition: Explains some of the more nonsensical rules of the magic system to Vaarsuvius.

Kohaku

Kohaku

"Still, you did manage to separate her from those disgusting cats, so it should be easy for me to follow up and kill them all."

Race: Human
Gender: Female
Class: Unknown
Alignment: Chaotic Evil

A mercenary working in Azure City who has a personal history with Therkla. Appears in the Kickstarter bonus story "Spoiler Alert".

---

• Faux Affably Evil: When she and Therkla fight they exchange a lot of pleasantries at first, which gradually devolves into backhanded condescending fake-complements, with Kohaku mocking Therkla's abilities and race.
• Jerkass: Consistently rude and condescending to Therkla, and happy to murder a random merchant family even though Therkla has already faked their deaths and Kohaku's master wouldn't know the difference.
• Smug Snake: In spades. Mocks Therkla throughout their fights and continually acts like the half-orc has no chance whatsoever of beating her.

Captain Axe

Captain Axe

"It's my job to protect everyone aboard — especially Hinjo. And that means getting him far away from situations where he can die heroically."

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Unknown
Alignment: Lawful Good (presumably)

The captain of Hinjo's junk. Very loyal to his lord, but knows when to disobey too.

---

• The Captain: Of Hinjo's junk. This means he has great authority when on the ship.
• Hook Hand: He has a small axe replacing his left hand.
• I Did What I Had to Do: He takes advantage of Hinjo getting knocked unconscious to order the departure of the junk. This is necessary to save all their lives, because Hinjo insisted on waiting for Haley who is somewhere in the battlefield reclaiming Roy's corpse.
• Perma-Stubble: Adding to his rough sailor look.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: After Hinjo is knocked out, he disobeys orders for the ship to wait, realizing that the enemy is too strong to fight off for much longer.
• They Call Him "Sword": Axe in this case. Probably a Shout-Out to Captain Hook.

Regular army

For Tsukiko, who briefly fought alongside the army, see Team Evil.

Daigo & Kazumi Kato

Daigo & Kazumi Kato

Daigo

Kazumi

Daigo: [dying] Kazumi... is a pretty name...
Kazumi: [crying] Thank you. What's yours?
Daigo: ... ... Daigo.
[no longer dying] ... Uh? I, uh... I think I'm OK, now.
Kazumi: Wow. I guess having a name really DOES matter.

Race: Humans
Gender: Male & Female (respectively)
Class: Fighters
Alignment: Neutral Good

Regular soldiers in the Azure City army, Daigo and Kazumi refuse to be nameless Red Shirts like the rest of the army — literally, by mentioning their names. They escaped Azure City along with Elan, Vaarsuvius and Durkon. Daigo and Kazumi are now married, with Kazumi pregnant, and have been given the status of nobility by Hinjo. The fact that their names are known also makes them significantly more competent than regular Azurite soldiers.

