Tropes relating to the Rebellion. For other characters in Twig, see here.
open/close all folders
Rebellion and Associates
Genevieve Fray and Company
Genevieve Fray
An escapee from the Academy with similar abilities to Sy.
- Adaptational Villainy: Rare same author example, was originally the protagonist of Wildbow's pilot story "Boil" (which later became Twig) and in it she was less ruthless and conniving.
- Ambiguously Evil: The most noticeable thing about in her first conversation with Sy is how polite and friendly she is. Really, how evil she is depends on your opinion of the Academy.
- The Bad Guy Wins: While her actual evilness is questionable, she more or less achieves her objectives over the course of the arc and the Lambs are powerless to stop her.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: The final arc reveals that she and Hayle have been working together all along, using the war to manipulate the Lambs into becoming a new generation of Nobles.
- Big Bad Ensemble: One of the main antagonists, alongside the Infante and Hayle. Of the three, she's the most prominent as the mastermind behind the civil war, and though she has good intentions, her willingness to use primordials against the Crown makes her just as much of a threat to the world at large.
- Broken Pedestal: Sy suffers this regarding her in Bitter Pill when she states that she never saw herself as an experiment but as a scientist, which leads to Sy giving her a "Reason You Suck" Speech.
- The Chessmaster: In Arc 7, Sy gets a little thrill when he realizes that sterilizing hundreds of thousands of people and starting a civil war was step one of her plan.
- Combat Tentacles: She wears a weaponized jellyfish on her arm that she uses to pull her opponents in so that she can poison them.
- Divergent Character Evolution: Displays much more ruthless behavior than she did in Boil, with a body count of at least 3 which she did not have in the snippet.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Based on the protagonist of Boil, one of wildbow's preview works in the interim between Worm and Pact whose elements were incorporated into Twig.
- Evil Versus Evil: With the Duke and the Academy.
- Foil:
- To Sy, having been taking doses of the Wyvern formula for as long as he has. However, when Sy was folded into the Lambs and his doses were set to their current level, Genevieve started increasing hers past any reasonable safety measures, as Sy had been intended as a lab rat to establish a maximum limit. Furthermore, her focus is not just science but long-term strategy and planning skills, a field in which Sy is noticeably weak. Although, which is more "Evil"? Good luck deciding that...
- She's also far better at fighting than Sy, whose combat abilities are negligible at best.
- Long-Lost Relative: Sylvester considers her his "sister" for her similar use of the Wyvern formula; in return, she seems very interested in maintaining contact with him and the Lambs. Perhaps beyond their being "useful tools", although how much so is up in the air.
- Mad Scientist: She started taking Wyvern to get a jump on the academic competition... and, quickly developed herself in every way she could to get good enough in the biological sciences and underhanded scheming to produce as much of it (or any other chemical) she needed without the pesky authoritarian supervision and paperwork.
- Master Poisoner: Wearing a hazmat suit 24/7 when in the same town as her is advisable as a sensible precaution. She can drop Sy before he even gets a hint he's in trouble. Granted, she has good reason to know all the backdoors when it comes to Wyvern resistance; but, still. Then there's what she does to the water supply of a whole region...
- The Perfectionist: She overthinks every aspect of her plans to compensate for the weakness of Wyvern in rapid reaction. However, this means that when something comes up that she doesn't expect, she needs time to formulate a new plan.
- Pet the Dog: After knocking out Sy she leaves him somewhere warm and with a blanket rather than just leave him in the snow to freeze to death.
- Poisonous Person: As with Sy, it's not a good idea to get a transfusion from her, even if technically you are the same blood type. On top of that, she's installed custom-made, biotech toxin-delivery tools on her person.
- The Social Expert: She maintains that she utterly sucks at the interpersonal nuances involved in this, and is, therefore, an aversion; Sy begs to differ (and argues a very good point). She really doesn't share his focus on improvisation and spontaneity, particularly not with his "just messing" applications, yet she can be very manipulative when she puts her mind to plan for it, so she excels at the broader sociopolitical side of climbing greasy poles, as a result. How and why she became a tutor is a case in point.
- Super-Intelligence: You can tell she uses Wyvern when she assesses and plots, put it that way.
