Characters / 8-Bit Theater

Warriors of Light/Light Warriors

Group as a Whole

Garland: And what kind of tactics do you tend to employ?
Fighter: Oh, we usually murder our way to the top and claim victory whilst astride a pile of mangled bodies.
Garland: I see...
Fighter: But we're heroes so it's okay when we do that.

The... "heroes" of the story, by virtue of the fact that they showed up to the recruiting station at the right time. Vary between stupid and evil (except for Fighter, who's always stupid), and usually solve their problems through sheer luck and/or excessive use of violence.

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• Amusing Injuries: All get hurt in various imaginative ways, rarely do the injuries last more than a panel.
• And the Adventure Continues: For Black Mage and Fighter at least. The others had better things to do with their time than hang out with Black Mage. Or Fighter. Especially Fighter... but especially Black Mage.
• Badass Crew: Fighter and Thief get to do badass things on a regular basis, but Black Mage and Red Mage have defeated multiple demigods.
• Butt-Monkey: Black Mage generally has it the worst, but all of the Light Warriors get their share of abuse at various points.
• Comic Trio: Red Mage is the one who makes crazy schemes, while Thief and/or Black Mage complain about his nonsense and Fighter just follows whatever plan is given to him.
• Destructive Saviour: Initially. Later they drop the "saviours" part.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Between each other, no one else was able to horrify them by doing evil acts but themselves since Thief, Red Mage and Black Mage are horrible persons in their own way.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: They actually aren't the Light Warriors. They just got to King Steve first and convinced him. As is explained eventually, when it comes to their alleged heroics, it's more that heroic deeds were done with them nearby.
• Four-Man Band: Thief is the Only Sane Man (a kleptomaniac and greedy kind of sanity), Red Mage thinks he is The Smart Guy, Black Mage is The Pervert (mostly Blood Lust, except when White Mage is involved) and Fighter is the Butt-Monkey (particularly as everyone takes advantage of him being dumb enough to comply).
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: All of them except Fighter. For a certain value of heroic, of course.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": "Black Mage", "Fighter" and "Red Mage" are in fact their actual names.
• Jerkass Has a Point: They rightfully point out that Sarda caused all the terrible things in the world because of his revenge.
• Light Is Not Good: Their official title is the "Light Warriors," but they are far from the noble saviors the name implies.
• Meaningful Name: McWarrior, Evilwizardington, Statscowski. The only exception is Thief, whose last name is the name of his clan, i.e. Khee'bler. Though Thief's fake surname (since Thief isn't his real first name) might be Bastard.
• Moral Myopia: Constantly. You did, uh, read the quote at the top of this section, right?
• Nominal Hero: In-universe they are only considered heroes because King Steve appointed them to be the Light Warriors, and he only did so because they showed up first and tricked him into choosing them. Neither King Steve who appointed them nor Thief who became their leader cared much about the fate of the world they were supposed to save, as Thief explains in episode 336. As the story progresses it becomes increasingly obvious that the Light Warriors are the Villain Protagonists of the story.
• No-Sell: Fighter's more or less immune to all damage besides brain trauma (and doesn't have much brain left to traumatize), Thief can dodge (and then sue) nearly anything, and Red Mage often gets out of horrific injury by "forgetting" to record the damage on his character sheet. The only Light Warrior who doesn't have an easy out is Black Mage, to the universe's unceasing delight.
• Powerful, but Incompetent: On paper, they represent the apex of their respective classes and specializations, with feats that are comically over-the-top in their absurd effectiveness. In practice... not so much.
• Prestige Class: They all eventually get one of these. Black Mage becomes a Blue Mage, Red Mage becomes a Mimic, Fighter becomes a Knight, and Thief becomes a Ninja.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: And they never really grow out of it. They're at least as destructive to each other as to their enemies.
• Seen It All: By the end of the comic, except for Fighter. Well, technically he'd seen it all too, but was too busy thinking about swords to really pay attention.
• Smart Ball: While generally idiots as a whole, any given member can be the Only Sane Man whenever someone else is being particularly stupid. Black Mage, Thief, and Red Mage tend to pass it around, and Fighter's also been known to get his hands on it.
• Stupid Evil: As ever, every member but Fighter (who's the other extreme). Black Mage is the most prolific offender, but Thief puts in work as well, being obsessed with stealing and deceit as an end unto itself. Red Mage also has his moments, though his evil tends to be in the name of whatever brain-damaged efficient method he's convinced himself will definitely work.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: And that's on the very rare occasions when they do work together at all. Most of the time they are closer to Divided We Fall.
• True Companions: They're somewhere between a straight example and an inversion. Despite all the obstacles they face together, they all (with the exception of Fighter) absolutely hate each other. At the same time, they will grudgingly cooperate when they have to.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: With the possible exception of Fighter, the Light Warriors are completely unsympathetic, which is what allows their constant infighting and failures to be so damn funny.
• Villain Protagonist: Early on in the story Black Mage kills a large number of old people in a nursing home, in the belief that one of them had conned Fighter out of his money. Things go downhill from there. When they do good it is purely by accident.

Black Mage Evilwizardington

"If there was a way to get magic for free, do you really think I'd have spent so much time sacrificing children to my dark gods? For spells, I mean. Obviously there'd still be sacrifices. A hobby's a hobby."

The most evil and depraved member of the Light Warriors. Also their dedicated Only Sane Man, blaster, and Butt-Monkey.

