Main Characters | Outer Ones | Others
Black Souls: Heroines | Inhabitants of Elysium | Enemies (I)
Black Souls II: Inhabitants of Wonderland | Enemies (II)
The main recurring characters of the BLACKSOULS series. Given how central they are to the games' stories, all spoilers are unmarked.
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The Protagonist
Grimm
The character the player controls in Black Souls and Black Souls 2. A man with no particular features, he is set as the lead actor of the wild and unforgiving stories he gets thrown into.
Though the player can give him any name, he is referred to as "Grimm" by certain characters near the endings of the games. He is revealed to be Lewis Carroll merged with several other authors.
Tropes applying to Grimm:
- Ambiguously Bi: While Grimm's interests are mostly female, he can potentially get down with business with Hansel in I and Lizard Bill in II, the latter being a downright Gay Option for him.
- Author Powers: The main reason why he's so strong in the Gardens and why the Outer Ones are interested in him. For an Outer One, the power of imagination is something unique to humans and empowers their creation abilities, and Grimm being an amalgamation of authors makes him the perfect tool for the Crawling One in particular. In I, this power is demonstrated when he brings back all the companions he killed in Ending C.
- Breeding Slave: What the Crawling One basically had Grimm in Black Souls 2 become in their Garden. The Outer Ones—disguised as most of the girls—Grimm sleeps with give birth to new Outer Ones that Grimm proceeds to impregnate, although he doesn't realize this.
- Brother–Sister Incest:
- This is the end result of choosing Alice to be Grimm's little sister, however it's subverted when it's revealed that it's really a Outer One posing as Grimm's younger sister.
- One of the memories in Winterbell mentions that there was an Outer One posing as Grimm's older sister, but according to Mabel she left once she realized the Crawling One had gone insane.
- Composite Character: Courtesy of Mary Ann, Grimm is an incarnation of Lewis Carroll with his soul mixed with that of other authors, his namesakes implied to be part of him, or at least is an amalgamation of various authors.
- Determinator:
- In Black Souls 2 he gains an obsession with finding Alice, although it turns out this was a desire implanted by the Crawling One.
- Played Straight most often in Crown of the Lion and Unicorn. There is one event where he can engage Lindamea in a Duel to the Death, which culminates into undead versus undead hacking away at each other 'til their lives run out in the final phase; the other is the fight against The Grand Guignol, a Marathon Boss consisting of numerous phases each with a different Domain from the last—it's telling that in the event you are defeated, Alice (Prickett) will come as a voice to encourage you to get back up.
- The Faceless: When you see Grimm in CGs, his face is either not shown or shown in very little detail.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: You are not restricted to swords in-game, but the first game's title artwork depicts Grimm as a knight holding onto a sword planted in the ground.
- Knight in Shining Armor: The title artwork for both Black Souls games depicts him as one clad in knightly armor. Whether or not he can live up to the heroic ideals of the trope is up to the player.
- Magnetic Hero: Not just good enough to win over the many worldly Companion of both Elysium and Wonderland, but charismatic and loveable enough to even captivate the hearts of Outer Ones such as Node, Prickett and even Mabel. Charismatic to the point all three are willing to lay down their lives for him. Hell, you even have the unyielding Yandere devotion of Big Bad The Crawling One.
- This is likely the case both due to Grimm's remarkable nature as the only entity to have the power of a Creator and Mary Sue's tampering with his body and soul, but also the world of Elysium and the Wonderland and their inhabitants being formed to service him as the "lead of the story".
- Master of All: In both BS games, the player can have him specced and equipped for any kind of build focused on attacking, defending, magic, or whatever you need tailored to fight certain enemies—by the endgame, you'll at least have your stats maxed out, plenty of options for physical attacks, Sorceries, buffs, debuffs, the whole package. This aspect becomes important for BS2's Domains, which impose restrictions and debuffs that'll require you to plan around.
- Parental Incest: This is the end result of choosing Alice to be either Grimm's daughter or his mother, although like with Brother–Sister Incest above, it's subverted because both are actually Outer Ones.
- Really Gets Around: Grimm can sleep with around a dozen girls in Black Souls, and well over two dozen in Black Souls 2.
Tropes applying to Lewis Carroll:
- Despair Event Horizon: After several decades he gets an invite to see Alice again, but when he sees her as an old women, he crosses this, runs away and wishes to go back to when she was young. Unfortunately for him, Mary Sue answers his wish.
- Did Not Get the Girl: He fell in love with Alice Liddell. However, due to the age difference and her father barring their relationship, he wasn't able to get anywhere with her.