- They Called Me Mad!: Sy believes that her driving motivation is for validation, that she ultimately needs to prove to people that her way is the correct one, and thus rebuke the Academy for kicking her out.
- Uncertain Doom: She ends the story at the mercy of the Lambs before they become Nobles. It's unknown what happens to her afterward, though execution certainly isn't out of the picture.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Sylvester suggests that she tells people, and herself, that she is this, and buys into it herself a little with shades of Knight Templar by constantly being fair and avoiding lying.
- Wolverine Claws: She has poison injectors hidden underneath her fingernails.
- Your Days Are Numbered: She reveals to Sy in Bitter Pill 15.14 that her usage of Wyvern shortens her lifespan as well, but since she took more focused doses, her expiration is much further in the future than Sy's.
Warren
Once the son of a powerful landowner in Radham, Warren was betrayed by his friends and left for dead so they could get at his money. He was then found by a rogue scientist who salvaged his head for use in a computing machine, who was eventually arrested by the Academy, and Warren's head (still conscious) ended up in the evidence locker. When Genevieve Fray made her escape, she rescued him and earned his loyalty by executing his creator and sticking his head atop a massive Stitched to use as muscle.
- And I Must Scream: Until Fray found him he was pretty much a Futurama-style disembodied head fully conscious of his situation.
- The Brute: Is Fray's main muscle, though he's neither stupid nor thoughtlessly violent.
- Losing Your Head: Was left as just a head before Fray found him, minus a tongue so his screaming wouldn't distract the scientist who inflicted that fate on him.
- The Quiet One: He doesn't talk much, not because he can't but because he has little to say.
- Uncertain Doom: It's unknown if he manages to escape the Blackwood and Red plague.
Wendy
A young high-end Stitched that belonged to Warren's family before being kidnapped alongside him, she tags along with Genevieve because Warren does, and her last order was to look after him.
- It Can Think: As the arc goes on it becomes increasingly clear that Wendy is, in fact, still a person, if a severely brain-damaged one.
- Undying Loyalty: To Warren since her last orders were to look after him.
The Shepherd and his Flock
The antagonists of the second arc, the Shepherd is a populist leader who manipulates legions of people through words alone, with a network of spies and informants within the Academy itself. They become recurring antagonists as part of the rebels later on, though the war takes it toll on their numbers
The Shepherd
Reverend Mauer aka the Shepherd
"I could kill every last noble and every last demented doctor who perverts something that should be good, and I don’t think it would be any better than a drop of water to a man dying of thirst. I could keep fighting until every last soldier is dead and my weapons broken to pieces, and I would claw at my enemies with my fingers, until those fingers were worn down to nubs. ... The Academy is big, and fighting it requires a character that is incapable of giving up the fight. I have the character."
Reverend Mauer was once a soldier for the Crown, fighting in wars as a conscript. Returning home with a new arm and a new outlook, he joined the clergy and mans the local parish in Radham. When the rebellion kicks off, he's a major player in command of thousands of troops.
- Anti-Villain: Mauer has a sympathetic backstory, and it's difficult to say whether or not his goals are any better or worse than those of the Academy the protagonists work for. He is eventually complicit in Percy's child murders however.
- Artificial Limbs: His arm has been replaced a very poor grafted arm made out of wood and fungus, which is heavy, misshapen, and forces him to walk with a limp due to its sheer weight.
- Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: He's the one who kills Mr. Percy.
- Badass Normal: He's so good at manipulating crowds that Sy repeatedly asks Jamie to confirm that he's not an experiment of some sort like the Lambsbridge Gang.
- Big Bad Wannabe: Despite his prominence as one of the most recurring rebels and enemies of the Lambs, he's ultimately just a pawn for Fray's machinations who never learns the truth behind the Nobles and the Block.
- The Chessmaster: Mauer's usual modus operandi is to do something to force the Academy to react and overreact to garner support for his cause, with his people in place to stir things up and draw attention to the atrocity.
- Determinator: It doesn't matter to him how many friends and pawns he loses, what the Academy does in response, or how long he has to fight. He will continue to fight for as long as he needs to.
- Didn't See That Coming: For all his plotting and scheming, he wasn't expecting the Academy to use children against him.
