Characters / Twig: The Lambs

Tropes relating to the Lambs. For other characters in Twig, see here.

The Lambsbridge Project, aka the Lambs

A group of wetworks agents and cleaners for the Radham Academy that specialize in infiltration, urban warfare, and creative strategies. They are also our protagonists.

The Group as a Whole

• Anti-Hero: So far they're the most morally ambiguous of any wildbow protagonists, as it's not clear whether or not they can be considered "good".
• Ambiguously Human:
  • Aside from Lillian, they're all products of Mad Science, so it's unclear how human they really are. Helen at least is indeed an Artificial Human. As is Ashton: he's a Plant Person, basically.
  • Gordon mentions that his limbs were made out of many different people's limbs and Sy describes him as being like a stitched that never died.
• Badass Adorable: They're a bunch of eleven and twelve year olds (and one thirteen-year-old) who spend their time going up against Mad Scientists and the monsters they create at the beginning. They qualify by default.
• Big Brother Is Employing You: The Academy isn't totalitarian per se- sometimes it actually verges on anarchy- but there is no question that the Academy and the Nobles are the top dogs, and the Lamb's job is to keep them in place.
• Born into Slavery: Those of the Lambs who were ever ordinary children were acquired by the Academy at an incredibly young age, while most of the others were simply made as weapons.
• Child Soldier: It's variable how much this applies to them. Lillian is a pretty straightforward case of a minor being used as a soldier, and Jamie and Sy are essentially the same- normal human children who have been modified and used as soldiers. Gordon and Mary are somewhat more ambiguous- Gordon is essentially a more-photogenic Frankenstein's Monster stitched together from several corpses and it's unclear whether he still retains the identity of any of the people he was made up of, while Mary is a cloned duplicate of a seemingly murdered girl genetically engineered and trained to act as an assassin. Ashton and Helen are more like Child-Shaped biological weapons than actual Child Soldiers.
• Disposable Vagrant: Hayle does clearly value them, and he has invested time and effort into their growth and care, but it's no coincidence that they came from an orphanage. Gordon implies that Ashton and Evette, Sy's predecessors, were killed for acting out, rather than being "defective" as Hayle claimed, and after their success against the Shepherd, Professor Briggs announces his intent to test them to destruction and replace them with a new iteration, learning from the first.
• Escape Artist: So, you have a Lamb or Lambs in chains or a cell? Good luck with that (especially if Sy, Jaime, Helen or Mary)... they all make a point of knowing various ways to get free and/or increasing the odds that things get so bad, you have to let them go.
• Famed In-Story: By the time the the Lambs go after Genevieve Fray they've managed some degree of fame for their defeats of the Shepard and Sub-Rosa, to the point that it starts to interfere with their MO of just being mistaken for random children.
• Free-Range Children: Seem to lack any sort of adult supervision during the daytime.
• Explosive Leash: The Lambs are chemically dependent on a substance the Academy feeds into Radham's water, without which they rapidly sicken and die. For missions that take them outside of Radham, they're given pills of the substance.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Gordon sets Sy a rule: no Lamb sacrifices themselves unless it saves at least two other Lambs. Otherwise there's no point. Despite this, if there's a plan that calls for a Lamb injuring themselves or putting themselves in danger, Sy's your man.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Holding back info will only make them resort to physical torture on top of the psychological screws.
• Little Professor Dialog: Each of them will throw out adult terminology related to their specialty at the drop of a hat. This is generally justified in that most of them are not conventional children, but instead bio-augmented weapons meant to look like children.
• Meaningful Rename: After taking over the Crown States, the experiment Lambs give themselves new Lord names. Sy becomes Lord Simon, Jessie becomes Lady Jessica, Helen becomes Lady Helena, Mary becomes Lady Margaret, and Ashton becomes Lord Asher.
• Moral Myopia: Lambs generally care most about looking after each other, being nice to other experiments who aren't horrible to them and keeping an eye on the Mice (orphans, street brats and other societal dregs left to fend for themselves) when they can. Most others can just go and die messily — and, if they've harmed the aforementioned groups, the Lambs will try to ensure they most certainly will.
• More Deadly Than the Male: Sy and Gordon are pretty ruthless and generally won't hesitate to kill when necessary, but they do have some morality and generally make at least a token effort to avoid murdering innocents. Jaime, both I, II and Jessie, also always tries to limit collateral damage as much as possible and isn't a fighter by inclination. Mary, on the other hand, is a remorseless assassin who generally has no moral code beyond group loyalty and perfectionism, while Helen is a purpose-built Femme Fatale who derives a sexual-like pleasure from killing. This is designed: society at large still underestimates girls, so... making your deadliest weapons look "harmless" makes sense.
• The Nicknamer: They make a little contest of assigning nicknames to their latest job. Sy tends to win.
• Only One Name: Lillian has a surname by virtue of being the only Lamb with a living family (though it takes ten arcs before it's finally revealed), and Mary goes by the last name of her template, but the other Lambs lack them by being either orphans who never knew their families or Artificial Humans. When Sy and Jamie run away, their last name on the wanted posters is given as "Lambsbridge," which Sy finds delightful. In 15.13, Sy changes Jessie's to Ewesmont, a play on Lambsbridge. (A female lamb is an ewe).
• Punch-Clock Villain: Their role is doing the dirty work of the Academy, a world-dominating, human-experimenting order of Mad Scientists. They do this because it was what they were created to do and because they are controlled by a chemical leash, rather than out of any actual loyalty to the organization. With the exception of Sy. Ironically enough, after a few lambs die, he is the first to leave.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: They're a bunch of tweenagers (Plus one young teenager) who hunt mad scientists. Later on they're just a bunch of young teenagers.
• Restraining Bolt: They can't normally leave the grounds of the Academy or the surrounding town due to chemicals in the perpetual rainstorm and drinking water being necessary for their survival. Without them they'll quickly sicken and die. This is later removed when Fray manages to publically dose a whole region with the "leash" drug, kicking off a rebellion against the Crown. The Lambs are then called upon to go longer distances from Radham, and the leash is engineered out of them after that, which eventually allows Jamie and Sy to escape...
• Secret Project Refugee Family: Without the "Refugee" part. They consider each other siblings, though they are not related, and are part of Mister Hayle's secret project. This becomes a more accurate description after Sy and Jamie/Jessie run away.
• Token Evil Teammate: Sylvester is more like the Token Chaotic Teammate. He has most of the common elements of jerkiness, snarkiness and tendency to become the Butt-Monkey and he's the most likely to go behind the rest of the team's backs. Morally however he's somewhere in the middle of the road for the Lambs. The most actually evil Lamb is probably Mary or Helen, though since they're both strongly Lawful they tend to fit into the group better than Sy and clash with authority the least out of the Lambs.
• Token Good Teammate: Jamie and Lillian, who happen to be the most moral of the Lambs and the most concerned with the wellbeing of people outside their group.
• True Companions: The Lambs are absolutely selfless when it comes to other lambs and most of them are absolutely ruthless otherwise.
• Tyke Bomb: Each of them save for Lillian is an individual project from the Academy, with multiple students working under Mr. Hayle to work with them and shape their progress.
• Walking Disaster Area: Granted, the places the Lambs generally find themselves in aren't all that stable to start with. But, they have a habit of leaving quite a bit more rubble behind them than there was when they went in. Sy has a particularly bad case of the trope, but he's by no means alone in finding ways to make architectural or sociopolitcal structures go boom.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: They all seem to be fairly mature for their ages, even if Sly does have perverted tendencies.
• Your Days Are Numbered:
  • All the experiments have expiration dates. Most aren't going to see twenty, and Gordon was scheduled to be the first to eventually die. His body did eventually break down while on mission and without access to his doctors he didn't make it.
  • Within a few years Mary is expected to die from cancer caused by her nature as a clone.
  • Sy isn't expected to die physically, but his Wyvern dosages are expected to eventually shatter his mind. In the end that's exactly what they do before merging into a new personality.
  • It's ultimately subverted for the surviving experiment Lambs at the end of the story, as after taking over Radham they end up converting themselves into beings much like Nobles, but without their sociopathy.

Original Lambs

Sylvester

Sylvester aka Sy/Sly/Simon

The viewpoint protagonist of Twig. A twelve-year-old with enhanced planning and scheming abilities, codenamed Project Wyvern.

