History Characters / TwigNoblesAndTheAcademies

* BigBadEnsemble: With Fray, whom he fights against, he drives many of the story's atrocities. While he seems fond of the Lambs, he ultimately considers them expendable.

* BigBad: Though not for the entire story, he's the biggest and longest lasting overarching threat.

* BadassBaritone: One of his enhancements-he speaks in a deep, commanding voice ''all the time,'' so that people know instantly who is speaking.

* YouGotSpunk: Despite Sy's moments of defiance, he finds him extremely interesting.

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: He's powerfully enhanced as a result of his position and nigh-impossible to kill.

* BastardBastard: Very much so. Oddly, their title is stated to be "Lady Baronet," rather than the more accurate "Baronetess" to describe a female holder of an honorary title.

* AdiposeRex: His design is intended to evoke this deliberately. In fact, underneath all that fat is an immensely powerful body many, many times stronger than an ordinary human... or indeed, most of the nobles.
* BigBad: Though not for the entire story, he's the biggest and longest lasting overarching threat

* FatBastard: As to be expected from a member of the nobility.

* BatmanGambit: He offers Mauer the chance to shoot him in the head, standing perfectly still. The offer is given knowing that Mauer won't turn down the chance to kill a noble, as well as that Mauer will flinch when Augustus snaps the jaw of the rebel he's holding. The result is that Mauer missed, cracking his men's faith in him.

* RescueRomance: Briefly has this with Gordon, before she realizes that she can't be a party to what the Lambs do regularly.

* AdiposeRex: His design is intended to evoke this deliberately.

* WeaponOfChoice: Catcher prefers his mancatcher, which has several interchangeable heads he uses for different purposes.

* MoralDissonance: Sy hits her with one of these, noting her friendliness while she's one of the people metaphorically holding a gun to his head. It shocks her enough that she agrees to resign as his handler, not that it lasts.

* NotSoDifferent: [[spoiler:Comparing her to the Lambs' Mary shows that they have a lot in common in terms of clothing and fighting styles.]]

* NotSoDifferent: [[spoiler:To the Lambs. Both are groups of Academy-designed experiments with a strong sociological and/or political twist to them. The main difference is that the Lambs know themselves to be linked experiments, and are widely treated as such (pretty much at the bottom of the totem pole). Most of the Nobles don't really know what they are (although more than a few suspect) and aren't treated as experiments at all by wider society. Yet, all depend on the Academic system just to exist.]]

* KillerWater: 99% of it is water, held together by mucus webs.

* BadassGrandpa: Looks like a wizened old man, can take on whole packs of [[SuperReflexes the Ghosts]] with ease.

* GreenEyes: Their eyes reflect green in the darkness, and they've got some sort of enhanced vision.

* ZergRush: A lone whelp is about as dangerous as a feral bobcat. Problem is, you'll never fight just one. They'll lurk around their target, feeding as much as they can to increase their numbers before attacking in a swarm.

[[folder: Hubris]]

A dog given to Gordon to help monitor his heart as he begins breaking down.
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* ActionPet: By benefit of being an Academy creation, he's much smarter and stronger than an ordinary dog would be.
* AttackAnimal: He's perfectly willing and capable of ripping out throats.
* CanineCompanion: To Gordon.
* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: [[spoiler:He's killed when one of the Twins runs him through.]]
* IronicNickname: Hubris tells Gordon his limits. Not something you should usually rely on hubris to do.
* UndyingLoyalty: As loyal as any dog you'd like to name, willing to put his life on the line to protect the Lambs. [[spoiler:Also literal, as he continues to follow the other Lambs after Gordon dies.]]

