Characters / Unsounded

Main Characters

Duane

Duane Adelier

The Zombie

^{Click here to see him while he was alive.}

One of the heroes of the comic, Duane is a unique sort of zombie who has retained all of his intelligence, skills, and memories. He'd meant to make a quiet unlife in Sharteshane, copying legal documents and reading and writing letters for commission. However, when his condition was uncovered by the leader of the Frummagem crime family, Duane was given an ultimatum: either he escorts Boss-King Frummagem's daughter Sette to her cousin’s place to collect a debt the man owes Nary, or he can have his secret exposed to the whole town. Reluctantly he accepted, though he’s making an effort to try and make Sette a better person along the way.

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• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Escort my daughter to her cousin Stockyard, or I reveal you're a galit to anyone in town with a pitchfork and torch and a desperate need for a break from monotony.
• Animals Hate Him: Most likely because he's dead.
• Anti-Hero: At first glance, he seems like an upstanding, heroic man; to a large extent he is, but he is also very much the product of his rather repressive country, and is staunchly loyal to its ideals (even if he's a bit more liberal than his fellow countrymen). He is also extremely bitter about the circumstances of his death, which is understandable if for no other reason than his young daughter was, as far as he knew for over half a decade, murdered alongside him. Ultimately he ends up being something of a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, where he can alternate between being a kind, heroic man who'll go out of his way to help people in trouble... and being cruel, vicious, and selfish as he clings to his conservative beliefs. As his sanity begins to slip from revelations about his death in later chapters, he begins to spend more and more time in the latter mindset.
• Badass Preacher: In life, Duane was a Ssaelit preacher. He was also in the military, and is equally capable at physical combat and pymary. In death... he's just as religious and just as badass, if not moreso.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted (not that he was all that attractive when he was alive, either). In his undead form, Duane is very clearly a corpse; he's completely desiccated, he has no nose, and depending on the day he might be filled with beetles. On top of that, at night he becomes feral. However, he usually uses pymary to cast a Normalcy-based glamour on himself, making himself appear as an unremarkable living man; since Perceptive glamours utilize Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder, when Duane's is active, how he's drawn depends on who's looking at him and how he's feeling. Is Sette looking at him? Is it someone who knows he's a zombie, or is it someone who has no idea? Does he feel like Duane Adelier, or does he feel like a monster?
• Berserk Button:
  • Harming children is something he simply won't abide. After finding the girl the Red Berry Boys butchered, he makes it his goal to hunt them down, regardless of Sette's primary goal.
  • Anything involving Cresce is certain to piss him off. One can understand, since his country is at war with Cresce and Crescian assassins killed him and, as he believed for many years, his daughter alongside him.
  • Nary Frummagem is quickly becoming one, what with him double-crossing Duane, attempting to deliver Duane into slavery, using Sette - his own daughter - as an unknowing delivery girl, and everything involving the First Silver.
  • Implying that his brother Lemuel is very troubled in the head and/or had anything to do with Duane's murder is sure to put Duane on the defensive... even while it's becoming ever more evident, even to Duane, that both implications are true...
• Beware the Nice Ones: Duane is a genuinely kind and affable man. However, press one of his Berserk Buttons and he becomes cold, ruthless, and at times rather cruel.
• Broken Ace: An extremely powerful wright, highly skilled melee fighter, and a deeply intelligent man. Duane won the genetic Superpower Lottery with his ability to tacit cast, i.e. cast pymary without needing to speak at all, which also means he can cast instantly. His undead state means he doesn't feel pain, is surprisingly strong, and can keep fighting even after taking injuries that would outright kill a living man. Sure, Duane is one of the most dangerous people seen so far in the entire comic, that's not in doubt — but his entire existence is a bleak nightmare, he has more emotional wounds then any one person should, he's weighed down by the grudges he bears against the country that killed him and his daughter, and that's not even getting into his feelings about his family after his encounter with Lemuel and Mikaila at Litriya Shrine.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: He stops to help a brother and sister in distress, then makes a personal mission of tracking down and stopping the Red Berry Boys to prevent them from hurting children, much to Sette's chagrin.
• Cowardly Lion: A very downplayed example during his early days as a soldier. Combat situations clearly caused him to panic, making him stutter in fear while trying to rally the child soldiers under his command, but he'd still commit to his duties when it was called for. Age and experience knocked this trait out of him.
• Creepy Good: An inevitable fact when one is a walking, rotting, corpse. Usually his kind nature shines through enough to downplay the creepiness whenever his glamour fails, but when he drops said kind nature, he can be very off-putting.
• Cultured Badass: He speaks almost like a character from a Shakespeare play and he is one of the more well learned people in the series. He's also one of the most powerful wrights in Kasslyne, especially after his death, and a skilled melee combatant with years of experience.
• Cultured Warrior: While in the army.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Despite being a "living" corpse, he's one of the most decent people in the comic.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Often has many moments that involve this. Despite being a decent person overall, he comes from an extremely regressive and totalitarian state, and his country's warped ideals are rather ingrained in him.
• Dork Knight: Opera and theater loving, idealistic and noble, but very, very capable and competent in a fight.
• Deadpan Snarker: Tee-hee.
• Ensign Newbie: Has elements of this during Chapter 14, which is a flashback to his army days. He's only an officer over the Platinum child wrights who all look up to him, but outside that unit, he's looked down on both for being a Gold and for his general lack of war experience. He is chastised by his second-in-command Jon for putting his plat children into dangerous situations unnecessarily (he has them lead the way in detecting mines in a minefield their army needs to cross because due to their Platinum heritage, they are able to sense pymary at a much greater range than he can, but Jon, who is also a Plat but older than the rest, believed that the two of them could have handled the mines just fine) in order to gain points with his superiors. And when Jon is killed in an ambush, Duane plans to take the Plat children and his brother Lemuel and flee. Lemuel tells him to get over himself — people die in war all the time, and the only reason Duane cares now is because it's the first time it happened to someone he cared about. Duane's superior even notes that while Duane is an intelligent man and a powerful wright, he's a poor soldier when compared to Lemuel. By the time of his death, Duane had matured into more of a proper officer, and was respected by his subordinate soldiers.
• Et Tu, Brute?: When Duane meets his brother again for the first time in the six years since he fled Alderode, Duane eventually realizes that one of Lem's copilots is Mikaila, Duane's daughter... that he thought died the night he was assassinated, due to having seen her near-fatally stabbed and Lemuel telling him she was gone. At this moment, multiple facts come crashing into focus for Duane: the fact that Mikaila was only with Duane that day because Lemuel asked him to bring her, Lemuel was in charge of the city guard patrol that night — which was conspicuously absent when Duane's assassins came for him, and Lemuel was able to procure high-quality pymaric eye replacements for Duane shockingly fast. Duane can only ask "Why?" before Lemuel cuts his head off (presumably to prevent Mikaila from realizing who Duane was).
• Everyone Has Standards: When Aldish soldiers invade Litriya Shrine, Duane is disgusted to see that they seem mostly interested in looting the place for treasure, and outright backhands the squad leader - who was discussing his plans to rape the women there, most of which are children. Even though — as ever the Aldish patriot — he directs them to the Crescian laboratory underneath the shrine, he warns the soldiers that if they harm any of the civilians in the shrine, Duane will kill them without mercy. Not that it stopped them from trying, but it was a good effort!
• A Father to His Men: When he was in the army, despite the fact that as a Soud the default attitude towards him was rarely positive, many of his fellow soldiers came to respect him immensely due to the care he had for his Plat child soldiers.
• Fantastic Racism: One of his biggest character flaws is his blind hatred of Crescians, even those undeserving of it, and this massively affects his behavior during his time at the Litriya Shrine. Mind you, he has some very good reasons for that hatred, since for six years he thought Crescian agents killed him and his daughter.
  • Averted in that he is one of the only characters in the setting who doesn't consider two-toes to be worthless subhumans. In fact, they've always rather fascinated him, and when he wakes up one morning in a two-toe "village", he has such a big smile on his face that he looks adorable even though his face is rotting.
• Fatal Flaw: Patriotism. Duane's worst qualities, especially his bigotry and self-righteousness, are borne from his life as a persecuted minority in the intensely regressive Alderode, but he clings so fiercely to his identity as an Aldishman that he refuses to accept his country's faults, even when it becomes increasingly clear that it was involved in the plot to murder him. What's more, he'll double down and retreat into his prejudiced nationalism whenever he finds himself morally challenged, with increasingly disastrous results for himself and those around him.
• Friend to All Children: Always, which Sette takes shameless advantage of. In his living days, he was extremely protective of his squad of Child Mage soldiers, and was a devoted dad. He is even kind to two-toe children, when most people at best look down on two-toes. The two-toe child even gleefully notes that nobody had ever called her "miss" before.
• The Fundamentalist: Played with. He's an extremely devout fundamentalist Ssaelit, an Aldish patriot to the end, and contemptuous of both Gefendur and Cresce (and don't get him started on Crescian Gefendur). He's more liberal than many in Alderode, as he is willing to teach his daughter the ways of pymary when he sees how much grief it gives her to have a biological talent for it (as she, like him, is a tacit caster, meaning she can cast spells non-vocally) but not allowed to learn since women are expected to be nothing else but housewives in Alderode. However, he is very much within the party line in regards to his feelings towards Cresce and Gefendur and is rather intolerant and haughty towards both. They tend to cause him to indulge in his worst impulses. Though we see begin to see that it's less fanaticism that causes his anger and cruelty but rather unresolved bitterness towards the people who killed him and his daughter.
• Genre Savvy: "Think on it. A mysterious stranger in unassuming garb, of noble mien, his manner strange, his abilities unknown, selflessly answering the call of innocent youths. Not one to take lightly, says the theatre."
• Glamour Failure: Normally he uses a glamour to make himself look human; eye contact, however, breaks the spell and makes him resemble the rotting corpse that he is. Once Sette gives him pointers on deception, he starts to overcome this.
  • Even the glamour he starts using that allows for eye contact is still imperfect. For instance, if someone is aware that he's glamoured, they can see right through it.◊ Sette actively chooses not to look through it.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: His time at Litriya Shrine brings two things that he's desperately tried to avoid to the front of his mind. These are A: that his brother Lemuel was not quite as mentally well as he tried to present himself as, may have never mentally recovered from his time in the army, and was very likely involved in Duane's assassination, and B: that Duane himself has been running from the fact that despite the moral front he puts up, he's a moral coward; he speaks loftily of noble goals, but when it becomes time for him to act on it at hard times, he usually flounders. He failed to own up to the fact that his incompetence during the civil war got his second in command killed (it's clear from the flashback that he struggled with it at the time, but he eventually agrees with his Platinum children's claims that he "never lost a lad" and that over time he made himself believe the lie), he failed to hold Lemuel to account when Lemuel incinerated a wagon full of prisoners of war, and when he had the chance to improve (from his Ssaelit perspective) the lives of all the twins at Litriya Shrine, he chose instead to focus on evening the odds in the conflict between Alderode and Cresce, stating that he "owed nothing" to the place. With the fact that his brain is incapable of remembering the past in anything but perfect clarity in his current state, his only options are to accept these horrible, uncomfortable truths... or to go insane from them.
• Honor Before Reason: He'll use pymary against an opponent using pymary. If his opponent can't cast spells, he'll fight them with his quarterstaff or his fists, for the sake of fairness. Never mind that he's supernaturally strong.
• Horror Hunger: Like all zombies, Duane constantly craves living flesh, and he needs to keep tight control of himself at all times. Even a little bit of blood is enough to exacerbate his hunger. However, by removing a blood-splattered glove from his hand and pocketing it, Sette reveals that "out of sight, out of mind" applies and can help clear his thoughts when he starts, ahem, seeing red.
• Ignored Epiphany: The events of Litrya Shrine begin to force Duane to grapple with what he's always assumed he knew about his death. His hatred for the Crescian Queen which he always assumed orchestrated his death due to what he was told (not helped by her being the queen of the country his was at war with) was always his most bitter feeling. However, upon meeting his brother for the first time in years at the shrine and learning that the daughter Lemuel told him had died was very much alive, he begins to see through all the lies his brother told him after his death. However, he is given less than a day to process this very intense revelation before being thrown into a scenario that eventually leads him and Sette to (almost literally) hold the Queen's life in Sette's hands. And unfortunately, with some prodding by Lady Ilganyag, Duane chooses to fall back into his blind hatred of the Queen, stopping from helping her even though this also meant leaving Toma's very young daughter who was with the Queen in great danger too.
• In the Hood: Since sunlight makes him itch, and eye contact disrupts the illusions on his face.
• Just a Machine: Due to Duane's very unique circumstances, anyone who learns that he is undead assumes he is just a very advanced plod (considering the average plod is used for mindless labor). Indeed, even Sette assumed this to be the case until her accidental trip into the Khert where she saw Duane's past leading up to his death, at which point she realized he really is a thinking and feeling being. However, even late in the story, his "allies" tend to look at him as just a very advanced construct rather than a true human soul bound to an undead body; according to all known rules of how souls, memory, and pymary work, he cannot be Duane Adelier, and the more someone knows about pymary the more they understand how Duane's existence breaks every law — so, clearly, he must be a particularly advanced plod that someone's made believe it was Duane Adelier. Sette and the readers know better, of course.
• Large Ham: He has a very theatrical way of speaking. Just look at the quote on Genre Savvy when he encounters the Red Berry Boys for the first time, or hear him when he's recounting war stories to Sette. Understandable, since he used to be a fairly popular preacher who used pymary to enhance his sermons.
• Magic Knight: Word of God states that while in the military he trained the wrights under him on how to use weapons, in defiance of Squishy Wizards. He rarely uses them in conjunction though, finding it more honorable to only use pymary against other wrights and to use physical combat against non-wrights.
• Masking the Deformity: Duane usually hides his rotted undead face with an illusion for personal comfort and safety, but borrows a theatre mask of his patron god Ssael in Chapter 15. His long-lost brother knocks it off in a confrontation, then recoils in horror at the sight.
  Duane: It all... wilted.
• Master of Illusion: His favorite school of pymary, although he attests that he isn't incredibly talented with it, at least compared to his combat pymary.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: He's not one, but a Running Gag in early chapters is Sette accusing him of this.
• Morality Pet: To Sette. He's trying to make her a better person, and though she'll deny it up and down, his efforts seem to be gradually paying off. By baby steps, anyway.
• Morton's Fork: Duane is between a rock and a hard place in regards to his undeath and religion. As a zombie, he is considered an abomination to Ssaelism, as they consider the rot of death to be one of the Twins' crimes against humanity — and, thusly, an unacceptable sin... but he also can't set himself on fire to die properly and set his body to rest, as suicide is also considered an incredible sin to the Ssaelit. To continue living is a sin, but to end his life is also a sin — there's no good way out.
• Nightmare Face: Chapter 7 involves our first good look at his face. It's not pretty.
• Nighttime Transformation: As if it weren't enough to become a rotting corpse, at night his mind goes too.
• Noble Bigot: He's inherited his country's prejudices regarding women and Crescians, as well as the Ssaelit Church's distaste for its rivals the Gefendur. On the other hand, he's a sincerely good person, and is deeply troubled when his views are called into question.
• Our Zombies Are Different: He has the Horror Hunger most zombies do, but unlike regular "plods" he's intelligent, self-aware, and can cast pymary, and he is likely unique for this. In fact, the majority of characters in the story believe him to just be a very advanced plod rather than a truly sentient being (even most of his "allies") — albeit for good reason on their parts. At night, he becomes more like his mindless, bloodthirsty zombie cousins, though Sette can keep him docile at the end of a leash or a pair of shackles he carries for this purpose.
• The Paladin: Essentially was (and is) one of these, though more magically inclined. In life, he was a priest with a military background and was a very upstanding guy. In death, he retains his good nature and combat skills and remains deeply devout to Ssaelism. He is not one to let injustice go, sidetracking Sette's quest when he learns that there are slavers kidnapping (and murdering) children nearby. Downplayed somewhat — even though Duane himself is a very upstanding man, he comes from a totalitarian country and still believes in its ideals, and he can be something of a zealot when it comes to Ssaelism and the Gefendur.
• Papa Wolf: Towards Sette. And pretty much all children. And towards his own kids, particularly his daughter. Not that it did her any good...
• Parental Substitute: Towards Sette, though at first their relationship was very strained. Over time they've become practically like father and daughter, due to Sette reminding Duane of his daughter Mikaila and Duane giving Sette affection her da never did.
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: He averts this completely. He gets decapitated in Chapter 16, and aside from not being able to see or hear in the meantime, he's essentially alright (well, at least physically; mentally, he's dealing with issues indirectly related to the decapitation). Sette notes that this isn't even the first time he's lost his head in her company. It's heavily implied that this is all due to the device that Bastion Winalils implanted in him before he died; it isn't his head that ties his soul to his body, it's the silver pymaric in his spine.
• Replacement Goldfish: It's implied that one reason he puts up with Sette is that she reminds him of his lost daughter Mikaila, and at one point he sees Sette as her. Eventually subverted — Sette is **not** Mikaila, and that causes him to never fully commit to choosing her over his more personal grudges when forced to choose. And, worse, he's subconsciously aware of this fact. And so is Sette.
  Duane's conscious rebuking him for his selfishness: How kindly this ugly world has treated you. To a lonely father, it made a gift of a girl so starved for love her hunger sharpened her teeth into fangs. But she wasn't yours, and you lost interest so quickly.
• Sanity Slippage: The events at Litriya Shrine have been one continuous slide towards insanity for Duane. First, being stuck at a shrine dedicated to the practice of a ritual that Duane's religion finds completely abhorrent (the ritual sacrifice of a twin), recalling a traumatic war experience with more clarity than he could in life, said recollection making him realize that his brother Lemuel was mentally disturbed and possibly involved in the death of him and his daughter, the fact that the woman in charge of the Shrine is involved in experimentation on Water Women children, and Sette using her amulet to mindcontrol Duane into doing what she wants (specifically not wrecking and leaving the shrine so she can stay with the first genuine friend she's ever made for a bit longer.)
• Scars Are Forever: When Duane starts using a glamour that allows for eye contact at Sette's insistence, allowing him too look more like he did when he was alive, there is a scar along his lower left jaw and two small ones on his eyelids from when he was shot with a bolt and his eyes gouged out with a knife the night he died.
• Sense Loss Sadness: He has no sense of taste, smell, or fine touch anymore. When Lady Ilganyag makes him relive an intimate moment with his wife, he's completely overwhelmed.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: His theatrical-esque speaking (as noted under Large Ham above) often comes across as this.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Served in the military; while he actually enjoys recounting war stories, his time seems to have left him with a deep hatred of Crescians. Getting violently murdered by them (and seeing his daughter seemingly killed as well) definitely didn't help matters.
  • It turns out that he's even made himself forget certain details of certain stories from his past. Chapter 14 is him recounting a story from when he met the Salt Lizard during a campaign against Aldish rebels. When he begins to tell the tale, he's rather excited to, later noting that it was a favorite tale of his and his daughter. However, when he reaches the part where his arrogance and brashness gets his second-in-command and friend bisected, he momentarily has to stop the story to collect himself, as he had apparently blocked out the worst parts of the story in his memory while he was alive; yet, in death, the truth of the memories returned in full force. Without a brain to soften the memory and let him forget, every memory is crystal clear.
• Stay in the Kitchen: As is common among the Aldish, and especially the Ssaelit, he's got a misogynistic streak.
• The Storyteller: Duane is extremely good at telling stories, often using his tacit casting to add visuals. This was also at least part of his job as Rector while he was alive, albeit a religious variant.
• Stronger Than They Look: Duane is a rotting walking corpse. Not something you'd consider ideal for physical combat. And, yet, in death he's become supernaturally strong; combining that with the combat prowess he gained in life, he's one of the best fighters in the comic.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: One of Duane's duties in life was hunting down and destroying plods and unlicensed wrights. His body is now a decaying plod with his soul still bound to it, and considering he's legally dead, he's definitely unlicensed.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: Learning that the Khert is reaching for him as he sleeps upends his entire worldview, and especially his image of himself as an unholy creature rejected by God and the Khert. He becomes much more light-hearted afterward, determined to seek out the truth and learn more about his state, no longer viewing it as a curse.
• Warrior Poet: He enjoys showing off his eloquence and poetic phrases at least as much as his combat skills. This page is a good example.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: When he was alive. In the present day, he still desperately clings to this, but reality has started to set in.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Duane gets hit with a big one by Siya for his self-righteous hypocrisy and disturbing behavior when he offers to take her away from Litriya Shrine.
  Duane: Don't be afraid! I know this is all you've known. That they've told you lies, threatened your families, beaten you-
  Siya: I TOLD you no one beats me! YOU hit me! When you were going for mistress Lori. You're crazy and I- I dunno what you're talking about!
• Wrongly Accused: Captain Toma and Elka originally believed him and Sette, due to a case of wrong-place-wrong-time, of being in cahoots with the very slavers Duane intends to rain righteous justice on. After finding the mess he made of Turas, they decide that he's hunting the Red Berry Boys.