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• Acquired Poison Immunity: Either as a side effect or as a matter of course from Project Wyvern, he's immune to many natural venoms and toxins due to his monthly appointments exposing him to a wide variety of them.
• Adaptive Ability:
  • The Wyvern formula gives him a mental version of this, allowing him to reshape his focus and abilities to fill gaps as needed, with him having mostly settled on social manipulation in order to fill a role in the gestalt.
  • Following Gordon's death, he's also begun to become a better fighter as a result of that role being lost.
• All Men Are Perverts: Not the covert kind, since the rest of his group are all well aware of it and he himself is pretty shameless. His descriptions of women also inevitably focus a lot on their physical attractiveness compared to say, Taylor or Blake. Amusingly, he is also the least sexually and emotionally mature of the group, suggesting that the perversion is entirely something he does to annoy people without any real understanding of what it entails.
  • Later it is revealed that Sy has been turning this on and off in his brain to fit the situation.
• The Artful Dodger: Has never done a day's honest labor in his life, and is in fact completely unfamiliar with the concept. If he needs something, he'll get it. If he likes the person who has it, he might even pay for it.
• Befriending the Enemy: He tries to do this with Mary, immediately after driving her to the point of a Villainous BSoD. He's kind of bad at it, which seems to help given how he's otherwise been a frightening Manipulative Bastard towards her.
• Berserk Button: Damage and insult him all you like, but even think about harming the other Lambs for your own personal pleasure and... Well, he's going to go all interesting times on you.
• Blank Slate: Jamie suggests that Sy's ability to adapt himself to fill roles makes him this, taking on characteristics and traits to better suit whoever he's working with. He identifies a few core aspects of Sy, such as earnestness, hope, self-sacrifice, and a compulsion to attack people who are kind to him.
• Broken Bird: The cynicism, Lack of Empathy, and general bastardry are ultimately a product of his incredibly painful enhancement method and the treatment of his doctors growing up.
• Brought Down to Normal: He spends most of Arc 6 without the Wyvern formula enhancing his mind, making him miss social cues and infusing his narration with a sense of uncertainty.
• Brutal Honesty: He spends so much of his time lying that when he's actually honest it comes out hurtful and wrong to his friends.
• Catchphrase: Downplayed, but something somewhere between this and a Phrase Catcher comes up often enough to be noticeable; he'll say or do something that provokes one of the Lambs to say "Sy" in a warning/exasperated tone, and he'll respond by saying their name in a completely deadpan way, disrupting whatever script they're following, and giving him more opportunity to argue than if he accepted the implied admonition. Lillian later does the same thing when a fellow student is trying to undermine her, and it has the same result of getting the other student on the back foot for just a moment.
• The Chessmaster:
  • He operates under the philosophy that when you panic or shock people, they will react predictably, in recognizable patterns, and makes use of that panic to manipulate and control their movements.
  • In the first chapter, he bribes an orphan to dump water on the voltaic horses pulling a specific carriage, before arranging to suffer horrific burns, so that Mr. Hayle, his creator, will take him in his coach to the Academy for treatment, and be forced to leave him alone with his files when the horses are incapacitated. This is one of his less complicated plans.
• Combat Pragmatist: Later chapters reveal that while he's not the best in a straight fight, Sy can overpower people if he manages to get the drop on them.
• Creepy Child: In the "asks you unsettling philosophical questions about your job" sense, not the "emotionless" sense like with Helen.
• Creepy Souvenir: He takes a steel ring off of Melancholy's corpse and wears it on his thumb, he usually fiddles with it whenever he's feeling murderous or thinking about people he's killed. He eventually explains that it's a reminder to himself that the enemy are people too and that there's more to them than just the war. When he runs into Melancholy's partner Sanguine some time later, Sy gives the ring to him as a token of apology.
• Crying Wolf: He runs into this problem more than a few times. It turns out that openly professing your villainous nature tends to make people unlikely to believe you. It does, however, help the team as a whole, as Sy being the obviously devious liar makes people more likely to trust Gordon, even though (as Gordon freely admits to the other Lambs) he's as much of a bastard as Sy.
• Death Seeker: After Jamie's death, Sy starts searching for a way to die next while still helping the Lambs so that he doesn't have to see any more of them die, and he outright begs Mauer to kill him. He slowly gets over this following his running away from the lambs and reunification with Jamie 2.0.
• Destructive Romance:
  • He confides in Lillian that his fear of engaging in one of these is the reason he doesn't act on his and Mary's mutual feelings; he's aware that their physical and emotional closeness rests on a bedrock of emotional manipulation, control, and lies on his part, and thinks that he might fall into Domestic Abuser patterns if they were romantically linked.
  • His eventual relationship with Lillian works for a while, but eventually breaks down as well, simply because with his instinctive manipulative abilities, there will never be a level playing field between them, even when both parties genuinely try their best to make it work. It is excruciating to both of them, and Sy gets full-on Sanity Slippage after it becomes irretrievable.
• The Ditz: Wyvern gives Sy an extraordinary intellect and amazing perceptive skills, but it also gives him a terrible memory, meaning he can sometimes come across as stupid or unobservant to those who aren't in the know.
• Domestic Abuser: Sy's eventual relationship with Lillian switches between being a subversion or a deconstruction at different points; his delight in provoking embarrassment and awkwardness from her, and willingness to let her beg him not to screw up something serious for her (which he had no intention of doing but let her think he might), combined with her enjoying the teasing, tolerating the manipulation and the fact that they care deeply about each other fits many of the common abusive relationships. However, Sy actually can't completely switch off the manipulation even when he wants to, and before their relationship started she calls him out on how the push-pull way he manipulates his friends is very close to an emotionally abusive husband. His inability to express affection completely honestly is treated by everyone (Sy included) as a sign of how deeply screwed-up his emotions and attachments are, rather than anything nicely kinky. This is most clearly shown at the end of Arc 13; a typical Bastard Boyfriend story would have him kidnapping his girlfriend, tying her up, and intimately searching her while she protests (but doesn't adamantly refuse and can't deny that she enjoys it) portrayed as Romanticized Abuse, while in this case Lillian is so disgusted with herself for saying yes to him, and Sy so guilt-ridden for the terrible effect he's thoughtlessly had on her, that it is terminal to their romance.
• Don't Say Such Stupid Things!: He gives a speech like this to Lillian when she's convinced she can't save Mary, telling her that she's way better than she thinks she is.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: The biggest reason that he hates Lacey is that, in addition to pretending to be nice, she pities him for his situation.
• Good Thing You Can Heal:
  • At the very beginning of the story he's scarred by enzymes as part of one of his plans, and within a week he's got new, unscarred skin thanks to the Academy's resources.
  • Time and again, he pushes his luck with this trope. He's either got a closet Death Wish or is a little addicted to pain: if he has a choice, it's usually the self-harming route he'll pick to get out of a jam or solicit pity from a mark.
• Escape Artist: When he's locked in a cell with Jamie in arc 11, both of them with a dozen cuffs, they're halfway out in the time it takes the guard to do a round of the cellblock.
• Enemy Within: Represented by his vision of the Lord Infante, in Arc 19 if Sy is away from the Lambs for too long he suffers a Split-Personality Takeover and his loyalist persona attempts to sabotage whatever he's doing.
• Eyepatch of Power: Sports one of these after Arc 9. It conceals a ruined eye pumped full of poison which he uses against the Baron Richmond.
• Eye Scream: The Baron of Richmond stabs his eye out in Counting Sheep 9.3, before ordering him not to heal it or have it replaced.
• The Fatalist: During his first talk with Mary, he explains that he knows that he's going to die young due to knowing his own expiration date, and as a result he's dedicated himself to helping the other experiments. This is a facade, as he is in fact a true believer in Hayle's plans to create iteratively improved brains and hopes it will be able to save them all. Of course, Character Development happens, and Sy actually winds up going back on this after a few Lambs die: he blames the Academy and its people for the misery he and his friends have suffered in his life.
• Fake-Out Make-Out:
  • Does one with Lillian in Esprit de Corpse 5.1 in order to help her ward off suspicion from the children she's watching over. It was her idea. She was very insistent.
  • Later does this again in Enemy (Arc 7), kissing her in sight of Mr. Hayle as part of his plan to manipulate the oversight committee for the Lambs by discrediting her testimony so that all the blame could be pinned on him. This is a prelude to him starting an actual romantic relationship with her by way of apology.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: He started life as the youngest son of a doctor who died by sheer accident. He ends the story as the leader of the Crown States, a new brand of noble that personally took down the country and its major threats.
• Functional Addict: Sy is psychologically dependent on the Wyvern formula, and relies on it to shape his personality, but is otherwise perfectly functional. Having said that, his need for Wyvern is one of the major leashes the Academy uses to control him.
• Gone Horribly Right: Sy constantly skirts being dangerously close to becoming this for Hayle and Radham, considering his shaky origin as a stopgap replacement for Ashton-and-Evette in the Lambs' designed experimental social gestalt. Alternatively, there's the possibility of turning into a vegetable and/or liability lurking at the bottom of the Wyvren razor-edge. Whichever. Sure, they wanted him to be scheming, manipulative, adaptable and able to plan around any emergent tactical gaps in the on-the-ground chaos could throw into the ring, but... they may well have underestimated the degree of control practice has given him over the brain elasticity Wyvern thumps him with. He's awfully close to being a mental version of a Primordial in how he cannibalizes thought and behavioral patterns he bumps into.
  "I’m every monster I’ve ever fought. Every enemy I’ve defeated. I’m Sylvester and I’m not. ... What a mistake you’ve made."
• Hallucinations: Sy experiences vivid hallucinations while on a fresh dose of Wyvern, which he can control and direct to some extent.
• Heroic Safe Mode: Spends most of Arc 14 in this, with his hallucinations taking full control and trying to simulate an entire team of Lambs, and failing at that because they're ultimately just Sylvester talking to himself.
• Higher Understanding Through Drugs: Wyvern doses make Sy temporarily hallucinate and allow him to essentially re-order his thought processes, in addition to stripping him bare emotionally and forcing him to deal with his grief and pain without built-up emotional barriers.
• I Am a Monster: He cheerfully and firmly maintains his alienation from "normal people", since he thinks they suck, and repeatedly affirms his own monstrosity, seeming to take a kind of inner strength from it.
• The Idealist: Near the beginning of the story, Sy believes in the future, and for a while he believed that the Academy would bring about a golden age, making everything worth it. Later, however, he sees the Academy for the evil that it is, and dedicates himself to overturning the order it has created. The death of a few of his friends has a bit to do with this.
• I Just Want to Be Special: At one point in his development he ran away, successfully evading Dog and Catcher for almost a month, but turned himself in when he realized that his latest dose of the Wyvern serum was wearing off, craving the edge that it gave him.
• Imaginary Friend: In Arc 10, he begins to more consistently hallucinate Evette to guide him as he begins to learn forbidden Academy science, as this was to be her original role in the gestalt.
• Impromptu Tracheotomy: After the Baron crushes his throat Candida opens it up again with a scalpel. He's able to talk pretty well immediately afterwards, apparently because having his throat cut or crushed is a regular enough thing that his doctors have made some adjustments.
• Indy Ploy: Yes-no... But, mainly "sweet heavens, YES". Wyvern allows Sy to push this trope to almost Gambit Roulette-seeming levels thanks to his cognitive overclocking and Batman Gambit abilities; yet, for all intents and purposes, he's still fundamentally winging it towards goals. Because long-terming any plans in multiple stages tends to unravel on him thanks his memory issues. He just performs short- and medium-term Indies with a hell of a lot more skill than most.
• Innocent Bigot: His reaction to Jamie explaining that he's in love with him? "They can fix that, you know."
• Innocent Innuendo: Frequently either makes these or fails to notice others doing so, due to his lack of experience and deliberately suppressed libido.
• The Insomniac: After Jamie's Death of Personality he stays up all night reading Jamie's books rather than sleeping.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Played with. He wants Lillian to be happy, yes...but more than that, he wants Lillian to be successful and powerful, because her ambition and drive is what he fell in love with, and he also thinks that her rising through the ranks is the best hope the Academy has of being a genuine force for good.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's never easy to live with and he outright aims to be a pain, but... it's surprising how many "selfish" excuses to himself he can come up with to do both big and little good deeds here and there. Or, restrains his absolutely worst behavior at times for those he cares about. But, seriously: even when he does care, deliberately or accidentally provoking him will only get you one response: mayhem.
