Characters / Well That Was Unexpected

Characters of Well That Was Unexpected. Beware; some entries contain unmarked spoilers.

Team Rand

An informal high-level trio (later quartet) of adventurers consisting of Rand'Teh and his friends. They are the main heroes - or at least "heroes" - of the story.

In General

• Fighter, Mage, Thief: Fitting the D&D archetypes to a T, Rand is a standard blaster mage and Torn a frontline fighter. Kaylethia varies it a little more - she's a ranger specializing in guns, not a rogue - but her fighting style and general role in the party matches the Thief archetype all the same.
• Like Brother and Sister: Kaylethia and Torn, while they do go on a "man date" once and have on a few occasions exchanged vaguely flirty comments, never show any remotely serious signs of romantic interest in each other and in general act like a pair of - extremely fond of bickering - siblings, with Torn as the older brother figure and Kayl as the annoying younger sister. Ultimately subverted, but not in a romantic sense: when Kaylethia discovers Torn is really a Vector Witch, she becomes obsessed with killing him for the sake of the entire planet, with no hesitation about their previous friendship.
• Nominal Hero: Out of the three of them, Torn is the only one to show any meaningful interest in idealism or doing good for good's sake, and he's possibly the worst of the bunch. Rand and Kaylethia adventure pretty much entirely for the thrills and rewards, and are generally only about as moral doing it as they're required to be. Rand, at least, is quite honest about admitting he's not actually a hero to his friends, though that doesn't stop him from trying to look good in front of average people. All this is, of course, entirely in keeping with their portrayal as "typical" PCs.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Kaylethia is this way with both of the male party members, but especially so with Torn. Their relationship is pretty much built on constant snark, bickering, teasing, and miscellaneous passing insults - mostly on Kayl's end, but Torn occasionally manages to turn the tables on her. It's lampshaded (of course) more than once, but never more obviously than in Comic 294:
  Bartender: ...I assume you two are friends?
  Kaylethia: How do you know?
  Bartender: Well, between the fighting, rage, and death threats, I could only come to one plausible conclusion.
  Torn: Oh yeah that makes sense.
  Kaylethia: It's actually pretty obvious if you think about it.
  • Rand and Jeroshaw are also this way. Jeroshaw is probably the one living being that Rand genuinely, altruistically cares about, but that doesn't stop him from periodically insulting the dragon or using a Disperse Form spell to ride inside his head. Jeroshaw, for his part, can be equally insulting to Rand.
• With Friends Like These...: Rand and Torn, especially in earlier strips, can really only be considered friends because they say so. As early as Comic 16, Rand is placing command words inside Torn's head to make him suffer in retaliation for welching on a 100 gold piece bet, and their relationship does not improve from there. While Torn is generally more of a victim than a perpetrator, he does periodically try to get revenge against Rand for this and at one point actually blows him up, though he has semi-good reasons for it. Eventually, they do mellow out to be more Vitriolic Best Buds.

Rand'Teh

The main character of ''Well That was Unexpected, Rand (as he's known for short) is a member of an unnamed reptilian race and a veteran adventurer. He's an eighteenth-level sorcerer, though he's risen to twentieth level over the course of the story.

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• Angst? What Angst?: In-Universe, this is played for laughs in Comic 273, where Lord Secundus expects Rand to be experiencing anguish and "mental turbulence" over the revelation that his brother never existed, actually being a demon prince. Rand tells him "No, I'm fine" and we then see inside his head to prove that while he may be experiencing quite a few different emotions over the reveal, angst is distinctly not among them.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: During Rand's second time as a girl, she's hit on by Professor Savaddor - though it's anyone's guess at this point if he was serious - and Torn, who's already demonstrated an attraction to a member of her species, seems a bit favorably impressed by seeing her in a dress, though he's also quite insistent that he still thinks of Rand as male. It's also subverted in Comic 566, where a couple of Khorran soldiers talk about the first one hoping to "get" with Rand; turns out he's actually talking about his Connect Four team.
  • During Rand's first gender-bending incident, meanwhile, the trope is played for laughs in Comic 67, where Kaylethia confidently declares "Besides, I'm certain that nobody outside your species will notice it anyways." The kobold janitor promptly enters and makes a pass at Rand.
• Boxed Crook: In Chapter 7, he's roped into acting as the cavalry for Marnia's expedition against Atlas by King Ezekiel agreeing to release him from his Cool and Unusual Punishment early. In fact, given that Marnia's directly responsible for said punishment, the agreement's the only reason he bothers to help her at all.
• Break the Haughty: For the first six chapters of the story, he's about as confident and arrogant as you'd expect from a high-level sorcerer who's been one of the most powerful people he knows for his entire life (since he hatched tenth level). On the few occasions where other characters manage to pose a serious threat to him - as with Powers and Xeno - he ultimately shrugs it off, and he remains insistently in denial about the existence of the godlike Emperor. Then he actually meets the Emperor and finds out he's exactly as powerful as advertised. Since then, he's been subject to periodic bouts of depression over his inadequacy, and it's not helped by the introduction of other extremely powerful characters like the Adeptus Custodes.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Rand invokes this in Chapter 5, by claiming to not remember the incident an enemy spellcaster wants revenge on him for (destroying a group of rebels as part of his adventuring career). Unfortunately for him, he's eventually tricked into admitting it. The trope may also have been played straight at first, as it's not clear when he actually remembered.
• Celibate Hero: While his distinct unwillingness to return Marnia's romantic interest is pretty understandable given their history, the fact that finding her attractive never seems to cross his mind even before getting a reason to hate her suggests this trope at work. Indeed, Rand has never displayed any hint of concern about sex or romance in general over the entire 700+ comics so far.
• Cloudcuckoolander: He's more than a little unhinged and prone to random behavior and leaps of (il)logic.
• Color-Coded Eyes: He has purple eyes. Apparently uniquely among his species - which normally has red eyes - he has purple eyes that are directly indicative of his magic ability. Unlike some other spellcasters in the comic, they don't normally glow when he uses it (since his signature magic color is actually blue), but they do turn red when he runs out of magic. They're also a case of Eyes Are Mental: when body-swapped into Rand's body, Sereyentheous has gold eyes serving the same purpose instead.
• Cursed with Awesome: After being body-swapped with Custodian Sereyentheous, he tends to whine a lot about how it's made him even more "useless" - as he sees it - than before. In reality, while it's stripped him of his magic, it's also made him utterly indestructible and given him incredibly physical combat skills, and it turns out he can still cast magic of a sort by absorbing the energy of an Apocalypse Cruiser's cannon. Jeroshaw eventually calls him out on this:
  Jeroshaw: Let's ignore the giant city-destroying death-laser while I complain about being in the body of an immortal badass.
• Determinator: While he may occasionally suffer emotional breakdowns, physically he's capable of pushing his body to pretty incredible levels rather than just giving up. Best demonstrated during the climax of Chapter 2, where he (or she, at the time) makes his way back through an entire dungeon ahead of the pursuing Powers and Xeno, while simultaneously bleeding out from what's explicitly stated to be mortal damage to his lungs.
• Everyone Has Standards: Played for laughs in Comic 483, when a Magebane soldier shoots himself in the head after watching Team Rand slaughter their way through his comrades. Rand is horrified - apparently in this universe, suicide damns your soul in the afterlife because the gods can only properly judge you if you cared about yourself - and drops everything to resurrect the guy... at which point he kills him himself and goes on his way without any further concern.
  • Played much more seriously at the beginning of Chapter 11, when he's left horrified and furious after watching several children be vaporized by a Hypt Dragon he was unable to kill. It's one of the main causes for his crisis of self-confidence reaching its nadir in that chapter.
  • He also comments at one point that even Marnia wouldn't deserve to face the wrath of the Custodes.
• Ghost in the Machine: Comic 273 shows the inside of Rand's mind in this fashion, featuring several representations of different aspects of his personality: Confusion, Geekiness, Rage (who is a Space Marine), and two others that are unidentified, although one appears to represent his conscience or judgment.
• Heavy Sleeper: Perhaps understandable given his tendency to push himself physically and then crash, on some occasions he's very hard to wake up - notably Comic 183, where it took Torn detonating a dozen sticks of dynamite to do the job. Rand wasn't happy about it.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: He's an extremely short-tempered blaster-style mage who's very prone to violence, not always against people who strictly qualify as enemies. He's also kind of a jerk in his day-to-day existence, and sometimes has dialogue that suggests he's even worse, such as the time he reacted to a minor villain's backstory of killing dozens of people and leaving hundreds homeless with "You, sir, are awesome". And he eats people, though admittedly all the ones we've seen have tried to kill him first. Despite this he's also the main character and almost entirely played for laughs.
• Hiding Behind the Language Barrier: In a bit of a variant, Rand occasionally uses his native language, which almost none of the other cast members can speak, to hide side comments from them. One example is Comic 671, where he uses it to snark about how he doesn't actually need to do anything to sabotage Marnia and Ser's date.
  • Played with in Comic 282, where Rand deliberately addresses "Torn" (really Lord Secundus) in his native language, which Secundus can understand but Torn can't, in order to trick him into revealing his true identity. It works.
• High-Class Glass: He sports a monocle in his Custodes body in a fantasy sequence in Comic 665, while also sporting a fancy dress uniform, a glass of wine, and a bushy white mustache (yes, on his helmet) for that extra-classy look. It's sort of ironic, given that the actual subject of said fantasy sequence is petty revenge.
• How Do I Shot Web?: During Chapter 11, it takes him a while to figure out how to properly use his new Custodes abilities. While the invulnerability is pretty simple to exploit, as a long-term Squishy Wizard he takes a long time to fully grasp the advantages of his new super strength and martial prowess. In a bit of an inversion, it also takes him some time to figure out that he can't cast magic anymore - though he eventually learns that he can pull off a similiar effect by using absorbed energy.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Like pretty much all members of his species, Rand eats humans (and sometimes other humanoids, but he apparently prefers humans), and can do it pretty fast, having occasionally been shown to strip an entire corpse to the bone in an extremely short time. In his defense, he's never been shown to eat anyone who didn't try to kill him first. He also apparently doesn't eat them when they're still alive, although he's used this as a threat against Major Powers in the incident that started their mutual antagonism. All this, incidentally, is entirely Played for Laughs.
• Indy Ploy: There has been exactly one occasion where in the comic so far where Rand came up in advance with a plan and executed it exactly as he'd intended; every other plan he's ever come up with has been improvised on the spot. Notably, his improvised plans don't always work, especially against opponents with superior power levels like the Custodes, though on other occasions they've been very successful. He's lampshaded it at least once (though in fact the particular occasion in question wasn't actually planned at all):
  "Everything moves according to my designs. Although I'll be honest, I have no idea what I'm doing."
• Inelegant Blubbering: At the end of Chapter 8, upon being confronted with Xeno and the Apprentice emerging from an attacking skyship and flying towards him, Rand breaks down into panicked whimpering and sobbing about how he's doomed to have invincible opponents dog him wherever he goes. He gets a distinct lack of sympathy from an observing Kaylethia, who claims she enjoys bathing in the tears of cowardly sorcerers, though he eventually does snap out of it on his own. Played for Laughs, though it also helps demonstrate his increasing crisis of self-confidence.
• Insane Troll Logic: After being gender-bent for the second time, Rand decides to experiment with wearing the sort of poofy dresses popular with the Eternus court. When asked why, she explains that it's because Marnia's fondness for them proves that they're armor: "The layers of cloth and billowiness of the skirt makes your legs and waist completely invulnerable... while creating an hourglass silhouette that makes your upper body appear to be a smaller target than it actually is". She dismisses Torn's suggestion that it's just about appearances with "Preposterous!"
• It Amused Me: The most frequent motivation for him to do anything, whether a petty prank against his friends or full-scale adventuring, is his own personal amusement. Definitely not For the Evulz, since while his actions often do involve Comedic Sociopathy he can be equally amused by harmless things.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While it's a bit zig-zagged depending on the individual storyline (and, of course, Rule of Funny), as a general rule Rand has been portrayed as a colossal jerk, but not one without redeeming features. He does care about his friends on at least some level, and he's done several totally altruistic things (though these have a nasty habit of coming back to bite people). Maybe best exemplified by Comic 418, where he responds to hate object Princess Marnia's thanks for saving her life with a long series of complaints and insults, followed by an apparently-sincere "you're welcome".
• Master of Disguise: Parodied. Rand has a fondness for "disguises" that involve little more than a costume and the stereotypical fake-nose-and-glasses, yet somehow these disguises infallibly manage to fool every other character to see them, with many speaking of Rand's legendary disguises as a result. One particularly long-lasting one is his Commissar disguise, which, while originally donned for no real reason at the end of Chapter 8, is somehow able to fool three Adeptus Custodes, a High Lord of Terra, and several Arcane Incarnations, as well as various minor characters. (Though there are some indications some of them saw through it but played along for their own reason, such as amusement or - in the case of Clanor - getting a free chance to attack him).
• Master of Illusion: In an unusual case of the main protagonist having this trope, his other main area of spellcasting focus, besides destructive attack spells, is illusions. On at least two occasions he's used them to dodge seemingly certain death by switching himself with one, and he's also used them to get himself out of other problems as well. He resolved the conflict of Chapters 1 and 2 by switching the primary macguffin with an illusionary version, and he also set off the conflict of Chapter 6 by using an illusion of himself to get out of a fake 48-hour resurrection ritual.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Sometimes it seems like every time he bothers to actually be nice to Marnia, it gets him screwed over. Their original conflict came from his freely volunteering to resurrect her dead adoptive father (although it quickly stopped being altruistic once he tried to con her). Later, trying to get her some help after instinctively blasting her for teleporting into his bedroom gets him chained up and "tortured", which is the event that really sparks his hatred for her. And in a more comedic case, helping protect her against an angry Kaylethia in Chapter 8 gets him conked on the head by a tossed pulse rifle.
• Punch-Clock Hero: In general, he does not engage in heroic actions for any reasons that are actually heroic or moral, though he sometimes tries to make himself look like he is. While normally he's mostly seeking thrills amusement, or XP, on some occasions he's looking for a more tangible reward. Played for laughs in a series of comics starting with 167, where Team Rand makes a bet that whoever can save the most living survivors after a hovertruck crash gets... a cookie. Rand promptly teleports around resurrecting everyone who died in the crash, exhausting himself in the process, in order to get the cookie. And then it turns out he can't eat it anyway, since his biology is incompatible with human food.
• Relationship Sabotage: In Chapter 12, he volunteers to act as Ser's wingman (since the Custodian obviously has no knowledge of how Rand's species dates) for his date with Marnia in order to attempt revenge on the latter by sabotaging their date with bad suggestions such as a tacky suit and a bouquet of grenades. However, this largely wind up backfiring on him when his sabotage attempts actually go over well with Marnia, though the date goes awry before we can tell just how badly.
  • He's also talked about having an obligation to sabotage Torn's crush on Marnia, both because he hates her and because he thinks romance between humans and his species is gross. He's never actually done anything, though, mostly because Marnia has no idea Torn is even interested.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Played for laughs and subverted in Comic 461, where after a lengthy and unsuccessful attempt to reason with the Apprentice (who has his friends paralyzed), he declares that he's giving up and saving himself, and tries to walk away... only to immediately bump into a flirtatious Marnia. Cut to:
  Rand: O hai guys, I'm back.
  Kaylethia: Victory is mine!
  The Apprentice: Good to hear it.
• Self-Serving Memory: The How We Got Here sequence in Chapter 9 demonstrates that he tends to remember events as painting him in a favorable light compared to other people's versions. He also seems to change his reasoning for actions based on whatever's safest for him at the time, though this might just be lying:
  Limbaw: You really expect me to believe that?^note That Marnia's clumsiness counts as "provocation" for tripping her onto Sereyentheous's ashes, thereby desecrating his remains
  Rand: If it makes sense in my mind, then yes.
• Signature Move: Rand has a lot of signature spells, but the one that most stands out as being associated with him personally is his Galick Gun spell, a massive beam of magical energy intended to completely obliterate the opponent. Unfortunately for him, it works as intended maybe three times at most in the course of the comic.
• Squishy Wizard: Given that he's twentieth level (and a sorcerer instead of a wizard), he has a relatively high amount of hit points, but he's still ultimately a standard D&D caster who folds quickly to relatively little damage. This inconveniences both him and Sereyentheous in different ways after their body-switch.
• Talk to the Fist: He's a bit trigger-happy and impatient, and so has a tendency to blast villains before they're done talking. However, this hasn't worked often, and usually just gets him into fights with equal or superior opponents that might have been avoidable. The Emperor, at least, finds it more amusing than anything:
  "Nope. Right to the killing. Gods, I love this universe."
• The Chosen One: Comic 550 reveals that High Aios is in possession of a prophecy indicating that Rand will ultimately be able to defeat the Emperor with "a power he doesn't know he has", and that this is why the Arcane Incarnations are interested in keeping him alive. In a possible subversion, Clanor's claimed that it was "a stupid prophecy written by a stupid man" and the Archmagister Prime only wants to believe it because he's desperate - but on the other hand, Clanor has been Wrong Genre Savvy before.
• Unskilled, but Strong: After being body-swapped with Sereyentheous. He has no more skill at physical combat than he ever did (that is to say, none whatsoever), but the indestructibility and Super-Strength of his Custodian body still make him an extremely dangerous opponent.
• Visual Pun: His Magic Missile spell looks like literal missiles - as in the modern weapon - made out of magical energy.

