This is a list of all characters appearing in the game Eternal City.
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The Commander
The character representing the player, put at the center of the entire story. Depending on the gender the player chooses, they are a teenage black-haired boy or a brunette girl dressed in highschool uniform. Though appearing ordinary and without any memories of their past, it is certain that there is more to them as the story goes on.
- Action Survivor: A requirement given how much the human-strength Commander finds themselves beside their Wielders in fights. Examples include:
- In Vera's personal quest where they have to eliminate some monsters, the Commander's dragged along for the ride, staying mostly on the sidelines while the Wielder herself does all the fighting and planning. By the end, though sounding a bit miffed, Vera tells them that they're fine as they are.
- During When the Wind Blows, on the route to the When We Embrace ending, the Commander has to run through a tower full of hostile robots and mass-produced No. 1000s, all while the Ouroboros Squad dwindles one by one every floor and increasing the danger, using a combat stim made by Alexia that boosts their physical ability to avoid the threats as their comrades fight.
- The Alleged Boss: Being a Commander who can empower Wielders and lead them doesn't guarantee their loyalty, or come with absolute authority or forced obedience. As much as some Wielders would listen to the Commander and like them very much, plenty would ignore the Commander's own say in matters.
- Ambiguously Bi: Regardless of your chosen gender, Wielders will still like the Commander as they are. It also doesn't matter when it comes to the Commander's preferences themselves.
- Clueless Chick-Magnet: Even if being an average teenager (power-boosting aside) includes not being a genius, dense is putting it lightly for them.
- At an unspecified past point, Cybil has fallen for the Commander. Besides the handful of moments she keeps to herself in her stories, her featured event has you finding her lost books, some of which she explains with embarrassment include recipes and a romance novel. It's not exactly subtle why she has such an interest with the oblivious Commander around her...
- Lulu doesn't exactly make it easy with all the name-calling and then some, but in her Fireworks Festival story, she says she doesn't like the crowds. The Commander then asks her why would she come anyway. Cue Lulu staring at them for one withering moment.
- Leah's stories post-Conquer make it obvious to anyone watching that Miss Cupid has fallen for the Commander. Unfortunately for Leah, the Commander never notices all her blushing and flustering and such, and it remains ambiguous whether her Dying Declaration of Love in her City for Two ending got through.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": While texts sometime refer to the player by name, all voiced dialogue refer to them as "Commander" ("taichou" in JP dubbing).
- Featureless Protagonist: Subverted; they get two portraits of a male and female teenager. Their sprites don't ever get shown in any cutscenes except in promotional videos and rare in-game CGs featuring them.
- Friend to All Children: They have a notable affinity for children, best seen when helping child(ish) Wielders like Bahisa, Haku, Rin, Aike, and No. 1000. In her personal story, Donghua in particular took to them in just a moment when the other staff members were having trouble calming her.
- Frontline General: Despite their lack of combat ability, they're always in the thick of action alongside their Wielders to command them, which has led to many an incident where they're put in harm's way.
- Healing Hands: While it never happens in-story, switching to another Wielder in gameplay heals them for 50% of their max HP.
- Identity Amnesia: Although the cycle ensures that the world itself resets, including the memories of everyone trapped in it, the Commander in particular has no known past beyond them waking up in the infirmary. The most Ann and Antoneva could say is that they were a random person who passed the Central Department's Commander test and apparently fainted afterwards, who was then taken to the infirmary. Several flashbacks such as them making a deal with Viatin makes it clear that they've been up to a lot of things 'back' then.
- Kid Hero: In appearance and from what's described by others, like Ranulk remarking they're a "kid" in his personal route, the Commander is a teenager who might have come from a high school. Their age is debatable however, given that they've been looping an untold number of times, let alone their potential origins as one of the "gods".
- Loved by All: Most, if not every Wielder under their command favor them greatly. Even the most morally dubious or outright psychotic/villainous ones like Iscariot will treat them well.
- Magnetic Hero: Without fail, the Commander manages to win over any Wielder to themselves, from the biggest authorities anywhere to the lowliest and nastiest of the lot. This is made all the more incredible when this happens in any story cycle, where over the course of seven days, they win the loyalty of the focus Wielder(s) of that story. Their Amnesiac Resonance may have a lot to do with it too to have a reputation for being such an effective and well-beloved Commander.
- The Main Characters Do Everything: While it seems like the Commander is the biggest drive for progress in most chapters, and downplayed since there are plenty of other characters helping, it's justified in that the Commander is given a lot of authority over many Central Department resources, like mobilizing Wielders at any time (for battles against monsters and Black Gates) and ordering constructions of facilities. Outside of the Department, the Commander is the only one (besides Hiro and off-mentioned Commanders) capable of not only powering up Wielders but also purifying Black Cores, making their abilities much coveted by many. On a larger scale, they are the only character who arranged for their future selves to retain their memories of past loops.
