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The Citizens
Klaasje
Klaasje Amandou
I told you things break around me.
Voiced by: Dasha Nekrasova (original), Marine D'Aure (Final Cut)
"And for the record: no, I didn't do it."
Miss Oranje Disco Dancer, the only other guest at the hotel when the game begins.
- Actually Pretty Funny: Failing the Suggestion check with her in the beginning causes Klaasje to burst into laughter at your horribly bungled and incoherent pick-up line.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: She was drawn to Lely because he was a violent asshole, and loved it when he got rough with her.
- Ambiguously Evil: Once you corner her it becomes abundantly clear that she's guilty of something, but whatever it is, it has nothing to do with the murder and you have no real way of discerning it. She claims to be a white-collar criminal who got in over her head, but by the time she confides this in you she's been well-established as a Consummate Liar who will say and do almost anything to save her own skin.
- Chekhov's Gunman: She's the first other character you meet in the game, then turns out to be a key witness who was in the middle of sex with Lely at the moment of his death. You ultimately discover that the murder was at least partly the result of a twisted Love Triangle, that she wasn't even aware existed, with her at the center.
- Consummate Liar: She's seemingly very candid and fast on her feet, but you'll eventually realize that you have no idea whether or not anything she's telling you is the truth. With high enough Volition, you can realize that you're compromised by your attraction to her. Protest though they will, none of your other skills are immune and none of the information they give you over the course of your conversations with her is completely accurate. Ironically, not even Volition is immune, being swayed in the opposite direction: it's so ticked off that she's fooled you and the other skills that it becomes overly eager to pin the murder on her, despite a serious lack of evidence.
- Corporate Samurai: Downplayed — she never completely shows her hand, but aside from what she tells you about her work as a corporate spy, she plays a mean game of Xanatos Speed Chess, creating elaborate plans in minutes while still high, moments after a man she might have had feelings for died in her arms. Physical Instrument can also pick up on self-defense training in how she carries herself.
- Crying Wolf: Catching her in enough lies just makes it that much harder to know if she's telling you the truth about anything.
- Death Seeker: Heavily implied. You can come to the realization that she had figured out the location and direction where the shot that killed Lely came from. When she comes to the roof to smoke every night, she is actually placing herself with her back towards the direction where the shot came from, making herself a highly visible target, as if she is hoping that the killer will one night fire a second shot.
- Distinguishing Mark: Her face is covered in moles. This is apparently a trait of Oranjese women. Multiple characters find them fascinating, with the starstruck Dros comparing her face to 'an isola'.
- Even the Girls Want Her: Aside from Lely's, the murderer's, Titus's, and your oft-remarked attraction to her, she and Ruby had a brief fling.
- Everyone Loves Blondes: She is a pretty blonde woman, who has everybody falling for her left and right, including you. The fact that Dora was also a blonde might mean that it is even more personal for you.
- Eyes Never Lie: Her eyes are her only real tells. Volition realizes she's lying to you when you look into them; the only time she really loses her composure, she shoots you a dangerous look. Downplayed in the end: the tell is so minor that you can only tell she's lying to you in general, but not about anything specific.
- Femme Fatale: Sultry, manipulative, infuriatingly vague, and completely unpredictable, beholden to no one. Also a Femme Fatale Spy, recruited for industrial espionage.
- Foil: Klaasje is one of several characters who act as a foil for the main character, Harry. Klaasje is similar to Harry at her age. In the last dream Dora says that Harry was very cool and attractive in his 20s. Behind her youthful glamor, Klaasje is a stimulant addict and an alcoholic. She is driven, intelligent, and a skilled manipulator. Her personal relationships are dysfunctional, and she is already running from her past. Klaasje may end up being very similar to Harry in 15 years.
- Functional Addict: She consumes copious amounts of drugs — her medicine cabinet impresses even you. This is actually a minor plot point. Her tolerance is so high that she's able to keep a clear enough head to plan a meticulous cover up when coked out of her mind, right after her lover was murdered while he was penetrating her.
- Future Spandex: Maybe not so much future per se, but the silver jumpsuit she wears certainly invokes the idea of it.
- Hoist by Her Own Petard: Her attempts to lie and manipulate the player can backfire on her spectacularly. Should the player figure out that what she is doing and that nothing she says can be trusted, they can respond by arresting her on the spot, which is the situation she was trying to avoid in the first place.
- Honor Before Reason: If questioned about it, she's quick to deny that Lely raped her even though doing so would give her an easy out from being interrogated further by the detectives.
- I Know You're Watching Me: Klaasje was never able to figure out who killed Lely, but she eventually calucated the exact direction the shot that killed him came from. The true killer admits that she managed to spook him, because he saw her staring directly into his scope several times, and would place herself right in the firing line as if to dare him to take a second shot.
- Interface Screw: If you pass a difficult Volition check whilst interrogating her, Volition will tell you that all your other skills are compromised by your attraction to her, and that you can't trust anything they tell you about her. Notably, Volition itself is also compromised — whilst it's correct that your other skills are hopelessly infatuated with her and overly trusting as a result, it's very keen to pin the murder on her, when in reality she's innocent of that particular crime.
- Karma Houdini: Downplayed (somewhat) in the event that you don't arrest her. While she's innocent of any wrongdoing with regards to the murder itself, and does ultimately leave behind a vital clue, Klassje's desperate, paranoid attempts to avoid being implicated include heaps of obstruction of justice, crime scene and witness tampering, and quite possibly an active attempt to frame her friend Ruby (not to mention multiple corporate espionage charges, assuming her confession was true), all of which she gets away with by fleeing the country.
- Leitmotif: Hers is called "Miss Oranje Disco Dancer", suitably enough.
- Must Have Nicotine: She spends most of the story in the process of smoking one cigarette after another. When you interview her, you catch a look of her ashtray, which you quickly likens to a porcupine.
- Mysterious Past: How much of what she tells you is true? You're never really given an answer.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Making the anonymous call to get Lely's body down from the tree can result in her getting detained and assassinated for doing so.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: You only know her as Miss Oranje Disco Dancer until you uncover her connection to the case. After which you discover that Klaasje isn't her real name. Then you find out both Annouk Meijer-Smit and Katarzine Alaczije aren't either.
- Pet the Dog: For all her lies and manipulations, Klaasje was genuinely in love with Lely and wants his killer to be brought to justice. She was the one who called the RCM in the first place, simply because she just couldn't stand to see his body just hanging in the tree and suffer prolonged exposure to the elements. If you don't arrest her, she covertly makes her escape just before the Tribunal, but not before leaving a hint to the true killer's location.
- Revealing Cover Up: A interesting twist on the trope. She actually didn't kill Lely, but as the only direct witness to his death, she is afraid that she will be taken into official custody for questioning, and thereby allow her enemies in the Moralintern to get their hands on her. She is so afraid in fact, that she tries her level best to lead the RCM investigation away from her, but ironically, the fact that you and Kim eventually manage to see through her deception, can be the one thing that provides the emotional push for you to arrest her and have her taken into custody, leading to the outcome she was trying so hard to avoid in the first place.
- Real Name as an Alias: Subverted. Klaasje Amandou isn't her real name, but rather an alias based on the name on her passport, Katarzine Alaczije... which is another fake name. The name she says is on her passport, Annouk Meijer-Smit, isn't real either.
- She Knows Too Much: Choosing to arrest her, and having at least some points in Shivers, leads to you recieving a vision that very heavily implies that she is going to be assassinated while in custody, presumably by people sent either by her former employees, or some other powerful enemy she made in her past line of work, that wants their secrets to go to the grave with her.
- Shout-Out: The Detective's name for her, Miss Oranje Disco Dancer, is a reference to the Manic Street Preachers song "Miss Europa Disco Dancer".Miss Europa Disco Dancer
Feel the drug of your persona - So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Her beauty makes it easy to charm others, but it also inspires a lot of jealousy as well, and it makes it tricky to hide from the Moralintern.
- Walking Spoiler: It's difficult to sort fact from fiction with Klaasje, and knowing which is which inevitably comes with spoilers for the game's central mystery.
- Wild Card: She's the one who called the RCM, which ultimately torpedoes the Hardie Boys' attempt to re-stage the hanged man's death as a lynching, despite the fact that the whole effort was organized for her benefit, since the Hanged Man died in her room. She seems torn between genuinely wanting to help the investigation and protecting a mysterious agenda of her own. Despite which she really is an odd victim of circumstance — regardless of how you feel about her purported reasons for being on the run, the murder actually had nothing to do with her Mysterious Past, and at least based on one Shivers flash-sideways during the ending, she really is risking her life just by telling you as much as she has...
- Xanatos Speed Chess: Her spy training has conditioned her to keep her head cool in stressful situations and therefore able to string elaborate schemes together on the spot and also be capable of adjusting them on the fly. Ruby was left shocked by how quickly and calmly she was able to put together a plan to get a freshly killed body out of her bedroom in such a way it diverted attention away from herself. This scheming nature can be her undoing if the Detective's Volition catches on to how manipulative she really is: By manipulating the Detective's skills directly, it becomes impossible to trust her for many players, leading to her arrest and subsequent assassination.
Cuno and Cunoesse
Cuno / Kuuno de Ruyter
(He really doesn't care.)
Voiced by: Dot Major (original), Oliver Dabiri (Final Cut)
"Fuck does Cuno care?!"
A twelve-year-old drug-dealing local hellion. You first meet him and his "sister" while he's throwing rocks at the victim's suspended corpse.
- 11th-Hour Ranger: In the event you have managed to befriend him, and Kim gets put out of commission due to being shot and wounded during the Tribunal, Cuno offers to step in for him and act as your temporary sidekick for the final portion of the story.
- Abusive Parents: If you pass a Physical Instrument check and punch him, he mostly shrugs it off and implies his father hits him as well. It also makes him respect you a bit more, all but confirming it.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Cuno provides one of these if he accompanies you to the sea fortress at the end of the game.You: Don't worry kid. I'm a good guy with a gun.
Cuno: Are you?
He squints at you — squints into your soul.
Cuno: *Are you?* - Big Brother Instinct: Much of his bravado is about looking out for Cunoesse, forcing people to take him seriously, and making her feel safe — it's just that what makes her feel safe is acting like a thieving, thuggish fuck-the-police gangster.
- Big Damn Heroes: If Cuno is present for when your squad chews you out, he comes to your aid by going on an impassioned tirade attesting to your strong moral character. Your skills point this out to you.Esprit de Corps: That's it. The cavalry has arrived.
- Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: From his perspective at least. The way he sees it, he keeps the scary and violent Cunoesse from getting in trouble with the law and going off-rails.
- Delinquent: As you might expect, Cuno is anti-social, doesn't go to school, and uses a lot of drugs.
- Embarrassing First Name: Him and C thought his real name, Kuuno de Ruyter, sounded weak, so they changed it.
- Hidden Depths: His rowdy, aggressive behavior is actually pushed by Cunoesse, who has more serious problems; if you can talk to him alone it's possible to get through to him and befriend him. He has an imaginative, artistic streak, coming up with a whole society for the locusts he steals from the cryptozoologists' traps (called Night City, the City of Rage) — and if Kim gets wounded during the Tribunal, Cuno can take his place (at least while you investigate the Whirling), speak up on your behalf in front of your squad, and even be tapped for training as a future RCM detective.Cuno: Cuno likes this brain-shit. Thinking-shit.
- Hypocritical Heartwarming: Keeps insulting Kim if he gets shot at the Tribunal, but defends him if you join in. The way Cuno sees it, he is free to make fun of the binoclard, but you doing it to someone who took a bullet helping you is just cold.
- Informed Attribute: The game describes Cuno as almost resembling a gremlin, whereas his portrait shows him as rather plain looking, not appearing much worse than the other portraits. On the other hand, his character model is somewhat less realistically proportioned than other kids in the game.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Well, perhaps dented silver, but it's there. He cares for Cunoesse quite a bit, and is surprisingly open to you if you pass the Empathy check in to better understand him and treat him respectfully. He's also a lot more aware of social norms than one might think — if Kim is shot and Cuno wakes up the player, he'll make a crack about Kim going down for you. If you make one too, Cuno angrily admonishes you for spitting on Kim's sacrifice. He has no need to be thankful for Kim, but you do; showing that sacrifice a lack of respect seems to genuinely upset Cuno.
- Missing Mom: While Cuno often mentions his dad and you even may get to meet him (albeit in a vegetative state), we don't get to hear anything about his mother. It could be assumed that she either died or left them at some point.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Even though characters in this game don't mind cursing, Cuno uses the words "fuck" and "shit" in nearly every sentence he says. It's done to play up how immature and insecure he is.
- Third-Person Person: Cuno refers to himself as Cuno, to the point where him saying "I" is called out in-game as seriously out of character.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: By the tender age of twelve, Cuno is already hooked on speed, deals drugs to local lowlives, has dropped out of school, and entertains himself throwing rocks at a corpse the way a normal child would skipping stones, even as he openly picks fights with the police. Being encouraged by someone like Cunoesse, who is far worse, will do that to you.
- We Used to Be Friends: Should he accompany the detective in the aftermath of the mercenary tribunal, Cuno reveals that he broke things off with Cunoesse. Apparently, Cunoesse did not take it well, as the game describes Cuno as "someone who'll be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life."
- Wisdom from the Gutter: Empathy manages early on to pick up on the fact that Cuno is actually much more clever and socially aware than he appears. Managing to win his trust proves that this is indeed the case. At the end, if he became your sidekick, and after he testifies on your behalf in front of your squad, Rhetoric admits that the profanity-ridden speech he made in defense of you was actually pretty good, if a bit on the long side.
- Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Can dole out a lot of this, depending on the character you're playing, as you perform the field autopsy in front of him. Averted at the end if you managed to get through to him and brought him onboard your investigation, though; he can testify on your behalf in front of your squad, and by that point his approval is much more valuable.
Cunoesse
Voiced by: Anneka Warburton
"I'm not here, pig. You're not seeing this."
Cuno's sort-of-foster sister.
- Cop Killer: So she says. Your skill checks can say that there's no possible way she could have overpowered a cop. If she's killed anyone, it's probably another child.
- Creepy Child: Even moreso than Cuno. She seems to welcome the idea of death, since if you point at a gun at her, she'll tell you to shoot. She's also just as confrontational and needlessly aggressive.
- Death Seeker: Responds with worrying glee to any perceived threat towards her from the protagonist detective's direction. She'll even shout "Do it, pig! SET ME FREE!" if you choose to point a gun at her. This extends all the way to a Suicide by Cop if the protagonist succeeds in the skillcheck to shoot her
, even though it gets a Non-Standard Game Over. - Distaff Counterpart: In-universe. She’s only called Cunoesse because she has the same red hair as Cuno and no one knows what her real name is.