---

• Action Mom: Kazumi "I'm a goddamn baby-making, life-taking MACHINE" Kato. She hasn't even given birth yet! Her quote, "Who cares how many people I have to kill? I can just make MORE in my tummy!" is now a T-shirt.
• Alliterative Name: Kazumi Kato; plus when Daigo nearly revealed his last name, it started with "Da".
• Badass Normal: They are regular Azurite soldiers, with no special abilities or magic whatsoever.
• Battle Couple: They started the Siege as co-workers and became a couple in the midst of it.
• Beta Couple: Unusually, they have been a couple for less time than the alpha. Less unusually, their relationship is much smoother than — they're already happily married without any plot complications, aside for one or two attempts on their lives.
• Butt-Monkey: Daigo suffers a case of this during the Kubota arc, notably getting ninja-kicked in the face, then slammed by a door, and then broken glass is sprayed on his face.
• Chekhov's Gun: Daigo's last name remains unfired so far.
• Chickification: Averted by Kazumi during her pregnancy. She tells three hostile ninjas that she didn't forget all her military training the moment she conceived, and she tells them this while kicking their ass. Her husband, on the other hand...
• Cluster F-Bomb: Kazumi is prone to these when she's in Mama Bear mode.
• Defied Trope: Red Shirt. They defied this trope, and saved Daigo's life, by mentioning their names. Daigo keeps his last name a secret in case of an emergency.
• Flirting Under Fire: Their first lines of dialogue is a invitiation to coffee.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: The time between them meeting each other and their marriage is three-and-a-half months. Not to mention that Kazumi is already eight weeks pregnant during their wedding.
• Happily Married: Their marriage has withstood months on a refugee ship, ninja attacks, and relocation.
• Historical In-Joke: Kazumi's "I can just make more in my tummy!" is a reference to William Marshall's father John boasting that he had the "hammer and anvils fine enough to build a better son" when a kidnapped William was threatened with execution by a besieging Stephen of Blois.
• Lampshade Hanging: Their entire existence lampoons the concept of the Red Shirt, and Belkar refers to them as such by name.
• Lower-Deck Episode: Such a sequence serves as their introduction.
• The Maiden Name Debate: Neither appears to have taken the other's name, but they use "Kato" for their new noble house.
• Mama Bear: Kazumi kills nearly every assassin sent to kill her and her baby, and her child is not even born yet.
  Kazumi: I'm a goddamn baby-making, life-taking MACHINE!
• Mauve Shirt: They seem to be elevating themselves to recurring characters, near the same level as Hinjo.
• Nominal Importance: Deliberately invoked by Kazumi so she can save her own life and Daigo's in "I'll Hold Them Off".
• Playing with a Trope: The purpose of their existences, as noted within Defied Trope, Lampshade Hanging, Nominal Importance and Subverted Trope.
• Pregnant Badass: Kazumi's the one pictured on the trope's page.
  Kazumi: You stupid pieces of @#!%. I was in the army, too, and I didn't forget four years of training the moment my egg's perimeter was breached. You think just because I can't see my feet right now that I can't put one of them up your cowardly ninja asses? Please.
• Pregnant Hostage: The ninjas thought Kazumi would be helpless while pregnant. They were wrong.
• Rags to Riches: Technically, as Hinjo promotes them to nobility at their wedding.
• Red Herring Shirts: They're more significant than they appear at first.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Daigo, after Azure City's fall:
  Daigo: [Hinjo], I know it really isn't my place to say, but... if we're going to ever retake this city, we'll need you leading the charge. Not the nobles, who are, as [Elan] said, doodoo heads.
• Subverted Trope: Red Shirt, naturally, along with Red Shirt Army. Even before that, their class is fighter, a character class. The majority of the NPCs are warriors (which is basically the same class without the feats), making them Elite Mook by default.
• Withholding Their Name: Meta example. After discovering that Nominal Importance is at play in this universe, Daigo decides to withhold his last name in case of an emergency.

General Chang

General Chang

"Prepare to hold this breach at all cost, men."

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Warrior
Alignment: Lawful Good (presumably)

A general in Azure City's regular military.

---

• Good Counterpart: To the Hobgoblin General. Both are commanding officers, the Hobgoblin General follows orders without question, but Chang questions orders that could result in casualties.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Courtesy of the Death Knight who runs him through with his sword so hard half of his arm punches through the General.
• Mauve Shirt: A minor and ultimately unimportant character, but he has enough tropes to make his death more meaningful than a Red Shirt's.

General Claire Nhek

General Claire Nhek

"The last thing we need is a war on two fronts!"

Race: Human
Gender: Female
Class: Unknown
Alignment: Unknown

A general in the Azurite military, and O-Chul's commanding officer before he joined the Sapphire Guard.