Sette

Sette Frummagem

The Brat

The other hero of the story, Sette is the "eldest and onliest" daughter of crime boss Nary-a-Care Frummagem. Tasked with collecting a debt her cousin owes her father, Sette is determined to prove herself as Nary’s daughter, hoping one day to take over his criminal empire.

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• Ambiguously Human: She has a long tufted tail (she insists it's a lion's tail), sharp teeth, no nipples or bellybutton, a literally supernatural sense of smell, she can manipulate the khert barehanded and the Silver's pain ghosts believe she specifically can help them, and is older than she looks due to slow aging — multiple characters remark she hasn't aged a day in years. Even other characters question if she's really human. On the other hand, both Duane's pymary and a device that apparently targets any nonhumans both seem to consider her human, so the jury's still out.
• Anti-Hero: Not quite a Villain Protagonist, but hero's a bit of a stretch. Given enough time, though, it starts becoming clear that most of her negative traits are just bluster and trying to make her crimelord da proud of her.
• Badass Adorable: Sette is fully capable of fighting grown men, and can take some pretty extreme punishment for her size. This is on top of her being highly athletic and stealthy.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Has no nipples or bellybutton, and it's not just an artistic choice.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Raised to believe that anyone weak, naïve or trusting enough to be cheated or robbed deserves it, and even family loyalty is contingent upon paying the boss his cut of your take. It's a hard life in Sharteshane.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Her attitude and rudeness certainly doesn’t make Duane's job any easier.
• Break the Cutie: Sette's experiences in the Nevergreen, where she learns her family's Blue-and-Orange Morality applies to her as well and she'd been betrayed on every level. Her experience in the Khert leaves her brokenly crying for her father.
• Catchphrase: "Live in your best world". The story explores both the positives and negatives that this mindset can bring through Sette. On one hand, it can mean being true to yourself and finding opportunity in any scenario where others see only negativity, a mindset even Duane sees some value in. On the other hand, it also sometimes leads her to outright deny reality, visually portrayed by having things she's seen literally scribbled out in what looks like crayon to show her avoiding harsh realities that she otherwise struggles to cope with. Taken to a horrifying extreme in Chapter 17, where she rips out and destroys her own memories that she can't cope with.
• Children Are Innocent: Surprisingly, despite being far from innocent in any conventional sense, Sette appears motivated by a childlike faith in herself, her father, the nonsense she'd been raised on, and childish dreams of Frummagen-style glory such as it is. Each grisly reality she confronts leaves her horrified and terrified.
• Companion Cube: Sette at one point apologizes to money.
  Sette: "Evil foreign money?" (cuddles money) She didn't mean it...
• Compelling Voice: She has the ability to control pymarics through willpower alone. At the end of Book 1, she and Duane realize to their mutual horror that this includes the dead, and Duane's affection and loyalty towards Sette was at least partly because he'd been unwittingly enthralled by her.
• Conflicting Loyalty: As the story progresses, Sette feels torn between her loyalty to her father Nary and her growing affection for Duane, who has become something of a Parental Substitute. This conflict only grows in "The Deadly Nevergreen 25", after it turns out the whole job was to get Duane to Stockyard so he can be shackled and used for Nary's purposes, something Sette was completely unaware of. Duane vows to get revenge on Nary for everything he's done, causing no end of guilt for Sette; she'll be betraying her da if she helps Duane, but she can't bring herself to betray Duane after everything they've been through and everything she's learned about him.
• Cope by Pretending: It becomes increasingly clear that much of Sette's "live in your best world" mantra involves outright lying to herself and mentally altering her memories to avoid facing things she can't mentally accept, visually portrayed as memories being scribbled out with crayon. Taken to it's most obvious when at the end of chapter 16, she recounts the events of Litrya Shrine with a much more heroic tone than what actually happened and states that after their mission to stop the Silver is over, she's going to go back and bring gifts for Sara and Siya even though Sara died at the shrine, something Sette knows full well.
• Daddy's Little Villain: Sette wants nothing more than to take over the Frummagem crime business from her father, and will do anything to show she's a coldhearted cutthroat to prove herself. It's heavily implied Sette is just seeking her father's approval as opposed to actually wanting to be a malicious crime boss, which Duane picks up on.
• Deadly Dodging: How she fights. She tends to avoid attacks and send her attacker either completely off balance or into a nearby hard surface. Like most thieves, she prefers fleeing to fighting if possible.
• Death Glare: She gives Jivi an oddly tranquil one when he threatens to throw Duane out of a safe place into the storm going on outside when Duane is out of his mind at night. Sette's stare is enough to make Jivi back off.◊
• Desperately Craves Affection:
  • After she recounts having seen Duane and Mikaila's deaths in the Khert, Duane furiously yells at her not to use Mikaila's name because "it is not for you." Sette tearfully shoots back that it is, because that's what Duane himself sometimes calls Sette at night... and she don't mind it because "ain't no one ever calls me Sette the way ya call me Mikaila."
  • Part of Duane's Character Development following the events at the Litrya Shrine is acknowledging to himself that the world sent him, a lonely father, the gift of "a girl so starved for love her hunger sharpened her teeth to fangs." Only for him to reject her for no greater reason than her not being his girl.
• Divine Parentage: It is heavily implied that Sette is the daughter - or at least the creation - of Ssael. Yes, ''that'' Ssael. Played with, though, in that Ssael may not have slain the Twins as Ssaelist doctrine describes (as it's a question of whether the Twins truly existed at all, or at least as the Gefendur believe they do). However, it seems Ssael did somehow manage to survive in the Khert, something no other person since has done...
• Even Evil Has Standards: While she talks casually about being a hardened criminal willing to murder people, she discourages Duane from killing a Crescian Peaceguard that had been following orders and pursuing them. Seeing Stockyard murder his own friend leaves her absolutely horrified.
• Excellent Judge of Character: Sette is not only an expert at sussing out and manipulating people, she's also really good at spotting when people are trustworthy and when they're decidedly not. For example, she hasn't trusted Bastion from day one and doesn't intend to let him get hold of Duane, and she's pegged Lemuel as bad news.
• From a Certain Point of View: Raised to the level of an entire lifestyle. According to Sette, lying convincingly means creating an inner ideal and projecting that upon the outside world, unintentionally giving Duane and the audience more insight into her own character.
• Hidden Depths: Despite being a crude thief, Sette is just as devout to the Gefendur faith as Duane is to Ssaelism. She is rather deferential to the gods' statues, her favorite god being Tirna, and she's unhappy when Duane trashtalks them.
• I Reject Your Reality: Sette turns this into a horrible artform. "Live in your best world" indeed. While at times she uses it in a self-affirming way, other times she is essentially mentally rewriting her reality to avoid harsh truths, generally visually depicted as memories being crudely scribbled out with crayon. Taken to horrifyingly literal extents in Chapter 17.
• Jerkass: She's rude to pretty much everyone, usually for no reason, and has grand ambitions of taking over her father's criminal empire. Turns out she's often covering fear with bluster.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Though, as Duane says, "She's not as cruel as she'd have the world believe."
• Little Bit Beastly: The aforementioned sharp teeth (which grew in and replaced her normal human teeth all at once when she was younger) and "mule's tail". Also the heightened sense of smell, which is down to an olfactory system that's much more akin to a dog than a human.
• Kid Hero: She looks like she's ten to twelve years old, and is generally treated like it, though it's implied that she's Older Than She Looks. Possibly even The Ageless.
• Kid with the Leash: Specifically to Duane, at night, when he's in zombie mode. She possesses a necklace made by Bastion Winalils that lets her pacify him and seemingly control him to a certain extent.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: She'll take everything that’s not nailed down to the floor. Then the nails. Then the floor. Sometimes borders on Impossible Thief, such as when she empties a tip jar of coins in seconds, while demanding things from the shopkeepers.
• Lady Swears-a-Lot: She's got quite the mouth on her. Even in casual situations, she peppers her sentences with profanity for no reason. This emphasizes the outlaw lifestyle she was raised with. That said, her language is still generally muted compared to many adults. While some of their language goes into hard rated-R territory, hers rarely rises above PG-13, showing that she's still a kid underneath her airs of being a thug.
• Limited Wardrobe: While Duane goes through multiple outfits throughout the story (usually because they keep getting destroyed), Sette keeps the same look throughout (when she isn't disguising herself). It's even commented on a bit; when her blue overshirt gets ruined, she manages to find another identical one, and comments that she was surprised to find her exact shirt in a Crescian town.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: She doesn't bear much resemblance to her father, and she's remarked as being "unique" among the Frummagems. She's also considerably more concerned about the rumor that she isn't Nary's real daughter than she lets on.
• Missing Mom: Sette's been told her mother drowned when she was an infant, though her primary source (Nary) is far from reliable. Her mother wanted Sette dead; they got into a fight, and Nary pushed her off a pier.
• Mooning: Sette moons Jivi rather than greet him more kindly when she finds him in Litriya Shrine on the 58th page of Chapter 15.
• Never Learned to Read: Though alone with Duane, she acts like it's no big deal, she clearly feels humiliated when Jivi reveals it to all the kids at the Gefendur monastery they stop at for a night. It's also relevant because she stole documents (apparently about Duane) from Stockyard's office before everything went to hell, and she wants to know what's in them, but doesn't want to show them to Duane — so she's trying to find someone else who can tell her.
• The Nose Knows: Her sense of smell is superhuman, to the point where she can actually smell pymary.
• Older Than She Looks: According to Anadyne, she hasn't visibly aged in the three years since Ana last saw her. An undead Starfish states in Chapter 17 that Nary told him that Sette hasn't physically aged in a decade... and judging from Sette's reaction, he's not lying.
• Prefers Going Barefoot: She has yet to put on any footwear, from the very first panel on. This is due partly to culture (street children in Hanghorse don't wear shoes) and partly to preference.
• Rage Against the Heavens: With grace and poise. Done with considerably less of either of those in Chapter 17.
• Royal Brat: Not actual royalty, but she’s the heir to her father’s crime family — if she can prove herself worthy.
• Self-Serving Memory: Sette "lives in her best world", and a big part of that is that she lies. Constantly. Especially to herself. Played for Horror in Chapter 17, where it becomes clear she can rip out and destroy her own memories, and will do it to ones that make her feel especially bad; she destroys her own memories of Starfish, and had Jivi not intervened, would've destroyed her own memories of meeting her First Friend Sara... because Sara died, and the trauma of facing the fact her first true friend drowned is just too much to bear.
• Small Name, Big Ego: While her father is feared and respected, she thinks she should have some of that infamy too. The rest of the world tends to disagree. As does Sette herself. as she frequently has to pysch herself up to face scary situations.
• Smarter Than You Look: Despite looking like the typical Bratty Half-Pint, though with a tail, she dupes Duane into travelling into Cresce by leading him away from roads and towns where he could discover their position, and travelling at night while Duane is "sleeping".
• Spell My Name With An S: An in-universe example. While at Litriya Shrine, some of the twins there start playing a spelling game with Matty (who learned letters but never how to properly read before going blind) where they spell out words with their bodies (which gets around the issue as the construct that helps him see can see physical shapes but is unable to see the details such as writing on them). One of the words they spell is "Setty", which everyone seems to assume is how her name is spelled (as it's phonetically correct). The only times we've seen it spelled as "Sette" with an e is in a letter written by her da Nary, who would presumably know how to spell his daughter's name; and by Duane, who is a scholar (apparently the name is Tainish in origin, and Duane knows its meaning, which would definitely explain how he'd know the true spelling).
• Tomboy: Quite vocal in her disgust for "girly" things.
• The Tooth Hurts: A flashback establishes that when she was young, her teeth fell out suddenly to be replaced by a sharper set, freaking her out. And when she goes into a mental breakdown, sharp teeth grow out of her palms.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: If you've gotten this far, then you've probably realized that her potty mouth is one of the least troublesome things about her behavior... Threatening people at knifepoint, maiming people, being way more knowledgeable about sexual matters than a girl her apparent age should be, the list goes on. To some degree this is a side effect of having grown up in Sharteshane, where children are expected to be working at twelve, if not younger.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: She's dead set on proving herself as a worthy heir to her father though there are hints that her memories of how he treats her are far kinder than how he actually was (such as her having an uncommented on black eye in one flashback), and he was apparently willing to sell her to Starfish, a murderous pedophile, before finding a more profitable arrangement instead.
• What Measure Is A Nonhuman: She seeks reassurance on her humanity from Duane in a down moment, inadvertently revealing her fears that she may not be human. Duane even refers to her affectionately as a "homunculus" though not in her hearing.
• Wrongly Accused: Like Duane, she is believed to be a member of the Red Berry Boys by Captain Toma and Elka. Not that she doesn't have plenty of other, perfectly legitimate reasons to be arrested...
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Duane kindly reminds her that when she had an opportunity to cut and run scot-free, she endangered herself to destroy the Silver, saving his life and the city of Ethelmik, instead.

Jivi

Jivi Flask

The Runaway

A captive of the Red Berry Boys, and, so far, the only one not to have undergone the procedure that have left all other captives comatose. All that's really known about him is that he was found sleeping in a ditch before being captured. He's currently working on a plan to free himself and the rest of the captives.

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• Big Brother Instinct: Towards Matty, Cara, and the child captives of the Red Berry Boys.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: He looks a lot younger during his early appearances. After a few chapters, he begins to look more like a teenager.
• Fantastic Racism: As something of a counter point to Duane, Jivi displays similar racism, but from the other side of the line. Much like Duane he's an otherwise a good person, but extremely indoctrinated into his own culture. In particular, Shartes like Sette set him off much the same way Duane is set off by Crescians, as the Red Berry Boys were mostly from Sharteshane; even besides that, Cresce's lack of money is completely opposed to Sharteshane's money-grubbing ideals.
• Foil: He shapes up to be something of one to Duane. They're both very loyal to their respective countries with a healthy hatred for the other side. But they are also both fundamentally decent guys who ultimately want to do the right thing. However, Jivi's hatred for Alderode is not quite as biting as Duane's hatred for Cresce is, as his personal experiences with Alderode have been mostly limited compared to Duane who was murdered by Crescian agents Or so it seems anyway. And due to not being quite so jaded as Duane, Jivi is more capable of adjusting his behavior when he realizes he's in the wrong; Duane comparatively finds himself repeatedly slipping into self-interest despite having revelations about how selfish he's become lately. This culminates in Chapter 17, where Duane loses track of Sette in the chaos of the silver abomination and becomes more interested in what his role in Ilganyag's plans are, while Jivi takes it upon himself to help end Sette's increasingly quick descent into Sanity Slippage, particularly when he realizes how she sees him as a bully.
  • To some degree, he works as a foil to Sette as well — both of them have only one parent in the picture, and that parent's legacy is overwhelming. However, Sette desperately wants to live up to her father Nary's standards, whereas there's very little that Jivi wants less than acting the way his mother Regina wants him to.
• Jerkass Realization: He defaults to adolescent bullying towards Sette, but when the First Silver causes her worst memories to manifest around her, he sees his own laughing face in the crowd tormenting her and resolves to change.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Gets turned into one looking like a Plat after complaining too much, complete with flowers in the background. He has a breakdown the very next panel. Sadly, it doesn't survive the page.
• Mysterious Past: Nothing much is known about him other than he was found by the Red Berry Boys in a ditch. However the nightmares he suffers from, that involve his mother, seemingly a pirate captain he worked under, hint at a Dark and Troubled Past.
• Nice Guy:
  • His Establishing Character Moment is comforting and giving candy to a crying little girl. He tries to comfort the other captives of the Red Berry Boys while they're in pain, and eventually resolves to free all of them.
  • He even comforts Matty after Quigley blows up at him and is about to hit him, and earlier in the comic he was extremely resentful toward Matty for being the kid of someone working with the slavers. Later, he rescues Matty and Quigley from the Red Berry Boys, even though he owes them nothing.
  • His prejudices do color his interactions from time to time. Though admittingly she wasn't exactly a shining example of kindness herself, Jivi is not very kind to Sette. Beyond just trading barbs, when they were stuck in a Gefendur temple, Jivi publicly outed Sette's illiteracy to humiliate her in front of all the other kids there. Matty calls him on this even though even he hadn't exactly gotten along swimmingly with Sette either by that point.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Matty points out that Jivi sounds like a pirate when he gets mad, which Jivi immediately refutes. Matty's not wrong, though, and Jivi doesn't stop after it's pointed out.
• Signature Headgear: He eventually gets a red school uniform hat that he takes to and wears near-constantly. Unfortunately, Sette takes to it as well, and starts stealing it from him every chance she gets — much to his frustration.
• Survivor Guilt: Seems to have some in regards to Cara's death. This provides part of his motivation for saving everyone from the Red Berry Boys.

Quigley

Mathis Quigley

The Widower

An Aldish wright working for the Red Berry Boys. When he learned Starfish's plan involved hurting children, he quit, only returning after Starfish agreed to release the kids when the job was over... and up his pay. He has a son named Matty who he keeps promising to take to Sharteshane, where they can live a quiet, peaceful life. This promise has been repeatedly broken.