- False Rape Accusation: She tries to get the Detective to back off from questioning Cuno by yelling that he's planning to touch Cuno and is preparing to take out his dick, with Cuno going along with it for his own amusement. The Detective can then either back off or try to shut him up with force: the former option makes Cuno stop and admit that he knew you were about to punch him due to his past experience with his abusive dad but backing down causes him to lose respect towards the Detective, while the latter option either causes Cuno to gain respect towards him for not taking their shit or lose it by trying and failing to stop him.
- Lady Looks Like a Dude: She pretty much looks like a second Cuno wearing a hat. The first time she speaks, Reaction Speed's first thought is "So it's a girl... Interesting."
- Mysterious Past: She just showed up in the hall outside the de Ruyters' apartment one day, soaking wet and shivering. Cuno took her in. His dad didn't notice, mostly just assuming she was Cuno.
- Not Good with Rejection: Should Cuno accompany the detective after the mercenary tribunal, he'll reveal that he broke things off with Cunoesse. Given the game's description of Cuno's behavior (i.e. that of someone "who'll be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life"), Cunoesse did not take his decision well.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: You're never told what her actual name is, only Cunoesse or "C". Turns out that nobody actually knows what her real name is. That includes Cuno, possibly even Cunoesse herself. Her given name in her obituary is "Cunoesse Vittulainen", which is Finnish (Suruese in universe) consisting of "Vittu" meaning pussy, and "-lainen" meaning (-someome hailing from the location of), so translated to English it would be something akin to "Pussylander", "Pussyish" or "Pussyvian". So it's obviously a made up name.
- "Vittulainen" is more commonly slang for someone incredibly annoying.
- Pet the Dog: When Cuno goes on a rant about how he'll end up just like his father and die like him, Cunoesse tells him to stop saying "all this *sad* shit". Empathy notes there's a touch of grief in her statement.
- Poirot Speak: Occasionally peppers her dialog with bits of a foreign language (real-life Finnish). Cuno and Kim don't recognize it at all, but having a high Encyclopedia will tell you it's called Suruese in-universe, meaning she hails from the remote isola of Katla and probably lived in Revachol's small Suruese community before winding up in Martinaise.
- Toxic Friend Influence: She's this to Cuno. Getting to know Cuno will reveal his Hidden Depths and that he's much smarter and empathetic than he may first appear. Cunoesse is constantly egging on the worst of his behavior, though. The only way to really bring out what little good side Cuno has is by separating him from Cunoesse.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Even worse than Cuno, who sees her as next level insanity. She is into snuff radio and seeks death.
- Would Hurt a Child: Passing some skill checks with Cuno will have him reveal that she's killed someone in the past. She brags it was a cop, but the skills can say that there's no way a child could have overpowered a police officer and it was most likely another child she killed.
The Cryptozoologists
Lena, The Cryptozoologist's Wife
Hello, sweetie.
Voiced by: Ev Ryan (original), Tegen Hitchens (Final Cut)
"But — maybe a fresh set of eyes is what this world needs?"
A kindly wheelchair-bound old lady, waiting for her husband Morell to return home from a field expedition to find a possibly imaginary stick-insect.
- Cool Old Lady: She's pretty much the nicest person in all of Martinaise. She will give you her pin to pawn when you need money, and will happily spend her time telling you about cryptids.
- Crash-Into Hello: Your first potential interaction with Lena after getting down into the Whirling-in-Rags' bar area is crashing into her, back-first, if you fail the Savoir Faire check to "sneak" away from Garte in mid-conversation. This does you more harm than her (it only dings up her wheelchair and apparently doesn't knock her down), and she remains cordial with you regardless.
- Crisis of Faith: Her and her husband’s repeated failure to find solid proof of the Insulindian Phasmid has given her doubts about whether her sighting of it years ago really was anything other than the overactive imagination of a young child. More tragically, she worries that her husband may have only been interested in her to begin with because of her story, and that if she shares her doubts with him he might lose interest in her entirely. If you learn her address during your last conversation with her and return from the sea fortress with proof of the Phasmid’s existence, you can prove both of these doubts wrong.
- Eloquent in My Native Tongue: A variant: she's a quiet, pleasant old lady until you broach the subject of her husband's field of cryptozoology, at which point she lights up and speaks quickly and with great confidence. Her husband acknowledges she's the better speaker between the two of them; he knows his subject, but doesn't enjoy teaching himself.
- Handicapped Badass: Played with. You can try and recruit her to help with the investigation, but, while flattered, she points out Revachol is not exactly handicap accessible and she’d slow you down. Though an Empathy check implies she would have been more receptive if she were younger.
- Nice Guy: Aside from the Racist Grandma example below, she's unfailingly polite and friendly and doesn't get offended whatsoever by your more weird and out-there decisions and statements, at most just looking at you with pity.
- Odd Friendship: Her and her husband are friends with Gary, an ill-concealed cryptofascist.
- Racist Grandma: Just a little bit — when she gives you the Kind Green Ape pen, she apparently sees nothing offensive in comparing Seolites like Kim to a separate species of hominid. More highly evolved in some ways, she says, apparently meaning it as an awkward compliment. It goes at least part of the way to explaining how she and Morell are friends with Gary. The whole thing appears to be a reference to the real-life cryptid the De Loys Ape, which was largely pushed by anthropologist and Nazi collaborator George Montandon as proof that indigenous Americans evolved from different ancestry to white humans.
Morell, The Cryptozoologist
Voiced by: Kyle Simmons (original), Paul Delaross (Final Cut)
"I've always liked animals, and puzzles. Searching for cryptids is a bit of both."
An elderly field researcher out searching for proof of an elusive local stick insect.
- Absent-Minded Professor: Downplayed. While eccentric and absorbed in a field most people believe is based on chasing myths, Morell is a gruff, serious-minded man and a rigorous scientist.Morell: I'm less interested in mammalian concerns, to be honest...
- Grumpy Old Man: Repeatedly described as gruff, he's defensive of his life's work, and not big on small talk. Leary of being mocked or starting arguments, he prefers to keep to himself.
- Leitmotif: "The Cryptozoologists", which plays when talking to him in the field. It is a variant of "La Revacholiere," the leitmotif of his quarry.
- Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious: His field of expertise: the study of creatures most people don't believe exist. While most establishment scientists look down on his efforts, he does attempt to maintain credibility as a serious researcher rather than a wide-eyed enthusiast.You: So no one's ever found one?
Morell: Not *yet*. That's what makes it a *cryptid*. - They Called Me Mad!: Downplayed again. He's made an entire life and career searching for animals most people don't believe exist. He's also never found any concrete proof of a single one himself — apart from what he says is a meticulously vetted sighting, albeit one reported by his own wife (before she met him, but still). He does not make a distinction between more exciting, glamourous cryptids and plausible but boring ones such as a possibly extinct species of phasmid. You can end up vindicating his efforts if you manage to return from the sea island with an actual photograph of a certain creature.
Gary, The Cryptofascist
Voiced by: Stephen Hill
"Always a pleasure to see an officer of the law! I mean... officers."
Morell's friend and research assistant. Delivers topping pies in his off-hours.
- Bad Liar: It doesn't take a lot of prodding to get him to admit that he stole the Hanged Man's breastplate and is wearing it under his shirt.
- Butt-Monkey: He's rightfully taken to task by the detectives for meddling in the crime scene and generally acting like an insolent weenie towards them. Morell chews him out after overhearing this interaction.
- Conspiracy Kitchen Sink: Believes in a bunch of random and contradictory racist conspiratorial views about the Seolites, who he thinks are controlling people with a radiocomputer network at the same time as idealising them for supporting the Suzerain during the Revolution. Your INT skills are not impressed.
- Dirty Coward: He's easily cowed by anyone with an iota of power, whether it's you, with a badge that makes your other glaring faults completely invisible to him, or Evrart Claire doing nothing more than unlocking his door serving as a deadly warning not to publish even whatever minor criticisms of the Union Gary had planned.
- Evil Reactionary: While evil is a bit of a stretch, he's incredibly smug and obsessed with the supposed glory and nobility of the Revacholian monarchy, so much so that he has the old royal flag hung on the wall in his apartment. His authoritarian sympathies also make him a xenophobe and he’s particularly racist towards Kim when you first speak to him, but the game portrays him as more pathetic than anything as he immediately breaks down and apologizes if the player calls him out on this.
- Foreshadowing: Claims that Seolites have technology that allows them to send messages backwards in time. If you pursue the Moralintern Vision Quest to its conclusion, you and Kim can receive a transmission from near the actual end of the game.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: It’s heavily implied that the only reason Morell and Lena spend any time with him is because of his interest in Cryptozoology, as Morell constantly yells at him during the players interaction with them out in the field and Lena comes across as more pitying of him than anything else.
- Hidden Depths: When Gary apologizes for interfering with the crime scene and insulting Kim, your skills will note that his remorse is sincere even though he's being slightly histrionic about it. When he notes that the suzerain's Seolan admirals heroically fought at his side until the bitter end, he seems to be expressing genuine admiration for them even if it's tainted by his racism. It even seems like something of a minor Heel Realization for him.
- Jerkass: He's not exactly evil, but he's a jerk and a blowhard.
- Jerkass Has a Point: He was planning to write an op-ed article criticizing the Claire brothers for their dictatorial rule over Martinaise and their tendency to suppress free speech. While it's hypocritical coming from him given that he'd be fine with their unethical behavior if they were right-wing autocrats instead, the points he raises are hard to argue against (especially considering Claire wanted to intimidate him into silence over this).
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Gary thinks he's more intelligent and sophisticated than he actually is.
- Nerdy Nasalness: He has a nasally voice when he speaks, which makes his smugness and horrible political beliefs all the more unpleasant.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: He's not really a "villain" but he's about as open-minded as you'd expect someone the game describes as a "crypto-fascist" to be.Gary the Cryptofascist: THEY'RE JUST ON A DIFFERENT RUNG OF THE LADDER MORELL! I HAD NO *PROBLEM* WITH THEM! [...] THEY'RE A *NASCENT CULTURE*!
- Sophisticated as Hell: Even though he strives to appear cultured and erudite, he owns a bunch of mugs with crude, low-brow racist caricatures on them. He even openly, seemingly reflexively refers to Kim (a high-ranking detective) as "yellow man" to his face. This goes about as well as you'd expect. Even Gary seems mortified, suddenly confronted with a conflict between his racism and his general worship of authority figures.
Garte
Lawrence Garte
I'm THE CAFETERIA MANAGER.
Voiced by: Adam Lawton Stanley
"Okay, fine, I'll take it off your bill! Sleep in an post-apocalyptic hell-hole if you want to."
The cafeteria manager at the Whirling-in-Rags. Understandably, he has a bit of a grudge against the detective who wrecked one of the rooms upstairs.
- Badass Bystander: By this game's standards at least. He doesn't perform any heroic feats, but your skills agree — confronting the thugs verbally and sticking around to witness the Tribunal without running for cover outside of the Whirling took a lot of courage. Even after the bullets start flying, he can still be heard, shouting and begging the mercenaries to stop.
- Deadpan Snarker: He's extremely sarcastic, sometimes going into extended pantomimes, like shaking a nonexistent martini shaker or asking what you want in the drink he's not going to make you.Garte: Money doesn't make you happy but it lets you be *un*happy for a while longer.
- Defrosting Ice King: Garte noticeably softens up on the detective after you find him a replacement for the taxidermy skua you wrecked, and even more so after you take a bullet to protect the Whirling-in-Rags and its patrons. He clearly considers your debt paid and then some, considering that he takes the opportunity to thoroughly clean and fix up your room while you're unconscious.
- Hidden Depths: While he's a manager, Garte is still far down in the corporate hierarchy and very alienated by his job and his bosses. If you manage to get on his less-bad side he'll state that the other two cafeterias he manages are little more than glorified hot-dog stands. He cares about the Whirling-in-Rags because he used to be its bartender before he got promoted, and part of the reason he dislikes you is how destructive you've been to the place.
- Incredibly Lame Fun: Perhaps the only person left in Martinaise who still likes taxidermy animals. He's also rather chipper when faced with what you thought was an anti-climax to the blue door mystery he's been casually obsessing over for years, since he can fix up the old pinball machines you found to add more entertainment options to the hostel.
- Insistent Terminology: He is not a bartender, he is a cafeteria manager. He also keeps reminding you that the Whirling-in-Rags is only one of the many, many (ie. three) cafeterias he manages. He ends up admitting the Whirling is the only one he really cares about, even if it's in the Doomed district, and also that he used to be a bartender — at the Whirling-in-Rags.
- Jerkass Has a Point: As rude and stuck up as he is to you, during your three-day bender you did wreck one the rooms, drive away the hostess, scare the customers, and break a taxidermy bird for no apparent reason. All he wants is for you to pay for the damage you caused and the drinks you drank, and at the point when you meet him, it doesn't seem like you're even going to investigate the murder the hostel called you about in the first place.
- Madonna-Whore Complex: If the Detective fails the Empathy check to discern Sylvie's true reasons for why she's so unconfortable talking to him, the sidequest to help reconcile her and Garte will be instead to convince him that she's a gold-digging whore and cause him to develop this mentality towards women.
- Nerves of Steel: Faces down a heavily armed Sociopathic Soldier trio preparing to murder his customers without fear. Even his continual rudeness towards you implies this, since you are genuinely unstable and were waving a gun in his face before the start of the game.
- Not Afraid to Die: To everyone's surprise, including his own. Garte realises that the reason he was able to confront the Tribunal was because he didn't care if he died. Figuring this out seems to have been a profound moment for him, and he is nicer to you afterwards, but it is ambiguous if this is due to him being depressed about his personal life, alienated by his job, the kind of person who naturally does not think of danger when in a crisis, or some combination of the three.
- Office Romance: Or at least he tried. If pressed during your initial interrogation, Garte will admit that he asked out, Sylvie, one of his employees, and believes it caused her to quit the job to avoid an uncomfortable work environment. To his credit, Garte admits it was an incredibly stupid thing to do and feels guilty he drove Sylvie away. Averted if you press Sylvie hard enough: dealing with your behavior in the week leading up to the events of the game is what caused her to quit, Garte simply picked a bad time to try and ask her out. She actually feels the same way about him and will feel guilty should you say he believes she quit because of him.
- Only Sane Man: You're his worst problem, but the neighbourhood's gone to shit, the strike's about to explode, the Hardie Boys are only getting more and more rowdy, his hostess has left, and, of course, there's a dead body behind the hostel.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: To you. He hates you for good reasons. You hate him for hating you and not serving you drinks. You can try to arrest him, claim he made you his "bitch", accuse Cuno of being in cahoots with him, do a Skyward Scream that he has betrayed you for the last time, or tell a representative of the Coalition that he is an escaped international criminal and should be executed.