Kaylethia

Rand's oldest friend, Kaylethia - nicknamed "Kayl" is an elf ranger and adventurer specializing in using guns. Like Rand, she has risen from eighteenth level to twentieth level over the course of the story.

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• Badass Longcoat: One of her standard adventuring outfits, as depicted in the image, is a long black or dark grey coat with sleeves (type not specified, but it's probably closer to a duster than a trenchcoat). Notably, unlike her other preferred adventuring outfit it doesn't seem to be enchanted or confer any sort of bonuses - it's there purely to look cool whipping around behind her as she pulls off acrobatic feats of gunmanship.
• Boomerang Bigot: Despite being an elf herself, she rather vocally dislikes elves, repeatedly criticizing them as dull, shallow, and one-dimensional; while this seems to be partially a case of metatextual complaining about the general portrayal of elves in fantasy, it's still kind of bizarre to witness. Eventually subverted when it turns out she's not actually an elf at all.
• Dark Secret: Beginning with Chapter 4, there are hints that she has some kind of secret she's desperate to conceal from her friends. It starts out with the fact that, when the entire adventuring party suffers an effect that turns them into something they fear, she becomes a "dragonoid", which is a mystery to everyone else and which she refuses to explain. Later, she's absolutely panicked after running into an unidentified woman from her past at a bar and tells Torn an incoherent and probably totally untrue story to fend off questions. After a while, though, hints such as these became less common and the plotline was seemingly dropped, only to be resolved in Chapter 12 with the revelation that her secret is that she's really a red dragon in elf form. Why she was so desperate to hide this has yet to be explained.
• Dresses the Same: In Comic 400, it's revealed that one reason she wore an uncharacteristically poofy pink dress to the party being held at the Eternus Royal Palace was to try and pull this trope on Princess Marnia, who is wearing an identical dress. However, it doesn't work, as Marnia instead interprets it as a case of "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery".
  Kaylethia: Nooo! Damn you! It's plagiarism! PLAGIARISM!
• Eyes Are Mental: After appearing in the new art style for the first time in Comic 684◊, she's shown to have very vivid red eyes - unusual for a normal elf, but appropriate for a shapeshifted red dragon.
• The Gadfly: She positively thrives on irritating people for the sake of irritating them. Her favorite target is easily Torn - probably because of his straight man nature - to whom she acts very much like an annoying younger sister, but she also goes out of her way to be obnoxious to Marnia and many minor NPCs.
• Genre Savvy: While genre savvy in the comic in general tends to fluctuate depending on the joke, of all the main cast she's far and away the most consistently familiar with genre conventions, which she tries to point out to the others without much success. She has a particular tendency to notice when other characters are Tempting Fate and either lampshade it, get annoyed with them, or both.
• Gun Fu: Her preferred fighting style involves lots of flipping and jumping around while firing guns, though there's very little Guns Akimbo involved because her favorite gun requires two hands to use.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Kaylethia seems to get angry - or at least intensely frustrated - with the other characters around her remarkably easily and with no consistent provocation. She generally tries to make it sound like Enraged by Idiocy, but her definition of "idiocy" is extremely loose and frequently involves trying to cover up her own mistakes. This gets worse as the series gets on.
• Hate at First Sight: She takes an almost instantaneous dislike to Princess Marnia that just gets worse the longer they know each other. While there's certainly different factors making it worse on both sides - Marnia's egotism and condescension, Kaylethia's temper and impatience - as well as a couple of missed opportunities for them to smooth things over, to a large extent it just seems to come down to some kind of inherent incompatibility between their personalities.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Almost identically to Rand, she has dialogue that makes her sound nastier than her actions show her to be, but nevertheless is still extremely prone to comedic violence as the first answer to most problems.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: She seems utterly convinced most of the time that she is the Only Sane Man, able alone out of the entire cast to spot the holes in the plot and act sensibly. However, while she genuinely is somewhat Genre Savvy, she's anything but sane and on-the-ball, with a tendency towards nonsensical and random behavior that's probably rivaled only by Rand. She's also occasionally just plain stupid.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Especially when adventuring in tandem with Torn, she's very prone to just telling the plan "skrew it" and charging in guns blazing. In general this doesn't work out as badly for her as might be expected, but on one occasion in Chapter 6, it got her eaten when she rushed out of an elevator door and straight into Archduke Araske's mouth - made worse by the ample amount of Tempting Fate foreshadowing that it was a bad idea. (Ironically, though, when the comic inevitably referenced the original Leeroy Jenkins Video, it was Torn who made the Shout-Out in a rare reversal of their combat roles).
• Major Injury Underreaction: She tends to suffer from massive torso wounds with increasing frequence throughout the comic as a Running Gag, and never seems either seriously affected or pained by them. Occasionally, she uses this to freak out more normal people, such as in Comic 187, where she gets an Eternian palace functionary to faint. Of course, dragons are notoriously hard to kill...
• Mr. Exposition: Especially in the earlier comics, she's typically the one responsible for expositing to Torn - and the reader - about setting background such as where the city of Eetwosees got its name. She also provides a lot of Rand's background, as she's known him longer than anyone else and he's not particularly forthcoming with it himself. This dynamic eventually seems to have faded away, however.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Parodied with her "+6 Dress of Lesser Teleportation-when-nobody-is-looking", which has this as an explicit magical power (and is apparently an epic-level item to boot!) It's first named and depicted in action in Comic 195, though she's shown wearing it earlier.
• Overly Prepared Gag: In Comic 378, she spends seven panels acting paranoid about Torn supposedly plotting to have her killed by having the Eternus Praetorians to lay a trap for her... just to set up a joke about how she knows that he couldn't possibly have laid anything.
  Torn: How could a creature of such stupidity possibly think up of such elaborate means of irritation?!
• Put on a Bus: She's absent from the story starting in Chapter 10, with it being explained that she's doing mercenary work elsewhere for the Kingdom of Eternus. Comic 684◊ reveals that The Bus Came Back sooner than expected, as she was actually present in Chapter 11 under the guise of apparent new character "Vinny".
• Took a Level in Jerkass: During the first few chapters, while she was as prone to Comedic Sociopathy as most of the cast, she also had a softer side shown in her role as Rand's best friend. As the comic went on, however, she was increasingly flanderized into an utterly callous, violent jerk - even by the standards of the main cast - and her role as Rand's closest friend was written out in favor of Jeroshaw. This seems to have been slightly reversed following the reveal that she was "Vinny", who - while still a Heroic Comedic Sociopath on some occasions - was also shown to be altruistically concerned with saving the world and took some care to avoid using lethal force against Marnia, who Kaylethia hates.

Torn

A human fighter, Torn appears to be the most normal member of Rand's adventuring party. Like Rand, he has risen from eighteenth level to twentieth level over the course of the story.

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• Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon: In keeping with his role as the "bruiser" of the main heroes, his favored weapon is a large two-handed axe. His original one also featured a pointed tip, which is how he lost it - he left it pinning Xeno to a wall in Chapter 4. It was eventually replaced by a new axe from the Eternus armory in Chapter 7.
• Consummate Liar: The reveal of his true nature as a Vector Witch has also proven that he's a phenomenal liar. With the exception of two cases of Rule of Funny, he's able to switch completely seamlessly between his "normal" and "Vector Witch" personalities, and he can easily make up a story to explain any suspicious behavior on his part. In fact, he's so good a liar - and has been so clearly doing it for such a long time - that it's left his ultimate allegiances very unclear.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Although he initially denied it, it's become very obvious as the story goes along that he has a crush on Princess Marnia - or rather, obvious to everyone except Marnia. While she probably wouldn't return his feelings even if she knew, since she's 1) a different species and 2) has an equally unrequited attraction to Rand, that hasn't stopped Torn from periodically pursuing the more low-key version of this trope by constantly hanging around the princess, treating her favorably, and trying to point out why Rand would not be a good match for her. Since he's also nicer than most of the cast members, some of this might be completely sincere, but either way, it hasn't worked, and his crush has just kept getting more pathetic as the comic goes along:
  "Am I... am I really being cardboard-zoned?"
• Evil All Along: Possibly. He's clearly allied with the Emperor and Magebane, and he's been shown to be capable of far more ruthless actions since his true nature was revealed, but between the gray nature of the main conflict, the fact that he hasn't directly acted against the other protagonists yet, and the way he's continued to demonstrate a more sympathetic side - and an apparent crush on one of the worshipers of the gods he claims to want dead - his final allegiances and alignment aren't entirely clear.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: His eyes glow a featureless white whenever he uses his Vector Witch powers - revealing, among other things, that he used them in Comic 593 to help Rand break through a teleportation barrier, which is otherwise not made explicit within the narrative.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Within the earlier parts of the comic, a Running Gag involved him having either a terrible Sense Motive or very bad luck with his rolls for it, as shown by his repeated failure to tell when other characters - usually Xeno - were lying to the party. This eventually seems to have been phased out, however.
• Hypocritical Humor: In Comic 349, he gets pissed off at Powers exchanging relatively friendly mid-fight banter with Marnia, claiming it's his way of hitting on her, and exclaims "Damn it Powers, she's not even your species!"
• Interspecies Romance: In a one-sided version, his crush on Marnia does not seem hindered in the slightest by the fact that she's a big albino lizard instead of a human. Some of the other characters are more weirded out by it, though, and it's implied that one reason Marnia doesn't return his feelings is that she simply isn't attracted to humans like that.
• Last of His Kind: As far as anyone knows, he is the sole remaining Vector Witch existing upon Aios today. It's not clear if he really is the last survivor from the Vector Wars (though he's claimed to be much older than he looks before), or if he's developed his powers in the time since then.
• Limited Wardrobe: In noticeable contrast to Rand and Kaylethia, who both have a wide variety of outfits, he's basically never seen outside of anything but his standard gray armor. While this is partially justified (since he's a primary fighter and therefore actually uses armor), you'd think he'd change out of it once in a while in a non-combat situation... And then it's abruptly subverted in Chapter 12, where post-Art Shift, he's suddenly seen sporting a casual suit and tie for his job at the royal palace.
• Messy Hair: While it's normally avoided with his very straight (if kind of weird-looking) hairstyle, the beginning of Chapter 8 shows that he suffers from a bad case of morning hair.
• No-Sell: When the Arcane Incarnation Icktepetchis tries to blast him with some kind of lightning or energy spell after he reveals himself to be a Vector Witch, Torn simply shrugs it off with no damage and no apparent effort.
• Not So Above It All: Though he generally acts as though he's the Only Sane Man, he does sometimes act just as goofy as his companions. When he first meets King Ezekiel he has a bizarre fantasy about fighting Santa Claus, on one occasion he teams up with Rand to turn Kaylethia's endless teasing of him about Marnia back on her, and the entirety of Comic 424 is about him trying to convince the king to say "Mah boi, this peace is what all true warriors strive for!"
  • On a darker note, he also occasionally engages in the same sort of Comedic Sociopathy as Kaylethia and Rand, such as when he joins the former in throwing a mercenary who tried to double-cross them to his death while making False Reassurance jokes about "letting him go".
• Only Sane Man: While it does sometimes fluctuate for the sake of a joke, in general he's been consistently portrayed as the only member of Team Rand with any real amount of either morals or ordinary common sense. This isn't always a positive, of course: out of all the cast, he's probably the quickest to try and act based on how things should be in reality, which is not necessarily a sensible way to act when you're living in a setting like Aios.
• Rage Against the Heavens: As revealed in his Motive Rant in Comic 560, the main reason he supports the Emperor is that he believes the immortals - gods and Arcane Incarnations both - have spent millennia keeping mortals from reaching their true potential, and now that one (the Emperor) has, they're determined to crush him. Torn intends to crush them instead, allowing mortals to make their own destiny and reducing the gods to "but bacteria" besides them.
• Straight Man: As the relatively normal member of his adventuring party, he generally takes on this role for Rand and Kaylethia when teamed up with either of them as a duo. Emperor Ing has mentioned wanting to flesh him out more to help him be more of an independent character instead of just filling this role.
• The Big Guy: He isn't physically especially large (he is bigger than Powers, the other main human character, but Powers is unusually short), but out of all the protagonists he's definitely the one who most specializes in physical, hand-to-hand combat. He's not the most damaging of them (that honor goes to Rand), but he's easily capable of taking more damage than any of the other protagonists.
• The Generic Guy: "Generic" is probably too harsh a term, but between his Straight Man personality, his extremely ordinary race/class combination as a human single-classed fighter, and his generally mundane character design, he certainly comes across as one of the blandest members of the generally quirky cast. Given the Magebane Empire's fondness for the color gray and the general Stylistic Suck of Madness Style, this may actually be foreshadowing for his somewhat less generic true nature.
• The Reveal: Comic 560 reveals that Torn is far more than he seems. He's actually epic-level and the last surviving Vector Witch, a type of character whose powers are still largely undefined - though they apparently involve manipulating fate - but which are known to have once wreaked enormous destruction in a conflict known as the Vector Wars. Furthermore, he's actually secretly allied with the Emperor in his efforts to destroy High Aios and the gods, which he demonstrates by one-shotting an Arcane Incarnation. So far, the only other protagonist to find out about this is Kaylethia, who's desperately trying to kill him as a result. Some of the villains like Xeno and the Superintendent of Hypt also know the truth, though it's not clear for how long.
• The Watson: During the earlier parts of the comic, he generally was the one to ask the seemingly obvious questions that would let Kaylethia, or less commonly Rand, exposit about some setting background element such as the name 'Eetwosees'. There was never really an explanation given why he didn't know this information already, and these scenes were eventually phased out.
• Token Good Teammate/Token Evil Teammate: In general he seems to be the only member of Team Rand who's really concerned with doing heroic acts for their own sake instead of rewards, thrills, or lulz, and he occasionally urges the others to do the same (without much if any success). He's also just significantly nicer as a person than either Rand or Kaylethia. Then this all gets flipped on its head with the reveal of his Vector Witch nature, which instead suggests he's considerably more evil than any of his supposed friends: while Rand or Kayl might be a jerk towards NPCs or joke casually about killing people, Torn has outright murdered several of his supposed allies and friends just to conceal his true identity. Curiously, though, when not in Vector Witch mode he continues to act like the most moral member of the main cast, such as when he attempts to prevent Princess Marnia from killing a seemingly-helpless opponent in Chapter 12.