• Lack of Empathy:
  • He doesn't much care when he sees others being hurt. Unless they're a Lamb, a Mouse, a Monster (an experiment/ Academy-survivor worth knowing) or somebody he's decided is an honorary member of those categories. And, even then, he's usually much too busy calculating factors like their resilience (usually reassuringly great) vs damage vs gain rather than spending time freaking out or wincing in sympathy. Justified: time spent openly sympathizing is precious time taken out of survival plans and actions.
  • When he's free of the Wyvern formula's influence, however, he tends to be a bit more empathetic.
• Leave No Witnesses:
  • He comes to the conclusion that in order for him to get his eye back after it's destroyed by the Baron Richmond, he's going to have to kill the Baron, his immediate family, and everyone who saw the Baron destroy the eye in the first place. This doesn't exactly work out.
  • He tells himself that he's going to do this regarding Lanie and Chance when he makes them assist in his assassination of Baron Richmond and rescue of Candida, but finds himself unable to commit and takes them with him when he goes on the run.
• Le Parkour: He has some talent at it, and seems to enjoy it. Climbing is, in fact, the one physical skill Non-Action Guy Sy has at a comparable level to Mary and Gordon.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: His default plans can basically be summed up as "make things go very not smooth; profit from the chaos".
• Love Hurts: Sylvester's love for the Lambs brings him no end of pain. He admits he could use the Wyvern formula to get rid of the pain, but he's terrified of what else he'd lose along with it.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Sy is very likely this. There are more than a few hints that taking regular doses of the agonizing Wyvern has messed with his pain perception: he regularly reacts to what should be highly distracting damage with what amounts to a great, big "meh". The Wyvern formula also allows him to restructure his mind to ignore pain in general.
• Manipulative Bastard: He's very good at putting on roles and getting people to do what he wants, and nearly every time someone talks his narration usually accompanies it with speculation about what they want and what they're trying to achieve with their choice of words. As Lillian notes, his relationships with his friends and her in particular are often reminiscent of an abusive husband, showing scorn and then letting them back into his confidence to control them. However, it's not entirely voluntary on his part; the fact that his Wyvern-enhanced brain is molded into this role means he can't completely switch off his constant analysis of what people are revealing and what direction the conversation might go in, and even when he intellectually knows it is in everyone's best interests for him to be completely honest, he is still compelled to twist things.
• Master of the Mixed Message: When he puts his mind to it, he can muddy a simple one sentence greeting with at least three meanings quite deliberately. It's one of his fortes when dealing with targets to confuse them, or just when messing about with the others for fun before coming (kind of) straight. However, he's probably at his worst with Lillian, and, it's not entirely clear how much that's entirely on purpose. She doesn't know what to think.
• Morality Pet: He needs others to ground him and to keep track of the facts and goals he often forgets during sessions or when running high on both complicated mayhem and Wyvern. And, he knows it. If he can't get access to other Lambs, he has habit of finding replacements to care for/ bounce off. Most of them are temporary, but Shirley ends up becoming this full-time after Arc 11.
• Mouthy Kid: He has a lot of fun needling the students assigned to the Wyvern project. Among the other orphans he can be similarly insufferable.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He has this reaction when he discovers that his attempt to get badges for the Lambs nearly stopped Hayle from reviving one of the failed projects.
• New Meat: As much as he acts out against Lillian because of her "outsider" status, he himself was not originally designed as part of the gestalt, and he adopted the persona that he is now to replace Ashton, a failed member.
  • That he accepts new additions to the team more readily after Lillian speaks volumes about his growth. Well, unless they're called "Cecil" or "Duncan".
• The Nicknamer:
  • Tends to nickname their newest targets.
  • As of Lamb to the Slaughter 6.11, he's taken to calling Lillian "Lil".
• Non-Action Guy: Sly isn't the best fighter despite his swiftness and brains, and Taking Root 1.4 has him getting the crap beat out of him by another kid. On the other hand, he's got a pretty good throwing arm...
  • Through the liberal use of the Wyvern formula, Sy is eventually able to get over this, becoming more of a competent Combat Pragmatist, though still not to the "one kid army" levels of some of his companions.
• Oblivious to Love:
  • Despite being a pervert, he may not realize that one of the team has growing feelings for him, despite the fact that he's been going around holding hands with Mary whenever he has an mission-critical excuse, or just because. As well as that one time he put his hand up her skirt, ostensibly to get knives, and she had a somewhat ambiguous expression on her face afterwards. Later developments reveal that he is the only one on the team who thinks he's never had a crush.
  • In Arc 5, Lillian basically forces him to kiss her, claiming that she said he was her boyfriend as part of her cover. It's his First Kiss, and with a girl he often teases and bickers with.
  • In 6.03, he has a conversation with Mary while helping her dress in a small room which she literally hauled him into. She says she likes him. He says he knows, and she has feelings for Gordon as well, and she likes Gordon more than him. Mary also says Lillian likes being teased, which explains a lot about the previous bullet point.
  • In 6.09, Jamie admits that he's in love with Sy, which Sy didn't see coming at all.
  • Finally, it is revealed that the reason that Sy has been zig-zagging this one all over the place since is that he has at times been using the Wyvern formula to deliberately suppress his libido.
• Older Than They Look: Due to malnourishment stunting his growth, Sy's often mistaken as being far younger than he actually is upon becoming a teenager.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Only adults regularly call him Sylvester.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: You know the Duke of Francis is bad news when even Sy, who has no problems badmouthing anyone else, just submits to him without complaint.
• Pet the Dog: He gets really happy whenever one of the other Lambs does something cool, and he'll always praise them effusively.
• Poisonous Person: His blood is actually poisonous as a result of the Wyvern treatment. This can sometimes overlap thematically with his fears of being a Toxic Friend Influence for Lillian and the other Lambs.
  • This does have the beneficial side effect of keeping him from being infected by the parasite du jour and he sometimes exploits this by baiting critters into attacking him so they don't go after others.
• Regretful Traitor: To the Lambs after Arc 10.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Decides that he's sick and tired of the Academy and watching Lambs die at the start of arc 10.
• Sherlock Scan: Social cues rather than physical; he constantly scans people's body language and choice of words to make deductions about them, though usually goes straight into pressing the button he's just found rather than show-off or explain how he found it.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: He has this with Lillian, needling her constantly and teasing her. It occasionally gets into very mutually uncomfortable territory, and she compares him to an abusive husband at times.
  • Eventually, after running away Sy captures Lillian and goes too far with this, more or less ending their romantic relationship permanently.
• The Smart Guy: Although everyone in the group has their own specialized talents, he's particularly focused on thinking and planning.
• The Social Darwinist: He expresses these views, claiming that the ultimate flaws of the human species are "stupidity and stagnation" and that in his perfect world, each individual would be surrounded by individuals who are driven to improve and who are equal to or better than themselves, a world where everyone is different and there is unending conflict. Unlike the usual for this trope, he doesn't deny or deride cooperation, believing that in fact the strongest bonds are born from struggle. After a few of his friends die, he is much less enthusiastic about this philosophy.
• The Social Expert: And, as a result, if he ever bothers to switch the charm on, he could easily act as a straight-up The Face when Gordon isn't around. But, his true forte, and preferred tactic, lies in being a sneaky, manipulative git who reads others like an open book before pouncing.
• Super-Intelligence: He was used as a test case for an experimental neurotoxin that increases mental acuity and learning ability by encouraging the break-up and formation of neural pathways. However the same process also interferes with the formation of long-term memories. For instance, he's horrible at remembering names.
• Super-Reflexes: Subverted. Sy can see what's coming his way faster than most (particularly just after appointments) and can, therefore, also start reacting quicker. The problem is that his muscles aren't any quicker at moving, nor his limbs developed in ways to get the job done as fast as his brain or spinal cord can process. His hand-eye coordination otherwise sucks, especially when e.g. throwing anything more complicated than a rock or when responding in a hand-to-hand fight. He can calculate trajectory and track targets perfectly well; it's the rest of the set of motions and forces involved that can give him trouble.
• Talking to Themself:
  • In 10.7 he has an entire hallucinatory conversation with all the other Lambs, living and dead.
  • 11.2 reveals that Sy regularly plays cards with the hallucinatory Lambs...and loses.
  • As Sy's grip on his own personality loosens over the course of Arc 14, Sy begins responding audibly to the various mental Lambs, much to the surprise and concern of his real-world companions.
  • In later arcs, any absence from a Lamb's company brings out hallucinations of enemies past and present, and he loses the ability to tell whether he's talking to a real person or a hallucination.
• Too Clever by Half: The major problem he has being designed as a conniving, analyzing talking dervish? He can't fully shut it off when he needs to work on simple plans, so he bogs himself down with all the side details, possible alternate outcomes and each proposed solution he can come up with. Worse, he knows it. His medium- and long-term memory capacity is shot to hell to give him all this stunning social wiring and processing speed. He also ends up overstepping himself, sometimes with disastrous consequences, due to his cleverness overtaking his common sense.
• Tragic Keepsake: He hangs onto Jamie's books after Jamie suffers a Death of Personality. They're not exactly light, but he thinks of them as the next best thing to having Jamie along, and sometimes slips up and refers to them as "him." He eventually lets up on this after he cultivates his relationship with Jamie 2.0/Jessie.
• Troll: He just loves messing with people's heads.
• Unreliable Narrator: Sy seems to see the world mainly in terms of manipulators and their dupes, and from what Jamie says, he's not nearly as emotionless as he'd like to pretend. Are the rest of the Lambs just as manipulative as Sy, or are they reacting with normal emotions? Who can say?
• Villainous Crush: Sy doesn't appear to differentiate with admiring someone for their abilities and harboring romantic feelings towards them, which, as Gordon and Jamie point out, makes his behavior towards Fray and Mauer look disturbingly like this, and he admits that if there were a few different variables (age, gender) he could see himself going for it.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: How he justified serving the Academy. Sylvester basically believed that the Academy could create improved brains that will solve everything, achieving a kind of Singularity, and saw anyone who opposed them as an Evil Luddite who would destroy him and his family while making their sacrifices meaningless. Ultimately, though, he realized that the Academy would sacrifice his family for nothing, and their future was an empty promise.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Strives to avert this, remembering that the people he faces often have as little choice as he does, and gives them chances to live when he can. In fact, Sy tends to care less for the lives of non-mooks than mooks, as seen when he executes one of his fences via grenade because his monstrous actions towards his Stitched offended Jamie.
• What Would X Do?: He has mental models of the rest of the group that he asks for advice. After Gordon's death, this evolves into full-on "phantom" versions of the other Lambs that push him to fill the growing gaps in the gestalt. As he loses his grip on reality they start temporarily taking over and "driving" Sy's body to have him do what they would have done in that situation.
• Wild Card: After leaving the Academy, it becomes more evident that the only side Sy's really on apart from the Lambs in spirit, is his own.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: He tries to play this to each Lamb's advantage... and, is usually pretty terrible at it due to full-bore over-planning in the heat of the moment. Short-term, multi-factor plotting, he's generally great at if he's got a timer or other constraints actively limiting his options; it's the decision-selection and application processes he has problems with when it comes to anything that'll work for more than two hours, tops. Particularly when faced with few limits. Sometimes, there just isn't a way for everybody to win if you're trying to cover way too many bases.
• You Remind Me of X: Does this to the second Jamie all the time, until he finally gets over his loss and comes to see Jamie 2.0, and especially Jessie, as a different and new person.