- Stubborn Hair: He can't grow a proper beard, so he's stuck with thin, patchy Perma-Stubble. Cuno calls him baby-beard. But he's trying.
Local Merchants
"Bird's Nest" Roy
Voiced by: Mikee Goodman
"All kinds of people come through here... Locals, travellers. People looking for a deal. People looking for a keepsake. People who are terminally bored."
The owner of the local pawn shop in Martinaise.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Downplayed. Roy is fairly lucid, but due to being constantly high on pyrholidon, his way of talking and thinking is just a little "off" at times, especially when it comes how he prices his wares. He is also completely convinced that the kingdom of Hjelmdall from the Hjelmdallermann series is a very real place and you should be able to find it if only you travel far enough north.
- Do You Want to Haggle?: Roy is not immune to this. Amongst other things, he can be talked into giving you the Man from Hjelmdall t-shirt for free, and a discount on a boombox once it becomes necessary for the investigation to have a machine to play tapes on. But notably, he absolutely refuses to budge on the sawed-off street light.
- Eccentric Artist: He's a creator and enthusiast of experimental, conceptual art — especially abstract patterns of light and sound. He has some interesting views about art — such as that the publication of the Hjelmdallermann books has made the Hjelmdallermann real, manifested in the minds of the reading public.
- Honest John's Dealership: Some of the things in his store are less than legit, most obviously the sawed-off street-light he stores in the corner of the shop (which he is only willing to part with for the outragous price of 700 réal). There is also the matter that he was not only willing to buy a police-issued gun off a drunken officer (you), he was also just as willing to sell it to a civilian that showed overt signs of insanity — although in his defense, he states that he broke his usual rule of not dealing in guns because Harry put the barrel in his mouth and said he couldn't trust himself with it. Besides, he made sure to take the bullets out before selling it.
- The Night Owl: Roy's shop is open both remarkably early in the morning and remarkably late at night. It is actually a clue to his pyrholidon addiction, as insomnia is a side-effect of the drug.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: He's fairly easygoing, even without the drugs, but he will all but snarl at you for trying to haggle him down for the boombox.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Settled in Martinaise after dealing with a nuclear meltdown crisis, even though he was warned it's a shit hole.
- Still Wearing the Old Colors: He still wears his old worker's vest from his time in the Emergency Relief Brigade that helped cleaning up a malfunctioning cheap nuclear reactor knows as "The People's Pile". As he talks about the disaster, it is obvious that his feelings about his old uniform are rather mixed to say the least. On one hand, he admits that he and his fellow brigade-members' efforts were mostly in vain and didn't do that much difference and is somewhat bitter about it, but he is also still a bit proud that he did something proactive to help out, even if it didn't amount to very much.
- The Stoner: He is a frequent user of the psychedelic anti-radiation drug pyrholidon, and you can even fairly easily talk him into sharing some of his supply with you.
- Sunglasses at Night: He always wears a pair of shades, even in the dim light of his shop. He does it to hide his eyes, which are bloodshot and yellow; the most overt signs of his pyrholidon addiction.
- We Buy Anything: Downplayed. Roy is pretty happy to buy all of the random trinkets you're carrying around, but he is not interested in buying your clothes, and he will emphatically reject buying any armor pieces off of you. He especially rejects the latter because he realizes that it simply too big a risk to have something that a PMC might want back some day lying around. That said, he still a bit of a gambler by nature, which is why he was willing to buy your gun off you when you offered it him (though when pressed, he'll also admit that he did it because you proved you were dangerously suicidal and couldn't be trusted with it).
Siileng / "Humanitarian Aid Guy"
Voiced by: Will Menaker (original), Lucky Singh Azad (Final Cut)
"*Everything's* cool. The goods are cool, the customers are cool, the place is cool — and one more thing, officer... you're *very* cool."
A street vendor who has set up shop at the Jam.
- Affably Evil: He's endearingly sleazy even if he's basically selling stuff that was meant to be used for humanitarian aid. He knows nothing is really stopping him doing so since Revachol's laws concerning this sort of thing are flimsy, but he doesn't act smug about it.
- Asian Store-Owner: A cheerful man of Asian-equivalent ethnicity with a strong accent who hawks stolen goods on the street outside the pawn shop in Martinaise, though his actual day job is being a lorry driver — he just isn't doing that right now because the harbor is closed.
- Fell Off the Back of a Truck: Essentially how he excuses the humanitarian aid packages and the FALN wear he is selling. You can put two and two together, and realize that Tommy Le Homme is most likely one of his suppliers.
- Funny Foreigner: Siigay seems to be Elysium's counterpart of India (or South Asia in general) and Siileng plays into the stereotype of the cheerful, charismatic and goofy Indian immigrant. However, it's unknown if this is his salesman persona or legimatelly part of his personality (or a combination of both).
- Honest John's Dealership: Even more so than Roy. He is not bothering particularly hard to hide the fact that he is selling humanitarian packages that was meant to be distributed for free.Siileng: No need for discounts at Siileng's, officer. Everything's already on sale.
- Lovable Rogue: He's an amicable and laid-back hustler.
- Who's on First?: When examining the FALN sneakers he has on display on top of a set of speakers, you can get into an extended argument with him over you wanting to buy the speakers, rather than the sneakers. Eventually, he will realize what you're talking about, and inform you that you will have to buy the sneakers before he will sell you the speakers.
Plaisance
Voiced by: Catherine Blangford
"Host of Hosts, guard me and my honest business venture from the curse that lurks behind the curtains..."
The nervous, superstitious proprietor of Crime, Romances, and Biographies of Famous People.
- Abusive Parents: She ends up being this to Annette, although not on purpose. Plaisance's own mother used to berate her for being unimaginative and somewhat dim.
- Awful Wedded Life: She's estranged from her businessman husband and doesn't see much of him because he's always traveling for work. Part of why Plaisance is so stressed out is that she's raising Annette by herself and struggling to provide for both of them in a bad part of town.
- Cloudcuckoolander: She has some... peculiar beliefs about the supernatural. You ultimately can't pierce this when explaining the mundane origins of the sounds in her shop — but if you allow Drama to spin a ridiculous yarn about it, she will buy it wholesale.
- Control Freak: The crux of Plaisance's fixation on the supernatural and ultraliberalism is that she wants to believe there are clearly-defined rules for how the world works. The thought that her and her daughter are alone in a chaotic universe where nothing is certain or easily-explained is too stressful for her to grapple with. As such, she places her faith in two ineffable entities that she thinks are in control of the world: the various supernatural beings/spirits/deities that supposedly watch over the Doomed Commercial District and the "free market." She wants for something to be directing everything that goes on in the world, because otherwise she'd have to live with the troubling reality that the well-being of her business and her family is (at least partially) out of her hands. These beliefs make her feel like she has some leverage over the currents that shape her and her daughter's lives, hence why she hopes that her sigils and charms will prevent her store from failing like all the others in the DCD.
- Granola Girl: She has traces of this given her kooky new age beliefs and fixation on the supernatural.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's shrill and superstitious but she genuinely cares about her daughter and wants the best for her. She's just not very good at figuring out what that is.
- Jerkass Has a Point: More like the "Moral Guardian Jerk with a Heart of Gold" has a point, but while you are looking around her store, she might comment that "The Man from Hjelmdall" series is full of "nasty stuff" and "crude, barbaric writing". Unlike most of her other Moral Guardians screed, she's actually fairly on point on the content of the series, and the books you get to buy exemplify the crude and mindless writting she warns you about.
- My God, What Have I Done?: She has this reaction when she realizes she's been working her daughter Annette so hard that the girl has started biting her nails. Empathy notes that this struck a chord with her because she's accustomed to being treated similarly by her distant and uncaring husband.
- Nervous Wreck: She's constantly on edge about threats to her business, whether they're downturns in the market or hostile spirits that supposedly haunt the building.
- Stepford Smiler: She tries to maintain a veneer of confidence and professionalism but her unhappiness and anxiety periodically bubble to the surface throughout her dialogue.
- Tough Love: How she views making Annette help out with the store, as she wants for her to be tough and self-sufficient so she's prepared to handle the challenges of adulthood. She changes her mind if you point out that having Annette skip school to work at the family's struggling bookstore is likely to add further challenges.
Annette
Voiced by: Suzie Sadler
Plaisance's plucky young daughter, hard at work trying to bring in business to the suffering shop.
- Adorably Precocious Child: Annette is quite well read and perks up when you ask her about the different genres of fiction she sells.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: If you intercede on Annette's behalf with her mom, she gives you a detective hat she found that gives you a boost to your Encyclopedia stat.
- Book Worm: She genuinely loves reading and seems to have a particular fondness for the Dick Mullen novels. Plaisance is exasperated that she focuses more on this than on her work or her studies.
- Nervous Wreck: Like her mom, Annette has problems with anxiety. This can be deduced by noticing that she chews her nails.
- Nice Girl: She's a sweet kid who's nothing but courteous to the detectives.
- Plucky Girl: She's got a pretty difficult lot, having to stand out in the cold all day advertising the store because of her mom's insistence on growing her business instead of sending Annette to school, but she maintains a cheerful facade and it takes some observation to figure out she's not as happy as she lets on. You can notice that she copes by chewing her fingernails.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: She's quite enthusiastic about crime fiction and shows excitement when you tell her you're a detective, but she can learn pretty quickly that you are not the Dick Mullen type of police officer.
- Then again, Dick Mullen is noted to be an unrealistic portrayal of detective work because of how much trouble he causes while investigating a case, which would almost certainly get a real officer subject to a disciplinary hearing. Considering who our protagonist is, she's closer than most officers in the game are comfortable admitting.
Neha, the Novelty Dicemaker
Voiced by: Yoana Nikolova
A woman running a business making novelty dice for Revachol's roleplayers and various dice enthusiasts. May or may not be an evil spirit haunting the Doomed Commercial District.
- Agent Scully: She does not believe in the Curse of the Commercial District and offers a set of much more realistic scenarios for why the District seems to attract failed businesses if you try to convince her of the curse.
- Deadpan Snarker: Has a dry but good-natured sense of humor and makes a number of cutting remarks about the numerous failed businesses in her building.
- Headphones Equal Isolation: She wears headphones and is deep into working, and is therefore almost completely unaware of events outside her office. She is also one of the more out-of-the-way NPCs in the game.
- Leitmotif: "Polyhedrons", which only plays inside her office.
- Ms. Exposition: She'll tell you all you could possibly want to know about the Doomed Commercial Area, having lived and worked there longer than anyone.
- Winds of Destiny, Change!: A very downplayed example. Buying one of her dice allows the Detective to re-roll a small and very specific set of tests with a bonus, and unless you've already tried (and failed) those checks you will not know which ones when you buy it.
The Pétanque Players
René Arnoux
Mistakes are forgiven, when men at least *try* to right their wrongs.
Voiced by: Ben Davies (original), Jorel Paul (Final Cut)
"Because that's what happens when communards hijack your country, execute your supreme leadership, and turn your capital into a slaughterhouse. You use *heavy ordnance* to clean up your home."
An old army veteran and a hardcore royalist, still dreaming of the good old days when King Frissel the First was still in charge.
- Alas, Poor Villain: It's more along the lines of "Alas, Poor Jerkass", but his death is quite poignant. Gaston is devastated by it despite their adversarial relationship.
- All Issues Are Political Issues: René expresses annoyance with Gaston refusing to pick sides and affirms that even being a full-blown communist would be better than remaining apolitical.
- Armored Closet Gay: Passing a ludicrously hard Pain Threshold skill check during the fascist vision quest will reveal that his feelings for Gaston are not entirely platonic, but that René has been heavily suppressing them and has absolutely every intention of taking these feelings to the grave unexpressed.Inland Empire: Hopelessly alone behind the unbreakable walls he spent a lifetime erecting. No one will ever know him.
- Betty and Veronica: The courageous but abrasive Veronica to gentle Gaston's Betty. Both men were in love with the same woman, Jeanne-Marie Beaulieu, until her death two years ago of pneumonia.
- Black Shirt: He's a fervent loyalist to the monarchs of old despite the fact that they were for all intents and purposes incompetent rulers who drove their country to the ground.
- Even Evil Has Standards: He is a pro-monarchist jerk but if you boast about punching Cuno in the face he is appalled that an officer of the law would hit a child.
- Gayngst: By passing an impossible Pain Threshold check during the Fascist vision quest, you can figure out that he is in love with Gaston and has been his entire life, but his inability to accept his love has turned it into a deep pain and regret he has carried with him for decades.Pain Threshold: There's tenderness in the carabineer's look. Tenderness that's curdled into pain or something darker. Even worse, a love that's aborted and smothered, stamped beneath his brilliant boot heel.
- Grumpy Old Man: That are very few things about society that he isn't bitter and resentful about.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: Evrart gave him a job as security for the harbour, building him his own shack on the wall and everything. It's mostly a symbolic position ("purely decorative," as Gaston puts it) — when René had to take some medical leave, they don't bother to replace him, and Evrart still seems to know everything that happens in Martinaise regardless. René keeps doing it mostly out of pure stubbornness, which later leads to tragedy when the exertion of going back to his post causes him to suffer a fatal heart attack.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Although it's colored by his reactionary political views and his disdain for women, he's right in pointing out that Moralintern rule has not been good for Revachol.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Don't mention the war, or politics, or screw up his game of petanque, or talk to him at all if you can help it. He's an angry man just looking for an excuse to blow his fuse. He'll hold a grudge for days if you 'succeed' on the check to play pétanque — which has you lob the boule straight out to sea, shotput-style.
- Hollywood Heart Attack: Had to take some time off to see a doctor about some heart trouble. It eventually catches up with him, and on the morning of Day 5 of the investigation, you can find out from Gaston that he died in the night.
- Hypocrite: He criticises Gaston for helping to write Union propaganda, but he himself works for the Union as a security guard, if only tokenly (the Claire Brothers don't even bother to replace him when he takes medical leave).
- My Country, Right or Wrong: He's so loyal to the country that he'll even defend the drug-addled, cowardly, dandified kings and princes of the monarchy's final days.
- Odd Friendship: With Gaston. They've known each other all their lives and been rivals for most of it, but both loving the same woman for all those years has made them closer to each other than anyone else. René basically doesn't have any other friends. On an even stranger, purely one-sided note, the Deserter has spent so long hating René, ruminating on killing him as the last surviving symbol of the monarchy, that if you inform the old communard that René died of a heart attack, he experiences a moment of bitter grief mixed with regret at having left it too long.