The group of main characters. See their page [[CharactersTwigTheLambs here]]

!The Crown
[[folder:Nobles]]

!!!In General

!!The Duke of Francis

->''“The Crown wins. It is a constant in this universe, understand?“''

A nobleman and warleader who takes over the Radham Academy after Doctor Briggs is ousted.
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!!Baron Richmond

->''“I’m not one of those fanatics who put far too much stock in Wallace’s Law or anything of the sort. I’m not going to say that I’m creating better people by doing what I do to them. I simply like to see people suffer, to see how it unfolds, what it reveals about them. And I like to see what it lacks, compared to the suffering that goes hand in hand with greatness.“''

A low-ranking noble who still holds considerable power in the Crown States, known for his sadism and casual brutality.
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!! The Twins

The twin sisters of the Baron Richmond, they are equally monstrous but lack his direct power due to their bastard origin.
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!!Lord Infante

A morbidly obese noble many times the size of a normal man.

!!The Falconer

A noble described as a tall, raven haired woman dressed in a white silk shirt covered with black leather encountered by Sy in New Amsterdam, who works with a giant falcon. She's one of the Infante's wards.
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!! Lord King Adam

!The Academy
!!!Radham Acadamy

[[folder:Doctors]]

!!Mr. Hayle

!! Professor Ibott

!!Lacey

!!Gladys Shipman

One of the researchers at the Academy and the niece of Sub-Rosa's creator.
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!!Dr. Willard D.

!!Avis Pardoe

[[folder:Experiments]]

!!The Lambs

The group of main characters. See above.

!!Sub Rosa

!!Dog and Catcher

!!Gorger

!! Hangman

!! Whiskers

!! Whelps

!! Hubris

!!!Other Acadamies
[[folder:Superweapons]]
!!The Brechwell Beast

Brechwell Academy's superweapon, typically kept tranquilized and imprisoned underground.

* BreathWeapon: Toxic gas that it can ignite to cause explosions. It's a handy way to clear out crevices and buildings it can't get into.
* GodzillaThreshold: When the threshold is crossed, the Beast is Brechwell's solution.
* {{Kaiju}}: It's three stories tall at the shoulder and broad enough to crush anyone unfortunate enough to still be in the street when it goes by.
* NighInvulnerable: Throughout its rampage, nothing does more than superficial damage to it. It shrugs off exorcist rifles, cannons, and explosions at point blank in its face.
* RammingAlwaysWorks: Its primary method of dealing with problems is to simply bulldoze over them. The design of the city is actually made to facilitate this, with curving streets rather than right angle corners to stop it from loosing momentum when unleashed and a portcullis system to control its route.

!!Nephilim One
An experiment resembling a giant human, created by Ibott.

* ActionBomb: [[spoiler:He's deployed with a belly full of Black Wood spores that explode out of him when he's wounded enough.]]
* AttackItsWeakPoint: Ibott is well aware of this tactic and included a number of redundancies, defenses, and countermeasures to prevent this. Harming him requires making your own weakpoint, concentration cannon fire on a particular point until it breaches his defenses.
* BizarreAlienSenses: What looks like eyes and ears are just decoys. His body hair is his actual method of sensory input, millions of tendrils meant to pick up scent.
* GagPenis: A giant made for war, yet he's... equipped. Sy and Helen make no shortage of jokes about this.
* {{Kaiju}}: Taller than any building and the third largest land-based experiment in the world.

!!The Gossamer Creature
A superweapon created by Moraga Academy, a smaller academy in the Californias.

* BizarreAlienBiology: Sy describes it as a jellyfish minus the jelly, a creature made of millions of threads all arranged into a ghostly shape.
* CombatTentacles: Pretty much all it's made of.
* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: Its primary method of attack is to intertwine many of its tentacles together and then skewer a building with it. If its targets don't get killed by that, it does its best to finish the job by untwining the tentacles within the building and slashing apart everything they can reach.
* {{Kaiju}}: It's even bigger than Nephilim, though with only a fraction of the mass.
* TheLastDance: Exploited by [[spoiler:Sylvester]]. Its water supply is poisoned, leaving it a limited time before it expires. This ends up backfiring when its handlers discover this, leading it to play this straight and do as much damage as it can before it dies rather than expend the last of its strength without knowing it.
* NoNameGiven: It's never named, hence the appellation.
* RazorFloss: The "threads" that make up its body can be stiffened, either entirely or in parts, allowing it to shear through softer materials and leave gouges even in stone and metal.