Gordon

The leader of the group, specializing in combat and social relations. 13 years old at the start of the story and Codenamed Project Griffon. Killed when his body gives out in Counting Sheep 9.5

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• The Ace: According to Sly he's "strong, handsome, likable and talented."
• Almost Dead Guy: He holds on just long enough for Jamie and Sy to find himself and Lillian and to give each of them a quiet talk.
• Animal Companion: He has a helper dog called Hubris that has an extremely high level of intelligence and serves to warn him when his heart is acting up.
• Big Guy Fatality Syndrome: As The Ace of the Lambs, he's naturally going to be the first to die, right? Wrong, he's actually second, but his is the first predicted death.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Occasionally can be sly and undercutting in the name of doing his job. This probably comes as an out-of-the-blue surprise to most. Particularly when they were probably expecting pain from Sy's near-constant jerkassary, instead. He himself remarks on his completely undeserved reputation for honesty.
• Determinator: He'll do his utmost to see a thing through, physical damage be damned.
• Chick Magnet: His fit body and good looks make him popular amongst the ladies.
• Creepy Child: Even more than Jaime, he seems to be actively built to avert this trope.
• Dumb Muscle: Relatively speaking. He's generally quite bright, but he lacks the intellect or attitude for sneaky, manipulative work like Sylvester, Helen and Jamie do. What he is, however, is the best in a fight and being the physical restraining bolt of the group in conjunction with Jaime's strategic one.
• The Face: When it comes to interacting with others, he's the go-to, first choice because of his looks and likability. Followed by Helen due to her being able to act the part well enough. He's, however, specifically built for this role, while she really isn't.
• Friend to All Living Things: He's better than Sy at interacting with other experiments. Even some of the Whelps will let him pet them, and they'll usually take a hand off if you try that.
• Heart Trauma: Due to his history of transplants, he has a weak heart and begins to suffer from arryhthmia, for which he has Hubris to keep an eye on him.
• The Hero: How Sly thinks of him at least. Time will tell if he lives up to it. However, If you're expecting a Knight In Shining Armour, you're in for a Combat Pragmatist surprise.
• Jack of All Stats: If you can call this a specialty, it's his. He's better physically than the rest, but is broadly good in almost any other capacity you can think of, as well. Even if he won't shine in all of them.
• The Last Dance: Averted. He agonizes over how he doesn't get to do this because of his body failing, when the Lambs are up against five homicidal Nobles and they need him more than ever.
• The Leader: Nominally, at least. He seems content to let Sy make the decisions and speak for the group when that doesn't involve buttering someone up.
• Living on Borrowed Time: His body is giving out, and they can only give him so many transplants. Eventually something will break that can't be replaced.
• Love Makes You Dumb: As mentioned below, him saving Gladys made things a bit harder for the Lambs.
• Mix-and-Match Man: The nature of Project Griffon. He's literally stitched together from the best parts from about twenty six people, as well as a few things that weren't people, making him essentially a living, more expensive to maintain Stitched.
• Precocious Crush: Appears to have one on Gladys, who's sixteen, which annoys Sy as it ruined his plan to trick Sub-Rosa in the form of Gordon attacking her and the convicts. She reciprocates until she comes along on one of their jobs, leading to their eventual breakup.
• Viking Funeral: The Lambs decide to burn down the house he dies in. Sy acknowledges it's a dick move to the owners, but they don't want anyone else getting Gordon's body.
• Would Hit a Girl: Says he's "not shy" to fight a woman.

