Characters / Goblin Slayer: Other Significant Players

Main Character Index
Traveling Companions and Loved Ones: (Goblin Slayer | Priestess)
Adventurers Guild: (Guild Members | Staff)
Other Characters: Other Significant Players | The Gods | Antagonists

The Shout Outs, Captain Ersatz, Expy, "No Celebrities Were Harmed", Continuity Nods and Mythology Gags references regarding to specific characters go here.

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High ranking players (royalty, nobles and other high ranking positions)

Goblin Slayer's Allies

Sword Maiden

Voiced by: Aya Endo (Japanese), Meg McClain (English)

With these eyes, I see many things... things you cannot imagine...

A blind woman and former Gold-ranked adventurer who runs the Temple of Law as Archbishop of the Supreme God. Having heard of Goblin Slayer's achievements, she enlists him and his party to slay goblins infesting the sewers underneath Water Town, the city her temple oversees.

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• The Ace: She made her mark in history ten years ago for her role in defeating the Demon Lord, in particular ending the machinations of an order known as the Evil Sect. Even long after her retirement, the group is no closer to summoning their god thanks to her power and influence.
• A-Cup Angst: She goes through this in Daikatana, wishing she was bigger like some fellow adventuresses. Needless to say, she gets her wish and then some.
• All of the Other Reindeer: In her early days as Female Bishop, word got out that she failed her very first quest, a goblin-slaying mission no less. Almost every adventurer since gave her the cold shoulder because they didn't want to associate with such a beacon of bad luck and (perceived) incompetence, forcing her to peddle her services as an appraiser just to get by.
• Blind Seer: An encounter with goblins early in her adventuring days left her eyes burned blind, but she was afterwards blessed with Aura Vision that perceives enough to let her get around with minimal need for aid.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: Her sword is gilded. Justified as she uses it as a Magic Staff and Staff of Authority rather than a melee weapon.
• Blow You Away: Knows the spell "Blast Wind."
• Breakout Character: She headlines Spin-Off web novel Goblin Slayer Side Story 2: Tsubanari no Daikatana about her quest to take out the Demon Lord that was her original claim to fame, alongside her old party of adventurers.
• Broken Ace: Mixed with Broken Bird — a single mistake was all it took to make her what she is now. She is blinded, mentally-shattered, and instilled with a crippling fear of goblins. Her nights are constantly plagued with nightmares. Worst of all, no one would ever pay heed to her cries for help, because what would they, and a legendary hero like her, have to fear against the most common and lowliest of mooks?
• Broken Bird: A fragile and traumatized, but still lovely young woman. Daikatana describes her as "a girl of scant happiness," and adds the detail of laboring under harsh expectations before her disastrous adventuring debut.
• Broken Smile: When Goblin Slayer rejected her romantic entreatments and mustered no sympathy for her past experiences, she cracked a wry, vacant little grin to his turned back as her inner demons rose up to drag her under completely... until Goblin Slayer relented and spoke words and promises that at last brought her reprieve from the trauma and nightmares of her past.
• Cat Smile: In the manga, when Goblin Slayer asks if she knew all along about the Water Town goblin nest before hiring him, and admits to having no basis for suspecting any conspiracy and had decided to interrogate all the quest-givers on a whim, Sword Maiden gives a tiny, rueful smirk at having fallen for the bluff and confessing so readily.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: She wants to help her fellow adventurers and work towards saving the world in whatever small way she can. If She can't be on the frontlines, she provide support or advocate on other's behalf.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: While speaking with Noble Fencer in Volume 6 and learning about her being rescued by Goblin Slayer, she immediately casts a spell to read her mind and learn her opinion and intentions toward him. When she visits the Adventurer's Guild to ask Goblin Slayer to be a temporary bodyguard in Volume 8, she uses the opportunity to scope out her competition.
• Color-Coded Eyes: Promo art and the anime show Sword Maiden's eyes to be a washed out blue-grey in color, further paled by her cataracts, and she more than fits their historic connotations of beauty, cynicism, and altered vision.
• Combat Medic: As Female Bishop she had some healing miracles and was trained in first aid.
• Commonality Connection: Feels kinship with Noble Fencer for their... mutual trauma, and takes her in a part-time assistant and informal apprentice when she sets up shop in Water Town as Female Merchant.
• Covered with Scars: Her body is covered in several faint white lines that have all mostly healed by the time the events of the story take place. Her eyes, which she keeps behind a blindfold, were less so. All evidence of having been a former toy for goblins.
• Cowardly Lion: Even as late as Volume 8, she is not over her phobia of goblins despite how much peace of mind Goblin Slayer has helped her regain. She locks herself in her carriage for a full day after goblin wolf riders attempt to harass her caravan, and when she is sent as The Cavalry to get Goblin Slayer's injured party out of the Dungeon of the Dead, she is unable to bring herself to take any more active measures than shooting off one lighting spell from a far distance and clinging to her Alligator familiar as she watches her battle-priest retinue charge in for her (which is still an improvement in itself).
• Defiled Forever: How she feels concerning her... experience in goblin captivity. Since There Are No Therapists, she simply can't move on.
• Determinator: Even after being raped, abandoned by her first party, ridiculed by scum on the street for being "weak", left with no support for her PTSD, and reduced to working for a pittance, she still wants to be a hero.
• Dork Knight: Ex-Gold rank adventurer and an archbishop of the Church of the Supreme God. Gets chided by her attendant for poor sleeping behavior, sulks for it, and nibbles on her pillow.
• Double Entendre: Couldn't resist cracking a pointed remark about Goblin Slayer "sharing a bed" with her and Priestess to heal him with Resurrection, cementing her status as The Tease.
• Due to the Dead: Prays for destroyed undead to be able to rest in peace, even in the Dungeon of the Dead, where she knows that most zombies and skeletons aren't necesarily rising due to unquiet spirits.
• Eating the Eye Candy: A slightly different take on the norm given her condition, but the Resurrection miracle provided ample opportunity to burn the sensation of Goblin Slayer's naked chest into her memories.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: As a Gold-ranked adventurer, Sword Maiden is regarded as one of the kingdom's best individual combatants, is expected to take on quests of extreme governmental importance if they come up, and has been granted a position of national prestige in her church to occupy her peacetime.
• Enemy Scan: Her ability to identify items and loot is a magic boon granted by her god. It can also detect curses.
• Eye Scream: She wasn't always blind. When goblins kidnapped her, among other things they burned her eyes with a torch.
• Famed in Story: She was formerly a member of the adventuring party that slew a Demon Lord, becoming a household name in the process. A decade later, she is still regarded as a Living Legend.
• Familiar: An albino alligator. It had been defending the sewers underneath Water Town well before Goblin Slayer's arrival and is the reason there are no giant rats to hunt.
