The character list for The Tenth Line.
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Party Members
The Princess
- An Ice Person: One of her attacks, Diving Swan, hits a line of enemies with an icy charge.
- Bad Powers, Good People: She's a good person, but her light powers come from a world-ending entity of pure light.
- Boots of Toughness: Never mind the cute bows on them: the Princess' pragmatic choice of footwear shows that she knows how to get things done.
- Combat Medic: The Princess can dish out damage, but her special power is the ability to heal other party members—including healing as a secondary effect of her attacks and parries. Her Fury/Forgiveness gauge lets you dynamically emphasize the "Combat" or the "Medic" function.
- Heroines Prefer Swords: Her main weapon is a Royal Rapier, naturally. She starts off with an ornamental one since it's the only one she could find while fleeing for her life, but gets real one from a blacksmith in the First Town.
- Light 'em Up: As the game goes on, she gains access to more light-based abilities due to her connection to the White Energy.
- Magic Knight: She is both a trained fencer and a newbie sorceress. Most of her magic gradually fades away after the white energy entity is defeated.
- No Name Given: The Princess is the Princess. Or "Your Highness" if you want to be polite. Or "Your Royal Highness" if you really want to get on her good side. Her real name is Anne, and she's not a princess.
- Orphanage of Love: She opens one in Skyweather during the epilogue, making it a home for both humans and nonhumans in defiance of the dead king's xenophobic policies.
- Playing with Fire: Her Flare Flayer attack is a fiery blast.
- Prim and Proper Bun: Wears the Lady of War variety, although she is more outgoing than the usual variation of this trope.
- Princess Protagonist: A female protagonist in an old-school ERPG? Of course she's a princess! She's not actually a princess. She's was just using it to keep Rik and Tox with her.
- Proper Tights with a Skirt: The default outfit.
- Spoiled Brat: Was one before her abduction, making her search for allies extra challenging.
Rik the Kobold
- Flechette Storm: Rik's ultimate attack basically involves him spamming his thrown knives as fast as the player can press the button, turning the battle into a Bullet Hell for the enemies. There's even an achievement for throwing ONE THOUSAND of his knives.
- Fox Folk: The only kobold among the main characters.
- Older Than They Look: He's actually older than Tox, by a year.
- Only in It for the Money: Agrees to escort the Princess home for the ransom she promises her father will pay him. After she's outed as not a real princess, he still agrees to escort her anyway.
- Raised by Humans: Rik is a beastman but was raised by a human couple, so he only partly conforms to his species' stereotypes.
- Trick Knife: Rik's throwing knives can be tricked-out with various items to give them a variety of elemental damage bonuses.
Tox the Black Dracomage
- Bad Powers, Good People: Downplayed. The dark magic that he wields forms a kind of deadly magical pollution in high concentrations.
- Black Magic: Tox practices it, though in this setting, it's not so much "evil magic" as "magic that nobody understands how it works and so everyone fears it".
- Breath Weapon: His primary means of attack is his breath weapon. In addition to being able to breathe fire, he can also switch to any of the other three elements.
- Casting a Shadow: While he can use all four of the main Elemental Powers, most of his attacks use darkness instead.
- Draconic Humanoid: Tox is basically a black dragon who walks upright.
- Extreme Omnivore: Can eat items the party finds to improve his stats.
- Flash Step: Can use it to avoid incoming attacks in combat and to get to otherwise inaccessible locations in the exploration mode.
- Gentle Giant: Despite being a physically imposing and generally a dangerous magic-wielder, Tox comes across as a gentle and intellectual individual.
- Heroic Sacrifice: At the end of the game, while the black dracomages are blackening the sky to stop the white energy, Tox absorbs it all into his body to save Rik, who, unlike The Princess, is not immune to black dracomage poison.
- Mage Killer: His attacks are especially deadly to fellow mages.
- Power-Up Food: He changes the element of his Breath Weapon by eating items that the party comes across.
- Raised by Humans: Like Rik, he was raised by a human couple, so he only partly conforms to his species' stereotypes.
- Squishy Wizard: Despite having a lot of damage output, Tox is the least durable of the primary party.
- Younger Than They Look: He's only 20, despite looking far older.
Assist Characters
Lawrence the Human
- Cool Old Guy: He is quite a bit older than the rest of the party, but fun to be around.
- Good Old Fisticuffs: In a world of magic and walking dragons, this guy beats everyone up with his fists.
- Non-Elemental: His attacks are just brute force.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: There are hints that there is a darker side to his happy-go-lucky persona. The reason he is so adamant about protecting the Princess is because his daughter, Grace, ended up in the same situation and he was unable to save her.
- Old-School Chivalry: Jumps to the Princess' defense despite not even knowing her.
Sonya the Huntress
- An Ice Person: Her special attack is ice-elemental.
- Fantastic Racism: She shares the Huntsfolk's xenophobic beliefs and is particularly looking for an excuse to kill Tox. She mellows out over the course of the game, but tries to avoid admitting it.
- King Incognito: She, not Anne, is the real princess. She only briefly re-assumes her title to let Rik and Tox into Skyweather to rescue Anne, letting one of her brothers take the throne afterward.