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• Abhorrent Admirer: Towards White Mage. His advocation of violence as the solution to all life problems, sleazy pickup lines, questionable personal hygiene, along with many other things, ensure that his twisted affections will never be reciprocated by White Mage.
• Amazon Chaser: Towards Kary.
  Black Mage: Lady, if you weren't trying to kill me, and half made out of snake, I'd be on you like blood on my knife.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: The crescent moon on his Blue Mage outfit.
• Atomic F-Bomb: Once Black Mage is soul punched back into his body, he lets out one of these heard for miles around.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: Well, the Archer Captain thinks so. Squick.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • His magic is genuinely and even impressively powerful by the standards of the setting. His ability to actually use it effectively is a bit more of a coin toss to put it nicely. Having poweful, offensive magic sounds useful but Black Mage rarely actually has it work when he wants it to. He has horrible aim with his spells so he's not very likely to hit anything when he uses it, something which might get worse when his all too easy to set off temper flares up. Being able to steamroll anything in one hit doesn't mean much if he can't actually land that hit. The fact that he's a Glass Cannon Squishy Wizard just makes this worse for him. Black Mage actually seems to be aware of this to some extent, considering that he travels with other people because he knows that his considerable power won't be enough to protect himself against the monsters in the world.
  • His Hadoken spell is effectively a nuke... that he can only use once a day. And given his temper is likely to make him waste that one use on whatever sufficiently annoys him enough...
  • Blue Magic very much works like this for him. Being able to copy enemy attacks sounds like a good deal but the requirements to use that power are... discouraging to say the least. He has to actually be hit by an attack to copy it and he doesn't have any Required Secondary Powers that protect him when he takes the hit. He can also wind up falling prey to Powers as Programs Exact Words with what he copies, as seen when he tries to copy a Reality Warper spell but it backfires because said spell works in accordance with Sarda's will rather than the caster's.
• Ax-Crazy: If he's not actively trying to destroy the world, he's stabbing his allies because they annoy him.
• Being Evil Sucks: He is chronically unable to resist the urge to do evil, and as a result he always gets punished for it in some way, or just suffers in general.
• Berserk Button: You'd have an easier time listing what doesn't somehow enrage Black Mage but one specific thing that he declares as utterly off limits is trying to see his face. He threatened the group when they were voting on party members because they wanted to use his hat and only agreed to the idea after making it so they wouldn't see his face. After Onion Kid accidentally saw it Black Mage quietly threatened him to forget what he saw while using a speech bubble in inverted colors.
• Black Mage: Well, duh, he's named after the Trope Namer.
• Black Magic: Almost all of his spells are offensive, but some are offensive in both senses of the word. In fact, his only non-destructive spell seems to be Feather Fall, which he keeps out of necessity due to all the times he falls from a great height or gets violently flung into the stratosphere.
  • Eye Beams: That Red Mage claims he doesn't actually have.
  • Fireballs: In the form of raining meteors. Though he really needs to work on his aim.
  • Kamehamehadoken: His Hadoken, which he got by sacrificing nine orphaned kids to his dark god and which siphons love out of the universe every time it's used. He can only use it once a day, though.
  • Necromancy: Seen here.
  • Shock and Awe: Such as Bolt-2, a.k.a. Electric Death.
  • Taken for Granite: He can also do this! He did it to prevent a temporal paradox.
• Blessed with Suck: He becomes this kind of character after his class change. At first he thought that Blue Magic grants its user the immunity to enemy attacks, as well as the ability to learn and use said attacks - so naturally, he was overjoyed after gaining Blue Magic. As he learned quickly (and painfully), it didn't grant him immunity to anything, and while he was able to learn attacks used against him, he had to survive them first. Plus, in the course of the series, he's learned only three spells through Blue Magic - one of which is the Goblin Punch, which has a mostly impractical range. The others include a spell specifically targeted at him, as he learns the hard way, while the third one rewrites reality according to Sarda's whim, which in practice also makes it targeted at him.
• Blood Is the New Black: Happened to him a few times.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: It's fairly easy to read him as this; over the course of the comics he's used the widest varieties of spells, displayed in-depth knowledge about magical theory (including magics he doesn't personally practice, such as ice and summoning) and history, and as mentioned elsewhere, so long as he's not particularly angry or close to White Mage, he's generally the smartest of the group. He just happens to be insanely lazy, commenting more than once that a battle would go their way if they all actually fought instead of just standing by to let Red Mage get mauled, and not acting on it because it's too much effort. In fact, he unlocked his nearly full potential waaay before the other three Light Warriors even got half-way there, but held off going Game Breaker Mode until 506 episodes later. (Nearly full potential, because he is still under the restraint of his Power Limiter.) The only possible reason being either this trope, and/or he is a Death Seeker. Or he is just too emotionally unstable, what with all the power, idiocy from the world around and his own, he doesn't seem to be able to focus.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: once fought off a deep one, a dinosaur, and a giant marmoset with nothing but his knife. He was certainly feeling it afterwards , though.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: When Sarda (rightfully) accuses him of slaughtering his parents, breaking his mind with a glimpse of his face, killing his foster family, killing his other foster family, and burning down his orphanage, Black Mage still can't seem to recall the exact set of events being referred to, and asks when he did it.
• Butt-Monkey: To the point where the universe itself was created to hurt him.
• Card-Carrying Villain: He makes no attempt to present himself as anything other than evil, makes absolutely no excuse for mass-murder and destruction, and he's damn well proud of it. Red Mage and Thief tend to be just blind to morality and ethical standards, but Black Mage can very easily see the moral dilemma of a problem, and he may even argue about the validity of it. ... Of course, he only identifies it so he can go in the completely opposite direction.
  • He loves evil so much that he fell for a trap that he knew was a trap just because the sign said the pie he'd be receiving would be evil.
  • How proud is BM of his own villainy? When given the chance to convince White Mage that he was really a nice guy worth dating who was just misunderstood all along, Black Mage told her his evil selfish reasons for feeling the way he did. Thus ruining any chances, he might have had with her, not that he's aware of that or anything.
• Casanova Wannabe: Every time he talks to White Mage, he is either this or Dirty Old Man (minus the 'old' part, as he only went through puberty a year or so before the events of the comic).
• Charm Person: Hypnovision.
• The Chew Toy: He comically suffers through the comic's duration. And, frankly, he deserves it.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Not only does he betray the rest of the team when given a chance, but he also frequently stabs them in the back (or head) literally - especially Fighter.
• Cosmic Plaything: The universe just loves gnawing on him. It's a Running Gag that nearly everything that exists does so to hurt him. In fact, this might be a genuine universal law, considering Sarda's hand in the beginning of the universe, as well as White Mage's inadvertent involvement.
• Deadpan Snarker: Sarcasm occurs mostly when he is around Red Mage and Fighter for any period of time. And when he's not holding the Idiot Ball.
• Death Seeker: Sometimes. He has hoped to die more than once in hopes of ending his miserable life, or to get back to Hell so he can re-conquer it. But he's not even allowed to die.
• Dirty Coward: He's a self admitted coward and a big reason he's dragged into so many misadventures is he's easily intimidated into compliance. Even the reason he became a member of the adventuring team in the first place is he wanted other people around to be his meatshields.
• Enraged by Idiocy: Among the nearly endless things that can set Black Mage off, stupidity ranks at the top of the list. He has a nearly kneejerk instinct to try stabbing Fighter whenever the latter says something particularly idiotic and nearly every word out of his mouth incites vitriol or attempted violence from Black Mage. One time he had to endure such a glaring example of Insane Troll Logic from Red Mage that his vision actually starts distorting out of sheer rage from hearing it.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Despite how proud he is his evilness, even he wouldn't cross a few lines.
  • Even Black Mage thought that Thief's idea to impose fees for clouds was really sick.
  • He planned to create a whole new level of hell specifically as punishment for the things Red Mage did to chocobos.
  • And he felt unable to tell Fighter that he had gone to Hell instead of Heaven after Lich killed him.
    Black Mage: Even though I am the incarnation of all mortal evils, I just don't have the heart.
  • He has no compunctions about harming children and sacrificing them for power. But he draws the line at sacrificing them for no reason.
    White Mage: You... sacrificed... children. For power?
    Black Mage: Of course. If I'd sacrificed them for no reason I'd be a sicko or something.
  • He's left stunned by Red Mage's chimeric Chocobo, unable to say anything for four panels.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: Both types apply to him. His attempts at jokes are terrible, and his sense of humor is derived from other people's pain.
• Evil Is Petty: In addition to being an Omnicidal Maniac, he is also the biggest Jerkass in the comic (with the possible exception of Sarda).
• Exact Words: The spell he used Blue Magic to learn from Sarda, a spell who's sole purpose was to hurt Black Mage, he learned a spell that hurts Black Mage, meaning that all casting it does is hurting himself.
• The Faceless: And for a good reason. The mere sight of his face can drive people to madness.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: All of the Light Warriors qualify, because they are not real heroes but Nominal ones who are known as heroes, but Black Mage really takes the cake. In fact, he stabs the cake, urinates on whatever's left, poisons it, gives it to an orphanage, and then Hadokens said orphanage for good measure. A full list of his atrocities would probably double the size of this page. At least.
• Fantastic Racism: Will take any opportunity he can to mock the Elven race.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: An In-Universe example: once he learns blue magic his ridiculous new outfit is mocked mercilessly by just about everyone, and his striped pantaloons cause many people to mistake him for some sort of clown.
• Fat Bastard: While it's not obvious in his sprite (because it's, well, a sprite), commentary from other characters indicates that Black Mage is carrying around a bit of a spare tyre (Dragoon, for example, calls him "the little fat guy"). As for "bastard", well, that's pretty self-explanatory by this point.
• For the Evulz: The reason for nearly everything he does in the series is for the pleasure of being evil.
• Freudian Excuse: Subverted. Technically he has one, in that the excessive amount of power that exists in his soul has driven him insane (confirmed in-universe)... but he realises this at one point, ignores it, and continues to go on to do so many evil things that there is literally no justification for what he's done.
• Glass Cannon: He describes himself as one. However, he is a played with example. Black Mage is tough enough to survive anything that can be thrown at him, although unlike his fellow Light Warriors, he's not tough enough to shrug off the pain of being hit/stabbed/crushed/whatever. He's also mocked by the other Light Warriors^note  Yes, even Fighter who is his self proclaimed BFF for being noodly and not having the physical strength to fight his way out of a paper bag, yet he is shown to be pretty capable of killing sea monsters with only his knife. The only reason he hangs with the Light Warriors is because he wants meat shields to avoid having to fight alone and get himself hurt.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: To the point where they can give him away in the dark.
• Hair-Trigger Temper:
  • He once used Hadoken on a bee that annoyed him.
  • And here are some other things that have suffered his wrath.
• Groin Attack: One of the few spells he ever gains as part of his Blue Magic is the dreaded Goblin Punch which works this way. And is also neither a punch, nor does it have anything to do with goblins. And he had to take one himself to learn it.
• Hell Has New Management:
  • He managed to briefly take over Hell after being killed by Lich, then came back to the land of the living to kill Lich. This eventually backfired on him, as Lich in turn took over Hell in his absence and then brought Black Mage back to life... thus demoting him from the position of the all-powerful Hell King back to that of the universe's favourite Chew Toy.
  • That said, after Lich manages to bar Black Mage from Hell by getting him stuck on the corporeal plane, a lot of very powerful Eldritch Abominations make sure to keep him out of hell (such that whenever he dies, a God of Evil sends him right back to the overworld). If Black Mage ever gets back there, which he is still conspiring to do, the universe wouldn't be around for much longer (or it would, but it wouldn't be a nice place to exist). Let's just say this: there is a reason why all the legions of Hell were terrified of him.
• Hidden Depths: He has moments like these when the audience realizes he has a vast swamp of rather uncomfortable emotional turmoil. And he has moments like these. However, they often come on the heels of moments like these which clearly favor him for the post of anthropomorphic personification of all Evil. He's still a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk...Maybe. In one of the rare moments White Mage shows sympathy for him she concludes that he is too broken to ever redeem himself or change.
• Hijacking Cthulhu: Black Mage absorbs FIVE Cthulhus, one of whom was himself.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He's copied and used two of Sarda's spells. One of them is specifically targeted at him, and the other allows one to rewrite reality according to Sarda's whim (which in practice means it's also targeted at him).
• Humanoid Abomination: There's something... wrong with whatever is under his hood. Sarda claims it is "the dread lattice of Black Magic."
• Ignored Epiphany: Black Mage starts to wonder if White Mage is right and that perhaps maybe being good might give him purpose in life, only to get distracted and kill Fighter instead.
• I Love the Dead: Once expressed willingness to have sex with White Mage's dead body, considering it only slightly less ideal than having sex with her while alive. He did have sex with the corpse of his own doppleganger.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy:
  • He has a lot of trouble hitting the right target with his Hadokens. "HOW DO YOU MISS A VOLCANO?!". (Though he doesn't mind too much as long as something dies.)
  • "How did you not only miss us, but manage to zap yourself?".
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Possibly. Fighter says of a monster "You know he's needlessly antagonistic to the other fat little monsters to compensate for his poor self-image. Just like you, Black Mage." But Fighter's opinion isn't the most reliable, so it's also possible that Black Mage is just that arrogant.
• Iron Butt-Monkey: Probably takes more abuse than anyone else in the comic, but never suffers any permanent damage.
• It's All About Me: After Sarda revives Fighter and Thief, who are justifiably mad that Black Mage just tried killing them, he doesn't choose the best method to try and talk himself out of their revenge.
  Black Mage: If you think about it, I'm the victim here.
  Thief: How?
  Black Mage: I didn't get what I wanted.
• Jerkass: Of the Evil Is Petty variety. He'd destroy the world if given half a chance, but he'll also stab his allies in the head for irritating him or burn down an orphanage just because it's there.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He might go out of the way to be as much of an evil psycho as he possibly can but he that doesn't mean he can't make valid points in his arguments.
  • Treats Fighter like a brain dead anchor around his neck. He's not wrong.
  • When the group is voting on members for the Light Warrior job he makes a valid argument about how it's really only a choice between White Mage and Red Mage. Black Mage and Fighter started the group so they can't be kicked out. Thief is the leader because of Fighter's stupidity and the duo are stuck with him no matter what, also because of Fighter being a moron.
  • While he initially misinterprets the King of Corneria's request to destroy chaos Black Mage makes a good point during the ensuing rant about how order equates to good and chaos equates to bad and how they really shouldn't automatically connect to specific outcomes like that. He's also pretty right to be upset that the King expects them to basically handle the whole quest themselves with no support at all from the crown.
• Karma Houdini: Played with, as he suffers extreme pain and humiliation on a regular basis but it never seems to last permanently. See Butt-Monkey and Cosmic Plaything. There's the possibility that there isn't enough punishment in the universe to fit his crimes.
• Laughably Evil: As horrible as he is, he's a prime source of Black Comedy.
• Love Makes You Dumb: On a good day, he's smarter than Thief. Introduce anger or a proximity to White Mage, and his IQ and sanity will plummet so fast you'll swear you just witnessed it exceeding the speed of light.
• Made of Evil: He is the closest thing to the Anthropomorphic Personification of Evil. In fact, when the Castle of Ordeals tries to find an adequate representation of his atrocities, Black Mage himself is the closest thing they can get out of all possible monsters. If he ever gets back down to Hell again, he will fit the bill of God of Evil.
• Magic Knight: When the plot doesn't require him to be a Squishy Wizard, he can be quite competent in physical combat - to the point where it's hard to tell whether he killed more people with his Hadoken or with his knives. He even managed to kill a sea monster and at least one, possibly two groups of cultists with nothing but knives.
• Major Injury Underreaction: "I appear to have come aflame."
• Meta Guy: his cynicism to Fighter's Cloud Cuckoo Lander observations lean on the fourth wall.
• The Millstone: Black Mage is by far the most common contributor to the failures of the Light Warriors. He's usually the first to get captured, the first to go down in a fight, the first to instigate conflicts, the first to derail a successful plan, the first to bring about a new threat... his attempts at outright treason are nothing compared to his attempts to get something done for the team. Thief and Red Mage once claimed that dragging his unconscious body was a relief compared to dealing with him conscious and helping out.
• Morality Chain: A rare villainous case. Several times the question arises as to why the Light Warriors are such a blight on the world, with the heavy implication that Black Mage is the main reason. Shown most clearly at their first visit to Onrac, when Black Mage is separated from the group and replaced by White Mage, and instead of terrorizing the area the Light Warriors actually revitalize the downtrodden town. And when the town is again devasated, thanks to Black Mage's arrival, Fighter asks Thief and Red Mage why there is so much destruction and ruin everywhere they go. Cue Black Mage running past them.
• Murder Is the Best Solution:
  • He even worked up a flow chart for it.
    Muffin: You don't want to kill me.
    Black Mage: Not specifically, no. But I enjoy killing in the academic sense. Also in the murder sense.
  • "I call it my 'final solution'. Basically, I'm given a license to kill and it solves all my problems.
• Never Bareheaded: He actually does remove his hat once, but it's not shown on screen and the only person who sees it is driven mad from the sight.
• Nightmare Face: His face is supposedly non-Euclidean thanks to all that magic energy warping his body.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: despite how much of a Deadpan Snarker he is, he doesn't realise how a lot of what he does or says immediately throws the minds of everyone around him into speculative horror territory. His face doesn't help.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Usually Black Mage is most threatening to his own person, with his teammates coming in at a distant second. But in the blessedly rare occurrence that his insanity, laziness, atrocious luck, and even worse aim don't take him out of a fight early, he steamrolls over nearly everything in front of him short of gods or Fiends.
• No Kill like Overkill: His favored tactic, whenever stabbing isn't doing the job. Few things can stand up to point-blank annihilation.
• Odd Couple: And no, not in that way (okay, mostly not that way...) with Fighter. No matter how many times he attempts to or successfully kills Fighter, they're still together, even three years after Chaos is defeated... probably so he can still make Fighter suffer, but it never works out that way.
• Omnicidal Maniac: He's not very discriminant with who he murders. Or brutally maims. He has a list of all the people he wants to kill, with only two entries. Those entries are "Everyone I know" and "Everyone I don't know". The only person he doesn't want to kill is White Mage. Though if she did die (like say, from drinking "wine" that's actually paint thinner), he wouldn't be too upset, since the body would still be warm for a while at least. Ironically, he actually does end up impaling her on one of his evil tendril spike things, though she gets better.
• Only Sane Man: When he's not killing everyone in sight, carrying the Idiot Ball, or mooning over White Mage, he is the one making all the logical points. This is rare.
• Person of Mass Destruction: His Hadoken is almost literally a nuke. If it wasn't from his fleshy body needing rest and blood he'd be unstoppable.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Comic 486 is the only time he ever shows anything remotely resembling compassion, and it's never brought up again.
  • After coming back from Hell and killing Lich, he couldn't bring himself to disillusion Fighter who believed he came back from Heaven. This being Black Mage, to say it's a sign of compassion would be saying too much, but still it is a sign of unusual restraint.
• The Pig-Pen: Acknowledged by everyone but the man himself. He insists that the smell is from his spell components.
• Ping Pong Naïveté: He can be the smartest of the Light Warriors, barely smarter than Fighter (if not dumber than Fighter) or somewhere in between, depending on what makes for a better joke at the moment. In particular, his intelligence seems to rapidly decrease the closer White Mage is to him.
• The Plan: A cunning one he set up at the Citadel of Ordeals, where he knew he would have to "face his flaws"; as per the typical physical manifestation of fantasy metaphors, he would therefore have to kill off his evil side. Considering that there was no way in hell he was going to get rid of all of his evil, he managed to rig the situation so that after killing his evil side, he would re-inherit all the evil. It's a real pity that he has never attributed so much forethought to plans that could in anyway benefit the world. Not that he'd ever want to benefit the world.
• Power at a Price: His own power seems to come at the price of his sanity and morality. However, he isn't opposed to using other people's lives or sanity to get access to more power. Remember how he got the Hadoken?
• Power Limiter: Without a weak fleshy body holding him back, he becomes powerful enough to take over Hell.
• The Power of Love: Parodied; his Hadoken is powered by love. And by powered, we mean it uses it as a fuel: every time he casts it the amount of love in the universe decreases, and the divorce rate increases.
• Power Up Let Down: He gets Blue Magic as part of his class change but since the first step in utilizing that power involves tanking whatever attack you want to learn and Black Mage is a Glass Cannon, he gets no mileage out of it.
• Psycho for Hire: as long as you can point him in the right direction and get out of the disaster zone, you can invade and destroy an entire country single-handedly. Thief found this out with the poor Dwarf nation.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: One way he shocked both Thief and Red Mage is that he has no problem raping White Mage or her corpse if she dies from his "wine" (read: paint thinner). He also wished he could find a way to rape and pillage with one hand as a celebration of supposedly being rid of the Light Warriors.
• Redemption Equals Sex: Discussed. He strongly suggests to White Mage that having sex with him would inspire goodness in him, but then fears that pillow talk might be involved.
• Required Secondary Powers: Defied. He describes Blue Magic as the ultimate power, as you absorb any attacks against you and learn them for your own use. When he is actually granted Blue Magic, it turns out the absorbing attacks bit isn't part of the package and he only learns the spells after he survives them.
• Robe and Wizard Hat: As per the standard Final Fantasy sprite, he has the robes and the hate. The hat is very important because it hides his face in shadow.
• Sanity Slippage: Goes up and down the insane slope like a yo-yo. The way it works is this: if he's (relatively) sane, he will be savvy, smarter than Thief, and generally the level of violence will be restricted to a comparative minimum (or at the very least will be efficient); if he's gone down the insane slope, his IQ will reduce massively, he will lose all ability to reason, and carnage will ensue. Lots of carnage. With blood.
• Sarcasm-Blind: Despite tending to be the one to comment on the stupidity of what's occurring the most, he tends to have his fair share of moments where he blatantly misses the point.
• Sarcasm Failure: A lot of Black Mage's sarcasm is all but lost (much to to his frustration) 100% of the time on Fighter (who either cannot understand it or is Obfuscating Stupidity to infuriate Black Mage), and 75% of the time on Red Mage (who is likely to misunderstand it tdue to his weird relationship with logic).
• Self-Made Orphan: "I wouldn't refer to any person of my family in the present tense..."
• Small Name, Big Ego: He thinks highly about himself despite being repulsive and fragile. He does indeed seem to have a lot of potential, but it's invariably held back by that same evil.
• Starfish Language: A purported spell for reading a book for hours at a time.
• Stupid Evil: He is an Omnicidal Maniac whose Ax-Crazy impulses ensure he is despised by almost everyone around him (the "almost" is because of Fighter, who thinks they are best friends) . Even when violence isn't the smart decision, he will still do it.
• The Starscream: Probably one of the only instances where one of the heroes is trying to replace the Big Bad. Okay, so maybe "hero" is a bad description..
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Does this all the time, particularly when talking to city guards trying to find him. He also frequents establishments that use it, such as the liquor store which sells wine that "might not be" paint thinner.
• Terrible Artist: It seems that he can't draw very well.
• Token Evil Teammate: While the other Light Warriors aren't angels themselves, Black Mage is actively trying to be as evil as possible, and is quite proud of it, too. He's also the only that will freely admit to being evil.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Pie.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Of the magic variety. While having enough power to single-handedly raze towns (even without the Hadouken) his terrible aim, overreliance on the Hadouken, and inability to choose practicality over destruction really hold back his capabilities as a mage.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: While already listed as a trait for the entire group, Black Mage gets a special mention for being one of the least sympathetic characters ever conceived, and suffering the most for it.
• Villain Protagonist: More than any of the others, he is both villain and protagonist. He's only one of the Light Warriors because of the opportunities for destruction it offers.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: He hates Fighter yet constantly sticks with Fighter, even after the timeskip. Or, rather, Fighter is this with him. Black Mage wants nothing to do with Fighter.
• Walking Wasteland: The evil "mindless destruction is fun" kind. Sometimes it'll be limited to just stabbing someone repeatedly until they die. Sometimes he's a Walking Disaster Area and bad things just continuously happen in his vicinity (usually to him). Sometimes, he'll just Hadoken something that annoys him a lot. In any case, his violence is usually indiscriminate and completely arbitrary (much like some kind of natural disaster... a sadistic natural disaster). However, if Thief decides he wants to target something, he'll use Black Mage to horrifyingly direct ends. Remember the Dwarf nation? 'Nuff said.
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Frequently asks this with a lot of sarcasm that neither Red Mage nor Fighter seem to hear. This often is coupled with Fighter's use of the phrase, which he uses in (seemingly) complete innocence, and together makes for some very Meta leaning on the fourth wall.
• What Is Evil?:
  • Discussed via internal monologue here. Unfortunately, anger at the stupidity of Fighter tends to have an amnesiac/obliterating/stupefying effect.
  • Also parodied. "Is killing a man really murder?"
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: He's a nexus for the ley lines in reality and has the lowest sanity tolerance ever. Being born like this, his incredible power has warped his sanity considerably over the years, making morality seem increasingly irrelevant to him. Having an insane Ax-Crazy maniac running around with the forces of creation at his finger tips was not the best idea ever.
• Would Hit a Girl: Despite his attraction to White Mage, he isn't above putting her in harm's way, fantasizing of killing her (along with Thief, Red Mage, and Fighter) when he found out they voted for him to be kicked out of the group, and launching a stream of fire at her in an attempt to cover up the fact that he rigged the votes. For anyone else he'll indiscriminately kill without second thoughts.
• The Worf Effect: Lampshaded by Red Mage. He is the punching bag. People show how hard they punch by punching him. Indeed, despite his power, he is often the first go down in a fight.