• Flashback Echo: In the manga, Sword Maiden gets flashes of her time in the hands of goblins from just looking down at her own body.
• Foil:
  • Both Sword Maiden and Goblin Slayer had their lives forever altered by the machinations of goblins at a young age. Shackled by intense trauma and mental baggage, they are a pair of damaged goods who still pushed on and became successful adventurers. However, a closer look into their lives exhibits just how Sword Maiden is everything Goblin Slayer isn’t:
    • Sword Maiden is a stunningly beautiful woman whose looks and grace draws admiration from all, complemented by robes that show off her curves and leave little to the imagination. The only imperfection about her appearance is the blindfold that covers her useless eyes. Goblin Slayer isn’t too bad on the looks department either, but he covers everything behind plated armor and a closed helmet, and his eyes are never seen by the audience.
    • As an authority figure and dedicated caster of miracles, Sword Maiden rarely permits herself to take direct action, so she works through proxies such as hired help, astral projections, and familiars. Once she gets involved in a fight, though, she's packing enough power to bring even gods to their knees. Goblin Slayer is a frontlines man through and through, freely getting himself involved in the thick of combat. He's not an especially great fighter due to Crippling Overspecialization and cheap gear, but if it's good enough for goblins, then it's good enough for him.
    • Gold- and Silver-rank are granted only to the most powerful, skilled, and trustworthy adventurers as proof of their accomplishments. Naturally, Sword Maiden is utterly revered as an unquestioned Living Legend for defeating the Demon Lord. By contrast, Goblin Slayer’s skill as an adventurer is frequently doubted upon by skeptics, especially since he was only given his rank as the Guild’s sole goblin exterminator.
    • However, it is because of Sword Maiden's accolades that she ends up finding herself distanced from her peers, somebody to be admired from afar. Her subjects put too much faith in her abilities when she's the one who needs help the most. Until the events of Volume 2 occurred, she had virtually nothing to show for all the adulation heaped upon her. Goblin Slayer was mostly isolated too, but he’s always had at least someone willing to reach out to him and give support, be it his childhood friend, his receptionist, or his partners.
    • Sword Maiden's mental health issues are characterized by vivid night terrors, arrested development, and a desperate need for love from an empathetic soul. Because of this, she latches onto Goblin Slayer like a child does with a security blanket, and reveals another side of herself that is vulnerable, fanciful, coquettish, and occasionally even petty when she's not upholding her image. Goblin Slayer is also mentally inhibited and sometimes insecure, but his emotions are mostly numbed whenever he isn't in the midst of Tranquil Fury.
    • Ultimately, their fates at the hands of goblins have taken them through wildly different approaches with their lives, becoming the crux of the issue at the climax of Volume 2 — Sword Maiden had her innocence destroyed through degradation by torture and rape; for her, goblins were something to be feared. Indeed, her paralyzing phobia would plague her for years to come. Even so, she managed to save the world, and would go on to live a mostly functional life as a world-renowned holy woman. Meanwhile, Goblin Slayer had his innocence destroyed along with his sister and his hometown; for him, goblins were meant to be butchered with a vengeance. This anger has been focused into an understandable desire to take down as many of the bastards as possible, and it has worked wonders for the people he saved, Sword Maiden included. He's never going to aim for higher though, and his future prospects aren't good if he's left to his own devices.
  • Not only do she and Priestess share some physical traits, but she too differentiates from Goblin Slayer's age by about five years, behaved very much like the younger girl in her adventuring days, and understood how menacing goblins can be at around the same age as well. Given some years, experience, and... filling out, Priestess may mature to resemble Sword Maiden in both stature and position. So it is not too difficult to infer that she is a possible outcome of Priestess' future, had Goblin Slayer been too late to rescue her in their first encounter.
• Freudian Excuse: She's an emotional wreck behind closed doors, and a frequent victim of night terrors. For an archbishop and a major figure, she can be surprisingly cynical about heroes and politics. Even with those she likes, she can be unnerving at times, as Priestess can attest to, and some of her actions (like attempting to seduce Goblin Slayer with her personal story about being a rape victim) show signs of a not-entirely well woman. Just like how Goblin Slayer's experience with the monsters left a lasting impression on his psyche, her experience as a prisoner broke her completely, except she's now too afraid to ever face goblins on her own.
• Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: Samurai Captain finds her to be surprisingly physically active for a demure spellcaster of noble heritage.
• Good Is Not Soft: In spite of her beauty and gentle appearance, she can be surprisingly harsh at times, such as warning Priestess that Goblin Slayer cannot protect her forever directly after implying first-hand experience with goblin savagery. She also takes direct control of her alligator to stalk the underground labyrinth, tearing monsters apart and chasing away adventurers to prevent casualties.
• Handicapped Badass: Back in her heyday. She was blinded before she went on to become a legendary hero, performing the deeds that promoted her into Gold-ranked status.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Downplayed, but Sword Maiden is a bit of a social drinker, getting noted in Daikatana as having a higher alcohol tolerance than most of her party despite being a very skinny teenage girl, and in Volume 8 of the main series being very eager to share some pulls of sweetened wine with Dwarf Shaman from a street vendor in the capital even as her carriage rides up to the castle where she is about to participate in urgent meetings.
• Heroic Lineage: One of her long-ago ancestors was a Platinum-ranked hero. This put enormous pressure on her as a young girl growing up in a time of ascendent monstrous threats.
• Heroic RRoD: Casts Fusion Blast by herself by entering Overcast, burning and exhausting herself.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Years of the people around her being unable to accept the idea that she could have ever been any less capable or untouchable than she is now have caused her to internalize a self-image of herself as still the hapless, unfortunate rookie that got overpowered by goblins on her first quest, referring to herself as "Just a weak little girl" in need of saving, despite having long since risen to become a demon-slaying, world-saving Gold Rank. Also, in Daikatana, she needed constant assurance that she was doing a good job with the map she was in charge of drawing.
• High Priest: She's an archbishop, after all.
• Hypocrite: Chastises Priestess during their shared bath scene for leaning on Goblin Slayer as a source of strength, and warns her to keep in mind that he inevitably will fall someday. By the end of the Water Town goblin extermination quest, Sword Maiden has formed a romantic obsession for Goblin Slayer, to the point of shamelessly propositioning him on his last day in the city and using the memory of his martial prowess as a sleep aid.