Helen

"Basics first. Eat, sleep, breathe, murder, drink."

An oddly emotionless girl, she specializes in taking on any social role necessary and is capable of contorting her body to ridiculous lengths. She is, or at least looks, 12 years old at the start of the story and is Codenamed Project Galatea.

---

• Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: There's been something done to her skeleton to allow her to do this.
• Artificial Human: According to Sylvester, she's the only one of the original group that was vat-grown, and he suggests that as a result she wasn't even designed with standard human social psychology-her acting skill is not inbuilt, but the result of having had to learn to interact with people starting from nowhere, and being good at it.
• Blood Knight: Helen's biologically designed to enjoy murdering people, and as she continues to develop she admits to fantasies that involve killing not only the stronger of her enemies, but also the more deadly of her fellow Lambs, though she reassures them that she wouldn't do that. She finds other ways to channel that.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Her compass basically has all the points you'd expect of a semi-feral, barnyard, adolescent cat. Food, fight, grooming, nice pad, den mates... and other kinds of playmates.
• Combat Pragmatist: She has to be, as she's mainly specialised for infiltration, ambush and all around stealth. She is very deadly and packs powerful inbuilt physical surprises, but she's also still the height and weight of a tween girl. Which does put limits on a simple one-on-one duke-out.
• Cool Big Sis: To Ashton. She's quite consciously going all out in acting the part, but the decision to use this mode to thoroughly do so is genuinely hers. She also seems take real pleasure at the prospect of helping Nora and Lara learn to both better socially integrate and destress, as well.
• Creepy Child: When you creep other science projects out on a routine basis with what you can and can't do, you're creepy.
• Cute and Psycho: Helen is adorable and often bubbly, but asking her questions can often give you answers that you didn't want to hear.
• Dope Slap: Occasionally doles whacks to the head out. When Sy is being particularly obnoxious and time consuming with it... and when he has painted her in the "Bis Sis" colours.
• Emotionless Girl: She has a level of disconnect between her emotions and her reactions, but they do exist. Unfortunately, Professor Ibott doesn't believe this to be the case...
• Fille Fatale: What she basically is, at the moment — even though she tones the skill set down to fit in with the Lambs most of the time. Has the capacity to be a real nightmare as she grows into her designed Femme Fatale role.
• Fluffy Tamer: Um, yes — in a way. Getting other incredibly dangerous, Ambiguously Human projects to help train and mould seems to be an acquired hobby she's picking up. One she seems surprisingly good at as she adapts her murderous toolset to fit the teaching role. The more difficult (and deadly) the challenge to others, the better she likes it.
• Grapple Move: If Helen is in your personal space, you live on her sufferance. Sy calls her "a torture rack in human form".
• Made of Iron: In Gut Feeling 17.11 she's riddled with bullets, but while hurt is still alive. Ibott obviously gave her plenty of redundancies.
• Manipulative Bitch: In the same vein as Sylvester, except she utterly trumps him in the acting department. She's a lot less likely to come up with entirely her own schemes, though: she needs a few cues before Showtime. However... this is mainly his interpretation of what she does. Gordon might see her as The Ace or a Broken Ace almost like him, but lesser, for instance.
• Master Actor: Feed her cues and she'll make you doubt she could have been anybody else, even if you've seen other performances. Has a few drawbacks: she is not as physically strong, tough or as good in a physical fight as she can pretend to be. And, if she acts like a friend, you'll never be sure if she actually is once you know what she can do.
• Master Poisoner: Possibly, as it's not Lillian supplying most of the ideas about what was used or how various attacks could have been administered under the radar when the group are trying to analyse an attack against them.
• Meaningful Name: Her codename is Project Galatea, and she happens to be an artificial human.
• Lack of Empathy: Averted. She can empathise, though normal sympathy might be off the table. You'd think an emotionally abnormal, Ambiguously Human killing machine would have the empathy of a rock, but... No: she actually needs to have some clue about how others think and feel on some emotional level to track, hunt and terrorise them effectively. However, stretching what she has to work out how to care for others (especially Lambs) as best she can should be no comfort, as it's far from standard issue. Even though she actually likes doing so and feels down when separated (or so Ibott's grumbling over her endocrine readings indicate).
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Well, "Normal Sterotypes" rather than "Stupidity", but her "bright, bubbly and slightly cheeky upper-middle-class debutante wannabe" is something to behold. It reflects her actual self not by very much at all and is specifically used to deceive.
• Overly-Long Tongue: Her tongue is extendable and prehensile. This should scare you on a number of levels.
• Proper Lady: She shows a persona that is very much this.
• Pygmalion Plot: Her codename is "Project Galatea." Guess what she's supposed to do when she grows up?
• Restraining Bolt: She has a very real one that many of the other Lambs lack: she needs to remain near her creator and his team to continue to mature and grow properly along humanoid lines, as she lacks the capacity on her own. As she puts it, she needs Ibott so that she can be beautiful.
• Rubber Man: From the looks of it, she can fully disconnect her bones pretty much at will, letting her stretch herself ridiculously.
• Satellite Character: What Ibott basically expected her to be, and constantly "trains" her to act like (read: "punish when she acts outside expected 'parameters'"). It's painfully apparent that she's many steps above being merely his Blank Slate, walking Meal Ticket to better things, though.
• Stepford Smiler: What her knack for wearing masks effectively turns her into. Underneath whatever persona she's wearing today is an emotionally detached oddity who knows way too many ways to kill people for comfort.
• The Stoic: She doesn't emote much around the people that really know her, particularly at the start. Dropping her animated masks is almost like an act of honest affection — until she's ordered by Ibott to cut the creepy out. Well, maybe: it's hard to say for sure. It's acknowledgement that she can trust you to deal when she outwardly goes blank, at least, maybe?
• Sweet Tooth: Genuinely loves sweets of all kinds. But, to really get on her good side, it's indulgently calorific cakes and pastries you need to go for. Next to murder, it's her most prominent vice and craving. One which quite surprised Ibott when it became apparent: he now uses deprivation like a bludgeon.

Jamie

A 12 year old boy augmented with an enhanced memory. Codenamed Project Caterpillar.

