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Spectral Knights
Leoric
Voiced by: Neil Ross
Totem: Lion, representing his courageous leadership.
Power: Power Staff of Wisdom - Produces cryptic advice regarding wise actions to take regarding the present or future situation.
- Big Brother Mentor: To Feryl.
- Blue Is Heroic: He wears blue armor and leads the good guys.
- Brutal Honesty: When not being cryptic, his staff can be painfully frank.
- Cryptically Unhelpful Answer: His Wisdom Staff has a habit of answering questions in a vague manner that doesn't become clear until later.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: He is close friends with Feryl.
- King of Beasts: He has a lion totem to represent his role as the Spectral Knights' leader.
- The Leader: He is the leader of the Spectral Knights.
- Love at First Sight: He falls in love with Fletchen at first sight, and the two of them begin a relationship.
- The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: The Sun Imp Growl (who can control cats) proves able to use his powers on Leoric in lion form.
- The Owl-Knowing One: His Wisdom Staff predicts the future and has an owl as its avatar.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: He is Prince of New Valarak and actively fights against the Darkling Lords as well as helping out the less fortunate.
- Shapeshifter Mode Lock: He becomes trapped in his lion form in the episode "Lion Hunt".
- Weapon Specialization: His main weapon is a whip.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: His greatest fear had been old age, until an episode where he became an old man and learned he could still be useful.
Ectar
Voiced by: Michael McConnohie
Totem: Fox, representing his cleverness in sensing an ambush during the test.
Power: Activate and Control Vehicles. In the comic, his Lancer Cycle has the Power of Protection—a magical shield.
- Arch-Enemy: As a expert lawman, he and Reekon have been Worthy Opponents to each other for years.
- Blue Is Heroic: He's a good guy whose armor has parts colored blue.
- Cool Bike: His Lancer Cycle is a motorcycle-like vehicle equipped with a battering lance, a photon cannon and a magical force field.
- Cunning Like a Fox: His cleverness earns him a fox totem.
- Enhanced Interrogation Techniques: He's willing to manhandle and frighten stool pigeons and minor crooks to get info he wants. He's also willing to bribe them if that works better.
- The Lancer: He is Leoric's second-in-command.
- Smith of the Yard: Criminals and other low-lifes are seen to recognize him on sight.
- Wolverine Claws: His weapon is sort of a dual-bladed handheld katar.
Feryl
Voiced by: Beau Weaver
Totem: Wolf, representing his sharp senses and tracking skills.
Power: Activate and Control vehicles. In the comic, his Capture Chariot has the Power of Fire.
- The Baby of the Bunch: He and Arzon are the youngest of the Spectral Knights.
- Enhanced Archaic Weapon: Feryl wields an odd two-pronged dagger which can make a spark between its prongs that he uses at one point to make light.
- Foil: Feryl is a foil to Mortdredd, as both are highly loyal and close to their leaders. His relationship with Leoric is healthier than Mortdredd's with Darkstorm, though.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: He is close friends with Leoric.
- Noble Wolf: He is a hero with a wolf totem.
- Super-Senses: He earned his wolf totem by having acute senses in human form. Naturally, as a wolf his senses are far better than human.
- 10-Minute Retirement: He temporarily quits the Spectral Knights in "Feryl Steps Out", after he starts feeling like a screw-up.
Cryotek
Voiced by: Bernard Erhard
Totem: Bear, representing his raw physical strength and endurance.
Power: Power Staff of Strength - Summons forth an archer who fires a powerfully explosive energy arrow. In the comics, this is just Super-Strength.
- Arch-Enemy: He's got a combative past with Cindarr.
- Bears Are Bad News: A heroic variant. His totem is a bear and using it is certainly bad news for the Darkling Lords.
- Boisterous Bruiser: He's physically the strongest of the knights as well as good-natured.
- Epic Flail: He uses a flail as his main weapon.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: A mild case. He tends to think of himself as stodgy and slow of foot and speech, which bothers him at times.
- Primary-Color Champion: He's a heroic character clad in red and blue armor.