- Naïve Newcomer: As a rookie Commander (leaving out the moments of Amnesiac Resonance) without their memory, they tend to act straightforward and nice without much complexity to their actions. This becomes exemplified during the Key to the Box chapter when Kachigo likewise became a Wielder on the same day the Commander woke up, which is how they connect with each other.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the Steps Toward the Abyss route, choosing to shoot Hiro will free the Mortified Rin and let her go on a rampage in the city. Mortifying your Wielders or letting Hiro's experiments go through will also lead you to the definite bad ending of the route.
- Purely Aesthetic Gender:
- Gender has very little effect on the story, besides the pronouns matching your selected gender and changing the Commander's appearance in cutscenes.
- Subverted in one specific instance during the Freedom route, where the Commander is contacted by an alternate version of the Commander. You gain the choice to decide whether you're hearing a boy or a girl.
- Super-Empowering: As a Commander, their primary ability is to boost a Wielder's powers. Hiro pessimistically refers to Commanders as walking batteries, not helped by the Central Department imprisoning the Commander in a cell designed to drain their power for Wielders outside in Unsullied Doll.
- Support Party Member: In battles, both gameplay and storywise, the one and only power they have is to empower Wielders who would do the fighting. Them doing fighting of any kind, especially when conventional weaponry wouldn't do more than annoy monsters or Wielders (if it came to it), tends to end badly.
Wielders in General
Wielders are people who use Divine Artifacts, empowering themselves with a mystical energy known as Thauma to become unparalleled forces of nature.
- An Adventurer Is You: Wielders are sorted into six classes—Warrior, Tank, Mage, Assassin, Shooter, and Support—that define their role in battle, further divided into two types based on their attack range.
- Melee:
- Warriors possess both the health to live through close engagements while dishing out high damage.
- Tanks have a large amount of health and can Draw Aggro from enemies, taking heat off their teammates.
- Assassins have low health but high damage, often boasting stealth and warp skills.
- Ranged:
- Mages specialize in dealing magical damage. In comparison to Shooters, they have lower range but deal large bursts of damage, sometimes having movement-restricting skills.
- Shooters can deal damage from afar, having the longest range of the six classes.
- Supporters focus on healing and/or buffing their team over dealing damage. Certain Supporters can also have skills focused on debuffing enemies or crowd control.
- Melee:
- Aerith and Bob: You've got the unusual Antoneva, Anka, Ranulk and Senmo Shika, the mythical types in Askr, Ymir, Sigrifa and Iscariot, the comparatively normal Ann, Bonnie, Cybil and Helga, and the Eastern-style Kachigo, Kaliyyeh, Ririko and Li Ruoyin.
- Artifact of Power: Divine Artifacts ("Artifacts" for short), which are how their wielders gain power and thus named as Artifact Wielders. The main points about them can be condensed into these bullet points:
- An Artifact chooses their Wielder, letting the latter gain power from it in the form of Thauma. Since each Artifact is unique, no Wielder's power is the same as each other.
- Thauma is the energy Artifacts generate and Wielders manipulate for their powers. Wielders cannot live without Thauma, so parting from their Artifact is essentially suicide. If Wielders were to overflow with Thauma, which can either arise from overusing their Artifact or staying in places with high concentrations of Thauma, they Mortify as a result.
- Artifacts can change the physiology of their Wielders (without their consent) to suit the Artifact's power, if not theme.
- According to Hiro, Artifacts originate from the Dimension, presumably transported from it through Black Gates, hence the meteoric rise in Wielders during the Black Gate Event. Any information about their origins beyond that is unknown at the moment.
- It is possible for non-biological and non-living beings/creations to link to an Artifact, or gain sentience as a result. Leos, Ann, and No. 1000 are some examples.
- Empowered Badass Normal: Before picking up their Artifacts, some Wielders are already well-known in their fields of work. For example, Kachigo is an expert kendo practitioner, Saihamm and Vera are well-known soldiers, and Elusha who rose from being a countryside girl to an infamous socialite that always gambles with high stakes.
- Loyalty Mission: Every Wielder has a "conquer" side story the player can progress by going on patrols with them and entering their special events, provided that they reach the appropriate affection level for their events and cleared conditions to unlock their story if there are any (though one should beware of things they need to prepare ahead of time, like having a lot of Coins on hand). Completing their stories boosts their max Kageso Cost by three and each, if not some of their Ability stats by a point or two. Ann and Antoneva are exceptions to this, given that they star in their own routes acting as their own side story.
