S-Class Threats
Major dangers that present threats to entire Earths, or worse, all of them.
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The Taught
The organization controlled by Teacher, an ex-Birdcage inmate and cell leader. It was built using the remnants of Cauldron's infrastructure and aims to use their resources and Teacher's power to obtain total control of all Earths. Teacher
Benjamin Terrell
A parahuman formerly imprisoned in the Birdcage for engineering assassinations. His power allows him to give Tinker or Thinker powers to others, or enhance existing powers, at the cost of slowly diminishing their intelligence and independence; at high levels of use it turns them into mindless thralls. After Gold Morning he managed to take over an empty world for himself, as well as co-opt Cauldron's now defunct headquarters. For tropes related to his appearance in Worm, see here.Classification: Trump, Thinker, Tinker, Master (?)
- Big Bad Wannabe: He's foreshadowed as a major antagonist in the early chapters of Ward, and many of the major conflicts—the Fallen, Goddess' attack on the parahuman prison, the Order of Four's alliance with Cradle and March—can be traced back to his machinations to set off the end of the world again. However, he's ultimately defeated right before he can take control of the Titan apocalypse and is arrested offscreen, with it being heavily implied that the Simurgh orchestrated his downfall as a means of securing her own influence over the Titans.
- The Chessmaster: Works behind the scenes to become a major power following the chaos created after Golden Morning. Throughout Ward he's seen to be quietly recruiting specific parahumans whose powers he finds useful, out-maneuvering rivals like Goddess without too much direct conflict, using his vast resources to inflame divisions within other teams and organizations, and subtly works to subvert alliances with other Earths, all for the purpose of gaining control of the entire multiverse.
- Climax Boss: Like Jack Slash before him, Teacher is not the Final Boss of the serial. However, as one of the longest-running and impactful antagonists in the series, the war against him in arcs 15 and 16 involves the culmination of plenty of ongoing plot threads while directly leading into the emergence of the true antagonists.
- Complexity Addiction: This is still very much in evidence. No plan of Teacher's ever has the minimal possible moving parts to it and just has to have overlapping layers of plotting. Even when a plan is working perfectly, Teacher will always try to optimize it or insert additional components that risk backfiring. Basically becoming Cauldron 2: Not Even Goodish This Time meant inheriting their torn knitting bag of complicated on top of his. True to form, the whole shebang comes crashing down on him partly because of how difficult he made it for himself, but also because rather important rogue factors worked counter expectations.
- Deal with the Devil: Recruits both parahumans and mundane people, and makes alliances almost entirely on this, promising everything from their heart's desires, simple financial and medical security, and even the multiverse itself, all while slowly and methodically taking control either through his own powers or the powers of his thralls. Best seen in interlude 13.x.
- Diabolical Mastermind: Heads one of the most powerful and subversive criminal organizations in the story. By the time of Ward it's grown to the point that he has an army of staff occupying Cauldron's old facility, and is notable enough that governments of other Earths are willing to ally with him.
- Disc-One Final Boss: After being positioned as the mastermind behind most of Earth Gimel's problems, all as a means of taking control of the shard network, Teacher is ultimately defeated before he can complete his plot, leaving Fortuna and the Simurgh to pick up the reins.
- Even Evil Has Standards: As much damage and chaos as Teacher's ultimately behind, even he draws the line at the part of March's plan calling for messing with the time bubbles. However, later revelations indicate this was just because he didn't want Kronos around as competition for control of the Titan networks.
- The Heavy: Shares the role with Amy. The Red Queen is a far more personal antagonist to Victoria, but Teacher is the driving force behind much of the danger faced by Gimel, whether it be the terrorist attacks committed by the Fallen or the beginnings of war with Earth Cheit. While he is not directly responsible for beginning the shard apocalypse—though not for lack of trying—it was his schemes that brought events to the tipping point for the end of the world to begin again.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Teacher tries to paint his subversive attempts to conquer multiple worlds as a good thing in the long run. Since reality is breaking, and the Shards are going to converge, he believes that with everyone and everything under him, he'll be able to salvage some sense of order and survival from the resulting disasters. It's noted that although Contessa admits to it being the "objectively best outcome," no one—even her—thinks it's a particularly good one that's worth allowing, as Teacher is blatantly only concerned with power for himself.
- People Puppets: While Teacher's power doesn't normally work like this, in the shard realm, he is able to direct his thralls around in such a manner, with connections explicitly compared to puppet strings allowing the apparent fusion of Teacher and his fifteen-foot tall Shard's avatar to move them.
- Power at a Price: All the powers he gives come with a corresponding penalty to independent thought. At low levels and infrequent use this acts like a mildly addictive drug, at high levels it reduces them to mindless thralls.
- Super-Empowering: He can grant a wide range of Tinker and Thinker powers.
- Villain Ball: He's prone to holding back against certain powerful capes when he has the upper hand, in the hopes of being able to recruit/enslave them to his side. This has the tendency to backfire when he loses the advantage as seen when Contessa is freed, and her actions start turning the tide of the assault against him, as well as calling off an assault on a pin-downed Legend by the Dragonslayers, only for Sveta and a Harbinger clone to rescue him.