- Retired Badass: He once carried a wounded prince across an open battlefield for two straight days while fending off enemy combatants. He's undeniably brave, even if the cause he fought for was... questionable.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: It's implied that René is haunted by his wartime experiences, but he's too macho, stubborn, and old-fashioned to find the words to express these feelings. There are hints of regret and sadness at certain points in his dialogue that imply he's not as tough as he'd like you to think. He's noticeably despondent about his and the other carabiners' failure to protect King Frissell from being thrown beneath the wheels of an oncoming streetcar by an angry mob, with the implication being that he feels personally responsible for the king's death.
- Sour Outside, Sad Inside: René's bitter sarcasm belies how depressed he is by his traumatic life experiences and his home country's present-day poverty. His intense displeasure with what he feels is wrong with contemporary Revachol could be read as him feeling personally responsible (as a former soldier of the suzerain) for allowing the misfortunes that befell the country to occur. When he halfheartedly defends the nobility despite knowing on some level that they were useless and abhorrent, that could likewise be read as him placing the blame for the suzerainty's downfall on himself and other ordinary men who served the crown rather than the nobles who caused the revolution to happen with their negligence and misrule.
- Stay in the Kitchen: He is very skeptical about the idea of women serving in the RCM as field officers rather than desk jockeys.
- Still Wearing the Old Colors: He still wears his old army uniform — canary-yellow and sky-blue with orange trousers. Hardly camo, as Kim notes.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: With Gaston. He constantly hurls insults at him, but you get the sense that he cares deeply about him in his own slightly twisted way, and Gaston just takes René's crabby attitude in stride.
Gaston Martin
Voiced by: Chris Nicolaides (original), Hervé Carrascosa (Final Cut)
"René, you're a man with a fork in a world of soup."
René's pétanque partner, a jolly old man who makes a mean sandwich.
- Betty and Veronica: The mild-mannered, kind-hearted Betty to the fiery René's Veronica. Their neighbour Jeanne-Marie Beaulieu spent her whole life trying to decide between the two of them, but in the end, she never did.
- Berserk Button: Asking him to share his sandwiches. Even being very nice and polite, if you ask for a piece of his sandwich and insists on it when he refuses, he will tell you to fuck off, although he apologizes right afterwards. The Rhetoric white check to convince him to give you his sandwich is absurdly high.
- The Ditherer: Not unlike his beloved Jeanne-Marie, but about politics rather than romance. Gaston is the empathetic fence-sitter to René's diehard royalist, which is one of the things René hates most about him: better even one of the hated communists than someone with no ideology whatsoever.
- Everyone Went to School Together: Taught human studies to the Claire Brothers and Easy Leo, and is rather proud of the former two.
- Insult of Endearment: He calls Rene an old cunt a few times after his death, but there's a nostalgic softness to the insult.Rhetoric: "Strange how *old cunt* sounds almost gentle when he says it now."
- Nice Guy: He's friendly, polite, and more willing to give you the benefit of the doubt than most Martinaise locals. Just don't get weird about his sandwich.
- Odd Friendship: Gaston, Jeanne-Marie, and René lived on the same street their whole lives, and a lifetime of Jeanne-Marie going back and forth between them has bonded the two men to the point where they come out to the old broken square and play pétanque nearly every day. After all, if someone as wonderful as Jeanne-Marie saw something in that cranky old soldier, there must be something worthwhile in him. He takes the loss of René hard — in some strange way, he loved that "utter cunt."
- Supreme Chef: Downplayed. We don't know anything about his other culinary skills, but he apparently does make fantastic sandwiches. You can scam him out of one he had prepared for his lunch by suggesting modifying it with different exotic recipes, and he immediately is all ears. The item description also refers to said sandwich as "the work of a master craftsman".
The Capeside Apartment Complex
The Smoker on the Balcony
Voiced by: Virgil Texas (original), Mark Holcomb (Final Cut)
"Gendarmerie! You found me."
A good listener and a possible witness to the crime.
- Camp Gay: He looks the part, but his mannerisms are more mild-mannered than flamboyant. It sows enough doubt in you that you do not immediately make the connection that he is quite possibly a member of the "Homo-sexual Underground".
- Catchphrase: When he approves of any minor thing, sometimes ironically: "Beautiful."
- Closet Key: As a game mechanic, no less. Passing a Composure check while interacting with him unlocks the Homo-Sexual Underground for the Thought Cabinet.
- The Confidant: He complains out loud that everyone seem to treat him like this, saying that he is basically an unpaid therapist to most people.
- Even the Guys Want Him: You are drawn to him for reasons you cannot explain, even though you've just met him. He is just so *different* and compelling.
- Friends with Benefits: His relationship with his "Sunday Friend" begins and ends in the Smoker's bedroom.You: What does it mean — a Sunday friend?
Smoker on the Balcony: That he won't be there when times get tough, I guess.
You: Is that even a friend?
Smoker on the Balcony: It is — on Sundays. - Lazy Alias: If you try asking him his name upon encountering him, he will respond that it is "Martin Martinaise". Rhetoric isn't impressed.Rhetoric: That's definitely not his real name.
- Navel-Deep Neckline: Wears his shirt open nearly to the waist.
- Nice Guy: Though he's naturally guarded around you at first given that you are a police officer, he is nevertheless cooperative and unfailingly cordial to you. Even your bumbling attempts to question if he is part of the "Homo-sexual underground" amuse rather than offend him.
- No Name Given: You never get to know him as anything else but "the Smoker on the Balcony", other than his Mr. Smith alias "Martin Martinaise". Rhetoric quickly deduces it's a flimsy false name purely to "answer" your question without actually doing so.
- Sad Clown: Being on intimate terms with an extremely talkative and high-ranking Moralintern executive has made him aware that Revachol — let alone Martinaise — isn't going to improve anytime soon. And for as bad as it is in his neighbourhood, whatever he was running away from in his home country is even worse, so much of his merriment is tinged with melancholy.
- Transparent Closet: Technically, if only because Revachol's homophobia and the potentially scandalous implication of the relationship he's in means he has to be at least somewhat discreet. He's not really trying to hide it and if you ask him he'll answer honestly, but he's careful not to say anything "incriminating" before you do. After that, however...The Smoker on the Balcony: Some say we engineered disco to spread our vision of a vertiginous, ever-changing society, where all there is is a razzle-dazzle of gold!
The Sunday Friend
Voiced by: Tariq Khan (original), Jean-Pascal Heynemand (Final Cut)
"None of z'is is weird."
A Moralintern bureaucrat who witnessed the hanging. He can be found keeping a low profile in the Smoker on the Balcony's apartment after 22:00 on Day 2.
- Affably Evil: He's perfectly friendly, and happily divulges whatever you want to know. It's just everything he has to say beyond the hanging is either useless or sounds distinctly ominous.Sunday Friend: The Coalition is only looking out for *ze price stabilitié*. Inflation is a killer, like a heart disease blocking the normal circulation of the economy — it must be controlled...
- Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Bears more than a slight resemblance to a young Michael Caine.
- Friends with Benefits: He seems to treat the Smoker as something like a mistress (the male equivalent, somewhat rare in fiction), giving him gifts and visiting him in Martinaise before returning to his 'real' life back in the city proper.
- Funetik Aksent: He has a sort of Swiss French/German accent, and pronounces his th- sounds as z's.
- Given Name Reveal: You will only know him as the Smoker on the Balcony's "Sunday Friend" to begin with, since that's what he is to the Smoker. He'll introduce himself by his real name — Charles Villedrouin — once you arrive in the apartment.
- Government Agency of Fiction: He works for EPIS, a Moralintern supra-organization which began as a market customs system but now busies itself with much, much more.
- I Was Never Here: In the Moralist Vision Quest, he predictably refuses to help you contact Moralintern since "officially" he's still in La Delta preparing for a conference.
- Meal Ticket: He is paying for the Smoker's art degree, and buying him silk robes and expensive perfume in the bargain.
- Non-Answer: The man speaks almost entirely in neoliberal technobabble, and as such it's almost impossible to get any sort of straight answers out of him. The worst example of this is probably when you're just trying to ask what EPIS stands for. He keeps rambling about how great of a success the whole thing is, despite the Detective's multiple attempts to interrupt it and just get a damn answer to a simple question, implying that he's either avoiding the question because he doesn't even know, has forgotten the answer, or is so caught up praising it that he can't hear anything else at the moment.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Not as far as the case is concerned, since you're part of the RCM and thus part of the bureaucracy, but he's completely incapable of giving a straight answer about the Coalition or Moralintern, and every Non-Answer he gives indicates that the progress they plan to bring to the second and third world is decades away if it comes at all — but incremental change is better than any upheaval or violence, surely.Smoker on the Balcony: (later) And how did you like him?
You: You were right, he was magical. Magically bureaucratic. - Take That!: The Friend's description of EPIS make it clear it's meant to be a satire of The European Union.
- Transparent Closet: Played with. The Smoker and his Sunday Friend are clearly hooking up, but neither of them will actually say as much. While homo-sexuality is legal in Revachol, Sunday Friend is a politician, and his relationship with his young friend seems suspiciously based on expensive gifts.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: He is this, in a way; he's absolutely convinced the market reforms EPIS are imposing on Revachol are going to transform it, despite all evidence to the contrary. He's only an Obstructive Bureaucrat because that's what the city needs.
- Windbag Politician: He preaches the virtues of Moralism through extremely long strings of meaningless jargon, and deflects any other questions about himself, the murder, or what he's doing in Martinaise.
Cindy the Skull
Voiced by: Xiayah St. Ruth
"I thought I'd mix it up, you know, summon the forces of crime and social chaos — with a wall-sized invitation."
A local vandal and ranking member of one of Revachol's more notable gangs.
- Blood Knight: Downplayed. In her soft-spoken, ironic way, she's fond of talking up the possibility of eating the rich as the streets of Revachol 'run red with blood'. She doesn't actually do anything worse than vandalism, however, and she seems to almost pity the Cop in particular.
- Calling Card: Spends most of the game debating what she should paint on Martinaise. The tribunal ends up giving her the inspiration she needs, painting "Un jour je serai de retour près de toi" ("One day I shall return to your side") across the square where the shooting took place, incorporating the blood of those who died with fuel oil... thus allowing you to set it on fire, making it visible from high above the ground. After finishing her mural, she vanishes from the neighbourhood (and the game).
- Cop Hater: Subverted. She calls you a pig (and an ungulate, and an animal) more than any other character in the game, but it can come to border on an Insult of Endearment by the later game.
- Gang Banger: As the name says, she's a member of the Skulls, a local street gang. Kim notes that she's somewhat out of her territory. Cindy says she can sense the coming chaos in Martinaise.
- Hidden Depths: She has a soft spot for kids and animals. And you qualify as both. She's also sympathetic to communism in spite of herself.
- Mad Artist: She isn't all that mad, but she'd like you to think she is. Dressed in old lady's clothes with her face painted black and white and standing defiantly in front of a wall she's defaced with red paint (actually government fuel oil, dyed bright red and thus blatantly stolen), musing over bringing mayhem to the district as well as what image or slogan she can leave on Martinaise as her 'masterpiece'.
Billie Méjean, the Working Class Woman
Voiced by: Tegen Hitchens
A working class woman found perusing the true crime books outside of "Crime, Romance, and Biographies of Famous People". With some easy skill checks you can determine Billie is worried about her missing husband, and will ask you to look for him.
- Bookworm: She can be found browsing the books outside the local bookstore and you can find out that she occasionally borrows science fiction novels from the Jamrock public library.
- The Everyman: One of the few people in Martinaise who does not have an eccentric personality and/or occupation.
Steban and Ulixes, the Student Communists
Steban
Ulixes
Voiced by: Tariq Khan (Steban), Moritz Bäckerling (Ulixes)
"In the dark times, should the stars also go out?"
Two scholars of Nilsenist infra-materialism who hold radical meetings in the construction site at the top of the apartments. They are also the lead writers for the Communist magazine La Fumée, under the respective pseudonyms "Nasteb Encalada-Bernal" and "Exilus Bücher".
- Aerith and Bob: Played with. You can find their writing in the Communist magazine under their pseudonyms "Nasteb and Exilus", with your brain chiming in that they must be fake names because "have you ever met someone named Exilus?" Which is made all the more amusing once you meet them and learn that their real names are Steban and Ulixes — the latter a real but less common alternate Latin spelling of Ulysses/Ulises.
- The Anti-Nihilist: Dig deep into Steban's beliefs enough and he will reveal that he agrees with another academic who claims that Communism can be considered a pseudo-religion in the sense that it places faith in the possibility of a brighter future for humanity instead of Dolores Dei or any kind of eternal bliss or reward and, much like Volition, he believes in Communism because it's impossible.
- Both of their hopes of keeping Communism a persistent political force amidst all of its setbacks is visualized through a spiraling stack of matchboxes, resembling Ignus Nilsen's grand concept of physics-defying hyperstructures reliant on the inherent belief of a Communist revolution. They are seen building this structure when you first meet them, at which point it then collapses partway through. Finishing the Vision Quest properly ends with Harry, Steban, and Ulixes re-building the matchbox stack even higher than it originally was, and, for the briefest of moments, they all stand back and appreciate finally finishing the structure and proving that Nilsen's revolutionary plasm can truly keep such a structure alive... before it collapses again regardless. Steban expects this, however, and believes that continual re-building through sheer perseverance is what will bring communist ideologies back into the forefront of common knowledge.
- The tower is a rendition of the real life project known as Tatlin's Tower, a never-constructed monument intended to be built to celebrate the October Revolution. If you're the kind of person who knows that, getting to make it stand, even for just a moment is
completely heartbreaking.
- The tower is a rendition of the real life project known as Tatlin's Tower, a never-constructed monument intended to be built to celebrate the October Revolution. If you're the kind of person who knows that, getting to make it stand, even for just a moment is
- Both of their hopes of keeping Communism a persistent political force amidst all of its setbacks is visualized through a spiraling stack of matchboxes, resembling Ignus Nilsen's grand concept of physics-defying hyperstructures reliant on the inherent belief of a Communist revolution. They are seen building this structure when you first meet them, at which point it then collapses partway through. Finishing the Vision Quest properly ends with Harry, Steban, and Ulixes re-building the matchbox stack even higher than it originally was, and, for the briefest of moments, they all stand back and appreciate finally finishing the structure and proving that Nilsen's revolutionary plasm can truly keep such a structure alive... before it collapses again regardless. Steban expects this, however, and believes that continual re-building through sheer perseverance is what will bring communist ideologies back into the forefront of common knowledge.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Their key belief is that sufficient belief in the cause will allow a Communist state to reshape physical laws. The world of Elysium being what it is, they may not actually be wrong.
- The Dividual: Steban and Ulixes are only ever encountered together, and they both believe in the same somewhat unusual brand of Communism.