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• Always Save the Girl: He will always save Matty, and Matty knows this. He may eat lunch first, though.
• Anti-Villain: Works for the Red Berry Boys, but he's Only in It for the Money, and only after he negotiated the children in Starfish's clutches would be let go. Also, he loves his son very much and "doesn’t do executions."
• Awful Truth: For a long time, readers knew that Quigley's wife was killed by the Aldish government for creating Uaid, who was eventually meant to be a weapon for an Aldish rebel group called the March to use against Alderode; Quigley is understandably pretty bitter about it. But then the the truth comes out — Quigley was, in fact, the one who sold his wife out to the government in the first place; both out of fear that they would inevitably find out about Uaid, and out of frustration that she wouldn't do what he wanted her to do. He was clearly conflicted about it, but still ultimately went through with it, causing her death. When Matty finds out about it, it ends up being the last straw for him, and he abandons his father.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Most of his pymaric attacks come in the shape of insects, especially from his pymaric cape Swarm (made by his late wife, Vienne).
• Boomerang Bigot: Despite being Aldish, he has zero love for Alderode. He also dislikes Ssaelism (though this was largely due to growing up in a Gefendur part of the country, even if he isn't exactly a devout Gefendur). He actually has more respect for Cresce even, though he'd prefer to have as little to do with either country as possible.
• Bungled Suicide: He intended to die in his raid on the Aldish municipal office, but miraculously survived.
• Combat Pragmatist: Duane calls him out on "fighting without honor," due to his unfair tactics of using his opponent's robe as a pymary component and, later, unleashing a horde of pymaric insects. When he has to face Stockyard's gang, he splatters their heads from an ambush.
• Cultural Cringe: Gets into an argument with Duane when he's contemptuous of Alderode as a whole. Given his wife was murdered by Aldish nationalists, it's easy to see why.
• Cynicism Catalyst: His wife was murdered by Aldish nationals. He has quite the hatred for them as a result.
  • Though it is revealed that Quigley in fact was the one who sold out his wife to said Aldish nationals. Scared of what could be inevitable reprisal for Vienne's work, and frustrated that she seemed more interested in her work and their son than him, he turned her in to the government.
• Death Seeker: Is incredibly depressed, nihilistic, and suicidal. Matty is practically the only reason he keeps living (although prior to the events of Orphans, he didn't even care about that).
• Due to the Dead: When he thinks that Toma was killed by the flood in the Nevergreen, he gives a respectful bow towards Toma's clothes that surfaced.
• Evil Counterpart: To Duane, though he's not that evil. ...At least before the revelation that he was the one who sold his wife out to the Aldish government to be tortured to death, while also initially planning to let them do whatever they wanted to his son.
• Famed In-Story: The events that led to him, Matty, and Uaid being on the run are well known. In Cresce, they even wrote a play about it. Crescians he meets like to bring the play up, to his annoyance.
• Foreign-Language Tirade: At Litriya Shrine, Quigley tells Matty not to talk in Tainish, as he doesn't want to be stared at. When moments later he learns that Matty isn't in the shrine play they are sitting down to watch, he bursts into a rant in Tainish immediately over it.
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: Implied to be what happened when he betrayed Vienne to the government, temporarily. "Feel our peace relax your heart. Your mind. Your soul. Alderode gifts you this peace."
• Heroic Willpower: Well, heroic is almost certainly the wrong word, but Quigley is the first non-Soud Ald in the entire story to be able to resist the Etalarche curse at all. This is a curse that turns normally sane and rational people into frothing, murderous, psychopaths if the target of the curse is known to be nearby — or, hell, even if the target isn't... and Quigley managed to resist it because the only thing he hates more than Roger Foi-Hellick, more than anything else in the world, is himself (though, admittedly, the raging khert fire helped dampen the effect of the Etalarche curse; still, it's impressive enough that even Duane is shocked).
• Interrupted Suicide: Twice, in Orphans.
• Jealous Parent: It's later revealed that his questionable parenting towards Matty is due to resenting that Matty was ever born in the first place; Quigley never wanted a child, but Vienne decided she wanted to keep the baby, and Quigley believes it changed his relationship with his wife and that she paid more attention to Matty than to him. It turns out to be part of the reason why he sold her out to the Aldish government.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's short-tempered and rude to most people — including his son, when he's angry enough. Despite this, he genuinely loves Matty and attempts to save the Red Berry Boys' slaves. He also doesn't kill needlessly, and seems to detest cold-blooded murder.
• Living Legend: A minor example. A Crescian play was made about the events that led to his wife's murder and his killing spree while trying to recover Uaid before escaping. He hates it, but it apparently helped him avoid coming to blows with Elka, since she knew who he was because of it.
• One-Man Army: After his wife was killed, he raided the Aldish Municipal Office to retrieve her construct Uaid. He killed everyone inside, escaped unharmed, and did all this while carrying Matty on his back.
• Only in It for the Money: His reason for working with lunatics like Starfish and, before that, for his work for the Window in Alderode. Justified in that he knows he won't live to see Matty reach his teens — plats will inevitably die by thirty, it's just the way their bodies work, and at best Quigley has half a decade left if nothing kills him first — so he's trying to provide a legacy for his son instead.
• Papa Wolf: As cruel as he can be to Matty, he does ultimately love his son, and will do anything to protect him.
• Parents as People: He does love his son, but he's a deeply flawed individual who frequently breaks his promises to Matty; and, in at least one case, took his anger out on Matty by hitting him. It's later revealed that he resents Matty for ever being born, as Quigley never wanted a child in the first place, and Matty's birth changed the relationship Quigley had with his wife.
• Pretty Boy: Iori is shamelessly gleeful about having gotten him naked to administer first aid.
• Punch-Clock Villain: He's Only in It for the Money. When Starfish and Nary stop being profitable, he starts helping Captain Toma instead.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: He went on one after discovering his wife's death. Subverted when it's revealed that he was the one responsible for selling out his wife to the government, who tortured and killed her. His rampage wasn't out of revenge, it was an attempt at Suicide by Cop.
• Smug Super: He was very disdainful of Duane's abilities during their duel. His arrogance was unfounded.
• Squishy Wizard: Very much so, especially in comparison to Duane, though he has has moments.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Quigley is an unrepentant asshole to basically everyone in his life, even his own son. Especially his son. But behind his assholish outer layer is a deep, deep level of self-loathing. Self-loathing that is fully justified given he sold his wife and son out to the Aldish secret police, who tortured his wife to death for sedition. Even though he loves his son, he never actually wanted him and remains resentful of his existence even now... which is extra rough, since Matty is basically the only reason he hasn't killed himself yet.
• Suicide by Cop:
  • After his wife was murdered by Aldish authorities which is later revealed to be because he was the one who sold her out, he raided a municipal office in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, intending to die in the attempt. He survived.
  • He also attempts this at the end of Orphans, charging Uaid straight into a Crescian platoon, but Matty takes the controls and pilots Uaid to safety.
• Token Good Teammate: To the Red Berry Boys formerly.
• Token Evil Teammate: Though he perhaps cannot be called evil, and Duane and Sette can't be fully called good, Quigley is the most amoral of the protagonists — only really caring about the welfare of himself and Matty. He refuses to have any stake in the war between Alderode and Cresce and is very self-serving. He's also kind of an asshole without any real traits to counteract his assholishness, aside from his care for his son, but even that at times feels more like obligation rather than genuine care; while Duane can be an overly self-righteous zealot and Sette is a crude thief, Duane is still genuinely altruistic, and Sette's criminal nature is largely an affect put on to gain the approval of her crimelord da.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Due to being a member of the Platinum caste, Quigley has a very natural affinity for pymary. That said, as someone who grew up in a small community away from the Aldish capitol, he didn't receive any proper combat pymaric training. As such, he has a lot of raw pymaric power at his disposal, but not the most control or dexterity over it. Said raw power is usually enough against most foes, but against properly trained and experienced wrights like Duane, Quigley doesn't quite have the skill to keep up.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Perhaps not BEST buds, but after twelve chapters of misunderstandings, conflict, and generally disliking each other, Duane and Quigley —once forced to stay in the same place with each other for a while — start actually getting along, settling into this.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: The reason he left the Red Berry Boys is because Starfish's plans involved ripping out kids' organs. He only rejoined after Starfish agreed to let the kids go once the job was done, and that Quigley would be paid more.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Starfish tries to do this to him. Try being the operative word.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Plats age faster than most people. They don't live long past thirty. Quigley's got roughly five years left, and Word of God is that although externally he looks his age (twenty-five), internally his organs are the equivalent of a fifty-year-old.

Matty

Matty Quigley

The Innocent

Mathias's eight-year-old son. Blinded during the incident that caused the death of his mother, he relies on a pymaric doll named Chitz in order to see. Cheerful, friendly and naïve, Matty hopes that he and his father will retire to Sharteshane to live a peaceful life. Unfortunately this dream will have to wait after his father signs on with the Red Berry Boys for one last job.

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• Adorably Precocious Child: "He needs to count to ten." —on throwing his father in their golem's belly/cellar.
• Break the Cutie: Subverted. He has a healthy fear of villains like Starfish, but he's bounced back from some truly nightmarish situations after being suitably horrified at the time. Finally played straight during the events at Litriya Shrine. First he sees Duane, a man he had come to like, descend into raving madness before attacking his father; then he sees his father mockingly telling Duane to kill him and Matty since they are so short lived as Plats. Right in front of him. To top it all off, he sees Uaid's memory showing the night his mother was killed by Aldish government agents. Before they kill her, they tell her that it was Quigley that sold her out. All of this proves to be too much, as it causes Matty to take Uaid (and Jivi, who happened to arrive just after Matty sees the memory) and abandon the shrine while deliberately leaving his father behind; which could mean certain death for Quigley, as there is a raging battle between Cresce and Alderode forces just outside the shrine, and neither faction is particularly interested in seeing Quigley alive.
• Cheerful Child: Relentlessly so. He's nice to Sette and Toma even while they're actively working against Quigley and him, and still sees his father as the man who does the voices while reading him the comics.
• Children Are Innocent: He is the only major character in the story who has no real prejudices or innate hatred towards anyone. He doesn't seem to have a mean bone in his body.
• Companion Cube: Chitz, the pymaric he uses to see.
• The Conscience: Despite his naivete and vulnerability, he gradually becomes this to the main cast, many of whom are far more morally questionable.
• Foil: To Sette.
• Missing Mom: She was killed by the Aldish secret police.
• Morality Pet: He serves as this for his father.
• Signature Headgear: Sports a blue hat with tan brim, courtesy of his father, and is quite defensive of it.
• Never Learned to Read: Largely due to going blind at such a young age. As Chitz, his doll that lets him see, can only see physical shapes, but not what's on them, he can't read off paper; he can see the book or page, but not what's on it. He did learn letters before losing his sight (so he can name them if they are made with physical 3D objects), but never got around to the actual practice of reading.
• The Pollyanna: To quote the cast page, while blind, "he still manages to see most silver linings."
• You No Take Candle: In one of the short stories taking place before the story, Matty's Continental, the common language of the setting, is rather poor, causing his speech to others besides his father to be rather broken. By the story proper, he has become much more fluent.

Emil

Captain Emil Toma

The Captain

A famous Crescian Peaceguard captain who is trying to find and put an end to the Red Berry Boys. After a violent encounter with Duane and Sette in an evacuated Red Berry Boy hideout, he believes them to be members of the gang and is devoted to bringing them to justice.

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• The Ace: Played with. Toma is a very skilled fighter and a good officer, but his status as a legend among the Crescian people is highly exaggerated.
• Close-Range Combatant: In a world full of combatants with projectiles, pymary, war constructs, and pymaric weapons capable of spitting out projectiles, Emil wields a sword with anti-pymary properties. This doesn't stop him from still being one of the most effective fighters around.
• A Father to His Men: He's very protective of those he works alongside.
• Fair Cop: His exploits got him recognition, but his good looks got him a wife.
• Foil: His pride in Cresce and sense of civic duty is a positive one to Duane's blind nationalism and Quigley's spiteful individualism. Toma readily takes up arms to defend his country, but also has few illusions as to Cresce's flaws — it takes him very little time to realize that his superiors in the military are conspiring against the Queen, and when confronted with evidence of Sonorie's involvement in the silver plot, he doesn't try to downplay it.
• The Good Captain: He has this reputation in Cresce, and he's one of the noblest characters in the comic.
• Happily Married: Most of the Crescian population believes this is what his marriage is, being something of a "living the dream" scenario. According to Elka, his wife pulled a And Now You Must Marry Me which he couldn't refuse. It turns out the marriage isn't as happy as people thought, since she's not only cheating on him, she's divorcing him.
• Hero Antagonist: All signs point to him being a very noble man; he just temporarily happens to be against Duane and Sette.
• Inspector Javert: He mistakenly believes Duane and Sette to be members of the Red Berry Boys. Later subverted as Toma has since decided that the pair are after the Berry Boys just like he and Elka are, but isn't yet sure of their motivation. Finding the half-eaten, dismembered remains of a guy who found Duane at night made him rightly cautious.
• The Paragon: Probably the most noble adult character in the story, he generally always looks heroic. He's very much a Crescian patriot, but he's also perfectly willing to question his country's more immoral projects. He's also one of the first characters to treat Duane like an actual person rather than simply an advanced plod. This also means he hold's Duane's patriotism to Alderode against him, but he's also one of the first to let it go when Duane apologizes for his complicity in the Aldish attack on Litriya Shrine, even if it's partially out of pragmatism from the imminent danger.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Toma has shown willingness to work with people he should technically be arresting, such as Quigley and Duane, provided a bigger threat is removed as a result. He also looks out for his subordinates and gives everyone a fair chance to prove themselves.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Emil Toma has been declared dead in the destruction of Ethelmik, as part of Bell's narrative painting the Queen in a bad light and blaming the mess and silver on Alderode even though it was his own work. He did nearly die, but escaped and ended up captive to Bell's forces.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: He'd like to be home with his daughter, but he has duties to fulfil for his country. There's also marital troubles at home; Emil's been staying away from the capital to avoid having to deal with his wife, Emne.

Elka

Lieutenant Elka

A Crescian Peaceguard working under Captain Toma who's helping him track down the Red Berry Boys.

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• Bodyguard Crush: There's an implication that she cares for Toma as more than just a friend or boss. It's reciprocated.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. Her face is clearly swollen after she gets beat up by the corrupt Ethelmik guards for a good while. The cut she also gets from one of them slashing her face looks pretty ugly too because of said swelling though it looks more attractive a few days later once her face has otherwise healed.
• Hero Antagonist: Like Toma, she's a member of the Peaceguard and dedicated to taking down the Red Berry Boys.
• Hidden Buxom: Spends most of her screen time wearing a metal breastplate. When out of it, she's revealed to be absolutely stacked, even lamenting that her "antibreast plate" was restricting her full power.
• Good Is Not Nice: She's a very abrasive person, and doesn't much like being stationed in Ulestry, as shown by her condescending and rude attitude towards the officials working there. She was also pretty rough with Sette when she first encountered her, threatening her after she assumed the girl was a member of the Red Berry Boys. Admittedly, after months on the job, far from home, and tracking child killers, she has a bit of an excuse.
• Informed Attribute: She is somewhat frequently referred to (largely by Hetr and herself) as ugly, but she looks about as attractive as any of the other attractive women in the story. Word of God is that she isn't truly ugly, but she's rather plain in appearance.
• Inspector Javert: Like her captain, she initially believes Duane and Sette to be members of the Red Berry Boys. Of course, they also have a personal stake in tracking Duane down after he cut off the arm of one of her friends.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Elka is abrasive, rude, and short-tempered most of the time and only acts decently respectful to Toma. She's still one of the most decent people shown in the comic.
• Magic Knight: Is a skilled wright as well as a decent melee combatant. This isn't an oddity for a Crescian the way it is for the Aldish Duane, though.
• Messy Hair: She spends many chapters with unkempt and wild hair after the events at Ethelmik, largely because she has no time to groom herself over the next few days, what with being on the run from Hetr and his fellow corrupt soldiers. After meeting up again with the loyal Crescian army, she's able to fix her hair back to how it was when we first meet her (along with getting a fresh uniform).
• One of the Boys: Elka is very tomboyish in her mannerisms, and much of her humor is as crass as her male colleagues whom she seems to spend the majority of her time with.
• Last-Name Basis: Elka is her last name, not her first name.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: She finds herself in this dynamic with Duane, at the end of the first book. She isn't fully convinced he isn't just a very advanced plod with artificial intelligence who happens to be emulating a soldier from the country she despises; he, in line with his nation's views, finds a woman being a battlewright to be a disgrace... and she's from the country that he despises. They trade many barbs while working together to stop the First Silver abomination.

Crescians

Queen Sonorie

Maharaishala Sonorie

The Queen

The Queen of Cresce, one of the four members of Cresce's ruling Council of Four. She married the Aldish defector Roger Foi-Hellick, which has made her unpopular with some of her subjects. Her reputation as having a weakness for pretty Aldishmen was further strengthened by her granting protection to Mathis Quigley when he fled Alderode; however, this was because she wanted her war wrights to study his construct in order to develop their own based on it to fight Alderode with.

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• Animal Lover: A passionate dog breeder.
• Anti-Hero /Anti-Villain: Depending on your point of view on both Cresce and Alderode, she could come across as either of these. She has more than a few plans of questionable morality (such as using a psychopathic monster as a tool in her scheme against Alderode and using a shrine full of children as a cover/shield to cover up a scientific military installation); however, she genuinely loves her country, and wants nothing more than a permanent end to the war with Alderode. Unlike the traitorous General Bell who wishes for a very bloody war that will wipe Alderode off the face of the map, Sonorie's plan is heavily implied to be permanent yet as non-violent as possible; she simply wishes for Alderode to stop, not be completely destroyed.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Alderode certainly thinks so. The truth is more complicated, but the measures she takes to ensure her country's survival are still ruthless, even by the comic's broad standards.
• Guilt-Induced Nightmare: Has one after the death of her sister Rilursa.
• Marriage of Convenience: Though outwardly they portray it as marrying for love, the marriage between Queen Sonorie and Roger Foi-Hellick is this. Roger's soul has been changed in a way no other living Aldishman can claim, due to being the victim of the Etalarche curse. He and Sonorie are working together so that Cresce may learn of a method to change or even destroy the Dammakhert that surrounds Alderode, which would be crippling to the Aldish. There is nothing romantic between them (especially since Roger is gay), but they do deeply respect and care for each other. Though the outward ruse may throw off Alderode to what Sonorie is really up to, it also has the added side effect of making certain powerful people within her country think she has gone soft towards their eternal enemy.
• Odd Name Out: As Crescian royalty, she is apparently entitled to a name longer than four letters, a limit that seems to be universally followed in Cresce in reverence to the Twins.
• Reluctant Ruler: It was why she was originally chosen to be her grandmother's heir over her sister Rilursa - she wanted to be in power less.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: She is allied with the Senet Beast Ruckmearkha. His venom is capable of dissolving a soul — in this specific case, Roger Foi-Hellick's soul — so that it can be analyzed by the Black Tongues, a group of powerful wrights, to create a weapon against Alderode's Dammakhert. However, Ruck is a barely functioning psychopath that violently kills those around him at the drop of a hat. Sonorie finds him abominable, but needs him for her plan. She plans to dispose of him after his usefulness is at an end; he knows this, and she knows that he knows, creating even more tension.

General Bell

General Kima Bell

The Lord General

A leading Crescian military officer and prominent figure in (theoretical) service to Queen Sonorie. He is part of Cresce's ruling Council of Four, serving as the Lord General.

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• Apologetic Attacker: He apologizes to a clerk after murdering her when she stumbles upon his schemes.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Delicieu created the First Silver weapon, but General Bell gave him a means through Cresce so he could use it to strike at Alderode's capital, and Bastion Winalils helped them. He's also acting against Queen Sonorie, who's become the new backer for the Black Tongues.
• Engineered Public Confession: The microphone he'd been using to broadcast his "salvation" of Port Morstorben is plugged back in (by a disapproving coffee cup, no less) as he's ranting to Captain Toma, so that the whole city learns he's a bloodthirsty lunatic addled by efheby venom. He dies almost immediately afterward, with no chance to salvage his precious reputation.
• General Ripper: Cresce and Alderode have gone to war many times, and General Bell is taking increasingly sinister measures to wipe out Alderode for good. Like transporting a magical WMD to Alderode's capital, wiping out a Crescian town to support his narrative, and plotting to usurp his Queen.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: His war-hound is baited into a pymaric barrier that cuts them both in two.
• He Knows Too Much: A clerk, loyal Peaceguard soldiers, an entire town — Bell will kill anyone who knows too much or goes against the narrative of his plans.
• He-Man Woman Hater: General Bell's disgust with having a woman ruling the country and women being able to work in any job field at any level in Cresce is part of what fuels his desire for a military coup, where he plans to replace Cresce's state religion — which celebrates women and sexuality — with one more aligned with Alderode's violently patriarchal Gefendur sect.
• Karmic Death: His death may have been quick, but it was also utterly humiliating, equivalent to a bug splatting into a windshield. What's more, his reputation is utterly ruined since everyone is going to know he was being regularly fed on by a efheby and lost his mind.
• Large and in Charge: General Bell is a high-ranking official in the Peaceguard and dwarfs most people.
• Leave No Survivors: He orders Hetr to destroy Ethelmik and kill everyone inside, so they can claim the First Silver detonated and was destroyed.
• Religious Bruiser: A devout, heavily muscled Gefendur.
• The Starscream: General Bell is secretly plotting a coup against Queen Sonorie, viewing her as too ineffectual to stop Alderode.
• Villain with Good Publicity: He's viewed as a hero by many in Cresce, to the point where he's more popular with them than Queen Sonorie. Mostly because Sonorie's made controversial decisions in their minds, like marrying an Aldish man and turning down a weapon that could've helped Cresce in their war against Alderode.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He's treasonous and genocidal, but from his point-of-view, everything he’s doing is to protect Cresce from a country of increasingly dangerous fundamentalists and a queen too ineffectual to defeat them.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: He tries to have Captain Toma killed both because He Knows Too Much and because he's more useful as a martyr for Bell's cause.

Priestess Uria

The High Priestess

The High Priestess of Cresce, and part of the ruling Council of Four. She oversees twin sacrifices in Cresce and acts as the Queen and other powerful noble's clergy. As the High Priestess, she was once a kept twin herself; her sister was sacrificed, and she became part of the clergy going forwards.

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• Bloody Hilarious: During a deadly game of hot potato with an Aldish pymaric grenade, a panicky Ufal ends up instinctively tossing it into a corridor where Uria is. Cue explosion with her severed limbs flying everywhere.
• High Priest: Uria is the head of Cresce's state church, though as their state religion follows the Sororal Gefendur sect, ultimate religious authority lies with the Two Sisters of the Silverleaf Church in Ulestry.