Fighter McWarrior

"I like... what was it again?"

The stupidest member of the Light Warriors, as well as the Token Good Teammate and their frontline warrior. Has moments of clarity which imply a college-level education and the required sanity.

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• Achievements in Ignorance:
  • Glorious Chainsaw Method actually depended on Fighter being too dumb to realize it's impossible. And it worked.
  • Forms a four-person team, with himself as THREE of the members.
    Black Mage: How'd you do that?
    Fighter: I... don't know...
  • Surviving a fall from over a mile in the air by blocking the ground.
• Anti-Villain: Really only a villain by association. He would probably be a straight-up hero if he wasn't with the other Light Warriors.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: He even lampshaded his lack of attention once.
• Author Avatar: surprisingly semi-confirmed by the man himself
• Barrier Warrior: After his class change, he gained the ability to block anything with his swords. That included powered-up Black Mage's evil black energy tendrils and even the Earth itself.
• Berserk Button: Fighter will not tolerate the idea of someone talking about purposely harming Black Mage. Not even if that person is his ally. Which stopped both Red Mage and Thief from their idea. When Black Mage was killed by Lich, Fighter reacted... poorly.
  Fighter: Get up, Lich. I'm not through hurting you yet.
  Lich: You have no idea the forces at work here, boy. If death himself cannot take me, what makes you think you can?
  Fighter: I SAID GET UP!
• Berserker Tears: When Black Mage was killed by Lich, tears flowed with Unstoppable Rage.
• Beware the Nice Ones: When Thief and Red Mage float the idea of killing Black Mage, he casually makes it clear that he could easily kill them both any time he wanted to.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Only with regards to his swordsmanship, in which he is a prodigy. He doesn't even train to improve upon his already superhuman abilities, he just relies on them as-is.
• Brown Note: Of sorts. Listening to Fighter talk can reduce the intelligence of anyone nearby. Known victims are Red Mage, Black Mage, and possibly Drizz'l. It has the opposite effect on Chaos.
  Red Mage: Oh dear. I think it's finally happened. Years of exposure to Fighter's, shall we say, point of view, has left Black Mage a spluttering vegetable.
• Bumbling Sidekick: At times. Although he occasionally proves to be smarter, deadlier, and more competent than his fellow Light Warriors, and always holds the moral high ground, he mostly serves as the local ditz.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • "I like swords!"
  • "I'm a helper!"
• Characterization Marches On: In the early strips, he and Black Mage were a bit closer to Vitriolic Best Buds, with Fighter occasionally snarking back at BM. For example, back then Fighter mocked BM for being beaten up by White Mage and even called him a jerk once. In later strips, Fighter just takes BM's insults and abuse without fighting back and always assumes that they're BFF anyway.
• Childhood Brain Damage: Black Mage asks Fighter whether he was dropped on his head a lot as a child, to which Fighter answers, "Maybe..." This is immediately followed by a flashback to Fighter's childhood, with young Fighter exclaiming how happy he is to have power lines in his back yard and plenty of paint chips to eat.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: He lives in different realities most of the time. The brief times he collides with the one everyone else lives in usually a combination of Too Dumb to Fool and Too Dumb to Live. Also Too Dumb To Die, apparently. In any case among his usual frolicking in Happy Cloud Land Where Black Mage is my friend, he occasionally dips down to reality with piercing insights.
• The Cloud Cuckoo Lander Was Right: Happens when he's in the right spatial alignment. It clashes heavily with Dumbass Has a Point and leaves everyone wondering exactly where the line between Obfuscating Stupidity, insanity, and pure idiocy lies. Anyone needing a justification?
  Fighter: Don't lie to the poor lady, RM. You know exactly who we are and we don't look innocent at all. All I'd trust those two jokers with is a stab in the back and then the throat. And you wear a mask. I look okay and seem honest, but as far as she knows, it's an elaborate act. A ruse that works so well my own friends could never suspect - never consider - the evil I inflict upon innocents wheresoever we go.
  Red Mage: He's just kidding of... of course...
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Yes, he's the stupidest member of the team. He's also the most effective and dangerous. Red Mage and Thief are both completely aware of this fact and the mere possibility of having to actually fight him utterly terrifies both of them.
• The Ditz: He does prove himself smarter than it seems on occasion. But is stupid enough to be easily duped - and at times, astound people with his ideas.
• Dual Wielding: To a ridiculous degree during his fight with Kary, when he dual-wielded sword-chucks.
• Dumbass Has a Point: Is quite prone to relatively intelligent suggestions that usually go ignored.
• Dumb Is Good: His Genius Ditz moments notwithstanding, he is the dumbest of the Light Warriors. He's also the only member of the group who is undeniably and consistently good.
• Dumb Muscle: Most of the time, the only muscles in his body that work are the ones swinging his swords. That piece of tissue in his skull rarely does anything useful.
• Genius Ditz:
  • When it comes to swords, he's an innately talented genius. When it comes to non-sword related matters, his mind is a vast ocean filled with strange and paradoxical creatures that should never have made it past the design stage of evolution.
  • He can also read Overcomplicatian language and occasionally shows at least some knowledge of mathematics (correcting Red Mage's mistake from the previous strip) and physics.
  • He is also able to look into the "Six hundred and twelve dimensional sphere" which forces a person to look at data so complete that if it was transmitted byte by byte as a laser it would encircle the universe three times. Looking at it causes a headache while reading it drives sane men insane and drives insane men sane or kills them. Black Mage goes comatose from it, while Fighter is able to read it just fine and determine that it contains every possible plan for every possible device that can destroy every possible thing in existence.
• Hard Head: "The main tactic of the Ram Form of Zodiackenshido is to break your opponent's equipment with your head before he breaks your head with his equipment". His head never breaks, so he is free to Use Your Head as much as he likes.
• Hidden Depths: He likes Haiku.
• Horrible Judge of Character: He believes that Black Mage is his friend and that he's just a misunderstood helper rather than evil incarnate; Red Mage is a genius; Thief is a good leader with their best interests at heart and, in general, that the Light Warriors are heroes.
• Idiot Hero: In the quartet, he's the closest to a hero and a complete idiot.
• Ignorance Is Bliss: Is by far the most genuinely happy party member (as opposed to murderous glee) due to his ignorance of what's really happening.
• I Know You Know I Know: How he tricked Drizz'l into freeing him.
• Implausible Fencing Powers: Gained the ability to block literally anything with his sword blade. Even intangible concepts, blasts of pure energy, and Earth itself.
• Improbable Weapon User: Sword-Chucks, yo!
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Confirmed to be so stupid that his brain doesn't get affected by so much residual evil exposure from Black Mage.
• Jumped at the Call: Immediately wanted to become a Light Warrior For Great Justice.
• Made of Iron: How else would he survive being stabbed in the head by Black Mage all these times?
• Manchild: Rarely shows the maturity or mentality of an adult, which makes him easy to manipulate.
• Master Swordsman: Fighter has mastered all 12 forms of the Zodiac style Kenshido, and because he thinks he can do anything with his swords can pull off things like the "Glorious Chainsaw Method" and blocking the Earth. Only Kary can match him to a standstill and, being a Fiend, it should be the other way around.
• Me's a Crowd: Fighter doesn't officially have the ability to self-duplicate, but when Red Mage made a plan for the three other members of the gang to be in two person groups and also have Fighter be all their partners, Fighter managed to be beside each of them.
• Meta Guy: In a very much Cloud Cuckoo Lander fashion. He usually serves as a counterpoint to Black Mage's snark. They both can get dangerously close to leaning on the fourth wall.
• Morality Pet: Downplayed; none of the group, even Black Mage, have the heart to answer some of his questions honestly, partly because he is so dumb it would take a while to explain but mostly because it's like telling a kid Santa doesn't exist. When he asks Thief and Red Mage if they thinks he is dumb or when he gives them drawing they just dodge the subject and take the drawing. Black Mage, empowered by the evil of Hell, didn't feel like enough of a jerk to tell Fighter he didn't go to Heaven.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: When he's shown in the epilogue he is shown to be very muscular. Fitting as he is easily the physically strongest of the main characters.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Fighter is indirectly responsible for a lot of suffering because he protects Black Mage from the consequences of his actions, like when Red Mage and Thief wanted to kill Black Mage for betraying the team and joining Muffin.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Apparently, he considers every monster the Light Warriors encountered to be cute, or at least nice - including Chaos himself. It's hinted that this is the reason why he hangs out with Black Mage.
• Please Wake Up: After Lich kills Black Mage, he expects Black Mage to immediately kill him... only for BM to not get up and is even pleading with him to get up and yell at him.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: At least, if Black Mage is to be believed, he has a potent stare.
• The Real Man: Depending on the situation either he only wants to cut through people and be done with it or he is just too oblivious to even do that right.
• Smart Ball: For once, plays the straight man to Black Mage when the latter makes several insensitive jokes about Black Belt's death.
• Stupid Good: He thinks that Black Mage is his best friend. Stupidly good to a fault.
• Terrible Artist: His drawings aren't any better than BM's.
• Token Good Teammate: Mainly for lack of competition, he is the only moral person in the group.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Cookies.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: He thinks Black Mage is his best friend, desite all the stabbing and sarcasm.
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Will say this with utter conviction and (probably) lack of any kind of sarcasm. This is usually followed by Black Mage a) stabbing him, b) being so consumed by Angrish that he is immobilized, or c) using heavy sarcasm that Fighter obviously ignores.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Fighter's solution to almost every problem is to hack it with a sword. If it's still not solved, hack it with two swords, and if it's still not solved... Sword Chucks, yo! After his class change, he learns to block things using his swords. In fact, the only attack he knows that doesn't use a sword is the Me-doken.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Spiders scare him, which Drizzl uses to his advantage.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: He's trying to help the world. He's an imbecile, a walking disaster area, and has terrible taste in "heroic" companions, but... "I'm a helper!"