Jeroshaw

A dragon made out of lasers, Jeroshaw is Rand's familiar, purchased by him during the events of Chapter 8. He is relatively small for a dragon and appears to be rather young.

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• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: In Comic 653, he interrupts Rand's increasingly self-pitying monologue about how he's "useless" with a slap - which somehow leaves a mark even on a Custodes helmet - and a speech telling Rand in no uncertain terms to pull himself out of his depression and focus on stopping the imminent Hyptian doom overhead. It works.
• Morality Pet: While their relationship has its share of insults and irritations, he appears to be the one person Rand genuinely, selflessly cares about. Rand is genuinely saddened and frustrated by the effect the cambro has on his sanity, and when Jeroshaw is injured during a battle with Hypt Dragons at the beginning of Chapter 11, Rand actually runs away from the fight - in maybe the only time in the comic besides the times he's outmatched - to save the dragon. Similarly, Jeroshaw proves to be the only person who can get through to Rand later in the chapter when the latter begins to suffer a nervous breakdown.
• Parrot Pet Position: Played for laughs in his introduction, which shows that he apparently tried to do this despite being vastly larger than Rand. He keeps whining about it on various other occasions during Chapters 8 and 9, though Rand never lets him.
  Rand: Okay, you don't ride on my shoulders anymore. Doctor's orders.
  Jeroshaw: Aww, I like rides.
• Sanity Slippage: While he was always a bit weird, during Chapter 10, after being exposed to Rand's "cambro" - a mysterious egg-shaped artifact covered in glowing runes that was created by the death of an Archmagister of High Aios - Jeroshaw becomes increasingly unhinged. He develops a Gollum-like paranoid obsession with protecting it against people who want to "steal" it from him, as well as a tendency towards incoherent, violent-sounding ramblings, and winds up being put in a dragon-sized straitjacket and tied to a table. However, he seems to have recovered in the later part of Chapter 11, perhaps as a result of no longer being around the cambro.
• Sixth Ranger: After seven and half chapters of Team Rand consisting of the Rand-Torn-Kaylethia trio, he's acquired as Rand's familiar and has so far stuck around as a permanent member of the team though the team itself doesn't really exist anymore, so this really only lasted for two chapters.
• Talkative Loon: One of the results of his cambro-induced insanity is a tendency towards long, rambling strings of nonsense, often involving threats of violence. It's actually somewhat downplayed, though: while his subject matter is nonsensical, he generally manages to stick to coherent sentence structure and there's some degree of continuity between the things he's saying.
• Vague Age: Dialogue indicates he's very young for a dragon - perhaps explaining why, while large, he's not nearly as huge as most of the other dragons seen in the comic - but his personality and behavior seem reasonably adult-like... at least inasmuch as anyone in this comic acts like an adult. He does have some notably childish moments, though.

Kingdom of Eternus

The most powerful and stable nation on Aios, the Kingdom of Eternus is a center of magitechnology and the primary enemy of the Magebane Empire. Its royal family are among Rand's major allies, though he frequently hasn't gotten along with them.

Princess Marnia Celeste Eternus

A member of Rand's race, Princess Marnia is an adopted member of the Eternian royal family. Found by the king and queen of Eternus as an egg, she was raised as one of their children and is now the sole surviving heir to the throne. She is a fifteenth-level paladin.

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• Battle Ballgown: Her standard adventuring outfit (depicted above), while technically identified as "Princess Marnia's +7 Mithril Plate Armor", looks a lot like an armored dress, complete with a long skirt, and has been nicknamed a "combat dress" by fans. It's nevertheless much more practical than her normal dresses and does offer real defense, having been shown to absorb an entire round of fire from a rotary gun at close range.
• Cassandra Truth: In Chapter 10, she's convinced that the Hypt Dragons and the "normal" Hyptians are working together to attack Eternus, despite Rand and other characters insisting that Hypt Dragons only still call themselves that to trick people like her into blaming their attacks on Hypt. Turns out she's right, though it's not clear whether it was just a case of Too Dumb to Fool.
• Cloudcuckoolander: While some of it is just the results of her speech impediment, she's clearly not entirely in touch with everyday reality. During the few times where she and Rand are able to hold a friendly conversation, this can produce some impressive stereo goofiness.
• Combat Medic: When used mid-battle, her healing abilities are often the best contribution she can make to a fight, but that doesn't mean she doesn't engage in actual combat as well. Best shown off in Chapter 12, where she and Sereyentheous successfully take on an overwhelming force of daemons through the judicious use of her healing and Restoration spells; while Ser does most of the actual daemon-slaying, she kills a few herself as well.
• Cool Crown: She has a pretty standard Princess Classic crown, which doubles as a magic item. Kaylethia (who's convinced at the time that she's an imposter) initially assumes it lets her use some kind of mind control powers, but Chapter 7 establishes that its actual ability is to protect her, as a reptile, against extreme cold.
• Good Is Not Nice: For a paladin, she can be frankly kind of a self-centered jerk sometimes. She also has an unexpectedly bloodthirsty streak in battle that, after being hinted at a few times, really comes to the fore in her battle with "Vinny" during Chapter 12.
• Happily Adopted: While she clearly does not entirely fit in with the predominantly human Eternus aristocracy, her adoptive family is a different story. For all intents and purposes, she appears to consider them her real family: she's devastated by the deaths of her adoptive mother and siblings, is very close to her adoptive father, and never seems to wonder about her birth family even when a god specifically tells her what her name would have been if they'd raised her. A flashback to her original hatching and subsequent adoption shows that things didn't quite always go so smoothly, though. (But that's just what you get when you wave a human's face in front of an infant member of a human-eating species!)
• Heroic BSoD: Perhaps fittingly given her melodramatic nature, she's prone to this, freezing up during Chapter 4 after realizing she's been temporarily turned undead, and during Chapter 7 after Rand brutally shoots down her Love Confession. The former case is Played for Laughs when she very abruptly snaps out of it to smash Major Powers into a wall.
• Honor Before Reason: Torn warns her against "senseless acts of keeping your word" in Comic 412, but she generally acts like this surprisingly rarely considering that she's both a paladin and fairly Wrong Genre Savvy. One example does occur in Comic 503, where she attempts to avenge a dragon that was hostile moments before by attacking Powers, who's proven himself capable of easily clobbering both her and Torn.
• Insistent Terminology: She's very insistent on being addressed as Princess Marnia, or 'Lady Marnia' when she's around people who don't know she's the princess. In general only her father and Marcellan get to use her real name without a title.
• Love Epiphany: Played with a bit in Comic 328, where it's actually her father who realizes that she's in love with Rand, instead of hating him as she continues to insist. She does come to realize it herself as a result, though it's already a bit too late for it to have any chance of going anywhere.
• Love Makes You Dumb: While she's a little out of touch with reality to begin with, she really acts like an idiot when it comes to her crush on Rand. After first wasting a lot of time trying to seek revenge on him for petty reasons - and incidentally destroying whatever hypothetical chance she may have had with him in the process - before realizing she's interested in him, she then constantly engages in nonsensical behavior like interpreting getting blasted through a house as a positive sign or completely ignoring all signs that he's the opposite of interested in her (despite initially going to pieces when he rejected her). This reaches its apex in Chapter 12, where she flatly refuses to realize that Custodian Sereyentheous in Rand's body is not Rand despite the fact that he's not trying even slightly to hide it - though ultimately this last case leads to the trope being subverted, as once she finally figures it out, she also realizes at last that Rand actually hates her and starts to get over him. (Noticeably, when she then starts to experience signs of attraction to Sereyentheous, she acts a little more sensibly about it).
• Loving a Shadow: Torn is insistent that she's not really in love with Rand as a person, just as an idealized heroic figure who rescued her from Atlas, and while he has obvious ulterior motives for this, it's kind of believable given the way she talks about Rand. However, it's ultimately subverted with Comic 686◊, which establishes that, while her view of Rand may be a little rosy-eyed, she actually is interested in him because of real aspects of his personality like his "maverick" behavior.
• Magitek: Her preferred weapon is a warhammer called a "metahammer". In classic paladin style, she's fond of using it to smite evil, which is represented by it trailing a nimbus of gold energy. During Chapters 4 and 5, it temporarily absorbs Xeno's magical power, allowing her to do much more serious damage, as represented by the "sound" effect EPIC SMASH. Xeno eventually takes the power back, though.
• Mood-Swinger: She's capable of flipping very quickly between melodramatic - or real - sadness and other moods such as aggressiveness or normal cheerfulness. Her father, who finds this behavior very frustrating, thinks it's caused somehow by her albinism affecting her brain chemistry, and Rand and Kaylethia apparently find medical records that agree. Her moods aren't that extreme compared to some versions of the trope, though.
• Never Heard That One Before: Her first meeting with Kaylethia makes it clear she's more than a little tired of having to explain how she can be the heir to the throne of a human royal family. Possibly subverted, though, as she's generally more pleasant about explaining it and this may have just been a product of their Hate at First Sight.
• Open Secret: Played for laughs. Officially, she is "Lady Marnia Celeste of House Celeste", a noble of Eternus, and the true identity of the last living heir to the Eternian throne is unknown. However, nobody - including her - really seems to put that much effort into hiding that she's the princess, with the fact that they share names being just one part of it. Somehow most of the Praetorians still don't know what she looks like, though.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: She's a high-level character - apparently the second highest-level paladin in the entire world, in fact - and equipped with some impressive equipment. But the rest of the protagonists are about five levels higher than her, and most of the villains are even more powerful than that. As a result, she generally does not appear to be very effective in combat and, with a few mostly situational exceptions has only ever defeated mooks. As of Chapter 12, though, she did manage to beat Kaylethia in a fair fight.
• Power Gives You Wings: During the middle of Chapter 7, after being mortally wounded by Major Powers, she passes out and experiences a vision where she's given an "Angel Form" powerup (in the form of a literal cheat code) by one of the gods of Aios and, for some reason, the Emperor. In addition to massively boosting her combat skills, it gives her huge, white, feathery wings. These wings have ironically proven much more useful than the rest of the powerup, which rarely seems to work, as in Chapter 12 she uses them to fly herself and Torn safely out of a room full of exploding catwalks above pools of lava.
• Rationalizing the Overkill: Played with in all sorts of ways in Chapter 6 after it turns out Rand's tricked her into thinking an illusion of him was resurrecting King Ezekiel. While it's understandable that she might be angry about him not raising her father, she seems much more angry about him having tricked her personally, and it's eventually made clear that she's really mistaking another kind of obsession altogether for anger... Too bad she didn't figure that out until after she'd already given Rand ample reason to hate her.
• Rescue Romance: Her crush on Rand is a one-sided version, as, while she doesn't realize she has feelings for him until over a hundred comics afterwards, it was originally triggered by his (rather spontaneous) rescue of her from the Atlas-occupied Genesis Spire.
  • Played with much later, when Custodian Sereyentheous's entirely unnecessary diving-save of her leads to the first point where they verbally acknowledge their reciprocal romantic tension, though there'd already been some Ship Tease before that. (Technically they'd both saved each other's life at least once before as well, but it's not brought up).
• Royal Brat: She definitely has a fair amount of ego and entitlement coming from her royal background. She tries more than once to order around Team Rand by pulling rank, and it's clearly one of the major factors driving her mutual hostility with Kaylethia. Meanwhile, in a more harmless version, she often uses the claim of being a "proper lady" to excuse some fairly outrageous behavior like chainsawing through a wall to expand the size of a door and keeping her dinner date waiting for an arbitrary time.
• Ungrateful Bastard: It's kind of easy to understand why Rand hates her when you consider that her ultimate (if initial) response to his first rescuing her from terrorists, then getting her some medical attention after she tried to attack him, was to chain him to the ceiling and force him to listen to music he hated.
• Unstoppable Rage: During Chapter 12, she goes completely nuts on "Vinny" after the latter tries to assassinate Torn with a bomb, steadily pressing her back despite being five levels lower and ultimately knocking her off a catwalk, where she prepares to finish her off before Torn stops her. It's explained as her having a special hatred for assassins as a result of one killing most of her adoptive family when she was younger.
• Walking Armory: Parodied. She is virtually never without a very large number of weapons from the Eternus royal armories - grenades, beam-sabers, a metafist, many, many guns, and others - but because of the comic's inventory system, they never show up or hinder her movements at all. She's generally used all of these weapons at least once, too.
  "Mine apologies if mine smallsome arsenal art quite inadequate."
• Warrior Princess: She's a fifteenth-level paladin, and while this makes her somewhat underleveled by the standards of most of the cast, it also makes it clear that she's not exactly a helpless old-fashioned princess either (though she is a better healer than fighter). It's established before she even appears by the circumstances which led to the cast rescuing her from Atlas: instead of being kidnapped like Torn assumed, she was captured after leading a squad of Praetorians in an attack on Atlas's base that managed to kill a number of guards and do a fair amount of damage.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: She consistently acts as if she's living in a more serious, more idealistic, and above all more melodramatic story than she really is, as can be seen in things as diverse as the way she acts while in combat and the way she sees her relationship with Rand. Both enemies and allies have tried calling her out on this, but none of it ever seems to get through.
• Ye Olde Butchered English: She speaks constantly in a bizarre pseudo-Shakespearian dialect that does not even try to pretend to be historically accurate, though it is internally consistent. It's established as a speech impediment of a sort (possibly caused by her albinism), not a voluntary speech preference; her thought bubbles have normal speech and she also speaks normally when experiencing a near-death vision in Chapter 7 and while in her powered-up angel form.
• You Killed My Father: Subverted. After the Apprentice kills her adoptive father King Ezekiel in Chapter 5, she smashes him with her temporarily-powered up metahammer, but is prevented from killing him when he surrenders deliberately to spite her. While her father is later raised, Marnia still wants revenge on the Apprentice the next time they face off - though since her metahammer's lost its powerup, she's no longer anywhere near a match for him.
  • Chapter 12 reveals that she also apparently beat the assassin who killed her adoptive mother so severely that she shattered every bone in her hands doing it... despite not even being trained for combat at the time.

King Ezekiel Eternus

The elderly ruler of Eternus, King Ezekiel is Marnia's adoptive father and a primary opponent of the Magebane Empire. He is epic-level and considered the best swordsman in the world despite his age.