- I Resemble That Remark!: Steban and Ulixes sneer at the in-universe Gottwalder school of Communists, a group that believes the academic and intellectual classes are revolutionarily impotent and only capable of contributing to Communism through critique. Staban calls them "depressed liberals who've read too many books." The two themselves are university students who operate a two-person book club, scoff at former members who lost interest in a club dedicated to reading and talking about Mazovian economics for lacking "ideological fortitude," and demand prospective new members submit academic essays on assigned topics to join.
- Revolutionaries Who Don't Do Anything: Despite being supposed revolutionaries they're ultimately pretty harmless and aren't likely to do anything other than the typical navel-gazing. Partly justified, in that The Detective's initial intentions with the Communist Vision Quest are that he seeks to gain membership in what he at first believes to be a hidden revolutionary cell of Revacholian communards.
- Satellite Character: Between the two of them, Steban is clearly the leader who mainly speaks for the duo, and as such his character is notably more fleshed out than Ulixes, who meanwhile, mostly only chimes in occasionally to back up Steban or add his own two cents on a subject. This is emphasized in the game notes, where Ulixes is referred to as "Echo Maker".
- Sharp-Dressed Man: The Saramarizian Lounge Jacket found in the apartment actually belongs to Steban.
- Significant Anagram: Their pseudonyms for the Communist magazine, Nasteb and Exilus, are anagrams of their actual given names, Steban and Ulixes.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Reach the end of their questline, and your inner monologue will note that the pair is liable to meet a grisly end:Volition: So young. So *unbearably* young...
Half Light: Why do you see the two of them with their backs against a bullet-pocked wall, all of a sudden?
Inland Empire: Their faces, blurred yet frozen as though in ambrotype. You were never *that young*, were you? - We ARE Struggling Together: Their group is down to two members because they're so insistent on maintaining their own orthodoxy. With the detective's help, they can relax membership requirements and start recruiting more widely.
The Jam
Tommy Le Homme
Voiced by: Mark Holcomb
"Chasin' transient pleasures is a drag these days. I prefer the examined life now — thinkin', reflectin', observin'."
One of the long-haul camionneurs stuck in the Jam. A family man, still hoping to be discovered for the rhymes he composes out on the road.
- Blatant Lies: Tommy will refuse to sell you any of the FALN gear from his truck out of principle, though both Siileng and Cuno will sell you the gear he's already handed off.
- More blatently if your Reaction Speed is too low when you ask him for a cigarette he will tell you he doesn't have any despite smoking one in front of you.
- Despair Event Horizon: He doesn't take it well if you tell him that Ruby committed suicide. He's deeply rattled by the revelation and, if you pushed him to inform on Ruby, he thereafter refuses to talk to you, partly because he's angry at himself for telling you about her whereabouts.
- Mellow Fellow: He's a cool, easygoing Nice Guy who'll welcome you to Martinaise and the Jam and tell you what he knows without putting up a fuss.
- Mr. Exposition: A minor one, but he's your first source of information on the Jam and, as an outsider, a lot more forthcoming than most of the locals about the Union and Martinaise as a whole. Subverted when he sends you on a runaround to get someone else to point you at the lady driver, even when he knew her better than any of them and knew full well she was probably the one you were looking for and had already gone on the run.
- My God, What Have I Done?: He has this reaction if you tell him that Ruby killed herself, especially if you pushed him into informing on her, as he feels personally culpable for what happened to her.
- Nice Guy: He's a kindhearted poet and one of the first people you'll meet on the streets of Martinaise who actually wants to help you. Even when he's trying to throw you off the lady driver's trail, it's because he's worried about her and what being processed by the RCM would do to someone who's already had a hard life.
- Stage Names: Tommy Le Homme just sounded better than his real name — Jerry Lafitte — and Tommy L'Homme, while grammatically more correct, was taken.
- Waiting for a Break: He's working as a lorry driver to support his family while working on his poetry. Conceptualization seems to think he's got a shot.
- When You Coming Home, Dad?: Tommy's job takes him a long way from his home in Deora for weeks at a time. Under his mellow surface, he misses his wife and kids and hopes he's doing the right thing to support them.
Racist Lorry Driver
Voiced by: Pierre Maubouché
"Welcome to Revachol."
- Boisterous Weakling: He's not as formidable or imposing as he makes himself out to be.
- The Bully: Apropos of nothing, he feels compelled to hassle Kim (a random person he's never met before) while he passes by on the sidewalk. Like all bullies, he shuts up real quick the moment you and Kim seriously challenge him (especially if you pass the Half Light check to intimidate him).
- Dirty Coward: When he's challenged by the detectives for telling Kim "Welcome to Revachol," he starts obfuscating about his intentions and acting like he wasn't trying to say anything racist. He doesn't have the stones to be up-front about his convictions to this random person he's picking on.
- If you successfully intimidate him with the Half-Light check while questioning him about the drug trade, he drops his tough guy facade and sheepishly rats out who the trafficker is.Half Light: Men like this only respect two things: strength and fear.
- If you successfully intimidate him with the Half-Light check while questioning him about the drug trade, he drops his tough guy facade and sheepishly rats out who the trafficker is.
- Establishing Character Moment: True to his name, the very first thing he says to the detectives is a racist slogan.
- He also provides one of these for you in terms of where you stand on issues of race and what your relationship with Kim will be like. He'll likely be one of the very first people you meet after exiting the Whirling, so how you respond to his mean-spirited drivel will say a lot about your political views. You can either wholeheartedly agree with his dubious race realism (which saddens Kim and makes him uncomfortable) or you can tell him to go fuck himself. This can possibly be the start of a fire-forged friendship where you and Kim always have each other's backs when facing down prejudiced idiots.
- Evil Is Petty: He rats out Siileng, not because he's engaged in criminal activities, but because he's a non-white person.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: He is indeed a racist and a lorry driver.
- Fat Bastard: He's not in the best physical shape, which makes it all the more rich when he complains about other (non-Revacholian) people being genetically inferior to him.
- Hate Sink: He is, hands down, the most despicable character whom the detectives have the displeasure of interacting with over the course of the game. Yes, even more so than the equally racist Measurehead, the Ax-Crazy mercenaries, the blatantly corrupt Evrart Claire, and The Deserter. Unlike those other characters, who, to their admittedly very little credit, have some kind of Freudian Excuse and/or level of competence to back up their twisted actions and worldviews, the racist lorry driver is simply a piggish, self-pitying, hateful human being with no redeeming virtues whatsoever.
- He-Man Woman Hater: He doesn't have much respect for the tomboyish Ruby, partly because she's a women but also because she's gay.
- Giving him a closer examination during the Fascist Vision Quest reveals that the main reason for his bitterness and bigotry is that he has no luck with women and resents that fact deeply:Logic: There's a lot one can do with "average", but this guy hasn't. Now past his prime, it's unlikely he ever will. While others dominate the "killing fields", he will sink to the buttom of the mating pool.
You: How is he ill-equipped?
Logic: It is his defeatist, self-pitying mentality. A sense that the world *owes* him a mate, because he perceives himself as a "good guy".
Suggestion: The ladies don't like that, it isn't *sexy*.
Logic: He isn't interested in evolving, improving, or working for it. He thinks just by *being* he is entitled to love and respect.
- Giving him a closer examination during the Fascist Vision Quest reveals that the main reason for his bitterness and bigotry is that he has no luck with women and resents that fact deeply:
- Hypocrite: He mocks other people for their "inferior" physical characteristics even though he's not exactly a looker himself.
- Even though he hates drugs and the people who "pollute" their bodies with them, he knew about the ongoing drug trade and didn't say anything about it to the authorities.
- Hypocritical Humor: A task enables you to ask his stance on drugs. His response:Racist Lorry Driver: Drugs? They are shit, man. I don't let anything pollute my body. (he takes a long drag on his cigarrete)
- Jerkass: He yells a racist slogan at Kim after seeing him walk down the street. He initially plays dumb about his intentions and insists he didn't mean anything by it, but his subsequent interactions show that he's exactly as despicable and unpleasant as he appears at a glance.
- No Name Given: As far as the game is concerned, he's a racist lorry driver and that's all you need to know.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: He's happy to make trouble for Kim or Siileng purely because they're non-Occidental. After all, the murder victim was only a lousy foreigner anyway. At one point, you can even spot him shouting "Welcome to Revachol" at a random redhead who happens to walk by him. He apparently thinks they all must be foreigners too.
- Smug Snake: He acts very snide towards you if you take Kim's side, but as soon as you apply just a little pressure to him he immediately folds like a cheap suit.
- The Stool Pigeon: He cravenly tells you about the local drug trafficking route to save his own skin, given that he was complicit in it by not reporting it earlier.
The Paledriver
Voiced by: Maria Elena Carbonell Abors
"You have to understand — a true boiadero needs a whole horizon to himself. He can't be tied down by a man or woman. His beloved was selfish."
A distracted old woman. Actually a veteran lorry driver from Mesque, and one of the few brave or mad enough to drive the routes that pass through the pale.
- Big Badass Rig: Her lorry is specially modified to travel through the pale, allowing it to be mounted into the cargo holds of the airships that travel between the isolas.
- Bored with Insanity: She's well-acquainted with how the pale has affected her mind and is mostly capable of not letting it get in the way of her work.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: She's perfectly competent at her job despite having been touched by the pale.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Played for Drama. Her views of the passage of time and the sanctity of life are skewed by spending so much time reliving other people's memories. She mentions that through her long sojourns in the pale, she's lost so much of her past self that people who once knew her now barely recognize her.
- Cowboy: She's something of a boiadeiro herself, roaming the last wild frontier, intentionally cut off from the rest of humanity.
- Deadpan Snarker: She has a penchant for sarcasm.
- Dreaming of Times Gone By: Her long-term exposure to the pale has left her with other people's memories rattling around in her head. One of her favourite pastimes is entering a sort of meditative state in which she relives those bygone days — for instance the golden age of Mesque, which coincided with the beginnings of the revolution in Revachol.
- Foil: Like you, she's forgotten most of who she once was. Unlike you, she remembers a great deal — of other people's lives. You can theorize yourself that your own amnesia has its source in the pale.
- Gratuitous Foreign Language: She calls you Xerife, Sheriff in Portuguese, although the way she pronounces it is different from how the word sounds in real life.
- Higher Understanding Through Drugs: Subverted. At first glance, she seems like she's tripping on some intense hallucinogens. In fact it's a side-effect of long-term exposure to the pale.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's not abundantly clear at first if her affliction is supernatural, if she's just on drugs, or suffering from a neurodegenerative disorder. This trope is averted when it's decisively established that the reason she's like this is that she's genuinely able to remember other people's memories.
- No Name Given: 'The Paledriver' is just your name for her, based on her job. She never mentions her real name. Given how much she's forgotten about her past life, it doesn't seem like she'd care.
- Obfuscating Insanity: Mostly incidental. She's not really going out of her way to appear insane or conceal anything. She's just far beyond caring how others see her. As it turns out, she's lucid for the most part and is perfectly aware of the effects her pale exposure has had.
- Poirot Speak: Similar to Call Me Manaña, she occasionally says words in her native Mesque, a combination of Spanish and Portuguese.
- Space Trucker: Of sorts. Being a paledriver means she's one of the few insane enough to be willing to brave the pale on an ongoing basis, knowing full well what that much exposure can do to a human being. She doesn't actually navigate through the pale herself, but taking the voyage over and over means enduring the nothingness and negation — even while insulated aboard the palegoing airships — and accumulating trace amounts of other people's memories, and eventually losing one's own.The Paledriver: (reciting the lyrics to a popular song) In the middle of this town there's a ghostly motorway — it takes all the people where they want to stay... They say I've been away on a kind of holiday.
The Fishing Village
Isobel, The Washerwoman
"This is pretty much a non-place. A gap. A blank spot on the map, just a cluster of nameless shacks on a nameless street."
Voiced by: Veronica Chon
Married name Sadie, an old Samaran washer-woman who came to live on the coast with her husband, and remembers when the village was a bustling fish-market.
- Cool Old Lady: She's nothing but helpful and kind to the detectives, although she lies to them about Ruby's whereabouts. Granted, she was doing this out of concern for the young woman's well-being, so it wasn't driven by malice.
- Mrs. Exposition: From her washrack in the middle of the street she sees all the little village's comings and goings, and she can tell you a significant amount about both current events and the history of the coast — possibly more than she first lets on.
- Properly Paranoid: She correctly surmises that Evrart's youth center project is a way to drive her and Lilienne out of the village. Even if you convince her to give you her signature, she's still glumly aware that it's going to end bad for the fishing village.
- Wasteland Elder: Martinaise is already poor, but the nameless fishing village on the coast is "pornographically poor", according to Joyce and your own Conceptualization skill. Isobel is something of a local wise woman and unspoken leader for the few remaining residents. She takes pity on the Detective, much as she took pity on Ruby, and offers you a shack to stay in, free of charge, after Day 3 of the investigation.
- Women Are Wiser: Than the husbands who went off and got themselves killed, in the war or at sea or by drinking themselves to death, certainly. She'll tell you you can probably find forgotten caches of cash on the coast, left behind by men who though they could hide it from their wives. She'll also see through Evrart's plans for the youth centre straight away, even if you haven't: the construction will drag on and on, forcing the current residents out of the village so that the Claire Brothers can buy it up for a pittance.
Lilienne, The Net-Picker
Voiced by: Tegen Hitchens
"Us working folk don't have the luxury to be bed-sick with melancholy."
Lilienne Carter is a middle-aged widow who lives in the small fishing village on the eastern outskirts of Martinaise. She is of independent nature and carries a sword.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Just a little, which contrasts with her otherwise completely level-headed, realist approach to the world. She unironically suggests Harry to hold a funeral for his destroyed motor carriage since, after all, our material possessions are a part of our lives as well. This may take even Harry by surprise. She also seems to have some semi mystical or spiritual believes about the sun.
- Cool Sword: Subverted. While it is the only sword wielded by any character in this particular fantasy RPG, it is expressly not cool or unique in any way — Lilienne describes it as simply a tool, like a shovel, mass-manufactured and strictly utilitarian. She gives it to you if you manage to go on a date with her.You: Nice sword. Does it come with a story?
Lilienne: Unfortunately the factory sold this one with a 3-year warranty instead of a story. - Love Interest: You can take her on a date-of-sorts and hit things off with her pretty well, but she makes it clear from the start that it won't go any further than a nice chat. Volition will note that, due to her losing her alcoholic husband in a drunk accident, there would need to be at least a year between you and your drinking before she'd consider something more. It is a more downplayed example overall, with the importance of the interaction being more on showing that you have the capacity to move on from the ex-something should you put the effort in to it.