- Nature Hero: She is encountered in the wilds and her special attacks are nature-themed.
- The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: As long as Tox does nothing to break the laws, she'll go as far as to protect him from other attackers—just so she can kill him herself, once he finally does.
- Religious Bruiser: She has complete faith in the Ten Lines and believes that her work (hunting black dracomages) will help avert the cataclysm it foretold.
Syx the Green Dracomage
- Apologizes a Lot: Especially when his temper gets the better of him and he starts slinging his magic around.
- Defeat Equals Friendship: Syx is initially the boss of the Hollow River Valley area before joining the party.
- Expy: Of Moke from The Reconstruction and The Drop—another green reptilian user of poisonous magic.
- Flunky Boss: As a boss, he has his followers assist him in combat.
- Poisonous Person: As a practitioner of the nox magic, poisons and other nastiness seem to be drawn to him. He's absorbed so much that he's basically a walking chemical spill, contaminating the land around him until he finds a cave to live in.
- Shrinking Violet: Being treated as inherently evil his entire life left him a timid and socially insecure individual.
Vax the Red Dracomage
- Heroic Sacrifice: When Lux's soldier's attack Rik and Tox's home, he offers to distract them so they can get away, but they shoot him with an arrow and and he ended up dying in the ensuing fire.
- Jumped at the Call: Pretty much joins as an Assist Character for the adventure the Princess' quest promises.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Red dracons are known for causing widespread destruction with their fire-based powers, which is why Vax, having spent most of his life with humans, decided to avoid developing said powers.
- Playing with Fire: Subverted. Even though red dracons are known for their fiery breath, Vax chose not to develop his talents in this area, so he can only breathe clouds of debilitating smoke.
Lux the White Dracomage
- An Ice Person: He has control over Ice.
- Bad Powers, Bad People: He believes this about black Dracons and their powers of darkness. So things go south when he meets Tox. The final confrontation with him is shortly after he killed several others.
- Blow You Away: He also uses Sky magic.
- Face–Heel Turn: Initially, Lux is helpful and cordial to The Princess, but when he discovers that Tox is travelling with her later on...
- Flunky Boss: As a boss, he has his ice crystals assist him in combat. Failing to defeat all of them has them restore some of Lux's HP.
- Guile Hero: He is not so much into fighting as he is into diplomacy and directing his followers.
- Knight Templar: Against black dracomages, due to believing that they're a case of Bad Powers, Bad People. It's to the point that he murdered the king just for talking to Nix.
- The Paragon: He is a champion of human-beast relations and considered a hero of the people.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The Princess is awed to meet him and hopes to do so again.
Non-Player Characters
Nix the Black Dracomage
A female black dracomage who works to unite other black dracomages under her banner.
- Casting a Shadow: She's a black dracomage like Tox, making her naturally attuned to darkness.
- Insufferable Genius: She is a very intelligent individual, but also contemptuous and even unreasonable at times.
- The Social Darwinist: She kicked Tox out of their brood for being weak, leading to him being Raised by Humans.
- Superboss: She is only fought in the postgame and is the strongest Dracon the player can fight. She also has the highest difficulty rating for Quad Pro Quo.
- Super Supremacist: She believes that Dracons brought magic and culture to the world and so should rule over it. She plans to use let the deadly magical pollution left over from containing the white energy entity wipe out most non-Dracons so that she can rule over the survivors.
- You Can't Fight Fate: She believes that the black dracomages purpose is to destroy and take back the world, and that it's pointless to fight it.
Villains
The Tall Man
- The Adjectival Man: Because names have power in the setting, he chooses to keep his secret.
- Big Bad: He is shaping up to be this.
- Hidden Agenda Villain: The Tall Man occasionally shows up in cutscenes but his goals are a mystery. In the endgame, you find out that his main goal was to stave off the White Light, who demands a girl with the mark every ten years, to prevent a disaster.
- No Name Given: His real name is never revealed.
The Thin Man
- The Adjectival Man: Just like his boss.
- Ambiguous Disorder: He seems a little out of his mind, but this is hardly elaborated upon.
- The Dragon: To the Tall Man.
- The Heavy: Unlike his boss, he is a threat looming over the Princess' shoulder continuously.
- No Name Given: Like his boss, his real name is never given.
SPOILER CHARACTER
The White Energy
A... being of pure white energy. It demands a sacrifice of a girl with the mark, a birthmark that renders one immune to black dracomage poison, its only weakness.- Energy Beings: An enormous orb of light energy that fights using what appears to be the spirits of the girls sacrificed to it.
- Final Boss: A piece of it is last enemy fought by the party, though the dracomage gathering are the ones who finish the rest of it off.
- Flunky Boss: During its fight, it has hands made of pure white energy assist it in battle.
- Greater-Scope Villain: To the cultists, who were sacrificing those with a particular mark to appease it. The black dracomages oppose it and are gathering to destroy it under Nix's leadership.
- Light 'em Up: It attacks with the same light energy it's made from.
- Light Is Not Good: A being of pure white, light energy is possibly one of the most evil and/or destructive beings in the game.