Chancellor Ufal

The Chancellor

The Chancellor of Cresce, and the former mayor of its capitol city. Ufal is part of the Council of Four. As the Chancellor, he is meant to communicate the will of the nobles to the queen, and to communicate her will back to the nobles.

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• Beleaguered Bureaucrat: Ufal is supposed to be the Chancellor, acting as liason between the queen and the nobles, but both groups lie to him while plotting against each other behind his back; with the nobles straight up kicking him out of meetings he should be privy to. He's stuck trying to keep the High Priestess, Lord General, Queen, Nobles and the commoners all appeased and capable of working together while everyone is plotting (save the Priestess, who still gives him trouble), and thus Ufal looks incredibly stressed out at all times. At least the queen treats him with respect and does eventually let him in on her plans.
• Straight Gay: Ufal seems an earnest (if understandably stressed) man whose every moment is taken up by his work. The first hint of his sexuality was when his much more flamboyant partner gave him some encouragement and straightened up his suit at a party, many chapters and years after Ufal's first introduction.

Arcwright Tesa Moli

One of the Queen's advisors.

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• Cool Old Lady: Sharp-minded and sharp-tongued.
• Disabled Badass: Requires a wheelchair and breathing mask, but surprised Bastion when she proved to still be alive (and angry/feisty enough to give him a Groin Attack) despite having been injured and deprived of the mask while he set up an illusion pretending to be her.
• Face Death with Dignity: Attempted, but averted. Getting torn to pieces will make anyone scream.
• Four-Star Badass: All those medals aren't just for show. Her current health problems are mostly due to past battles.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Detonated her wheelchair to draw the attention of the ghosts and buy time for her allies to run.

Private Elan

Private Elan Aled

A Peaceguard private serving in Ethelmik.

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• The Atoner: He officially sides with Toma and Elka to make amends for smuggling Sette into Ethelmik and selling information to Stockyard.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: He gets his chest crushed before getting core leeched for extra measure, causing him to be dissolved painfully by the Khert.
• Dirty Cop: A sympathetic example — he may help criminals, but it's to get treatment for his heart condition.
• Dream-Crushing Handicap: Elan always wanted to be Peaceguard and passed the mental examinations, but his heart condition meant he could never pass the physical for fieldwork. They ended up giving him administrative duties instead.
• The Mole: He's Peaceguard, but spies on them for the Frummagems.
• Redemption Equals Death: He used to inform for the Frummagems, but he sides with Toma to foil their First Silver operation. He actually succeeds in helping him, and his death comes later, when he sacrifices his life to General Bell's corrupt Peaceguard to buy time for Toma and Elka to escape.
• The So-Called Coward: Elan Aled is thought of as a coward because he seems to switch sides constantly for survival as he tries to stay alive despite his heart condition; however, he never had any loyalty to those he was betraying, and most of them were secretly working together anyway. He gives his life distracting an army so that two of the only noble people he'd ever known would have a chance to escape, even as one of the commanders of the traitor army calls him a coward while hiding behind a bunch of battle wrights and giant war constructs, while Elan took them on with nothing but a sword.
• Trapped in Villainy: He only cooperated with Stockyard because his treatment would’ve been withheld otherwise.

Aseptick Rion Keon

Rion Keon

A wright allied with General Bell's coup.

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• The Archmage: Keon is an Aseptick; this is the highest level and position a wright can reach, at which point they're not even referred to as a wright anymore.
• Deadpan Snarker: Has a caustic wit, often leveled at Hetr.
• Fingore: The sheer power he channeled from Ethelmik's waterfall caused his hands to split in half at his khert ports, and even after a month he still has them stapled together.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Along with his split hands, he has extensive burns from the raw power he channeled while destroying Ethelmik.
• Surrounded by Idiots: He makes clear his low opinion of Hetr, the main Crescian army, and even General Bell himself.

Captain Hetr (SPOILERS UNMARKED)

Hart Hetr

A self-important traitor to the crown and loyal follower of General Bell. He was useful as the Captain of the Ethelmik Guard; but, with Ethelmik burned, he's a more expendable pawn. He's a proper ideologue who thinks Bell is what's best for Cresce.

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• Asshole Victim: Hetr allied himself with Bell's coup and thus turned a blind eye to Bell's co-conspirators running a brothel in Ethelmik, he then returned to Ethelmik and slaughtered the entire town with Bell's loyal butchers, pontificating all the while about how important he is and how he's looked forward to murdering them to cover up crimes he is also complicit in because they're corrupt. This includes children and citizens with no clue what was going on.
• Eye Scream: Hetr gets the side of his head and his eye burned. The next time he shows up, he's missing half his mustache, and his eye is an angry bloody red.
• Lame Last Words: Spoofed with Hetr, who lives just long enough to regret them.
  Hetr: My name will blaze on history's page! My sacrifices leave schoolchildren in breathless awe! My soul is not a fart—!^*It Makes Sense in Context (slightly); references a previous argument about the weight of a soul
  *shank*
  Hetr: Don't... let those be my last words...
  Emil: Don't worry. No one's ever gonna look them up.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Everything he does is to be remembered as a hero of Cresce by history, and he sides with General Bell to be part of the coup he believe will get him there. However, he significantly overplays his own importance (his role in Bell's plot ended with Ethelmik as far as Bell was concerned), and ultimately he dies pathetically, destined to be forgotten.
• Warrior Poet: He thinks he's this, often waxing theatrically or breaking into verse during battle, treating everything like it's a stage play.

Mistress Lori

Lori Ripa

The Mistress of Litriya Shrine. She was once a kept twin herself, but her twin sister Iori ran away to get married.

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• The Atoner: Becomes one for her experiments on the water women after being confronted with the hypocrisy of condemning Duane for indirectly causing the deaths of two of the shrine girls when she had killed a little girl during her experiments, promising to re-grow the child she killed from her preserved heart.
• Hypocrite: She castigates Duane and has little sympathy for his remorse over indirectly causing the deaths of Ilya and Sara, telling him that they were "meant for more than this". This sentiment would ring truer were it not for the fact that the purpose she meant for them was to be ritually sacrificed and then eaten purely for being born as twins, with Ilya's death being in part because she was running away from Lori to escape being sacrificed. Not to mention that she tries to take the moral high ground over Duane after performing torturous experiments on the stormfolk, including ripping out the heart of a waterbaby, something that he does not hesitate to call her out on.
• Would Hurt a Child: During her experiments on the water women, she vivisected one of the children and cut her heart out. She does promise to try and re-grow her later after Duane confronts her about it.

Siya and Sara Litriya

Siya Litriya and Sara Litriya

Sara

Siya

A pair of twins living at Litriya Shrine. As twins living under the Gefendur faith, the pair are being raised with other female twins from Cresce until they come of age as adults; when they turn 22, Siya will be ritually sacrificed to the Twins, while Sara will become a clergy member that takes care of other twin children until they come of age.

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• Always Identical Twins: Played with. Like all twins within the setting, Siya and Sara are identical twins. However, breaking from tradition, Siya (the twin who has been chosen to be sacrificed) has made a point of visually distinguishing herself from her twin sister Sara, with a different hairstyle and wearing her robes in a non-traditional way.
• Innocently Insensitive: Siya is friends with Ruffles, one of the two-toes that lives under the shrine. However, their friendship is very much filtered through the bias held by most humans towards two-toes, considering them lesser. Siya bases a two-toe character in her story off of Ruffles, but portrays her as a dumb comic relief character. And when some of the two-toes steal documents from the shrine head's office in a rebellion attempt and the rest of the two-toes are ordered to stay underground, Ruffles asks Siya to stand up for them, but Siya is too caught up in her own troubles and essentially tells Ruffles to be a good girl and go with the other two-toes into imprisonment.
• Legacy Seeker: Siya has been raised from birth to become a human sacrifice at age 22, so she devotes her time to art and writing in hopes of creating something that will outlive her.
• One Twin Must Die: Enforced by the Gefendur faith, though out of an odd form of love rather than hate. Gefendur twins are raised in isolated shrines in general luxury and comfort. At the age of 22, one of the twins is ritually euthanized then cannibalized with the belief that their soul will go straight to the Twins themselves and live by their side, and the other twin enters priesthood and becomes a caretaker for future twins. Siya is very bitter about her impending sacrifice and Sette offers to take both twins with her and free them of their obligations to the shrine. Tragically, Sara ultimately dies when both Aldish forces assault the shrine, which means that Siya is no longer obligated to be sacrificed.
• Polar Opposite Twins: Siya and Sara are as different as night and day (which is partially a deliberate choice on Siya's part). Sara is a very outgoing and energetic Spoiled Sweet girl who otherwise is rather listless and not motivated by much other than enjoyment. Siya on the other hand is very curious and artistically driven who while not totally withdrawn and has an energetic friendship with the two toes Ruffles tends to be less openly outgoing and can be moodier. Makes sense considering Sara has her entire life ahead of her where she'll never want for anything while Siya has less than a decade before she will be ritually sacrificed and thus has a desire to do something with her life before then. They also dress completely differently (which is a deliberate choice by Siya, the rest of the twins at the shrine dress and style their hair identically to each other).
• Spoiled Sweet: Sara is a genuinely kind girl who becomes Sette's first true friend. However, she is very sheltered and because of this doesn't quite understand exactly what she's gotten herself into when she schemes with Sette to have a currently not well in the head Duane crash the Twins pageant as Ssael. And she is the one who initially apologizes to and comforts Ruffles after all her of two toe kin were killed in an explosion. And when the aftershocks of the explosion threaten to collapse on the underground area they were in, she takes the time to recover Siya's precious book that had fallen in the water earlier to get it back to Siya. And tragically this extra time taken ends up giving Sara not enough time to escape the collapsing room, killing her.

Chea

Chea Toma

The Badge Collector

Emil and Emne's young daughter. She collects Peaceguard badges, so her father sends her new ones for every new town he visits.

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• Collector of the Strange: Chea collects Queensguard and Constable badges. It is illegal for those who are issued the badges to give them up, but her father sends her badges for every town he visits by bribing, and through Elka terrifying people into handing them over.
• Exact Eavesdropping: Chea overhears her mother's new husband talking with General Bell about using the Toma's family influence to help Bell and killing Chea's mother as soon as he can get away with it. Mentioning that women die in childbirth sometimes.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: Emil avoids the capital and Emne on purpose, as theirs is a loveless failing marriage, and he has the convenient excuse of his work in the Peaceguard. He does feel guilty about abandoning his daughter, but feels he has no choice; his wife is a noble, and has more political power than he does, so it's not like he can reasonably divorce her without looking like a laughingstock.

Karl

Karl Toma

The man Emne has been cheating on Emil with, and whom she marries after Emil's death is announced.

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• Death by Irony: Karl used his good looks to exploit and use Emne (and plenty of other women before her) to get into positions of power. He dies being tortured, having his face carved off and being sexually assaulted by Ruck.
• From Bad to Worse: Getting thrown in jail while the city is being attacked by a horrific monster? Pretty bad. Having Aldish soldiers attack said jail and start killing everyone inside? Worse. Having an efheby show up, who knows your name, makes direct eye contact with you, and then rips you out of your jail cell to start treating you like a toy? Do we even have to say it?
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Once he marries into the Toma family, he becomes very fond of using his newly-gained nobility to push people around. Once he's thrown in prison, he keeps shouting that he's Lord Karl Toma — and unfortunately for him, Ruck hears the name and has been eager for an audience.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Emne's latest pretty boytoy has hair that reaches past his shoulders.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Karl acts dumb in order to get away with starting riots and genocidal attacks, by acting like he had no clue what he was doing or the potential repercussions.
• Signature Headgear: He wears a vivid purple wide-brimmed hat no matter what else — if anything — he has on. Even to flamboyant Crescian sensibilities, it doesn't impress:
  Queen Sonorie: Chancellor Ufal, I believe something beneath that hat just made words at me.
• Smug Snake: He's a smirking asshole who goes out of his way to taunt both children and heads of state as he spearheads a coup for General Bell. He learns to his displeasure that Queen Sonorie knew what he was up to from the beginning; she just apparently finds him so trifling that he wasn't worth punishing until Alderode was dealt with. And as the Silver starts slaughtering multiple people and getting closer to him and the other conspirators, he gets more alarmed as he realizes that Bell might not have things under control.
• Til Murder Do Us Part: He's plotting this for Emne, as once she's given birth to a heir that cements his role in the Toma family, he really doesn't need her any more.
• Uptown Girl: He was a restroom attendant before his marriage to Emne catapulted him into the Queen's Council, more or less by virtue of being handsome and good in bed.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Karl doesn't wear a shirt, and if he has to he keeps it open, since he's pretty, he knows it and he uses people's perception of him as a brainless boy-toy to get away with murder.
• Villainous Breakdown: As the situation in Port Morstorben deteriorates and he realizes just how expendable he is, he freaks out badly enough to try and assassinate Queen Sonorie personally, while she's surrounded by her soldiers and retainers. He's dragged off to prison, shrieking in terror the whole way.

Lady Emne

Emne Toma

A noblewoman and cousin to the Queen who saw Emil after he rescued one of the Queen's other cousins and thought him so attractive she had to have him. She's been cheating on him with one of Bell's followers, and is in the process of a divorce. By the time Emil has been declared dead a week, she's already married to Karl.

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• Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: Emne has been cheating on Emil while he's away on his job in the Peaceguard. She's pregnant with another man's child and working on divorcing Emil, though she married Emil because he was pretty and he married her for her noble name, so it wasn't a deep relationship in the first place.
• Has a Type: Both her husbands are much lower on the social totem pole than her, a power disparity that she might enjoy.
• Uptown Girl: She has vastly more wealth and political power than either of her husbands, as Elka unromantically describes:
  Elka: Well, Lady Emne Toma was there, saw the Captain looking fiiiine in his dressy clothes—and decided she had to have him. She was the royal. He was farmboy. So Emne got what Emne wanted. Ain't love grand.

Lady Rilursa

Lady Rilursa Sonorie

The Diplomat

Queen Sonorie's sister, and first in line for the throne of Cresce.

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• Blood from the Mouth: As Rilursa lays dying, she has blood streaming from her mouth and nose.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Rilursa ends up impaled on the broken axel of her cart, which pierced through her chest after her cart was forced off a cliff.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Rilursa gets assassinated on the diplomatic mission to Sharteshane she's introduced on. She does get an appearance in a flashback to the Foi-Hellick rebellion, but that just further cements that she was a stern woman loyal to her sister.

Nora Pris

A Crescian artificer.

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• Hairstyle Inertia: Nora's consistent hairstyle is why she can be recognized when she shows up again, after her previous appearance in a flashback to fifteen years ago.
• Mad Scientist: Nora has done some horrific things in the name of her Queen and advancing knowledge of the Khert, though she's got nothing on the Black Tongues. She's the first one to realize Roger has been made a cypher by his curse.

Frummagem Crime Family

Nary Frummagem

Nary-a-Care Frummagem

The Crimelord

Sette's "da", the head of the Frummagem crime family. Nary runs the Cricket Boys out of his bar the Midnight Cricket in New Tawhoque where the Frummagems are the powers running the city. He's sent Sette and Duane to collect tribute from his delinquent nephew, Stockyard.

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• Abusive Parents: He's physically and emotionally abusive to Sette despite his daughter's worship of him. Starfish even claims Nary considered selling Sette to him as a Sex Slave, before Nary found a better use for her.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: He forces Duane to accompany Sette across the country by threatening to expose his status as undead.
• Arms Dealer: He's worked out a deal with Delicieu to smuggle his First Silver weapon, which is the equivalent of a magical WMD, across countries.
• Broken Pedestal: As time goes on, Sette is finding it harder and harder to make excuses for his behavior.
• The Don: He's the ultimate boss of the Frummagem Crime Family, and the one other bosses pay tribute to.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He is capable of love; however, it's always through a lens of self-interest. He loved Sette's mom enough to hire Black Tongues to save her when Sette's birth was killing her. And he loved Sette enough as his daughter that he killed her mother when she wanted Sette killed for being "unnatural". The biggest "compliment" he can give Sette is giving her a dangerous job that could go wrong in multiple ways, as he believes if she is truly his daughter, she'll find a way to succeed one way or another (which conveniently will profit him). But ultimately, if forced to choose between "love" and his self-interest, he'll choose self-interest every time.
• The Family That Slays Together: His crime family really is run by his extensive family, including his daughter, nephews and nieces.
• The Man Behind the Man: Nary's the one funding the Red Berry Boys and aiding in their smuggling operation.
• Manipulative Bastard: He told Sette to travel to Ethelmik to collect tribute from her cousin, Stockyard, and he forced Duane to accompanying her through a combination of extortion and preying on his affection for children. What neither of them knew was that it was all a colossal scam to get Duane to Ethelmik so he could have him smuggled to Bastion Winalils, Duane's creator. Further evidence suggests that he knew Sette would double-cross them, too, and he's encouraging her to push further into Alderode for reasons unknown.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • According to Starfish, the reason Nary didn't sell Sette to him wasn't out of objection to his daughter being made a Sex Slave, but because he found a more profitable use for her. Admittedly, it's ''Starfish'', so who knows if that's what Nary actually thinks.
  • Presumably this is the reason why Nary forbade Starfish from using children to incubate the First Silver. Starfish already admitted he used kids so he could charge extra for smuggling more people across country, so Nary probably just didn't want to get fleeced.
• Revenge by Proxy: We see during a memory of Sette's that when she was a child, Nary punished an underling who punched Sette by strangling to death said underling's sister who had nothing really to do with what happened to teach him a lesson.
• Would Hurt a Child: He beats the living daylights out of Sette easily as breathing, and worse incidents come to light as the story goes on. When Sette's sharpened teeth started coming in, he nearly strangled her to death in a drunken rage, and later casually broke another girl's neck in front of her brother to make a point.

Stockyard

Stockyard Frummagem

Nephew to Nary Frummagem, he's made his way to Cresce to broaden the family's criminal enterprise. Recently he's become delinquent in paying tribute to his uncle.

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• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Publicly he acts like a Lovable Rogue to endear himself to Sette, Duane and the people of Ethelmik, but behind closed doors he holds them in contempt, calling Sette a freak and thinking the people of Ethelmik pathetic for not fighting back against Crescian laws.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: His murder of Toby is partly motivated over his jealousy over Toby’s relationship with Anadyne.
• Entitled to Have You: Stockyard seems to think that because he got Anadyne out of a life of prostitution and paid for her pymary lessons, he's entitled to her love and loyalty.
• Et Tu, Brute?: When his spies tell him Toby and Anadyne — his friend and the woman he loves — were talking about leaving him, he weeps when he hears the news, and ends up murdering Toby for the perceived betrayal.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Though he can be callous towards her, it's implied he's in love with his cousin, Anadyne, and that's why he got her a job and paid for her pymaric lessons so she'd stop prostituting herself. His murder of Toby seems partly motivated by jealousy over him "stealing" Anadyne.
  • Stockyard loved his father, Tar-Nut Frummagem, confessing that the worst day of his life was when his father hanged. According to rumor, Tar-Nut took the fall for Stockyard's murder of a cop, and that all of Stockyard's criminal enterprises are to honor his late father and succeed where he never did.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • He only handles the First Silver business for the payday; personally, he hates the dark business because reliable rogues won't touch it, leaving him dealing with sickos. He tells Sette to pass along a message to her dad not to involve him with it again.
  • Despite working with Starfish, he's completely disgusted by him, and he lets him know it in no uncertain terms when he saves Sette from him.
    Stockyard: This (punches Starfish) is for making me touch you.
• Freudian Excuse: Like Sette, Stockyard was raised to be a criminal. Toby speculates that the reason Stockyard tries so hard to succeed as a criminal is because his father sacrificed himself for him by confessing to a crime Stockyard committed.
• Karmic Death: He garroted his friend, Toby, out of paranoia, and his father took the fall for a murder Stockyard committed, resulting in his hanging. Stockyard ends killed by the reanimated corpse of Toby who channels the worst memories of Stockyard's father, and hangs Stockyard by a razor-wire noose.
• Kissing Cousins: He's in love with his cousin, Anadyne.
• Madness Mantra: "You let me fall." Said repeatedly by his disembodied head to Anadyne, as the First Silver feeds on her shattered psyche after his death.
• Mean Boss: Not to his inner circle but to his other employees. Unlike Anadyne and Toby, Stockyard has no plans to take any of the local whores or muscle with him when they abandon Ethelmik.
• Off with His Head!: As seen in The Deadly Nevergreen part 2 :: 100, Stockyard ends up decapitated by a razor-wire noose.
• Pet the Dog:
  • He literally pets an animal — in this case a kedis, a warm-blooded iguana that are like housecats in-universe —while loading provisions onto a ship. Moments later, he instinctively saves its life by pulling it away from the First Silver weapon when it tries to attack the creature.
  • Stockyard treats Sette cruelly, imprisons her, and even considers murdering her when she won't go along with his plans for Duane, but he still saves her when Starfish tries to rape her.
• Save the Villain: Sette tries to hold on to Stockyard to stop him from hanging, while Ana blasts a pymaric spell to try to cut the noose. Unfortunately, Ana's too far away and she ends up hitting Sette, meaning Stockyard falls to his death.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Stockyard's set him up as something of a local hero in town, since his bartering system has found a way to work around the unpopular economic systems Cresce has forced on them. Many in Ethelmik view him as their best hope to save the town.
• Villainous Breakdown: It begins when his informants tell him Toby and Anadyne want to abandon him.
• Villainous Friendship: He's friends with his right-hand man, Toby. Unfortunately, it doesn't last.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Toby implies the reason Stockyard wants to be such a successful criminal is to honor his deceased father, who never had the chance to amount to much because he sacrificed his life to save his son.