Red Mage Statscowski

Red Mage: Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped. The success or failure of any given step will have no impact on the macro level.
Black Mage: That's so stupid I can't even see straight any more.
Red Mage: Now imagine what'll happen when physics tries to figure it out!

The munchkin and "The Smart Guy" of the group. He believes the world works by various game rules (especially RPG's). Whether he is right or not depends largely on whether or not it would be funny.

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• Achievements in Ignorance: Every time Red Mage has a plan that works even partially, it's only because reality was unable to keep up with his particular combination of stupidity and Insane Troll Logic.
• Affably Evil: He’s nowhere near as heroic as Fighter but is generally friendlier and less actively malicious than Thief and Black Mage.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: The feather on his hat(s).
• Bestiality Is Depraved: He has to explain to a disturbed Black Mage that when he's talking about chocobo sex, he's not talking about sex with chocobos, that when he's talking about breeding the chocobos, he's not talking about breeding with the chocobos, and that when he's taking the matter of breeding into his own hands, he's not literally grabbing the chocobos by their genitals. He did watch them breeding for hours for no other reasons that he felt like it.
• Butt-Monkey: If Black Mage isn't the one being horribly injured, odds are Red Mage is.
• Character Development: While he largely remains the same character, he does learn that it's better to use spells and abilities to live another day then to be dead but retain his peak versatility.
• Cloudcuckoolander: His grasp of reality is tenuous at best, and he lives as if he is a PC in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign.
• The Cloudcuckoolander Was Right: As pointed out here, despite his complete lack of common sense, a good number of his plans do end up working.
• Complexity Addiction: His plans always have to be multilayered, while his companions prefer the immediate (and usually violent) solution.
• Crazy Enough to Work: Sometimes his plans are so completely insane they actually work. Most of them, however, are just crazy enough to fail hilariously.
• Creepy Crossdresser: He really likes to wear dresses, which invariably makes everyone else very uncomfortable. Even has a drag name, Deborah.
• Cuckoosnarker: Despite not understanding sarcasm aimed at him most of the time, he still engages in Snark-to-Snark Combat with the others.
  Black Mage: It was a joke.
  Red Mage: Oh. See, I was confused by the total lack of comedy.
• Desperately Craves Affection: Due to fake daddy issues, he even fakes mechanic babble solely for an attempt at male bonding.
• Does Not Understand Sarcasm: "We're going to have a code. When I stab you in the ear, that means I'm being sarcastic. Got it?"
• Dump Stat: In universe, he considers Charisma to be this. He has a nightmare where all his stats are low, except for Charisma, which is boosted to a whopping thirteen.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • The comic where Black Mage explains his Hadoken spell works by draining love out of the universe and converting it into destructive energy is part of a trinity where Red Mage writes up "real" versions of signature powers of the Light Warriors for use in Dungeons & Dragons (it's the third, after Fighter's Zodiackenshido and his own Ice-9). The last panel is the Hadoken's "statblock" incomplete and scribbled over, with a note from Red Mage that some things are too horrible to contemplate in the spot left blank.
  • When Black Mage states in page 874 that if White Mage dies from drinking paint thinner, her body will still be warm enough for him to get what he wants, Red Mage considers that to be the worst thing he's ever said.
• Evilutionary Biologist: When it comes to Chocobo breeding.
  Red Mage: All it required was a cocktail of dangerous experimental surgery and a willingness to ignore the unnecessary suffering of perfectly innocent beings. Also, I shot magic into their chromosomes until they turned inside out. Evolution is my bitch.
• Fake Memories: "Plus, Red Mage? You can NOT tell him this, but he's not actually a cross dresser and he has no daddy issues. I've just been messin' with his head."
• Genius Ditz: When he actually manages to connect to reality he's surprisingly competent. At his best he's able to win an argument with Thief, outsnark Black Mage, construct many bizarre but workable plans that probably saved everyone's lives more than once, and even successfully perform brain surgery (well, after a few false starts). In some respects he really is the smartest member of the group.
• Godhood Seeker: Learned almost "every move in the game" from the Datasphere and planned to dethrone the gods and start the world over after the adventure.
• Hero with an F in Good: Many times he only thinks about himself (to the point his ordeal is about hubris), and the tendency to do cruel stuff (Chocobo breeding, taking over a city) doesn't help either.
• An Ice Person: Although he spent a large time trying to keep his spell use "neutral," he eventually started specializing in ice spells, including one that could destroy an entire universe.
• Insane Troll Logic: Each and every one of his plans operates on ineffable anti-logic. His explanation is that a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot fail due to flaws in its own logic, and it therefore cannot be stopped.
• Iron Butt Monkey: Like the rest, one time he got swallowed by a dragon and stayed on fire since he could hug people to death despite the excruciating pain.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: A classic example: between his overwrought vocabulary and unshakable self-confidence, it's sometimes easy to forget that Red Mage is really talking out of his ass most of the time.
• Lack of Empathy: He doesn't enjoy murdering like Black Mage but he doesn't care about anyone. His Ice 9 spell explicitly states that a total lack of regard to human life is required to learn it (because it's causing the heat death of the Universe). And his chocobos experiment sickens even Black Mage.
• Last of His Kind: According to him, the rest of the Red Mages stupided themselves into extinction. Of course, given the existence of Barry in the True Light Warriors, Red Mage's status as a Min Maxer, his obvious delusions, and the fact that in the next comic, he says "...lies disguised as secrets also equals depth", how much of what he says is true is left up for debate.
• Last Stand: Despite being extremely uncharacteristic, Red Mage decides to save the world (and White Mage) from Black Mage's evil here, going into a fight with no advantages, his entire team dead, and no real plan, fighting against the sum total of all the evil in the universe.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Substantially less evil than Black Mage and Thief, on the grounds of being thoroughly amoral and insane rather than outright sadistic or immoral.
• Mad Scientist: With D&D magic and Looney Tunes physics standing in for science and reason, he will engineer the best chocobo breed despite how much pain this causes the chocobos.
• Min-Maxing: His obsession is achieving the optimal build by sacrificing the unnecessary, like Charisma.
• Munchkin: He forgets to write his damage down, use animal husbandry to get off an island and does everything for experience points.
• Mystical White Hair: A white-haired wizard. And in some regards, also fits White Hair, Black Heart.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Played for Laughs. Red Mage can gain any skill he wants, or needs, simply by writing said skill in his character sheet. By his character change, he learns to mimic skills but uses them far longer than the duration of his Mime skill ^note his Mime skill lasts for 3 seconds
• No Social Skills: He Does Not Understand Sarcasm, constantly makes Innocent Innuendos without realising, doesn't understand why discussing monster sex makes people uncomfortable, and his attempts to get sidequests from strangers led to them thinking he was a rapist. He puts it down to his low Charisma stat.
  Black Mage: You really should work on your conversational skills.
• Only Sane Man: Doesn't hold the role of "reasonable one" as often as often as Black Mage or Thief, but he finds himself in this role from time to time, such as being frustrated with Black Mage and Thief's inability to go through a single Dwarfen town without destroying it, frequently preventing them from getting information they needed.
• Pet the Dog: Uses his healing powers to revive an impaled White Mage during the final battle, with no obvious utilitarian purpose for doing so.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Ironically, despite being a Red Mage (an archetype seen as a Jack of All Stats Magic Knight) and often billing himself as such, he doesn't actually make much use of his Red Mage abilities, even after he stopped holding them back for the sake of not unbalancing himself. He doesn't cast spells nearly as often as his fellow mages, and he fights in melee very infrequently compared even to Black Mage. Most of the time, he relies on mundane skills sneaked onto his character sheet. Much of this is due to his Complexity Addiction—he would rather cheat to learn surgery and botch it multiple times in the process than simply cast a healing spell and be done with it.
• The Plan: Whether it's getting themselves out of a fix, or defeating an opponent, Red Mage thinks of a plan for it. Of course, most of them fail because of how he views the world in general, but sometimes they're so insane he actually pulls them off.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He's the only one of the party who objects to the genocide of the dwarven nation during the hunt for the Earth Orb and goes out of his way to try and stop it, simply because killing them prevents the dwarves from giving them directions.
• Pride: A significant chunk of Red Mage's entire thing is that he's sublimely convinced he is the smartest person in the world, with a mind thrumming with fractactical genius. Repeatedly being maimed, transformed, blown up etc. as a result of this conviction does nothing to disabuse him of it.
• The Red Mage: It's in the name and is infact his name.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Seems to genuinely believe that he's a 'fractactical genius', and loves to brag about it.
• The Smart Guy: Well he thinks he is the brains of the group, anyway.
• The Strategist: He makes the plans for the group. Although most of his plans are hindered by such minor things as: The Laws Of Physics, Common Sense, Black Mage, Basic Logic, their own brain-breaking insanity, the incompetence of his cohorts, his own incompetence, Black Mage, a lack of proper equipment, a lack of regard for any kind of rationality, Fighter's stupidity, his own stupidity, Black Mage's stupidity, being needlessly overcomplicated to the point of madness, Black Mage, his tenous grasp on reality, King Steve...that being said, he still pulls off a good one every now and then.
• That Came Out Wrong: He does this so frequently it seems like it might actually be on purpose.
  "Wait, your balls shrunk."
• Trauma Button: Panics at the mention of "cool kids".
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Has a horrific tendency to solve problems with animal husbandry.
• Why Couldn't You Be Different?: He claims that his father hated him because he wanted to have a daughter rather than son. This resulted in Red Mage's cross-dressing tendencies. (But see Fake Memories above.)
• Wrong Genre Savvy:
  • Thinks he's in a paper-and-dice game. And sometimes a MMO.
  • Or even an RTS.

Prince Thief Khee'bler

Black Mage: [seeing Thief with an enormous bag of loot] Didn't the pirates take everything already?
Thief: They left everything that was nailed down. I did not.

The Miser Advisor of the Light Warriors, who constantly scams the rest of the team out of any rewards they might have earned. He also became The Leader due to similar wrangling.

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• Arbitrary Skepticism: He constantly insists that dragons don't exist, despite encountering well over a dozen of them.
• Bad Boss: Let his law-ninja die of starvation because he was too much of a miser to buy food for them. He's also this for the rest of the Light Warriors, as he constantly steals from them, tricks them into signing manipulative contracts, makes them do countless humiliating and/or life-threatening things for him, and physically abuses them.
• Because I'm Good At It: Why he continues to commit mass-larceny and untold numbers of crimes, even after he has no logical need to do so, is because he is skilled at doing so, so he continues to do so.
• Blatant Lies: People are stupid enough to believe him most of the time, he honestly thought he could lie about his legs being already broken while standing so there was no need to break them. It surprised him that the person he talked to wasn't a complete moron.
• Can't Argue with Elves: You can but you'll lose your time and sanity because Thief can never let an arguement go.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: He's an Elf, so beytrayal comes with the territory. He can and has abandoned the others to some horrible fate or other at the first opportunity. He even backstabs himself by stealing his ninja class from his future self, at a very inconvenient moment.
• Consummate Liar: He sometime won't even bother giving convincing lies.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Really cares for his father and beat up Black Mage when he called his mother a whore.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Both he and Red Mage were disgusted by Black Mage's plan to make White Mage drink what was most likely a paint thinner and then rape her (alive or dead).
  • When Black Mage becomes a genuine threat, he immediately opposes him.
  • He respects the right to call dibs.
• Evil Genius: Truly deserving of his status as Magnificent Bastard, he can manipulate and swindle anyone into doing anything. For one thing, he manages to keep Black Mage on a leash (because if he doesn't, Black Mage becomes an uncontrollable Eldritch Abomination that even terrifies the demons from Hell), and he screwed with Red Mage's head to turn him into a cross-dresser. He helps keep Fighter placated (though admittedly this isn't that hard to do), who could potentially destroy both him and Red Mage in a straight-up fight. For the Evulz of course.
• The Evil Prince: He fits a number of the qualifications, but seems to genuinely care about his father. And his mother.
• Fantastic Racism: Like all elves, he views all other humanoids as inferior. He has a particular hatred towards dwarves.
• Greed: He is Thief, he endangers himself and his crew for a quick buck.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Matoya and Raven use his legal trickery to their advantages, but they end up flogging themselves.
  • Also, he gets his class change to Ninja by stealing it from the future. Much later, right after he's avoided being de-leveled with the other light warriors, his past self shows up and steals the class change from him.
• Impossible Thief: On a regular basis. The most pivotal is probably stealing his own class change from his future self.
• Informed Attribute: He claims to be married. However, we never see Thief's wife even in the epilogue.
• Intangible Theft: He claims (with some justification) that he can steal anything that is not both nailed down and on fire.
• Jerkass: Egotistical, and often barely concerned if others are in harm's way. Specially his teammates!
• Kid with the Leash: is one of the few individuals that can control Black Mage and channel his destructive impulses to a common goal (...most of the time).
• Magnificent Bastard: Called this in-universe by Black Mage, and rightfully so.
• Miser Advisor: His main motivation with the Light Warrior quest regards getting all the cash he can.
• Money Fetish: Money fondling comes with being a thief.
• Non-Action Guy: While he can hold his own in a fight when he wants to, most of the time he prefers to make the other members of the group (or his lawninja squad, or White Mage and Black Belt) do the fighting for him.
• Odd Friendship: He and Black Mage are... well, they still hate each other, but at least they're able to be honest with each other about how much they hate their teammates... including each other. When Black Mage thought Thief had gone insane, he was genuinely sad to lose the only teammate who would understand his Deadpan Snarker comments.
• Only Sane Man: Well, other than being thoroughly evil, he's sane compared to the other three. He still has his Stupid Evil moments, though. What's scary about his Stupid Evil moments is that they leave Black Mage in the role of Only Sane Man. Think about that for a moment.
• Pet the Dog: Has a few moments showing genuine affection for Fighter. On one occasion, he attempts to converse with Fighter while Black Mage and Red Mage are talking about a fight between Batman and Dr. Doom. On another occasion, when he and Black Mage abandon Red Mage during the confrontation with Sarda, Thief pops back in to grab Fighter. He also sacrificed himself to protect White Mage after Black Mage injured her, telling Red Mage "Watch her" before attempting a backstab.
• Read the Fine Print: His Super Ultra Fine Print.
• Really 700 Years Old: As an elf, he has a much longer life span than an ordinary human despite not looking any older than the rest of the Light Warrios. He stated that he got married centuries before any of the Light Warriors were even born.
• Shouldn't You Stop Stealing?: He's the Trope Namer in a way (the phrase is spoken to him by Black Mage), given his motivation for becoming a thief was to save his sick father. Thief's response is simply "No."
• Superior Species: Elf are the greatest species in the world! So he keeps saying anyway.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Via a Freudian Slip "Do you have any idea why every impoverished clump of hovels you people call towns are so impoverished, clumped, filthy, and hoveled?... Neither do they! So let's move before they catch on to me... Er... It. Because it's certainly not me." Lampshaded by Black Mage: "Saying that only makes me suspect you more."
• Touché: His reaction after Sarda apparently leaves Thief out of his depowering of the Light Warriors, only for past Thief to steal his Ninja class.
  Well. I deserve this.
• Villain Protagonist: His long-term plan is to own everything that exists, and also own everything that doesn't exist (with plans on targeting things that could exist later). And since he could never afford to buy all that stuff, he's using other means (note his name).