- The Dragon: to Genevieve Fray, whose authority he abides to.
- Dragon with an Agenda: That said, he is also highly independent and has his own side projects.
- Evil Mentor: Sy wishes he was his but unfortunately they are on different sides.
- Enemy Mine: Allies himself with Sylvester during the battle for Lugh, recognizing that the Lambs are on the verge of turning against the Academy and only need a push.
- False Flag Operation: His plan to let Whiskers loose is essentially this, to convince his parish that they're under attack by the Academy.
- I Surrender, Suckers: He comes forward at the battle of Lugh to surrender to the Duke, planning to blow him up with hidden explosives, and, when that fails, reveals that he and Fray have developed improved rifles which riddle the Duke with bullets.
- Magnetic Hero: He's atrociously charismatic, to the extent that Sy becomes fascinated by him midway through the mission.I’d learned to read people because I’d had to. The Shepherd, though, was the first person I wanted. I wanted him in a box where I could make him perform and glean everything I could.
- No Kill like Overkill: He authorizes Sylvester to have as many explosives as he wants to kill the Baron Richmond.
- No Sympathy: He doesn't particularly care that Gordon is dead, except in that it helps to turn Sylvester into an asset for the fight for Lugh.
- The Paranoiac: His war experience had a significant effect on his personality. Not only does he leave objects around his dwelling in places where he'll see if they were moved, he's on such a hair trigger that even the slightest hint of falseness leads him to dump his tea discreetly out a window. Of course, given that Mary had, indeed, poisoned his tea while his back was turned, this verges into Properly Paranoid.
- Preacher Man: He's the spiritual center of the town, a position which he uses to gain a great deal of trust from the locals.
- Sanity Slippage: As the story goes on and the rebellion falls to pieces, it takes its toll on him. By the end he's still charismatic, but Sy is able to see he's clearly gone closer to the deep end.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: His regiment was deployed in the Crown Wars against Mexico, but the Crown chose to expend his fellow soldiers to protect more valuable experiments deployed in a spiteful attack against their enemies when it became clear that they couldn't win, leaving him with a deep resentment for the Crown and a belief that he had surpassed his own death.
- The Social Expert: He can work on both large and small scales, manipulating individual parishioners into nigh-suicidal acts of conscience or turning a crowd into an angry mob while looking like he's trying to calm it.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: Him and every member of his regiment.
- Tranquil Fury: He runs entirely on calm, powerful anger.
- Uncertain Doom: The last wee see of him, he launches an attack on Radham to put them on edge and make Sy's impending attack harder. Whether he survives this or manages to get to safety afterwards is unknown.
- We Have Reserves: He'll callously send recently recruited civilians to fight Academy forces with whatever they can get their hands on while all the while hanging onto a larger stockpile of arms for his own elite troops.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: In his war with the Academy, he'll cross lines that even the Academy will never cross, precisely because they are forbidden and he knows it will provoke reactions.
- Would Hurt a Child:
- Well, would shoot an Academy experiment (Helen) that looks like a child, at least. When Sy calls him out on it during the Tooth and Nail arc he states that she was no more human than Sy was.
- During Tooth and Nail he threatens Lillian with a gun as well.
The Plague Men
Soldiers of the rebellion who offered themselves up to be augmented into superhumanly resistant super soldiers so that the various nerve gasses and air-borne toxins would not affect them.
- Always a Bigger Fish: They have parasites specifically designed to pull this on any other parasites the Academy may try to use.
- BFG: The carry exorcist rifles, guns specifically made to take down stitched and experiments in only a few shots.
- Body Horror: Canisters of ambiguous fluids grated onto flesh? Check. Wires and tubes feeding ambiguous fluids into their bodies? Check. Artificial parasites introduced into their bodies that visibly coil beneath the skin? Check. Various synthetic plagues acquired, presumably to occupy all of their bodies exploitable niches? Check.
- Clingy Costume: They have gas-masks and respirators grafted onto their faces to keep out the worst of whatever nasty gases The Academy could throw at them.
- Heroic Host: for a given value of heroic, the Plague Men had symbiotic parasites introduced into their systems that aimed at boosting their immunity to foreign substances somehow.