Bodkin (Sr.)

Nary's second in command. He's been left in charge of Nary's New Tawhoque operations including the Midnight Cricket while Nary travels to Alderode working for Beadman.

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• Dead Animal Warning: Bodkin killed a puppy and left it in Sette's bed. She responded by cutting up his pet rat and dumping it in his soup.
• Would Hurt a Child: Bodkin would love a chance to kill Sette without Nary looking over his shoulder. Not only does he know she'll need to kill him if she ever wants to run the Cricket Boys and take over her father's organization, she also got his son hanged and annoys the hell out of him. His only confirmed act against Sette was killing a puppy and leaving it in her bed, and she was out of town with Duane before he was given run of the place.

Anadyne

Anadyne Frummagem

One of Sette's cousins, she's one of Stockyard's most trusted enforcers and has been studying pymary out of a desire to make something of herself.

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• Affably Evil: She might be a criminal, but she's not actively malicious.
• Anti-Villain: Anadyne so far. She shares Quigley's standards about not hurting children and is only doing her job.
• Body Horror: Toma's dog mauled Ana's arm up pretty badly, but that isn't where the body horror comes from. The body horror starts when her arm begins to fester and rot from being untreated for multiple days, due to being stuck inside the mass of First Silver with no way out; although wrights can easily deal with infection, her mental break from accidentally killing Stockyard has left her wanting to die. And then the silver starts fusing with her arm...
  • Chapter 14 shows that she is no longer remotely human. Her body has completely been essentially taken apart by the silver to the point that it's impossible to say if any of Anadyne is actually left. By Chapter 17, the only remaining part of her physical body is her heart, being kept alive by First Silver even after the rest of her body has been assimilated into the monstrous mass.
• Brains and Brawn: Anadyne is the brains to Knock's brawn.
• Determinator: When Anadyne's arm is mangled, she stops the bleeding with pymary and jumps back into the fight, even while the mutated First Silver starts tearing the place apart around her.
• Break the Cutie: She's gone through a lot of shit, to say the least. She was never very confident about her pymary abilities and missing the spell that might have saved Stockyard's life pretty much broke her. And that was before she ended up in the mass of First Silver that is doing its best to break her mind totally, not to mention completely destroying her arm.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: She and her cousin Knock are like sisters, and she's in a loving relationship with Toby.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Unlike her cousin, Knock, Ana refuses to harm children.
  • She's thoroughly repulsed by the First Silver weapon and everything it stands for.
• Humanoid Abomination: The First Silver takes such a liking to her misery that it chooses to merge with her completely. It's not clear what she is now, but it isn't human.
• I Just Want to Be Special:
• It's All My Fault: She blames herself for Stockyard and Toby's deaths, thinking that her lack of skill at pymary is why they died. While it is partially true for Stockyard, circumstances would've had him die whether she took the shot or not, and Toby had already been killed, his corpse was just reanimated by the First Silver.
• Lady of Black Magic: Anadyne tries to be this, showing up at fights with an elegant dress and disintegration spells, but her pymary isn't quite up to par.
• Minion Shipping: She and Toby both work for Stockyard and are romantically involved.
• Never My Fault: While embodying the First Silver, she happens to catch sight of Matty and remembers the time she tried to suffocate his father in front of him. She immediately begins screaming that it wasn't her fault she did it because she didn't make "thieves and men and murder and money".
• Overshadowed by Awesome: She's not an untalented wright, but she's not a prodigy and next to Duane "finest wright in centuries", plat battlemage Quigley, and abomination-crafting Black Tongue Delicieu she's decidedly outclassed.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Anadyne so far seems to be a polite, compassionate young woman who just so happens to working as a crime lord's enforcer.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Anadyne's the more cerebral blue to Knock's hot-headed and fight-ready red.
• Sanity Slippage: Anadyne cracks after Stockyard and Toby's deaths and witnessing the nightmarish torments of Delicieu's First Silver weapon.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: It looked like Anadyne would be this for Quigley, since she and Knock were both introduced in the same chapter that Quigley and Ephsephin depart the Red Berry Boys. Not so much.
• Would Not Hurt A Child: Anadyne flat-out states she won't let Starfish cut up Matty.

Knock-Me-Down

Knock-Me-Down Frummagem

A Sister Hard Head

One of Sette's cousins, Knock is a fearsome, brawling woman and has a sisterly relationship with her cousin, Anadyne.

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• Actually Pretty Funny: Despite fighting against her the night before, when she sees Sette trying to intimidate everyone in the Deadly Nevergreen, Knock's enamored with the performance.
  Knock: Oh no, I love her.
  Toby: Didn't she drop a pulley on your head?
  Knock: I had it coming.
• Affably Evil: Knock is definitely more villainous than her cousin, Ana, but that doesn't mean she can't compliment someone on their play, or admire her cousin for her courage.
• Brains and Brawn: Knock is the brawn to Anadyne's brains.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Knock likes to party with her friends when she's not on the job — and sometimes when she is.
• The Brute: Knock-Me-Down. She's a mob enforcer on muscle-building Fantastic Drugs who's strong enough to suplex a riding hound.
• Combat Pragmatist: Despite her obvious strength, Knock's go-to option for dealing with threats is to shoot at them with a forearm-mounted saw shooter that fires poisoned discs.
• Determinator: Knock will save Anadyne, no matter what, even if it means fighting an undead Toby in a place that looks like hell itself... or running straight at an enormous monster composed of pain, just because Ana is screaming for help.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Knock clearly cares for Anadyne and rushes to her side whenever she's in trouble.
• Genre Savvy: Knock tells Starfish to make Matty look away while she's trying to kill the kid's father, saying that if not, a masked avenger will show up in ten years to ruin her day.
• The Lad-ette: Knock is brazen in her love of good fights, good booze, and good sex.
• Liquid Courage: Some of Knock's more manic behaviour comes from her taste for the Fantastic Drug glut.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Knock is hot-blooded, combat-ready red to Anadyne's calmer and more professional blue.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Knock for Ephsephin, Anadyne for Quigley. Both of them are introduced in the same chapter that the replaced characters die or leave the Red Berry Boys.
• Undying Loyalty: The sheer amount of dangerous shit she goes through for Anadyne is impressive, particularly since she's been otherwise shown as the pragmatic self-saving type.
• Would Hurt a Child: Knock seems to have no qualms about trying to kill Jivi.

Toby

Tobias Hogshead

Stockyard's right-hand man.

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• Affably Evil: For a criminal, Toby's actually a pretty nice guy who values his employees, has a lot of standards, stands by the people he loves, and just wants a life where he's happy.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Toby's one of the least villainous antagonists in the comic, but he gets garroted to death by his friend, Stockyard, for planning on leaving with Anadyne.
• Benevolent Boss: In contrast to Stockyard, who wants to abandon the local whores and muscle when he sets up shop in a new town, Toby wants to take them with and use them.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He and Anadyne are in a loving relationship.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • He's a mob-enforcer but the entire business with the First Silver, and the prospect of it destroying the khert and souls, rightfully terrifies him.
  • He offers to break Starfish's spine after he and Stockyard catch him molesting Sette.
• Delinquent Hair: Toby's head is mostly shaved save for a fringe he's dyed pink to match his girlfriend's scarf.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Anadyne's not small, it's just that Toby's massive among most men.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Knock destroys his reanimated body by slamming a lift door on top of it, flattening him and sending limbs and blood flying.
• Number Two: Toby is Stockyard's right-hand man.
• Minion Shipping: He's in a romantic relationship with fellow criminal, Anadyne.
• Off with His Head!: Stockyard strangles him with garrote wire until it slices through his throat and takes his head off.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Toby's a criminal, but he's not cruel a man. The business with the First Silver disturbs him, and his ambition is just to set up his own gang with Anadyne once Stockyard's deal is done. It is ambiguous in his final moments if he planned on killing Stockyard to usurp him, however.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Toby gets unnerved enough by the First Silver business and thinks proposes that he and Ana take their people, leave Ethelmik and Stockyard behind, and set up elsewhere.
• The Starscream: Possibly, but it's ambiguous. He talked to Anadyne about abandoning Stockyard, and he's seen handling a knife while talking with Stockyard in the latter's rooms, but it's never clear if he does want to usurp Stockyard or if he's handling the knife out of unease over the First Silver and Stockyard's slipping sanity. Whatever the case, Stockyard kills him before he can explain himself.
• Villainous Friendship: Toby's friends with his boss, Stockyard, as well as Knock-Me-Down, and is in a romantic relationship with Anadyne. Unfortunately, Stockyard takes the news of him and Anadyne talking about leaving him very poorly, and Toby ends up killed by him because of it.

Dawn

Dawn

One of Stockyard's employees at the Deadly Nevergreen.

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• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Dawn worries that Stockyard might be hurting Sette, even though the other employees tell her it's none of their buisness, tries to save everyone rather than looking out for herself when the Nevergreen turns into a hellish deathtrap, helps Sette open the locks to get rid of the silver rather than flee with her friends, tries to stop Starfish from going after Sette and tries to help others escape Ethelmik when the military starts bombing it to hide all evidence of the silver.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: When the silver starts winding its way through the Nevergreen she's the one who orders everyone to try and escape, and when that doesn't work orders them to the lift to try and get away from the room where it's killing everyone. When General Bell's corrupt soldiers start burning Ethelmik she gathers the other survivors and orders everyone to flee into the mountains.

The Black Tongues

Bastion Winalils

Bastion Winalils

Bastion Winalils, a Jet-caste Aldish wright, a doctor, and a member of the Black Tongues, is the man who hired Nary Frummagem to have Sette take Duane back to Alderode through Cresce; he is also the one who gave her the amulet that lets her command Duane at night, and the wright who supplied the spell that keeps Elan's heart beating. He created Timofey, the ghost-boy, but perhaps most importantly, he is the one who "created" Duane, bringing him back to his current state of sentient undeath.

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• Affably Evil: He's done some pretty despicable things, but his goals seem at least somewhat well-intentioned and when not on a job, he's genuinely friendly, charming, and even dorky in regards to science.
• Anti-Villain: He has a genuinely well-intentioned goal in his heart, he is known to provide medical aid for those he comes across in the course of his work, has a history of treating sick children, and generally tries to avoid unnecessary collateral damage during his plans, unlike some of his fellow Black Tongues who don't really care about such things. However, he is perfectly willing to stoop to immoral means to see his plans brought to fruition, culminating in being party to the rather painful murder and following years of torment that one Duane Adelier experienced. During said murder, Bastion's temperament was one of excitement for a plan coming together, rather than regret over the murder of a man who'd done nothing to him.
• Body Horror: The price of being Ilganyag's favorite. The torc he wears burrows into his neck if he so much as touches it, and is so closely entwined with his body he can no longer remove it; and there are barely stitched up cuts in his chest which, in a dream, open up into her eyes. And compared to Darkest Paul's torc, which gets pulled off his neck with no real effort, as Ilganyag never particularly cared about him, when Darkest attempts to pull of Bastion's torc, we see that the torc has burrowed itself all throughout his body, looking almost like veins.
• Dark Is Evil/Dark Is Not Evil: He seems to waffle between the two. He generally wears dark clothes with a crow or raven motif, often inspired by his patron Lady Ilganyag, and moves around by becoming shadow. He has good intentions, but he's willing to do some pretty deplorable things to see them realized.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He's not the most moral person, but even he doesn't like Delicieu or his Silver experiment. Though these standards don't stop him from aiding Delicieu for the money, or helping General Bell in a genocidal war against his own countrymen. It helps that Delicieu is really his childhood friend Prakhuta, who was tortured by the real Delicieu alongside Bastion and killed him to save Bastion's life.
  • He's not a fan of collateral damage. He was disturbed by how an entire city was destroyed to continue the passage of the First Silver, and he closed Mikaila's wounds to prevent her from dying when she was accidentally stabbed during Duane's assassination.
• Extreme Omnisexual: He's seen with a female prostitute, he may have been in a relationship with another male Black Tongue, and he casually mentions that he once had sex with an efheby, a species of Snake People who eat minds. Considering the nature of the Black Tongues, it's quite possible that he considers it a viable mode of scientific inquiry.
• Flashy Teleportation: He's discovered a unique method of teleporting himself called 'offsetting', which causes him to dissolve into a pool of darkness and zip along nearby surfaces to his destination. Unfortunately, he can't take anything with him that isn't part of his body (with the exception of his torc), so all the 'clothes' he's usually seen wearing are pymaric constructs — essentially holograms. They are purely cosmetic and don't provide any sort of protection, which means he has to watch where he's walking.
• Handsome Lech: One of his first actions after being properly introduced is to make a grab for Iori Ripa's ass, which earns him a slap across the face.
• Immortality Immorality: In order to test his theories on resurrection, he aided in the assassination of Duane and his daughter, Mikhaila, to get access to Duane's corpse. Unlike other examples of this trope, he seems to want the secrets of immortality to benefit the world instead of himself exclusively.
• Large Ham: Speaks flamboyantly with grand gestures. This is quickly becoming an Aldish trait.
• Mad Scientist: As one of the Black Tongues, he's on the cutting edge of pymaric research and has a decidedly lax attitude towards experimental ethics.
• Naked on Arrival: Mitigated. His mysterious teleportation ability doesn't allow him to take anything with him that's not his own body (excepting his torc), but he can use glamours to create illusory clothing (though fanservice still occurs in transition). Rahm still is quick to hand him a robe when Bastion visits, though, so he doesn't have to put his naked butt on all the furniture.
• Necromancer: He's the one who killed Duane then brought him back to life, preserving all his memories before they could dissolve into the khert, meaning he's the real-Duane instead of an artificial personality created from a collection of memories like Timofey.
• Only in It for the Money: While continuing his scientific studies is his greater goal, he accepts mercenary work because he needs money to fund them. Money is why he says he's helped Delicieu. It's also why he said he took the job to help assassinate Duane while he was still alive. That, and to test his scientific theories on a tacit caster.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: As a jet, the Aldish caste with black hair and pale skin, this comes naturally to him; his black-feather cloak only emphasizes it.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: So far, his primary goal seems to be healing. All the major projects we know about that are his (Duane, Elan, and Timofey) are attempts to stave off or overcome death in some way. We also see him helping people in the aftermath of the Silver incident even though this almost exposes him to the authorities. While he's willing to go to extreme lengths to achieve his goals, he does seem to have the best intentions.
• We Used to Be Friends: In his childhood, he was rather close to Cutter, or rather Prakhuta, who was a guinea pig for Delicieu, Bastion's master. They both suffered under Delicieu's cruelty, and ultimately Prakhuta killed Delicieu with his newfound pymary while Delicieu was distracted trying to torture Bastion to death for also trying to kill him. In the present, Prakhuta has little but scorn for Bastion, feeling that he should have done more to save Prakhuta and the other two-toes who did die from Delicieu's experiments, while Bastion feels disgust that Prakhuta chose to continue Delicieu's abominable experiments, even taking up his name especially after everything he did to the both of them.
• Would Hurt a Child: Bastion was involved with Duane's assassination, meaning he also contributed to Mikaila's death.
  • Except not quite. Turns out that Bastion went out of his way to close Mikaila's wounds so that she wouldn't die even though she had nothing to do with his plans. He's not a fan of collateral damage, particularly with children.

Delicieu

Thierry Delicieu

One of the most famous Black Tongues, he is infamous for his experiments with the Khert and with First Silver. It was his work that caused the large mass of First Silver filled with memories of pain to be unleashed upon the world, but he hasn't been seen in a long while...

• Dirty Old Man: He raped his teenage apprentice Bastion, and lent the boy out to other Black Tongues with similar tastes for the same purpose.
• Fat Bastard: He is very amoral in his research, not caring how many two-toes die or how much pain is caused, so long as he gets his results. He also treated Bastion, his student, very cruelly. He also has a noticeable pot belly.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Prakhuta used his newfound pymary to cut Delicieu in half. Vertically.
• The Ghost: Outside of flashbacks, he hasn't been seen in the story at present day, though everyone talks about him and his work. It turns out he's been dead for decades, after Prakhuta killed him to save Bastion's life. The Delicieu running around at present day is actually Prakhuta under a pseudonym.
• The Unfettered: He shows zero concern for whatever harm his research may cause to his subjects. The results are all that matter to him.

Timofey

Timofey

A mysterious ghost-boy first seen hanging around the Ripas' house, he works for Bastion Winalils as a manservant, and is actually an artificial creation; he was never alive.

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• Artificial Human: Timofey was never actually alive, he's an artificial personality created from a collection of ghosts pulled from the khert by Bastion.
• Easy Sex Change: As he was meant to be the resurrection of Bastion's sister, his body was originally designed with breasts; Bastion revamped the body for him.
• Drama Queen: He tends to overact constantly, and his fairly gaudy Phantom-of-the-Opera-style getup doesn't help.
• Friendly Ghost: Sort of, although it's eventually revealed he was assembled from many different memories dredged out of the Khert and was never actually alive himself.
• Hero-Worshipper: He idolizes people like Jivi and Elan Aled when they perform daring heroics.
• Just a Machine: Winalils dismisses him this way. Timofey's expressions at this imply he does not agree.
• Replacement Goldfish: Timofey is the result of Bastion trying to bring his sister back from the dead and failing, although he treats Timofey fairly well all considered.

Rahm Ripa

Rahm "the Raptor" Ripa

A Black Tongue living in Ethelmik who briefly shelters Quigley, Jivi and Matty.

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• An Arm and a Leg: Averted. He has legs, it's just that no one can see them, since the accident with the Khert that killed his son also took away all visual aspects from his legs.
• Deal with the Devil: Rahm agrees to capture Duane and betray the Quigleys for Bastion in exchange for First Silver to finish his flying pymaric.
• Defector from Decadence: The Black Tongues' ambitions have been growing out of control since Lady Ilganyag stopped guiding them, so Rahm's been staying away from the group.
• Due to the Dead: Rahm dedicates himself to perfecting his son, Dani's, flying pymaric because his son died before he could do so himself.
• Everyone Has Standards: The Black Tongues can be amoral in their experiments, but Rahm thinks Delicieu is a madman and calls out Bastion for helping him.
• Grumpy Old Man: Rahm isn't so old but he more than makes up for it with grumpiness.
• Happily Married: Despite their disagreements, Iori and Rahm clearly love each other.
• Hypocrite: Rahm plays at being the protector of Ethelmik, but he stays in his workshop and watches the Khert, complaining about monsters and brothels while doing nothing about it. He refuses to stop the monstrosity that is the First Silver or save any of its many victims because it might be Black Tongue work, and claims the victims deserved what they got.
  Iori: Well, Rahm the Raptor would have to leave his damned workshop to police "his city" wouldn't he? But he—anyway the Frummagems have ruined what's left of Ethelmik.
• Morality Chain: Iori acts as one to him, and she's ultimately the one to get him to stand down and stop attacking Quigley and Duane on Bastion's behalf.
• Nothing Personal: He tells Quigley this while betraying him, saying it's just a favor for a colleague.
• Outliving One's Offspring: One of his and Iori's sons, Dani, died in an accident while showing off his and Rahm's flight pymaric. The reason he betrays the Quigleys on Bastion's request is to get First Silver to finally finish the flying pymaric Dani died working on.
• Pet the Dog: Rahm pulled memories out of the Khert and used them to create ghostly "grandbabies" to keep Iori company.
• Red Baron: He's called "Rahm the Raptor" among his fellow Black Tongues.