Warriors of Darkness

Group as a Whole

Garland: We have failed to enact any significant revenge against the hated Light Warriors.
Vilbert: Point of order: Nuh-uh!
Bikke: Yar. Ye slam o' poetry be as significant as a pee in the ocean.
Drizz'l: It's what we're all thinking.

The theoretical antagonists of the comic, they are even less competent than the Light Warriors, and significantly less evil. They spend most of their time involved in "evil" bake sales.

---

• Card-Carrying Villain: Although they're very bad at it, they do see themselves as villains.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Garland's plan of strong but caring iron grip seems better than anything the Light Warriors have in mind.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: In the penultimate strip White Mage makes everyone believe that the Dark Warriors were the ones who defeated Chaos and saved the world.
• Forgot I Couldn't Swim: Naturally, their first Evil Plan as a full team involved the ocean.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: Even if they weren't complete morons they are leagues under the Light Warrior in terms of strength and villainy.
• Harmless Villain: Too dumb, too weak, too nice or being Vilbert stops them from doing any harm.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Even Sarda feels sad for them.
• Legion of Doom: Each of them appeared in an antagonistic role away from the others before joining: Garland in the first arc, Bikke, D'rizzl and Vilbert at various stages along the Elfland/Earth Orb arcs.
• Minion with an F in Evil: Drizz'l is the only evil one (Bikke starts out evil and rapidly becomes too stupid to handle any concept that complex) and he sucks at it too.
• Psycho Rangers: They form a fairly rough Evil Counterpart group to the Light Warriors, sharing gimmicks and personal rivalries between them (ineffectual RPG-obsessive, egotistic elven prince, Dumb Muscle, and faceless moral center).
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: Tried to but they never fought the Light Warriors as a team.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Propped up as the true heroes and saviors of the world in the epilogue. They even get a theme park and open a chain of restaurants.
• Unknown Rival: The Light Warriors are barely aware of them, only Black Mage recognizes them during their first encounters as a full team, and they didn't even know why they were out to get them, or that they were even after them in the first place.

Garland

Garland: You will pay for your insolence, princess. For when I summon the dark lord Chaos to do my bidding, my very first uh... bid will be to hurrrrrt you. Hurrrrt you!
Princess Sara: What're you gonna have him do? Poke me in the ribs?
Garland: Oh heavens no. I'm nefarious, not cruel.

The first Big Bad of the comic...in theory. In practice, he's such a Harmless Villain that the princess he kidnapped takes over his operation in order to inject some competence. Becomes the leader of the Dark Warriors when the group is formed.

---

• Adaptational Wimp: A fairly comical example, removing Garland's connection to Chaos and greater plot significance in favor of focusing on his Warm-Up Boss aspect.
• Affably Evil: He's very polite for someone who is states that he is evil. Particularly in regards to cooking, whether it's for his friends, enemies or victims.
• Anti-Villain: Mostly because he's a poor villain. Sara, his captive, has to coach him in how to be evil.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Even though he's probably the least evil character of them all, he proclaims himself to be very evil.
• Contractual Genre Blindness: The reason why he didn't let Drizz'l kill the Light Warriors when the opportunity to do so arose, is because it would be against the genre rules.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Garland is actually pretty intelligent (relative to the rest of the world, at least)... when he's not trying to be evil. As a villain, this is kind of a problem for him.
• Dumbass Has a Point: When Drizz'l asks Garland about why he doesn't seem to be doing anything to stop Bikke trying to overthrow him, he points out Bikke is too stupid to pull off a successful mutiny, Vilbert is too obsessed with looking cool to do anything, and Drizz'l is too depressed after Fighter took his swords to be any sort of threat. Also he put amnesia peppers in the tacos everyone was eating so they would forget any plans they made to overthrow him.
• The Ditz: Not to Bikke or even Vilbert's level but he is simply too naive and spineless to think things through.
• Enemy Summoner: He has actually been shown to be fairly competent in monster summoning.
• Evil Sounds Deep: he has an evil voice and it hurts.
• The Faceless: He's never seen without his armor.
• Goshdang It To Heck: Apologizes for saying "aw, nuts."
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Gives Fighter and White Mage a run for their money in purity. He'd probably apologize about that. He may even be nicer than them.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Most of his villainy is either harmless or doomed to failure. Sara is the one to give him villainy lessons.
• Malicious Slander: Starts a Scare Campaign against the Light Warriors, except he's right about them.
• Nice Guy: Garland is arguably the nicest character. Even White Mage is more rude than him and it's not like his company is better than the Light Warriors.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: The way he dealt with the Dark Warriors' mutiny against him was actually pretty clever. Also his summoning power are not to be trifled with.
• Poke the Poodle:
  • He's nefarious, not cruel, so he would never stoop to something like poking someone's ribs.
  • The most evil thing he did in the comic was probably finding a quarter and not asking if it belonged to anyone.
• Speech Bubbles: Starts off as black-on-grey, then standard black-on-white, then white-on-black, and finally settles on red-on-black. Lampshaded as him working on his evil voice.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Comes up with a stealth tactic nearly identical to Red Mage's and, likewise, thinks Red Mage's giant block of ice is a cold-fusion generator.
• Supreme Chef: His greatest, and possibly only real, ability is his superlative cooking ability. .
• Tin Tyrant: Wears an armor covered with Spikes of Villainy.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Scared to insanity of the forest imps that infest the woods near his castle.

Drizz'l

"I have got to find new, non-sucky, friends."

The prince of the dark elves. He eventually becomes the Only Sane Man of the Dark Warriors.

---

• The Beastmaster: Tends to rely on monsters (the giant spiders, camel spider, platypus, random encounters in the Temple, and the Fiends). Likely a Ranger/Fighter, being a Drizzt ripoff.
• Canon Foreigner: He isn't based on any preexisting character from the original game, although along with his father he does serve as a Decomposite Character of Astos the dark elf.
• Characterization Marches On: In his first appearance he was stupid enough to be outsmarted by Fighter. In later appearances he's the Dark Warrior's Only Sane Man. This might be related to the fact that Fighter is a walking Brown Note to all things even remotely intelligent, though.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Betrayal becomes prevalent in his interactions with Thief and the other Dark Warriors towards the end. Needless to say, his elven royalty shows.
• Crippling Overspecialization: He's a Master Swordsman with his pair of scimitars. Without them, he's utterly useless in a fight.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Almost on the receiving end of this. Turns out that summoning the "true guardians" of something takes longer than a fatal mob stabbing.
• Deadpan Snarker: Really passive aggressive.
• Dual Wielding: When Fighter gets the swords, he names them Stabby and Slashy (although Fighter named the second one Stabby again before he changed it).
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: While we don't see them interact on screen he did love his father and joined the Dark Warriors to avenge his death.
• Giant Spider: His minions prior to becoming a Dark Warrior are really big aracnoids.
• Harmless Villain: He claims he is the smartest and the baddest on his team, but the point is since Fighter took away his swords he is effectively harmless. Even Garland knocks him down a peg by lampshading it.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Joins the Light Warriors, wants to return to the Dark Warriors but teams up with Thief to backstab everyone, but is then forced to rejoin the Dark Warriors.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: For all his wit and villainy he can't do anything without his swords.
• Master Swordsman: A master of the Spider-style Kenshido and one of the few people who can actually give Fighter a run for his money when it comes to swordsmanship.
• Only Sane Man: Serves the role of reasonable one for the Dark Warriors.
• Overused Copycat Character: He is a Drizzt ripoff. Not much attention is brought to it though.
• Punctuation Shaker: Done as a parody of Drizzt Do'Urden, only with the apostrophe on the first name.
• Surrounded by Idiots: His opinion of the Dark Warriors in brief - He can't stand their idiocy.
• Speech Bubbles: Inverted (white on black).
• The Starscream: Actually manages to take leadership over the Dark Warriors for a little while and make them slightly less ineffective.
• Straw Misogynist: Tells Princess Sara that if they team up he would be the brains because he's male. Sara being Sara, he's laughed off.
• Summoning Ritual: Tries to summon fiends. He bungles the summoning, but they come anyway. He sics them on the Dark Warriors, only to realize one of the fiends is Vilbert's father. Hilarity Ensues.
• White Hair, Black Heart: His hair is white, and he's the Dark Warrior with the vilest behavior.
• You Killed My Father: His primary grievance with the Light Warriors is the death of his father.

Bikke

"Be this 600 or pineapple?"

A fearsome pirate of the seven seas who knows nothing about piracy or seas—or anything else, for that matter.

---

• Ambidextrous Sprite: Though it's entirely probable that he has two perfectly healthy eyes and intentionally moves his eyepatch when he turns.
• Bad Boss: Killed his crew by feeding them Cheetos when they were suffering scurvy rather than oranges. Not out of stupidity, but so he wouldn't have to share the booty.
• The Big Guy: Often by choice as he likes to do physical stuff.
• The Ditz: Easily tops both Fighter and King Steve in this regard.
• Hook Hand: After believing himself to have one, Vilbert eventually gives him a prop one.
• Never Learned to Read: Or write.
• Pirate: Complete with Talk Like a Pirate. Interestingly, he's also unable to swim. He loses his ship and crew in his first arc, but joins the Dark Warriors anyway.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Garland apparently carries a baby tote for him.
• Super Drowning Skills: Well, since it involves aquatic travel, that means he's terrible at it.
• Talk Like a Pirate: The only way he ever speaks is like a proper pirate.
• Wowing Cthulhu: When Sarda goes to take the Orbs from the Dark Warriors, they all try to stop him. He points out that none of them know how to use the Orbs, so Bikke throws one at him instead. Sarda is impressed and states he spar Bikke.
• You Will Be Spared: He is told this by Sarda when Bikke "properly" uses the Water Orb. ^note  Bikke just fwacks Sarda with it.

Vilbert von Vampire

"My dark soul burns with fiery agreement. Or possibly tacos."

A LARP-er roleplaying as a vampire...who is also a vampire for real. Also Lich's son.

---

• Basement-Dweller: Moved out of his parents' house - and into their basement. But after joining the Dark Warriors he moved into a completely different basement.
• Drama Queen: The dramatic flair of the group.
• Emo Teen: Loves crying about things and hearing depressing music.
• Evil Redhead: How evil he is depends on the day, but he likes being mean, and he is always redhaired.
• Goth: Played for Laughs. He is a humorous caricature of gothic stereotypes.
• Our Vampires Are Different: He is more of an Emo Teen than an actual threat. Tellingly, he never has an actual "fight". He just gets whacked repeatedly, with his father taking the spot of his fight instead.
• Really 700 Years Old: A vampire in a teen body - and soul.
• The Roleplayer: LARP, in contrast to Red Mage's stats-based gaming.
• Rule of Cool: He explicitly states that despite being a vampire, sunlight doesn't harm him simply because his death should "be more interesting than that."
• Speech Bubbles: Black text and outlines with a red gradient background.
• Take That!: To both Goths and Emo kids.
  Vilbert: I'm a goth, you see, I thrive in the attention of others, though they be the same people whom I mercilessly mock for not understanding me.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Thinks he's in a LARP.

The Other Warriors

Group as a Whole

Red Mage: But the Other Warriors were on the same quest.
Thief: It's because they aren't smart! You were able to fool them. You.

Another group of warriors out to save the world, they have a mildly antagonistic relationship with the Light Warriors.

---

• Canon Foreigner: There's nothing resembling them or their roles in Final Fantasy. Their designs are taken or modified from the various new jobs in Final Fantasy III, but even then, they don't appear to resemble the Light Warriors in that game, either.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: All are killed off unceremoniously by Sarda.
• Hero of Another Story: Their story being an attempt to, completely unsuccessfully, bring the Light Warriors to justice, while helping others along the way.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Much like the Light Warriors, their class names are their actual names.
• Idiot Hero: Thief brings up the point that Red Mage was able to trick them. Later, a distinctly human Warmech was able to convince them that he is human, despite being a Walking Tank with a mustache.
• Nice Guy: They all, unlike the Light Warriors, seem like genuine heroes, with altruistic goals. Well, except maybe Rogue.