---

• Bookworm: Loves reading books for fun.
• Canis Latinicus: He tries to coin the word "Tetradeleocleithrophobia" to classify Lillian's fear of "being trapped in a place with monsters and life-exterminating deathtraps," based on his incomplete knowledge of Latin, which he is not permitted to learn.
• Covered with Scars: His back is a twisted mess of scars from an extended spinal column used to plug him into Project Caterpillar, and the scars extend around the rest of his body as well. Especially notable in that the rest of the Lambs go out of their way to avert Scars Are Forever by having easy access to skin grafts and advanced healing technology.
• Death of Personality: At the end of 6.13, Jamie's doctors aren't able to restore his memories, leaving a Blank Slate that barely knows how to move.
• Driven to Suicide: The second Jamie reveals that the first was increasingly burdened by the weight of his memory and knowledge until he eventually just gave in during his final appointment, unable to bear it any longer and passing the role to his second self.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Jamie's occasionally mistaken for a young girl. It's implied that his modifications and scarring are extensive enough that he has functionally no sex characteristics, which plays a part in his fluid sense of gender. He goes along with being male because that's the gender the Academy gave him.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The Responsible to Sy's Foolish, tending to rein Sy in when he goes too far.
• Geek: Is a dime novel fan with the memory capacity to really geek out with ease at the drop of a hat. Infiltrates a school using the nerd crowd as natural camouflage.
• The Heart: He's the one of the experiments who is most likely to express empathy and concern for the others, and he occasionally demonstrates that he knows them well enough to see through their facades, such as when he notes that Sy drove Lacey away out of kindness.
• Hidden Depths: It's in his codename of "Caterpillar". He might look like and actually be an unassuming, uncoordinated nerd and The Heart, but with a name like that, there's bound to be more to him beyond his stunning storage capacity.
• Incompatible Orientation: He's in love with Sy. Sy is firmly heterosexual. Jamie's fine with it.
• The Klutz: By comparison to the others, yes. His focus on record, recall and retention means he sometimes needs a running jump getting up to speed on what is actually happening here-now. Including where things are relative to him, spatially.
• Morality Chain Beyond the Grave: Sy relies on his hallucination of the first Jamie to be his conscience and tell him uncomfortable truths.
• Non-Action Guy: He's almost (key word being almost) as bad as Sy is in a fight.
• No Infantile Amnesia: He remembers the entire process by which he was first augmented, when he couldn't have been more than a couple of years old.
• Note to Self: He leaves a series of coded messages in his books for his future self, containing information, but very few imperatives-the only one that the second Jamie has revealed being "help Sylvester."
• Regretful Traitor: The second Jamie, who deserts the Lambs with Sylvester.
• Renaissance Man: He could theoretically become all this and more with his ability to call upon everything he's learned and apply it, but he's been carefully kept from advanced knowledge. The implication is that his creators are scared of what he might become if he had access to their scientific abilities. In spite of this, he's gleaned enough that he can perform battlefield surgery and guide Lillian through more advanced procedures.
• The Smart Guy: In a different way to Lillian, for all they're both bookworms. He's got a memory for details and facts that the other orphans lack. He's also good at getting the others to analyse their deductions further than they would alone.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: Has a pair even though the Twigverse has many other methods of eye correction. He does it quite deliberately, and it's not too hard to guess why: "no more messing with me" rebellion, most likely. Surprisingly, the glasses are there to make Jamie's eyesight worse instead of better. They blur his peripheral vision to reduce the amount of 'data' in his memories, helping to lower the strain on his mental catalog.
• Wetware CPU: Jamie is actually just an interface and data-gathering tool for the true Project Caterpillar, a massive collection of Brains in Jars which during his appointments collect data from him, reformat it, and return it so that he can make use of it.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: To an extent. Jamie is a gentle, kind person in a world that is not good to the gentle or the kind, and his time in-story often sees him slapped in the face by cold reality.

---

Jamie II/Jessie

The second personality to inhabit Jamie's body, she comes into being after the original suffers a Death of Personality. Far less idealistic, less capable of ignoring the cruelties of society, and a walking symbol of heartbreak for Sy. Unless otherwise noted, all tropes applying to the first Jamie also apply to the second.

---

• Ambiguously Bi: Apparently had a lot of long conversations with both male and female prostitutes at the brothel where she and Sy sought sanctuary.
• Ambiguous Gender Identity: Jessie states that she and her predecessor never really felt like a "boy," but accepted it because it was the Academy's designation and it brought them closer to Sy, though they never quite felt like a "girl" either, suggesting that they're nonbinary but happening to use she/her pronouns.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: She confesses that she feels like an imposter at times, which isn't helped by Sy outright confirming this fear.
• And I Must Scream: Fears that this will be his eventual fate, trapped behind her own eyes without control over her body.
• Bookworm: Contrasting her predecessor, she's less fond of fiction in general, wanting to focus on the real world, though she still reads a lot.
• The Conscience: To Sylvester, eventually, as she tends to appeal to his better nature.
• Defrosting Ice King: She's initially hard on everyone due to disliking her predecessor's idealism, but slowly softens after her introduction, coming to appreciate and respect the friendships and love the first Jamie had.
• Empty Shell: She has to relearn how to walk, talk, and read over the course of nine months.
• Escape Artist: Her memorization skills let her learn how to pick any given lock design perfectly given very little practice.
• Jack of All Trades: Due to picking up the skillsets of the other Lambs. She can act competently, but not as well as Helen; she can throw knives with a fifty percent hit rate, where Mary would hit every target; she can brew an imperfect version of the Wyvern formula, or cook up smoke grenades, but doesn't have Lillian's or Hayle's full expertise...
• Knight in Sour Armor: By comparison to the first Jamie, she's much less able to get invested in adventure stories and more focused on not repeating what she sees as the naive mistakes of the first. However, it's notable that she's more likely than the first Jamie to push Sy to take action against the various monstrous aspects of society.
• Loss of Identity: She's unable to recover many of the original's memories or specific personality touchstones, and is encouraged to perceive herself as a distinct person. However, she's rather more like Jamie than she realizes. Closer than many twins, in fact. They're a different angles in different times on the same basic personality, put it that way.
• Meaningful Rename: She settles on the name "Jessie" in Arc 14, noting that it's similarly androgynous yet distinct from her older self, allowing her to establish firm boundaries between herself and Jamie's memory. Also, the assumed last name "Ewesmont" ties in with the group's nickname as the Lambs.
• The Promise: Jamie left his new self a coded will and testament, and Jessie has promised both selves to stick to it as best she can. The upshot? She's promised to try keeping Sy from going too far off the rails, even though she also got fair warning it might not be possible. Poor sod.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: By contrast with the first Jamie, she jumps at the chance to escape the Academy.
• Sleepyhead: She sleeps as much as sixteen hours per day after leaving the Academy. Without access to the rest of Project Caterpillar, she needs the time to properly sort and format her memories.
• Tell Me About My Father: She asks Sy to tell her about the first, who entrusted Sy with his books.
• That Man Is Dead: Both Sy and Jamie are painfully aware that she's not the old one. For starters, she doesn't actually need glasses. Although she still chooses to wear them.
• Took a Level in Badass: Jessie is less restrained and more competent when it comes to violence than Jamie was. Having said that, her first instinct is still usually "carefully take the explosive device from Sy and discuss other available options" rather than "let's blow stuff up to solve problems".
• Walking Spoiler:
  • Her existence raises the question of what happened to Jamie. The answer? Nothing good.
  • Additionally, her gender identity by way of pronoun shifts and name changing.

Later Additions

Lillian Garey

A 13 year old girl and sole normal human who helps out the others in return for keeping her Academy scholarship.