- Ship Tease: Provided your date goes alright, she's a bit warmer to you afterwards and she expresses Anger Born of Worry in the endgame when she sees you've been shot.
- Struggling Single Mother: Feeds her family of four by selling fish to high-end restaurants and occasionally renting out her boat. The cabin is one of the cozier locations in the game, but it's still her, the twins, and Little Lily all in a single room.
- Weapon for Intimidation: She doesn't really know her way around that sword too well, but just carrying it is ample deterrent.
Lilienne's Twins
"Up, rock!" "Down, rock!"
Voiced by: Zachary Sowden (Final Cut)
Lilienne's two boys, who can be found playing outside of her home.
- Always Identical Twins: They look and sound exactly alike.
- Buffy Speak: They're older than little Lily, but not as well-spoken.
- Chekhov's Gunman: They've been out to the island and have actually seen the Deserter there, providing a few minor clues which can nonetheless be helpful when you question the old man during the endgame.
- Flat Character: They're shy of newcomers, and perhaps not the most imaginative.
- From the Mouths of Babes: Somewhat Played for Drama. When trying to ask the twins about the islet during the endgame, one of the twins abruptly says that their dad, who Lilienne earlier stated drowned in a boating accident, killed himself. The other twin is quick to deny this and almost cries at the thought, and no prior interaction with them indicated they have confused, childlike feelings regarding their late father, making it especially shocking.
- No Name Given: In their shared dialogue, they're just called Lilienne's Twin and Lilienne's Other Twin.
Little Lily
"Lamby usually doesn't like strangers, but you're also fuzzy like Lamby."
Voiced by: Eva-Lotta Soomer (original), Honor Davis-Pye (Final Cut)
Lilienne's young daughter, who shares her name.
- Cheerful Child: A sweet little girl playing with her beloved stuffed toy in a cozy little house by the sea.
- A Dog Named "Dog": Has a stuffed toy sheep named Lamby.
- Grail in the Garbage: She found the Hanged Man's stolen gauntlets. She played with them for a while, but they didn't fit, so she buried them under a sandcastle. You can have them if you want.
- Security Blanket: Her somewhat threadbare stuffed sheep Lamby. Letting her make Lamby give you a 'hug' will heal a point of Morale.
The Pigs
Voiced by: Tegen Hitchens (original), Margaret Ashley (Final Cut)
"SUICIDE BY COP! SPLIT-SECOND DECISION. EAT LEAD, SCUMBAG!"
A troubled woman who believes she is a cop, and compulsively collects any police equipment she gets her hands on.- Insane Equals Violent: Played with, like many other tropes in the game. She certainly is dangerous, considering she’s waving your gun around, but everyone, including the Hardie Boys, are aware she’s just a deeply troubled woman in dire need of help, not an enemy to be put down.
- It Works Better with Bullets: As it turns out, your Villiers pistol was unloaded before The Pigs got her hands on it; the main Hand/Eye Coordination check during your encounter with her has you realize this. Passing or failing the check in question has her try to shoot you, until she also realizes this and experiences a Villainous Breakdown over it.
- Police Pig: Her name references this, though she isn't actually a cop. She's spent far too long listening to police radio dramas, causing her to identify herself to others as "The Pigs". Kim wryly notes how refreshing it is that someone else is calling themself a pig for once.
- The Pig-Pen: Her mental illness clearly interferes with her ability to take care of herself.
- Scatterbrained Senior: She's a cripplingly senile woman who is old enough that the members of the Hardie Boys remember her back when they were kids.
- Technobabble: Invoked. She is aware of quite a few police terms. What she isn’t aware of is what any of them actually mean. She spends much of your conversation with her stringing these together to sound like a “real” cop.
- Villainous Breakdown: Even if the protagonist is so inept that they utterly fail every skill check to dissuade her from discharging their pawned gun, it transpires that it's not actually loaded, which causes her to undergo this.
The Fish Market Drunks
Rosemary, Idiot Doom Spiral, and Don't Call Abigail / The Union of Moribund Alcoholics
Idiot Doom Spiral
Don't Call Abigail
Rosemary
Voiced by: Mikee Goodman (Idiot Doom Spiral original only, Don't Call Abigail in both versions), Jonathon West (Idiot Doom Spiral, Final Cut), Felix Biederman (Rosemary, original), Tariq Khan (Rosemary, Final Cut)
"Man, you're like, bleeding now. Reality's really messed you up."
Three homeless drunks living in an abandoned pile of construction material south of the fishing village on the coast.
- Affectionate Nickname: To them, you're the one and only Tequila Sunset. Despite appearances, however, they didn't come up with it. Esprit de Corps' visions show that your fellow officers from the 41st are already familiar with it from before your latest bout of binge drinking.Rosemary: The legend returns.
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: A case study of long-term substance abuse, Played for Laughs. They also bore witness to the midpoint of your own booze- and speed-fueled bender, where you crashed your motor carriage into the sea and spent the rest of the night getting high and drinking with them.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: During the Ultraliberal Vision Quest, Idiot Doom Spiral can be hired (pro bono) as your personal brand manager. Despite having next to no money available to him and being paid squat, he manages to hustle a rudimentary advertisement display using Martinaise's Horseback Monument for maximum visibility of whatever hokum you're peddling at low cost.
- Crazy Homeless People: Don't Call Abigail in particular is locked into some kind of neverending, unwaking nightmare. The other two are mostly lucid, but Idiot Doom Spiral seems to have a weird blind spot when it comes to doing anything to actually fix his past mistakes. None of them have any interest in anything but drinking.
- Duck Season, Rabbit Season: A comically one-sided, drug-addled example. Initially, Rosemary sells the bottle of medicinal spirits for a painfully steep 300 reál. Press him casually about the spirits, however, and he'll slip up amidst his story about finding it and state it's priced at a mere 3. Your Reaction Speed skill is almost hilariously abrupt about getting you to play along.Reaction Speed: Don't mention it.
- Embarrassing Nickname: You'd think Idiot Doom Spiral would object, but he seems downright proud of it — like Tequila Sunset, it's a name that evokes something.
- Flat Character: Idiot Doom Spiral is by far the most developed, and even Don't Call Abigail is imbued with a certain amount of pathos implied by his name. Rosemary, by comparison, doesn't have much of a story to tell — he was a science teacher before he got hooked on speed — and is mostly just there to sell you drugs.
- Gender-Blender Name: Rosemary and Abigail are usually women's names. Of course, those aren't their actual names.
- Hidden Depths: All Alcohol-Induced Idiocy, Buffy Speak, and pretensions of 'high concept' thinking aside, Idiot Doom Spiral does occasionally show signs of the Conceptualization skills that presumably led to his founding a billion-reál tech company in the first place.Idiot Doom Spiral: The wind picks up, a sky already dark now blackens. Water starts falling from above, the first cold rain of the seasons...
- Large Ham: Idiot Doom Spiral, in the Final Cut, has a rolling, theatrical sort of voice, throwing himself into the role of The Storyteller with gusto.
- Meaningful Name: Real name George, Idiot Doom Spiral is a tech oligarch turned hobo. His life spiraled hopelessly out of control thanks to a series of dumb, seemingly minor and easily rectifiable mistakes... at which point he apparently just gave up and sank into homelessness.
- He continues living up to his name even after becoming a hopeless drunk hobo: he mentions finding a nice replacement jacket for the filthy one he's currently wearing but managing to lose it as well, unlocking a task for Harry to find it. Harry finds it hanging on a fence in a disgusting state with the narration describing it as a jacket-shaped mass of seagull shit and seaweed, but asking Isobel to wash it restores it to a more or less acceptable state, at which point you can either keep it for yourself or return it to IDS. Talk to him, however, and he acts like he's never even seen the jacket before and calls Harry crazy for suggesting he ever mentioned anything about losing a jacket, at which point the narration notes that it's easy to see how IDS managed to end in his current state. You have an option to either forcibly give him the jacket, stating you've gone through far too much (literal) shit to get it back, or just keep it yourself since he obviously doesn't appreciate your effort. If you already have the washed jacket on hand when he mentions it and ask whether it's the one he lost, he insists that he wouldn't be caught dead wearing something made by FALN, that he knows a quality jacket when he sees one and that the jacket he lost must be a different one, even though Rosemary insists he's seen Spiral with the FALN jacket before.
- Missing Steps Plan: Invoked and Played With — you can point out that it seems like there's a gap between getting locked out of his apartment, getting locked out of his office, and ending up living on the street years later, but Spiral just brushes it off.
- Never Gets Drunk: Downplayed. Idiot Doom Spiral manages to be very articulate drunk, well-spoken even by a sober person's standards — which is impressive, given how drunk he seems to be, based on how much he drinks in the Detective's company, and his slight slurring and occasional Alcohol Hic or belch.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Although he does briefly mention his real name is George, even Doom Spiral mostly calls himself Idiot Doom Spiral. Don't Call Abigail and Rosemary are the only names we're given for the other members of the trio.
- The Pig-Pen: Even the other homeless men are disgusted by Spiral's shit-encrusted tracksuit.
- Pokémon Speak: Don't Call Abigail can't or won't say anything other than begging people not to call Abigail, so that's what the other men call him. That or 'Abs'.
- Riches to Rags: Spiral was once the well-off founder of a successful tech company, but then he lost the keys to his apartment, then his girlfriend, then his company, and then his wealth all in a single baffling chain of events.
- Shadow Archetype: To the lesser aspects of you. Idiot Doom Spiral is a self-destructive big talker, Don't Call Abigail is barely functional after a traumatic relationship, and Rosemary is a former teacher turned drug peddler.
- Sophisticated as Hell: Spiral combines his hammy high-concept storytelling with the occasional precision curse word, vulgarism, or belch. Particularly noticeable with the preppy accent the Final Cut gives him.
- The Storyteller: Spiral enjoys retelling his own fall from grace and various Urban Legends in exchange for booze. Rosemary seems to base his business, selling beer, wine, and speed, on his proximity to Spiral.
- Yuppie: Idiot Doom Spiral was a high-powered ad exec and co-founder/junior partner at his own firm before losing it all. In the Final Cut, he has a very preppy, yuppie-ish American accent.
The Anodic Dance Crew
Andre, Noid, Egg Head and Acele Berger
Andre
Noid
Egg Head
Acele
Voiced by: Tariq Khan (Andre and Egg Head), Liam Lever (Noid, original), Dot Major (Noid, Final Cut) and Amy Lightowler (Acele)
"God is close by, but maybe he doesn't have good enough ears. Let me turn it up, so we can lure him here."
Four young people intent on turning Martinaise's abandoned church into a night club.
- Aura Vision: Invoked. Noid will only talk to you if you can 'sync your sines'. Really he just seems to want some proof that they can trust you.
- Barrier Maiden: If they create their night club, this is what they become, since the pale's growth can be resisted by large gatherings of people. The church used to serves this function before it was abandoned.
- Catchphrase: For Egg Head: "Hard core! So hard core! HAAAAAARRRRRD CORE!" (also "Hard core to the mega!"), enough that it accompanies turning on Hardcore Mode in the in-game options.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Egg Head is the game's most triumphant example. Finding out how to communicate through the maze of emcee gibberish that forms his initial dialogue tree in is a puzzle unto itself.
- Cool People Rebel Against Authority:
- Lampshaded:You: Is it important for you? To be an individual?
Andre: Of course it is, otherwise I'd just be another poor guy with no education and no money. General-issue, man. Now I'm all that — *and* I have radical spikes. - Parodied by Egg Head, who starts out yelling generic Communist slogans but whose politics are so shallow you can reprogram him with equally generic Fascist, Ultraliberal or Moralist slogans in two seconds if you've adopted one of those ideologies.Moralist Egg Head: Incremental progress! Yeaaaaaah!
- Lampshaded:
- Death Seeker: Egg Head is a subtle and understated example of this. During Soona's experiment where she amplifies the "sound" of the pale, he's worryingly enthusiastic about the possibility of the church imploding and killing everyone. Although he ultimately pulls the plug on the speakers after it gets "too hard core" for his liking, he seems to find the possibility tantalizing on some level.
- Everybody Must Get Stoned: Andre is of the opinion that the only way their night club is going to be a success is if they first build a speed lab to fund it. Acele is also pretty much permanently bombed.
- Freudian Trio: Hardcore, all-about-the-music emcee Egg Head is the id, political and philosophical Noid the superego, and practical, diplomatic leader Andre the ego. Oh, and Acele.
- Hidden Depths:
- Noid, guttural and taciturn with pierced ears and goth clothes, is a trained carpenter and well-read in history, philosophy, and architecture.Noid: It's a miracle of carpentry. Dead bodies carved into *total* shapes. Now it can be something more.
- Despite his staunch, anti-authoritarian *soft core* view on Moralism, Noid is also pertinent to your interaction with the Coalition Warship in the event that Soona was evicted prior to the climax of the Moralist Vision Quest, using his spare equipment to help you connect to the Archer's frequency.
- Acele is highly intelligent and a skilled liar, but it takes an eclectic combination of skills, including Drama, Empathy, and Electrochemistry, to crack her laconic surface and get her talking.
- If you can navigate to the right dialogue options, Egg Head will stop yelling dance floor nonsense for a moment and admit the track he's spinning isn't as hardcore as he'd like it to be in a surprisingly depressive tone. He also turns out to have genuine technical skill with his audio equipment. His dialogue during Soona's experiment also hints at some very well hidden suicidal tendencies.
- Noid, guttural and taciturn with pierced ears and goth clothes, is a trained carpenter and well-read in history, philosophy, and architecture.
- Inflationary Dialogue: If you press Andre on him locking the spookers inside of the church, he'll reassure you that he's "super sure" they're still alive - at least 90%. Or maybe 85%. Yes, they might have been locked in there for a week, but he's at least 80% sure they're still alive...
- It Will Never Catch On: Despite living in a tent on the sea ice outside one of the poorest parts of the city and having practically no experience in organizing music venues, the kids are basically in the process of inventing modern dance music in the setting. The Cop can put a stop to it — or get really into it and predict that this is absolutely going to be the next biggest thing since disco itself.Andre: Do you see a way out of this jam — and into a laser-lit future of dance and unity?
- Meaningful Name: Egg Head has a big head. Noid is short for "Paranoid". Egg Head actually comes from the fact that Germaine is a huge Fanboy of world-famous emcee Arno van Eyck — he's an Eyck Head.
- No Indoor Voice: Egg Head, constantly spouting slogans at the top of his lungs.