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• Authority Equals Asskicking: In keeping with the high-powered nature of royalty on Aios, he is considered the deadliest swordsman in the entire world despite his advanced age, and wields a double-bladed beam-saber in Chapter 5's Battle for Eternus. However, this is a bit of an Informed Ability, as he's only shown killing mooks during the battle and is snuffed out without difficulty when he confronts the enemy commander.
• Back from the Dead: During the Battle for Eternus arc in Chapter 5, the Apprentice kills him effortlessly (in Comic 280, which is missing from the archives but can be determined by context). After the battle, Rand volunteers to raise him, but a series of escalating misunderstandings lead him to abandon the resurrection and skip town, and the king winds up staying dead until late in Chapter 6, where he is unexpectedly raised by Clanor - of all people - as a favor to Marcellan.
• Big Good: As the King of Eternus, he is one of the most politically and personally powerful good-aligned characters on Aios, and the effective leader of the forces opposing the Magebane Empire. The only other character who has anything close to a similar role is the Archmagister Prime of High Aios, but he's only appeared once and appears to be kind of a patronizing jerk.
• Honor Before Reason: He's very insistent that the Magebane Empire has to answer to someone for its crimes against sentient (er, sapient) life, even in the face of opposition from his allies in Hypt. Which is all very well and noble... but also not very smart given not only the enormous power of Magebane's Emperor and its minions, but the fact that they're perfectly willing to avoid using that power and make peace with Eternus if the king would just negotiate. Subverted slightly, though, in that it's implied part of the reason that he won't is as much arrogance and overconfidence as it is a desire for justice.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: When Eetwosees is threatened by invasion in Chapter 5 he leads the defense personally, and at other times, while he often seems to delegate a lot of the day-to-day business of running the kingdom to his daughter and Marcellan, it's clear that he does play an important role in Eternian diplomacy and strategy. (Though this may not always be a good thing...)
• What's Up, King Dude?: Although Kaylethia and Torn initially have to deal with a certain level of bureaucracy when they're first summoned to meet him in Chapter 3, for the majority of the comic the protagonists have just been able to waltz into the royal palace and see him, or more often Marnia, whenever they feel like it. He doesn't bat an eye at randomly running into Rand at one point, and Torn's even able to spend a whole comic harassing him over one very silly request. This is both in keeping with the traditions of RPG adventurers being able to meet royalty regularly, and justified in the narrative: after all, they did save his beloved adoptive daughter and have helped save his entire kingdom.

Marcellan

An Arcane Incarnation and technomancer in service to the royal family of Eternus.

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• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: It's strongly implied that he often took on this role for Marnia as she was growing up. In the comic proper, he's seen taking on her duties at the beginning of Chapter 12 after she's left "distracted" by an upcoming dinner date.
• Extreme Doormat: Initially, he's portrayed as very subservient to the Eternus royal family, even when he shouldn't be. It's finally subverted for comedic effect in Comic 325, where he blows up at King Ezekiel's constant repetition of "Marcellan, is Marnie gonna be okay?" while he's trying to heal her and delivers a very long rant about how the king should just shut up and let him do his job. He promptly gets a hilariously terrified look on his "face" after realizing what he just said, but luckily Ezekiel's okay with it:
  "Wow... I had no idea you actually had a spine."
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: As both an Arcane Incarnation and a technomancer, it frequently falls on him to keep the royal palace running day to day, particularly given that both the king and the princess are often a little out of it. He's at various points seen handling paperwork, fixing damage to the palace caused by its own inhabitants, and even commanding the military while the royal family are busy elsewhere.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Played for laughs in Comic 683◊, where he unhesitatingly throws himself into an antimagic field - certain death for Arcane Incarnations - in order to save Marnia from falling to her death, only for her to easily save herself by transforming into her angel form. Fortunately he manages to pull out in time to survive, though his futile heroics go unnoticed.
  Marnia: Marcellan, you should be careful! Antimagic fields are dangerous to Arcane Incarnations like yourself.
  Marcellan: ...my thanks for the advice, Your Highness.
• Servile Snarker: He tends to deal with the rather thankless nature of his job with a lot of snark, often specifically about how he's being ignored or underappreciated; it's usually much funnier than his attempts at more normal humor. In addition to acting this way around the royal family, he's also shown to be very sarcastic to Clanor, who is his direct superior within the hierarchy of High Aios, though Clanor is somewhat less tolerant of it than his normal employers.
• Undying Loyalty: For all the crap he seems to constantly have to deal with, for all that he very frequently goes underappreciated, and for all that he likes to snark at their expense, his loyalty to the royal family of Eternus seems absolutely unshakeable. He's particularly devoted to Princess Marnia, who he's known since she was a child, and has shown quite unambiguously that he'd be willing to die for her in an instant - though he's equally willing to gripe about it if he survives.

"Vinny"

A mysterious masked mercenary in Eternian service, this character's gender and name have not been revealed, leading fans to nickname them "Vinny" after their resemblance to a Vindicare Assassin from Warhammer 40,000. They are apparently a red dragon in humanoid form.

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• Ambiguous Gender: Vinny's gender is not visually apparent at first glance - though they're clearly not particularly feminine-looking - and the other characters have generally not referred to them in a way that would indicate it. When Arc once does refer to Vinny as "he", Vinny grabs onto her and yells "Don't you EVER refer to me using pronouns!" (Xeno comments that it must be a dragon thing). Eventually, though, it's made clear that she is very definitely female.
• Badass Longcoat: They're never seen without wearing a long black coat with a high collar over their armor; it appears clearly meant as visual shorthand for being a badass. Turns out it's either an artistically upgraded version of her original signature longcoat or a similar-looking replacement; it's also apparently immune to fire damage for... some reason.
• Cassandra Truth: After discovering in their introduction that that Torn is a Vector Witch, Vinny desperately tries to convince everyone they meet that he must be immediately killed for the safety of the entire world. Professor Savaddor refuses to take them seriously, as does Xeno, who doesn't even understand what the potential danger is as a result of not being from Aios. Rand and Jeroshaw do actually seem to consider the possibility, but they're so terrified by the prospect of it being true that they just pretend they have no idea what Vector Witches are. And Marnia is too angry to reason with during their Chapter 12 confrontation.
• Cool Mask: Vinny is never seen without a full-sized mask/helmet, as depicted in the character image. Out-of-universe, it's responsible for their nickname thanks to its resemblance to that of a Vindicare Assassin, though Word of God says that this is a coincidence and it's actually inspired by the background image of this video. In-universe its purpose beyond hiding their identity is never explained, though a flashback to the Queen of Eternus's assassination and an alternative version of Comic 664◊ suggest that dark masks with glowing eyes may simply be standard equipment for assassins on Aios.
• Crazy-Prepared: After their attempt to assassinate Torn with a bomb fails, Vinny flees into a room that's been rigged in advance with not only an antimagic field - which is perhaps an understandable precaution if you're going up against known allies of an Arcane Incarnation - but also a massive load of explosives attached to the underside of its catwalks, apparently just in case Torn happened to follow them in.
• Dramatic Unmask: In Comic 684◊, Vinny pulls off their mask to reveal that she's really Kaylethia. It was fairly heavily foreshadowed, given Vinny's continuing lack of an identified name or gender despite a fairly heavy presence in the last two chapters, her red dragon form (which Kaylethia had also strongly been hinted at having), and of course their very similar-looking longcoats.
• Gun Fu: While they mostly stick to acting as a sniper during the Battle of Leesburg in Chapter 11 (at least before transforming), during their battle with Marnia in Chapter 12, Vinny engages in a lot of mid-gunfight acrobatics, topped off by the ridiculous-even-for-this-comic move of surfing down a plasma beam from Marnia's rifle while firing one-handed as they go.
• Insane Troll Logic: In Comic 623, after being confused by a reference Xeno makes to himself as a babysitter, Vinny concludes that it means he's going to turn Marnia and Savaddor into babies and then sit on them.
  "The FIEND!"
• No Escape but Down: At the end of their fight with Marnia, cornered, disarmed, and dangling from a catwalk over a pool of lava, Vinny lets go and falls into the lava - but not before setting off all of the explosives they've planted around the room. They survive anyway thanks to their draconic fire immunity.
• No Name Given: Despite appearing in nearly 70 comics, their name was never revealed, and there wasn't even an in-universe nickname given. Fans eventually came up with "Vinny" from their resemblance to a Vindicare Assassin from Warhammer 40,000. As it turns out, the real reason they weren't named was because the audience already knew it.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Although the transformation itself hasn't yet been depicted directly onscreen, Vinny is capable of shapeshifting between their normal humanoid form and that of a huge red dragon. Though less commonly used, the red dragon is apparently their true form.

Magebane Empire

The primary antagonistic force in the story, the Magebane Empire is an aggressive nation that is over five thousand years old. However, it is also geographically tiny and survives primarily because of the extraordinary personal power of its ruler and his minions.

The Emperor

Formerly a normal human sorcerer, the Emperor of the Magebane Empire is now a four-armed grey giant possessed of indescribable magical and personal power, which he has used to kill many gods. His real name is unknown.

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• Affably Evil: As shown in his interactions with both the protagonists and his minions, he's a pretty personable and laid-back guy once you get past his wacky (and somewhat murderous) sense of humor. He's perfectly willing to have converse pleasantly with the protagonists when he first properly meets them, with Rand being the one to start a fight, and he later tries again for a friendly chat with Torn and Marnia while cameoing during the Pokemon battle subplot in Chapter 9. Nor is this just a product of his immense power - during his duel with Khorne, the one being in the comic who's proven a match for him, in Chapter 12, he engages in mid-battle conversation that's so friendly and mutually complimentary that it borders on Foe Romance Subtext.
• Anti-Villain: While he kicks the dog a couple of times - especially in regards to Lord Magebane - in general he's far less destructive and evil then he could be, given his power. He claims to be not trying to hurt anyone or conquer anything except as is necessary for his own survival, and overall he's backed this up. In fact, on a couple of occasions he's actually gone out of his way to save the protagonists, such as his entrance in Chapter 7, where he breaks up a fight between them and Powers that wasn't going well at all, and in Chapter 12, where he intercepts a blast Khorne aimed at Sereyentheous before engaging the Chaos God in battle.
• Bad Boss: The Emperor is quite willing to extend his trolling behavior to his minions, with Xeno probably getting the worst of it. He's also proven to be dangerous to ordinary Magebane soldiers, though mostly just as collateral damage.
• Berserk Button: He does not like Breaking the Fourth Wall at all. In Comic 229, after having to do it in order to provide some humor to a long Expo Dump meant for confused readers, he loses his temper and blows up half a continent before repairing it. And in Comic 249, he responds to Torn doing a similar thing by declaring "Only I can do that!" and charring Torn to a crisp.
• Big Bad: As the Emperor of the Magebane Empire, he's been set up as the ultimate antagonist of the story, posing a threat to Aios and supposedly the entire multiverse. While he's not too active himself, the primary villains are all his minions and some of the Arc Villains, like the Hyptians in Chapters 10 and 11 are also allied with him. However, there's been some doubt thrown on this, since he's not nearly as evil as he could be and doesn't seem to have anything in particular against the protagonists. Still, Rand supposedly is prophecized to ultimately defeat him...
• Deity of Human Origin: He was once an ordinary human, albeit a powerful sorcerer, before becoming what he is now: a being of immense power who, while not quite stable enough to be technically considered one himself, is vastly more powerful than any ordinary god. His ultimate goal is apparently to stabilize his powers and become Aios's new god of magic.
• Fallen Hero: According to his own account of his backstory, he was once an incredible force for good, having Awakened the tarrasque of Aios to turn it into the good-aligned Archduke Araske and, ironically enough, become the first Arcane Incarnation and founded High Aios to bring order to magic and the world. He even sacrificed himself to save the world by ending the Time Freeze^note a historical event that hasn't really been detailed, but certainly wasn't a good thing for the world. Unfortunately, it was this sacrifice that somehow caused him to attain his current power; now, even by the most generous interpretation, he's an immensely selfish being who's murdered countless gods just to keep himself alive.
• God-Emperor: As both the ruler of the Magebane Empire and a borderline deity, he certainly comes close to qualifying for this trope on power alone. It's not clear whether any of Magebane's ordinary citizens actually worship him or not, but the Apprentice's self-proclaimed title of "The Last Priest" and his apparently unshakeable loyalty imply that he might. More humorously, Major Powers has become convinced, that he's actually an aspect of the God-Emperor of Mankind and follows him for that reason; this isn't really the case, but Powers isn't exactly sane.
• Laughably Evil: Despite being the theoretical primary antagonist, he almost unfailingly brings some of the comic's more random humor whenever he shows up, at least partially because he doesn't really take anything seriously. Early chapters played him a bit more seriously, but that hasn't been the case in a while.
• Meta Guy: In a variant, while he's very distinctly not an Author Avatar, he frequently acts as the author's voice within the comic. He berates the audience for not following the plot (sometimes seriously, sometimes not), fast-forwards through boring bits or moments where the story seems to have gone off the rails, messes with the panel structure, and in general acts like something of a narrator while still remaining a character within the narrative as well.
• Missing Mom: Unlike many characters in this comic, we know quite a bit about his relationship with his father (it's not good). His mother, however, has never been mentioned or even hinted at.
• Motive Rant: Played for laughs in Comic 368, where, after Rand tells him that he thought the Emperor wanted to destroy the universe, the Emperor launches into an angry rant explaining his backstory and claiming that he's been unjustly villified by High Aios and the pantheon when all he really wants to do is live. Unfortunately, his credibility winds up being undercut by the realization that he's accidentally destroyed the world during his monologue; when he resets it, he doesn't bother to give the speech again.
• No Name Given: His true name is known to only two beings in the universe besides himself, and is censored magically whenever he speaks it. It's not clear whether knowing it would actually mean anything to anyone, or if he's just secretive.
• The Omnipotent: Subverted. For most of the comic, he's portrayed as having essentially author-level powers, able to shrug off any attack, destroy and recreate the world in the blink of an eye, and generally rewrite reality however he sees fit without expending any meaningful effort in doing so. But in Chapter 12, when he confronts the Chaos God Khorne, he finds himself fought to a standstill. While this is partially because Khorne is immune to magic, it clearly proves that the Emperor, while still stupendously powerful, does indeed have his limits within the narrative.
• Orcus on His Throne: He rarely ever bothers to leave Magebane's gigantic fortress of a palace except when god-hunting, and delegates pretty much all direct antagonist duties or other involvement with the plot to one of his minions, usually the Apprentice. Certainly he's never done anything to try and directly attack the protagonists, despite it having been amply demonstrated that he could snuff them out literally without even realizing it. This is one of the major clues that he's not nearly as evil as the Arcane Incarnations or their allies make him out to be.
• Phlebotinum Overload: The driving force behind pretty much all of his actions is to avoid this trope. His power is apparently so vast that his physical form can contain only a fraction of it at any one moment, and eventually it will kill him. To avoid this, he periodically releases it - destroying the world, which he then fixes - and kills gods to absorb their strength so that his body can hold more of his full power. His ultimate goal is to absorb the Heart of Arcaea (the source of all magic), which he believes will let him fully stabilize his power, allowing him to become a true god.
• Seen It All: Of the snarky and Genre Savvy variation. He's over five thousand years old and has experienced a very wide spectrum of existence; as such, nothing seems to faze or particularly surprise him, just amuse him.
• Self-Made Orphan: Exaggerated: he is constantly killing his father, Lord Magebane, on pretty much the slightest impulse. He resurrects him afterwards, but he's said that he'll only do this for deaths that Lord Magebane suffers at the Emperor's own hand. As a result, he also tends to constantly put his father in lethal danger just for kicks. While Lord Magebane is not a very sympathetic character at all, this is still one of the more obvious indicators that the Emperor is indeed actually evil and not just selfish and determined to stay alive.
• Spell My Name with a "The": Although he doesn't actually seem to mind being addressed simply as "Emperor" from time to time, he's generally known to both characters and readers as "The Emperor". Powers has used this to conclude that his mysterious real name is actually "Theodore Emperor" - with "The" as a nickname - which the Emperor has claimed was actually not far off. Of course, he may have been joking.
• Troll: Besides killing gods, the primary thing he uses his borderline omnipotent powers for? Annoying those around him for his own amusement. In fact, he's actually been shown making troll-style faces on more than one occasion.