- Heroic Sacrifice: While not a mortal sacrifice, these soldiers had themselves augmented to fight a totalitarian regime of Bio Punk mad scientists backed by an oppressive monarchy.
- Horrifying Hero: While the towns that they fight for are certainly grateful for their sacrifice, civilians avert their eyes and soldiers give them a wide birth.
- No-Sell: Specifically made to be immune to toxins, parasites, and poisons.
- Poisoned Weapons: Their exorcist rifles fire crystal shards that set off the pain response of the body. It's potent enough to leave experiments disoriented by the alien sensation of pain, making them easy targets as they can't react to a stimulus they were meant to be immune to.
- Pro-Human Transhuman: Chose to become Inhuman monsters to better protect their cities from the gases and toxins of The Academy.
The Puppeteer and Creations
The Puppeteer
Mr. Percy aka The Puppeteer
The creator of the Bad Seeds. A teacher at Mothmont who is much more than he seems.
- Affably Evil: He's quite refined and soft-spoken and treats his creations kindly, which doesn't change the fact that he's a serial child murderer who'd send them to their deaths in a second to save his own skin.
- Boom, Headshot!: Mauer shoots him in the head during the Tooth and Nail arc in order to get the Lambs on their side.
- Clone Army: His vision for the future involved this. By Arc 6 he seems to have succeeded, deploying teams of enhanced clones into Radham itself.
- Evilutionary Biologist: He is convinced that the Academy is locked into a course that he recognizes as an "overshoot" where a species achieves exponential growth and then exceeds its resources. Whether he cares, now, that's another question.
- Expendable Clone: He manages the various Ghost teams using clones of himself.
- Hypocrite: So, he hates the Academic system for a host of reasons. So far, so standard. Doesn't stop him both supplying and procuring from the semi-official child-selling racket the Nobilty is built on. Which also supplies Acadamies with "raw materials", as well. All the template children he used to create the Bad Seeds? Sold in the auctions; feeding the system.
- Incompletely Trained: He has only limited Academy training, and gets by on memorized scraps of knowledge.
- Mad Doctor: Specialises in cloning and indoctrination. Has a hazy grasp of Ethics 101, at best.
- Manipulative Bastard: Deliberately works with children and infantile experiments because he finds children easier to shape, mold, and manipulate.
- It's Personal: It becomes this for him after the Lambsbridge Gang take down the remaining Bad Seeds.
- They Called Me Mad!: His ultimate motivation. The Academy rejected his proposal, so he decided to try to create an army of brainwashed children clones to overthrow them.
- Twin Maker: His specialty in science.
- Would Hurt a Child: His methods consistently prey upon children. Sy suggests it's not a necessary part of the science but something pathological.
The Bad Seeds
The principle antagonists of the first arc. A group of children controlled by an unseen master, who sends them to kill their parents and then themselves in a grisly series of serial killings. Based out of the Mothmont school, a preparatory school for Radham Academy. While the Bad Seeds are wiped out, the Puppeteer escapes and returns in Arc 6 with the Ghosts.
- Kill and Replace: Not exactly, as from what Mary says the Puppeteer sold the originals off to someone, presumably not wanting to waste such valuable resources by just killing them. But the Bad Seeds seem to have seamlessly taken over the roles of their progenitors.
- Leave No Witnesses: Their modus operandi. When they're done with their parents, each Bad Seed will then kill themself, and try to do so in a way that immolates their body to deter investigators.
- Murder-Suicide: Each Bad Seed is intended to be used only once.
- Poison Is Evil: In contrast to the bloody murders which drew the Academy's attention in the first place, when they have time and a target that isn't their designed one they tend to be less overt. Several of their attempts on the Gang involve poison, and in order to draw out the Lambsbridge Gang, they poison about half the school in order to force a shutdown of normal services.
- Psycho Rangers: The Bad Seeds are this to the Lambsbridge Gang. Where the gang is designed primarily for information gathering and can fill a wide range of other tasks, the Bad Seeds are single-use assassination weapons, and are therefore that much more deadly, but less flexible.
- Self-Made Orphan: Their killings are intended to look like this, usually targeting high-profile individuals, though the time requirements inherent in their design mean that not all of their parents have ended up in positions of actual power.