• I Did What I Had to Do: The vivisected girl in a back alley of Water Town that kick-started the whole investigation into potential goblins hiding in the sewers was a Frame-Up... on the goblins. Actual goblins would have taken the girl back to their nest first, not cut her apart in human territory, something that Goblin Slayer caught on from the start. The girl was really a victim of the Evil Sect's rituals, but the order was supposed to be dead, and Sword Maiden saw an opportunity to finally bring a proper scare and justification to actively hunt goblins in the sewers. Even if it means pinning the blame on the wrong culprit.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: After losing her old adventuring party and finding herself isolated in a sea of supplicants, sycophants, and servants, she is slowly falling apart from the need for someone, anyone at all, who understands her pain, likes her for herself, and is willing to comfort her in the face of the terrors of her past that still haunt her.
• Insecure Love Interest: She is subtly upset upon learning that Goblin Slayer has a young woman waiting for him at home, and envies both her and Priestess for being much more emotionally resilient compared to a "desperate, weak girl" such as herself.
• Intimate Healing: What her miracle Resurrection essentially is. So long as the target is not actually dead, it can stitch shattered bones together, and restore a body to peak health and stamina. However, due to its extensive setup and highly specific requirements, she almost never uses it.
• Intimate Psychotherapy: Goblin Slayer, a fellow victim of goblins, seemed to fit what Sword Maiden wanted out of a confidant, and not just to empathize and soothe her anxieties: Come the opportunity to spend time together in private, her repeated pleas all but screamed exactly how she wanted him to "comfort" her. Which is why she's crushed to learn the hard way that Goblin Slayer wouldn't (or couldn't) reciprocate her. He just kills goblins — nothing more, nothing less. Sword Maiden would just have to make do with that instead.
• Ironic Nickname: She is called the "Sword Maiden" but, as her backstory reveals, she was raped by goblins, thus is not a maiden at all. In a light novel interlude, a cultist of the gods of chaos spitefully lampshades this fact.
• I Should Have Been Better: Constantly berates herself for freezing up at jujst the mere mention of goblins in Daikatana. Saqmurai Captain assures her that the rest of the party can handle them and she just needs to keep her cool for the other dangers of the dungeon.
• The Jinx: No one wants to party with her after she escaped the goblins because losing to them in the first place got her labelled as "unlucky."
• Knight in Sour Armor: Though semi-retired, she remains a high-powered and stalwart keeper of the peace, and champion of the Supreme God. However, she remains all but psychologically broken from her early experiences of the depths of the depravity of monsters, and during the occupation of Water Town by Evil Sectarians and a goblin nest she is aghast at how none of the city natives seem to care about the periodic disappearances and butchering so long as they aren't in their neighborhoods. Not helped by the fact she can't get the army, who could effectively handle the problem, to help because the King is focused on using the army to exterminate demons.
• Light 'em Up: Holy Smite is a blast of burning holy energy directly from her god to her heretical foes.
• Living Lie Detector: She is also capable of invoking the Sense Lie miracle, and Noble Fencer strongly suspects that she was subjected to it when Sword Maiden suddenly started grilling her on her feelings towards Goblin Slayer.
• Love Confession: Or something to that effect to Goblin Slayer, seeing as he's the only one making an effort to help — everyone else sees her as a powerful figure, so they don't recognize her fear of goblins. Whether or not he acknowledges her words, or even hears them, is a different matter entirely.
  Sword Maiden: I... I cherish you...!
• Loving a Shadow: Sword Maiden's infatuation with Goblin Slayer began before she had ever met the man, having learned of his existence through folk songs. Once they meet, she willingly puts up with his brusque conduct, opens her heart to him, and more. It's quite a literal case too, considering her eyes; when she thinks of him, she imagines a figure clad in stalwart armor only tangentially related to Goblin Slayer's actual appearance. In the end of Volume 2, Sword Maiden finally snaps and undergoes a mental breakdown when he firmly rejects her pleas to relieve her anguish. Having said that, his last words afterward not only bring her back from the brink, but reinforce her love and desire to pursue him.
• Magic Focus Object: Certain spells require specific catalysts, such as a horn for "Blast Wind."
• Magical Gesture: Performs mudras as well as mantras to cast arcane magic.
• Magic Knight: In Daikatana it's noted that while Female Bishop is unused to being on the front lines, she is trained in wielding martial weapons, and is at least strong enough to cave in a brigand's head utterly with the hilt of her sword-staff.
• Magic Staff: A sword with gilded edges and scales hanging off the hilt, the sign of the Supreme God, serves as this.
• The Millstone: Is convinced she is this for the Golden Party, and reassurances by Samurai Captain only work for a short time.
• Most Common Superpower: Has one of the largest busts of the entire cast, and her backstory marks her as the most powerful, if now retired, adventurer properly introduced as of yet.
• Ms. Fanservice: She has a very voluptuous body, and gets both a Furo Scene and a Bedmate Reveal scene involving Priestess, with Goblin Slayer participating in the latter. Priestess herself has a hard time looking away.
• Naughty Nuns: For someone intended to be a High Priest, her ceremonial robes do a poor job at concealing her curves. She is also deeply in love with Goblin Slayer and throws herself at his arms, alas he is too single-minded in his quest to pay any attention.
• The Navigator: Took over as cartographer and direction-giver for the Golden Party from Myrmidon Monk.
• Never Gets Drunk: Or at least hungover, as she's noted to be tipsy after a night of merriment in Daikatana but is completely clear-headed the next day while Female Mage and even Myrmidon Monk are choking down hangover cures.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Her telling Priestess that there is good chance Goblin Slayer will die or disappear eventually, due to her own experiences, causes Priestess to Freak Out at a critical moment, nearly getting the entire party killed (or in the case of the females much, much worse).
• No Hero to His Valet: The one person who treats Sword Maiden as just a woman besides Goblin Slayer is her Attendant, who freely chides and jokes about her lovelorn ways. She used to be just as stiff as anyone else when Sword Maiden was hiding her pain, but she's grateful for the newfound casualness all the same, particularly when she transcribes her letters to Goblin Slayer for her with discretion.
• Not Herself: Says that the main reason she was so harsh with Priestess in the bath was because mind-melding with her alligator familiar taxed her enough to rob her of her usual patience.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: While Goblin Slayer's company were busy foiling Dark Elf's plan to summon Hecatoncheir in the flesh, Sword Maiden participated alongside a Platinum-ranked hero in fending off the genuine article within the spirit realm via Astral Projection. Said giant was so powerful, its mere presence manifested in the real world as the howling storm the company did battle in.
• Ornamental Weapon: Her sword is a glorified catalyst, decorated with a gold cap on the tip and hanging scales on the crossguard.
• Past Experience Nightmare: Plagued by nightmares about her time at the hands of goblins for years on end, until Goblin Slayer leaves her with a promise to always answer her call for salvation, even in her dreams. Her personal attendants note that she has slept soundly and restfully ever since.