Lieutenants
The Overseer
The Overseer (formerly the Custodian)
The former keeper of Cauldron's secret facilities, the Custodian has continued her role since Teacher has taken them over, renaming herself the Overseer. For tropes pertaining to her appearance in Worm, see here.Classification: Breaker/Shaker/Mover/Stranger
- Badass Boast: Despite not being able to talk, she delivers one heck of a boast when visiting Cheit with Teacher"You wanted me to be a housewife, and I am," she said, to the void, her voice rising. "I maintain my home. You wanted me to be meek, never heard, and I am. You wanted me to be nothing and no one and I am!"She liked to think the choir carried that voice higher, rather than drown it out. It didn't matter. She had come to terms with her silent voice long ago. To accept was one of the first things she had learned."I am a creator of my own kingdom. I am free. I’m a woman more powerful than any of you. I’m everything you wanted yet everything you feared, and I can be both because..."She filled the space, sweeping past people on either side of the street, people on the stairs, people on the dais."...I am everything everywhere."
- Best Served Cold: Helps Teacher due to her hatred of Earth Cheit for selling her to Cauldron in the first place.
- The Constant: She refers to herself as this, in regards to Cauldron and its base.
- The Dragon: She serves this role for Teacher, especially in the later arcs of the story.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: A former Cauldron employee tells her that as far as he's concerned while the rest of Cauldron might've believed they did terrible things in service of a greater good, she just does what she does out of base sadism.
- Self-Duplication: Her power lets her duplicate her nearly incorporeal form.
- The Speechless: She cannot talk on account of being made of air.
- Stay in the Kitchen: She was forced into the role of a housewife in her previous life on Earth Cheit. As she notes, she ended up serving in that role anyway as the Custodian.
- Token Evil Teammate: She served this role in a downplayed capacity for Cauldron. While Cauldron certainly operated in a moral gray area, she partook in their atrocities without any care for any good that could arise from them, simply enjoying the newfound freedom that her powers grant her.
Ingenue
Miranda Webb
A former cell block leader in the Birdcage who possesses a strong obsession with Chevalier. For tropes pertaining to her appearance in Worm see here.Classification: Trump (Striker sub-classification removed by enhancements)
- Consummate Liar: She doesn't miss a beat:“If you use your power to try to affect mine-”“Requires touch,” Ingenue lied.
- Living Doll Collector: She collects parahumans and slowly brings them under her control using her power so that they do as she wishes. Of course, she has little interest in the true "dolls," of Teacher's thralls, who have no personality to speak of. She refers to her parahuman thralls as her "boys."
- Make It Look Like an Accident: She rose to power in the Birdcage thanks to her rivals suffering "accidents" that were engineered by her.
- Man of Kryptonite: Under Teacher's tutelage, she's expanded and refined her Super-Empowering ability to either "overclock" powers (making their wielder wildly unstable and harming friend and foe alike) or completely drain their strength away by boosting their control to levels that effectively lock access to shards for a short time. It is implied that she was the one who managed to bring Valkyrie down to normal with this ability, making her bad news for any Parahuman who gets in her way.
- Never My Fault: The interlude with her POV, has her attributing all the deaths and injuries that happen to everyone who gets in her way to being "mere coincidence," with her being an innocent bystander even in her own mind.
- Super-Empowering: Her power allows her to amplify certain aspects of a subject's power (usually its strength) at the expense of another (usually the degree of control). Thanks to Teacher, she can now do this with finer control than before as well as at range (where she required physical contact previously).
- Teens Are Monsters: She terrified the PRT's Thinkers when interviewed after her arrest as a teenager, getting herself sent to the Birdcage.
- The Vamp: She uses her power to manipulate male parahumans into doing as she wishes.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Being under the effects of her power for a prolonged period of time leads those affected to become homicidal.
The Pharmacist
One of Teacher's minions, though not a thrall, posing as a pharmacist in a parahuman prison. Her power lets her light other people's powers on fire. Purple fire.
Classification: Blaster/Trump
- The Dragon: Teacher's most present and competent underling throughout the early arcs of the story. Unlike most in his faction, she doesn't seem to be a thrall or even under the benefits of his power.
- Glass Cannon: Her powers can easily nullify somebody as dangerous as Goddess without even trying, but once Victoria finally manages to get within striking distance in their second fight, it's over in a second.
- Incendiary Exponent: The nature of her Trump ability: her fires burn powers. Forcefields, emotion altering auras, Master minions, healing factors, telekinesis, all of it goes up like gasoline.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Victoria (and by extension, the narration) only ever calls her "the pharmacist". If she even has a cape name, it's never provided, and her real name likewise goes unstated.
- Playing with Fire: The Blaster part of her powers is the ability to create and control purple flames.
- Power Nullifier: Doesn't outright deactivate powers like Hatchet Face, but she can effectively render a lot of them useless all the while burning her opponents, and is particularly effective against auras and other area-of-effects. Additionally, it seems that while using a Thinker power on her flames will not set the user's mind on fire (thankfully), it will give them a headache and not give any useful info.
- Purple Is Powerful: The flames created by her power are purple in color, and in conjunction with her ability to ignite powers she's probably one of the most dangerous pyrokinetics in the whole of the Wormverse this side of Lung.
