The Crew | Factions (Corporations: The Board, Auntie Cleo's, Spacer's Choice, C&P Boarst Factory, MSI), SubLight Salvaging & Shipping, Iconoclasts, Other Groups: Groundbreaker, Deserters, Gorgon, Eridanos, Marauders, Outlaws | Other Characters
An organization that is fighting to free Terra-1 (Monarch) from the control from the Board.
The Iconoclasts
In General
"Freedom! This is the only place in Halcyon you'll find it. No corporations, no shackles, no problems."
An organization of religiously-themed rebels.
- The Cavalry: If you've helped them out they'll be one of the potential factions that end up assaulting Tartarus in the end to help you.
- The Fundamentalist: They practice Philosophism, the largest religion in the system except for the OSI.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Graham does this for the Iconoclasts by having them attack Stellar Bay if they receive the logic module.
- Order Versus Chaos: Has this as their motivation like the OSI. Except they're with Chaos.
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: They're an anti-Board terrorist group but there's no Board presence on Terra-1 (Monarch) and they don't have any spaceships.
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Player Punch: If the player sided with MSI over them in the battle for the targeting module and deigns to return to Amber Heights for whatever reason, they'll find none of the named members of the organization they've met and potentially befriended (or even rescued) there, implying that they all died during the thwarted siege on Stellar Bay or wandered off in defeat. - Rebellious Rebel: It's a religiously themed revolution with Philosophism at the core.
- The Remnant: If it comes to pass, the climactic battle that the Iconoclasts have with MSI over the targeting module doesn't necessarily result in them being wiped out if they should lose. What's left of the Decapitated Army can be found bumming around Amber Heights, slumming it across Monarch, or taking potshots at the Unplanned Variable if they get too close.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Averted for the time being as Graham is keeping them from doing too much to non-Board targets. Revealed to be a scam as not only was Graham responsible for the Amber Heights massacre but is planning to conquer Stellar Bay.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Villified: If Zora takes over.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: They are this with MSI as they're fighting over radio waves at the start of the game. Until Graham attacks it if he remains leader.
- Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Like the Outlaws but significantly more "Freedom Fighter" than Terrorist. Unless Graham wins.
Leadership
Graham Bryant
"A stranger comes to our home. If you're looking for a path to walk, you've found one. If you're looking for a teacher, I am one."
Voiced by: Roger Craig Smith
A former MSI exec, who formed the Iconoclasts after MSI was kicked off the board, uniting his anti-corporate view with Philosophist views in a pseudo-religious manner.
- The Atoner: Most of what he's done is to make up for the Amber Heights massacre.
- Broken Pedestal: For Zora, after she finds out about his part in instigating the Amber Heights massacre. Felix and a Philosophist Max are similarly disgusted. Even Sanjar can't believe Graham would have killed so many people in the name of his cause.
- Defiant to the End: If the player supports Zora ousting him from leadership, he will refuse to go down peacefully and has to be killed by the player.
- Establishing Character Moment: Shares one with Zora. While talking about the next moves he'll make, he'll talk about spending the Iconoclasts limited-if-not-nonexistent funds on a printing press, ignoring Zora's focus on more practical matters.
- Evil Counterpart: To Vicar Max no matter how his personal quest pans out. To OSI Max, he is a similarly proud and wounded man who has turned to his faith as a way of saving himself from his faults, but hopes to erase rather than rectify his failures and is all too willing to exploit his station to dominate the masses. To Philosophist Max, for as much as he harps on spirituality and enlightenment, if a would-be believer doesn't pursue the religion in the way he does, then they aren't true Philosophists. Even a Max who has done away with religion entirely, in spite of his brusque manner and violent tendencies, would never, even at the height of his bitterness, mastermind the death of an entire town. As an added bonus, Graham can potentially make his last stand at a church on Monarch not too dissimilar in design from the one the Unplanned Variable first met Max.
- Foil: To Sanjar Nandi. Both are/were MSI executives, both had grievance with the way things were done, both still have some corporate executive foibles from before their disillusionment. But while Sanjar's is that he's still a stuffy bureaucrat, Graham's is that he still treats underlings as things instead of people.
- Heel–Faith Turn: Believes he's made one. He's wrong.
- Hypocrite: Claims to be fighting against The Board's corporate hegemony over the colony so that the workers will have better lives. To spread his message, he's willing to sacrifice as many of them as he can, often at the expense of necessities like food and medicine. It's doubly hypocritical in hindsight when you find out he was willing to resort to murdering everyone at the Amber Heights compound just so he and Sanjar could be in charge of Monarch.
- The Fundamentalist: Graham appears more soft spoken and calm than Zora his second in command. In actuality he has a casual disregard for the life of his troops. He has no problem about killing for his ideals, as seen with the Amber Heights massacre. While he does feel terrible about that, he's blind to how he's casually throwing away lives in the hopes of achieving his goals.
- Hiding Behind Religion: Zora basically states this is the case as he claims he's found peace in Philophism but is doing the same thing he did before — treating people like tools, placing the cause above individual lives. Vicar Max backs this up, claiming that he uses his faith as a bludgeon.
- It's All About Me: Even before it is revealed he is responsible for the Amber Heights massacre and founded the Iconoclasts as a way to distance himself from his own guilt, Zora calls him out on how cavalier he is with their people's lives, valuing things like a printing press when they're dangerously low on food, medicine, and ammo.
- Magnetic Hero: How he styles himself. Even Sanjar admits that Graham's personality was so charismatic that he was tempted to join in on his anti-corporate crusade.
- My Greatest Failure: Graham organized the pirate attack on Amber Heights in order to kill MSI executives whom he felt stood in the way of his, Hiram, and Sanjar's hope of reforming MSI. When the board kicked MSI off and blockaded the planet, Graham formed the Iconoclasts and all he does is in the name of absolving himself of the guilt he feels for what he did.