Alice Liddell
A mysterious blonde girl in a blue dress and a white apron, seemingly set at the center of Grimm's adventures. In the darkest moments, she is always there to encourage the protagonist.
- Ambiguous Situation:
- It's hard to ascertain which Alice is really Alice throughout the games, not helped by you meeting Alice in Ending H in II. Alice 01 of I is an android, while the three Alices in II are actually Outer Ones in disguise, whereas it's highly likely that the first Alice you meet in I is the real Alice, but Prickett is heavily implied to be either an Outer One or the real Alice in disguise.
- There's also the problem of whether "Alice" is the same living Alice. The memory viewed in Queensland is of an elderly Alice reminiscing her past with Lewis Carroll, but it's not clear whether an Outer God was watching (possibly The Crawling One) then took her soul or created an Alice based on her, or, more likely, that the Outer One before she was named Prickett took that role, who then adventured with Lewis-turned-Grimm in Wonderland as seen in the next chronological memory.
- Awful Wedded Life: A viewable memory in Queensland reveals she kept regrets over not getting with her first love, Lewis Carroll, having married a man "suited for her station". She let herself go along with it because she wanted to get away from the loneliness of separation and her husband's eyes resembled Lewis's a bit. Despite the high-class life she had though, it was all hollow for her.
- Hero of Another Story: The movie in Prickett's date, "Tea Party for Three", could have been a standalone game, where the previous iteration of Wonderland was said to be wondrous, Alice journeying with Grimm and the Black Rabbit, a trio who overcame threats like the Jabberwocky and the Red Queen.
- Impersonation-Exclusive Character: Alice herself is hardly ever present if at all throughout the series, really only ever directly being present at the start of I before she is eviscerated, meaning that, between a robotic clone of herself as Alice-02, Doll Alice, whatever is going on with Prickett, and of course, The Crawling One, who took up her shape, we hardly get to know the real, original Alice, at all.
Red Hood
Red Riding Hood
A tough, deadly blonde girl wearing her namesake red hood. She is remarkably unfazed by whatever horrors she sees on her travels, no thanks to her troubled childhood, and is often seen alongside her companion, Poro, a talking wolf.
She is the protagonist of the prequel game Red Hood's Woods.
- Ambiguously Human: Perhaps as a reference to the varied versions of the tale, it's uncertain if Red is a real human girl who got dragged into an Outer One's Garden, which explains the agency she has in all the games, or is a created heroine like any other and yet gained enough self-awareness to break free of her role. It's even more confusing that in Red Hood's Woods, her grandparents are somehow also her parents, then in I, Elizabeth Bathory is her mother. II reveals that Mary Ann was lazy enough to not care about the details, resulting in this fictionally screwed up family tree and Elizabeth's illogical rage for her supposed daughter.
- An Arm and a Leg: In Ending G of II, when she finds Grimm in the real world, she is missing her right arm from having fought her way out of Wonderland.
- Canine Companion: Poro, a talking wolf she made friends with in Red Hood's Woods.
- Darker and Edgier: A little girl mercenary who fights and kills monsters with a talking wolf like its nothing special, and had also suffered a pointlessly dark past no thanks to Mary Sue. Just to confirm how edgy she is, getting her final skill from the corpse of Jabberwocky in I has her deny being an edgelord.
- Dark and Troubled Past: The Red Hood seen in Red Hood's Woods is an emotionally detached girl who was sexually abused by her grandfather which culminated in Red killing him, which led to her kind grandmother running away from the scene in shock only to slip and drown in a river, something she regrets to this day.
- Improvised Weapon: Her starting weapon in Red Hood's Woods and her main weapon in both BLACK SOULS games is a kitchen knife that has a very good chance of instantly killing anyone.
- Little Dead Riding Hood: She was meant to die by being Eaten Alive by the Big Bad Wolf, but Mary Sue decided that was way too cliché and had something more cruel for her, and in End G, she reveals to Red Hood that she will die at the age of 20. End H features her last moments in her deathbed.
- Little Red Fighting Hood: Given the kind of games she stars in, this is a necessity for her.
- Red Riding Hood Replica: In one of her most darkest and lewdest incarnations possible.
- Stripperific: She wears a conservative white dress in addition to her signature red hood and cloak in the first two games, but as of II, for no reason given, said dress is replaced by some kind of black lingerie covering her unmentionables with crisscrossing strings over her torso.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Mary Ann reveals to Grimm in II (Ending G) that she shortened Red Hood's lifespan to 20 years, meaning she'd only live for a year even if they escaped Wonderland. Red herself already knew, but resolves herself to keep moving forward. Ending H in particular sees Red Hood breathing her last on her deathbed, while Grimm is at her side holding her hand.