Darkest Paul

Darkest Paul

Bastion's self professed nemesis. He turns out a bit more dangerous than Bastion would like to give him credit for.

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• Atrocious Alias: Absurd as "Darkest Paul" might sound, he chose it to cover up his Sharteshanian heritage; his actual name is Tarpaulin Targellery.
• Beware the Silly Ones: He has a receding hairline and a ridiculous name, but turns out to be resourceful, ruthless, and surprisingly calm under pressure.
• The Dragon: With Ruckmearha as the Black Tongues' de facto leader, Paul falls into this role, being more focused and considerably saner than the efheby.
• Tom the Dark Lord: His name is intentionally designed to seem laughable, which lets readers be surprised when he proves a credible danger to Bastion.

Maur

Maur

The kindest of the Black Tongues who interacts with Bastion, he's still holding out hope for Lady Ilganyag when most of the order has given up on her and moved on to Ruck.

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• Necromancer: He does most of his work with plods.
• Token Good Teammate: The Black Tongues are not necessarily evil, but they have monstrous people in their ranks and most of them don't show much care for each other or humanity. Maur is compassionate and sympathetic even in comparison to Bastion, whose goal might be noble but who is willing to partake in murder in order to study and raise funds. This might just be because his work hasn't been shown in detail.
• Skewed Priorities: Upon realizing that his fellow Black Tongues have carried out a coup killing Ballanstern, their leader, his reaction is:
  What have you done, what have you done? We are good and civilised men! We do not commit murder until we have voted to do so!

Master Ballanstern

Ballenstern

The leader of the Black Tongue order.

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• Asshole Victim: While he dies before getting any characterization in the main comic, the sidestory "Orphans" features him comparing Plats to dogs, heckling a grieving Quigley into attacking him, and breaking faith with the rest of his order to try and turn Quigley and Uaid over to Cresce after the Black Tongues had promised them sanctuary.
• The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: Ballanstern having his throat slit while the rest of the Black Tongues are entertaining patrons, and with Ruckmearha and Ruck's pet humans in the room with him, does not make a convincing suicide. Bastion certainly doesn't believe it to have been suicide, and those responsible for letting Ruck in don't even properly deny it.
• Doomed Appointment: Ballenstern is not actually dead the first time he's mentioned; he is, however, being killed off screen so by the time Bastion arrives to talk with him he's bleed out.

Iori Ripa

Iori Ripa

The Runaway Twin

The wife of Rahm Ripa.

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• Almighty Mom: Iori will hit undead wrights over the head with brooms, slap Bastion across the face when he gets too fresh, and fly into a burning town to talk her husband down when he goes too far.
• Black Sheep: She is considered this by her twin sister because Gefendur tradition states whenever twins are born, they are to be raised in a monastery until age 22; the younger sibling is ritually sacrificed and cannibalized, and the older sibling joins the clergy. Iori, the younger sibling, instead fell in love with Rahm and ran away from the monastery. Her older sister has resented her for what she considered abandonment of duty, since she stayed a priestess, which is what is expected of the older twin. However, Iori is hardly a bad person.
• Fantastic Racism: Iori doesn’t like Duane for being a plod, but given that he's a walking corpse who hungers for human flesh and can go feral at night, this is completely reasonable.
• Happily Married: Despite their disagreements, Iori and Rahm clearly love each other.
• Hypocritical Humor: Iori says if she ever meets the two-toe that hurt Jivi, she'll knock his teeth out. When Jivi tells her she hit him with a stool, Iori tells him violence is never the answer.
• Morality Pet: Iori acts as this to Rahm, and she's the one who convinces him to stop aiding his betrayal of the Quigleys.
• Nice Girl: In contrast to her grumpy husband, Iori is warm and compassionate to practically everyone she meets.
• Outliving One's Offspring: One of her and Rahm's sons, Dani, died in an accident while showing off his and Rahm's flight pymaric.
• Silk Hiding Steel: She's a housewife who proves herself a badass when she risks drowning then flies into a burning town to talk her husband out of doing something terrible.
• Token Religious Teammate: Despite technically being associated with the atheistic Black Tongues due to her marriage to Rahm, Iori is still very much a devout Gefendur devotee, even despite having ran away from her religious duty to be sacrificed.
• Team Mom: Iori serves as this for Quigley, Matty, and Jivi, and tries to be this for Sette. She wants nothing to do with Duane, however.

The Red Berry Boys

The Red Berry Boys

A band of slavers and worse who primarily traffic in children (it's an efficiency thing).

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Tropes applying to the Red Berry Boys as a group:

• Dwindling Party: They're picked off one-by-one over the course of the story, starting with Bett. Cutter, also known as Delicieu, PROPERLY known as Prakhuta, is the only survivor.
• Organ Theft: A variation. They don't cut up people to steal their organs. They do it to transplant First Silver inside of their victims, which is part of an experiment by their employer.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: They're a gang of slavers, and some of the most irreprehensible villains in the comic. Though as it turns out, what they're up to is far worse than slavery.
• Unwitting Pawns: All of them end up being pawns of Delicieu, aka Cutter, who used them to create his First Silver experiment.
• Would Hurt a Child: All of them go along with Starfish's plan to cut up children to wriggle extra cash out of their employer.

Starfish

Starfish (Arctrit Ramora)

The leader of the Red Berry Boys, a sadistic and greedy thug who is making money by smuggling a mysterious substance inside people, first ripping out their organs to make room.

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• All There in the Manual: The story of Starfish getting his nickname is on tumblr. It's rather brutal and starts off in a way that seems sympathetic to him, before the murders he carried out are cleverly revealed.
• Back from the Dead: Though not in a way that anyone would wish to come back. His body and soul was absorbed by the First Silver abomination, and upon the Silver reaching Port Morstorben, what was left of his body and what fragmented memories remained were reanimated into what can only be described as a large penis monster (unfortunately fitting). Mentally, he is far from lucid. He doesn't even realize he died and he is only compelled by two rough ideas; 1: that he is still transporting the Silver with Quigley and 2: that he really really wants to have Sette...
• Bad Boss: After Ephsephin was grievously injured, Starfish decided to beat him to death with a bottle. He did this with a smile on his face.
• Beard of Evil: A stringy little goatee.
• Came Back Wrong: He died so close to the First Silver abomination that his body was swept up by it and his soul was essentially absorbed by it, even as it starts coming apart. At the end of chapter 16, a mutated chunk of his body and a fragment of his soul separates from the Silver, but it's very clear that Starfish is not himself. He doesn't remember his death, struggles to remember what he can remember, and has a single minded fixation on getting Sette. He is also a physical abomination that happens to be very phallic looking, rather fitting for the man.
• Dirty Coward: He likes to throw his weight around but he scares very quickly when the tables are turned. After acting like a blustering jerkass to Quigley, one blow from the wright is enough to make Starfish need new trousers. It's why he prefers children.
• Fat Bastard: According to the author, one reason she can stand writing such an immensely evil character is because he's... immense, and "fat people are fun to draw."
• For the Evulz: Frequently does cruel things for the sake of cruelty, rather than any practical reason. For example, beating an already dying Ephsephin to death, and forcing Matty to watch as his father is dying.
• Greed: Starfish values being paid so much that he has zero qualms over having to mutilate people to transport his goods. He even goes further by using children, since he is paid by the body and the smaller ones means he can cut corners and use less silver.
• Groin Attack: When he's manhandling/trying to molest Sette, she ends up jamming a dagger she had hidden in her sleeve earlier deep into his crotch.
• The Heavy: All lame puns aside, his crimes drive the comic's plot despite hints that Starfish is a small fry in the grand scheme of things. Later, it turns out the Two-Toe Lizard, Cutter, is his boss, and the mastermind behind the First Silver weapon.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: Subjects Sette when she's being held at Stockyard's to this. Thankfully interrupted before it goes too far, though he does get away with a lock of hair and starts sniffing it. Later he does it again after catching her while she's trying to flood the pipes but is foiled by her Barbie Doll Anatomy.
• Jerkass: To put it in the mildest terms possible.
• Karmic Death: Gets stabbed in the groin then blow up moments later. He deserved all of it.
• Lack of Empathy: To everyone ,really. See Bad Boss for the best display of this trope.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Gets stabbed right in the groin whilst trying to molest Sette.
• Meaningful Name: Starfish's real name is Arctrit Ramora, like the sucker fish that cling to sharks to feed on their scraps. Starfish is a coward who clings to the shadows of more powerful villains and targets the weak and already harmed as his victims.
• Only Known By His Nickname: His real name is Arctrit Ramora, but he's only ever been referred to in-comic as Starfish. The only exception is when his real name is listed on the Red Berry Boys' wanted poster.
• Psychotic Smirk: Has been known to break these out just before doing something particularly evil, like biting off part of Jivi's ear.
• Skewed Priorities: When the First Silver is taking over the Deadly Nevergreen, does he try to escape? No; he goes after Sette in an attempt to rape her. Notably, he even struggles with the decision for a moment, but does it anyway.
• Stout Strength: Apparently there's muscle under his bulk, which explains his strength and agility. Word of God likens him to a sumo wrestler.
• Villainous Glutton: Shown to be very fond of his food, and yet his bulk doesn't seem to seriously encumber him.
• Would Hurt a Child: He targets children to kidnap, eviscerate, and stuff with First Silver because he's paid by the head and the Silver supply stretches further in smaller bodies. Also, he's a child molester.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Tries to pull this on Quigley. Succeeds on doing this to Ephsephin.

Cutter

Cutter

A two-toe working for the Red Berry Boys, he handles the more horrifying side of their supernatural work. His original name—as humans can pronounce it—was Prakhuta, a test subject of Delicieu, Bastion's abusive Mad Scientist Black Tongue mentor. He also now poses as Delicieu himself, taking his place after killing him.

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• Admiring the Abomination: He's quite affectionate with the First Silver weapon, when it's not trying to torture him. He's in awe of Anadyne once the silver decides to use her as a host.
• Ax-Crazy: He's more interested in harming people than any other Red Berry Boy. When he reveals himself as Delicieu he becomes even more unhinged and deranged, reveling in the destruction and agony his First Silver experiment is creating.
• Back-Alley Doctor: He cuts, but he does not... uncut.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Cutter is Delicieu, the creator of the First Silver weapon and the one behind the Red Berry Boys. With the vision of his weapon destroying Alderode, he becomes one of the prime candidates for Big Bad, with Bastion helping him, and General Bell arranging the weapon's transport to the Aldish capital. Meanwhile, Queen Sonorie, the Black Tongues, and Murkoph have their own agendas. Events conspire to have him become a potential Big Bad in a different way after Anadyne fuses with the Silver; the two of them begin freeing Two-Toes from Crescian imprisonment in a long violent march towards Cresce.
• Dead Person Impersonation: Cutter's real name is Prakhuta, but he's assumed the identity of Delicieu, a Black Tongue who was Bastion's former mentor.
• Enigmatic Minion: He isn't shy about showing his contempt for the humans he works for, or hinting that he has a deeper purpose that they don't understand. As it turns out, he's the Mad Scientist who set all this in motion for his own reasons.
• Faux Affably Evil: He reveals this as his true personality after revealing himself as Delicieu. He speaks gentlemanly to Duane all while relishing Duane's torture, Ana's eroding sanity, and the general death and destruction his silver's unleashing.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Cutter is a completely deranged bastard and his face is covered in grotesque scars that he hides beneath a glamour like Duane.
• The Heavy: Starfish is the one in-charge of the Red Berry Boys, but it turns out he's really working for Cutter, aka Delicieu, who's the true mastermind of the First Silver weapon. Not that Starfish realizes who Cutter really is.
• Lizard Folk: Cutter is part of a race known as two-toes, or Inak, that strongly resemble bipedal lizards.
• Mad Doctor: Cutter is the Red Berry Boys' resident doctor, but is far more interested in causing harm then healing. As he says, he cuts, he doesn't uncut.
• Mad Scientist: He is actually Delicieu, one of the premiere mad scientists in the setting; the weapon of mass destruction he created is the driving force behind much of the plot.
• Man Behind the Man: Cutter is actually Delicieu, the Mad Scientist behind most of the plot up until now, and the whole deal with the First Silver is ultimately based on his experiments. ...Except not really — he was actually one of Delicieu's experiments who killed Delicieu and took over his identity.
• Meaningful Name: Cutter handles the surgeries.
• Obfuscating Insanity: Cutter drops the lunatic rhyming act once he gets the silver where he wants it, not that his real personality is any more sane.
• Rage Against the Heavens: He hates the Khert and how it works, viewing it as forcing memories of pain to exist forever, seemingly without purpose. His First Silver weapon is a means to lash out at the Khert, and give a means for the ghosts to finally strike back and share their pain with the world.
• Rhymes on a Dime:
  • Cutter speaks in almost nothing but rhymes. This quirk gets lampshaded by other characters constantly. He stops once his plans are too far into motion for anyone to do anything about them, showing that it was likely Obfuscating Insanity.
  • It's later revealed that improvising rhymes was a game he played with his old friend, Bastion, as a coping mechanism to survive the pain they endured at the hands of the real Delicieu. Becomes a Tearjerker when his old friend tries to use it to convince him to give up the violent path he's on.
    Bastion: Prakhuta needn't do as the scarlet dead say. Here's an old friend to come keep them at bay. Take his hand, take his apology, and we'll be away!
    Cutter: Prakhuta... no longer finds this old game fun to play.
• Sole Survivor: Of Delicieu's experiments on two-toes.
• To Serve Man: He's a lizard man with a taste for human flesh. It was implied at first but confirmed when he's seen feasting on Ephsephin's dead body.
• Walking Spoiler: He seems like just an insane lizard, but pretty much everything about him is a spoiler; just take a look at this folder to get an idea. He's the one who created the First Silver weapon from the slaves the Red Berry Boys were abducting, he's the Black Tongue Delicieu that everyone's afraid of, and his real name is Prakhuta, a former test subject of the original Delicieu whose identity he adopted after killing him.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Prakhuta is a very dark and seemingly insane type. Word of God describes him as finding it unbearable that, due to the nature of the khert, memories of pain and horror live on forever without purpose. The reason he constructed his abomination is to use the world's own workings to destroy itself. Even though he's a murderer, he doesn't feel badly about it because he knows the mind will live on and reincarnation is inevitable.
• We Used to Be Friends: It turns out that he and Bastion were pretty close during the time when Delicieu was experimenting on Prakhuta and other two-toes. Bastion tried to save Prakhuta and was tormented nearly as much as Prakhuta was. In the present though, Prakhuta only feels contempt for Bastion for not doing more to save him and the two-toes who died to Delicieu's experiments. Though this is probably largely due to Prakhuta's mind being warped from spending a decade dealing with spirits of pain due to Delicieu's experiments. We see that Bastion did try to stop Delicieu, going as far as trying to kill him, and would have been tortured to death if Prakhuta hadn't killed Delicieu with his newfound wright abilities.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Being a two-toe under human rule is already solid grounds on its own for a tragic backstory. Add on to that Delicieu's torture and experimentation, Delicieu's reveal that even if Prakhuta survived as a success story then it would still be for nothing because Delicieu would kill him at the end to see if the khert accepted his new soul, the fact that half his soul is literally nothing but pain and misery, his rejection and branding by other two-toes for being an abomination with a "long soul", and his being in so much pain that he had to warp his original goal of liberating his species into pointless genocide instead just to appease the ghosts in his mind, and it's hard not to feel sorry for the circumstances that led him to this point.
• Would Hurt a Child: With gusto, as long as it's a human child. As he puts it, his ultimate goal is to see "a toddler's head in every stock pot."
• You Are Number 6: When he drops his glamour, it's shown he has a "L12" tattooed on his forehead. A flashback reveals that he was one of many Two-Toes with such designations, and that they were all experimented on by the original Delicieu.

Turas

Turas Thanigirri

Starfish's right-hand man, and the second-in-command of the Red Berry Boys.

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• Eaten Alive: Turas is eaten alive by a feral Duane.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He's uncomfortable with some of Starfish's more pointlessly sadistic actions, like forcing Matty to watch the attempted drowning of his father.
• Gayngster: Turas is a member of a band of criminals called the Red Berry Boys, who just happens to be homosexual.
• Lazy Bum: Of the moral laziness variety. According to Word of God, he'll go along with Starfish's more sadistic actions cause it's easier, but that doesn't mean he's comfortable with them. A good example is when Starfish is having Quigley drowned and forcing Matty to watch, Turas is pointedly looking away.
• Number Two: Turas is a friend of Starfish (inasmuch as anyone can be a friend of Starfish) and serves as his second-in-command. He provides intimidation and a cooler, more cerebral form of evil to contrast with Starfish's For the Evulz.
• Only in It for the Money: He's really only around for the paycheck.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Unlike the psychopathic Starfish or brutish Ephsephin, Turas just sees their operation as a job and doesn't display any malice in his acts.
• Straight Gay: Turas likes flirting with male hookers in his downtime, but is the pragmatic, level-headed Straight Man of the Red Berry Boys while on the job.

Ephsephin

Ephsephin Alweather

A petty thug and the first member of the Red Berry Boys that Duane and Sette encounter.

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• The Brute: Ephsephin plays this role, being little more than hired muscle who prefers to beat his problems into submission.
• The Chew Toy: Ephsephin goes through more and more abuse as the comic goes on. This escalates to the point where Ephsephin gets badly injured and Starfish decides to kill him rather than make him see a doctor.
• Dumb Muscle: Not exceedingly dumb, but it's clear he was only hired to hurt people.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Ephsephin's afraid that if he's caught, he'll be hanged in the square where his mother will see him. Word of God takes this even further, saying that his entire motivation in working for Starfish was to get a big payoff so his mother wouldn't have to break her back washing windows to provide for him.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: Starfish caves his skull in with a bottle.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: It becomes hard not to feel bad for Ephsephin after a while, even though he most likely deserves all the abuse he suffers.
• Meaningful Name: Ephsephin's mom overheard Aldish sailors yelling efhsefhin to each other, thought it sounded fancy and named her son that without realizing it meant unlucky. The unlucky meaning of his name would prove prophetic.
• Signature Headgear: Ephsephin had a spiffy light taupe bolero with a red band , which Sette stole for a while before Ephsephin got it back.
• Stupid Crooks: Epsephin just doesn't know when to quit. Duane beats him up effortlessly, so later on he tries to capture Sette. She stabs him and runs off, so he chases her down, knocks Duane off a cliff... Sette slices his face open, and Duane climbs back up to pummel him again. Not long afterward, brimming with inexplicable confidence, he swings Sette around by her tail; she gets loose and sinks her teeth into his repeatedly-lacerated face.
• Would Hurt a Child: He's not only going along with Starfish's plan to smuggle the silver inside of children with no complaint—save that their victims are annoying sometimes—but attacks Sette viciously and considers handing her over to Starfish if he doesn't just beat her to death himself.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: After he’s wounded and begging Starfish for a doctor, Starfish responds by bashing his brains in with a bottle.

Bett

Bett

A wannabe wright who's one of the first Red Berry Boys Duane and Sette meet.

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• Bus Crash: Word of God is that he was captured by the Peaceguard, tortured and executed. He deserved it.
• Genre Blindness: Duane calls him out on it. Maybe attacking a mysterious stranger with unknown power who's protecting the innocent, isn't the smartest idea if you've ever been to the theatre.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Duane defeats him by turning his own pymaric against him.
• I Surrender, Suckers: He attempts to beg for his life and offers coin in exchange for his life, but really it's a ruse to sneak attack with a pymaric.
• Signature Headgear: Bett wears a wright's hat to make him look like a proper wright. Bett's would-be-victim steals it off him afterwards.
• Squishy Wizard: He's a wright, but he has no combat skills.
• Starter Villain: Bett exists pretty much to show how badass Duane is as a wright in comparison. Duane even lampshades Bett "won't see the second act."
• We Hardly Knew Ye: After his fight with Duane, Bett gets captured by the peaceguard. Word of God says he was tortured for information then subsequently hanged.