• The Perils of Being the Best: Ever since she helped topple the Demon Lord, achieved the Gold-rank, and assumed her position as Archbishop, the people around her have stayed at arm's length and insisted on treating her as an all-powerful pillar of strength, when what she wants and desperately needs is someone she can be comforted by and be vulnerable around. The pressure to live up to her pedestal and hide the marks of her past trauma have beaten her psyche down almost more than the actual trauma itself. This is best exemplified in Volume 8, when the Capital's upper echelon, upon learning that goblins have taken the Princess to the Dungeon of the Dead, starts imploring Sword Maiden to head there and rescue her. Caught between their expectations, her violent flashbacks, and her goblin phobia, the poor woman came dangerously close to snapping like a twig.
• Psychic Link: Can establish one with her giant white alligator familiar to direct it in patrolling the sewers for monsters. She dislikes doing so because she then feels the sensations of everything it does.
• Psychotic Smirk: Samurai Captain is unnerved to discover that when helping to beat back rogue adventurers accosting them in the Dungeon of the Dead, Female Bishop often develops a small, cold, cruel smirk while putting them down.
• Rape as Backstory: Over ten years ago she was knocked unconscious and dragged into a goblin nest, where she was tortured and raped for an indefinite amount of time. How she managed to get out was not explained, but the experience left her scarred both physically and mentally, with no one to turn to for comfort.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: She too is one of the few people outside of Goblin Slayer's circle to fully comprehend the horrors goblins represent. However, she is unique in that she is in an actual position of power to make a change, and was the one who authorized the investigation and consequent purging of the sewers before hiring him.
• The Red Mage: She uses arcane magic as well as miracles, and could even combo-cast with Female Mage as Female Bishop. She claims not to see what's so valuable about the skill compared to a more advanced single-type caster.
• Reflectionless Useless Eyes: Though she's long since healed the worst of the burn scars on her face, the eyes themselves remain opaque and sightless under her blindfold.
• Sanity Slippage: She was actually much more well-adjusted as a marginalized rookie freshly recovered from her captivity than as a mature hero a decade past the event. Being separated from her old companions, having to shoulder the expectations of the entire nation, and being exposed to the Dungeon of the Dead have all worsened her mental condition exponentially.
• Sensory Overload: Gets almost knocked out by noisy or smelly places in Daikatana due to her Super Senses.
• Sewer Gator: She keeps a giant albino alligator as a Familiar, and uses it to patrol the sewers of Water Town. This is why Water Town never has giant rat extermination quests.
• Sex for Solace: Ultimately what she wants from Goblin Slayer is a positive sexual experience. The anime plays it up after the Resurrection miracle as she gets very touchy and snugly with a shirtless Goblin Slayer.
• Skilled, but Naive: Daikatana reveals her to have been this as an aspiring adventurer. Her initial class was Bishop and it's stated that any decent Appraiser (her fallback career) needs to have an extensive background in magical studies to properly detect enchantments and curses on loot. All of this suggests either an exceptional prodigy or a woman who took extra time to fully develop her skills before taking to the field. It's just too bad that still wasn't enough to come out ahead on her first quest.
• Smells Sexy: Even Goblin Slayer himself can't help but take note of her beguiling fragrance.
• Sour Supporter: Nakedly resents the King for dismissing her fear of goblins and supplications for proper military mobilization against them despite being her old adventuring partner and knowing the reason for her phobia, one example being him not doing anything about the growing Water Town goblin infestation problem. When he visits her to complain about Evil Wizard building a Mage Tower and shutting down regional trade routes while his army is still mopping up the demons, all she does is mock him for being both unwilling and unable to protect his subjects from local threats and sing a song celebrating the idea of him being violently deposed.
• Stepford Smiler: Is almost always smiling in all of her interactions. As the trope suggests, she's hiding a lot of depression and anxiety underneath.
• Super Senses: Has heightened smell and hearing, which proves handy in tracking "newbie-hunting" rogues in Daikatana by the scent of blood that to others is completely covered by the sensory dampening magic of the Dungeon of the Dead. In volume 2, she can her a girl's muffled crying from across several busy market streets.
• Synchronization: She feels whatever her alligator familiar experiences. Seeing as she has it patrolling the sewers for monster swarms to fight and eat, she's often driven to the bathhouse to try to wash away the sensations.
• Tears of Joy: After Goblin Slayer promises to kill all goblins should she call for him, even in her dreams, she breaks down into these tears and declares her Love Confession for him.
• The Tease: For an archbishop, she's surprisingly forward and flirty to Goblin Slayer. It's genuine affection; much to her disappointment, it never gets a rise out of him.
• There Are No Therapists: Forget professional help; almost none of the people around her that she wants to open up to about her torment are willing to believe that a woman of her power could have ever been taken advantage of by mere goblins, unwittingly shaming her for weakness and worsening her internal agony and self-disgust.
• Turn Undead: Is naturally able to strip away necromantic magic.
• Tyke Bomb: Says that she was "molded" by her noble family to become a hero for their lifetime, though she wants that for herself now too.
• The Unchosen One: Unlike the elusive Platinum-ranked heroes, she just happened to be an exceptional individual who wasn't destined to save the world, but managed anyway.
• Utility Party Member: Sword Maiden's main role in the Golden Party was as their map-drawer in the dungeon.
• Vapor Wear: Her outfit is sideless, showing she doesn't wear underwear.
• Virgin Power: Her miracle Resurrection requires a virgin to be present. Unfortunately, Sword Maiden has been violated by goblins and therefore can no longer perform it alone. She can, however, cast it with a virgin (such as Priestess) present nearby as a "material component" for her spell.
• When She Smiles: When her attendant mentions Goblin Slayer and suggests writing a letter to him, Sword Maiden immediately perks up and her face literally beams with a huge smile. It's absolutely adorable.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Played for Drama. The entire reason why she hired Goblin Slayer in the first place is because she can never bring herself to confront goblins ever again — she fears that if the goblin swarm within the sewers ever makes it above ground, she will just fall apart entirely at the seams, leaving Water Town defenseless. In Daikatana she freezes when confronted by them and feels constant paranoia in the dungeon that they might spread even to parts with stronger monsters that always kill and eat them.
• Womanchild: She knows well enough to keep it hidden in public, but she can be a bit immature for a twenty-five-year-old. Sword Maiden has an especially noticeable habit of sulking like a teenage girl whenever the subject involves Goblin Slayer.
• Workaholic: She used to bury herself in work to distract herself from her problems. She's a little more lax now, but her attendants still think she needs more rest.
• Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: When she leads to charge to save Goblin Slayer's party from the remains of the cultist horde in Volume 8, she launches a spell that hits their vanguard with purple lightning.