- Real Men Wear Pink: One episode shows that he knows how to sew.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: He is king of Northalia and aids in the battle against the Darkling Lords.
- Ship Tease: He and Galadria are strongly implied to have been in a long-term relationship as of the pilot episode.
- Split Personality: In one episode, after accidentally absorbing Cravex's phylot totem in addition to his own, he develops a power-hungry second personality who steals power staffs from the others and tries to destroy Darkstorm and the Darkling Lords for good. It's not a Superpowered Evil Side, since they both share the benefits of having two totems.
- Super-Strength: In the comics, rather than summoning an archer, his power staff temporarily bestows Super-Strength upon the user, sufficient to cause concussive blasts by clapping his hands.
Witterquick
Voiced by: Jim Cummings
Totem: The cheetah, representing his fleetness of foot.
Power: Power Staff of Light Speed - Allows the user to fly incredibly fast. In the comic, this is just straight-up Super-Speed.
- Battle Boomerang: His weapon.
- Deadpan Snarker: The most sardonic of the Spectral Knights.
- Flight: In the cartoon, the staff bestows Super-Speed Flight to the user. The duration is unclear, possibly until they reach their destination or set foot on the ground again.
- Hot-Blooded: He tends to be impetuous and quick to act as well as move.
- Le Parkour: Not only can he run, but he's also an expert at evasion, pulling stunts like running up walls or flips.
- Real Men Wear Pink: The gray/white parts of his armor are a grayish-pink on the toy.
- Red Is Heroic: Most of his armor is red.
- Red Ones Go Faster: His armor is mostly red and he's the Spectral Knight with super speed.
- Super-Speed:
- In the cartoon, his staff's power combines this with Flight.
- In the comic, his staff gives him Super-Speed for a limited amount of time.
- Whatever continuity he's in, his totem is the cheetah. Merklynn describes it as the fastest animal in creation, which may mean that Prysmos cheetahs are faster than Earth cheetahs. Or not.
Arzon
Voiced by: Hal Rayle
Totem: Eagle, to commemorate his ingenuity in taking flight for his portion of the test.
Power: Power Staff of Knowledge - Allows the user to summon forth The Bearer of Knowledge, who will explain a subject in detail. In the comics, this knowledge is instead put directly into his head.
- The Baby of the Bunch: He and Feryl are the youngest of the Spectral Knights.
- Blue Is Heroic: He is a good guy who wears mostly blue armor.
- Carry a Big Stick: He uses some kind of flanged mace as his weapon.
- Friend to All Living Things: He is opposed to hunting animals for sport and feels it's immoral to kill an animal for a live-saving quest item.
- The McCoy: Possibly the least cynical of the Knights, he won't compromise on his beliefs, even when lives are on the line.
- The Omniscient: The Bearer of Knowledge can provide information about anything, though his summon time is limited.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: His father is King Tazlon, though it's unclear where his kingdom is located.
- The Strategist: His toy profile implies this. We don't really see it in the cartoon, apart from a tendency to think outside the box.
- Super-Strength: For an eagle anyway, as he can pick up a man and still fly in that form.
- Token Flyer: Arzon is the only one of the Spectral Knights who can fly.
Galadria
Voiced by: Susan Blu
Totem: Dolphin, representing her cleverness underwater.
Power: Activate and Control vehicles (in the comic, she also gets the Shield of Healing)
- Arch-Enemy: She and Virulina were foes long before the premiere episode.
- Blue Is Heroic: She wears bluish armor and is on the Spectral Knights' side.
- Healing Hands: During the Talisman arc of the comics, she and Galadria demand to be given powers equal to the male knights for the arduous quest. Merklynn consents, giving Galadria a Power Shield with the ability of Healing.
- Ship Tease: She and Cryotek are strongly implied to have been in a long-term relationship as of the pilot episode.
- The Smurfette Principle: She is the sole female member of the Spectral Knights.
- Textile Work Is Feminine: Averted. When she's briefly enslaved and forced to sew, she has no skill at it. You know who does? Cryotek!