- Mana: Thauma is a foreign energy Wielders manipulate that lets them perform inhuman feats and magical effects, which remains in the human body alongside Anima, the energy that 'represents' their human side. What makes Thauma foreign is that it comes from the Dimension, which itself is full of the stuff, and when a Wielder uses more of their powers (or stay in the Dimension too long), this increases the amount of Thauma they carry, creating an imbalance of Thauma and Anima through an overflow of the former, and ultimately Mortifying into a Monster. Conversely, if a Wielder has low or no Thauma, they die from a lack of it. Preventing this imbalance is what Commanders are really there for since they can purify Wielders—though this is done by using their lifeforce.
- Morphic Resonance: Upon receiving an Artifact, their Wielders sometimes have their bodies changed to suit the Artifact's powers or themes. A few cases include:
- Cybil's body mostly changes to that of paper, forcing her to avoid fires that can easily or water drenching her fragile paper body.
- In addition to sprouting two horns on her forehead, Dong Hua's body and mind regressed in age, turning her younger than she initially was and causing her to lose her memories periodically.
- One Person, One Power: Every person always has one specific power, some which can be straightforward and obvious, others being rather unusual and vague; Bahisa's power is a subconscious manifestation of "twisted desire/wish", appearing as black hands reaching from underneath her skirt to help her fulfill her "wish".
- Starter Mon: You get Ann at the start before getting a second C-base grade Wielder from your first summoning. One of three will appear: Osagi, Kaliyyeh, or Niya.
Central Department
General Tropes
- Army of Thieves and Whores: A number of Wielders registered with them are of the unsavory and shady sort. Examples include experimental subjects Bahisa, Dagoth and Muya, Olucia being secretly a love-obsessed serial killer, Vern who, put bluntly, sleeps around, Wilt the underworld information dealer, Rinmu who's in it for the machine parts no matter where they come from, Kuroha Renka being an actual thief...
- Heroes "R" Us: The Department is a legal governing organization that is mainly concerned with slaying monsters of the Dimension, sealing Black Gates, keeping Wielder activity in harmony with the normal human order of Confluence and the rest of the world by extension. Wielders affiliated with the Department are obligated to fight monsters wherever they are, especially when the Commander calls on them.
- Super Registration Act: They have a majority of Wielders living in the city register with them (or take them in) not just to gain forces to stop Black Gates with, but also to regulate Wielder activity and ensure they don't go on rampages. As is typical of the trope, this helps to provide an image of safety for the Muggle civilians, though Antoneva and Anka confess that it's a shaky position to keep even today.
Hiro
A middle-aged Commander with an easygoing demeanor, but is actually the founder of the Central Department. He seems nice, but you will soon discover the lengths he will go for his own agendas...
- Cool Old Guy: He at first presents himself as a carefree guy who gives out strawberry candy as though he were your grandfather. Unfortunately, there is more to him than that.
Rachel
An eccentric but talented scientist placed in charge of the Central Department's scientific research. Nothing ever makes his day like an opportunity to research Divine Artifacts and the Dimension.
The Seven
The seven Wielders who lead the Central Department alongside Hiro. Antoneva, Anka, and Elusha are in charge of logistics, while Olucia, Ranulk, and Flora take matters related to combat. The last, Darvela, is only known as the "Son of Darkness", who works in black operations.
Other Staff Members
Ordinary staff working in the Central Department. They are sometimes mentioned offscreen in the Wielders' profiles or in some side stories.
Inhabitants of Confluence
General Tropes
Kasumi
The master of the Hakuya House. Though much about her is unknown, this enigmatic woman helps you in unlocking memories you did not realize you had of Wielders.
- Dub Name Change: The "Hakuya House" (hakuya meaning "midnight sun" in Japanese) is different from its original Chinese name, "白夜馆" (lit. "White Night Pavilion"). Both refer to the same natural phenomenon either way.
Kachigo's Mother
The Dimension
General Tropes
Leviathan
Mimic of Flora's Husband
The Seventh Trumpet
General Tropes
Ron
Griffith
The Gods
The Girl
Seraphim
A mysterious girl, other times known as "God", who appears every now and then as she contemptuously watches the story of you and Confluence play out from her throne.
The Teacher
Essolin
Others
Eternal Paradise Troupe
Traveling the world and spreading cheer with their awesome acts, this troupe which Yuri and Starfire belong to has recently arrived in Confluence to do their work (and pay for their destitute conditions). That said, the group was and still has roots in shady businesses...
Garuda Squad
A military team of Wielders originating from the Seventh Trumpet, but have broken off from it for their own purposes. Their five members are composed of their leader, Leiyin, her adjutant Lena, and Cross, Angelica and Sloan.
As a team:
- A Day in the Limelight: The entire squad stars in their own chapter, Wings of Dawn.
Cross
Angelica
Sloan
Ouroboros Squad