Noble Fencer

Voiced by: Sumire Uesaka (Japanese), Anairis Quiñones (English)

Noble Fencer after the events of Volume 5

An aristocratic young woman who ran away from home to become an adventurer. The plot of the fifth volume of the light novel is kicked off when Goblin Slayer and his party are hired to recover her when she goes missing hunting goblins in an ice mountain.

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• Achey Scars: The brand on her neck still pains her even two years after getting it. She considers it a sign that she is currently dealing with Chaos-corruption whenever it does.
• Ancestral Weapon: She wields an ancient silver rapier that is a heirloom of her house. She begs Goblin Slayer to let her accompany the party to retrieve it from the goblin paladin after he saves her and makes clear he intends to finish the job on her horde-extermination quest.
• Arc Hero: Of Volume 5, as the mission of that volume was to rescue her and later she acts as a Guest-Star Party Member to Goblin Slayer's team in their quest to stop the Goblin Paladin.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: After becoming Female Merchant, she dresses in a fancy dark suit, but retains her skill with her rapier and lightning magic even as a retired adventurer, tempered and honed with painfully gained experience in reining in her pride, accurately judging her foes, and giving her all to overcome the cruelties of the world.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: She enters the secret enemy fortress in volume 11 by bluffing she is a collaborating merchant and just plowing through conversations attempting to steer her away from the garrison.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Survives her experience with the goblins with only the brand on her neck, and rape. Justified in that since she was powering the Goblin Paladin's magic, he probably wanted her in a good condition so she wouldn't die.
• Big Little Sister: Priestess explicitly sees and treats her as a little sister, even though she is much taller and more developed.
• Birds of a Feather: With Priestess. Just like her, she had her entire rookie party killed and was the sole survivor.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: Her sword has a gold-plated hilt with a large gemstone set in front and under the blade.
• Blue Blood: Noted to be high in station, enough that Sword Maiden got involved in deciding who to send to rescue her.
• Break the Cutie: She runs away from home to become an adventurer, with her first mission being a goblin-slaying one. Her plan results in her team being killed and her body being branded, leaving her vengeful and broken with a desire to kill all goblins.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Literally one of the first things the light novel narration mentions about her is how well she fills out her breastplate.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: Admits quite frankly that she’s not very good with alcohol when offered an ale.
• Cast from Hit Points: The goblin paladin is able to use the brand of the God of Wisdom his lackeys gave her to use her lifeforce as fuel to perform magic at no cost to his own energy.
• Claimed by the Supernatural: The goblins branded her with the sign of the God of Wisdom and made her the living covenant that allows the goblin paladin to receive divine favor.
• Cool Sword: Her personal weapon is an amazingly light sword that is strong and sharp enough to cut through steel, and is made of incredibly rare and valuable aluminum.
• Curtains Match the Window: Colored illustrations reveal that she has blonde hair and golden eyes.
• Deer in the Headlights: Freezes up while climbing over her carriage in the middle of a goblin ambush, Goblin Slayer covers her and snaps her out f it.
• Defiled Forever: It was stated that her chastity was among the precious things that the goblins have taken from her.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • She tried to eliminate the goblins by starving them out, but this resulted in her party draining their resources and energy over the course of weeks of camping in the mountain winter. Which led to her party being wiped out and herself being captured and made into a sacrifice. Goblin Slayer himself admits that it wasn't a bad method, where it went wrong was in not realizing that the cave they staked out wasn't the goblins' den, but their auxiliary temple.
  • She also depleted the nearby village of crucial supplies for the winter so she not only endangered her own team but the village she was working for.
  • Worse, the novel makes it clear on multiple occasions she could've pulled the plug on the mission and regrouped at any point, but refused to do so out of stubbornness that she "couldn't be wrong".
• Emotion Suppression: Does this almost instantly upon waking up back in the inn from being rescued from the goblin's temple. Priestess just as immediately sets about breaking her walls.
• Epiphany Therapy: Upon seeing the goblin paladin again all the emotions she had been repressing since her rescue: her guilt over causing her friends' death, fear and sorrow from being taken by the goblins, and admission to not being as ready to be an adventurer as she thought, come crashing into all at once. But once she accepts what happened to her, she is able to properly engage with the fight against the goblins and later move on from the experience.
• Escort Mission: Is the object of one in volume 11, to justify bringing the party with her as she infiltrates and investigates the Desert Kingdom.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Noble Fencer was most fond of Half-Elf Fighter, thinking they were getting along great while marching together and feeling hurt that she in particular was snubbing her.
• The Face: After arranging for her and Goblin Slayer's party to conduct a mission in the Desert Kingdom together, she quickly establishes her niche as a social chameleon, using her status as scion to a high-status merchant as plausible cover for herself and her “bodyguard entourage” to visit the nation, and consistently making use of her wealth and charisma to divert attention from her martial-focused teammates, if not outright bribe or flatter the opposition to let them pass without a fight.
• Fatal Flaw: Her pride. Her failed plan resulted in her party being placed in a dangerous position. Instead of retreating or calling off the quest when things were getting dangerous, she persisted out of fear of becoming a laughing stock for failing to complete a goblin subjection quest.This ultimately leads to the death of her party members along with her being captured.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Insists on accompanying the party to find and kill the goblin paladin, which Goblin Slayer and Priestess agree to.
• Handy Helper: After being healed and retired from adventuring, Noble Fencer decides to stay and operate her part of the family business in Water Town and spends what time she can get away with as an unofficial assistant to Sword Maiden, fielding correspondence, managing meetings, and making court appearances alongside her.
• Hartman Hips: The manga gives her extremely wide, curvaceous hips that she often has cocked during talking scenes.
• Hates Being Touched: Downplayed. Noble Fencer is perfectly fine with people she knows, but nearly blows her cover during an infiltration in Volume 11 when a soldier touches her. Given her experiences, she's understandably jumpy with strangers.
• Honest Advisor: In later volumes she is increasingly involved with the King as a general assistant and confidant on the level of his preexisting inner-circle.
• Honey Trap: Incapacitates a garrison of enemy soldiers by hotboxing them in a small room with her drugged perfume as she pretends to be a merchant come to cater on them.