Ranger

A forest guide and Chick Magnet who may or may not have a habit of leading hapless travelers to their deaths.

---

• Characterization Marches On: Early on, he implies himself to have been a legendary Serial Killer who led people to their deaths. This idea is dropped fairly quickly, and after that point, he's fairly moral.
• Chick Magnet: White Mage swoons at the mere sight of him.
• Department of Redundancy Department: His full name is Generic Dual-Class Half-Elven Ranger. His other class is also Ranger.
• Dual Wielding: Unfortunately, he chose to take it even further against Sarda, which still left him about Eleventy Zillion short.
• Heinz Hybrid: He's apparently 50% elf, 25% human and 12.5% orc. The remaining 12.5% is unknown, but presumably also human. Bizarrely, in his introduction, he claims to be half-elven and half-human. Later he says he's a half-elven ranger who is a quarter Lefeinish (human) and a quarter half-orc. This puts him anywhere from 112.5% to 125%, depending on what the other half of the half-orc is.
• We Help the Helpless: His group is one of few groups trying to help people.

Berserker Axinhed

"Just because I fly into a blind, homocidal rage at the tip of a helm doesn't mean I'm incapable of appreciating the finer things in life."

A dapper and polite gentlemanly dwarf who also flies into frothing rage in combat.

---

• The Berserker: He will fly into a blind, homocidal rage when he loses his monocle.
• Berserk Button: Taking off his monocle triggers RAGE!, but since it works when he takes it off himself, his berserk button can be whatever he wants it to be.
• The Big Guy: He's the main physical muscle to them team.
• The Faceless: Like all dwarves in the comic, he has no face.
• High-Class Glass: When he's not berserking he sports one of these, because when he wears it he is a gentleman and gentleman do not fly into blind, homocidal rages.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Averted. When he isn't berserking, he's not much of a stereotypical dwarf at all.
• Quintessential British Gentleman: Apart from being a dwarf and periodically going psychotic, he fits the stereotype because he is a dapper and polite gentleman.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: When in berserker mode, he speaks entirely in profanity, in sharp contrast to his polite speech patterns when calm.

Cleric

"Well look at that, another beautiful miracle. If it weren't for my atheism, I'd be impressed by it."

The atheist cleric of the Other Warriors, who gets spells from all the gods at once, since they know he doesn't play favorites.

---

• Agent Scully: Despite being a priest capable of calling down miracles from any of dozens of gods, he doesn't believe in gods or miracles. This leads to his undoing.
• Dumbass Has a Point: As completely stupid as it is to be both a cleric and an atheist, he makes a compelling point that it prevents him from seeming like he has favorites or is a suck-up.
• The Heart: More sensible than Ranger and Berserker, and kinder than Rogue.
• Healing Shiv: Uses a shiv to heal people, and this is why he is the Trope Namer.
• Nay-Theist: Knows the gods exist but does not believe they do in order to not ruin his bargaining position.
• White Mage: He's a cleric, so white magic that lets him heal others is his thing.

Rogue

"I know a guy."

A less competent version of Thief.

---

• Friend in the Black Market: He knows a guy. It's Thief.
• Honest John's Dealership: He is a crook but is better at hiding it than Thief, mostly because he is bad at being a crook.
• Non-Action Guy: Never fights.
• Only Sane Man: Within the group of the Other Warriors, he is the most reasonable.

The Fiends

Group as a Whole

The guardians of the Orbs of Light, and the primary antagonists of the comic.

---

• Back from the Dead: Due to Being summoned from hell by Drizz'l, they return for round two.
• Co-Dragons: They are a quartet of elite minions for Chaos. Muffin is even an actual dragon.
• Elemental Embodiment: Really only Kary is the full elemental thing. Lich is more of an elemental antithesis (and embodiment of death), whereas it's an entirely Informed Ability for Ur and Muffin.
• For the Evulz: They enjoy destruction and killing. Ur seems more professional about it but he still try destroying the world just because.
• Knight of Cerebus: Lich and Kary play this straight by making the plot more serious with their actions, like hero killing. Ur and Muffin subvert it by making things more comical.

Lich

"Death is the natural state of all being. Life is the aberration. It is fleeting, and full of pain. Come, embrace the eternity in nothing!"

A several hundred thousand year old archmage who achieved immortality in undeath and guards the Earth Orb. Also Vilbert's father.

---

• Abusive Parent: While he loves his one son, he does not treat him well.
• Badass Boast: Loves to do this even more than the other villains. Unfortunately for his ego, the Warriors of Light don't take him seriously.
  Lich: You mock the Lich King?! All that is living turns to ash in the presence of the Lich. I am the beauty of decay, the perfection of death. All that is born lives only to die. And in death shall you serve a new master. Lich! So face me, oh warriors, and know the horror of perfection!
  Black Mage: Yes, yes, the Lord of The Dead shall surely inherit the greatest kingdom given enough time. Now hush, the adults are talking.
• Brought Down to Badass: He attempts to invoke trope this when the Light Warriors manage to successfully return his soul to his body, rendering him mortal and depriving him of his lich powers. As he points out, even if he isn't immortal anymore, he's still an unbelievably ancient, well-learned, and powerful mage and should be able to wipe them out in seconds... and then a powered-up Black Mage immediately drags him to Hell.
• Charm Person: Uses "creepy undead mind control" to prevent his wives from cheating on him. Try not to focus too much on the creepy...
• Dem Bones: Being a lich, he is a skeleton.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Seems to genuinely care about his son, even if he considers him to be a bit of a failure.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Even the original translation had "Lich" as a proper noun and name.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Considers his son a dissapointment but in his defense, those moments come from Vilbert being an idiot.
• Necromancer: He has creepy undead mind control and performed lichdom on himself.
• Our Liches Are Different: He is a skeleton, and he stored his soul in something external. In this case, the earth orb.
• Physical God: Becomes the ruler of Hell after Hell King Black Mage kills him.
• Straw Nihilist: He is the embodiment of death, he doesn't have the best outlook about the meaning of life.
• Soul Jar: Used the Earth Orb for this purpose.

Kary

"Look, I haven't killed anything in about three minutes, so my patience is nil at this point."

The Elemental Embodiment of Fire, guardian of the Orb of Fire, and one of the most kill-happy creatures on the planet.

---

• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: As demonstrated by the above quote, getting her to stop incinerating everything and everyone and pay attention is a bit of a challenge.
• Ax-Crazy: She makes Black Mage look restrained in comparison. She kills anyone and everyone who happens to be within range if they make her angry...or if she gets bored enough.
• Literally Shattered Lives: Her first death left a bunch of fragments of ice.
• Load-Bearing Boss: Kary appears to be one, as her volcano lair explodes shortly after she is killed. Black Mage insists it is just a coincidence, however.
• Logical Weakness: Averted. While being an embodiment of fire would give the hint she is weak to ice magic she doesn't actually display any significant vulnerability.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: She's got six arms.
• No-Sell: Red Mage attempts to kill her with a low level ice spell. It doesn't phase her.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Kary's stupidity and rampant self-sabotage tends to overshadow the fact that she is genuinely an incredibly powerful monstrosity and fearsome combatant; she kills Black Belt without any real effort and requires very drastic measures to take down.
• Personality Powers: Really the only Fiend to fit the idea of Elemental Embodiment.
• Playing with Fire: Like mentioned above, she's the elemental embodiment of fire.
• Snake People: She has snake tail for a lower body.
• Stupid Evil: Slaughters her own minions for little or no reason just to prove she's evil and because she likes killing things.
• Worthy Opponent: Calls Fighter a foe worth serious effort to kill.

Ur

"Anyway, you guys ordered an apocalypse if I'm right."

An Eldritch Abomination beyond space and time, who acts as a freelance agent of apocalypse. Also the guardian of the Water Orb.

---

• Affably Evil: Handles ending worlds in a friendly, business-like manner.
• Eldritch Abomination: An entity from beyond space and time that is summoned by H. P. Lovecraft-inspired cultists.
• Kraken and Leviathan: "A basic Krakenoid", with a boatload of Combat Tentacles to use.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Attempts to eat Red Mage, who kills him from the inside.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Planned to destroy the world when summoned.
• Punctuation Shaker: His true name is Jnn'efur.

Muffin

Dragoon: Muffin is a dragon. It all makes sense now. Like, when I'd say 'Polly want a cracker?" she'd say "No, Muffin want to rip a knight in half and suck out the pulp.
Thief: That kind of thing happen often?
Dragoon: Around here it does.

Supposedly the last dragon, and one of near godlike power. She played the part of Dragoon's pet parakeet, both to avoid suspicion and because she thought it was funny. Also acts as the guardian of the Air Orb.

---

• Canon Foreigner: A Tiamat filler with a completely different personality and the sprite of Dark Dragon Idoun/Idenn.
• Evil Plan: Formed the Dragoons to kill off all the other dragons to take their treasure and then have the Dragoons killed off, too. Th latter part of this plan has already reached fulillment. That's why Dragoon is like Red Mage, Last of His Kind.
• Faux Affably Evil: She likes to talk with her enemies and even convinced Fighter to not kill her because she would rather not want to die. She is still a sadistic monster.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Though Dragoon suspects it wasn't her real name. Based on FF1 it's a strong possibility that her real name is Tiamat, but this is never confirmed.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Creating an order of knights designed solely to slay dragons really comes back to bite her.
• I Lied: Tells Black Mage she had an invisible flying castle. He doesn't realize she made that up until she pulls this trope, telling him to his face that she lied to him.
• Last of His Kind: Almost. Red Mage points out that they've met multiple dragons other than her, and she grudgingly acknowledges that she didn't quite manage to kill all of the others, but definitely got all the big ones (apart from Bahamut). Not too long afterwards the Light Warriors run into fourteen dragons in the temple of fiends, so apparently Muffin did a pretty sloppy job.
• Manipulative Bastard: She deals with each of the Light Warriors by being able to outwit or dissuade them from trying to kill her - she even convinced Black Mage to join her in doing destruction. .
• Smug Snake: Being a dragon makes you underestimate small and stupid ape like beings, especially when they have done nothing to prove her wrong.
• Superior Species: Sure thinks dragons are superior to all others. Manages to out-do even elves in terms of racial arrogance.
• Visionary Villain: Unlike the other Fiends, she had an agenda of ruling the world as the only meaningful dragon by having Dragoon slaughtering the others.
• We Can Rule Together: Briefly allies with Black Mage before tricking him into getting off of her while flying in the middle of the sky.

Avatars

Dr. Swordopolis

Swordopolis: You are the Enlightened Warrior, but you're also very, very stupid.
Fighter: I don't follow.
Swordopolis: Yeah, see, that's rather the problem, actually.

The Avatar who works with Fighter, much to his frustration. Manifests as Dymlos's sprite from Tales of Destiny with glasses slapped on top.

---

• Arch-Enemy: Appears to be opposed in some way to Darko.
  Darko: Let Swordopolis and his fool try to stop you now!
• Ass Shove: This is how he possesses people. He would really prefer an alternative.
• Everyone Has Standards: While he wants Black Mage dead, he's not willing to do so at the cost of everyone's lives, which is why he stops Fighter from murdering everyone.
• Surrounded by Idiots: He mostly interacts with Fighter, which may explain the frustration.
• Talking Weapon: Or at least manifests as a sword that talks.

Megahedron

Red Mage: Wish I had a patron deity.
Megahedron: But Red Mage, what about me?
Red Mage: Oh Megahedron, we both know you're nothing more than a manifestation of my three point Hallucination flaw, and therefore not real.

The Avatar who works with Red Mage, much to his frustration. Manifests as a D20 with sunglasses.

---

• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Only Red Mage ever really interacts with him, and none of the others even mention him, meaning it's hard to tell whether he's a legitimate Avatar in the same way as Swordopolis, or if he really is a result of Red Mage's madness.
• Only Sane Man: To be fair, he avatars for Red Mage. Any sanity at all would put him ahead.
  Megahedron: Will you stop looking into the ancient insanity box already!
• Non-Indicative Name: He is in fact an icosahedron. An actual megahedron would have a million faces and closely resemble a sphere, meaning in the 8-bit universe it'd probably appear as a cube.
• Vagueness Is Coming: He cops to it, at least.
  Megahedron: Great, this brick wall of words again. Look, can I just deliver my vague portents and leave?

"Darko, Dark God of the Dark"

The Avatar who works with Black Mage, much to the frustration of both of them. Manifests as Magus's sprite from Chrono Trigger.

---

• Arch-Enemy: Is working against Swordopolis.
• Brown Note: Supposedly, his true name makes your brain eat itself.
• Celestial Bureaucracy: Or rather Infernal Bureaucracy. He's Evil's middle management. Unrelatedly, all of Evil is middle management.
• Demon Lords and Archdevils: His formal title is "Avatar of Evil and Executive Assistant to Chaos".
• God of Evil: Black Mage refers to him as divine evilness.
• No Name Given: His admittedly lame title is the first thing Black Mage thought of.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Whenever he and Black Mage talk in the later strips, his preferred topic of conversation is why BM hasn't gotten around to ending all things lately.

Raven

"I invented chicanery. You don't want to play this game with me, elf. It will be the end of you."

A trickster god who becomes, for all intents and purposes, Thief's Avatar.

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• Animalistic Abomination: Takes the form of a raven.
• Clever Crows: A very intelligent raven god. Unfortunately he isn’t quite as good at it as Thief.
• Manipulative Bastard: He's not quite on Thief's level, but he comes close.
• Out-Gambitted: Thief turns out to be better than him, which is really quite a feat.
• Trickster God: His modus operandi is trickery. He invented chicanery. He doesn’t get around to actually doing much, though.

