Line #1316 Characters/ShadowHearts


1	Here is a character guide to the main cast of Aruze/Nautilus' dark fantasy RPG series, ''VideoGame/ShadowHearts''. This is a work in progress, so any contributions are appreciated.
2
3	!!Works with subpages:
4	[[index]]
5	* ''Characters/{{Koudelka}}''
6	* ''Characters/ShadowHearts1''
7	** [[Characters/ShadowHeartsYuriHyuga Yuri Hyuga]]
8	* ''Characters/ShadowHeartsCovenant''
9	* ''Characters/ShadowHeartsFromTheNewWorld''
10	[[/index]]
11
12	----
13	[[folder:Strange Creature (Spoilers)]]
14	!! Roger Bacon
15	!!!'''Voiced by:''' Tatsuya Gashoin (JP, games), Creator/RyuseiNakao (''Koudelka'' Drama CD), Creator/JimmyZoppi (EN, ''Shadow Hearts''), Andrew Morris as ‘Amos Nandy’ (EN, ''Covenant'')
16	[[quoteright:180:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/RogAruu_3320.jpg]]
17	The once renowned alchemist during the Middle Ages, Roger Bacon was tasked by the Vatican to translate the Émigré Document, a tome with the power to bring back the dead. After he did what he was told, the Vatican attempted to kill him in order to keep the secrets of the Document safe. Bacon escaped, but not before using the Document to grant himself immortality. For centuries he has lived near the Nemeton Monastery in Wales, there he has helped those who seek to combat the dark and otherworldly powers that thrive in the world. Roger is the only character to appear in every game in the series, including ''Koudelka''.
18	----
19	* ActualPacifist: As Roger’s abilities are the result of comprehending the nature of God, Roger considers using them toward violent ends, even against evil, blasphemy.
20	* AdmiringTheAbomination: Roger worships [[spoiler: God, as in the Judaeo God]], who he knows is the sort of thing that could give Cthulhu night-terrors.
21	* AgeWithoutYouth: Sure, he has immortality but he can still age just like a normal human (so much that he was mistaken for an alien)
22	* AllPowerfulBystander: He has the same powers as Albert (possibly more), but refuses to use any of them. Seems afraid of angering God and generally apathetic to humanity, so this may be entirely justified.
23	* BigGood: You know the world is in trouble when he's the closest thing we have to this.
24	* BreakingTheFourthWall: He not only speaks to the audience, he actually interrupts the naming window process when he is first met, saying it is rude to name people you have just met. He is even literally LeaningOnTheFourthWall during his speech.
25	** He even gets an AudienceWhatAudience from the heroes for addressing the forth wall as if there were people there.
26	* CoolOldGuy: Over a thousand years old, and a genius kooky inventor.
27	* CoolPlane: Cool Airship in ''Covenant''!
28	* CrazySane: Roger is one of only three people to ever comprehend true nature of reality from the Émigré Document and the ''only'' one not to go insane from it. As nutty as he acts, he is stable because he has made peace with his place in the cosmos.
29	* CynicismCatalyst: It is hard to pick out which accounts for his Madden Into Misanthropy status, but going down the list: The Pope tried to kill him after he translated the nature of God, his prized student was imprisoned for years by the Church for attempting to stand-up for civil rights, he has been ostracized for his Gonk factor, but perhaps most damning of all -- upon divining the true nature of God it turns out God is a colossal-space-flea who sees Earth as a petri-dish, at best. The rosiness has long gone out of Roger's disposition.
30	* DirtyOldMan: All of his sub-plots involve finding him porn.
31	* ElderlyImmortal Type D.
32	* EvilIsNotAToy: He points this out whenever anyone asks why he doesn't just use the magics he knows to fix things. In the ''Koudelka'' manga, he neatly illustrates this by asking Lord Leslie a simple question that no one who seeks the Émigré Document ever asks; Namely, If the Émigré Document could truly undo death, then how did he think the Fomor Druids that wrote it, managed to die off?
33	* ForScience: It's practically his raison d'etre.
34	* FourthWallObserver: He can wink to the audience since he gained insight into the nature of the universe and knows he is in a video-game, but to everyone else he appears to have suffered a case of...
35	* GibberingGenius: Especially in ''Koudelka'' but he drifts into this quite easily in the following games as well. The difference seems to be while Koudelka, Edward and James are too polite/curious/bewildered to interrupt him, Yuri is very much willing [[PercussiveMaintenance to bonk him on the head or back-hand him to keep him focused]].