- No Social Skills: Invoked. Noid says he "sucks at socializing" himself, and apart from Andre going out of his way to be diplomatic, they're all outsiders to one degree or another — part of the youth infraculture, taking drugs and going to raves — who know they don't fit in to the adult world that lies ahead of them. Acele is quiet but actually has a lot to say if you can connect with her, Noid is angry and paranoid, and Egg Head is more interested in slogans and chants than actual conversation.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: The group seem naive and faintly cretinous when you first encounter them, not least because they've planted their tent on sea ice. However they're perfectly capable of hoodwinking a police officer, if you don't cotton onto what they're actually up to.
- Odd Friendship: Noid really doesn't like Moralism, but he especially dislikes Dolores Dei. Despite this, he's pals with Egg Head, who adores the iconography and spirit of the Innocence's saga. You can make this friendship even odder by turning Egg Head into a bonafide Moralist despite Noid's pleas.
- Older Than They Look: Although Kim sees them all as delinquents, it's only really Acele who is a 'kid', being either in her late teens or early 20s. Noid is a young adult, old enough to have completed an apprenticeship and joined the workforce. Andre is described as "youngish", is apparently balding, and admits he's still clinging to the fantasy of being twenty despite being an age he only gives as "not twenty" - he's probably in his mid-30s. If you manage to get Egg Head to stop grinning, the Detective guesses he's actually about his own age — mid-40s. (Another reference to Egg Head's inspiration, H.P. Baxxter, a middle-aged man who is still making the kind of music that impresses twelve-year-olds.)
- Progressive Instrumentation: Actually a plot point — figuring out what their dance track needs and then providing it makes their in-universe Electronic Dance Music theme progressively heavier, louder, and bassier.
- The Quiet One: Acele is off on her own, recording her sounds. The drugs help. Subverted in that she's quiet because you're a cop, and she's the daughter of a fairly major underworld figure. The drug lab was actually her idea — or rather, she didn't think they should go through with it, but she is the one who came up with the concept. Drug labs are actually the major reason why her dad got killed by rival gang members. Part of why she's off on her own is because she's trying to come to terms with her sense of guilt over continuing the cycle.
- Revealing Cover Up: Andre casually informing you that the tent can only accommodate four people clues you in to how Acele was reflexively lying to you by virtue of you being a cop when she claimed that she was out in the snow trying to record more sound samples because there wasn't enough room in there, which incites more curiosity in the detective as to why she would've done so than if she had been calmer and just told the truth.
- The Smart Guy: They're all pretty technical, but Noid, also a trained carpenter, is a well-read intellectual.
- The Smurfette Principle: Acele is the only girl of the group. You will find her in the cold outside the tent initially, because there's only room for three inside.
- Speaks in Shout-Outs: Egg Head speaks by yelling dancefloor slogans. Finding a way through the 'maze' of his dialogue tree is an in-game quest, after which he'll talk to you more normally.
- Spiky Hair: Andre frosts his tips and styles his hair into spikes to conceal the fact that he's going Prematurely Bald.
- Sucks at Dancing: Andre is a terrible dancer, with just the one move, a sort of hopping running man. You can try and teach him your own moves, if you're up to it.
- Stepford Smiler: If Egg Head's ominous chanting during Soona's experiment (during which he keeps calling for the "mother of mega" to "come down to us") is anything to go by, they might be a Death Seeker beneath their cheery exterior.
- The Unintelligible: Egg Head communicates almost entirely in dancefloor gibberish. It transpires after talking to the others that nobody fully understands what he's going on about, or even where he came from. You can get some idea yourself if you manage to navigate a nonsense conversation with him.
- Waxing Lyrical: A lot of the things that Egg Head says are lyrics taken from songs by German happy hardcore/techno band Scooter.
The Church Spookers
Soona Luukanen-Kilde, The Lead Programmer
Voiced by: Ida May (original), Elina Hietala (Final Cut)
Could you just... *shh* for a moment?
"What qualities does *nothing* have? How do you measure something that doesn't exist?"
A computer engineer attempting to research a strange sound anomaly in the old church on the coast. She and the dance club are mutually opposed to the other's presence in the church.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: She's extremely grateful if you help her with her research, even if she still has trouble showing it on the outside. She even warms up to the "discomen" (the Anodic Dance Kids) after their sound equipment turns out to be vital to identifying the 2mm hole in reality.
- Foil: To the chaotic, affable Anodic Dance Kids, who also want to use the church. They claim she's some kind of monster. She wants them to turn that wretched music off. You can reconcile them by getting them to use each other's tech, or favor one over the other.
- Lampshade Hanging: The radio-based RPG she and her friends from the Fortress Accident studio were devising is a pastiche of Disco Elysium's own tortured development."My God... " The lieutenant leans forward, tracing the maddening rhizome. "It's like the less money they had, the more ambitious their project became."
- The Misophonic: She needs complete silence in order to study the Swallow. She has unsurprisingly developed an uncharitable view of the tent outside pumping dance music non-stop.
- Machine Empathy: She has a lot more time for her mainframes than she does for any human, and gets very angry when you mess around with them. A high enough Interfacing skill will empathize (and drive you to do said messing).
- Named After Someone Famous: She shares her last name with Rauni-Leena Luukanen-Kilde, a Finnish physician who wrote and lectured on parapsychology, ufology and mind control.
- Never My Fault: She refuses to have their team take full responsibility for their failure or how the off site copy being on site was in fact a safety risk. She is quite enthusiastic to blame the Swallow for their game failure and not the horrible mismanagement.
- No Social Skills: Soona would very much like to be left alone with her roleplaying games and research, and she makes no secret of that fact. Her saying she doesn't entirely mind you being around is the highest compliment she's capable of giving.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: She's gone from programming computer games to researching a radio/audio anomaly inside an abandoned church.
- Portent of Doom: The Swallow is actually a fresh patch of the pale developing. In due course, it will envelope all of Revachol.
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: While the game doesn't draw attention to it, her name has Finnish origins much like Cunoesse's, she talks with a noticeable Finnish accent, and she's voiced by a Finnish actress, implying she's also of Suruese descent and either used to live in Katla at some point or is part of the Suruese community in Revachol.
Tiago, The "Crab Man"
We are all one, who sing the Mother's glory.
"A name isn't just your identity, but also, so to speak... your place among your fellows, your place in the world. I ain't got no use for such a place any more."
Voiced by: Jonny El Hage (original), Jonathan G. Rodriguez (Final Cut)
The terrifying "Crab Man" the dance kids locked in the church. A reformed gang-banger who found religion and is now living as a squatter, to be closer to his goddess.
- Ambiguously Human: His way of moving is deeply uncanny and disturbing, even when he isn't literally climbing the walls, and you never see him out of shadow. It's never clearly established whether his agility and indifference to the cold are just raw physical strength born of madness, Heroic Resolve, or if something else is at play, but it's implied that he's actually been living in the church since it was shot up in an RCM raid some years earlier.
- Dark Is Not Evil: He's definitely weird and sinister, but he doesn't seem like a bad guy. He's perfectly amenable to the kids building a night club in the church (possibly because the Swallow would prevent their music from bothering him) and he doesn't interfere with their activities at any point.
- The Faceless: He only appears as a silhouette both in his portrait and in his in-game model, likely to reinforce the Ambiguously Human trope above.
- Gangbangers: He was a Mesque Banger — his abandoned red brogues and Scarf of Asskicking are described as such in your inventory — until he found religion.
- Heel–Faith Turn: He apparently found religion in the form of something he calls the Mother of Silence — not Dolores Dei, but something else entirely. Which may be either a poetic description of the 2mm hole in the world or an eldritch-sounding entity on the other side of the Swallow.Tiago: She is one who can't be painted or sculpted. She is a cavity, in the dark, beyond sense. She saved me... but I couldn't describe her to you. No one can, homes, and no one ever will.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Despite his condescending tone, he's correct in pointing out that your drinking problem has ruined your life and will eventually kill you.
- Poirot Speak: He's something like a SoCal banger, and freely switches between English and Spanish, or their in-universe equivalents.
- Smug Straight Edge: Zigzagged. He claims to have given up his own vices since finding the Mother, but Kim suspects he's high on something other than religious ecstasy. The very first thing he says to you is that drinking has made you a scared little pussy — but then, with apparently genuine compassion, he encourages you to open yourself up to the Mother, or whatever it takes to break the cycle of addiction before it kills you.Tiago: Necesitas pararnote , homie.
- That Man Is Dead: He barely remembers his old name, Tiago. Finding the Mother has made him something more, and he has no desire to return to his old life, or indeed anything resembling normality.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: He's barefoot and shirtless despite the winter chill, the better to move freely as he climbs.
- Wall Crawl: He's an incredible climber, effortlessly scaling the walls of the church and swinging between the uppermost rafters. Acele first caught sight of him climbing down the wall behind Soona face-first in complete silence.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: It's not specified what comes of the Crab Man after you get his approval for the night club plan. He climbs back up into the rafters and he's not seen again during the subsequent scenes in the church. It can be inferred that he went back to minding his own business while basking in the Swallow.
MEGA RICH LIGHT-BENDING GUY
Roustame Diodore
Investor, licence holder, and extremely high-net-worth individual.
"Capital. Makes one speechless, does it not? Blinds like the sun that rises from beyond the horizon after a gloomy winter."
Voiced by: Miro Kokenov (Final Cut)
Some people are so rich that the law doesn't apply to them any more. This man, found in a shipping container as an Easter Egg, is so rich that the laws of physics don't apply to him any more, his absurd net worth creating a singularity that warps light itself around him.
- Actually Pretty Funny: It's implied the 100 real he gives you for your proposal is less a serious investment and more amusement at a "low net-worth individual" such as you coming up with a solid business proposal on the fly.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: He is definitely mega rich, and light bends around him to obscure his appearance. His name is also MEGA RICH LIGHT-BENDING GUY.
- The Faceless: As you might expect, the light bending around him means you never get a good look at his face. Even just trying to figure out the path light takes requires very high Visual Calculus check.
- Fiction 500: He is so rich that light itself bends around him.
- Interface Screw: Standing close to him causes the money counter on the HUD to completely freak out.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Despite the fact that the Light-Bending Guy himself has heard of the light-bending effect and in fact knows the theory behind it, neither he nor Kim can actually see it. Kim thinks you're just imagining things.
- Nice Guy: Mild class prejudice aside, he's a polite and pleasant guy who seems happy to have a chat.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: It is subtle, but there are several hints that he is at least partially based on the Estonian businessman Margus Linnamäe, the guy who was Disco Elysium's biggest corporate sponsor. Most prominently in that he mentions to previously have been an investor in the Fortress Accident game development studio, who are ZA/UM's self-deprecating stand-in.
- The Scrooge: The Light Bending Guy is apparently a man with billions in the triple digits but lives in a cargo container moving from place to place and doesn't ever use his money to do anything other than make more money.
The Deserter (spoilers)
Commissar Iosef Lilianovich Dros
This is my termless surrender.
Voiced by: Mikee Goodman (original), Chris Lines (Final Cut)
"Take me to them as a prisoner of war. I have relinquished my weapon, I can no longer serve. No superiors can relieve me of my duty, you bulldozed them all to a mass grave for trying to free humanity..."
A troubled old man, and one of the few surviving original communists from the Revolution, if not the last. Significant spoilers follow.
- Actually Pretty Funny: He believes that he should kill René, and that no one else should have the right, though it seems as if Dros wants this to be one of the last things he ever does. You can make the analogy that he sounds like someone who has eyed out a piece of candy that he's saving to eat for last. Dros can even admit that you've got a point there, with a chuckle. Learning that he will never get to do it, as René has succumbed to bad health, takes quite a lot of the wind out of Dros. It will lead into the Villainous Breakdown he has as well, since now he's got nothing to look forward to but a jail cell.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When the detectives inform him that his confession, surrender, and veiled threats towards them have made him ineligible for the protections he thought he was owed by the Wayfarer Act, what was left of his aggression and bravado instantly vanish, and he's reduced to a frightened, pleading wreck as he begs the duo not to arrest him.
- Alas, Poor Villain: As awful of a person as Iosef is, there's a strong feeling of melancholy looming over the conversation with him.
- Black Eyes of Evil: The narration repeatedly notes his black eyes which are eternally fixed in a Thousand-Yard Stare. It's implied that his pupils are permanently dilated as a result of the phasmid's psychoactive pheromones.
- Boomerang Bigot: Speaks scornfully of "kipts"* despite being a black man himself.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Iosef has more than communist indoctrination affecting him. The Phasmic's pheremones have been affecting him tremendously and doing so for the decades he's been on the island.
- Child Soldiers: He joined the Communist militia at the tender age of 16, straight out of political school.
- Cold Sniper: A deadly shot with an antique rifle, who's spent the last forty years on his own, plotting his revenge on the bourgeoisie, the foreign occupiers, and the working class traitors who've allowed the Revolution's legacy to die.
- Commie Nazis: While Dros is a communist and has a violent hatred for fascists and royalists, many of the things he says (especially about non-white people, women, and sexuality in general) sound a lot like right-wing propaganda. You can point this out to him, much to his chagrin.
- Crazy Homeless People: Iosef squats in a decaying island fortress and survives by stealing from dumpsters and people's houses as well as looting all the secret caches that were leftover from the revolution. He avoids contact with almost all people and occasionally commits murder via his Cold Sniper abilities for fun.
- Dented Iron: He's still an exceptionally deadly marksman, as his killing of Lely proves, but decades of rough living have taken its toll on him. Him surrendering to you is at least partially motivated by him acknowledging that he's too old and sick to keep going, and probably won't survive the year. The Phasmid leaving knocks whatever wind he had left out of him and reduces him to a vegetative state.
- Determinator: Spent decades surviving as a homeless partisan, waging his own endless war even though he likely could've rejoined Martinaise society without fear of persecution. Subverted insofar as his actual role and training weren't in partisan warfare, but as a political officer. A true commissar Determinator would've continued stocking the fires of the revolution and rebellion against the Moralintern, not hide on a deserted island declaring himself the last communist.
- Dirty Old Man: A stalker, voyeur, and advocate of pederasty since the Commune legislated it. He enjoyed spying on Klaasje both through the scope of his rifle and through a hole he cut in the wall.
- Dirty Coward: Dros' entire history seems to have been governed by this aspect of himself. He was recruited by the Communists near the end of the Antecentennial Revolution as a commissar but, when the chips were down and Dros was facing down the full force of the Coalition's invasion of Revachol, he deserted his comrades and left them to die. Though remorseful of his action, even writing an poor critique of himself that addresses his faults, he does nothing to change himself for the better and just stews in his own failings. When he meets "Klaasje", he stalks her for an untold amount of time and spies on her like a rat in the walls, too afraid to even talk to her, let alone confront his growing feelings for her — eventually leading him to murder her lover in a fit of petulant jealousy.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Even all these years later, he still speaks warmly of his comrades in the revolution, and his inability to move on from their deaths is a major reason why he's become such a hateful, isolated man.Dros: ... and then you see it. As it strangles and beats your friends to death. The sweetest, most courageous people in the world. You see the fear and power in its eyes.