Others

White Mage

"Stupid white mage's oath."

The begrudging ally of the Light Warriors, dedicated to pushing them onto the path of destiny whether they like it or not.

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• All-Loving Hero: Well, she at least tries to be one, helping people wherever and whenever they need it. The Light Warriors (especially Black Mage) definitely try her patience, however.
• Already Done for You: Kills Chaos while the Light Warriors were stalling for time to think of a way out of it.
• Ass Shove: After one particularly nasty act by Black Mage, she swore that she would introduce her hammer into his body in a way so obscene that her oaths forbade her from speaking of it, barring the assurance that he'd be tasting splinters for a week. This was one of the few times that Black Mage showed active fear of her.
• Been There, Shaped History: Sarda teleports White Mage to the beginning of the universe just to have her away from him. It turns out she accidentally started creation before a younger Sarda could get there.
• Big Eater: She's very food-motivated, and brings up cultural cuisines with unusual regularity.
• Break the Cutie:
  • Black Belt's death, finding out that she's God since she created the universe and then killing Black Belt's time distorted clone that Black Mage petrified.
  • Fighter is the one who breaks her by talking. Seriously...
• Buxom Beauty Standard: The art style doesn't show it, but she's supposedly rather stacked as Black Mage often makes lewd comments about her chest size, such as calling her breasts "gazongas".
• Covert Pervert: Early in the story she was shown to be physically attracted to fighter, such as being very pleased with Thief stripping Fighter nude to demonstrate his stealing skills.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: She killed Chaos with the other white mages.
• Easily Forgiven: She's the one who ensured that the Dark Warriors got the credit for beating Chaos, but none of the Light Warriors seem to hold it against her. Red Mage shrugs it off as "a trifle."
• Even Evil Has Standards: When she (briefly) turns evil, she still spurns Black Mage's advances. She does still have standards, after all.
• Evil Costume Switch: Her robes turned inside-out for the half-dozen or so strips or so that she was "evil".
• Face–Heel Turn: Well, the single most adorable attempt at one ever. She calls herself "White Mage, destroyer of worlds!" and is gets shy and anxious over her first chance to do something evil in her new evil life.
• Good is Not Nice: One of the few morally upstanding characters in the comic, but she doesn't always treat Black Belt particularly well. She is also a bit sour and pushy with the Light Warriors but they are trying her patience even if she wasn't trying to make them fulfill a vague prophecy with little help.
• Horrible Judge of Character: She spends most of the comic thinking that the Light Warriors really are champions of virtue, when in reality they are anything but. She learns better by the end of the comic, though. She also thinks that Sarda is a Big Good, when he's actually a Grade-A Jerkass.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Impaled by Black Mage's evil energy spike thing. But, fortunately, she got better.
• Informed Attractiveness: She's supposedly so attractive that Black Mage lusts after her. Thanks to it being a sprite comic, of course, we don't see it. Although there was an attempt to show it when she was first introduced.
  • We see her in the epilogue. She's quite cute. And stacked. It takes the last strip to show what Black Mage was talking about. Easily seen when White Mage is walking with Thief.
  • There's also a wallpaper with a picture of her drawn by Matt Speroni, who also drew the aforementioned epilogue, and approved by Clevinger. It also shows her as a Significant Green-Eyed Redhead.
• Logic Bomb: Convinced Chaos that a universe without Order would lead to a vast nothingness of randomized particles... which would be totally non-chaotic... and therefore boring. Then zapped him with enough White Magic to kill a vile dark god of chaotic energy. Which is what he was. So that worked out.
• Lust Object: Black Mage harbors a deep lust for her and often acts in lecherously towards her, which disgusts her enough for her to break her white mage oath just to beat him up.
• Minion with an F in Evil: Her Face–Heel Turn ends when Fighter points out to her that she is terrible at being evil.
• Morality Pet: Subverted. Black Mage's crush on her appears humanizing at first, but is eventually shown to be really, really creepy. Her presence also isn't enough to prevent him from being evil; at most, he tries to be evil without her noticing. That said, the times when he's in White Mage's presence are about as restrained as Black Mage's evil ever gets.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: She knows shit has hit the fan when Black Mage comes back from Hell.
  WM: Did you feel that?
  BB: What?
  WM: A great disturbance in the order. As if millions of voices cried out to say "Oh shit."
• Mysterious Protector: She tries but as Black Belt point out they have lunch with them every once in a while and are completely aware that she has their back.
• Not So Above It All: While she's usually the most reasonable character in the cast, she has her moments that show she's prone to idiocy like the others. Moments include failing to see Thief's trasnparently dishonest nature (though she's quick to learn in later strips) or Black Belt of all people pointing out how they consistently make their presence very obvious to the Light Warriors.
• Only Sane Man: Usually is the reasonable one in the Light Warriors, trying to get them to stop messing around and focus on saving the world. Unless she ends up talking to Sarda who she believes to be a nice guy or persists on making the Light Warriors heroes of the prophecy.
• Out of Focus: Originally a Sixth Ranger of sorts, but started showing up less and less as the comic went on.
• Poke the Poodle: Sort of; when briefly convinced that she fundamentally hurts people and so should embrace evil, her lack of actual evil impulses and tendency to overthink things eventually results in her deciding to repeatedly kick Red Mage in the shin.
• Red Is Heroic: She's got red hair and is by far the most heroic character in the story (not that that's hard.)
• Those Two Guys: Always seen with Black Belt, her bodyguard, at first. Then he died in battle.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Italian.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Black Mage gives her one when she is ok with Black Belt beating Garland (seemingly) to death, she is actually impressed Black Mage feels compassion only for him to negate the whole outrage by voicing he is angry that he can't kill with impunity.
• White Mage: She is a white mage from an order of white mages who performs white magic.

Sarda

"I, gentlemen, am Sarda, and that makes me the wizard who did it!"

The most powerful mage in existence, he is older than the universe itself. In theory, he's supposed to guide the Light Warriors to their destiny. In practice, he just uses his omnipotence to screw with them.

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• Arch-Enemy: Black Mage is his worst and most personal enemy. This is because Black Mage drove him insane, killed his family and then his foster families (plural).
• The Archmage: The most powerful wizard in the comic by far, to the point that he is effectively omnipotent.
• Ascended Extra: Everyone is, but he is the comic's Most Triumphant Example. In all editions of Final Fantasy, Sarda/Sadda is just a hermit who gives the heroes a rod to get past the Earth Cave. In 8-bit Theater, he is so much more.
• Asshole Victim: He is a Jerkass who uses his magic to mess with people, making the world a worse place on petty whims, and for all his complaints about the Light Warriors he was going to let them live and cause more havoc anyways. No tears were shed when he was possessed by Chaos.
• Best Served Cold: He waited for his enemies to get powerful only so he could show how powerless they are compared to him.
• Big Bad:
  • He's technically the main enemy of the Light Warriors.
  • Unless you count the Light Warriors themselves, as he is responsible for setting everything in motion. Besides, he's nearly as nasty as Black Mage, regularly abusing his power, screwing with Ranger for no reason and with the entire town of Onrac just to get revenge on White Mage. He even inadvertently killed Onion Kid's - AKA his own - adoptive parents when he was doing it. All because he can.
  • You could say he takes the place of Garland, the Big Bad from the source material, being a character scarred by the Light Warriors in the beginning, involved in a time-loop plot, planning on the Light Warriors to complete their quest, and becoming the vessel for Chaos. They're even both fought in the Temple of Fiends.
• Comes Great Responsibility: But absolute power, rocks absolutely.
• Composite Character: While being based on Sarda at initial appearances, he ends up absorbing a lot of Garland's aspects from the original game, with both being weaklings that the Light Warriors encountered early on who then traveled back in time and gained strength through a time loop, then, after absorbing a lot of power upon the defeat of the Fiends, became Chaos.
• Crippling Overspecialization: He actively evokes this trope against Mimics and Blue Mages by creating spells that only harm one specific target, or benefit only himself reguardless of who is casting it.
• Cruel Mercy: Decides to inflict this on the Light Warriors instead of killing them, after subjecting them to a Curb-Stomp Battle and de-leveling them. He figures a life filled with terror and the occasional magical torture when he feels like it is far more satisfactory. Unfortunately for him, he's possessed by Chaos soon after that.
• Death by Irony: A combination of Hoist by His Own Petard and poetically dying the way he grew up—accidentally harmed by Black Mage's evil.
• Demonic Possession: By Chaos.
• Evil Is Petty: And bored. Days used to be longer, but he shortened them to twenty-four hours just to make people hurry.
• Evil Sorcerer: he uses his magic to troll and hurt people.
• The Faceless: His face is blackened under the hood so all we can see of it is his mustache. Though we see his face plenty of times when he is a child.
• Failure Is the Only Option: For all his power his attempts at revenge on the Light Warriors are all doomed. Attempting to change the past failed because You Can't Fight Fate. He admits that Red Mage's plan to have Black Mage use a powered up Hadoken would have killed him if he didn't absorb the power of Orbs. But absorbing that power led to him being possessed by Chaos.
• Freudian Excuse: He's such an asshole because Black Mage made his past self's life miserable. This is cancelled out because he didn't do anything to fix it, though Word of God suggests he couldn't.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: He was originally the Onion Kid, a nobody who Black Mage accidentally orphaned multiple times.
• Future Badass: He is Onion Kid with billions of years of age on him.
• A God Am I: Becoming an omnipotent wizard really went to his head. It gives the effect of 'I am Sarda. My will be done'.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: Being trapped and alone for billions of years alone was really just the final straw that broke the wizard's mind.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: His madness started with Black Mage's face.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Absorbs so much power that he is killed and his body is used by Chaos. He also causes himself to be stuck at the beginning of time, as when he attempted to send White Mage to a pocket dimension, he accidentally sends her to the beginning of the universe seconds before he gets there.
• Hypocrite:
  • He can make a case for Black Mage, but he can't really claim the moral high ground over Thief and Red Mage. He doesn't even attempt to claim it over Fighter.
  • He claims the Light Warriors (bar Fighter) are all monsters that need to die for the good of everyone else (not that he's wrong about that) but decides their ultimate punishment is to live in the knowledge that he could kill them at any time. Between that and his own villainy he only seems to care about revenge on them because they wronged him.
  • He also justifies not just pulling a Ret-Gone on the Light Warriors by saying the past cannot be changed. Didn't stop him from erasing Bard for annoying him, apparently.
• Idiot Ball: Just once, though at the worst possible moment. Quoth the Evil Overlord List: No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head. To his defense it was either that or die right now since Black Mage's hadoken would have had likely killed him if he didn't absorb the power but his decision of gloating robs him of his revenge.
• Immortal Genius: Is not only most powerful and intelligent mage in the setting, but also effectively immortal, having lived for billions of years as a result of a failed plan to go back in time and kickstart the beginning of the universe. In the present, he's essentially Seen It All - enough to serve as an extremely manipulative guide to the Light Warriors - and he's learned enough about magic to essentially warp reality as well.
• It's All About Me: Despite his claims about how the Light Warriors need to die for the good of the world his actions make it clear he is only bothered because of what they technically just Black Mage did to him. He defends his own villainous acts with the defense that what he does is funny.
• Jerkass: Has no problem with brutally murdering anyone who annoys him enough, and takes great pleasure in screwing with the Light Warriors (which, granted, they deserve but still.) He also wipes a whole town because it will hurt White Mage.
• Laughably Evil: States his acts of evil are simply done because it's funny. There is no denying his dickery is a riot.
• Living Bodysuit: Chaos uses him to incarnate himself.
• Manly Facial Hair: Sports a very impressive mustache, which was recommended to him by White Mage at the beginning of the universe.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: He could take everything thrown at him which ends up killing him because of Phlebotinum Overload.
• One-Winged Angel: After absorbing the elemental orbs and Black Mage's super evil, he is possessed by Chaos to set up the final battle.
• The Power of Hate: His hatred of the Light Warriors is what kept him going for eons.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Towards Fighter, who he recognizes as "a casualty" that unlike the three sociopaths around him, doesn't really deserves to die. At times he's also gentle to White Mage, even if he has reasons to hate her.
  • He lets the Dark Warriors flee rather than killing them all, taking pity on their incompetence.
  Sarda: Look, I don't do this...uh, ever. But you guys are basically like kittens stuck on a leaking lifeboat in a typhoon. Just run.
• Reality Warper: His command of magic is so powerful, that after so many years of study, he became capable of altering reality at a whim.
• Seen It All: And probably still seeing it since his perception of time is weird, however Fighter and Bikke can pull fast ones on him with their stupidity.
  • Apparently some things can be so absurd even he can't comprehend them, such as when Ranger manages to quadruple-wield bows, each with three arrows ready to fire.
  Sarda: How are you holding those?
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Traveled to the beginning of the universe in order to prevent the Light Warriors from coming into being. It didn't work.
• Stable Time Loop: As a direct result of the Light Warrior's actions, mirroring the original game's similar time loop. He's the grown-up Onion Kid, gone back to the dawn of time to try to re-write the universe in his image, only to end up beaten to the punch by White Mage by a few seconds. He is then forced to take The Slow Path back.
• Time Abyss: Technically older than the universe, because he was there at the start of it.
• Trickster Mentor: He tends to act like one whenever he's in a good mood, playing jokes on the Light Warriors and teaching them bizarre "lessons." Although by the end it's clear he was just an Evil Mentor trying to disguise his bad intentions.
• Villainous Breakdown: He does... Not take it well when he realizes he's suffering from Phlebotinum Overload. These are also his last words before Chaos takes over his body.
  Sarda: This... This isn't right. This will not be... I am Sarda. And I am older than time. I possess a power beyond mortal imagination. My plans will not be undone by such amateur-hour horseshit as absorbing too much power and exploding. I am Sarda. My will be done.
• Villain Teleportation: His all-powerful magic allows him to show up whenever the plot calls for it. Or teleport others, making Black Mage livid once he did so.
• You Already Changed the Past: Tries to prevent White Mage from accidentally creating the universe, but in doing so causes her to do it. As such, he firmly believes that You Can't Fight Fate.