Lord Magebane

The Emperor's father, Lord Magebane is the founder of the Magebane Empire and is over five thousand years old. However, he is only a fifth-level aristocrat and has little real power within the empire.

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• Authority in Name Only: While it's not entirely clear whether he or the Emperor is the formal titled ruler of the Magebane Empire, he clearly is supposed to retain at least some important position, with the authority to order around troops and represent the empire at formal events. However, whatever this position precisely is, in practice it seems to exist only on paper. It's clear that the Emperor is the true ruler and driving force of Magebane, and his minions barely pay Lord Magebane any attention, only doing what he says when they feel like it. Chapter 8 shows that he can't even seem to get his own bodyguards to do what he says.
• Butt-Monkey: He's the constant target of humorous suffering from the Emperor, his other minions, and the narrative itself. Over the course of the comic, he's been variously traumatized by Warp travel, cut in half, been mocked by his minions, had his monocle stolen, and been terrorized, threatened, and killed in many humorous ways by the Emperor - all of it Played for Laughs.
• Chekhov's Gunman: In Comic 76, Rand encounters a trio of enemy shapeshifters trying to pose as his teammates and doing a very bad job of it. One of them, who's supposed to be Kaylethia, is instead using Lord Magebane's form - his first technical appearance within the comic.
• Flanderization: Initially he's portrayed as a fairly significant and active part of the Magebane Empire hierarchy, giving advice to his son on a number of matters, arranging a Secret Test of Character for Xeno, and engaging in diplomatic negotiations with Eternus; while he does take some abuse from the Emperor, it doesn't define his character. As the story goes on, though, he increasingly is portrayed as a total joke who gets no respect from any of the Emperor's minions or even the Elite Mooks, and who seems to be there pretty much entirely for his godlike son to kick around. He hasn't been involved in the main plot for a long time.
• High-Class Glass: Like a number of upper-crust characters within the comic, he wears a monocle. According to his entry in an old characters list, it's actually a laser-monocle, but this power was only ever seen once and seems to have been forgotten about. Nonetheless, he takes it very seriously, at one point assembling his entire army just in order to ask them which one of them stole it .
• Out of Focus: He last appeared in anything more than a cameo during Chapter 8, and hasn't been seen at all since the start of the Hypt arc in Chapter 10.
• Time Abyss: As the father of the Emperor and the founder of the Magebane Empire, he is at least five thousand years old and may be significantly older, since we don't know his backstory beyond that point. Also a mystery is how he's managed to stay alive until the present, since he seems to be just a fairly ordinary human, though his son probably has something to do with it.

Xeno

Originally a Tau fire warrior named Ke'tie'pert'nek, the character now known as Xeno was killed by Major Powers, only to be resurrected by the Emperor. He is now a death knight-like undead being with powerful martial and magical skills. Despite being one of the Emperor's lieutenants, he also retains a leadership position within the Tau Enclave on Aios as their Shas'O (military commander).

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• Anti-Villain: Despite being an undead servant of the apparent Big Bad, he really doesn't seem particularly evil at all. While he's quite straightforward about his willingness to do hard things if necessary to achieve his objectives, he rarely engages in any gratuitous evil, and often goes out of his way to save lives - including the lives of the main characters - even if it means challenging his allies. And when he discovers the Emperor has been destroying the world on a regular basis, he tries to attack him, demanding justice. Obviously he fails, but he gets points for the effort. He can certainly be a Jerkass sometimes, of course, but that's a universal character trait in this comic.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: On the one hand, he's one of the most level-headed, competent, intelligent, and all-around dangerous villains in the comic. On the other hand, he's still prone to totally ridiculous behavior; while some of it (such as his tendency to get amusingly smashed to bits) isn't really his fault, much of it is. He has a fondness for silly hats, an occasional tendency to geek out with Rand, and can occasionally lapse into over-the-top reactions completely unlike his normal collected demeanor. Comics extras (especially the Valentine's Day strips!) have a particular tendency to play this side of his personality up. But in the main comic, at least, none of this actually makes him any less dangerous as a villain.
• Consummate Liar: He appears to be an excellent liar, and would probably be an even better one if most of the people he lied to weren't automatically inclined to distrust him. He's still good enough at it to make it unclear on most individual occasions exactly what his goals and motives are in a particular situation.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: He usually takes this role to Powers whenever they work together, attempting to smooth over the dissonances between Powers's Imperial indoctrination and the reality of Aios, and to keep him focused on the mission instead of going on a wanton murdering spree. He's generally successful with the latter - though he occasionally has to bribe Powers by letting him attack him - but not so much the former.
• Cutting the Knot: Played for laughs in Comic 281: as part of a test to confirm his status as the Enclave's new Shas'O, he's confronted with a door that he can't teleport past. After the Earth Caste engineer running the test tells him he also can't smash through it, Xeno bursts out of the test chamber, beats him up, and threatens to use him as a shovel to dig his way through the door unless he opens it. The engineer instead tells Xeno that what he was supposed to was simply press the obvious button that opened the door.
  Caption on arrow pointing to the button: OMFG XENO YOU DUMBASS
• Engineered Heroics: Chapter 11 features a minor example. During the Battle of Leesburg arc, he conjures up an illusionary Eternus sky frigate to take on the Hyptian Apocalypse Cruiser attacking the city. When the Apocalypse "destroys" the frigate, Xeno takes the opportunity to make himself look like a hero by apparently stopping its debris from crushing Marnia and Savaddor.
• First-Episode Resurrection: He's killed in Comic 13, very shortly into the comic and not long after his introduction, and is brought back in his undead form by the Emperor soon afterward, debuting at the conclusion of the prologue "Chapter 0" storyline. We still don't actually know that much about his life as a living Tau.
• Friendly Enemy: He seems remarkably chill with the protagonists even when they aren't working together, often offering them friendly (if patronizing advice). He and Rand seem to get on particularly well despite simultaneously vocally hating each other, including a memorable instance in Comic 458 where they geek out together over Rand having picked up a laser dragon familiar. Again, this gets played up some in the extra comics.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: He has both apparent Complete Immortality and absolutely stupendous regenerative powers that allow him to recover rapidly from just about any injury. Naturally, this means he's horribly injured almost every time he appears, starting with mere impalement and working his way up through various levels of mangling, decapitation, and dismemberment. On at least one occasion he was reduced to little more than part of his head and a pile of gore, yet managed to reform in the next comic.
• Klingon Promotion: At the beginning of Chapter 3, when the incompetent and mentally unstable Shas'O of the Aios Tau Enclave attempts to have him relieved of duty, Xeno kills him and assumes his post. His attempt to make the murder look like a suicide is quickly seen through, but the fire caste accepts him as their new leader anyway - partly because they're intimidated by Xeno, and partly because no one really liked his predecessor. The promotion is eventually formally confirmed by the enclave's Ethereal Caste member.
• Magic Knight: In his death knight form, he possesses both extremely potent magical powers and is a skilled swordsman and hand-to-hand combatant. One character has described him as possessing "martial prowess exceeded only by the Custodes and magical ability exceeded only by the Emperor," and he's perfectly willing to use both types of ability in battle.
• Manipulative Bastard: He's very, very good at talking people who don't trust him at all into doing exactly what he wants. It's probably best demonstrated at the beginning of Chapter 11, where he convinces King Ezekiel of Eternus to accept him as an ally despite numerous objections, but he also shows it off while working his way up to the leadership of the Aios Tau Enclave.
• Mook Promotion: Happens very early in the storyline, but is nonetheless played straight: when he's first introduced there's little reason not to view him as just a mook. But while he begins as a random Tau fire warrior visibly indistinguishable from the numerous others that have appeared in the comic, by the current point of the comic he has become one of the most powerful beings upon Aios.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Though he has a real name (Ke'tie'pert'nek), essentially everyone just calls him "Xeno" from the term Major Powers normally uses to refer to him.
• Spikes of Villainy: Downplayed: After his power boost in Comic 245, he gets a new armor design that has noticeable spikes on its shoulder plates, but isn't otherwise particularly spiky.
• Stopped Caring: Eventually, he just flat-out gives up on his efforts to reason with Powers and settles for just explaining things to him in a way that fits with his worldview while still making sure he does what Xeno wants.
• The Men First: Played with: In Comic 645, when called upon by Professor Savaddor to help his supposed allies, who are outmatched by the Hyptians, he claims that the battle is hopeless and his first duty is to save his men. In reality he's actually playing both sides and is refusing to help the good guys any further. However, apparently one of his specific instructions for the Hypt Dragons was to have his troops teleported to safety.
• Took a Level in Badass: Near the end of Chapter 4, after he's lost most of his powers and fallen victim to a Humiliation Conga from both the protagonists and some random Atlas goons, the Emperor orders the Apprentice to help him recover his powers. One Training Montage later, he's not only done so but become more powerful than ever before. In contrast to earlier comics, where - while he was still very dangerous - he could still face some difficulty overcoming certain opponents, he now seems able to pretty much effortlessly defeat anyone short of Powers (who he's still evenly matched with) or the Adeptus Custodes.
• 24-Hour Armor: While in a few very early comics he was shown to occasionally take off his helmet, for most of the story he's never been seen in anything but his armor, though the armor itself gets periodic upgrades.
• Unfortunate Names: The first part of his Tau name, "Ke'tie", is apparently pronounced identically to "Katie". This has inevitably earned him some mockery within the comic.
• Villain Ball: He grabs one in Comic 232 when, in noticeable contrast to his normal shrewd and manipulative personality, he very suddenly throws Rand out a window of the Genesis Spire just because he doesn't like him. This leads to Rand's friends becoming increasingly suspicious and ultimately attacking him; while he comes close to winning the ensuing fight, in the end he gets the crap beaten out of him and is left for dead in his most spectacular defeat in the comic - and it was entirely his own fault.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: While he's never made it entirely clear what the greater good he's working for is - though it's definitely not the so-called "Greater Good" of the Tau Empire, which he's well aware is little more than a polite way of referring to the totalitarian ambitions of the Ethereal Caste - he's always been very insistent that he is working for some kind of greater good. He admits that he's willing to use questionable methods, but also claims that they will serve a higher purpose, even if those around him can't tell how. It doesn't seem to be the Emperor's own agenda; while Xeno seems to agree that the Arcane Incarnations are corrupt and patronizing, he also has some clear differences with the Emperor on a few things.
• Willfully Weak: During his first real fight with Rand and Torn, he offers to not use any spells during the fight in order to make it easier on them, and is true to his word. He still beats the hell out of them without much real difficulty.

Gary/The Apprentice

Originally one of several Imperial psykers that accompanied Major Powers to Aios, Gary was eventually killed by Powers on suspicion of daemonic possession. He was subsequently resurrected by the Emperor as the Apprentice, a daemonic being capable of wielding powerful magical energies. He is the commander of Magebane's military forces.

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• Came Back Strong: In Comic 94, Gary is killed when Major Powers stabs him through the head with his chainsword. By the end of the chapter, though, he's been resurrected by the Emperor as the Apprentice, an incredibly powerful daemonic being who's far more formidable than Gary ever was and is arguably the most individually powerful of the Emperor's three Co-Dragons. In a bit of a subversion, though, there seems to be next to no trace of Gary's personality remaining in the Apprentice, though they do have the same memories.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Unlike his cohorts Powers and Xeno, who both claim (though for very different reasons) to actually be the good guy, he doesn't seem to be at all reluctant to declare his nature as a daemonic being and often threatens to horribly kill people and/or consume their souls. In fact, he's pretty over-the-top about it.
• Faux Affably Evil: On the surface, he acts similarly to many other villains in the comic, taking a rather cordial tone when it comes to interacting with the heroes. But while he manages to keep this facade going on a few occasions - such as his time as a prisoner of Eternus - generally he drops it pretty quickly to reveal his true nature as one of the few genuinely cruel and sadistic villains in the story.
• Good Wings, Evil Wings: He has a pair of creepy-looking bone wings, which are apparently inspired by (and compared to in-comic) Kerrigan as the Queen of Blades. They don't appear to serve any purpose except to make him look more evil; while he can fly, it's through his powers, not through use of the wings.
• The Heavy: He's generally been the driving force behind most direct threats from the Magebane Empire in the comic, since the Emperor is too powerful to be a direct force in the story (and doesn't really care about being a threat anyway), Lord Magebane isn't very threatening, and Powers and Xeno both have their own agendas that only overlap with the Emperor's. He commanded the attack on Eetwosees in Chapter 5, and poses much more of an active threat to the heroes during the Chapter 9 battle that introduces the Custodes then Xeno does.
• Humanoid Abomination: At first glance, he doesn't seem any different then he did as a human apart from the bone wings and yellow eyes. However, his magical power is anything but normal, and when he takes major - if superficial - damage in Chapter 8, it's shown that underneath the surface, he appears to be little more than a mass of amorphous dark red tentacles.
• I Have Many Names: Played for laughs in Comic 376. When an Eternus Praetorian standing by his cell asks "What... who are you?", the Apprentice launches into a monologue about the many titles he could be called: the Harbinger of Eternity, the True Messiah, the Last Priest...
  Praetorian: I don't care about you. I mean the other guy.
  (pan to Lord Secundus having materialized behind the Apprentice)
• I Surrender, Suckers: Subverted. While his initial reason for surrendering to Marnia in Chapter 5 is just to be spiteful by forcing her to accept it rather than avenge her father, it's also strongly implied that he's only playing along with his imprisonment until he can cause some kind of damage. However, he actually just winds up being forgotten for a couple of chapters before disappearing from his cell in a battle with Lord Secundus.
• Major Injury Underreaction/Minor Injury Overreaction: Has demonstrated both extremes at different points for comedic effect. In Comic 283, his reaction to a hit from Princess Marnia's temporarily souped-up metahammer that left him unable to rise and trailing blood is to initially laugh it off, though he later does seem to realize that it did damage. Conversely, Comic 447 sees him go utterly to pieces over getting shampoo in his eyes.
  • Zig-zagged during the battle in Chapter 9, where he completely flips out over apparently-serious damage - including being cut in half and having a plasma beam go through his face - that doesn't actually seem to meaningfully affect him.
• Mind Control: He initially demonstrates formidable mind control abilities during his introduction, using them to first turn the members of an Eternus strike force against each other and then force their commander into making a full confession. This hasn't really been shown since, however.
• Out of Focus: He hasn't appeared in the comic since diving into a Warp rift after Powers in Comic 556.
• Punch-Clock Villain: As Gary, he didn't seem to have any particular stake in any of the events of the story, and just seemed to go along with them because it was his role as an Imperial psyker. This is definitely not the case after his resurrection, though.
• Token Good Teammate: As Gary, he was the only member of the Xeno-Powers-Gary trio of early antagonists who didn't seem to have any particularly sinister or evil side. After his resurrection and transformation, however, this has been pretty much flipped around, as he is far more evil than Xeno (who is largely an Anti-Villain) or even Powers (who's a hero by the standards of his own civilization).
• Villainous Friendship: While it might just be by way of contrast to their interactions with Major Powers, the Apprentice and Xeno seem to have a friendship of sorts, frequently being working together without trouble (at least by the standards of this comic) and on a couple of occasions teaming up to make fun of Lord Magebane, as in Comic 407, where they make funny faces at him behind his back while he makes a speech.