- Trigger Phrase: A series of nonsense syllables that puts them in a state of mind of homicidal mania without self-preservation.
The Ghosts
Percy's second creations, replacements for the Bad Seeds who operate as a pack, each possessing incredible physical capabilities and coordinated hunting tactics using high frequency sound to communicate and locate prey.
- Beauty Is Bad: For reasons that probably involve Percy being a deeply disturbing person, they all look like beautiful women. Several specific beautiful women, since he's building off a template.
- Child Soldiers: You can't grow a working brain fast enough for Percy's purposes...so the Ghosts use the brains of the kids they're made from.
- Disposable Vagrant: They're made from these.
- Hell Is That Noise: While their communications are normally above the range of human hearing, they can still be detected if they're screaming in pain, as Catcher demonstrates, a feeling like your teeth vibrating.
- Human Resources: A Ghost cell infiltrates a city, constructs a makeshift base, and can then begin to manufacture more Ghosts using local resources. In Radham they used homeless children.
- Recognizable by Sound: Helen, Dog, and Catcher use their communications to predict their attacks, since they have Super-Senses.
- Sinister Scraping Sound: This is the first weakness the Lambs find, disrupting their concentration and ability to coordinate.
- The Speechless: They can't speak, communicating entirely through high frequency tones.
- Super-Senses: They all possess superhuman hearing, and apparently echolocation.
- Unskilled, but Strong: They're significantly more advanced and capable than the Lambs or Catcher, but they can't match the Radham experiments in raw experience. Thus, the Radham experiments are able to take several of them out in the first engagement using unconventional tactics-they've never faced a serious threat to their lives before.
Cynthia Imlay and the Spears
Cynthia Imlay
One of the leaders of the Rebellion, a former child of the slums that was found and trained by Godwin. She and the Four Humors, a group of mercenary experiments under her employ, are the main antagonists of the fifth arc.
- Big Bad Wannabe: She's one of the main leaders of the rebellion, but is mostly dropped from the story after refusing to join Fray. She subsequently plays second fiddle to Fray and Mauer's more successful attacks against the Crown, before possibly being killed offscreen once Sy happens to run into her again through sheer happenstance.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Is extremely irritable in general temperament.
- Scars Are Forever: Not true given the level of science practiced by the Academies, but she keeps the scars inflicted on her by the Lambs.
- Uncertain Doom: All signs point to "doom," whether at the hands of Nephilim or succumbing to the Blackwood, but it's never made explicit.
- Wild Card: Her volatility tends to make her unreliable at best.
- Would Hurt a Child: When she and Sy meet again during the Tooth And Nail arc, it's only the interference of Genevieve Fray that keeps him from getting killed by her.
The Humors
An ex-Academy wetworks squad acting under the leadership of Cynthia. The group are each named after one of the components of the Four-Temperament Ensemble, each having a specific enhanced sense.
- Arc Villain: The Humors as a whole are Cynthia's main operatives and the Lambs' primary opponents for the fifth arc.
- Dwindling Party: Over the course of Arc 5 the Lambs kill off the Humors one by one until only Sanguine is left.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: They clearly care for each other in much the same way the Lambs do.
- Foil: To the Lambs, as they too were a four-man cell that did dirty work for the Academy, though they chose to rebel.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: Each of the experiments are named after one.
- In-Series Nickname: They refer to each other by nicknames rather than their full designations. Sanguine is Guin, Melancholic is Melancholy, Phlegmatic is Phlegm, and Choleric is Cholera.
- I Want Them Alive!: The Humors have orders from Cynthia to capture the Lambs alive if possible.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: They were told that if they failed too many times or proved too difficult to handle, they would be taken apart and harvested for the best parts of each of them. Then they'd put together Sanguine's eyes, Melancholic's nose and tongue, Phlematic's ears, Choleric's body, and the brain of whichever one of them proved the most obedient. Small wonder they turned coat.
Sanguine
A man with enhanced sight.
- Arc Villain: Sanguine returns as one of the bounty hunters chasing Sy and Jessie in arc 11, and one far more antagonistic than the apologetic Dog and Catcher.
- Bayonet Ya: Wields a rifle with bayonet attached.
- The Bus Came Back: Comes back in Cut to the Quick as one of the bounty hunters hired to capture or kill Sy and Jamie after they abandon the Academy.