Black Belt

Black Belt: You try walking a straight line without bumping into wave functions of neighboring realities.
Black Mage: We do it all the time. It's called NOT BEING SO STUPID THAT IT WARPS THE UNIVERSE!

White Mage's companion, and holder of the dubious honor of being even stupider than Fighter.

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• Achievements in Ignorance:
  • He manages to be a Reality Warper by virtue of having No Sense of Direction, to the point of creating a time warped duplicate of himself while walking in a straight hallway.
  • When crossing a magma chasm, he holds on to the rope used to get across and walks... Despite him being the one holding it to allow others across, and the others taking down the rope on the other side.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: He is deadly with his fists.
• Came Back Wrong: White Mage's attempt to revive him really didn't end well.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Black Belt was trained to be able to defeat any man. He's amazing at fighting humanoid enemies, but is useless in fights against anything else.
• Dumb Muscle: As dumb or dumber than Fighter, but able to beat ninja with their own limbs.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": The monks named their highest martial grade after him.
• Killed Off for Real: Courtesy of Kary. Yes, he is permanently dead. Even the time warped duplicate of him is dead.
• No Sense of Direction: He has such a terrible sense of direction that it warps the fabric of reality. Like the time that he got lost in a straight hallway, and ended up following his future self from one second in the future.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: He's not gay! He wants to kick asses not touch them.

Dragoon

"All those poor, poor fools not living in towers or being able to leap into the stratosphere. It's like they wanted to drown."

The last of the dragoons, an order dedicated to slaying dragons. Also lives with Muffin, the last dragon, who he believes is a parakeet.

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• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: While White Mage and Onion Kid list off the Light Warriors' atrocities, Dragoon complains about their unwittingly taking his spear with them to Sarda.
• Big Damn Heroes: Pops up out of nowhere to save Thief from Muffin by jamming his spear through her head.
• Canon Foreigner: Dragoons weren't introduced until Final Fantasy II, and it was III that added the whole jumping shtick.
• Dragon Knight: A Dragoon, the type anyway. His job is actually killing dragons.
• The Dragonslayer: He is this, despite the fact that he evidently doesn't entirely grasp what a dragon actually is. He proves it by killing Muffin.
• Embarrassing First Name: One strip implies that his first name is actually Sebastian, and that he isn't too fond of it.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": He doesn't answer to Sebastian.
• Genius Ditz: He's actually genuinely competent at killing dragons, and fighting in general. He's just also kind of a naïve moron.
• Last of His Kind: The last Dragoon around.
• Nice Guy: He is unfailingly polite, even to Black Mage.
• Put on a Bus: After his arc is over, he leaves the story. But comes Back for the Finale and, unlike the countless cameos within said finale, he's actually the sixth most prominent character in it.
• Running Gag: Invariably lands on Black Mage when jumping.
• Unwitting Pawn: Muffin used him to slay every other big dragon (well, not all of them. They missed one or two, or a lot).

King Steve

King Steve: Did I ever tell you about the time I built this castle all by hand?
Princess Sara: It's 400 years old, dad.
King Steve: Yes, yes. I designed it that way, you know.

The very, very, very stupid king of Corneria.

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• 0% Approval Rating: To the point where half of his subjects, when given a choice, preferred to get a sword through their heads than to be ruled by King Steve forever.
• Brick Joke: See The Cloud Cuckoo Lander Was Right below.
• The Caligula: He starts wars with other countries and murders his own subjects on a whim. Plus, he likes to wear shoes made from baby skin. Fresh daily. That cry. His severe idiocy does not help matters.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Hoo boy... He thinks he has invented imagination and eating, that he's running for election despite being a king, and against a length of string nonetheless, that a coffee stain on his shirt is his right-hand man... And that's not even the tip of the iceberg.
• The Cloud Cuckoo Lander Was Right: Turns out one can drill for mana.
• The Ditz: He's even stupider than Fighter.
• Imaginary Enemy: His political rival Length of String. Until King Steve assassinates him.
• Imaginary Friend: Right Hand Man Rodney the coffee stain.
• Laughably Evil: His is despotism is hilarious.
• Too Dumb to Live: He is basically only kept alive by a mix of dumb luck and apathy.
• With This Herring: The apparent source of his characterization is that he believed the only possible aid or reward the Light Warriors would want for saving his daughter is a vague direction on the one end and building a bridge that he was already going to build on the other.
• Worthy Opponent: Thief considers him to be the world's foremost criminal mind.

Princess Sara

The far more competent daughter of King Steve, her kidnapping by Garland starts off the plot.

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• Action Girl: Well, Fighter certainly thought so when he saw her borrowing his sword and slaughtering a giant with it.
• Damsel in Distress: Parody of the trope, in that constant kidnapping led to her learning some things of evil from villains.
• Demoted to Extra: A big part of the Dark Warrior and King Steve sub-plots earlier on, but Drizz'l and Left-Hand Man Gary essentially take her place.
• Only Sane Man: Until her role as the sane one was replaced, that is.
• Politically-Active Princess: She has this role due to Alternative Character Interpretation (compared to her Damsel in Distress Final Fantasy counterpart). Mostly because leaving King Steve to his own devices would pretty much be the end of their dynasty.
• So Proud of You: To Garland's evil voice.

Chaos

"I am the yawning chasm from before the before; the darkness after the end of all things. I am nothing and no thing is eternal."

The Big Bad of the series, an omnicidal God of Evil dedicated to nothing but chaos and destruction...and actually a rather pleasant guy, all around.

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• Affably Evil: Rather sporting to the Light Warriors and, well, anyone who wants to destroy the world in a "cakeological singularity" can't be all bad.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Invoked. Killed offscreen by White Mage and three brand new characters.
• Brought Down to Normal: "Chaos! You're too tall!"
• Composite Character: Final Fantasy I's Chaos with Fomortiis' sprites, or just Fomortiis' head on Sarda's body.
• Eviler than Thou: To Sarda, possessing him.
• For the Evulz: Seems to genuinely love living up to his name with random acts of screwing people over.
  Chaos: Yes, you may do this thing.
  Red Mage: Score.
  Chaos: And take as long as you like. As long as it takes no more than 24 of your Earth hours.
  Red Mage: But you said-
  Chaos: I'm Chaos!
• Generic Doomsday Villain: Invoked trope. He wants to destroy all of existence out of a misguided belief that it would be chaotic. Unfortunately, White Mage explains to him that such a thing would create perfect order.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: While he did get mentioned about once a year, he still comes from nowhere (literally).
• Greater-Scope Villain: This IS based on Final Fantasy after all. "Darko, the Dark God of the Dark" says that all the monsters in the world are "fragments" of Chaos.
• Hijacked by Ganon: Possesses Sarda's body after a Phlebotinum Overload and threatens to destroy the universe towards the end of the comic.
• Meaningful Name: Apparently his full name is Chaos Doombringer.
• The Powers That Be: Obviously, what with him being the elder god of destruction. When challenged about his desire to destroy the universe with cake, his response is, 'it's a little beyond your ability to influence.'
• The Unfought: Well, unfought by the Light Warriors, at least.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Being Chaos and all.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Planned to give Black Mage the same fate as everyone else in the world.

Matoya

A powerful, blind witch who sends the Light Warriors on a quest for a rat tail. Dating the god of dragons.

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• Crystal Ball: She's introduced to the story because she lost it. So she did the logical thing: waited in a monster-haunted cave in some very remote location to entrust its recovery to the first group of people too stupid to avoid a monster-haunted cave in some very remote location.
• Forced Transformation: Turns people who annoy her into frogs.
• Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: She's dating Bahamut, god-king of dragons. The anatomical challenges are not explained. Though she tries. In detail.
• Interspecies Romance: As noted above, she's dating Bahamut, a dragon.

The Cultists

Thief: You're not going to have to incest at us first, are you?
Cultist 1: No, we don't do that!
Cultist 2: Any more!
Mrr'grt: As much!

A cult of Cthulhumanoids trying to summon an elder god to destroy the world.

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• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Their rituals include Human Sacrifice, turning their bodies into hosts for otherworldly parasites, and tea parties.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Actually got close to ending reality in both of their appearances, but they still pale in comparison to the Fiends, Sarda, and the Light Warriors.
• A Degree in Useless: The leader was a philosophy major, so "nutjob cultist is the only job I can hold."
• Embarrassing First Name: They all have girl names, though this doesn't seem to bother them.
• Filler Villain: In their first appearance they are fillers since the entire arc has 0 impact on the story.
• Straw Nihilist: Naturally, being a parody of Lovecraft's works, they comically go all nothing-matters-before-the-Old-One.
• Omnicidal Maniac: They are fine with bringing the end of the world.
• Punctuation Shaker: Those girl names are weirdly spelled, such as "Suh'zahne".
• Religion of Evil: They are a cult who wants to destroy the world and worship whatever they feel will help that end.
• Unexplained Recovery: They are all murdered in their first appearance, only to show up again later with no explination. They flat out deny being killed the first time.

Astos

The chancellor of the elf kingdom, who looks after Elfland while the king is indisposed and the prince is away.

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• Anti-Climax Boss: Invoked; See Talking the Monster to Death.
• Evil Chancellor: Yeah, everyone saw this coming.
• Evil Plan: If the Light Warriors were killed by Drizz'l or the assassins, he would have simply plunged Elf Land into a dark age under his kingship. When the Light Warriors attacked him, he was going to use that to create a civil war.
• Smug Snake: He is a less competent, more sleazy Thief.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Literally - Red Mage and Black Mage tried to come up with a Pre-Mortem One-Liner before fighting Astos, but it was such an awful pun that it ended up killing him.
• Villain with Good Publicity: As far as "good publicity" is possible among elves.

Warmech

"BEHOLD MY HUMAN LASER!"

A robot survivor of an extinct civilization.

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• Bus Crash: Kills himself off-screen.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Spent long, lonely years trying to develop a version of tennis that could be played by one person. One robot person. Who has no arms.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Lampshaded for laughs. The Light Warriors are pretty grumpy about the fact that a high-tech robot is inexplicably walking around in their somewhat-medieval-ish world.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: Again: tennis.
• Hugh Mann: Pretends to be human simply by getting a moustache.
• Logic Bomb: He is eventually defeated by this—he claims that he is human and he will laser to death anyone who says otherwise, at which it's pointed out that if he were human, he wouldn't have a laser.
• Walking Tank: A literal example.

Akbar

"Suckers!"

A merchant who continuously sells the Light Warriors a variety of useless and broken objects he claims will help them in their quest.

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• Evil Redhead: A red haired charlatan.
• Karma Houdini: As shown in the epilogue, apparently no one has ever brought him to justice for fraud or unscrupulous practices, since his businesses are still operating.
• Honest John's Dealership: Completely with Suspiciously Specific Denial. "Akbar's Boats—NOT Deathtraps."
• Shout-Out: Along with Jeff, two characters from Matt Groening's Life in Hell.

Jeff

"When I say deathtrap, I MEAN deathtrap!"

A turbaned merchant who openly sells dangerously shoddy products and services.

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• Honest John's Dealership: Inverts this with Truth in Advertising while still selling the same kind of lemons.
• Shout-Out: Along with Akbar.

The Sulk

One of Vilbert's friends.

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• Captain Ersatz: He's an angsty expy of The Incredible Hulk.
• The Eeyore: He likes to well, sulk, and listen to the depressing music of The Cure and Morrissey.
• Hulk Speak: Being a parody of Hulk, naturally.

The Real Light Warriors

The people actually destined to save the world from Chaos, they got to the recruiting station a bit too late.

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• Butt-Monkey: Whenever we see these guys, they're usually getting screwed over.
• The Chew Toy: When you consider how they were supposed to be the heroes, their suffering is very disheartening.
• Cosmic Plaything: Even when the Light Warriors aren't screwing them, things rarely work out for these guys.
• Good Counterpart: Since the Light Warriors are the very definition of Villain Protagonists, they are very heroic. To drive the point home, while the RLWs use character sprites of Fighter, Thief, and Red Mage's upgraded classes from the first Final Fantasy game (Knight, Ninja, Red Wizard, respectively) Black Mage's is a White Wizard.
• Heroic Build: Their sprites give off this appearance, befitting to their heroic nature.
• Hero of Another Story: Even with though they Missed the Call, they still manage to save the multiverse and acquire ludicrously powerful items in the process. This, however, makes them very visible looting targets for the other Light Warriors.
• Missed the Call: They were supposed to be the ones to become chosen by fate, but because they were out level grinding, the main characters got the job.
• No Name Given: The only member of the group whose name was revealed is the Red Wizard named Barry.
• No-Respect Guy: All of them really, considering they were the real heroes destined to save the world. Barry the Red Wizard gets the worst of it seeing how he's always blamed for whatever goes wrong.
• Think Nothing of It: When they do pull off some heroics, they are very humble about it.

Bard

The Fifth Light Warrior who (probably) pissed Sarda off.

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• Forgotten Fallen Friend: None of the other Light Warriors remember he existed. Granted, Sarda made sure that he didn't exist, so it'd be hard to remember him.
• Ret-Gone: It's implied that Sarda wiped him from space-time for something to do with his lute. About the only part they remember is a vague sense of not wanting to deal with Sarda for extended periods of time lest it give him an excuse to do this to them.

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