- Required Secondary Powers: She can't be burned by any fire she creates, and despite their properties they aren't self-propagating. Unfortunately, the same safeguards don't apply to her allies, which makes for an exploitable weakness when she battles the heroes alongside Lung.
The Dragonslayers
Saint
Geoffrey Pellick (Saint)
A mercenary who operated Tinkertech stolen from Dragon in the years leading up to Gold Morning despite not having any powers of his own. Devoting himself and his team, the Dragonslayers, to stopping what he perceived as Dragon's threat to society, he actually owed his capabilities to Teacher and joined his organization following Gold Morning. For tropes pertaining to his appearance in Worm see here.- Enemy Mine: Saint views Dragon as an existential threat to the human race, and his partner Dobrynja mentions being as scared of her as the Simurgh or Sleeper. However, Saint and Dragon are able to join forces to fight the Machine Army after it makes its way to Gimel.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He becomes visibly angry even through his Mini-Mecha Powered Armour, after Swansong kills Mags.
- Light Is Not Good: Wears powered armor themed as an angel of light, but is one of Teacher's minions.
- Single-Issue Wonk: He really only cares about stopping Dragon and nothing else.
- Unfortunate Names: He finds his name to be awkward when visiting Earth Cheit, especially when they are celebrating the anniversary of a prominent saint's death.
Victory I
Saint's mech, specializing in shielding allies and controlling the battlefield.- Barrier Warrior: The mech's wings are capable of extending "wing wall" forcefields out, ironically in a fight where some of Saint's opponents are forcefield users too.
- Electrified Bathtub: At one point during the Dragonslayers' fight with the invading force, the Victory pops out a large cartridge that emits an electrical current as the damage to the base's filtration room causes water to spill everywhere, only to be stopped by Victoria and Ashley.
- Razor Wings: The Victory's forcefields are capable of slicing through metal walkways.
Mags
Mags
A friend of Saint who followed him in his crusade to protect the world from Dragon as part of the Dragonslayers.- Character Death: Swansong accidentally kills Mags by carving through the chest of her mech during the attack on the Cauldron compound, obliterating half of her in the process.
Michael III
Mags' mech, specializing in offensive capabilities.- BFS: Her primary weapon is a sword "as long as two eighteen wheelers stuck end to end."
- Sword Beam: A variant where the blade itself becomes a beam.
Dobrynja
Dobrynja/Mischa
A friend of Saint who followed him in his crusade to protect the world from Dragon as part of the Dragonslayers.- Friend-or-Idol Decision: He's faced with a choice to save Saint and allow himself to be captured by Legend or to keep fighting and let Saint die. He chooses to save Saint.
The Isaiah
Dobrynja's mech, specializing in intercepting projectile attacks and forcing opponents to keep their distance with an array.- Energy Weapon: The Isaiah's halo is capable of precision laser blasts that it automatically uses to shoot anything that gets too close to it.
- "Instant Death" Radius: Get too close the the Isaiah, and you'll find yourself bombarded with its lasers.
Ingenue's Boys
Spawner
"Nedley"
One of the hybrid Slaughterhouse 9 clones Bonesaw made, combining Crawler and Breed.
Classification: Master, Brute, Changer
- Adaptive Ability: Like Crawler, he adapts over time as he heals. He can also apply adaptations and changes to his bugs.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: For a given definition of family, he had nearly 300 "siblings" in the form of the other Slaughterhouse 9 clones (now reduced to eight or less), with Bonesaw and Jack serving as "parents" and Spawner himself considering his bugs to be his children.
- Body Horror: He takes Crawler's inhuman mutations and Breed's
Squicky power and combines them into something nightmarish. His body is a living hive for his children, allowing them to exit through sphincters all over his body as well as the traditional orifices. Given that he carries about two hundred of his bugs in him, each about the size of a lemon, releasing the whole swarm leaves him missing enough mass that he's more gap than mass, reforming his body and stretching webs of skin over gaps to compensate. - The Brute: Serves as this to Ingenue's "boys."
- Character Death: Swansong destroys 90% of his body, after which a member of the Flock finds his head and moves in for the finishing blow.
- Extra Eyes: He has numerous eyes on his face and neck, all pitch black from corner to corner.
- Face Death with Dignity: Unlike Breed and Crawler, neither of whom had a chance to realize they were actually going to die before they were dead, he has a chance to realize he's going to die and simply closes his eyes to wait for the inevitable.
- Healing Factor: He can rapidly heal like Crawler, though his healing is fueled by the flesh his bugs collect. He can also direct his bugs to his injuries to serve as resources and builders to deconstruct and replace the injured portions, a process which is faster than his normal healing.
- Humanoid Abomination: Thanks to Ingenue's influence guiding his evolution, even two years after his creation he still looks humanoid. He's still off-human enough to be alien rather than horrific, with unusual patterns to his skin (implied to be the closed openings his bugs emerge from), too many eyes, claws, and a number of other changes that make him as inhuman internally as Crawler was externally.
- Human Resources: His bugs collect the flesh of their victims and bring it into him, where he uses it to fuel his healing and adaptations.