---

• Odd Name Out: Her first name, Claire, doesn't exactly fit the Asian theme that otherwise dominates Azure City.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Takes O-Chul's warnings seriously and responds to them sensibly instead of either dismissing O-Chul or selling him out to gain favor from the nobles his story implicates. She is also sympathetic to the Kapoor family's problems and, though she can't legally let them into the country without permission, she agrees to support their case before an immigration court so they can get that permission.

Zhou Bo

Zhou Bo

"You need good reflexes to be a truly effective coward."

Race: Human
Gender: Female
Class: Warrior
Alignment: Unknown

A soldier under O-Chul's command during the events of "How the Paladin Got His Scar", she deserted during a battle with hobgoblins. O-Chul later drafts her onto his mission to stop the hobgoblin raiders for good.

---

• Action Girl: Completely averted. Despite being a soldier in the Azure City army, she has absolutely no fighting ability.
• Ambiguous Situation: After Taking the Bullet for O-Chul, it's left ambiguous for quite some time about whether she lived or died. It isn't until the next to last page that it's shown that she survived.
• Career-Ending Injury: Intercepting Gin-Jun's attack against O-Chul results in the loss of her spleen. This is what earns her an honorable discharge from the army, when she had always expected to receive the dishonorable version instead.
• Dirty Coward: Starts out as this. Abandons her post to hide with the civilians. And justifies it to herself that she'd just be dead too (only her CO, one comrade, and one horse survived the battle). Until she finds the courage to take a sword slash for her commanding officer. She survives, but reasonably quits the army and takes up a job as a grave digger which she is perfectly fine with.
• The Drag-Along: Has to be shamed and coerced into following O-Chul's mission, and whines about it constantly the entire way. She turns out to be the one to save O-Chul's life in the end.
• Heroic BSoD: When Hinjo reveals his true identity, she goes into one when she realizes that she let the presumed heir to the throne be wounded in an earlier encounter. It's not helped by the fact that her family are major fans of the nobility.
• Hidden Depths: Is at first shown to be very callous about the deaths of her squadmates, and is constantly advising O-Chul to abandon their hopeless mission to stop a potential war between the hobgoblins and humans in order to save their own skins. When pressed, she blurts out that she hates burying more friends.
• Irony: Early in the story, O-Chul gives her a punishment detail of burying her comrades who died in the battle. While at the time she rationalizes her decision (if she hadn't deserted, she would have surely died too), it's clear that she does feel guilty for her actions and later she says that she is tired of digging graves for friends. At the end of the story, after she gets an honorable discharge from the army, she gets a job as a grave digger and is quite happy with it. Digging graves for strangers is not the same as digging them for your friends, after all.
• Lovable Coward: Lampshaded to the point that she boasts about how her fast reflexes help her run away faster. Averted later, when it's shown that she is quick to act to help others and, in doing so, puts herself at risk without thinking about it.
• Made of Iron: Nowhere near as much as O-Chul, of course, but, despite being a cowardly comic relief character, she shrugs off a surprising amount of punishment during the course of the story.
• Only in It for the Money: She only joins the army because she can't find a job elsewhere, and they offer 15 gold pieces as a signing bonus, which she really needs to pay for her mother's debts. Upon hearing this, Hinjo is horrified that someone joined the army and put their life in great danger for what is, to him, practically pocket change.
• Opt Out: Defied. She very much wants to do this when O-Chul recruits her for their mission, offering to suffer the whipping for desertion instead or to do whatever she needs to do in order to be thrown in the brig, but O-Chul makes it clear that isn't an option for her.
• Plucky Comic Relief: She identifies herself as such early in the story, while also identifying O-Chul as the "stoic, badass leader" and Saha Kapoor as "the mysterious lone wolf".
• Punishment Detail: She gets this a lot, on account of her cowardice.
• Red Shirt: Initially; her class (Warrior) is meant to imply this.
• Taking the Bullet: When she sees Gin-Jun running back to finish O-Chul off, she throws herself in the way, and absorbs several powerful attacks before Miko steps in and snaps Gin-Jun's neck.
• Took a Level in Badass: After running from danger for the entire story, she jumps into Gin-Jun's path to stop him from killing O-Chul.
• Uncertain Doom: After she protects O-Chul from several dangerous attacks with herself, we don't know whether she lives or dies until the second-to-last page, where it's revealed she survives.