- Everything Is Racist: He calls you a fascist regardless of your political ideology, and he may also call you a "racist shitbag" even if you didn't display racism during the game.
- Evil Is Petty: His stated reason for killing Lely wasn't for justice, or ideals. Rather, after a lifetime of suffering and regret, he just wanted to stop two "bad" people from enjoying their lives, even if only for a moment.
- Final Boss: Technically the final showdown of the game — but his gun isn't loaded and he actually wants to surrender to you. The only real challenge is piecing together his motive and connecting the few remaining dots of the mystery. If the player was diligent enough, then they can still arrest him even if they fail to extract a confession and motive from him, as there is more than enough circumstantial evidence pointing to him being the culprit to justify doing so.
- Foreshadowing: An interesting case. Hints of his existence pop up at several points during the investigation, but they are hidden behind several different and often relatively hard skill checks. It makes it very challenging to find most, let alone all the clues in just a single playthrough.
- Fun-Hating Villain: Loathes the idea that anyone in Revachol could take pleasure from any part of their life, viewing it as an insult to the Revolution. He sees any personal enjoyment of life and connection with others as a form of Bread and Circuses to keep the people from rising up.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: On top of his severe post-traumatic stress disorder from Operation Death Blow, Iosef has spent most of his long life living completely by himself in the ruins of Martinaise, scorning human contact. By the time you find him his lifestyle has taken its toll on both his body and mind. Half the reason why he so readily confesses to you seems to be that he wants someone, anyone, to finally listen to him after all these years.
- Hates Everyone Equally: Hates everyone, and hates them all quite a lot. He doesn't even care if you claim to be a communist yourself, saying that you're just a wishy-washy liberal wannabe-communist.
- Hormone-Addled Teenager: Played With. Yes, really. The spitefulness, the obsession with sex and women's bodies, the jealousy, the possessiveness, the utter refusal to compromise his own ideals in the face of overwhelming reality, the utter inability to acknowledge his own frailty. The Phasmid pheromones completely messed with his hormones, trapping him in a hellish, twisted version of his teenage mindset. Or, in Harry's own (potential) words, he's rather "randy" for a senior citizen. The moment the Phasmid leaves, he starts to act his age and then some, going from holdout firebrand to bitter yet senile old man in a matter of minutes.
- Hypocrite: The more he speaks the more it becomes evident that Dros is a living contradiction.
- Call him honorable and he will rebuke you, saying that honor is nothing but a useless feudal atavism. A few lines later, he will casually mention that he understands himself as a kind of 'knight-errant'.
- He loves to bring up the deviancy and degeneracy of others during his bitter screeds, yet by his own admission he'd been spending most of his time prior to shooting Lely spying on Klaasje both from his sniper's nest and from a peep hole he made in an unused storage area adjacent to her hotel room.
- At one point he uses the slur "kipts" when referring to the residents of Boogie Street (ostensibly an all-black community). Mere minutes later he complains about "all the racists" living in Martinaise.
- He scorns the bourgeois as pederasts who rape their own children, but expresses support for the practice in the context of the Commune doing it.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Whatever else you can say about him, he is an excellent marksman. He manages to shoot Lely in the head from over a full kilometer out, in the dead of night, with a single shot from a very old 4mm rifle. Part of the reason Iosef takes until the end of the game to find is that the Detective and Kim find it hard to believe that the killing shot could have come from the island. When they reach the island and find his sniper's nest, it turns out the nest provided Dros with the perfect view into Klaasje's room, and provided a firm platform to rest himself and his rifle on. He also admits that his aim was slightly off: He intended to hit Lely square in the head to kill him as messily as possible to traumatize Klaasje, but the shot instead went through his mouth and lodged in his skull. Still a fatal shot, but comparatively bloodless.
- Last of His Kind: Very possibly the last survivor from the original communists, having stayed alive due to a combination of an act of cowardice and the effects of exposure to the Insulindian Phasmid.
- Leitmotif: "Hope in Work and Joy in Leisure", which plays during his encounter.
- The Man Behind the Curtain: After multiple dead ends and a lot of blood spilled, you catch a lucky break from Klaasje's last note and sail to the imposing island in the bay to finally confront the true murderer... and discover him to be a sad, bitter old man near the end of his life who killed Lely for the very petty reason of not wanting anyone in the world to enjoy their own lives, even for a moment.
- Misanthrope Supreme: Over the decades of stewing in the memories of his desertion and the wreckage of his ideology, he's nursed a violent hatred of absolutely everyone of every ideological stripe, to the point where much of his dialogue consists of bitter screeds against the people he's spied on during his exile. It's strongly suggested that Lely is far from the first man he's shot from his sniper nest.
- Moral Myopia: Fixates on how the Moralintern mass-murdered the communists and anarchists, but he shows no remorse at how the Commune exterminated as many royalists, sympathetic civilians, and blameless outside industry workers as they could.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: While his killing of Lely was partly motivated due to the fact that he saw him as a tool of the corrupt system he spend his life fighting against, it was also very much spurred on by anger and jealousy against him for sleeping with Klaasje.
- Murderer P.O.V.: It turns out that the Start Screen is actually a subtle example of this. It is the view of Revachol from his perspective from the island he is hiding on.
- My Greatest Failure: Sees his desertion of the Communists in a fit of terror as such, to the point where he still continues to live on the run despite admitting himself that the revolution is dead and nobody's even looking for him anymore.
- Doubly so in that he was the setting's equivalent of a Soviet commissar. He was supposed to lead by example and be willing to die for the revolution he was telling others to die for. Instead the opposite happened. His men were more worthy of his title than he was.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Empathy notes that for all the animosity he held towards Rene that he's quite similar to him.
- Not So Stoic: He usually speaks in a cold, hateful growl, but sometimes he gets fired up enough to start shouting in rage and passion (the page quote doesn't show it, but by the end of that line he's yelling at you and Kim like a man possessed). It's genuinely affecting to see this broken-down old husk of a man start ranting furiously at you.
- N-Word Privileges: A black man who uses the in-universe slur "kipt" (the setting's equivalent of the N-word) liberally, but still condemns Revachol for racism generally and René as a "race traitor" specifically.
- Old Soldier: Appears to be in his seventies or eighties, and looks even older once deprived of the invigorating, narcotic effect of the phasmid's pheromones. Based on the numbers he gives you, you can work out that he's actually only in his mid-sixties.
- The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: He holds this attitude against René, planning to shoot him "one of these days", but never going through with it as he clearly wants it to be one of the last things he does in his life. You can make the analogy that he sounds like someone who has eyed out an especially tasty piece of candy that he is saving to eat for last, and he, quite amused, admits that it actually does sound a bit like that. Learning that he will never get to do it, as René has succumbed to bad health, takes quite a lot of the wind out of him.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: During the "burning years" following the Coalition landing, Revachol was plagued by a long period of lawlessness. Coalition troops freely terrorized and murdered any natives who were perceived as resisting the occupation government, often while tuned up on amphetamines and combat drugs. Dros mentions that he took advantage of the chaos to assassinate the worst of these soldiers to stop them from committing more war crimes. It's possible his hatred of Lely, who is himself a foreign soldier, partly stems from his lingering traumatic memories of what he saw during this period.Dros: I would take shots at them, *end* them. The worst ones. If I had a bullet to spare.
- The Political Officer: His role in the Communist militia. His age, bitterness, and shame over his desertion has made him a man of fanatical ideology. He denounces labour unions as the true enemy of the people and openly wishes that artists would be sent to The Gulag.
- Politically Incorrect Villain:
- For all of his rants about the "racists" infesting Revachol, he speaks disgustedly of sexual "degenerates" and "deviants", describes René as a "race traitor" and calls rock & roll "reactionary mental illness music". So-called "disco whores" in particular make him so angry that he can't even articulate what he thinks is wrong with them. It is left ambigious if he is genuinely prejudiced, or is just so consumed with hatred that he uses charged language to lash out.
- Despite being a black man himself, Dros uses the slur "kipt" quite a bit, which is an in-universe slur for black people, akin to saying the N-word in the real world.
- Pretender Diss: He is not particularly impressed by you as a political actor, no matter what ideology you claim to be a follower of. If you claim to be a communist, he waves you off as a weak-willed liberal that only pretends to be a communist, while accusing you, as a police officer, of acting as an enabler for the fascist cause. Even if you proclaim to actually be a card-carrying fascist, he still thinks you're full of it:Dros: You're not. You're part of the meatshield surrounding the *real* fascists, while they rape children. That's what *you* are.
- Psychopathic Manchild: Having been drafted into the war as a teenager, the intense trauma from his experiences and the guilt he feels from running from the front-line, mixed with the Phasmid pheromones, have trapped him in his teenage mindset.
- The Remnant: He still calls himself by his old rank, and part of him still wholeheartedly believes in the old Communist cause, even though he admits that he fully well knows that the Revolution was, and remains, lost. It was by preying on his loyalty to communism and hatred of its ideological enemies that the Claire Brothers were able to recruit him as an occasional hitman for the Union.
- The Resenter: While he's eager to voice his hatred of Revachol and the world in general for its perceived degeneracy and deviancy, it's pretty clear he also hates them simply because they were able to move on after the failure of the revolution while he wasn't.
- Serial Killer: By his own admission he has shot quite a few people in the Martinaise area over the years, mostly particularly brutal soldiers and mercenaries working for the Moralintern and the Coalition. It is clear that he might have been behind a good number of the unsolved murders around the district.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: It quickly becomes apparent from talking to Dros that his experiences during the Revolution have left him deeply disturbed. The extreme guilt he feels over having panicked and ran away from the front-line has ruined his life. He has never been able to move past the bad things that happened to him as a teenage soldier. When he talks about seeing Coalition shells rain down on Martinaise, he describes it like he was seeing an alien horror. It's hardly surprising that he was so badly rattled by the war.
- Shadow Archetype:
- Essentially what he is to René. Once idealistic young soldiers fighting on opposite sides of a war for humanity's future, both are now bitter, cynical, and disillusioned old men, trapped in the past even as the rest of the world moved on. But where René's defining moment of the war was an act of great bravery, Dros' defining moment was an act of shameful cowardice. Where René reluctantly accepted the resulting peace and retired from combat, as his hope of restoring the monarchy of old ultimately didn't come to pass, Dros kept vehemently fighting a war he knew was lost. And where René has by-and-large lived a comfortable life in the decades since the war and struts around in public in his old colorful uniform, Dros has spent that time living a meager survivalist lifestyle on the edge of the city, still wearing his old dark and worn fatigues and hiding in the shadows.Suggestion: He reminds him of himself. The same hatred. The same... you try to think of another thing — but no, it's just the hatred.
- He serves as one to the Detective. Neither one can get over the great lost love of your youth — the ex-something in your case, Girl Child Revolution in the Deserter's. The state of the Deserter is a look at the Detective if he still refuses to let go of the past; alone in poverty and poor health, a hateful outsider resenting the world for moving on with life, clinging to ideology as the only comfort.Dros: It will not come back any more. However hard I try, whatever I do.
- Essentially what he is to René. Once idealistic young soldiers fighting on opposite sides of a war for humanity's future, both are now bitter, cynical, and disillusioned old men, trapped in the past even as the rest of the world moved on. But where René's defining moment of the war was an act of great bravery, Dros' defining moment was an act of shameful cowardice. Where René reluctantly accepted the resulting peace and retired from combat, as his hope of restoring the monarchy of old ultimately didn't come to pass, Dros kept vehemently fighting a war he knew was lost. And where René has by-and-large lived a comfortable life in the decades since the war and struts around in public in his old colorful uniform, Dros has spent that time living a meager survivalist lifestyle on the edge of the city, still wearing his old dark and worn fatigues and hiding in the shadows.
- Stranger Behind the Mask: You can find evidence of his presence and notice inconsistencies in the various theories you and Kim come up with, but you can't actually meet the man until the closing hour of the game, after the mercenary tribunal has turned the case into something far more significant than a mere murder investigation.
- Subpar Supremacist: An avowed, and the last in his own words, communist who also happens to be a sexist, bigoted, murderous, vicious, arrogant, resentful, perverted, and cowardly old man.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: He totally didn't kill the previous head of the Dockworker's Union under orders from the Claire Brothers. Someone else did that, and besides, his memory is so spotty you really shouldn't take his incredibly detailed description of her death all that seriously.
- Tragic Villain: He's not exactly sympathetic, but he comes across as sad and pitiful more than anything else. He's a decrepit old man who wasted his life fighting a war that was already over when he was drafted into it.
- Unknown Rival: Is one for René, a similarly old, bitter and angry holdout for a bygone era, though a royalist instead of a communist. If the player tells him that René has passed away, Iosef comes close to something like grief.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Downplayed. He likely had some idea of the powderkeg he would set off by assassinating a corporate merc in the middle of a very tense strike, as he states that he periodically leaves his island to snoop around in Martinaise proper for supplies, but the domino effect caused by Lely's death was completely out of his control and unintended by him. All he wanted was to kill a man who represented everything he hates.
- Villainous Breakdown: The final conversation with Dros involves breaking down his motives, presenting evidence that proves him the killer, and arresting him. Dros is quite confident at first, as he thinks that he's owed legal protection by the Wayfarer Act. When the detectives inform Dros that his confession, surrender, and veiled threats towards them have made him ineligible for those protections, Dros instantly loses what was left of his aggression and bravado. He's reduced to a frightened, pleading wreck as he begs the cops not to arrest him, all while nervously glacing about, rocking back-and-forth, and barely managing to hold himself together. The appearance and then removal of the phasmid, which was also affecting his mental state, doesn't do him any favors in this regard.
- Villain Has a Point:
- Dros is right about pretty much everything he says about the Moralintern and the Coalition. They committed terrible war crimes while invading Revachol, and they've mismanaged the country for decades until it became an impoverished chattel colony to various international corporations. It's hard to begrudge him for being angry about this, especially given that the Coalition killed all his friends who served with him during the war. It's just that Dros has also made Revachol worse by killing people, and planning to kill even more of them.
- Dros is right in mocking Harry's political beliefs as Harry is using them to cope more than actually believing it. Of course, just because he's right about this doesn't mean that he's not a Hypocrite, as Dros waxes poetic on his own political beliefs that he's using to cope.
- Waxing Lyrical: Recites Manic Street Preachers lyrics, claiming they are a revolutionary song.
- Your Days Are Numbered: By the time you meet him, he's visibly in poor health, and is most likely terminally ill from years of hard living. He knows he doesn't have much time left, which is one of the reasons why he gives himself up with little complaint.