- Primal Stance: In combat, he moves on all fours.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: To himself. He has memories from both Crawler (Ned) and Breed (Bradley), and draws on each of them as needed. Crawler is brash, aggressive, and violent, while Breed is reserved, calculating, and cowardly.
- Wolverine Claws: His internal monologue describes his hands as claws, and for good reason.
Thralled Capes
The Leper
One of Teacher's thralled capes defending the old Cauldron base.
Classification: Brute, Blaster(?)
- Healing Factor: A disgusting one that manifests as a surge of decay and congealed human sickness that eventually reforms to replace damage.
- Plaguemaster: His power lets him supercharge any diseases in someone's body for several seconds. In ordinary circumstances this can be painful and irritating but not necessarily lethal, and may even be beneficial since it completely purges the target of all their infections when it's over. But when he's encountered he's working alongside the syringe thrall, resulting in incredibly agonizing and disgusting deaths for anyone she infected.
- Your Head Asplode: After he's deemed too dangerous to leave alive, Victoria punches him in the head at full strength to put him down. Given that Victoria can bench press 14+ tons there's not a lot left afterwards.
The Syringe Thrall
One of Teacher's thralled capes defending the old Cauldron base.
Classification: Breaker, Shaker
- Body Horror: She moves on a wave of syringes that impale her feet and legs.
- Character Death: Love Lost grabs her by the shoulders and then claws her bone-deep all the way down to her hands, leaving her to bleed out.
- Medical Horror: Her power causes needles to erupt from every surface around her, creating carpets of deadly, stabbing hazards. To make things worse, every needle is laced with addictive substances and incurable terminal diseases that will eventually kill the victim.
Human Thralls
Thralls
Teacher's various minions.
Classification: Low-level Thinker or Tinker
- Beam Spam: The advantage of having a lot of low-level Tinkers is that they can mass produce a lot of exotic weaponry, allowing them to barrage enemies with lasers.
- A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: During the assault on Teacher's base, several thralled Parahumans hide among the unpowered thralls doing mundane tasks. A doctor that is more independent than the rest is then tasked to use a certain phrase to make them attack in case of an invasion.
- Dehumanizing Insult: On the receiving end of many of Teacher's normal parahuman minions, being called things like "zombies" or "dolls" right in front of them. Not that they possess enough capacity or awareness to care.
- Elite Mooks: While the majority of the Thralls are witless minions that go about their tasks with simple-mindedness, there are specialized teams that are both empowered by a boosted Teacher, and still retain their free will thanks to Black Goat undoing the negative effects.
- Empty Shell: Most are barely capable of thinking on their own, requiring direct orders from Teacher or one of his subordinates.
- In Arc 15, Dying, the group encounters a room full of thralls so far gone that they don't even register as people to the various emotion sensors in the team. When a more capable thrall "awakens" a thralled Parahuman with an incomplete trigger phrase, the rest continue their work without a care of the fight happening right under their nose.
- Mooks: Their role is to be cannon fodder for Teacher.
Titans
The result of a parahuman having a broken second trigger under the right conditions, causing them to at least partially merge with their shard and undergo extreme physical changes.Please note that all titans and their identities are Walking Spoilers, so all spoilers are off within the following folders.
As A Whole
- All Your Powers Combined: A variant. Each parahuman is given a severely truncated version of their shard's full power in order to facilitate creative tactics. The Titans receive the full power, in terms of both strength and every possible variation the cape's power could have taken.
- Behemoth Battle: At first, they are more interested in subsuming each other to grow their networks. When the assault on Sharspace begins, a bunch of them launch an attack against the City. When the bombs go off and Victoria destroys a crystal that's particularly important to them, Skadi disconnects from Auger and Oberon and goes right back to fighting with them. Many of them also face off against the Shin Defense Initiative's Giants.
- Humanoid Abomination: The result of shards partially intersecting with our reality and subsuming their hosts. All of them have at least vaguely humanoid shapes, but the fine details vary drastically. While the Nemean titan looks like a fairly normal furry kaiju, Arachne's "body" is made entirely out of the razor lines produced by her power.
- Kaiju: Giant humanoid monsters that dwarf the Endbringers. While more focused on each other than humans at first, they attack the City when the assault on Shardspace begins.
- Serial Escalation: Zigzagged. At face value, they're essentially Worm's Endbringers but just more numerous. But on one hand, most of the Titans are individually weaker than the Endbringers (they lack the Endbringers' insane durability... though that's not saying much; it still take a LOT to hurt them). On the other, they have a completely different modus operandi, not bothering to fake weaknesses and not sandbagging with poor strategies like Endbringers did. Also unlike the Endbringers, they openly cooperate when networked but otherwise turn on each other as much as the humans.
The Kronos Network
Kronos
Dauntless (Shawn)/Alabaster
Debut: Heavens 12.all
A former Protectorate Hero with the ability to imbue objects with strength over time. He was entrapped in a bubble of near-frozen time during the battle against Leviathan by one of Bakuda's bombs, then later freed by March during her attack on Brockton Bay. He comes out somewhat... different than he was before. For tropes pertaining to his appearance in Worm see here.Classification: Striker/Trump
- And I Must Scream: When flung into the time bubble, he noticed that he gained charges at a massively accelerated rate. In a panic, he dumped all of them into his helmet, speeding up his thoughts and making him pass time at the same rate as the outside world, but unable to move. He was able to keep himself sane by using his new enhanced perception to observe people in the outside world, but that ended when Scion destroyed Brockton Bay. In the two years before his release, he tried to second trigger 10,000 times, but couldn't due to the time bubble keeping his shard disconnected.