Nguyen

Nguyen

"If the hobgoblins attack again... you know you can't count on her, right?"

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Warrior
Alignment: Unknown

A soldier in the Azurite military. He is badly wounded defending a small village from goblin raiders, but survives after O-Chul escorts him home.

---

• Almost Dead Guy: Parodied. He gives a detailed warning to O-Chul about Zhou Bo's cowardice, only for O-Chul to note how odd it is that Nguyen is able to speak so much despite his life-threatening wounds.
• Opt Out: More like forced out. He'd probably opt in for O-Chul's mission, and O-Chul considers him a valuable enough soldier that he wants to recruit Nguyen, but the clerics need at least an extra day for him to recover from his wounds, so O-Chul is forced to leave him behind and go with only Zhou Bo and Saha Kapoor.
• Sole Survivor: Besides O-Chul himself (and Zhou Bo, who deserted), he's the only member of their detachment to survive the first few pages of "How the Paladin Got His Scar".

The Sergeant

The Sergeant

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Warrior
Alignment: Unknown

A soldier in the Azurite military. After defeating a pair of bandits, he come across their child and must decide what to do with him.

---

• Happily Adopted: He ensures this happens to O-Chul.
• The Paladin: He doesn't have this class (as far as we know), but he certainly acts this way. Instead of having the young O-Chul arrested for his crimes or even killed, he arranges for him to be adopted by his loving sister.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: The other villagers want to hold O-Chul responsible for helping his parents rob and kill, but the sergeant recognizes that O-Chul was just a child and isn't at fault.
• Sergeant Rock: Subverted Trope, he is more calm in spite of his rank's reputation.
• Small Role, Big Impact: He only shows up in the prequel, but his decision to give O-Chul a fair chance to live a better life ultimately resulted in O-Chul becoming one of the best paladins in the Sapphire Guard, who would go on to successfully influence the Monster in the Darkness to resist his evil allies, and overall become a powerful ally for the Order in the future.
• The Voiceless: Has no lines of dialogue.

That Guy with a Halberd

That Guy with a Halberd

"Wait — was that oil hot?"

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Warrior
Alignment: Lawful Good (presumably)

Another soldier in the Azure City army. Shows up in one strip ordering boiling oil poured on the attacking hobgoblins. It turns out to be room-temperature coconut oil instead, but it drives the attackers off anyway. Turned into a Memetic Bystander by a forum thread.

---

• No Name Given: Why else would his character sheet say "That Guy with a Halberd"?

• Only Sane Man: In the single strip he appears in.
• Only Six Faces: There's really no way to tell this Guy with a Halberd from any other male soldier in the Azurite army, which has led to a fandom running gag that any time one of them has a significant line, it's this guy.

Clergy

High Priest of the Twelve Gods

High Priest of the Twelve Gods

"THEN LET US NOW BEGIN THE ULTIMATE DUEL BETWEEN CLERICS!"

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Cleric
Alignment: Unknown

The High Priest of the Twelve Gods. In addition to his duties as a member of the clergy, he also officiates over Hinjo's coronation and helps to defend the city.

---

• Call-Back: Appears in the line of the dead waiting to be judged in the afterlife after Redcloak kills him... only to realize he'd miscalculated how high his resistance was, meaning he was killed in fact by his own bad math.
• Duel to the Death: His only significant scene is him having one of these with Redcloak.
• Large Ham: Announces his duel with Redcloak in an over-the-top manner.

Resistance

For Ho Thanh, see his entry under "Sapphire Guard" above.

Niu

Niu

"Yeah, what was I thinking, not advertising [I multiclassed to rogue] to the team's paladin."