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• Badass Normal: Hanging around the Lambs has essentially forced her to become this, though Sy cautions her against becoming a Tyke Bomb like them, since she actually has a future to look forwards to and ambitions to fulfill by becoming a full professor.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Lillian is probably the nicest of the Lambs apart from Jamie, but if push comes to shove she can show a certain amount of ruthlessness.
• Breast Attack: When Sy's disregard for her or deliberate lack of empathy gets to be too much, she'll resort to a purple nurple.
• By-the-Book Cop: More than the rest, she's prone to stick to not just their orders, but standard social hierarchies and cues. Particularly within Academy grounds, but usually outside them, too. This extends to actually professing a liking for Cecil, as she's used to the concept of an Upper-Class Twit being, well... upper class. (Although, that might also be partly due to the fact Sy makes it clear he loathes the man.)
• Compliment Backfire: When Sy tells her she did a good job, she acts like he slapped her in the face, which is a perfectly reasonable reaction to being told this by Sy, especially since he's already looked up her skirt in a deliberate bid to annoy her.
• Deadly Doctor: Becomes this after taking Wyvern, showing the ability to come up with specialized countermeasures on the fly.
• Fake-Out Make-Out: Does one with Sy in Esprit de Corpse 5.1 in order to help her ward off suspicion from the children she's watching over, though Sy was expecting more of a chaste kiss while she went for a full-on makeout.
• Feel No Pain: One of the first self-modifications she makes with the Wyvern serum is to give herself enough pain resistance that she can be operated on without anesthetic and remain functional throughout.
• Geek: There's a reason she's a scholarship student... Little Miss Bioscience is a quiet geek who rather misses her old school. Folding herself back in with the other geeks was no problem.
• Insufferable Genius: She takes great pleasure in showing off her advanced skills and knowledge to older doctors who underestimate her.
• In the Hood: In her first appearance she wears a hood, and continues wearing one afterwards.
• Lonely Together: She and Mary bond during the latter's time at the Academy when the rest of the gang is out of touch.
• The Medic: The onsite healer, giver of first aid and supplier of what knowledge, chemicals and equipment she does have on hand. For anything more extensive than field biotech, though, she's quick to send her patients back to the Academy. Able to play at Master Poisoner or even With Syringes at a pinch, but neither are her specialties. She is still only a student Mad Scientist, after all.
• Morality Chain: To Mary. Mary comes to the conclusion that she wants Percy dead not because she cares that he's a predator who preys on children to make monsters, but because the fact that he does bothers Lillian. Following Percy's death she even considers attacking a Noble during the interrogation even though she knows her chances of escape are poor just so Lillian has a chance to escape.
• Naïve Newcomer: The latest addition to the group at the beginning of the story, with the snake charmer job being only her third with the Lambs. Over the course of the story she becomes far less naive as she becomes closer to the rest of the Lambs.
• Nerves of Steel: In Lamb (Arc 17), she remains outwardly calm even while having to deal with a female Noble who's aware of her relationship with the Lambs.
• Pair the Suitors: After her breakup with Sy, Lillian and Mary appear to develop a romantic and sexual dimension to their relationship, though Lillian remains intensely hung up on Sy.
• Psycho Serum: After Gordon's death, she decides to begin sharing Sy's Wyvern injections to give herself a much needed edge.
• Replacement Goldfish: For Evette, the experiment who was originally designed to provide Academy knowledge for the gestalt.
• Scholarship Student: Mr. Hayle is her sponsor at the Academy, and arranges for her tuition to be waived so long as she helps the group.
• Seen It All: Not in the field, there hasn't been nearly enough time to become completely jaded while on-mission, but off-mission the petty rivalries and tiny manipulations endemic to Academies such as Radham pale in comparison to what Sy and the Lambs' missions put her through on a daily basis.
  Lillian (internal monologue): Put up your dukes, world. I can take it.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss:
  • Lillian has a crush on Sy, as both Mary and Jamie's comments show; the former saying outright that she "likes to be teased", and Lillian deciding to rather intensely kiss Sy during their Fake-Out Make-Out. Eventually this escalates into a full-blown romance.
  • And then later falls apart when Sy runs away, captures her, and takes it too far.
• The Smart Guy: She's a student of the Academy. The only one in the group, in fact. She's also appallingly young to be there.
• The Team Normal: The sole non-experiment in the group, though even then she's incredibly bright. As a result, Sly doesn't view her as family compared to the others aside from being new, at first.

Mary Coburn

“I am a young lady of Mothmont, I am an exemplary killer. I am a step above.“

“With the Lambs at my back, I can handle anything this world might throw at me.“

“I win.“

The sole surviving female member of the Bad Seeds by the time the Lambsbridge Gang comes into contact with them. She defects at the end of Arc 1 to become The Sixth Ranger for the Lambs.

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• Action Girl: Mary is not backward in coming forwards when violence could be a solution to any given problem. In a straight-up fight, she's second only to Gordon. With a penchant for sneaky assassination, too... even though Helen tends to beat her on the sneak.
• Assassins Are Always Betrayed: Her creator uses her and leaves her to die with nary a second thought. Ten arcs later, Sy does something similar, accompanied by a bullet through her kneecap to give himself a head start.
• Blade Enthusiast:
  • Feel sorry for any poor soul trying to pat her down; either they'll get stabbed or spend a good twenty minutes at the job. She manages to hide and carry so many blades and wire with her, it's a wonder she doesn't clank when she walks.
  • At one point, she complains she wasn't expecting a mission, so she's stuck with just her normal walking around knives. Of which she has 22.
• Clone Degeneration: Being a clone has hit her hard, physiologically; she doesn't have long until the incurable and aggressive cancers that are the result of the methods used to make her end her life. When things get bad, her mental balance might end — if only because brain tumors do that.
• Clones Are People, Too: Despite being a clone, she's treated as her own person by the Lambs.
• Easily Forgiven: None of the Lambsbridge Gang seem to impose any moral judgement on her for the multiple attempts on their lives, the multiple successful murders that her fellow Bad Seeds carried out, or her general disregard for people outside a very small circle. Then again, the Gang are themselves child experiments who kill people in service to a very morally dubious organization.
• Evil Knockoff: Mary could be seen as one of these for the original, murdered Mary Coburn. It is later revealed that the original Mary could qualify as one of these for her, when Sy discovers that the original Mary is still alive, and has been transformed into a particularly vicious Noble.
• Fatal Flaw: Sy mentions that her greatest flaw while on a mission is that she has problems with out of the box thinking and can be left helpless if things go in ways that mess with her programming.
• Friendship Moment: She has several of these with the Lambs after defecting, including bonding with Lillian as mutual outsiders, helping them mentally break a prisoner, and giving a nickname to their latest target.
• Hates Being Alone: Sy realizes that more than anything, she's afraid of being alone and is in need of the family that she doesn't really have. He capitalizes on this by offering to let her join the Lambsbridge Gang.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: She agrees to Sylvester's offer to join the Lambsbridge Gang, but the question of how much of a "Face" the gang is is an open one, and at least a good part of her motivation is pulling a Screw Destiny against her perception that her creator made her to die.
• Iconic Item: Almost always seems to wear ribbons of some sort, to the point where on her first appearance Sy referred to her as "the girl with the ribbons".
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: She never had this talk with Sy about Lillian, trusting that he understood their relationship well enough. When Sy does break Lillian's heart, she responds in the most hurtful way possible: not giving him a reaction.
• Manipulative Bitch: Much like Sylvester, she's good at tricking people into giving her what she wants, though unlike him she's quicker to resort to violence when that doesn't work.
• Morality Chain: Lillian's morals are what keep her on the strait and narrow. Sy suspects a subversion; she uses the excuse of doing what Lillian would want and what she thinks she should feel to deceive even herself about her very real hate for those who prey on children.
• "Not So Different" Remark: She tries to claim this about Sy when he pushes Helen into the path of her knife, only to subsequently discover that, firstly, Helen doesn't mind being stabbed, and secondly, should not be allowed in close quarters with you.
• Pair the Suitors: It's revealed in Arc 18 that Lillian and Mary have developed a sexual relationship wherein Mary attempts to seduce Lillian while mimicking Sy.
• The Perfectionist: She utterly hates it if something she's done didn't work out and often spends time overanalysing whatever the weakness was.
• Razor Floss: She makes extensive use of razor-sharp wires.
• Self-Made Orphan: She was designed to look like this, but she only becomes it in full when she starts seeking Percy's death, having decided that he's a monster and she doesn't want anything to do with him.
• Sixth Ranger: Of the Lambs.
• Suicide by Cop: She tries to force this by getting the Headmistress to read out her command phrase. It turns out she doesn't have one. Sy lied about that.
• The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In: She can do this even with knives that aren't made to throw.
• Turned Against Their Masters: She abandons the Puppeteer by choosing not to fight to the death.
• Villainous BSoD: After Sy and Helen take her down, Sy's repeated points about how her creator doesn't really care about her wellbeing take their toll, and she gives up entirely.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: Prior to joining the Lambs, She has a fixation on pleasing her creator, who has shaped the Bad Seeds as a family unit with himself as the father.
• Younger Than They Look: She appears to be about the age of the Lambsbridge Gang, but Lillian hypothesizes that she had her aging artificially accelerated.

Ashton

A failed sub-project of the Lambs, Ashton is reactivated by Professor Hayle after the Lambs' successes in the field gain him the clout to secure further funding and resources for the project. Ashton resembles a human twelve-year-old with red hair and amber eyes.