- Buried Alive: He triggered while trapped inside a van underneath a mudslide. While trapped, he also gave his schizophrenic girlfriend a (successful!) C-section.
- Fusion Dance: Upon his release from the time bubble, on top of growing to a massive size, he merges with Alabaster, a supervillain with regenerative powers who was trapped in there with him. It's implied that he has fused to a degree with his shard as well, as in, the entity that gives him his powers.
- Giant Equals Invincible: On top of growing massively in size when released from the time bubble, approaching the size that Bohu the Endbringer reached at the lower end of her size, he also becomes effectively invincible; one could put this down to also including Alabastar in his make-up, his personal situation reset power being maximised would make Kronos no different from Gold Experience Requiem.
- Good Parents: He was very much a kind and considerate father for his son.
- Heroic Willpower: Despite being subjected to And I Must Scream by being frozen for enumerable eons from his perspective, followed by extended exposure to the Simurgh, he is one of the few Titans to retain his mind.
- Humanoid Abomination: He's a living dimensional portal, existing simultaneously in multiple alternate Earths at once.
- Power Incontinence: He can't so much as talk, let alone move, without causing widespread destruction.
- Prohuman Transhuman: Unlike most of the later Titans, he mostly retains his human mind and chooses inactivity for months over the possibility of inadvertently harming anyone.
- Secret Identity: Like most Protectorate heroes, he played this trope straight, although he eventually revealed the truth to his son.
- Walking Spoiler: It's essentially impossible to discuss his role in the story without bringing up his release from the time bubble.
Eve
Fume Hood (Lauren)
Debut: Sundown 17.y
The first Titan to emerge upon the reality fracture, out of Fume Hood undergoing a second trigger event. Passively generates toxic gases at all times, can create objects out of those gases and control them.
Classification: Blaster, Master
- Body Horror: When fighting against Oberon, it produces a pink-tinged gas that eats holes in whatever it touches, reinforces the edges so the structure doesn't collapse, and produces maggot-like creatures that eat at the victim from the inside out.
- It Can Think: Radiation 18.6 ends with Tattletale realizing that Fume Hood is still in control of Eve and was trying to communicate with them the whole time to tell them to retreat. This comes as no surprise to the readers who experienced her transformation firsthand.
- Poisonous Person: Like Fume Hood, it can produce deadly gas, but with much more power and versatility. Among a corrosive gas that can put more holes in buildings than Swiss cheese, it can also create giant maggot minions, a lubricating slime, and the ability to reshape its gas into solid spikes and walls.
- Prohuman Transhuman: It is communicating with Kronos and scenes from its perspective show that it is trying very hard to hold things together and prevent further collapse. It has only attacked out of self-defense.
The Fortuna Network
Fortuna
Contessa (Fortuna)
Debut: Sundown 17.z
The result of Contessa suffering a broken trigger during the reality fracture. Described as a female figure partially covered in black fur with glowing golden eyes covering its entire body, with occasional wolf features here and there.
Classification: Thinker
- Animal Motifs: She has wolf heads on her shoulder and one side of her chest.
- Big Bad Ensemble: Shares the role of main antagonist for the climax with the Simurgh. Though Fortuna appears very late into the story, she quickly establishes herself as the head of the dominant Titan network and the de facto leader of the antagonistic shards—a threat that has been built up since the beginning of the serial. The Simurgh's goals are far more vile, to the point where Fortuna actually helps the heroes fight her, but stopping her own plan to become a new Entity and blow up the planet to continue the cycle is an equally important responsibility for Victoria and the final conflict for her to overcome.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Her goal.
- Enemy Mine: Ultimately works with the heroes and villains to defeat the Simurgh, a far greater threat than herself... though they are working to defeat them both.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: Has eyes covering most of her body, with no logic as to their placement.
- Godhood Seeker: Plans to become a new Entity, which amounts to this.
- Outside-Context Problem: Unlike the other Titans (and all but a select few Parahumans in general), Contessa's Agent didn't come from either Scion/Zion or the deceased Eden, but a different Entity altogether.Before any of this, all of this, she had been the forward-looking eye of something greater and grander, a lonely being in and of itself. That great and grand thing had crossed paths with a pair of others.
- Seers: She can simulate millions of "paths" into the future towards various goals, basically Contessa's power turned up a notch. Fortunately for everyone, the Simurgh immediately starts sabotaging her paths with its own future sight upon Fortuna's emergence, rendering her immobile for the moment.
The Nemean Titan
Victor
Debut: Sundown 17.z
The result of Victor, former member of the Shepherds, undergoing a second trigger during the reality fracture. Described as feral, with golden hair and onyx skin, possessing elongated clawed arms.