- Covert Pervert: Thanks to his modified eyes, he can shift the focus of his gaze separately from where his eyes actually appear to be looking. He uses this to ogle cleavage while seeming to pay rapt attention to what people are saying.
- Fish Eyes: His modified eyes let him look in two directions at once and look a lot like this.
- Friendly Enemy: He likes and respects the Lambs for their skillset and abilities, treating them as the dangerous adversary they are and doing his best to kill them if possible.
- Friendly Sniper: He does a massive amount of damage to the Academy by taking out their human officers from a distance, and in person he makes a great effort to be personable.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: In Arc 11 he demonstrates the ability to consistently land his shots within a few feet of his targets, from over a mile away, while swapping between multiple guns and without a spotter.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: He saves a cat from one of Gladys Shipman's spiders, noting that he'd always wanted a cat.
- Lack of Empathy: His reaction to hearing that his teammates are dead amounts to "sounds about right," and he later tells Sy that he doesn't really hold a grudge beyond what he feels his teammates would have.
- Mercy Kill: In Enemy Arc 5, he kills an officer whose throat Mary had failed to fully slit due to his interruption.
- Mundane Utility: Being able to shift focus separately from where your eyes are pointing is probably useful to scope out a room without tipping off others, but he uses it to covertly check people out.
- Sole Survivor: Of the Humors.
- Super-Senses: He has incredibly enhanced sight, capable of seeing things miles away with crystal clarity, change what light spectrums he sees, and focus on any part of his field of vison rather than where his eyes are pointing.
- Villain Episode: Is the viewpoint character of Enemy Arc 5.
Melancholic
A woman with an enhanced sense of smell and a modified jaw.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: She's killed when Helen dislocates her spine.
- Exorcist Head: She can twist her head a full 180, which combined with her shark-like jaws, nearly let her bite Helen's face off after being put in a hold.
- Man Bites Man: She attempts to bite Helen's face off at one point.
- The Nose Knows: Her sense of smell is very good, and she uses it to great effect in tracking the Lambs. For instance, she figures out Helen by noting that she smells like blood.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Sy tries to pull this on her, and it has some effect, but only in that she tells him that she used to be where he was, staying with the Academy for the sake of her "family" when they were going to kill them all but one eventually, and he's insane for staying loyal.
- Personal Effects Reveal: Sy goes through her things after killing her and finds photos of two ordinary men, which shakes him a little.
- Scary Teeth: She has sharpened teeth.
Phlegmatic
A man with enhanced hearing.- Beard of Evil: Has unkempt, mangy beard and works as an assassin.
- Deadly Gas: His preferred weapon. He carries multiple varieties of toxic gas delivered through grenades or a censer.
- Epic Flail: He wields a spiked censer like one, which serves the dual purpose of exposing foes to his toxins.
- Poisonous Person: He has several gas-filled bladders in his body that rupture when he's shot, presumably venting more poisonous gasses.
- Reforged into a Minion: After his death, he's made into a stitched.
- Required Secondary Powers: Given that his preferred weapon is poisonous gas, he has a number of modification to help him avoid their effects.
- Super-Senses: Like all Humors he has an enhanced sense, in his case hearing.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: He gets killed by Jamie in the same chapter he's introduced.
Choleric
A man with an enhanced sense of touch.
- Dressing as the Enemy: He impersonates a stitched to infiltrate the Academy's camp.
- Super-Senses: Like all the Humors. It's never explicitly stated, but by process of elimination he's touch.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: He doesn't even get any lines before his death.
Lugh Cells
Candy
Candida "Candy" Gage/Emily
The runaway daughter of a rich family who has been granted a drastically extended lifespan as a result of an experiment.
- The Ageless: The nature of her "immortality."
- Power at a Price: She'll never die of old age, but the human brain simply wasn't meant to function for that long. The doctor who did it to her gives her a century or so before her mind suffers and only a little bit more before she's reduced to a vegetable.
Drake
Candida's boyfriend, with a black, scaly body.
- Dark Is Not Evil: A black, scaly body that gives him a reptilian look makes him appear pretty menacing. In actuality, he's one of the nicest characters in the story.