36	* GoMadFromTheRevelation: After he read the Manuscript of the Exiles and rewrote it as the Émigré Document, he appears to have gone border-line insane.
37	* {{Gonk}}: He doesn't really look human anymore and many characters even comment on his strange appearance.
38	* HelloInsertNameHere: Parodied.
39	* HermitGuru: Lives alone on a cliffside in Wales, where the Neameton Monastery was in ''Koudelka''.
40	* HeroicNeutral: Having translated the Émigré Document from the Manuscript Of Exiles, he comprehends God’s plan - and as such... he views planet earth as the tiny dust mote it is on a cosmic level; As such he can not justify breaking his pacifist nature to save it with his reality warping insights. He will do everything short of fighting though.
41	* HistoricalDomainCharacter: The real Roger Bacon was a Middle Ages alchemist living around the time the Magna Carta was signed, who discovered many scientific formulas.
42	* InsufferableGenius: To both the heroes and society in general.
43	* KeeperOfForbiddenKnowledge: He wrote the three tomes specifically because he was compelled to record the secretes of God he comprehended.
44	* LargeHam: ''Especially'' in ''Koudelka''.
45	* MaddenIntoMisanthropy: It's why he became a hermit and cares more about Yuri and friends than the fate of the world.
46	-->'''Roger Bacon:''' I've seen all I can take of mankind's cruelty.
47	* MiniatureSeniorCitizens: He is maybe 4 feet tall if that, but too be fair he is pushing 500.
48	* MisunderstoodLonerWithAHeartOfGold: Though he was once a renowned philosopher with many students, he was dismissed as a heretic, looks like a ghoul and now lives alone with healthy misanthropy for humanity as a whole, yet with the exception of Alice he is probably one of the closest things to completely selfless in the entire series.
49	* MyGreatestFailure: He considers Albert his greatest student and his mentorship of said student as his greatest failure in life.
50	* NoFourthWall: As part of his revelation into the nature of the universe he is aware he is a video-game character, or at-least that there is an audience.
51	* NonLinearCharacter: He is fully aware that he is in a video-game, what a video-game is, that World War I is about to happen at the end of Shadow Hearts and as displayed in From The New World, he also sees the past clear as day. This is all due to his Touched By Vorlorns status.
52	* OhCrap: Even mention the word “Émigré” and Roger will promptly freak the hell out. And since he is immortal anyway, well...
53	* OutOfCharacterIsSeriousBusiness: When an immortal, misanthropic, mad genius starts to panic that is your things-worse-than-death are on the way alarm.
54	* ProfessionalButtKisser: His “praise” of God, sounds less like piety, and more like a groveling employee trying to pacify a ''very'' temperamental higher-up.
55	* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: Subverted, he's over 500 years old, but he sure looks like it.
56	* RecurringCharacter: Bacon has been involved in every game in the series, including ''Koudelka''.
57	* RenaissanceMan: An expert in Law, Philosophy, Science, Astronomy, Alchemy, Anthropology, and Magic. He does everything from making potions to translating dead languages to building airships. Bonus Points for actually living through and contributing during the Renaissance.
58	* ScientificallyUnderstandableSorcery: Roger does not consider any of his divine powers to be magic, he understands the basic principles of how the cosmos works and simply takes short-cuts to stimulate responses, but since he can create such changes just by thinking, to everyone else it is just magic.
59	* SchizoTech: One of the main sources of it in the series.
60	* TheHeretic: Roger was branded a heretic by the Church and sentenced to be executed as such to [[TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow prevent him from sharing what he found out from the Émigré Document]], though since he had already made himself immortal the latter half of that plan did not work.
61	* TheWonka: Gonk factor aside, you will be hard-pressed not to notice Roger the second he walks into a room. Overblown, insufferable and employing an odd mixture of lunacy and misanthropy.
62	%%* TooCleverByHalf
63	* TouchedByVorlons: And was compelled to record his findings as the Émigré Document. Naturally aside from granting power such insights tend to leave readers quite mad... That includes Roger himself!
64	* VitriolicBestBuds: Roger and Yuri, to the core.
65	* WeUsedToBeFriends: Much to his lament regarding Albert.

Context Characters / ShadowHearts