Aldishmen

Konn/Copper

Roger Foi-Hellick

Roger Foi-Hellick

The Red Prince

The youngest son of the powerful Foi-Hellick family, he gained ideas of unmaking the control the Aldish state is able to exhert through the Dammakhert after his family forced him to the capital when he refused his marriage contract; this led to him leading a revolt in a civil war called the Foi-Hellick Affair, after which he fled to Cresce and married Queen Sonorie. Fifteen years ago, the Aldish state cast the Etalarche Curse on him, making him its first target in several hundred years.

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• Curse: Roger is under the Etalarche Curse, which makes all Aldish castes (save the Soud, who are immune to the Dammakhert) hate him with mindless murderous intensity no matter their prior relationship.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The Etalarche Curse makes Roger a cypher for the Dammakhert, which can only be deciphered by melting and dismantling his memories and soul. The process takes years, requires him to be repeatedly fed on by an efheby, and prevents his memories from being absorbed by the Khert on his death, essentially unmaking him entirely. It also ensures all his friends and former Aldish allies mindlessly hate him and would willingly kill themselves for a chance to tear him apart; it's implied his lover and coconspirator Mallory killed himself on Roger's sword just because it would hurt Roger more than anything else.
• Driven to Suicide: Sort of. He originally planned to Screw Destiny and not allow his own soul to be horrifically destroyed for the sake of destroying the Dammakhert, but when his own lover turns on him due to the Etalarche Curse, tells Roger that he never actually loved him and was just using him, and Roger is forced to impale the man in self-defense, he becomes willing to sacrifice himself; after all, he now has nothing else left.
• Gayngst: Roger's family was pissed he refused to marry a bride and have children, and that he refused to change his mind about liking men, so they sent him to the capital to be their mouthpiece. He got all of them killed, though, so he had the last laugh, even if his end was far more drawn out and torturous than theirs ever was.
• Hypocrite: While he heartbrokenly changes his tune, Roger rejects Shaensigin's method of unmaking the Dammakhert and breaking the Aldish government's control when he learns he'd have to die for it saying he'll be no one's martyr, seconds after casually dismissing that he'd gotten his entire family killed with this little speech:
  To revolt is to presume to declare: "Enough!" They had lived enough; longer than you will even should you die feeble in your bed. But yes, I used my voice in the capital to poison Alderode against them, and my family against Alderode.
• Marriage of Convenience: His marriage to Queen Sonorie of Cresce is one of these, though outwardly they claim it is a marriage of love. They both wish to see Alderode fall, so they work together to carry out the efheby plan. They do seem to genuinely care for each other however, even if not romantically.
• Stepford Smiler: Roger keeps up his foppish pretty boy act in public, but he's been having his mind and memories melted by Ruck for years to help Sonorie, and when the attendants close the door he collapses to the floor. His mind is at its end and won't come back together after the next time Ruck bites him; the next time his body appears in the comic, Ruck declares he's braindead, and although his body may still act on reflex his mind and soul are gone.
  Ruck: Too much of my attention makes your minds grow so...brittle. He won't melt back together next time; not in the proper way. I love him so, but oh...oh well.

Vampire (SPOILERS UNMARKED)

"Vampire" Mallory

A long-lived man of the Aldish Copper caste, leader of the March-allied revolutionaries in Avelpit, and Roger's lover. He was the last of the Foi-Hellick Rebellion leaders besides Roger alive; as the Aldish state couldn't find his real name, they were unable to kill him via the Dammakhert. Roger killed him in self-defense when the Etalarche curse made him attack Roger.

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• Badass Family: His older sister, Elarosny, is one of the leaders of the March — a long-standing Aldish rebel group.
• False Soulmate: He dies roaring that he actually hated Roger and only used the younger man to supply his rebellion. However, it's ambiguous how true this is, as he was under the Etalarche Curse (which permanently poisons and twists all memories of and feelings about the target in anyone it effects) at the time.
• Large and in Charge: Coppers continuously grow as they age, and given he's already over three centuries old, he towers over all his subordinates.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Vampire does not use his name and others (besides Roger) do not know it, because if the state knew it, they could use it to attack him through the Dammakhert.
• Posthumous Character: Vampire died in the Foi-Hellick Rebellion, while Duane was part of the State Ssaelit Order of Chinoll before he even married. Duane died six years before the start of the comic and had been married at least eight years by that point.
• Really 700 Years Old: Vampire mentions he's waited 300 years for a queen like Maharaishala Sonorie and a man like Roger, to make his dreams of an Alderode free of tyranny true. He looks to be in his forties at most, although this is likely due to the fact that the longer-lived Aldish castes' aging slows down drastically once they become adults.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Mallory talks in an antiquated way that makes him difficult to understand for some younger folks, but he still sprinkles his talk with cussing when talking about those loyal to the state:
  Vampire: The salt lizard plans to journey. She wishes live provision. Ye prove meet meat. Salt you she will and watch you writhe as ye dry. A cruel beldam howbeit fain I am to indulge it. Ye statist cunts cannot understand how your tyranny harms the heart.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: He grabs Will and tells him not to fear, but does not hesitate to let the other Aldish soldiers know he's giving them to Lowing Shaensigin to slowly kill and use as food provisions. This apparent care for children's lives is quickly subverted when he reveals he sacrificed his plat boys to set the Khert aflame on purpose.

Stenkonn/Jet

Cara

The Orphaned Runaway

Cara was a young, orphaned, Aldish girl who ran away from her uncle's house, and was subsequently kidnapped by the Red Berry Boys and cut open to use her to smuggle First Silver. The gang was interrupted while Cara was lying cut open on a table and fled, leaving her to die.

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• Almost Dead Guy: Poor Cara lives just long enough to drop some breadcrumbs about Bastion, the "Black Tongue Doctor", before expiring from her wounds.
• Interrupted Suicide: Bastion dragged her away from the pyres her family was burning on when she tried to join them, telling her she had to live. She ended up running away from her uncle Seth's house because it smelled bad, being kidnapped, vivisected alive by Cutter and left to bleed out.
• Together in Death: Cara tried to join her parents on their funeral pyre, and when she's dying talks about going the same place as her parents.
• You No Take Candle: Cara's first language is Tainish and her Continental isn't great, but it is perfectly understandable and impressive considering her circumstances as a child kidnapped and forced into slavery, where she first encountered Continental. She never has a chance to perfect it before her murder.

Bodie

Councilor Bodie

A warmongering Ssaelit councilor, who is a noted hater of the untitled and the Soud caste. Bodie is one of the most powerful men in Alderode.

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• Knight Templar: Bodie wants to kill large portions of the Gefendur in Alderode, so that their population decreases just like the Ssaelit population has decreased due to the Weeping Plague. This will ensure their calls for rebalancing the legislature are moot. While this is his argument, a lot of his actual words make it sound like he just wants to kill all the Gefendur.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Duane ends up punching Bodie because Bodie won't stop pushing his agenda of spreading a plague and carrying out genocide. This ensures that Bodie has Duane beaten later in the day and prevents Duane's promotion despite Duane being over qualified for it.
• The Proud Elite: Bodie dislikes the untitled, and sees himself as superior to them.

Soud/Gold

Lemuel

Lemuel Adelier

The Good Soldier

Duane's younger brother. Much cooler and more popular with the ladies than bookish Duane, Lemuel was pressed into joining the military as a foot soldier at the age of twelve; he eventually became a vliegeng rider, a rather prestigious position for one of Lemuel's caste. Despite their differences, he and Duane love each other, but something about Lemuel isn't quite right...

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• Book Dumb: He does not have the natural talent or patience for learning that Duane has, preferring to be a warrior to a wright.
• Broken Ace: He is a very skilled warrior, able to defeat his also rather skilled brother Duane in straight up duels with no pymary involved most of the time. He is also an extremely skilled Vliegeng rider, something that his fellow soldiers assumed he would never be able to achieve due to his caste. However, he is also not fully stable mentally due to the horrors of war he experienced at a young age and because of it, he assisted Bastion in the murder and resurrection of his own brother.
• Cain and Abel: Though he wasn't directly involved in Duane's death, it is heavily implied that he was involved in the conspiracy that led to his brother's murder...though seemingly not for malicious reasons, as he took care of Duane when the latter came back as a zombie and implied that he'd be able to take him somewhere safe, until Duane knocked him unconscious and fled the country one night, and he clearly didn't expect him to start rotting.
• Child Soldiers: Lemuel was drafted to the front at age twelve, and had been serving in the army four years by the time Duane was kicked out of seminary and joined. It's clear that his time at the front lines has done very little for his sanity, though he hides it well.
• Cool Uncle: Mikaila certain thinks he is. He is seen wanting to teach her knife throwing to annoy her parents and takes her flying on his vliegeng.
• The Fundamentalist:Averted, like his brother Duane. Lemuel follows the party line towards Cresce and Gefendur, but he isn't blind to all of his own country's flaws. Specifically, the self-inflicted Etalarche curse and the rabid hatred it brings out of his non-Soud countrymen disturbs him. And he tells one of his fellow Souds to cut it out when he starts talking about his undying hatred for Etalarche curse target Roger Foi Hellick, as Souds are unaffected by the curse so it's largely just posturing on the man's part.
• Mask of Sanity: Chapter 14 heavily implies that Lemuel later on is not as stable as he seems to be. His experiences as a teenager certainly were not for the weak of heart.
• Parental Substitute: Has taken on this role for Mikaila, who in a moment of fear calls him "papa".
• Religious Bruiser: Just like his brother, Lemuel is a very devout Ssaelit, even though unlike Duane, he is not a priest.
• Scars Are Forever: As a teenager, Lemuel got a long scar across his face from a flying tooth of one of his friends and fellow soldiers who exploded into a shower of gore from a pymaric landmine.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: He and Duane are about as different as night and day. Lemuel is a cool warrior who is popular with all the ladies yet single, has rather long flowing hair, and may not be as sane as he appears to be. Duane is a nerdy wright who was not very popular with women until met his wife, is(was?) balding, and has generally managed to keep his sanity despite the absolute hell he's been through as a zombie. Oh, and Duane is a zombie and Lemuel isn't.
• Would Hurt a Child: When he and Duane finally reunite years after Duane fled Alderode, it is while Lemuel is leading a task force to destroy a major Crescian Gefendur shrine filled with many young girls. The plan involves having some real scumbag soldiers rape and pillage the shrine, killing nearly everyone except for a few survivors who can tell the tale to the rest of Cresce with the hope that they will be enraged with the Queen for putting the shrine in harm's way (since it's also a laboratory for pymaric constructs). Duane is horrified with how callously Lemuel speaks of the matter.

Leysa

Leysa Adelier

Duane's wife, and the mother of Mikaila and Simon.

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• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: As blonde as all the Soud, and a firm believer in the equality of all Aldish castes.
• Happily Married: All depictions of her and Duane's married life shows that they were very much in love.

Mikaila

Mikaila Adelier

The Little Wright, The Golden Delight

Duane's daughter. His guilt over her dying during the assassination that killed him haunts him more than any other aspect of his life.

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• Animal Motifs: Mikaila has a blue butterfly motif, with a butterfly hair tie and looking at a butterfly window display on the night of Duane's murder. In a picture depicting what would have happened had Mikaila's birthday party gone as planned with Lemuel in attendance on the night of her father's assassination the present Lem got her is a pair of swords with butterfly guards.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She may be a young kindhearted girl, but that doesn't mean she's harmless. Bastion found out the hard way when she takes the sharp aspect of nearby broken glass to skewer him in the back after he assassinates her father. This nearly kills him and forces him to flee to safety. As Bastion later states, all Adeliers are dangerous.
• Braids of Action: Having her hair in a braid ensures Mikaila can keep it out of the way and tucked up into her cap as she serves secretly in an army that does not allow women to join, without cutting her hair into a boyish style.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: During her father's assassination, one of the assassins stabbed straight through her chest with a sword after she used her pymary to blind them with light.
• In the Blood: Both a tacit caster and an innate caster, just like her father.
• Famed In-Story: By present day, Mikaila has become known throughout the Aldish military as "the Golden Delight", believed to be blessed by Ssael himself. This likely came about from her surviving the assassination of Duane, who was set to take a major position in the government, despite the fact that she was seriously wounded herself.
• Large Ham: Mikaila is quite boisterous and dramatic, like dear old dad in his youth.
• Posthumous Character: Mikaila was run through by the assassins that killed Duane, and her collapse was one of the last things he saw before his eyes were put out by them. She survived, but Duane has gone six years thinking her dead because Lemuel told him she died that night and kept him from his family before Duane fled.

Captain Ricker

Captain Ricker

A Soud captain in the Lions of Mercy of doubtful morals.

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• Acrofatic: Boasts a large gut but that doesn't stop him leaping onto a Crescian construct from a moving Vliegeng to kill the pilot.
• An Arm and a Leg: Loses a leg when trying to escape from Litriya Shrine.
• Eye Scream: Loses an eye fighting Crescian constructs over the River Jarla. He's killed at Litriya Shrine when Captain Toma stabs him through the remaining one.
• Hypocrite: During the raid on Litriya Shrine, he criticizes how the Crescians supposedly disrespect their shrine maidens by using them as whores. Seconds after he says this he expresses his intention to rape and kill the shrine maidens in question.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Stabbed through the eye by Captain Toma.
• Large Ham: Enough so that Lemuel reminded him that Soud aren't effected by the Etalarche curse, and called him out for his performative hate of Roger Foi-Hellick. "Preach not prudence to a hungry lion!".
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Seems to be his favorite part of war, and he has a reputation for it: "Rutting Rickers splits lasses like wishbones."
• Religious Bruiser: A devout Ssaelit, a firm believer in the Golden Delight, and owner of a giant gut and massive axe.
• Sociopathic Soldier: He's nothing more than a brutal thug who happens to be an officer of the Aldish military. All the men he commands are likewise scum.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Has a surprisingly advanced vocabulary and a tendency to speak very poetically, all while going on how much he enjoys raping and looting.

Renghul/Silver

Will (SPOILERS UNMARKED)

William Argenti Junior

A boy from the same hometown as the Adeliers, who was sent to war as a child by his father to punish his mother. However, he surived the campaign (though though not totally unscathed) and grew up to be a soldier that is loyal to the Adeliers.

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• An Arm and a Leg: Will's arm was bitten off by Lowing Shaensigin when Dhampir tossed him into her mouth.
• Artificial Limbs: Will got a prosthetic after returning home from getting his arm bitten off.
• Child Soldiers: Will was forced to join the army as a child during the campaign to suppress the Foi-Hellick rebellion. Though as he merely served as a drummer boy, little more than a "ceremonial" position as he was essentially being sent to die by his father to punish his mother.

Sarthos

Jeremy formerly Jessamin Sarthos

The Aspiring Wright

An eager student who studied with Duane at university. Duane realized Sarthos was a Third Option after a professor said Sarthos would ruin him, and pointed out that the school Sarthos mentioned having gone to previously was a girls' school. While Duane feels repelled by Sarthos' choice to become a Third Option, considering it to be denying their god the place he assigned for them, he does have a very brief affair with them using the name and gender they'd legally left behind to study pymary.

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• Ambiguous Gender Identity: When Duane reveals he knows Jeremy Sarthos is a Third Option, Sarthos doesn't correct female pronouns in private, gives him their former feminine name to use when they get intimate, then corrects him to Jeremy after. Sarthos says they chose to become a Third Option out of their love of pymary, as only men are allowed to study it to become certified wrights in Alderode. Still they changed their legal gender and name in a ceremony they aren't allowed to reveal to anyone. (Word of God says Sarthos is a cisgender woman, like the majority of Third Options are; there are just no other options for an Aldish woman who wants to do anything besides the very limited list of 'womanly' choices. The Third Option system is just a way for Alderode to utilize gifted women without having to actually give them any rights as women, after all, even if there are non-cisgender Third Options.)
• Forced Out of the Closet: When Master Marnier hears that Duane is working on a paper with Sarthos, he grabs him and tells him to stay away from Sarthos or Sarthos will ruin him. When Duane asks what his mentor means, Marnier points out that the school Sarthos mentioned attending previously is a girls school. As Sarthos cannot legally even hint that they were ever not a man, they are shocked when Duane asks them why they never told him they were a woman.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: As becoming a Third Option and being legally and socially seen as a man is the only way for a woman to study non-frivolous pymary, given Word of God on their gender identity, Sarthos is this.
• Taking the Heat: After Duane kills Belarus in self defense, an act which will ensure Duane is expelled and unable to continue his studies as a wright, Sarthos takes the blame. Because Sarthos is a Third Option their advancement options are severely limited and they see in Duane someone from a caste other than Jet with the makings of a composer. Sarthos refuses to let Duane ruin himself over it, as do the professor and constable Duane tries to correct about just who is responsible.
• Trans Relationship Troubles: Sarthos' relationship with Duane is a mess. Lovers when Sarthos gave him their former name of Jessamin and acted as a woman, then Sarthos acted again as a man and corrected Duane back to Jeremy after they'd had sex. Duane is very uninterested in romance with a man, and from his view, "she" became a man again as they dressed. There's the added complication that they got together still bloody from a fight in which Duane made his first kill.
• Wanted a Gender-Conforming Child: Sarthos' mother doesn't know how to talk to them since they've become a Third Option, and their father sees them as a monster.

Hethllot/Platinum

Vienne

Vienne Quigley

The Smith

Mathis Quigley's wife and Matty's mother. An incredibly gifted artificer and smith, Vienne built Uaid with the intent of giving him to the rebel organization called the March. She was killed by the Aldish state when she refused to give up information on the March under torture.

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• A Day in the Limelight: She is the main character of the sidestory Vienne of Seferpine.
• Contraception Deception: Vienne and Mathis discussed children when they got married; each declared they didn't want any and weren't going to have any, so when Vienne got pregnant Mathis comforted her, assuming that it was unwanted and she'd need an abortion. She decided to keep the child without contradicting him, resulting in Matty.
• Disposable Woman: In the main comic Vienne exists primarily to be Quigley's Cynicism Catalyst, though her work and an admirer of some import show up beneath Litriya Shrine, and her idealism and beliefs live directly on in both Matty and Uaid.
• Posthumous Character: Vienne was tortured and killed by Window agents years before the story began.
• Showing Up Chauvinists: Vienne was a genius Magitek engineer and forgemaster who creates a revolutionary Construct design. She got by in her isolated village, but magic is illegal for women in her country, which led her to funnel aid to La Résistance and ultimately got her killed. In a prequel story, a resentful employee reports her to State Sec, so she evaporates the agent's head in front of him.
  Vienne: No one lets me do anything.

Senet Beasts

Lady Ilganyag

Lady Ilganyag/Sessine/The Betrayer

An enormous crow with three pairs of breasts, Lady Ilganyag lives in the Khert and encounters both Sette and Duane during their journeys there; while Sette is initially frightened by her appearance, Lady Ilganyag seems to provide them with advice and protection, though her ability to help Sette is limited by her inability to speak her language.

She is the patron of the Black Tongues, the Mad Scientist organization many characters belong to; their very name is a reference to her, since Ilganyag means "Black Tongue" in Aldish.