- Toyless Toyline Character: The only member of the Spectral Knights who did not have her own toy.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: The magical vehicles she can control are extremely useful—but unlike Feryl and Ectar, she doesn't get a vehicle of her own and has to borrow (or swipe) one. Getting a Power Shield in the comics helps mitigate this.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: When bitten by one of Cravex's spiders of Fear, she's shown to be (justly) terrified of tsunamis.
Darkling Lords
Darkstorm
Voiced by: Chris Latta
Totem: Mollusk, a Prysmos-ian shelled creature with acid spit, representing his climbing skills and...sliminess.
Power: Power Staff of Decay - Rapidly ages the target, which the staff may also reverse.
- Acid Attack: In mollusk form he has acid spit.
- Bad Boss: Played with. Darkstorm mistreats and yells at his underlings. He even refused to share the spoils of war after taking over the Spectral Knights. Mortdredd, his most loyal servant, receives most of the abuse. However, in one episode, Darkstorm has the ultimate power and wants to reward his most loyal subjects: Mortdredd with servants, Cindarr with superior intelligence, and Cravex with serenity. Of course, that didn't stop him from punishing Virulina, Reekon and Lexor just because they felt Darkstorm hasn't compensated them enough.
- Beard of Evil: He is a bearded villain.
- Big Bad: As the leader of the villainous Darkling Lords who schemes to rule over everyone else, he qualifies as the series' central villain.
- Everyone Has Standards: The guy wants to conquer the world, not wreck it. When he thought he accidentally set forth the apocalypse he was aghast. Recognizing that Merklynn was the only one who could stop it, he set the wizard free from Wizard's Jail without delay.
- Evil Eyebrows: Arched like bat wings.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: Merklynn's Orb and the Omnipoticron aren't evil in and of themselves, but when he manages to swipe them for himself, he gets a little too big for his britches and unknowingly casts a massive, apocalyptic... safeguard Merklynn had put in for such an occasion. As Merklynn chides him for his foolishness, Darkstorm actually looks ashamed for a change.
- Evil Overlord: He's a villain who desires to rule over everyone.
- Evil Virtues: He rewards honest loyalty, and he's sensible enough to work with the Spectral Knights against more dangerous threats.
- Green and Mean: He wears green armor and is the main villain.
- Make Them Rot: His main magic power is to make things decay.
- Mean Boss: He has a tendency to be insulting and ungrateful to his minions.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: A character with a name like Darkstorm can't believably be anything other than a bad guy.
- Rapid Aging: When used on living beings, his decay spell causes his victims to become very elderly.
- Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: By the time the series begins, he apparently has a number of slaves, and schemes to get more.
- Wall Crawl: He can do this in Mollusk form.
Reekon
Voiced by: Roscoe Lee Browne
Totem: Lizard, representing his reptilian stealth and treachery.
Power: Activate and Control vehicles. His Dagger Assault has the power of Magic Extraction.
- Arch-Enemy: As a master thief, he and Ectar have been Worthy Opponents to each other for years.
- Beard of Evil: He's a bad guy with a beard.
- De-power: His vehicle has a chamber which can strip a Visionary of their powers—or restore them.
- Gadgeteer Genius: In the Age of Science, he used gadgets for his thefts. In the Age of Magic, he's Darkstorm's chief technologist, working primarily with Magitek.
- Only in It for the Money: He only works for Darkstorm because he pays him. At one point, he mutters to himself that he'd willingly work for Leoric if he could provide a better offer.
- Serrated Blade of Pain: He uses a sword with a serrated blade as his weapon.
- Villainous Widow's Peak: He's a bad guy with a widow's peak.
Mortdredd
Voiced by: Jonathan Harris
Totem: Beetle, representing how he's usually on the ground licking Darkstorm's boots.
Power: Activate and Control vehicles. His Sky Claw has the Power of Flight.
- Beard of Evil: Yet another bearded Darkling Lord.
- Berserk Button: He reacts very badly to people insulting Darkstorm.
- Butt-Monkey: He suffers a lot.
- Flight: His Sky Claw is the only vehicle in the cartoon which can do this, though some vehicles have independent flying attack pods.