Classification: Thinker/Stranger
- Dirty Coward: Despite it just needing to run near its opponents to take them out of the fight, simple forcefields are able to make him turn around. As he drains more people, he gains more confidence.
- Failed a Spot Check: In its rush to feed off of people in the midst of its battle against the Shepherds, Capricorn, Furcate and Sveta, it fails to notice that the ground it is approaching is only rubble being held in place over one of the holes in reality by Moonsong's power. When she cancels it, the Titan falls into the shardspace, temporarily taking it out of the fight.
- Irony: A former Neo-Nazi winds up with black skin.
- No-Sell: Any ordinary attack aimed at him is ineffective and attackers are left helpless. Only parahuman abilities seem to affect him.
- Primal Stance: Described as being hunched over and feral in appearance.
Ophion
Mr. Bough
Debut: Radiation 18.2
The result of the villain Mr. Bough undergoing a second trigger during the reality fracture. Described as being formed of thick black cords with silver thorns and spikes sticking out, and a face made of flowers.
Classification: Striker
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: It is able to mutate the flesh of the Mother of Mothers to spawn insectoid creatures larger than cars.
- Body Horror: Those touched by the Titan's spikes become horribly mutated in various ways. Possibly permanently. Ophion himself appears as a tumor contorted into a vaguely humanoid shape by black and gold bands, and is riddled with its signature spikes.
- Lightning Bruiser: Very fast and accurate despite his size.
The Strange Titan
Debut: Radiation 18.2
A titan formed of unknown parahumans during the reality fracture, near Cheit. Appearance unknown because it cannot be observed.
Classification: Stranger
- He Who Must Not Be Seen: No one can look at it, and even cameras or other sensors become non-functional upon trying. Due to this, it was initially thought to be Blindside, but it has other powers that cast doubt on its true identity.
- Mind Rape: Those who get too close to it appear to become subjected to horrific and vivid hallucinations, with no response to external stimuli. Later it displays the ability to fire blasts at people that trigger the same effect if they're hit by them.
- No-Sell: Any attempts to use parahuman observation powers on it fail. When it gets briefly depowered after the Shardspace bombing, it can be seen briefly, appearing as a dark figure with static within itself.
The Ashen Titan
Cinereal
Debut: Sundown 17.z
The result of Cinereal second triggering during the reality fracture. A faceless gray female figure with hair like fire. Transforms inorganic matter around her into ash, which she can control.
Classification: Shaker/Breaker
- Ashes to Ashes: Her main power is to transform inorganic matter into ash that she can then control.
- Face–Heel Turn: After becoming a titan, she begins killing anyone who came near her, even if they only mean to talk rather than fight.
- Half the Woman She Used to Be: Dragon is able to use her technology to close off a portal created by the Titan Pouffe while the Ashen Titan is traveling though it, costing the Titan a quarter of her body.
Titanness Amenonuhoko
Magic Mystic Impaler
aka The Impaler Titan
A titan that appeared after the second onslaught of Titan Fortuna's reality breaking, she was once one of the members of eccentric superhero team Super Magic Dream Parade. She once had the ability to spatially manipulate her lance, as a titan she has two praying mantis-like appendages that she can extend and manipulate to terrifying effect. She's long, thin and faceless besides one eye, with long blue hair flowing all around her.
She was named by her teammates as a way to honor her memory but is more often that not just called "The Impaler Titan".
Classification: Striker/Blaster
- Ashes to Ashes: Her main power is to transform inorganic matter into ash that she can then control.
- Face–Heel Turn: She was once on the side of the heroes, even if her team were known to be closer to anti-heroes.
- Meaningful Name: despite all the jokes about Dream Parade's propensity for overly long names, hers is this. "Amenonuhoku" means "heavenly jeweled lance" and is a very relevant object in Shinto mythology, which also fits with the implication that she was a japanophile like her teammates (and the fact that Dream Parade willingly choose long names to make them more "special").
- When All You Have Is a Hammer…: her power is much more straightforward than other titan's but it's damm effective in battle.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Antares's reaction to Super Magic Dream Parade's name choice is of sheer frustation even between the apocalypse.
The Flowing Titan
Shortcut
Another titan that triggered after the second onslaught of Titan Fortuna's reality breaking, he was once Shortcut, a very temperamental cape from superhero team Advance Guard.
As a titan he has to ability to treat solids as liquids and use them both for movement and attack, as the waves will affect other material. He's noted to have a crooked back and to be unable to walk straight.
Classification: Mover/Shaker
- Face–Heel Turn: Unlikable as he was, he was still firmly on the side of good before turning.
- Lightning Bruiser: He's gigantic but his power was mover-aspected, allowing for great movement with strength.
The Oberon Network
Oberon
Prancer/Moose
Debut: Sundown 17.z
A Titan resulting from Prancer second triggering during the reality fracture. It fused with Moose shortly after its formation. Described as being extremely large, extremely muscled, with enormous antlers trailing down its back.
Classification: Breaker/Mover, Brute, Shaker
- Fusion Dance: From from Prancer and Moose fusing.
- Gathering Steam: Like Prancer, it becomes more fast and agile over time. Attacking it reduces this effect.
- Gravity Master: Downplayed. Its shockwaves can make the shattered pieces of roads and buildings resulting from them float in the air.