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• Ambiguously Evil: It's hard to know what her ultimate endgame is. She is kind and caring towards Duane whenever his soul is in the khert, yet she is controlling and vindictive towards Bastion whenever he attempts to rebel against her, going so far as to strangle him (non-fatally) with his silver torc to punish him for defiance. And while she confirms Duane's beliefs about the Twins and Ssael to be true, she was also the patron and supplier of knowledge to the explicitly atheistic Black Tongues. The only thing we seem to truly know about her is that she has a close relationship with Ssael (the Ssael) and is looking for him within the khert.
• The Chessmaster: Behind most of the events of the plot, attempting to 'correct' a fundamental mistake in Kasslyne itself.
• Giant Flyer: She's an enormous crow, so it comes with the territory.
• Humanity Is Insane: One of her few unambiguous positions on the race.
  There is no more broken, irrational, and piteous an animal than man! Skulls full of hornets! A biting spider at the end of every wrist. Abandoned here with sweet ideas and screaming, unattainable desires. Again and again they see gods in themselves and capture them on paper. Across millennia I've watched these palimpsests scab and scar; they pick at them until they bleed.
• In-Series Nickname: Both Murkoph and Sette call her 'Titty-Bird', which seems to have stuck.
• The Man Behind the Man: Everything that's transpired in the comic so far - the actions of the Black Tongues, Duane, Sette, and even Murkoph - are by her design. It's still unclear what her ultimate goal is.
• Ms. Fanservice: Giant harpytaur with six tits. What do you think?
  • Fan Disservice: Some of her assets are outright disturbing. Example: she lactates serrated metal thorns.
• Mysterious Protector: She protects Sette and Duane when they encounter her in the khert, though her reasons aren't yet clear. She also tries to warn Sette about Murkoph.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Inak have long worshiped her as a god, but she was once near the head of their pantheon and is now considered more of a god of evil, called The Betrayer. It would have been much better for humanity had Duane and the Black Tongues taken this bit of Inak knowledge to heart.
• No Sense of Personal Space: She tends to get overly touchy-feely with anyone she shares a scene with. Duane in particular doesn't like it much, although she's gradually seducing him.
• Technical Pacifist: Has caused the deaths of thousands, but refuses to directly murder anyone or take responsibility for the slaughters and genocides she's brought about.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Every major event that's happened in the comic is all part of some master plan that she has to fix a mistake she once committed. Admittedly, she does feel regret for what she's doing and that she's hurt so many people, but the body count is already in the tens of thousands and is likely only going to grow. As her motivations come further into the light, her goals appear more and more self serving.

Shaensigin

Shaensigin

The Salt Lizard

A salt lizard long worshipped by the Inak, and who views them as her children made for her. Salt lizards have been long considered dead, and even after Shaensigin was found in the Avelpit mines, few knew there was one yet alive.

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• Eyes Do Not Belong There: Shaensigin's exteral eye sockets are empty, but she has two large blue eyes inside her mouth.
• Eye Scream: Will stabbed Shaensigin in the eyes after being thrown into her mouth.
• Lured into a Trap: Lem and Duane trick Shaensigin into chasing Lem through a valve that Duane then slams shut on Shaensigin using magic.

Minnow

Minnow

A waterwoman worshiped as a small god by the Inak beneath Litriya Shrine, who worship Senet beasts as their gods and consider Ilganyag to have betrayed them and Shaensigin to be long dead. Although waterwoman identities tend to be fleeting, Minnow has kept this identity for a very long time.

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• Amazing Technicolor Population: Minnow has blue skin, and her people come in all sorts of shades of blue and green.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Waterwomen do not wear clothes, so when she attacks Bell's men on the riverside and helps assault the hidden lab under Litriya Shrine she does so naked.
• Robbing the Dead: Minnow is first seen stealing from the bodies of dead soldiers on the riverbanks.
• In-Series Nickname: The river women she lives with call her "Sea Thing" as she is from the sea, but seems to have been banished by her people there.

Ruck

Hanst Mikharhuk Ruckmearkha

The Snake

One of the few remaining efheby, senet beasts capable of extracting memories. He was awoken from a long hibernation less than a decade ago. With Lady Ilganyag silent, some of the Black Tongues have turned to him as their new patron.

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• Abhorrent Admirer: To Bastion, and possibly Duane.
  Ruck (to Bastion): I want there to be love between us, as there is love between you and Ilganyag. I can make you forget her.
• Alien Hair: He has tentacles on his head that resemble hair. He also has them on his chin which resemble a beard.
• Anti-Magic: Like all senet beasts, he's immune to direct pymary.
• Bad Boss: He rips his lawyer/mouthpiece in half because he found his voice annoying and to curry favor with Bastion.
• Berserk Button: While he's already easy to rile because of his predatory instincts, the one thing that makes him genuinely angry is irrelevance. When Sonorie tells him that senet beasts are incapable of change and no longer have a place in the world of men, he's still seething over it a chapter later.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: His appetites, addictions, and emotions are so tangled up that he's a puzzle even to his own kind, who are repulsed by his fascination with humanity. What's clear is that he is dangerous to know, since he views Lack of Empathy as a sign of respect and murder as an act of love.
• Catchphrase: "It is fine." Seems to be a tic more than anything, as he says it even while disemboweling people.
• Depraved Homosexual; He only ever uses his venom on men, and lusts after Bastion in his own perverted way. And he's a complete sadist.
• Dragon with an Agenda: In theory he's working for Queen Sonorie, but Ruck only seems to care about the knowledge he can gain from working with the Black Tongues.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Though "good" cannot be thrown around when talking about human sacrifice rituals, Ruck is infuriated to learn that the practice of sacrificing twins has been made more "humane". In the past, it involved a public ritual of the sacrifice having their throat slit in public, and then being dismembered to be fed to the ritual viewers. At present day, the sacrifice is put to sleep and euthanized in private, and their parts that are fed to the ritual viewers are presented much less viscerally. Ruck asks what is even the point if you don't get to see the victim's anguish and violent death, completely missing the "point" of the whole ritual.
• Faux Affably Evil: He certainly acts polite and benevolent to endear himself to Bastion but it's completely undermined by his unsettling appearance, lack of empathy, and barely-concealed predatory nature.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He has predatory instincts that tend to manifest like this, with a strong urge to simply kill anyone who speaks in a high-pitched voice, moves suddenly, or looks him in the eye.
  Ashley: The cloak of civility he wears is threadbare.
• Intrigued by Humanity: A fairly dark version. He's interested in the possibilities collaborating with humans offers him, but has no care for them individually - except whoever he currently has envenomed.
• Mind Rape: Efheby venom can do this to humans; Ruck has learned how to weaponize it to try and learn the secrets of the Aldish Dammakhert at the behest of Queen Sonorie. Poor Roger Foi-Hellick.
• Nightmare Fetishist: He's intrigued over some of the darker interests of the Black Tongues, like Bastion's necromancy, despite Duane being a walking corpse and Delicieu's First Silver weapon. He is also highly interested in the practice of sacrificing twins, and is genuinely infuriated to learn that the modern practice forgoes slitting the sacrificed twin's throat in public to the more "humane" practice of putting them to sleep before sacrificing them in private. He wants to see blood and anguish and asks what is even the point if that is gone.
• Overly Long Name: His full name is Hanst Mikharuk Ruckmearkha, so he prefers going by Ruck.
• Playing Both Sides: He is secretly working with Queen Sonorie to figure out how the Dammakhert works so she can possibly destroy it, which would cripple Alderode. At the same time, he is also working with General Bell, who is trying to depose Queen Sonorie, as he believes she is breaking too much with tradition and not being aggressive enough in the war with Alderode. In Bell's case, he doesn't seem to realize what Ruck is, as Ruck takes the form of a Yerta statue in Bell's presence. That said, it is unknown if Ruck is manipulating Bell for Sonorie's sake or for his own agenda.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: He's a casually murderous snakeman who's usurped leadership of the Black Tongues, a group of Mad Scientists who are amoral at best.
• Snake People: He's an efheby, a creature that has the lower half of a snake.
• Soul-Cutting Blade: The Black Tongues have created one from his venom.
• The Usurper: He's become the new patron of the Black Tongues, and his allies in the organization murdered their original leader when he objected.
• Would Hurt a Child: He grabs a young boy off the street, confusing him for the very much adult Karl Toma. We fortunately do not see it, but judging by what we see of the boy's corpse and the very bloody and wrecked state of the room, it was not a quick death...
• Your Soul Is Mine!: Efheby venom turns the soul to mush, allowing the efheby to sort through it, see the victim's deepest secrets, and eventually devour it. If they don't damage the soul too badly, the venom wears off and the victim can recover. As seen with Roger Foi-Hellick, though, even this has its limits; enough exposure to efheby venom will render someone braindead, as not enough of their soul will remain for it to function.

Others

Murkoph

Murkoph

The Hungry Man

A strange, apparently undead, man; he was trapped in the Khert somehow, and freed by Sette. He is incredibly violent and dangerous, and seems to be completely insane, but has an uncanny knowledge of the Khert and the world in general even through his madness.

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• Added Alliterative Appeal: Frequently employs this and other speech patterns (such as assonance) when speaking, giving his language a strangely poetic quality.
  • Sublime Rhyme: Occasionally uses this as well.
• Alien Blood: Unlike most undead shown, Murkoph bleeds when injured, but his blood is jet black and oily-looking.
• Autocannibalism: He is shown causally shaving off a chunk of his own finger for a quick snack.
• Card-Carrying Villain: He revels in his villainous reputation, and fondly reflects on having been one of the most horrifying creatures in the world.
• Casting a Shadow: Occasionally seems to use an ability similar to Bastion's, becoming a streak of shadow along the ground and materializing out of it.
• The Dreaded: When Murkoph walked the physical world, he was apparently the single most feared individual to have ever lived, a fact that he is very proud of. As he puts it:
  Murkoph:There were a time I were the scariest godsdamned thing skinside yeh could ever imagine. The moon trembled when I passed under, shakin' the breakers t'suicide all up and down the shores've creation. Hungry and hated, Murkoph ambled from coast to cavern, across countries and counties, bein' all the gods meant the world t'be. Pain, fear, endings upon endings upon endings... heavy with every purpose and no purpose at all. Some said it were the Twins themselves sent me! Some said it were Ssael, others that I was a senet monster. A thousand legends; names; whispered imprecations precedin' me like the shadow thrown afore me by the quiverin' moon. I were shadow itself.
• Extreme Omnivore: Besides his cannibalism, he's also implied to have eaten his own clothes during his time in the Khert.
• Fangs Are Evil: He has some that make him look vaguely like a vampire. Word of God is he pried them out of a dog, stuck them into his own gums, and kept them.
• Full-Frontal Assault: He is introduced wearing nothing but strips of cloth around his arms. Creative camera angles are the only thing preserving what could be considered his modesty.
  • Walking Shirtless Scene: He gets trousers in his next appearance, becoming this.
• Horror Hunger: For flesh, which he is all too happy to indulge. Being sealed away from anything edible has made him very, very hungry. He'd like living flesh, but he'll take what he can get.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Yes.
• Malevolent Mutilation: He's Covered in Scars and once rips open a gash on his chest for kicks. Duane tears the skin off his upper half, leaving him peevishly trying to fit it back on.
• Mysterious Past: Fans have been wildly speculating over just who and what he is. The fact that his facial scars seem to be identical to the scars that killed Ssael only adds fuel to the fire. Chapter 11 ends with Lady Ilganyag revealing they have a history together, and saying that an unspecified "they" turned Murkoph into the monster he is today in order to keep them apart. Murkoph has no idea what she's talking about. Word of God is:
  Murkoph is not Ssael, but Murkoph is or was Ssaelit.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Seems to have some degree of Healing Factor; when Sette slices open one of his scars, it's perfectly healed by the next page. The fact that his body is covered in stitches seems to imply that he has also been dismembered at least once.
• Off with His Head!: His neck is encircled with stitches, implying that he's been decapitated in the past.
  • Word of God has confirmed that this has happened to him. Multiple times, at that.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: He has blood-red eyes. They even seem to glow on occasion.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Murkoph was locked in the Khert for who knows how long. This was presumably meant to lock him him away from the world. Then Sette, falling for his charm, set him free...
• Serial Killer: Heavily implied by the number of female ghosts near him, who he refers to as "old girlfriends", as well as a strong implication that he's also a rapist.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Although he mixes it with rather crass language.
• Sophisticated as Hell: He uses highly sophisticated language and poetic speech patterns, but makes liberal use of slang and vulgarities as well.
• The Undead: Appears to be, given his grey pallor and the fact that some of his body parts look like they're held on by stitches. Unlike Duane, however, he is very well-preserved.
• Villain Has a Point: After Duane gets the better of him and starts angsting over yet another horrid revelation, Murkoph berates him for it and reminds him that for all the misery and mystery that plague the former's existence, he still has the most precious thing in all the world: Life.
• Villain Teleportation: He has access to the same teleportation trick, called offsetting, that Bastion does. It's possible this is due to his mysterious association with Lady Ilganyag.
• Would Hurt a Child: Combined with I'm a Humanitarian — he has no qualms about taking a bite out of Sette.

Uaid

Uaid

Vienne Quigley's never completed masterwork, a pymaric construct with an artificially crafted intelligence built out of happy memories and the remains of a mountain ogre child. Matty sees Uaid as his little brother, and Vienne called him her son, but most see him only as an incomplete tool whose value lies in being taken apart to understand the field spreader Vienne developed.

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• Benevolent A.I.: Uaid was brought to life using only joyful and kind memories from the Khert to program his personality, and he loves his family even if his brother is the only one who recognizes him as a person. Vienne built his personality a specific way, and it shows. He's such a sweet boy that when he sacrifices himself to save his brother, his death releases the little squid-fish ghosts associated with innocence, which rarely make their way out of the Khert.
• Big Damn Heroes: When Jivi goes to get Uaid to rescue the Quigleys right in the nick of time, he had no ability to read anything on the control panel; Uaid brought himself and Jivi, understanding enough of what Jivi was saying to realize something was endangering his brother.
• Big Little Brother: Matty considers Uaid, the giant construct his mother made out of a baby mountain ogre, his little brother. Matty and his friends can fit in Uaid's hand, though most consider Uaid nothing but a tool despite his being sentient.
• Kill the Cutie: The Lions of Mercy drop an allepakh on Uaid that Uaid swallows; the resulting explosion knocks his limbs off, and the reaction in the Khert causes his First Materials to be reassessed by the Khert and turned into normal earth, destroying the spellwork that composes him.
• Living MacGuffin: Alderode, Cresce and the Black Tongues all want him to study the field spreader that allows the Anti-Magic properties of his first materials to be applied to his non first materials. Alderode would also accept him being destroyed to keep that knowledge out of Crescian hands.
• Our Ogres Are Hungrier: The Ogres are all long dead and their bodies make up the continent, but Uaid was made using one of their bodies; it's theorized that his like of swallowing things, from fish and birds to humans, is a vestigial urge from his mountain ogre days. Since he's been hollowed out, throwing people and animals down his gullet just puts them in a protected room.

First Silver Weapon

First Silver Weapon/Sessine's Marrow

A powerful weapon wanted by many parties, it was created by the Black Tongue Delicieu.

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• And I Must Scream: It's made from the slaves taken by the Red Berry Boys, kept alive and in agony to serve as incubators for the First Silver. Their pain acts as a beacon to "ghosts" from the khert—memories of pain and agony—and draws them to it, making the weapon even more powerful.
• Bioweapon Beast: The First Silver Weapon is a magical eel-like Weapon of Mass Destruction built of thorny First Silver, human flesh, any materials it consumes, and memories of pain and suffering. It seeks out and perpetuates pain and despair in its victims before tearing them to pieces.
• The Dragon: It acts as this to Delicieu, its creator, whom it obeys for the promise of avenging its pain upon the world.
• Eldritch Abomination: Not only does the weapon just look horrifying on its own—an abomination made of gore, hands, eyes, and thorns—but it was grown inside still-living humans, and is fueled by vengeful ghosts summoned from the underlying framework of the world. It's also claimed that the silver itself is the marrow of Lady Ilganyag's hollowed silver bones, the thing fully trapping her in the Khert, as her bones could no longer support her weight in the physical world.
• Emotion Eater: It feeds of off negative emotions or memories of pain, anger, hate, fear and misery. The more negative emotions around, the more ghosts swarm to it, the more powerful it gets.
• Many Spirits Inside of One: The First Silver is controlled by the "ghosts"—aka painful memories of the deceased—of multiple people.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: The humans it was created from are still alive inside it, powering it like a beating heart. Killing them weakens it, but doesn't destroy it.
• Tortured Abomination: The khert preserves memories forever, even if they're memories of terrible things. This means, memories of agony exist forever, seemingly without purpose. The First Silver is controlled by the "ghosts" created from those memories, who want to share their pain with the world.

Lord Beadman

Lord Jab Beadman

The real power behind the throne in Sharteshane, a former ganglord whose bought himself nobility and put a puppet king on the throne. His company, Beadman's Betters, sells all sorts of things all through Kasslyne.

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• Puppet King: Beadman placed his own puppet king on the throne.
• Rags to Riches: Beadman started out as a cutthroat gangster, he's now the most powerful and rich man in the country. He's still a cutthroat gangster, but he can just afford to pay others to do most of the actual killing these days, while he focuses on running his corrupt company and country.

Ruffles

Miss Ruffles/HcH’stefaacsth

Pink Beetle Princess

A two-toe living with her people in the Inaktown beneath Litriya Shrine.

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• Break the Cutie: Ruffles is deeply upset when her brother and the other adolescent Inak tell her off for befriending humans, she goes upstairs during the attack on Litriya after the Two-Toes were ordered to go back to their Inaktown and ends up locked in a closet where she cries pounding on the door and rejects her heritage calling herself "Ruffles the human girl" as she calls for help. When she gets out and returns to the Inaktown it is to find it destroyed and her family and people dead. Her friends find her collapsed on a floating piece of debris telling them that the others sunk down.
• Lizard Folk: A pink Inak, a species that looks like bipedal lizards.
• Sole Survivor: The sole Inak to survive the attack on Litriya Shrine. All the rest were killed by the Aldish invaders, blown up by the secret bomb underneath the shrine, or drowned by the resulting flood of water.

Nanna

"Nanna"

The matriarch of the Inak living in the Inaktown beneath Litriya Shrine.

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• Apron Matron: Nanna has long been the stern matriarch of the band of the Children of Shaensigin beneath Litriya and keeps her clan in line even though the adolescents males are biting at the bit wanting to follow their instincts and become wandering warriors, which their current situation does not allow. Unfortunately she's too ill and bedridden to whip them into shape by the time Sette's party arrives at the shrine which results in tragedy.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She is the last member of her clan who remembers the time before their traditional homes were unearthed and destroyed by the Crescians, she remembers the forced Red Marches that decimated her peoples and their battles to try and keep their homelands alongside Shaensigin. After her people tried to settle on the riverbank she made the mistake of trusting a human, which resulted in her mouth being sewn shut with metal wire and being left to starve to death. This all informs her ways of protecting her surviving clan members as their matriarch.
• Granny Classic: A little near blind old lady who acts as the grandmother for her whole clan and is always there to give cuddles and tell stories to the little ones. Her home is a place where guest rights are sacred and traditions are upheld.
• Lizard Folk: A deep pink Inak with beautiful purple ruffles and frill.
• Only Known By His Nickname: Her Inak name is unknown, only the nickname humans came up with for her.

Flann

Flann

An Inak revolutionary who chose to take up arms in order to try and force Queen Sonorie to give the Inak rights in Cresce after General Bell forced them into camps.

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• Enemy Mine: May have started out on opposing sides from Toma, a Crescian guard, but as soon as Toma makes it clear Bell is responsible for the murder that sparked the crackdown on the Inak, Flann redirects his forces to rescue Toma from Bell's men and personally tricks Bell into a lethal trap.
• Face Death with Dignity: When Flann's group realizes they probably won't make it out of Morstorben he directs them to "sell [their] lives dearly", because they came there for a reason.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: The slashed battle scars across Flann's face are distinctly different from the unsettling intentional scaring that marks Prakhuta as a pariah.
• Handicapped Badass: Flann is one of the most experienced and effective fighters in the revolutionary force, and is missing an arm.
• Horrible Judge of Character: In his desperation Flann chose to trust and follow Prakhuta to try and save his people, even though Prakhuta was intentionally marked as a pariah by Inak elders to ensure he'd be Obviously Evil at a glance and was open about being dedicated to a god the Inak straight up call The Betrayer.
• Lizard Folk: A blue Inak, a species which looks like bi-pedal lizards.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Unlike some of the others following the "Red Pariah", Flann refuses to attack non-combatants, allows those who put down their weapons to flee, and honestly wants an audience with the Queen to force her to stop the legal attacks on his people. He is not out for revenge, is honorable, and does his best to lead the other revolutionaries to follow his ideals. Unfortunately he's operating under a misconception about the amount of power the Queen holds, as she tried to prevent the attacks on the Inak before they even happened; she was undermined by General Bell, who was behind the attack with he framed the Inak for in order to give him an excuse to enact a genocide against them.

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