Race: Human
Gender: Female
Class: Fighter/Rogue
Alignment: Neutral Good (probably)

A low-ranking soldier seconding Haley and later Thanh in the Azure City Resistance.

---

• Action Girl: Double her co-workers; fighter and rogue.
• Bring News Back: Thanh tells her to escape from the Resistance base and get word to Hinjo about its destruction.
• Holy Hand Grenade: Niu brings a bandoleer of holy water vials to assault a prison because she was told there was only a "skeleton crew" defending it and she believes the description was literal.
• It Has Been an Honor: To Thanh, when he prepares to give his life to cover her retreat.
  Niu: ... You're the bravest man I've ever met.
  Thanh: And you're the slowest woman! RUN!
• Literal-Minded: Sometimes.
  Niu: So, wait, when you said that the prison would be guarded by a skeleton crew during the speech, you didn't literally mean a—

She then points out that given the world they live in — she's in a city currently being run by a group of necromancers — it is not an unreasonable assumption.

• Mauve Shirt: A minor and ultimately unimportant character, but look at the size of this character sheet.
• More Hero than Thou: She tries to fight next to Thanh at the end, but he sends her away.
• Number Two: To Haley, and later to Thanh.
• La Résistance: She prefers "Rebel Alliance".
• Single Tear: After escaping from Redcloak's attack on the Resistance.
• Sole Survivor: She's the only member of the Resistance to survive Redcloak's attack on their base.
• Street Smart: Haley singled her out for this quality.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: To a degree with Ho Thanh; they differ on ways to deal with problems, as Ho Thanh is very direct and Niu prefers to be subversive. However, at no point do they ever fail to work together.

Isamu

Isamu

"I thought we agreed we were going to call ourselves 'The Azure City Underground."

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Unknown
Alignment: Unknown

A member of Haley's resistance cell during her insurgency against Azure City's hobgoblin occupiers.

---

• Face–Monster Turn: After being drained of his life energy by undead, he becomes a wight himself and joins Tsukiko's Black Squadron.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Killed by wights shortly after his introduction.

Other resistance leaders

Other resistance leaders

Resistance leader with topknot: The flame-haired trollop is an evil interloper, sent by our enemies to sow dissent!
Resistance leader with eyepatch: There can be no truce with the harlot who aided Hinjo's regicide.

Race: Human
Gender: Male & Female
Class: Unknown
Alignment: Unknown

Two leaders of anti-hobgoblin resistance cells which spend more time squabbling with each other than actually fighting the enemy, at least at first. The leader with a topknot thinks that the Order corrupted Hinjo and caused his ruin, while the leader with an eyepatch thinks that Hinjo was already evil and the Order helped him slay Shojo. Consequently, both are reluctant to trust Haley.

---

• La Résistance: They lead different factions within it.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Their problem, at least until they manage to unite.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: They don't get much screen time (or even names) before Redcloak has them both killed.

Other inhabitants of Azure City

Daesuk

Daesuk

"Well, fine! Who needs you? Just sit here and be a freak who thinks about fish all day!"

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Unknown
Alignment: Unknown

Lien's boyfriend from when she was a teenager.

---

• Jerkass: Doesn't even feign interest in the things Lien cares about. He also shows no sadness or angst when Lien dumps him.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: When confronted by the sea witch, he runs for his life, not even making sure Lien follows him.
• They Just Dont Get It: Lien tries to explain the source of their relationship problems to Daesuk as plainly as possible, but it still manages to fly over his head. Lien considers it outrageous that both a paladin and a freaking criminal understood her better after a few minutes than Daesuk ever did.

Sea witch

Sea witch

"I will give you three riddles. If you can solve them all, the ring is yours! If you cannot, I will transform you into a skitterling — to serve me for the rest of your life!"

Race: Sea hag
Gender: Female
Class: Unknown
Alignment: Unknown

A witch living in a cave underneath one of Azure City's piers.