- Horned Humanoid: Has enormous antlers that extend down its back.
- Primal Stance: Described as always being crouched down, as though poised to leap or sprint.
- Super-Speed: Courtesy of Prancer's power, it is very fast and agile for something of its size.
Auger
Auger
Debut: Radiation 18.2
The final titan to emerge upon the reality fracture, formed of a mercenary named Auger. Seems to have a multitude of powers, including lasers, Intangibility, and Tinkering. Since it emerged on the front lines of the Machine Army, its first actions were to war against them.
Classification: Breaker/Blaster/Tinker
- Energy Weapon: Part of its powerset is to aim a laser, and then transform matter around the laser in a process described as "flowering".
- Intangibility: Part of its power appears to shift it, or at least a part of it, into another dimension for a short time. It uses this to avoid attacks and confuse its enemies.
- Gadgeteer Genius: It's most focused on trying to perfect some sort of machine it's building in the middle of combat. It defends this machine with its life, refusing to let anything damage it, even at the cost of damage to its actual body.
Unnetworked
Arachne
Hunter
Debut: Sundown 17.z
The result of Hunter second triggering during the reality fracture at Shin. A female form made up of thin black lines similar to the cracks in reality. Extremely aggressive but easily distracted.
Classification: Shaker/Blaster
- Genius Loci: From what scenes from her perspective show, her "body" isn't the humanoid form so much as the enormous amount of wires her power generates all around her. The humanoid body is just a construct made of those wires.
- Intrinsic Vow: Everything she feels is centered around one impulse: never permit herself to be controlled again.
- Laughing Mad: She's constantly laughing as she lashes out at everything around her.
- No-Sell: She effortlessly ignores the attempt by the Goddess Giant to align her with its Master power.
- Razor Wire: She generates it within a radius of a quarter mile around herself, slicing and skewering anything that gets close.
Skadi
Axehead
Debut: Radiation 18.2
A titan formed out of a hero named Axehead, a member of Advance Guard. Described as a being of metal with golden hair, like a living suit of armor, and weapons for hands.
Classification: Mover/Brute
- Ax-Crazy: The most violent of the titans seen so far, aggressively chasing down whoever it views as the greatest threat.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: Its hands are blades.
- Boring, but Practical: Compared to the other titans, its powers are fairly straightforward, being able to teleport to the current greatest threat to itself and its allies. However, its strength, bladed arms, aggressiveness, and surprise factor makes it one of the most dangerous titans, and it can easily dismantle defensive lines by teleporting into their middle and wrecking havoc.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Downplayed. As a cape, she was pretty weak, being able to teleport into danger but with no control over the destination and no other powers. As a titan, she is one of the most dangerous ones due to her teleporting being much more versatile, strength, and surprise factor.
- Sneak Attack: Specializes in these, teleporting behind unsuspecting targets and attacking them with her bladed arms.
- Teleportation with Drawbacks: It can teleport to the position it perceives to be the greatest threat to itself, with no apparent restrictions on range or its target being in another dimension entirely, but limited by only having one target location.
- Weaponized Headgear: Originally wore an axe-like mask as Axehead, now the entire face of the giant is an ax.
Other S-Class Threats
The Simurgh
One of the four remaining Endbringers, possessing precognition, emotion manipulation, telekinesis, and mind-reading, the Simurgh is the only one who has remained active since Gold Morning. What her intentions are since Eidolon's death and Scion's defeat are unknown, but she is being carefully monitored by the Wardens. For tropes pertaining to her appearance in Worm see here.
- Angelic Abomination: Looks akin to an angel, but is anything but benevolent or even holy.
- Big Bad Ensemble: The Simurgh finally steps up to become the primary villain near the end of Ward, sharing the role with Fortuna. Though Fortuna is the more prominent threat throughout most of the climax, with Breakthrough not even learning of the Simurgh's true goals until the the end of penultimate arc, the Endbringer proves to be far worse through her aims at taking control of the Titans and enslaving humanity into an endless existence of maximized suffering and conflict to gather data for the next Entity to pass by Earth, and it's implied that the Simurgh has been influencing many events throughout the story to facilitate her victory. Stopping Fortuna is still an important task and is ultimately the final hurdle for Breakthrough to clear, but after learning of the Simurgh's plan the heroes immediately prioritize stopping her, even teaming up with the Titans to combat her in the climactic final battle of the serial.
- Blown Across the Room: Dragon's replica of String Theory's G-driver is capable of knocking her back an incredibly long distance. Thanks to Dauntless, with the guidance of the Titan Fortuna's precognition, the blast deposits her right into Sleeper's storm.
- Combat Clairvoyance: The Simurgh's wide-ranging precognition and mind-reading abilities are what make her so dangerous.
- Emotion Control: Her "song" can be used to alter emotions and push individuals to certain actions, and it only gets worse the longer one is exposed to it.
- Gathering Steam: As devastating as her mental powers are, they need time to build up to maximum effectiveness on a given individual. When a brand-new person enters her area of effect, she cannot perceive their timeline very clearly or mess with their head as effectively. But the more time the person spends near her, the more effective her powers become on them, and after a matter of minutes they are effectively nothing more than her puppet.