!!Harvesters and Tangles
A two part superweapon meant to capitalize on Radham's constant rain. The harvesters are small swarming creatures that fuse corpses together and puppeteer them. The tangles are the resulting creations, shambling creatures made of anything between two bodies to an entire army's worth of corpses.

* HostileWeather: Exploited as part of their design. Radham already rains almost constantly by design, and when the harvesters are deployed additional chemicals are released to turn it into acid rain. The result is that anyone caught out in the open becomes a casualty, while the melting flesh is more easily shaped and fused by the harvesters.

!!Hag Nerve
A superweapon deployed by Radham.

* BlobMonster: What it looks like. The Hag Nerve itself is actually pretty small, just a few gelatinous organs capable of producing mucus webs. But put those in water and it'll quickly create enough webs to pull together all of the water it can find into a semi-liquid body.
* KillerWater: 99% of it is water, held together by mucus webs.
* HomeFieldAdvantage: Radham is always raining, which means plenty of water to form into a body.
* WeakSauceWeakness: Certain chemicals can break down the mucus it uses to hold itself together, leaving it nothing more than a particularly slimy puddle. This wouldn't mean much, except one of those chemicals is ''salt''. Given the danger posed if the Hag nerve could get into and absorb the ocean, this is probably by design.

!!The Golden Calf
The Infante's personal superweapon, a monster derived from Primordials.

* TheAssimilator: Capable of eating bodies to increase its own mass. Considering its origins, there's probably some safeguards meant to ensure it doesn't truly assimilate what it eats.
* BodyguardBetrayal: [[spoiler:Though it may be the Infante's pet, the professors who created it can overrule his commands and do so during the siege on Radham.]]
* TheFaceless: It opens its mask to feed, but none of the viewpoint characters ever get a glance at what's underneath.
* HumanoidAbomination: It's roughly humanoid, but it's far from being human. Everything from its bones to its muscle structure to its skin are Primordial designed and are only coincidentally recognizable as something like a person.
* MalevolentMaskedMan: Far from being a man, but it wears a metal mask that hides its face.
* RuleOfSymbolism: In-universe. The design of its mask, its goat-like legs, and other features of its body are meant to by symbolic of a devil. In a setting where the nobility has outlawed religion, it's telling that a noble chose to make his pet look like that.
* TripodTerror: It has three legs when encountered in Radham.

[[folder:Experiments]]

!! The Wry Man

An old experiment who's been serving his local academy for decades. Needs more description.

* BadassGrandpa: Looks like a wizened old man, can take on whole packs of [[SuperReflexes the Ghosts]] with ease.
* SpellMyNameWithAThe: Like many other experiments has a 'The ___' style title instead of a name.

!! Petey

A fellow experiment of The Wry Man's.

* {{Acrofatic}}: Appears fairly out of shape and is noticeably short of breath after running around for a few minutes. Doesn't stop them from following the Lambs from roof to roof when allied with them.
* AerithAndBob: The Wry Man, The Engineer, The Beast and... Petey.
* BodyHorror: The body entitled "Petey" is not Petey. Petey is the spider-fetus thing that crawls into a female corpse's womb and pilots it from there.
* FluffyTheTerrible: Petey doesn't sound like the name of a deadly academy experiment.
* HazyFeelTurn: [[spoiler:They defect to Fray's side during the Brechwell siege.]]
* PuppeteerParasite: They vacate their current body part-way through, in order to take control of a Ghost.


!! The Engineer

An experiment clad in heavy armour. Colleague of The Wry Man and Petey.

* AdaptiveArmour: According to Sy, Everytime a piece of the armour is broken or a part of The Engineer breaks more armour is added to compensate.
* BodyHorror: If Sy is correct, then the majority of that armour is meant to replace damaged parts of The Engineer and as a result they need constant doses of painkiller.
* {{Cyborg}}: Much like Dog, The Engineer has had multiple pieces of machinery grafted to him.
* MightyGlacier: Not very fast, but strong enough to crush a Ghost with ease.