---

• Con Man: She does have magical ability, but it's much weaker than she makes it seem. She makes herself seem to be the mysterious powerful being... when her actions are done by a few magic items and a couple low-level spells.
• Cutting the Knot: Lien doesn't play her game and simply attacks her when she offers her ring of water breathing in exchange for a riddle game, on the condition Lien be turned into one of her creatures if Lien loses.
• Expy: She's clearly meant to be a stand in for the sea witch of The Little Mermaid, especially given Lien has inverted interests (wanting to explore under the sea rather than above it). But she also is nowhere near as powerful as the witch in the fairy tale, and Lien is not in the same emotional corner, nor is she as desperate.
• Magically-Binding Contract: Subverted: there is nothing binding about her agreements, she just wants her victims to think there is so they won't resist when she polymorphs them.
• Magic Wand: Owns a weak-level wand of polymorph, implying she is not powerful enough to cast it on her own.
• Manipulative Bastard: Using weak mind-reading magic to lure in victims and take them off guard by already knowing their names and what they want.
• Master of Illusion: Creates an illusion to make her cave entrance to appear to be a regular stone cliff when she wants no-one to find her.
• Paper Tiger: Folds like a house of cards once Lien gets one good punch in, and is arrested by the paladins.
• Riddle Me This: She convinces kids to try to solve her riddles in exchange for a reward, then shapeshifts them into monsters when they fail.
• Ring of Power: Owns a ring of water breathing. This is important because it shows she is not a powerful Sea Hag, but in fact a mundane witch. Lien is given it by the paladins as a gift in exchange for the reward money for finding her victims.
• Starter Villain: Is the first villain that Lien faces and starts her down the path of becoming a paladin.
• Would Hurt a Child: Ask all the children she's lured in with her riddle games and turned into her slaves.

Skitterlings

Skitterlings

"Help."

Race: Skitterlings (formerly humans)
Gender: Male and female
Class: Unknown
Alignment: Unknown

Children who were forcibly transformed into monsters by the sea witch.

---

• Forced Transformation: They were turned into horrible monsters by the sea witch using a wand.

Grand Larceny Prisoner

"It's not my usual area of expertise, but sometimes, you gotta break outta your rut to get ahead in this world."

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Rogue
Alignment: Unknown

A human thief whose name is never revealed, he was being held in the Azure City prison for grand larceny prior to the Battle of Azure City. Just before the battle he and other prisoners who are at least level 5 in their class are offered reduced sentences if they fight in the battle. He accepts.

---

• Affably Evil: He's a thief who accepts a job offer from Kubota to assassinate Hinjo in the middle of the battle, but he's friendly and good humored, and makes it clear he has nothing personal against Hinjo; Kubota just offered him too much money to refuse.
• Aloof Archer: He's a calm professional, and mostly unfazed man whose preferred weapon is a bow.
• Deadpan Snarker: He makes several low-key snarky comments. For example, when Elan says that it's nice to actually be competent for once, the Prisoner shoots three hobgoblins at once and quips that he wouldn't know.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Kubota pays him to kill Hinjo and make it look like Hinjo was hit by a poisoned hobgoblin arrow.
• Nothing Personal: He's got nothing against Hinjo, and probably wouldn't have tried to kill him if not for Kubota promising him a large sum, but he was offered a fortune and a job is a job.
• Off with His Head!: Belkar turns on him because Hinjo might be the only person who can remove the Mark of Justice, and Belkar decides not to take any chances with it. So he throw both himself and the Prisoner over the wall and decapitates the human as they're falling.
• Perfect Poison: Kubota supplies him with one. The Prisoner points out that even if it doesn't outright kill Hinjo, it'll likely weaken him enough for the hobgoblins Hinjo is fighting to finish him off.
• Professional Killer: As noted in his character quote, he isn't normally this, usually just being a thief, but Kubota promised him an enormous sum of 100,000 gold if he could kill Hinjo in the chaos of battle.
• Red Shirt: He gets just enough characterization to tease that he might be more than this, but ultimately he's a very minor character whose main contributions are to set up the Azurite politics seen more in the next arc and a tiny bit of character insight with Belkar.
• Side Bet: He and Belkar made a bet about whether Roy would be foolish enough to try to jump onto Xykon's zombie dragon to fight Xykon after Xykon's invisibility spell is broken.
• This Is Gonna Suck: He's dismayed when he first sees Xykon on the zombie dragon and says as much.
  Grand Larceny Prisoner: I shoulda stayed in jail.
• Villainous Friendship: He starts to form one with Belkar, and it seems like the two get along well enough, but the halfling turns on him over the assassination attempt on Hinjo, as Belkar fears that he might never be able to get the Mark of Justice removed if Hinjo dies.