- Half the Woman She Used to Be: Rain is able to separate her into two halves, with the help of the Fragile One to fly him into the right position for a strike. Being an Endbringer, this is a hindrance rather than a crippling blow.
- Hidden Agenda Villain: Nobody knows exactly why the Simurgh does what she does, which causes no shortage of headaches for the heroes, who know it's probably game-over for humanity if she has hostile intentions. It's ultimately revealed that she's kind of a "failsafe" mechanism for the Entities, designed to attempt to salvage what she can of failed cycles and pass on whatever info she can gather to the next Entity to visit Earth. Her plan for doing so is to enslave humanity into endless suffering and conflict with each other to gather more data through the shards.
- Light Is Not Good: While it wouldn't be accurate to describe her as "evil" the Simurgh's angelic appearance is very much at odds with her behavior.
- Mind over Matter: She possesses powerful telekinesis, although it's ultimately the least dangerous of her abilities.
- Mind Rape: Anyone exposed to her "song" will get one hell of a mind-whammy. They're set on edge by the constant, endless screaming in their head; they hear whispers from the environment poking and taunting their insecurities; and if the Simurgh can find some way to mess with their perceptions, she'll start with hallucinations and illusions. Capes have a policy of rotating out who's fighting her, trying to make sure nobody is exposed to her for too long, but this only mitigates the problem.
- Nigh-Invulnerable: Like all of the Endbringers, although she is certainly the most fragile of the bunch.
- Returning Big Bad: The Simurgh, as the leader of the Endbringers, was half of The Heavy in Worm alongside the Slaughterhouse Nine, but was prevented from being the true Big Bad by Scion. With both Entities now dead, the Simurgh returns in all her glory to become the Final Boss of the series.
- Seers: She can see the past and future to an absurd degree. It's not instantaneous though, and she does have blind spots, generally in the form of other precogs. Interestingly, she has no ability to perceive the present. This combined with her blind spots and the need to "get her hooks in" people before manipulating them, means she is not omniscient and can still be caught off-guard.
- Winged Humanoid: Exaggerated, her appearance resembles a fifteen-foot tall woman who is absolutely covered with feathered angelic wings all over her body.
The Machine Army
Debut: Glow-Worm 1
A group of self-replicating machines, mostly likely runaway Tinker-tech. They had been contained by the PRT within the town of Eagleton, Tennessee, but following Gold Morning have broken containment and are on a slow but steady advance toward the Brockton Bay portal to Gimel. The Wardens have been devoting significant resources to combating their advance.
- Hidden Agenda Villain: Nothing is known about what their goals are. Whether they're even intelligent enough to have goals beyond a pre-programmed purpose is unknown.
- Killer Robot: They are completely hostile to humanity and murder any human they come across. Whether this was intended by their creator or is a case of A.I. Is a Crapshoot is unclear.
- Mechanical Evolution: At first their methods were simplistic and easy to predict, if difficult to stop, but following the attack on Teacher, it's known they're experimenting with interdimensional portals, something they've never done before.
- Properly Paranoid: Their death traps can come out of nowhere, and it's mentioned that the recommended strategy for capes who are going up against them is "blast anything that moves with extreme prejudice".
- Trap Master: They operate by "infecting" metal and ore-based matter in their vicinity and transforming it into hidden death-traps.
- Wetware CPU: They're shown assimilating some humans and making those humans part of their machines. What advantage this gives them is unclear, but the humans are still alive and in extreme pain as a result of it.
Sleeper
A mysterious villain that was briefly introduced in Worm. As of Ward he's taken over an entire alternate Earth to become a much more active, but not immediate, threat and is thus under monitoring by the Wardens. For tropes pertaining to him in Worm see here.
- As You Know: Averted. The characters within the story seem to be generally knowledgeable about him, and thus don't see the need to elaborate on it. This leaves the readers almost completely in the dark regarding him and his abilities.
- The Dreaded: He's an S-class threat mentioned in the same breath as the Endbringers and the Slaughterhouse 9, and only capes with specific powers are approved to face him. According to the Wardens, those who intend to even attempt fighting him are recommended to have "special brains, invincibility, or absolute annihilation powers" as a minimum.
- Fictional Colour: When he uses his power on the Simurgh his storm takes on "a rainbow sheen that somehow felt it shouldn’t make sense with the way the colors unfolded."
- Evil Overlord: By the time of Ward, he's taken over Earth Zayin. However, there's no mention of how he accomplished this, nor of in what state he's left that Earth.
- Salt the Earth: One of the ways to fight him. However his power works, capes that can destroy matter can oppose him. In one instance Legend is able to deter him by annihilating a large swath of land for several dozen square kilometers.
- Summon Bigger Fish: The Wardens lure Sleeper onto Gimel in order to fight the Titans. It doesn't work, not the least because his actual interest in fighting the Titans seems to be minimal. He does, however, manage to take down the Simurgh (whether permanently or not is unclear), although that requires her being knocked into his storm.
- Weird Weather: Sleeper's power manifests itself as a storm, although, as always, the details of it are unexplained. Said storm is apparently capable of easily incapacitating the Simurgh when she is knocked into it.