- Hidden Depths: After being shown a vision of his ideal world—one where he has a group of loyal sycophants who worship him as he does Darkstorm—Mortredd gets lost in thought, hand on his chin as though the idea had never occurred to him before. Darkstorm has to yell to snap him out of it. This bit of characterization doesn't get followed up on, alas.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: His name sounds like a portmanteau of the French word mort (meaning "death") and the word dread, in addition to being very close to Mordred of Arthurian Legend. Then again he isn't really the best fighter of the group.
- Sinister Scimitar: Even though he calls it a scythe, his weapon more closely resembles one of these.
- Spell My Name With An S: Mortdred or Mortdredd? The latter appears in internal documents, the former appears everywhere else.
- The Creon: He's a total sycophant Yes-Man with exceedingly Undying Loyalty to Darkstorm and will do anything to remain his second-in-command.
- Token Flyer: He's got the only magical vehicle that can fly, though there were plans for the Spectral Knights to get a flying vehicle in the toyline.
- Undying Loyalty: Darkstorm's backside probably has a permanent imprint of his lips.
- Yes-Man: He is exceedingly loyal to Darkstorm.
Cindarr
Voiced by: Peter Cullen
Totem: Gorilla, representing his brute strength and climbing ability.
Power: Power Staff of Destruction - Summons forth a mighty beast which destroys everything around it for the summon duration.
- Anti-Villain: He often comes off as less evil than the other Darkling Lords, only serving Darkstorm because of an oath he's taken.
- Arch-Enemy: He and Cryotek fought numerous times prior to the series.
- Beard of Evil: Like most of the Darkling Lords, he's a villain who has a beard.
- Berserk Button: He hates it when people call him stupid.
- Big Eater: What sold him on joining up with Darkstorm was the promise that said warlord's castle had really good food.
- The Brute: Serves this role among the Darkling Lords.
- Carry a Big Stick: His weapon is a club.
- Dumb Muscle: He's the strongest of the Darkling Lords, but also isn't very bright.
- Friend to All Living Things: He often stops what he's doing to help out endangered animals.
- Hidden Depths: He's clearly self-aware of his lack of intelligence, as his ideal world is one where he's a genius.
- I Gave My Word: Unlike most of the other Darkling Lords, he keeps his promises, even to his enemies.
- Killer Gorilla: His totem is a gorilla.
- Minion with an F in Evil: He tends to be too nice to be a bad guy, at least when animals are involved.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: He's a villain who wears red and black armor.
- Spikes of Villainy: His armor has spikes.
- Summon Magic: As mentioned above, Destruction summons a demonic creature to wreck everything. Notably, he mentions at one point that the creature gets grumpy if it doesn't get to destroy stuff, indicating that it has a personality of its own, and later proudly mentions that he's been teaching it tricks.
- Wild Child: Implicitly. He has problems speaking clearly and mentions that his home is the jungle. We don't get much detail about his past, though.
- You No Take Candle: He usually talks like this. He can speak somewhat more articulately, but it seems to be a strain for him.
Cravex
Voiced by: Chris Latta
Totem: Phylot, a Prysmos-ian flying scavenger, in commemoration of how he swiped his fleeing enemies' weapons to sell later.
Power: Power Staff of Fear - Summons forth a spider-like creature which cannot be destroyed, and inflicts terrifying mental illusions upon whomever it bites.
- Beard of Evil: He's a bearded villain like most of the Darkling Lords.
- Creepy High-Pitched Voice: He has the same shrill voice Chris Latta used for his roles as Starscream, Cobra Commander and D'Compose.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Cravex is some level of angry all the time. Life itself seems to be his Berserk Button.
- Hidden Depths: One episode hints that his greatest wish is for a world where nothing whatsoever can irritate him. It looks like a pretty nice place, actually.
- Implacable Man: The Spider of Fear can't be destroyed, and attempts to chop it up only lead to it multiplying. Fortunately, all the copies vanish when one of them gets a bite in.
- Psycho for Hire: He's a madman who relishes causing mayhem.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: He's a villain in red and black armor.
- Token Flyer: The only one of the Darkling Lords who can fly in totem form.