Major Maximillian Powers

Formerly an Imperial Inquisitor, Maximillian Powers is a major in the Imperial Guard who originally came to Aios as part of a deniable mission. He has since become obsessed with destroying Rand, leading him to ally himself with the Magebane Empire.

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• Absolute Xenophobe: Naturally, as a faithful soldier of the Imperium of Man, you'd expect him to fit this trope. But Powers stands out by being psychotically xenophobic even compared to the other Imperials in the comic. While someone like High Lord of Terra Levinary in Chapter 9 can be willing to tolerate the continued existence of non-hostile aliens for at least a brief period of time, Powers needs no provocation whatsoever to simply appear and start killing everyone in sight. This extends to other humans - who, after all, are all "heretics" - though he'll generally target nonhumans first.
• Arch-Enemy: To Rand. However many other people the two of them come into conflict with - and it's a pretty long list for both - each will always be the other's most hated enemy. Word of God says this is why Powers could instant recognize that Sereyentheous in Rand's body wasn't Rand, despite being in mindless berserker mode at the time.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: He can be capable of rather clever tactics when he really needs to be, but his standard combat strategy is simply to charge at the nearest enemy guns blazing (or chainsword waving, depending on the circumstances). And he won't retreat from even vastly superior odds, though on one occasion he is persuaded to "advance in a different direction". He's badass enough that this usually works out for him.
• Badass Normal: Apart from his indestructibility (which definitely doesn't prevent him from being non-lethally defeated) and resistance to pain, he is simply a normal human: no magic, no psychic abilities, no special class features, and no cybernetic or other augmentations. Despite this, he manages to be one of the most undeniably lethal characters in the entire comic, simply through skill, training, and a hefty set of weapons.
• Black-and-White Insanity: To him, everyone is either a loyal servant to the God-Emperor of Man or His enemy, with Powers determining who's who. Guess which one most of the other characters in the comic are.
• Blood Knight: He thrives on combat, and while any attempt to slaughter the enemies of the Emperor (his Emperor, not the Magebane one) makes him happy, he clearly enjoys it the most when they pose a serious challenge to him. Demonstrated well in Comic 351, where his reaction to an apparently mortally wounded Marnia suddenly ascending into a warrior angel form is "Hahahah, glorious. NOW it's a fight!"
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Exaggerated. In the long run, he wants to kill virtually every single other character in the comic as enemies of the Imperium, but in the short run, he needs to work with some of them to kill the others.
• Characterization Marches On: During his first showdown with Rand, he's portrayed as a total wimp both in terms of combat skills and personality: he's easily defeated by Rand's magical powers, and breaks down in panic when Rand threatens to eat him. Both of these are completely at odds with all of his later characterization, even as soon as the next chapter. Curiously, though, they also remain central to the story, as this confrontation marks the start of his and Rand's animosity.
• Determinator: He never, ever gives up, and almost never loses confidence, no matter how bad the situation looks for him. Of course, this may just be because he's too stupid and fanatical to know better.
• Feel No Pain: In addition to his apparent inability to die, he doesn't seem to experience pain. While he can certainly be slowed down or outright incapacitated by injuries, his actual reaction to them doesn't seem to be anything but getting angrier, though he says this resistance is less effect when he's in a state of fear. In Comic 175, he claims this originated as the result of an incident during his days as an Inquisitor when he experienced a teleportation accident that resulted in a Space Marine materializing with his legs in his torso, although he also admits that he may have partially fictionalized this story.
• Hypocritical Humor: Despite the fact that his own combat tactics seem to consist entirely of charging at the nearest enemy (sometimes while screaming), in Comic 500 he expresses outraged incredulity at Torn and Marnia using basic tactics against him, declaring that "The mind that is too simple to accept their subjection to the God Emperor of Man cannot possibly fathom even basic tactica."
• I Reject Your Reality: Despite every attempt by other characters to convince him that Aios is a futuristic fantasy setting that doesn't fit into his indoctrinated worldview - to say nothing of all the direct evidence he's encountered - he remains absolutely unshaken in that worldview. He very gradually seems to have realized that there's some degree of difference between Aiosian arcane magic and standard Chaos sorcery, but he still seems convinced they're ultimately the same thing, just manifesting in different forms. Most other aspects of his zealotry and xenophobia haven't been shaken at all, even when they really should have been.
• Jet Pack: He uses a rocketpack from earlier in the comic, apparently of standard Imperial issue. Initially used as part of a minor Dungeon Bypass, it's seen its heaviest use in battling overly large or flying enemies - such as a tarrasque or Marnia's angel form - and within the Astral Plane.
• Karmic Transformation: In Chapter 4, when all members of the adventuring party suffer a Forced Transformation effect that turns them into something reflective of their worst fears, Powers becomes a Tau. He is predictably unhappy about this, but manages to more or less get by in his new form with the help of Xeno (not that he thanks him) and is even able to fit in somewhat with the Aios Tau Enclave - though it of course has no effect on his hatred of aliens. Eventually, he reverts without explanation to his normal form at the end of Chapter 6.
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: His introduction in the new art style reveals that he has a rather impressively heroic-looking jaw. While it initially seems somewhat at odds with his personality, it's worth remembering that by Imperial standards, Powers is a hero. Perhaps odder is the way its visible badassery contrasts with his generally dangerous-yet-unassuming appearance.
• Morphic Resonance: During Chapter 12, for currently unexplained reasons he randomly transforms into various other forms, including an Arcane Incarnation, a member of Rand's race, and various beings from different stories. Throughout these transformations, though, he keeps several features the same at all times: his purple eyes and a green and tan color scheme matching his Imperial Guard uniform.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Upon learning in Chapter 12 that Sereyentheous plans to summon a Chaos God to Aios, he reacts with barely restrained complete terror completely unlike his normal gung-ho attitude. He then freely and eagerly teams up with Rand and Marnia to try and stop first Ser and then the Chaos God, without one word uttered about slaughtering xenos heretics. A lampshade is eventually hung on this (of course) in Comic 700◊.
• Screaming Warrior: Parodied in Comic 543, where after flipping out over the Custodes' "heresy", he attacks Lahvin while screaming continously at the top of his lungs... for three panels, after which he has to stop in order to take several deep breaths. He winds up screaming while attacking quite a lot over the course of that battle, in fact.
• Staying Alive: This man just. Won't. Die. Decapitation, having his body disintegrated, being eaten, and all kinds of lesser injuries just seem to slow him down briefly. He even survives the entire world being blown up by the Emperor - though the Emperor does respond to this with "Y'know one of these days, Powers, you're gonna get killed." So far, unlike his immunity to pain, there has been no explanation offered for this, though there's been lampshading by the barrel.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Especially early in the comic, he and Xeno frequently have to work together despite the fact that Powers is the one who originally killed Xeno, and would very much like to kill him again, resulting in a lot of this trope when they do. To a lesser extent, this applies to most scenes in the comic where he's working with someone else.
• Unstoppable Rage: After Custodian Lahvin tries to explain to him in Comic 542 that the Imperium was never meant to be as xenophobic as it eventually became, Powers attacks him in a fit of rage. But he truly loses it in Comic 544 when Lahvin's fellow Custodian Limbaw mocks Powers for preferring fanaticism and hatred to logic and rationality. This causes Powers's eyes and speech bubbles to turn red and somehow gives him the strength to not only successfully go toe-to-toe with the seemingly invincible Limbaw, but wield one of the Custodes' Guardian Spears - which are made of neutronium and weigh as much as stars - against him. It's only after Powers apparently loses his rage, and strangely seems to forget what he was doing, that he finally gets taken down.
• Walking Armory: While his standard and iconic weapon is a chainsword, he carries quite a few other weapons in his inventory. He also seems to have more than one chainsword on him at all times, given how quickly he can replace them whenever they get destroyed (as happens semi-frequently).
• Wrecked Weapon: His chainswords tend to get wrecked a lot; taken up to eleven in Comic 544◊ when he destroys literally dozens of them trying to breach Lahvin's armor. Played for laughs in Comic 694◊, where Sereyentheous turns his latest one into cheese, causing it to shatter against his neck; as you'd expect, Powers is initially outraged... until he actually tries the cheese.
  nom nom "I'm okay wif fis."
• You Are What You Hate: It's been implied - if not outright stated by his battle with the Custodes - that in the end, Powers isn't truly loyal to the Emperor of Mankind so much as he is to a particular dogmatic and self-righteous form of Imperial ideology, as interpreted and determined by Powers himself. Meanwhile, looked at from the outside, he's repeatedly defied Imperial authority and is currently allied to a powerful arcane force with no actual relationship to the Imperium. Thus, despite spending almost his every waking moment seeking to kill them, he may actually qualify as a traitor and heretic himself - not that he'll ever admit it.
  Powers: Wait, heretics! Heretics! Brother-Custodian! I must kill the heretics!
  Lahvin: No, Powers. You are the heretics!

The Adeptus Custodes

The personal guards of the God-Emperor of Mankind, the Adeptus Custodes (or "Custodians") have spent the last 10,000 years guarding the Emperor on his Golden Throne on Earth. Three of them have now arrived on Aios as escorts to Aron Levinary, a High Lord of Terra. They are the most powerful warriors in the known universe.

In General

• Bling of War: Their Powered Armor is fantastically ornate even by the baroque standards of the Imperium of Man, and it particularly stands out in comparison to the normal art style. Unlike in Warhammer 40,000 canon, it's more brass than golden, but it's still fairly shiny, and there are golden aquila embellishments on their pauldrons. There are also random bright red gemstone-looking things and impressive black plumes on their helmets.
• Breakout Character: They proved extremely popular with the fanbase almost as soon as they arrived, resulting not only in a large continuing story presence throughout the following chapters (as opposed to their boss, High Lord of Terra Levinary, who simply disappeared), but in them getting their own intermittently-running Fourth-Wall Mail Slot spinoff, "Ask the Custodes".
• Divergent Character Evolution: Initially, all three Custodes appear effectively identical in terms of personalities, and the only thing really distinguishing them visually is that Limbaw is left-handed. Even the writing tends to mix up their names. However, Limbaw soon acquires a hat and sunglasses as part of a visual gag and keeps them, setting him apart visually and setting the tone for his more goofy personality. Later, Sereyentheous is killed and resurrected in Rand's body, allowing him to get his own unique character development about exploring his newfound mortal nature and magic. This leaves Lahvin as the only Custodian who hasn't yet been particularly fleshed out beyond the traits and appearance all three of them possess.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: They're utterly, hilariously unable to figure out that everyone around them is not the same kind of immortal, indestructible, super-strong badass that they are, and are constantly baffled at the frailty of those around them, marveling at how other characters could be left comatose by a "mere" seven-mile fall or be taken down by a single attack. Word of God says that there's some intentional ambiguity about how far this goes - it's possible that they're faking some of it to troll the other characters by doing things like offering them tea that's 213 degrees Farenheit - but it's clearly not all fake, as seen when Limbaw accidentally kills a temporarily mortal Sereyentheous by hugging him.
• Living Relic: They come from the very beginning of the history of the Imperium, and have spent the last ten thousand years on Earth doing pretty much nothing. As such, their attitudes are much different from that of modern Imperials, often in surprising ways. Notably, they claim that it was never the Emperor's intention to indiscriminately campaign against all aliens - only those hostile to humanity - and that he never intended for the Imperium to grow as intolerant, dogmatic, and repressive as it became. This makes it much easier for them get along with the rest of the cast, but it does not go over well with Major Powers...
• Mix-and-Match Weapon: As in canon, they wield Guardian Spears: glaives crossed with some type of ranged weapon (described in the text as a bolter, but represented visually as a beam weapon of some kind). They don't use the latter function often, which sometimes lets them catch opponents off guard, as with an unlucky Arcane Incarnation in Comic 554.
• No Hero to His Valet: Having acted as the bodyguards to the Emperor of Mankind right from the start of the Great Crusade, they have an infinitely less reverential view of him than most Imperials. They generally are less than respectful than talking about him, using affectionate nicknames like "Empy" and "Big E" and occasionally criticizing him, and they're quick to point out his A God I Am Not attitude to Powers. Sereyentheous even uses insults about him to get the attention of Powers and his Imperial Guard squad in Comic 692◊.
• Put on a Bus: Lahvin and Limbaw exit the story to fight Hyptians for the duration of Chapter 12, allowing it to focus more heavily on fleshing out the recently (re-)resurrected Sereyentheous. Lahvin doesn't even show up, while Limbaw appears in the first comic of the chapter to explain his absence and talk briefly with Ser.
• Smug Super: They're not at all shy about boasting about their incredible physical powers. However, this might be a subversion, since as noted above, they don't really seem to get that everyone else lacks those powers and so might not be boasting at all. The trope is definitely played straight with Sereyentheous, though, who spends quite a bit of time after being body-swapped with Rand either lamenting the loss of his Super-Strength or bragging about what he can now do with Rand's magical abilities.
• Those Two Guys: Lahvin and Limbaw, who spend a lot of time as a duo, and are seen much more often together than Sereyentheous is seen with either of them. While they have slightly different appearances and increasingly divergent personalities, they're still easy to confuse for each other, and even the author's gotten their names mixed up in a few comics.
• 24-Hour Armor: None of the Custodes have ever been seen without their armor. The one time one of them's shown to take off his helmet, there's another helmet underneath it (in a Shout-Out to Halo). However, the trope is averted when Rand and Sereyentheous switch bodies: Rand keeps the helmet on, but switches out the armor for a Custodes-colored and -sized version of his robe, while Ser gets a version of their armor meant for his new body, but loses it before his date with Marnia, and doesn't wear a helmet anyway.

Custodian Sereyentheous

One of the three Custodes to arrive on Aios, Sereyentheous - nicknamed Ser - did not appear much before he was killed by Clanor. An accident during his resurrection led him to switch bodies with Rand.