- Never My Fault: Despite the guilt he feels, he has internalized his Heel–Faith Turn so thoroughly that he is completely unwilling to actually admit responsibility for the Amber Heights Massacre if confronted with it by the player, only speaking of his guilt through hypothetical scenarios while never outright confirming his role in it. He'll only confirm it if Zora tries to take control of the Iconoclasts from him.
- "Not So Different" Remark: He's really not much better than your average corporation head in Halcyon when it comes to how much value he places on his followers. Zora calls him out for essentially viewing their people as expendable.
- Preacher Man: Graham styles himself as a kind of guru and spiritual mentor to his flock.
- Principles Zealot: Graham is focused entirely on his faith and ideology, and blind to concerns like the Iconocasts' need for food and medicine, or how many people died on a give mission.
- We Have Reserves: Has this attitude toward his men. He doesn't, and his callous waste of Iconoclast soldiers in pursuit of the spreading of his message gradually drives a wedge between him and Zora.
- We Used to Be Friends: He was friends with Sanjar. Now the two lead opposing factions, with Sanjar wanting to rejoin the Board and reform it from within, while Graham believes the Board must be dismantled so that something new can be built in its place.
Zora Blackwood
"No! No more listening. No more preaching. We are losing people left and right. We need to act!"
Voiced by: Sumalee Montano
A former doctor working for Rizzo's. When Rizzo pulled from Monarch, she joined the Iconoclasts as Graham's right hand woman.
- Combat Medic: Is technically the doctor of the Iconoclasts but has ended up their general.
- Defector from Decadence: Used to be one of Rizzo's researchers.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: She is far more concerned about keeping the group alive in contrast to Graham. Helping her supplant him as the leader of the Iconoclasts and to make amends with MSI leads to a far better ending.
- I've Come Too Far: Even if she deposes Graham, she still wants to attain the targeting module and conquer Stellar Bay as she views the fight over it as the tipping point where the Iconoclasts will either become the de facto force ruling over Monarch or completely helpless to oppose MSI any further.
- The Lancer: They argue constantly over the group's priorities, but at the end of the day Zora is Graham's loyal second-in-command. Which is what makes finding out he was the one who supplied the pirates with the gate codes to Amber Heights so hard for her.
- The Medic: Is the doctor of the Iconoclasts as well as their military leader.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Is both a doctor as well as a leader in a guerrilla (terrorist?) organization.
- A Mother to Her Men: Zora and Graham argue a lot over the latter's wasting their people's lives in the name of larger, more abstract objectives. Zora is the organization's doctor meaning she's the one patching those wounded following Graham's missions.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: She's far more pragmatic than Graham, realizing that ideology and faith won't replace the need for food, shelter and medicine. If Graham is deposed, she's willing to work with Sanjar to end to fighting and unite the two factions. Her direct pragmatism complements Sanjar's ability to organize and manage. And the two share a desire to provide for their people.
- This Is Unforgivable!: Believes MSI cutting off their supply chain is this. She changes her mind when Sanjar reaches out with an offer of alliance, after she finds out the full extent of Graham's complicity in the massacre of Amber Heights.
Soldiers
Ash
"Nothing on this moon for nobody. Just a lotta heartbreak."
A grizzled old mercenary who traveled all across Monarch during his younger years and now finds himself drinking away his remaining days at a bar in Amber Heights. In addition to telling stories from his old life as a merc he'll hire the UV to go on a quest to retrieve a valuable memento from his past.
- The Alcoholic: He eventually traded in the merc life to settle down in Amber Heights and spend his remaining years getting piss drunk at the local watering hole.
- Con Man: Revealed to be one at the end of his sidequest. He was paid a job to help people get off world, only to ditch them last minute and leave them to die just because someone paid him for a better job. You can rightfully call him out on this.
- Covered in Scars: If half of what he says is true he hasn't had an easy life and the mess of scars running across his face is proof enough that he's seen his share of the nastier aspects of frontier life on a sulfurous moon brimming with hostile wildlife.
- Retired Badass: He was apparently quite the warrior in his younger days and has the scars to prove it.
- The Storyteller: Has three stories to tell about the sights he's seen across Monarch, from the Hot Pole to the Cold. He'll tell you more more about the strange (but not totally implausible) geography of the planet than any other character, even if he can't explain the science behind it all himself.
- A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Puts up the act of being a retired mercenary who lost his squad years ago, but after completing his quest and finding out his "memento" doesn't match the sob story he told you, he admits he lied to you so you could pick up the money from a job he last minute cancelled. Said job caused several innocent people to die, and he thanks you for essentially letting him get away with it.
May & August Van Noy
"You are a sight, I'll tell you what. We are up a creek."
A pair of siblings that serve as some of the Iconoclast's heaviest hitters.
- Action Girl: May, of course. Both wear the Iconoclasts' heaviest armor and carry BFGs. Helmeted and fully suited up, they're basically indistinguishable until May starts doing the talking for them both.
- The Big Guy: They serve as heavies for the Iconoclasts' army and are some of the group's best soldiers. They definitely look the part too, with some of the heaviest weapons and armor that Amber Heights has to offer.
- BFG: Both tote heavy weapons.
- Brother–Sister Team: They are implied to do most (if not all) of their jobs as a team. If the UV made a positive impact on the Iconoclasts and maintained a good relationship with them they can even be found leading a group of Iconoclast soldiers during the assault on Tartarus at the end of the game.
- "Day of the Week" Name: Month of the year variant. Their first names are May and August.
- The Quiet One: August rarely says anything and prefers to let his sister May do most of the talking.