Kidnapper Prisoner

"I'll take my chances that the goblins plaster ya."

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Unknown
Alignment: Unknown

A middle-aged human in prison for kidnapping. He is one of several prisoners who are offered reduced sentences if he fights in the battle, but he declines.

---

• Bit Character: Only appears in two strips and says a few lines.
• Did Not Think This Through: He mentions hoping that the hobgoblins win. He clearly didn't consider that if they did he might wind up in an even worse predicament, since they'd have no interest in setting him free ever, and might simply go on a mass killing spree of humans, including prisoners.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Unceremoniously killed by some falling rubble.
• Evil Old Folks: He's middle-aged, bald, and with a white beard, but he is a criminal and the length of his sentence (he mentions that he still has 14 years to serve, with no indication of how long he's already been in prison), implies it was a pretty serious offense or offenses that got him put there.
• Opt Out: He refuses to aid the Azurites in the battle, saying that the reduction Hinjo is offering isn't enough to be worthwhile.
• Tempting Fate: He comments that he was right to stay in prison and it's safer there than on the battlefield. Just after saying that, part of the damaged ceiling collapses and crushes him. Nale, who was his cellmate, lampshades it.

Islanders

Inhabitants of the island that the Azure City survivors settle on after the city itself is conquered by Xykon.

Melisander

Melisander

"Why, with my despairing wail, hideously unkempt hair, and the aura of doom surrounding me, you almost certainly mistook me for a banshee!"

Race: Ghost (formerly elf)
Gender: Female
Class: Unknown
Alignment: Unknown

A long-deceased maid who served the elves that used to govern the island.

---

• Bad Powers, Good People: As a ghost, most of her powers are pretty frightening. However, Melisander only wants to be helpful to people.
• Dead All Along: From her point of view, as it had to be explained to her off panel that she was dead.
• Demonic Possession: One of her many powers.
• Forced Sleep: Another of her powers, and the one she finds to be most useful when serving the Azurites, since all the stress and trauma they've endured has given a lot of them insomnia that she can help fix.
• Friendly Ghost: Most definitely this, as she's a helpful, friendly maid despite being a ghost.
• Happiness in Minimum Wage: Figured as a ghost that she wouldn't be paid at all, since what use does she have money for? But Hinjo wouldn't have slavery on his watch, and says she could just use it to buy a Ghost-Touch Broom.
• Mundane Utility: Uses her spectral powers, such as walking through walls and the above-mentioned Forced Sleep, to help Azurite refugees to get a good night's rest.
• Never Learned to Read: One of the proposals by Kato is to act as a medium through the Ouija Board, which her illiteracy became an obstacle for communication.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: She possesses a zombie at the suggestion it might be a way around for her to have a physical presence without possessing a thinking person, but the zombie instincts almost immediately overwhelm her. Thankfully, the zombie is quickly destroyed.
• Undying Loyalty: Literally. Her sense of duty as a house keeper is so intense that it binds her spirit to the world of the living.
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Was hidden from Hinjo at first in fear of this... turns out Hinjo sees no reason to exorcise a perfectly benign spirit.

---