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• Blood Knight: He really likes to fight, even by Custodes standards. According to a story Lahvin tells in Comic 542, he never quite forgave the Emperor of Mankind for ordering the Custodes to not engage an army of aliens the Emperor was attempting to negotiate with during the Great Crusade, while in modern times, he's quite disappointed when the potential multi-sided fight over possession of Major Powers at the end of Chapter 9 instead devolves into diplomacy. Nor do things change when he's in Rand's body: he's still shown to prefer showing off in physical combat instead of using his magical powers whenever it's possible, such as in his "fight" with Powers.
• Death or Glory Attack: In Comic 703◊, he channels all of Rand's magical energy into a single beam spell meant to one-shot Khorne, which he eventually dubs the "KILLSYOULASER". It doesn't work.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: Inverted: while in Rand's body, he's persistently unable to recognize his own newfound weakness. At the beginning of Chapter 11, this actually gets him killed for a second time when he casually walks around while in negative hit points. Later, after his second resurrection, he does serious damage to himself by implanting his body with Custodes power armor, which he's only able to compensate for with Rand's magic. And once he runs out of magic during the climax of the chapter, he finds that what he considers to be a normal attack leaves him all but crippled with exhaustion; fortunately, this case gets dealt with by Marnia using multiple Restoration spells to keep him going.
• Fatal Flaw: Pride. While we don't see enough of him in his Custodes form to tell if he was exceptionally arrogant then, once he switches bodies with Rand, he becomes utterly convinced of his own infallibity and believes that Rand's magic can let him do absolutely anything. This leads to him nearly destroying Aios in an insane attempt to single-handedly kill the Chaos God Khorne. Its failure causes him to develop some humility, but he still tends to overestimate his own abilities, which nearly gets him killed by a small army of daemons when he tries to fight them in his normal style without realizing that his combat capabilities are much weaker in Rand's body.
• Humanity Ensues: Played with. After being vaporized by Clanor, a botched resurrection causes him and Rand to switch bodies; while this is technically going from a human of sorts to a non-human, it basically plays out the same way as the trope normally does, with Ser exploring some of the newfound parts of his life that being a normal, mortal being involves, such as physical fragility, food, and even dating.
• Hypocritical Humor: The first thing he does when meeting Rand after his second resurrection is criticize him for acting in ways unbecoming to the dignity of a Custodes. Rand retorts "When did you care about dignity?", which is followed by Ser flying around and generally acting like a complete goofball. Nor is this the least dignified thing he does before or since.
  Rand: These are the guys the universe gave unlimited martial prowess...
• Lady and Knight: His relationship with Princess Marnia has serious overtones of this, especially once they finally get the air cleared about the whole body-swap thing. Ser defers to her as the local authority at least some of the time, goes out of his way to protect her, and is extremely courteous - he's the only character in the entire comic to consistently address her by her title without prompting. When they fight together against Khorne's daemons, he does most of the direct hand-to-hand combat while she mostly supports with healing and restoration magic to keep him going. And there's definitely some romantic subtext to it all. Of course, they still snark at each other from time to time, but then everyone snarks at everyone else in this comic. At the end of the chapter, he even winds up formally swearing fealty to her.
• Must Make Amends: Following his disastrous miscalculation in summoning Khorne, which led to the deaths of huge numbers of Eternian citizens and nearly destroyed Aios, he has sworn himself to Marnia's service in the hope that he can try to atone for the damage he caused her world.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After his ultimate attack utterly fails to affect Khorne, he collapses in guilt and horror at the realization that he's just let a Chaos God loose upon the material plane, in shocking contrast to the normal Custodes arrogance he displays.
  "Now Khorne is fully manifested in reality, where he is free to run amok until there is no more blood left to shed. My failure, my arrogance, has doomed the universe."
• Overly Long Name: While all Custodes have insanely long names (reflecting the honors they've earned) that would take entire pages to write, his is the only one that's actually been mentioned in the comic; it's so long that when making dinner reservations in Comic 671, the manager just lists him as "table for Qwertyuiop". Furthermore, even his ordinary name - Sereyentheous - is significantly longer and harder to spell than that of his brothers, leading him to be frequently referred to both in and out of comic simply by his nickname "Ser".
• Reality Warper: Following the body-swap, the combination of Rand's magic and his innate power as a Custodian winds up magnifying Rand's magic to the point where Sereyentheous, instead of just casting spells in a conventional sense, can use it effectively to warp reality. Even with a huge part of his power diverted just to maintaining his physical capabilities and health, he can still do things like transform Powers's chainsword into cheese and cause a bunch of hostile Imperial Guard troops to simply fall over dead. Unfortunately, this leads him to assume his magic can literally do anything - which is definitely not the case.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: When in Rand's body, he's distinguished from Rand by having bright gold eyes instead of Rand's purple ones. Like Rand, they're tied to his magic, which has a gold aura color, and like Rand, when he runs out of power in Comic 704◊, they instead turn a normal-for-Rand's-species red.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Subverted. He barely appears prior to his first death compared to Lahvin and Limbaw and gets no real distinguishing characterization before it happens. After his resurrection, though - and particularly after his second resurrection - he's had a ton of screen time and has become by far the most fleshed out of any of the Custodes trio.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: After realizing the full scope of his power mixed with Rand's magic, he attempts to summon the Chaos God Khorne to Aios in order to kill him - with the intention of eventually killing all of the Chaos Gods and bringing peace to the Warp, thereby making the galaxy safe for humanity - whatever the risks to both himself and Aios as a whole, claiming that "the price for doing nothing is too high" when challenged by Marnia on this. This briefly brings him into direct conflict with the other protagonists, though they quickly have to set that aside once Khorne actually manifests.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Double subverted. After being resurrected in Rand's body for the second time, he impulsively asks Princess Marnia out to dinner after she hugs him, explaining to an irate Rand that it's because of his unfamiliarity with "this... 'romance'" thing. Later, though, he tells Limbaw that the date is just a way of pursuing diplomatic negotiations, and he appears to mean it. Still later, however, after the date has gone completely off the rails, he and Marnia do actually have some mutual romantic tension.

Custodian Lahvin

One of the three Custodes to arrive on Aios. Not much has been established about him as an individual so far.

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• The Generic Guy: Compared to Limbaw and Sereyentheous, he's been much less distinguished from the general personality traits all three Custodes share, and is primarily defined by his role as a straight man to Limbaw.
• Genius Bruiser: Out of all three Custodes, he's easily the most eloquent and intelligent - though the latter is still something of a relative term.
• Straight Man: He's frequently seen paired with Limbaw, and during these times he generally takes the role of the straight man to Limbaw's more explicitly goofy antics.
• Unstoppable Rage: After Clanor vaporizes Sereyentheous, he completely loses his cool and descends into an epic rage in which he first kills Clanor, then slaughters the rest of his squad of Arcane Incarnations when they try to intervene, with nothing any of them throw at him ever slowing him down. He remains seething with fury afterwards and explodes - apparently literally - at High Lord Levinary when the latter interrupts him.

Custodian Limbaw

One of three Custodes to arrive on Aios. He is apparently the highest-ranked member of the Custodes trio, identified as "Officer Limbaw".

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• Accidental Hero: He has a habit of doing this, played for laughs each time. In Comic 589, he's revealed to have been the mysterious force that fixed a collapsing skyscraper that Rand was trying to stop, apparently without even noticing anyone was in danger - he was just bugged by the way it disrupted the skyline. Later, in Comic 614, he turns out to have saved "Browncloak" and a number of the inhabitants of Rand's hometown from the blast that obliterated the town. He was only just trying to save Sereyentheous, and apologizes to the townspeople thanking him, who he seems to think are upset.
• And Call Him "George": In a variant on the trope, he accidentally mortally injures Sereyentheous by tackling him in a hug after he's resurrected in Rand's body, since neither of them immediately realize it's infinitely frailer than a normal Custodes body.
• Cool Shades: In Comic 465, as part of a visual gag, he acquires a pair of aviator sunglasses, which he continues to wear afterwards. They're apparently somehow double-layered, as seen on one occasion where he lends them to Marnia to shield her eyes from a nuclear blast, though obviously Limbaw himself doesn't need them for anything except looking cool (and a bit goofy).
• The Ditz: Apparently influenced by his goofier appearance, he quickly becomes portrayed as the most out-of-touch and dopey of the Custodes trio.
• Late to the Punchline: The end of Chapter 9 features a variant. When a future version of himself appears out of a Warp rift in Comic 556 and, confused, throws Powers into it, the present version of Limbaw yells "You dumbass!" and leaps into the rift after Powers, triggering a Stable Time Loop where he becomes the future Limbaw and throws Powers into the Warp because he remembers doing it. Comic 557 consists entirely of him realizing while floating in the Warp that, when he insulted Future Limbaw, he was in fact insulting himself.
• Make Me Wanna Shout: In Comic 484, he defeats Xeno, who's trying to unleash a continent-destroying spell against him, by taking off his helmet and screaming at him. The scream also takes out all of the members of Team Rand who are still on their feet, completely by accident.
  Torn: Any reason you guys aren't attacking us?
  Limbaw: You guys were destroyed by me shouting. Shouting. I wasn't even shouting at you.
• Overranked Soldier: The beginning of the Pokemon battle mini-arc introduces him as "Officer Limbaw", and he's apparently the highest-ranked of the three Custodes in the comic. At the same time, though, he's clearly the least intelligent and sensible of them - hardly officer material.

Hypt

The Hypt Academies are an ancient civilization of artificial intelligences. Although they mostly exist within a cyberspace demiplane, their servers exist physically somewhere on Aios. While Hypt was formerly an ally to the Kingdom of Eternus, it has since turned against it and launched a war against organic life.

Superintendent Kalros of Hypt

The ruler of Hypt, Superintendent Kalros is a Function: one of a race of artificial intelligences composed of the collected knowledge of Hypt. Though formerly an ally of King Ezekiel, he appears to have gone insane and is attempting to kill all living beings upon Aios.

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• Affably Evil: For a deranged artificial intelligence out to commit genocide on a global scale, he seems pretty easy-going (though like many characters in the comic, he's also easily annoyed). He frequently appears to be content to sit back and chat with the protagonists rather than fight them and seems more grudgingly congratulatory than anything when they foil his plans.
• Arc Villain: Although it's not revealed until the end of Chapter 10, he is the ultimate antagonist of the "Hypt Arc" spanning Chapters 10 and 11, attempting to exterminate the population of Eternus through armies of Hypt Dragons and giant floating monolithic Apocalypse Cruisers. While he's allied with the Magebane Empire, he clearly has his own distinct motives from theirs and is not just another minion of the Emperor, and Magebane forces ultimately play only a minor role.
• Badass Boast: He delivers a somewhat indirect and wordy one to Princess Marnia in Comic 642, asking why, if suicide is considered the coward's way out, and as a paladin she's immune to fear, she's bothering to attack him? Then he backs it up by neutralizing her without any visible effort.
• Card-Carrying Villain: For somebody who claims that he's acting logically and for the greater good of the universe, he's awfully quick to refer to his opponents as "heroes", and responds in the affirmative when Rand asks if he's the "final boss". He also has an Evil Laugh.
• Chekhov's Gunman: His first appearance is in Comic 372, literally hundreds of comics before he takes a major role in the story; it's also slightly foreshadowy of that later role by having him warn King Ezekiel that Hypt cannot support Eternus's opposition to the Magebane Empire. He also cameos a few times during the party sequence in Chapter 8 before finally taking on a major narrative role two chapters later.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": He's near-universally referred to simply as the Superintendent, or Lord Superintendent by his Hypt Dragon minions if they're feeling formal. His true name - Kalros - has been mentioned only once.
• Friendly Enemy: In general he's pretty relaxed when dealing with the heroes, possibly because he's so much more powerful than most of them, and is willing to actually sit back and give them advice on how to stop him (though he also insists it's impossible as he does so). He's particularly chatty with Professor Savaddor - who he actually was friends with before trying to have him killed - and they at one point actually have a moment where what looks like an attack is actually the Superintendent fixing Savaddor's malfunctioning vocoder (which has been causing him to speak in ALLCAPS).
• For Science!: In Comic 649, when Rand asks him why he isn't doing anything to stop Savaddor and Jeroshaw's attack on the Apocalypse Cruiser, he responds that he is still "a man of science" and is curious to see if it works. Later, after Rand manages to punch the cruiser away, he teleports in another - and then a third after that - to obtain more data on Rand's abilities. In fact, there are a couple of hints that the entire attack on Leesburg was meant solely to assess what the protagonists can do.
• Ludicrous Precision: In keeping with his characterization as an evil AI, he tends to talk this way, saying things such as "Wait 1.5 seconds" and inevitably giving numbers in very precise measurements. Comic 641 features a variant, in which his response to Marnia demanding to know how many people he's killed today is "Fifty-two thousand, nine hundred and seventeen, rounded down," as though he killed one-third of a person. Word of God is that this was a Shout-Out to how Terminator 2: Judgement Day had the "good" Terminator's POV feature a casualty readout that included decimals.
• No-Sell: Literally every attack the heroes throw at him during the battle of Leesburg - whether physical, magical, or something else - winds up dealing no damage, and only two are shown to draw any sort of reaction from him at all. When he eventually gives up and retreats, it's because all of his Apocalypse Cruisers have been defeated; he still hasn't taken any actual personal damage.
• Omnicidal Maniac: He intends to kill all organic life on Aios in order to, in his own words, create a world of perfect logic "where scientific and technomantic progress reigns unconstrained by petty mortal sentiments such as morality or lawyers". However, in a possible subversion, there are several hints that this may not be his real objective: he's curiously reluctant to use lethal force against the protagonists he severely outclasses; he seems to have a fairly solid alliance with the Magebane Empire; and more comedically, he's less than forthcoming with an answer when Rand asks him where things like uploaded minds and the undead would fit into this worldview.
• Surrounded by Idiots: He seems to be much, much smarter than the Hypt Dragons who act as his primary minions, and at one point erupts in a rage at their tendency to inform him of the obvious.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Defied. Professor Savaddor attempts to talk him down a couple of times by appealing to their former friendship and the fact that his plan is obviously nuts, but he refuses to even consider it.
• Tautological Templar: He insists that his plan to exterminate the entire organic population of the planet of Aios does not make him insane because, as a Function of Hypt, by definition he cannot be insane - in effect claiming that whatever he concludes must be correct because it's him concluding it.
  Savaddor: Omnicide is not the conclusion of a rational being. You're insane.
  Superintendent: Such a thing is not possible.
  Savaddor: And yet you are insane.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Played for laughs in Comic 660, when, following the defeat of three Apocalypse Cruisers in a row, he finally gives up for the moment and attempts to upload himself back to the Hypt cyberspace demiplane... only to run into speed problems in a parody of real-life internet connection difficulties. He doesn't manage to finally leave until almost halfway through the next comic.
  "0.67 Kb/s Upload Speed?! How? I'm hosted on a server the size of a skyscraper! How is it so slow?!"

Professor Savaddor

A Hyptian artificial intelligence and technomancer. Formerly the Professor of Mechanomantic Draconis at Hypt Academy, which meant he was in charge of studing mechanical dragons, Savaddor defected to Eternus after discovering that the Superintendent was behind the recent spate of Hypt Dragon attacks on Eternian citizens.

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• BFG: In Comic 650, he uses technomancy to conjure up a gigantic beam cannon about twenty times bigger than he is to fire at the Apocalypse Cruiser's weak point. It doesn't work, but at least it provides an amusing visual.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He's a brilliant technomancer and in many ways one of the more straightforwardly heroic characters in the comic, but that doesn't stop him from engaging in bizarre behavior - even at crucial moments - such as hitting on female-Rand and engaging in some truly bizarre mid-battle banter, such as singing "I Like Big Guns And I Cannot Lie".
• Chivalrous Pervert: During his introduction, he hits on Rand (currently female) pretty brazenly. But though he isn't above a little unasked-for mind reading, he's otherwise one of the politer and more heroic characters in the comic. That said, it's not entirely clear what was going on there, since he hasn't done anything like it again and is as confused as everyone else by Rand bringing it up later.
• Establishing Character Moment: Comic 592 has him debut by encountering female-Rand and proceed to effortlessly read her mind, analyze the current situation involving the Hypt Dragon she's just killed, and teleport her away while offering unsolicited advice on a current dilemna she's having, all the while trying to flirt with her and bragging about his status as a Hyptian Professor. It's a very effective way of establishing him as 1) powerful and competent, 2) rather egotistical, and 3) kind of a weirdo.
• High-Tech Hexagons: Unlike the angular black and green effects of normal Hyptian technomancy, his abilities' visual manifestation appears as lots of black hexagons with neon-blue edges; he also uses a hexagonal portal tunnel of some kind to teleport himself, Arc, Marnia, and "Vinny" to Leesburg in Comic 619. The whole thing gets massively lampshaded in a conversation with Xeno in Comic 625:
  Xeno: What am I looking at?
  Savaddor: A bunch of hexagons. You're supposed to believe that it's my suggestion for troop placement based on firing lines conceived through my peerless logic.
  Xeno: I must say, this is a very impressive blue and black honeycomb.
  Savaddor: Thank you.
  Xeno: You have excellent hexagons. It would be remiss of me not to consider them.
• Informed Flaw: Xeno and Marnia have both commented that he uses a disappointingly little amount of his intellect on quips and witty remarks. While this would be surprising if it were true considering the nature of the comic, it's not really borne out by the way he actually talks, which features a healthy amount of snark.
• Insufferable Genius: He's not at all hesitant to brag about his impressive intellect as a Hyptian Professor and artificial intelligence to those around him. He backs the bragging up to a large degree, although he's also shown to be wrong about a few key things at different points.
• Odd Friendship: Despite being a genius-level artificial intelligence, and very willing to tell people as much, he seems to have a genuine friendship with the slightly loopy Princess Marnia and the downright ditzy Arc, and has proven willing to stick up for them in conversation.
• Robe and Wizard Hat: His character design looks very much like a Magitek retro-futuristic robotic version of this style of appearance.
• Science Hero: In a variation on the trope, he uses technomancy - which, while never precisely defined, seems to be a fusion of magic and science and is certainly treated as the Aios equivalent of science - to do good and protect the people of Eternus, both directly and through the creation of various technomantic devices (mostly weapons).