• Honorary True Companion: She has a close relationship with the main party even after her introduction is over and she returns home, becoming penpals with both Priestess and High Elf Archer (eventually adding Guild Girl to her social circle) and meeting up to help the party every few volumes in a mutual partnership.
• Important Haircut: Shears off her long hair at her neck and offers it to Goblin Slayer as payment to let her join his party and fight to reclaim her stolen sword.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Her principle motivations for running away to become an adventurer was how she nearly cracked under the pressure to live up to her family name and her insecurity over being in her father’s shadow and owing her every material possession to his fortune. She hoped starting a legacy all her own from scratch would be easier, make her feel freer, and be more rewarding. It wasn’t.
• It's All About Me: Before her Character Development and some horrible life altering events, Noble Fencer's goal was to simply make a name for herself, achieve glory, and climb up the Guild Ranks to become Gold- or Platinum-ranked in no time. To this end she didn't think out her strategies and didn't realize her rookie mistakes were piling up into a disaster.
• Junior Counterpart: To Sword Maiden, or at least that how the older woman sees it. Sword Maiden certainly knows they share similar experiences, and takes Noble Fencer under her wing in an attempt to guide her away from some of the emotional pitfalls that left her a long-term wreck before.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Unable to calm herself while seeing a goblin wearing the robes of her dead companion, she attacks one and forces the group to change their plans while in the goblin territory.
• Made a Slave: Goblin Slayer theorized that the goblin paladin kept her alive for this reason after he "breaks her spirit". Once she becomes his subservient slave, he would force her to use her Shock and Awe magic to forge new weapons for his horde and eventually work her to death. Luckily, Goblin Slayer's party was able to save her before this can happen.
• Magical Gesture: Draws sigils with her fingers to power up her Lightning spell.
• Magic Knight: She can use spells alongside her swordplay.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Her plan to safely eliminate the goblins involved starving them out, but her failing to perform proper reconnaissance or factor in the amount of supplies needed to maintain her party out in the wilderness over the course of weeks results in her party being slaughtered and her being used as a sacrifice, which allows the goblin paladin to come into being.
• Parting-Words Regret: The last time she got to interact with her party, they were hazing her for the "bad" plan to starve out the goblins. Despite her team being the ones to say the hurtful parting word, their final conversation still fills Noble Fencer with regret.
• Pen Pals: It’s stated that after returning home to become a merchant she is friends and stays in contact with Priestess (and possibly High Elf Archer) with regular letters.
• Proper Tights with a Skirt: As an adventurer, she wore very thick black hose under high boots and a layered skirt, presenting an image of a dignified young noblegirl making a name for herself as a swordswoman.
• Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: Initially tried to form one with her fellow party member Half-Elf Warrior, which ended tragically. Afterwards, she does end up forming one with Priestess who acted as her Living Emotional Crutch throughout Volume 5 after Noble Fencer's traumatic experience with the goblins. Some of their interactions include frequent hand holding (especially in Goblin's Crown), Priestess often trying to comfort her, and Noble Fencer beating a goblin priest to death after it hurt Priestess.
• Rape and Revenge: After being captured by a goblin horde led by a goblin paladin, she ended up being raped and branded by the monsters. The traumatic experience left her in a very vengeful state after she was saved. She was able to convince Goblin Slayer's party to let her join them on their mission and she was ultimately able to kill most of the goblins that tormented her after causing an avalanche to wipe them out.
• Rescue Romance: Subverted. While she's immensely grateful for everything Goblin Slayer has done for her, a conversation with Sword Maiden in Volume 6 confirms no underlying feelings for the man... much to Sword Maiden's barely-disguised relief.
• Royal Rapier: Her sword seems to be one, with its extremely thin, long thrusting blade and ornate hilt.
• Scars are Forever: Sword Maiden is able to neutralize the magic of the seal on her neck, but not even she is strong enough to erase it entirely.
• Schizo Tech: Her Cool Sword is made out of aluminum, which is well beyond the ability of a medieval tech base to refine and produce. Also a case of Conspicuous Consumption, since aluminum was so rare even when it could be made that it was more valuable than gold.
• Shock and Awe: She has a Lightning spell. The goblin paladin wanted to enslave her in the first place to make her use this magic to help him in his attempts to learn smithing. Goblin Slayer has her instead blast the top off a mountain to induce an avalanche.
• Sixth Ranger: After being saved from her disastrous first quest in Volume 5, she maintains close ties with the party and semi-regularly helps them out with adventuring stuff, such as sneaking them into a meeting with the royal court and vouching for them alongside Sword Maiden in Volume 8, or securing them an out-of-country goblin mission in Volume 11 in which she participates and plays an essential part in its success.
• Skewed Priorities: While personally fond enough of Silver Blaze to be happy she's alright, she admits in the denouement of volume 15 to only really caring about her as a contracted member of her new racing team with a lot of bets riding on her that are keeping her enterprise in the black.
• The Social Expert: Her experience navigating royal banquets and merchant negotiations gives her a highly developed charisma and sense of how to manipulate non-hostile opposing persons, something commonborn pure adventurers lack.
• Sole Survivor: Of her party, she's the only one left alive.
• Start My Own: The reason she ran away and became an adventurer was because she wanted to achieve power and fame through her own abilities and not rely on her family name for prestige. She learns that attaining personal glory is a more arduous and perilous task than she first assumed, and in the most gruesome manner possible.
• That Man Is Dead: Though the effect probably isn't meant to be as final as this trope usually comes off as. Come Volume 8 she has shelved any remaining desire or dream to be an adventurer and the narrative rebrands her Female Merchant Leader.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: The reason Goblin Slayer and Priestess decide to bring her on their assault on the goblin stronghold is that they can tell that getting back in the saddle right now and confronting her trauma head-on is the only possible way she is ever going to have a chance at reclaiming her self-respect and recovering psychologically.
• Walking Spoiler: A given when her role in the story is so closely bound up in a major reveal of a new goblin evolution and the race's true potential for evil plans overall.
• Wealthy Philanthropist: Becomes this after returning to her family and entering their merchant business, being the one to put the down payment on Guild Girl's training camp in Volume 6 in the hope of properly preparing other rookies for the hazards of adventuring.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: She has a bit of PTSD from the goblins, and has difficulty facing them when her hate cools.
• Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: Her final Lightning spell in volume 11 is purple.
• Younger Than They Look: She's a year and change younger than Priestess, but taller and more womanly than her and High Elf Archer.