- The Starscream: Not surprising as Crevex is voiced by none other than the original Starscream's, voice actor Chris Latta. He has no problem challenging Darkstorm, what is unique about him however is that he's not as cowardly, as the actual Starscream, it also helps that rage-filled berserker who can just barely contain his temper.
Lexor
Voiced by: Michael McConnohie
Totem: Armadillo, representing how he turns cowardice into a defensive art.
Power: Power Staff of Invulnerability - Creates a large energy shield that completely negates one attack of any sort.
- Barrier Warrior: He is able to produce an impenetrable protective barrier using his invulnerability power staff.
- Beard of Evil: As with most of the Darkling Lords, he's a bad guy who is bearded.
- Butt-Monkey: He always loses fights that he doesn't run from.
- Compulsive Liar: Constantly lies in an effort to present himself in a courageous and noble light.
- Dirty Coward: Prone to retreating just to save his own skin.
- Hooks and Crooks: Lexor uses a double-bladed hooked dagger as a weapon.
- Living Lie Detector: As a practiced liar he's skilled at sensing prevarication in others.
- Miles Gloriosus: He'll throw insults and threats, but withers at so much as a nasty glare.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: Like Cravex and Cindarr, he's a villain who wears red and black armor.
- The Starscream: Even more so than Crevex, and he's actually voiced by the original Starscream's, voice actor Chris Latta. Lexor frequently insults Darkstorm behind his back, hinting that the Darkling Lords ought to rebel and put him in charge. This lasts until someone, usually Darkstorm, challenges him...and then the cowering starts again.
Virulina
Voiced by: Jennifer Darling
Totem: Shark, representing the vicious killing instinct she showed underwater.
Power: Activate and Control vehicles. In the comic, she receives the Power Shield of Disease.
- Arch-Enemy: She and Galadria were foes long before the premiere episode.
- Blackmail: Apparently one of her main sources of income is blackmailing people.
- Master of Disguise: She frequently disguises to trick others.
- Plaguemaster: During the Talisman arc of the comics, she and Galadria demand to be given powers equal to the male knights for the arduous quest. Merklynn consents, giving Virulina a Power Shield with the ability of Disease.
- The Smurfette Principle: She is the only female among the Darkling Lords.
- Threatening Shark: Her totem is a shark.
- Toyless Toyline Character: As with Galadria, she never got her own toy.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Like Galadria, she got the power to control vehicles, but no vehicle. As mentioned, the comics give her a Power Shield.
Other Characters
Merklynn
Voiced by: Roscoe Lee Browne
- Above Good and Evil: At the start of the series, his only concern is restoring magic. As such, he wasn't above aiding the evil Darkling Lords as well as the heroic Spectral Knights. His relationship with the Knights improves over the course of the series after the Darkling Lords attempted a coup against him one too many times and the Spectral Knights prove consistently helpful. He also helps out against genuinely dangerous and evil wizards and other threats.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: As his relationship with the Spectral Knights grows, he becomes closer to one of these, listening to their requests more often and even advising them. He still wants quests in return for favors, however.
- Toyless Toyline Character: He did not get his own toy, though the unproduced Iron Mountain playset was to feature a hologram of him.
- Tuckerization: He was apparently named after Hasbro sculptor Bill Merklein, who developed the holography that was used in the toyline.
- Wizard Beard: He's a wizard with a long, white beard.
- Wizards Live Longer: He's been around since the first Age of Magic, which happened to be 7,000 years before the series' events.
Bogavas
Voiced by: Jim Cummings
- Ambiguously Evil: It isn't clear exactly whose side he's on, but it's hinted that he would have been a source of trouble for the Spectral Knights and Merklynn later down the line.
- Master of Illusion: Bogavas claims that this is the only kind of magic he can perform. Merklynn tests him using an analysis spell and he appears to pass...but there's that whole "illusion" thing...
- Psychotic Smirk: See for yourself. He pulls this baby out at the end of the episode where he's convinced the knights he's not a threat. Hmm.
- Unexplained Accent: For some reason, he sports a Cockney accent.