Arc

A renegade Hypt Dragon. Arc is an old friend of Professor Savaddor's, but not much has been otherwise revealed about her past or nature.

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• Adult Child: There's no way to tell how old she actually is (though King Ezekiel once refers to Hypt Dragons as the Academy's "millennia-old mistake"), but it's clearly much older than she acts. She's constantly exciteable and cheerful, but in a fashion that suggests she doesn't really understand what's going on around her, she mispronouces words such as "participating", and generally speaks in a fairly childish fashion.
  Xeno: Apologies for leaving but the adults (and Arc) need to talk strategy.
• Ambiguous Gender: According to Rand, Hypt Dragons don't have gender, and certainly as robot skeleton dragons none is visually obvious, but Arc has been referred to as "she". Word of God is that she can be "considered" female.
• Genius Ditz: In almost all regards, she seems to be either childlike or simply ditzy. However, she's still a Hypt Dragon and knows quite a lot about how they think and operate, allowing her to be the first one to figure out in Comic 627 that the Hyptian strategy at Leesburg involves deliberately distracting the defenders with an unsuccessful attack.
• Jumping Out of a Cake: She's introduced in Comic 600 by erupting out of a large cake that Marnia had made as an apology... a cake that, while large, seemed way too small to conceal a dragon. (Possibly she used her alternative form to fit inside and then transformed, or possibly it was just Rule of Funny).
• Let's Get Dangerous!: She's initially depicted purely as comic relief, and doesn't become much more useful during the first stages of the Battle of Leesburg, firing a hilariously puny-looking set of small lasers that are derided by "Vinny" as useless. Once she transforms into her dragon form, though, she becomes a serious threat. Her fusion with Vinny is even more so: not only is it capable of damaging the previously-unstoppable Hyptian Apocalypse Cruiser, but it's one of only two things to even slightly affect the virtually invincible Superintendent Kalros.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: She is the only known Hypt Dragon who is not a Card-Carrying Villain out to slaughter as many organic beings as possible. The details behind this have not yet been established, though it's interesting to note that her draconic form is significantly less spiky and evil-looking than the standard Hypt Dragons.
• Remember the New Guy?: She's introduced as an old friend of Professor Savaddor's and at least an acquaintance of Marnia's. While Savaddor himself had only just debuted less than ten comics previously, Marnia had definitely never mentioned knowing a friendly Hypt Dragon before.
• Transforming Mecha: She's capable of shifting between a small mobile robot form (depicted above) and her Hypt Dragon form◊, apparently at will, though the transformation has not yet been depicted onscreen. It's not yet clear whether she can also assume a humanoid form as some other Hypt Dragons apparently can.

Other Characters

Gromm'Teh

Rand's younger brother, Gromm is also an adventurer, though he is only second level. He is a bard who specializes in playing the harmonica.

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• Annoying Younger Sibling: He and Rand don't seem to get along well, and while that's certainly in large part because Rand is an easily-annoyed jerkass, Gromm does seem to go out of his way to annoy him. This rarely ends well for him, with results seen in the prologue including getting frozen solid and shoved down the stairs (apparently, he shares his brother's resilience to comedic acts of violence).
• Dreadful Musician: His harmonica playing is widely feared and hated by Rand and his friends, who will go to some extreme lengths to stop him from playing it. The very first comic, in fact, features Rand waking up after having knocked himself unconscious to stop listening to it. Curiously, this is not true for other instruments - such as a guitar, which he's apparently quite good at - but he prefers to use the harmonica anyway.
• Limited Wardrobe: In contrast to his brother's wide array of costumes, he's only ever seen wearing one outfit: a red shirt and black pants. The colors are foreshadowing.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Played for laughs. As a second-level character, he is a complete gnat next to his brother and the other main protagonists, who are all borderline epic-level. However, as he gloats about in Comic 144, he's also the only second-level member of his own adventuring party, which makes him their most powerful member.
• The Reveal: Comic 270 reveals that Gromm does not and has never existed: he has always been an identity used by the demon prince Lord Secundus (whose characteristic colors happen to match Gromm's clothing). This pretty much comes out of nowhere, although Rand claims to be unsurprised, since his harmonica playing was so "hellishly unbearable" that only a demon lord could achieve it. Unfortunately, Comic 276, which apparently contains much of the explanation for this, is missing from the archives.

Lord Secundus

A shadowy demon prince, Lord Secundus has taken an interest in Rand's life for mysterious reasons. Despite being an enemy to the protagonists, he is also an enemy to the Emperor.

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• Bad Boss: He tends to blame all of his failures on Clanor and constantly berates him for incompetence. While Clanor is kind of incompetent, at least some of their failures are clearly Secundus's fault instead or as well.
• Big Bad Wannabe: During the early parts of the comic, he appeared as a (literally) shadowy force manipulating events from behind the scenes to threaten Rand and his friends, and the conclusion of Chapter 1 featured both him and the Emperor as sources of ominous foreshadowing, with the implication that he would be a major villain going forth. However, later comics revealed that not only is he vastly less powerful than the Emperor, he can't even manage to fight one of his minions to more than a draw. Furthermore, despite revealing himself as having posed as Rand's brother, it's clear that he's not even that much of a threat to Rand: not only are he and Clanor both fairly incompetent compared to the Emperor's minions, but he literally can't kill Rand because it will just lead to his re-ascension and inevitable subsequent death. All this has resulted in him winding up as a fairly second-rate villain in the overall narrative.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Played for laughs in his first encounter with Rand in Comic 64, where he traps Rand in an iron cage set to lower him into the lava and leaves him there with a magical prerecorded message to gloat. He doesn't take any precautions against Rand escaping magically, and the cage apparently lowers very slowly, prompting Rand to comment that "whoever that is, they are cheap, to the extreme."
• Characterization Marches On: His first onscreen interaction with Clanor, in Comic 73, has him threatening to execute the latter for his failure to kill Rand. While he's later shown as a Bad Boss who constantly berates Clanor and blames him for things that aren't his fault, this kind of explicitly threatening behavior is never seen again.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Despite being a demon prince, he seems to have some respect for order and stability: he despises Atlas as a group of psychopaths threatening civilization in general, and he seems to consider his conflict against the Emperor to be a matter of the good of the universe, instead of just being a power struggle.
• God of Evil: His former identity. Secundus is actually the former God of Pain, who after manifesting on Aios to investigate an arcane disturbance, became the first victim of the Emperor's deicide. He was resurrected by the Emperor in his current form as a demon lord, though it's not clear why. Also unclear is why, as has also been revealed, the key to his re-ascension to godhood is tied to Rand's life: if Rand dies, Secundus will experience apotheosis. This was his initial motive for killing Rand, and it's also why he's now decided not to until after the Emperor is defeated, since becoming a god would just inevitably get him killed by the Emperor again.
• Out of Focus: He has not been seen since the end of his inconclusive battle with the Apprentice all the way back in Comic 391, and hasn't even been mentioned since Clanor's death at the end of Chapter 9.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: He is a shadow demon with glowing red eyes, black-and-red speech bubbles and magical effects, and a home plane that appears to be primarily red. His chief minion dresses entirely in red, and his own favored outfit in his disguise as Gromm is red and black as well.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: He has an odd relationship with the Great Mechanicus, God of All Machines (apparently they were roommates at college) which, like most friendships in this comic, seems based partially upon mutual insults and deliberate irritation. When they meet Rand in Chapter 5, Mechanicus goes out of his way to share Secundus's embarrassing backstory just for the hell of it. They do seem to actually be friends, though.

Clanor

An evil-aligned Arcane Incarnation and Lord Secundus's right-hand man. Despite his evil alignment, Clanor is not a renegade from the Arcane Incarnations and holds the rank of a Magister-Captain within High Aios.

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• Conflicting Loyalty: Played with. He's loyal to both High Aios and Lord Secundus, and while the former seems to come first, it's not clear what he would choose if their interests ever came into conflict. However, this never actually winds up happening, since both share the same goals of world stability and defeating the Emperor. The one conflict they do have - Rand's survival - is eventually subverted when Clanor points out to Secundus that, for spoileriffic reasons, he can't actually kill Rand until after the Emperor is defeated.
• Characterization Marches On: As with Secundus, his first onscreen scene with his master in Comic 73 is rather off from his later characterization and interactions. He's portrayed as an easily intimidated wimp who begs for his life, in stark contrast to his later arrogance.
• Enraged by Idiocy: He seems to think he's Surrounded by Idiots at all times, and regularly lashes out at both Team Rand and his Arcane Incarnation cohorts throughout Chapter 9. However, he's really not that much brighter than them himself, and often lashes out at "idiocy" that isn't really.
  • In an earlier example, he beats the crap out of Marcellan for a Your Mom joke in Comic 306, despite not even having a mother, because he thinks it was a stupid joke.
• Establishing Character Moment: Comic 66 introduces him by having him teleport in and dramatically declare "RAND'TEH! Lord Secundus commands your demise. His will be done!"... to a pair of characters who do not actually include Rand. He winds up having to teleport to two more locations before actually finding Rand and blasting him... with a spell that has no effect except gender-bending him. All this helps to immediately establish that Clanor, for all his power, is not one of the more competent villains in this story.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: As the story goes on, and especially when he's not around Secundus, he seems ever more easily provoked to extreme outbursts of rage, even by the standards of this comic. While he usually blames it on the stupidity of the people he's ranting at, their actual actions often don't seem to have any bearing on it.
• The Dragon: He is the right-hand man (er, being) to Lord Secundus and his primary agent on Aios. In fact, he's pretty much Secundus's only depicted minion besides some lesser demons.
• Laser-Guided Karma: His final outbreak of random explosive rage leads to him committing a very Stupid Evil action which gets him Killed Off for Real as a direct result.
• Magic Staff: Uniquely among Arcane Incarnations, who generally rely on their own inherent powers and not magic items, he carries a magic staff. Apparently called the "Staff of Vindiction", it's topped off with a large red crystal and seems to act as some kind of focus for his Ultimate Destruction spell. After his death, it was looted by Rand, though he hasn't actually done anything with it... yet.
• Pet the Dog: Despite the way he's shown to treat Marcellan during their primary onscreen interaction, he winds up resurrecting King Ezekiel apparently purely as a favor to the other Arcane Incarnation; if there's an ulterior motive it's never hinted at. Lampshaded in Comic 327, where Marnia needs quite a bit of convincing that this was the case, considering Clanor's reputation.
• Servile Snarker: He does not spare Lord Secundus from his contempt for everyone around him, routinely calling out his more Genre Blind actions and at one point going so far as to cast a silence spell on him so he can snark in peace.
• Signature Move: His Ultimate Destruction spell, which is intended to be an infallible death spell that avoids the normal problem of save-and-die spells being potentially survivable by offering no save. Unfortunately, it has "a few bugs" - while it always works, it only actually kills the target five percent of the time, otherwise just gender-bending them. In fact, Clanor's reaction the one time Ultimate Destruction actually kills somebody during the events of the comic suggests that it may have been the first time the spell worked as intended, ever.
• Smug Snake: More than perhaps any other villain in the comic, he is supremely arrogant, contemptuous of those around him, and confident in his own abilities, despite the fact that he frequently fails at his assigned tasks and is generally only moderately powerful by the comic's standards. And in the classic tradition of the trope, his overconfidence and underestimation of his opponents ultimately lead to his death.
• Token Evil Teammate: To the Arcane Incarnations. Despite being openly evil-aligned - with a reported act of genocide in his past - and working for a demon prince, he's still a Magister-Captain in the hierarchy of High Aios, giving him the authority to order around other AIs. He's much quicker to resort to violent suggestions or other questionable acts like torture than they are, as shown in Chapter 9.

Archduke Araske

The original tarrasque of Aios, Archduke Araske was the recipient of an Awakening spell thousands of years ago from the man who became the Emperor. Now intelligent, he spent years making up for the destruction he caused and is today a major force for good and the progenitor of a race of sapient tarrasques. He is an ally of Eternus.

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• A Lizard Named "Liz": While it's never directly stated in the comic, it's implied that the name "Araske" derives from "tarrasque". Which makes sense, since he was the original tarrasque.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: In Comic 310, he rips off his own head in frustration over Marnia's complete inability to understand how claiming to be "the beautiful princess" is not actually a disguise when you're the only princess in the city. He's regenerated by the next time we see him.
• Hero of Another Story: He spent millenia after his Awakening atoning for the damage he caused before it, carving out his own realm in the process, and today is known as one of the most powerful forces for good upon Aios. He is famous worldwide and repeatedly namedropped by the protagonists. His total presence in this story so far? One chapter and a few cameos.
• High-Class Glass: He wears a monocle sized for a tarrasque; since he doesn't have normal ears (well, technically nobody in the comic has ears), it stays attached through the use of magic. The monocle itself is also enchanted, allowing the archduke to magically adjust his size in order to fit into areas that he'd normally be too big for.
• Offing the Offspring: While he doesn't do it directly, Rand speculates in Chapter 8 that the real reason behind the mission to finish off Atlas at the north pole was simply the archduke's way of taking out his renegade daughter, the tarrasque leader of Atlas. Since she legitimately was a terrorist and a threat to the safety of Eternus, this would qualify as a sympathetic example. Araske himself doesn't show any real regret about it, though he is annoyed by the D&D rules-abusing method Rand used to permanently kill her.
• Pimp Duds: In Chapter 6, Marnia's attempt to disguise him for their mission into the undercity of Eetwosees is to give him a bright purple, wide-brimmed hat with a giant feather attached to it. Together with his diamond-headed cane and her frilly dress, this leads him to ask whether they're trying to disguise themselves as "zhe pimp and zhe ho". It's not entirely clear if he was being sarcastic or serious; if the latter, it's a bit hypocritical given that he always carries the cane.
• Unexplained Accent: Despite living on a fantasy world that is otherwise lacking in Fantasy Counterpart Cultures, he speaks with a thick German Funetik Aksent, and is shown to speak entirely in German to his daughter in a flashback. No reason, other than Rule of Funny, is ever suggested for this.