Arc Mage

A former general of the Kingdom. Leaves the army in Year One Volume 2 to study monsters on the frontier, and ends up hiring the young Goblin Slayer as a guard and helper, becoming the source of most of his understanding of goblin ecology and anatomy.

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• Absentminded Professor: Spends her days reading and muttering over her tomes in an overflowing shack and doesn’t care enough to answer her door or keep an eye on her visitors.
• The Alcoholic: She guzzles the hard cider Goblin Slayer keeps bringing her in almost every scene she's in.
• Ambiguously Human: Even before she ascends (see below), there's something...off...about Arc Mage. During his first quest working with her, Goblin Slayer notes that, despite wearing long robes and moving through thick underbrush, her clothes never get caught on anything (he does shrug it off as her being that much more experienced than him or having enchanted clothes.) Throughout their association, she seems partially detached from events and the environment around her, as though she's one step removed from the world already.
• Arc Hero: Acts as Goblin Slayer's travel companion during his adventures in Volume 2 of Year One
• The Archmage: One of her titles, though she worked in a far more militaristic capacity than usual for this role.
• Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: Downplayed, when Goblin Slayer rebuffs her propositions in favor of having her give him better goblin-slaying tools, she falls over laughing with incredulity and chagrin. In the chapter afterwards she gets almost offended when Goblin Slayer doesn't react to her boasting of her womanly charms or inquire about how she deals with sexual solicitors.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: She knows that her world is a board game. Her goal is to find the edge of the board and leave, potentially becoming a "player" herself. She eventually succeeds with Goblin Slayer's help.
• Badass Bookworm: She studied under the very knowledgeable lizardmen and was a Military Mage. In Year One, she got roped into helping update the Monster Manual after she moved to town. Conveniently for her, Goblin Slayer shortly showed up and offered to help research goblins specifically.
• Cards of Power: Despite carrying a magic staff, a deck of richly illustrated playing cards is her primary instrument for spell channeling. She makes them herself, basing their portraits on the monsters she studies and filling them with details that don’t make it into the Monster Manual, and in her off time she has a habit of shuffling and arranging them as a meditative or divining practice.
• Chained by Fashion: She wears some sort of decorative harness or faux-corset made of short lengths of thick chains around her waist, as a possible visual hint of her status as a high-ranked Military Mage, mild manic tendencies, and aspirations to loose the fetter of her world.
• Charm Person: Freely admits to Goblin Slayer, that she hypnotizes and then uses amnesia hexes on the people who ask for sexual favors from her when they wish to trade or ask for a quest reward. Cow Girl also suspects she has charmed the townspeople to ignore her when she loudly presses up to Goblin Slayer and no one spares a glance.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: She often gets a wide, cheeky smirk across her face when lecturing Goblin Slayer or reminiscing on past exploits.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Her first reaction to Goblin Slayer showing her a magic ring is to think he wants her help proposing to someone.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: In her introductory chapter she knocks over a stack of books nearly every page. Sometimes she saves them, other times she goes down with them.
• Dissonant Serenity: She breezes through a goblin hunt with a detached goofy mien, wryly watching and refusing to help as Goblin Slayer wrestles for his life against attacking wolves and cracking jokes about a woman being used as a Human Shield by a hobgoblin. The only time her smile slips is when Goblin Slayer shoots down one of her teases, reminding her that he at least has to take everything seriously.
• Eccentric Mentor: She comes off as a Cloudcuckoolander and Mad Scientist, but she was also a very competent soldier and became Goblin Slayer's second mentor who taught him much about the characteristics of goblins.
• Escort Mission: Her and Goblin Slayer's research recursions are filed as these. True to form, Arc Mage refuses to actually aid in combat unless absolutely necessary.
• Geometric Magic: The main component of her magic rituals to break down the curses sealing the Shadow Tower is constructing a model of various four-dimensional polytopes.
• The Glomp: When meeting Goblin Slayer just before their last quest, she tackle-hugs him at first sight right in front of Cow Girl, and remains wrapped around him for most of their ensuing conversation.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: She occasionally puffs on a pipe during down time, which tends to emphasize either her studiousness or her seductiveness, depending on framing and how much she flaunts it.
• Grammar Nazi: Can be very pedantic, such as when she gets on Goblin Slayer's case for saying goblins see well "at night" instead of the more technically accurate "in the dark."
• He Is Not My Boyfriend: Naturally, rumors are quick to form over Goblin Slayer "seeing that strange woman living in a cabin by the river." When Cow Girl hears them and works up the nerve to confront Arc Mage, she laughs and assures her that he is just her helper on quests.
• Humans Are Morons: The night she and Goblin Slayer camp out before crawling the shade tower, she bitterly comments she sees no point in studying monsters and publishing bestiaries, as most adventurers are illiterate and almost all of them are too arrogant or idealistic in outlook to care about knowing their enemy, just charging at them sword-first.
• Insufferable Genius: Acts very haughty and condescending to Goblin Slayer in the beginning.
• Little Black Dress: She wears one with a scalloped hemline under her robe, and is as vivacious as they come.
• Mad Scientist: She does have shades of this. During her and Goblin Slayer's research missions, she is rather overenthusiastic about studying goblins. When witnessing a female captive being used as a Human Shield, Arc Mage can't help but wonder if the woman is pregnant with a goblin and admits the she would have liked to examine the child when it was born. She later dissects the bodies of the goblins at the end of the mission.
• Magic Staff: A thin, elegant one that more resembles a walking stick.
• Military Mage: Used to not just be one, but also served as a marshal of them.
• Motor Mouth: Never stops rambling about her past experiences or theories about the monsters they are hunting. Goblin Slayer is actually worried at points that her blathering is covering up the sound of approaching ambushes.
• Ms. Fanservice: Her manga introductory chapter gives a lot of angled shots and close-ups of her bare legs and thighs, shown off by her short skirt, as well as one shot of her breasts when offering Goblin Slayer sex for the ring he brought. In her second manga-focused chapter, the curvature of her round rear through her thin robe is also drawn attention to on a couple occasions.
• Noiseless Walker: She can casually flounce through an overgrown forest path without her feet making a sound or any footprints, and her clothing never gets so much as a leaf stuck in it. Goblin Slayer cant tell if she's using magic, or is just that good at field work.
• No Sense of Personal Space: After waiting in the Guild Hall for Goblin Slayer before their last quest together, she glomps him when he finally arrives and has a conversation about their preparations while keeping him in a bear hug.
• Perpetual Smiler: Almost always has big smile on her face even when she is covering herself in goblins' blood, being surrounded by monsters that want to do unspeakable things to her, or seeing a goblin captive being used as a Human Shield. Her smile rarely falters.
• Playing with Fire: In the manga she's magnanimous enough to relight Goblin Slayer's torch while he's fighting goblins, and makes the flames hot enough to melt goblin flesh.
• Power Perversion Potential: Casts illusions and memory charms on men she offers sex to so they think she followed through. She waves off Goblin Slayer questioning the ethics of that move by saying that they got what they were after as far as they recall.
• Red Baron: Has a second, more theatrical moniker to punctuate her more standard epitaph; the Magus of Electricity.
• Sex for Services: Is prepared, crossing into eager, to sleep with Goblin Slayer in exchange for the magic ring he’s trying to get appraised. Though as it turns out she doesn't actually physically sleep with the boys she propositions.
• Sexy Mentor: Nearly everything Goblin Slayer knows about the nature of goblins, he learned from her. She also is very proud of her beauty and tried to seduce Goblin Slayer multiple times, but is rebuffed every time because he isn't interested.
• Shock and Awe: She is an Arc Mage and brags about specializing in electricity magic.
• Showgirl Skirt: Her dress comes down to mid-thigh in front, but extends to her knees in the back.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: Her glasses mark her as a high-status mage, with all the wordy rambling one would expect.
• Smoking Is Glamorous: Has a pipe and makes quite the sultry show out of puffing on it.
• Status Buff: In the final floor of the shade tower, she struggles to finish a spell formula to unlock a seal door before Goblin Slayer gets overwhelmed by goblins. She nearly despairs at her ability to do so, until Goblin Slayer inspires the idea to use Haste to work faster.
• The Tease: Constantly flaunts her figure and comes-on to Goblin Slayer, taking his continued disinterest as an affront to her charms, to say nothing of how she scams young adventurers by offering them illusory sex.
• Trash of the Titans: Her rented house is overflowing with dust, piles of broken odds-and-ends, dirty dishes, and stacks upon stacks of tomes that block out the light.
• Unkempt Beauty: Her hair is usually a bird's nest, her favorite robe has patches, and she lives like a bibliophilic pig. And she's still absolutely gorgeous.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: She's capricious, obsessive, and more than a little psychopathic, all things Witch attributes to her sheer arcane might.