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• Annoying Younger Sibling: Has shades this kind of relationship with Duncan. Ashton obviously feels some kinship with and/or affection for the student doctor (which is reciprocated to a degree), as he constantly pesters him to improve in several areas. His relationship with Helen is a lot less annoying for both sides.
• Artificial Human: The only member of the Lambs, other than Helen, who isn't made from a human base.
• The Baby of the Bunch: The youngest of all the Lambs. Helen has taken him under her wing and taken responsibility for teaching him to act human.
• Cloudcuckoolander: His unique style of facial recognition and imagination-driving dot-joining is in danger of turning him into a permanent one of these if he can't learn to filter the worst distractions out and adjust himself quickly. He certainly starts out on a completely different plane of reality to most, put it that way.
• Determinator: Approaches every social puzzle with grit and determination, no matter how bamboozled by the whole thing he starts out as. He's going to prove himself worthwhile to have around, dammit!
• Emotion Control: He manipulates emotions through emitted drugs or pheromones of some sort. Sy is immune, thanks to his poison resistance, and Helen due to not having human neural structures. To prevent this from affecting other members of the team without their knowledge, Duncan develops indicator chemicals that change colors depending on what pheromones Ashton is currently emitting.
• Fish out of Water: Well, more a case of a plant out of the plantpot. At first, at least. He's got an awful lot more adjusting to do than most, put it that way. Helen seems to empathise. Well, as much as she can, at least.
• Grammar Nazi: A downplayed version, but... if anybody misnames, misquotes, mispronounces or mispronouns him or others near him, he'll quietly and incessantly correct them every time they do it until they stop doing it. He trained Duncan to stop calling him "it" or using contractions of his name, and he's all set to doggedly repeat the process for any other sentient and/or sapient experiment Duncan carelessly downgrades to object.
• Improbable Hairstyle: His hair is always perfect.
• Literal-Minded: Due to being less than nine months old at the time of his introduction and still learning, he has difficulty with metaphors and inference.
• Mr. Imagination: Spends much of his time hallucinating the bloody murders of the people around him, because red is his favorite color.
• No Social Skills: Like Helen, he started from nil, zip, nada, zilch. And, he's still got a long way to go, for all he's steadily improving by leaps and bounds. Having said that, he very quickly becomes a genius in comparison to Duncan. Who he continually attempts to make improve.
• Plant Person: When Sy visits a gestating Ashton in Arc 6, it's revealed that Ashton was growing inside a tree that takes up a large lab.
• The Stoic: He's far worse than Helen at pretending to be human, instead communicating emotions through pheromonal clouds that only Helen can even consciously detect.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: His eyes, Sy notes, are the only parts of him that look like he's alive.

Duncan Foster

An Academy student added to the program to fill the role of combat medic when the Lambs are split into two teams.

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• The Beastmaster: He has a pack of modified hounds with grabbing tentacles built in.
• Beleaguered Assistant: What he strongly (and grumpily) feels he is. He's out of his comfort zone and having to manage the Lambs while juggling various professors' egos, when he's got little to no managerial experience, so it's more than understandable.
• Character Development: He starts out fairly cold and detached, viewing the lambs as test subjects rather than people, and bemoaning having to be stuck with this project. Over time however he starts to view them as people and grows to bond with them, particularly Ashton, becoming a much more likable character. In the end, he winds up becoming a Lamb as much as Lillian and with her is one of the two doctors in charge of maintaining the Lords and Ladies of Lambsbridge.
• The Ditz: A bit. His ideas about lab safety are... less than switched-on. And, his social detachment makes some of his actions come across as somewhat misplaced or disjointed.
• Lack of Empathy: Yes-no. He starts out as an ode to scientific neutrality and detachment gone a little overboard (to almost self-damaging levels). But, he's by no means near being a classical sociopath, even though he is socially stunted as a result. There's a lost little heart in there.
• No Social Skills: Has a habit of finding exactly the most hurtful or inconsiderate way of saying or doing something without realizing what he's just done wrong. That his goal is to rise in the political shark tank of the Academy makes this his biggest problem.
• Odd Friendship: Thanks both to Ashton's earnest persistence and through racking up hours in the field, Duncan develops this with not just Ashton, but most of the New Lambs, too. Against his taught instincts and expectations, but not against theirs.
• Selective Obliviousness: When faced with a puzzle, he gets tunnel vision and stops investing in what little social acumen or common sense he's got. He's also really bad at taking criticism from anybody he doesn't consider a social better and won't take their point of view seriously if he considers it to fall outside the task in hand.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: To Sy. Initially Sy hates his guts, but refrains from killing him, instead humiliating him. This turns into a more good-natured rivalry over time.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: He refers to Lara as "it" instead of "her". He also did the same to Ashton before Ashton's constant, corrective pedantry cured him of it. He eventually grows out of this.
• It's All About Me: Well, in his defense, he's young, fairly sheltered and has been taught that experiments and stitched aren't Real People™. And, like most students, his career path is the most important thing in his life. So, yeah... he's Young Master Selfish, Esq. Even though he's not truly malicious. Another trait that is slowly eroded as the story goes on.

Neo-Lambs

A group of other child-appearing experiments that are folded into the Lambs for additional support.

Abby

One of the Lamb-like experiments recruited by the Lambs after Professor Hayle becomes Headmaster. Abby appears to be a young girl with dark hair and a strangely malformed face, the result of her rapid growth.

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• Artificial Human: Though a less successful one than Ashton or Helen. Seems to have a fairly strong human base, however.
• Convulsive Seizures: She has these whenever she experiences strong emotion, such as homesickness.
• Friend to All Living Things: Abby is much more fond of animals than humans, and animals seem to reciprocate. Unfortunately, she isn't as good at it as she was designed to be. However, isolating her from both human and animal companionship won't have helped her develop what she did have.
• Ship Tease: She has a clear crush on Ashton.

Emmett

A boy whose large body does not match his childlike features. Emmett is the product of a smaller Academy which gave him a new body, saving his life.

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• Gentle Giant: What he is, now. Particularly gentle and protective around experiments like Abby and Lara. And, animals like Quentin. Well, as best he can without directly challenging authorities apt to end them all if they act out of line.
• Hidden Depths: He very much looks like a very young Bruno: all Brawn. But, he's arguably far more of a Brain. Hence him being selected for the neo-Lambs.
• The Quiet One: Very much. When he does venture an opinion, he keeps it to the minimum, even though he's not monosyllablic.
• Secret-Keeper: He's willing to keep schtum about some of what he's worked out about what Sy is up to (and why)... both when it comes to Academy authorities, but also when keeping the original Lambs a bit in the dark on specifics.

Lara and Nora

A pair of insect-like experiments, child-sized with human intelligence. Lara and Nora are recruited by the Lambs after Professor Hayle becomes Headmaster.

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• Big Sister Instinct: As it turns out, Nora has this if you corner and physically threaten Lara anywhere near her. She goes full-on The Berserker, turning all her self-preservation instincts into pure defend-my-twin rage.
• Communications Officer: They function as this. Combined with being the communication array.
• Cornered Rattlesnake: Don't sneak up on either of the twins unless you can handle spikes. They will choose flight over fight, but if they can't flee, you will bleed...
• Lovable Coward: Lara and Nora are quick to flee, but are still quite loveable.
• Nervous Wreck: Both of them have had their anxiety responses jacked up to very unhappy levels as a security precaution. It's left them both with problems working in the field, as "flight before fight" may sound good on paper if you want comms to survive, but it also makes them less able to deal with daily life, let alone standing still when witnessing violence to report on without copious amounts of help. Cue actively needing other experiments like Helen and Ashton to help them through the worst of it. Oops.
• Single-Minded Twins: They can really pull this trick off... even when half a city away from each other, too. Never mind the fact they aren't really twins, but more like the only two remaining survivors of their batch.
• Twin Desynch: Lara is terrified that this might happen to them if they stick to one group of Lambs each and their experiences start to diverge. She's right to be afraid, since their project could be scrapped if this happens.
• Witty Banter: For a given definition of wit. Hurling joking, competitive and infantile abuse at each other near-constantly both face-to-face and when exchanging private messages is not only their shared coping strategy, but their ultimate sign of sibling affection. Hands up all siblings who recognize it...
  • When they start including/ganging up on Ashton-and-by-extension-Duncan in their banter, you know they care.

Associated Experiments

Hubris

A dog given to Gordon to help monitor his heart as he begins breaking down.

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• Action Pet: By benefit of being an Academy creation, he's much smarter and stronger than an ordinary dog would be.
• Attack Animal: He's perfectly willing and capable of ripping out throats.
• Canine Companion: To Gordon.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: He's killed when one of the Twins runs him through.
• Ironic Nickname: Hubris tells Gordon his limits. Not something you should usually rely on hubris to do.
• Undying Loyalty: As loyal as any dog you'd like to name, willing to put his life on the line to protect the Lambs. Also literal, as he continues to follow the other Lambs after Gordon dies.

Duncan's Hounds

Some of Duncan's experiments, which he sometimes brings on missions.

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• Attack Animal: As Duncan isn't really a fighter, he relies on his hounds if he can.
• Combat Tentacles: They have grabbing tentacles they use to restrain targets.
• The Paralyzer: Their main purpose is to paralyze people with a toxin in their tentacles, allowing for easier capture.
• Undying Loyalty: Nope! One poor exercise in lab safety by Duncan and one of them nearly eats him.