Hero's Party

Chosen Heroine

Voiced by: Miyuri Shimabukuro (Japanese), Rachel Thompson (English)

Chosen Heroine in Year One

A young adventuress who is destined to save the world, her rapidly-escalating quest to reach and defeat the Demon Lord runs in parallel to Goblin Slayer's various extermination missions. Though she hasn't gotten seriously involved with the Goblin Slayer and his group yet, she has had dealings with some of the more high-profile supporting characters they have already helped.

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• A-Cup Angst: She envies Sword Maiden's and Sword Saint's assets, as revealed during their fight against Hecatoncheir in Volume 3 and manga Chapter 40 respectively.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Her sword can carve dimensional portals and slice demon souls to render them Deader than Dead.
• The Ace: Her very first quest sees her slaying entire hordes of monsters, including dozens of goblins and a demon general, single-handedly. And she only gets more powerful from there.
• Achievements in Ignorance: One of the interlude chapters of the first volume tells the tale of how Chosen Heroine found a magic sword and killed one of the Twelve Generals of the Demon Lord while honestly believing that she was on a routine goblin-clearing job for rookie adventurers and that everything she encountered, fought, and did that day was normal for a Porcelain level quest.
• Adaptational Dye-Job: Like Goblin Slayer, she's described as black-haired in text, but never illustrated as such until Volume 11, which shows she also has Innocent Blue Eyes. This is in contrast to the anime and then later the manga, which both have designed her with deep red hair and eyes. Also, her armor is pure silver with slight blue and yellow trimmings in the illustrations, but grey with a yellow surcoat and red straps in the anime.
• Barrier Warrior: In one drama cd, she can cast a Barrier spell to construct a dome big enough to encompass a fortress and strong enough to weather a demon general's attacks. This is done only to make sure that none of the monsters inside can flee while she's marching over to them.
• BFS: Her holy blade is two-thirds as tall and just as wide as she is. In Volume 9, it is described as "ostentatiously large".
• Blade on a Stick: When disguising herself as a regular rookie, she swaps her signature Holy Sword for a simple iron spear. She is very nearly as powerful with it as she is when fully outfitted.
• Blithe Spirit: She was a happy-go-lucky country bumpkin before being found out to be the current hero of destiny, and the King and her teammates consider her simple jovial spirit to be as much a source of improvement for the places and people she visits as her ability to eliminate top-tier demons in a trice.
• Bokukko: She's pretty tomboyish, and even refers to herself as "Boku".
• Born Lucky: It is not certain if her luck is part and parcel of being The Chosen One, or if such fortune is what brought her to Platinum-rank in the first place. Either way, it is very real and part of what makes her so incredibly powerful.
  • One example in Volume 3 occurs when she briefly meets Goblin Slayer for the first time. She eagerly approaches him, completely unaware the grungy warrior had set up goblin traps in her path beforehand. Not one of them triggered in her presence.
  • Her home happened to be one of the first villages to be saved by Goblin Slayer's intervention, ensuring her survival and a stable, happy childhood.
• Book Dumb: Has tried to study history and magic seriously, but it's all too dry for her to stick with.
• Born Winner: She starts her adventuring career already strong enough to kill entire groups of monsters with blade or magic before her tremendous luck kicks in, let alone when she finds and starts wielding her signature magic sword.
• Bring My Brown Pants: Admits during her adventuring report to messing her underwear when she attacked a Demon General and he was the first monster she ever faced that didn't go down in one hit.
• Call-Forward: As Year One reveals, this wouldn't be the first time she visits Goblin Slayer in the midst of making booby-traps right before the Autumn Festival rolls around.
• Calling Your Attacks: Does this in Volume 7, to no one's surprise. Though it might have just been a spell.
• The Chosen One: Ordained by fate to be the one to put an end to the Demon Lord's current attempt at a comeback, sooner or later. For this, she has been promoted to become the sixteenth Platinum-ranked adventurer in history.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Very much a bleeding-heart do-gooder, which her teammates have to accommodate when questing.
  Sword Saint: All it takes is someone in distress to get you involved.
• Cloudcuckoolander: So much so that her sidekicks are there to make sure she doesn't get too distracted. At one point, she sees the Rookie Duo has added Priestess (temporarily) and Harefolk Hunter (possible temporarily) to their team and immediately supports their Ship Tease and growing Battle Harem.
• Comically Invincible Hero: Nearly every enemy she faces dies in one hit, the Big Bad Demon Lord dies to her within a couple of months of her becoming an adventurer, before the start of the second volume, and she nakedly revels in her overpowered abilities every time she makes an appearance.
  Hero: Well, I knew I could charge in there anytime and be like, 'Bam! I win!' Heck, winning’s my role!
• Coup de Grâce: Though Sword Saint is able to duel and cripple the Undead King, it falls on Chosen Heroine and her divinely empowered sword to kill him completely.
• Curtains Match the Window: The anime depicts her as having red hair and eyes.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: In a manga volume-included vignette, she trips a little getting up from sitting on a crate, and confesses to Priestess that she always stepped on people's feet when she danced at village festivals as a little girl.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Subverted, because she was supposed to have one, but then Goblin Slayer saved her Doomed Hometown from goblins and she was allowed to live a relatively happy childhood in an Orphanage of Love.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: When she runs into Goblin Slayer outside the frontier town, Chosen Heroine muses out loud that he has a strange outfit, realizes how that sounds, and tries to walk it back as she meant he looks "...interesting."
• Dimensional Traveler: She and her party spent several months fighting demons in the "Plane of Annihilation" after defeating Hecatoncheir in Volume 3. They are also known as "the knights who traversed the storms of the three thousand realms."
• Doomed Hometown: Subverted twice. The first time, during her childhood, Goblin Slayer prevented it. The second time is prevented by the heroine herself when she personally kills a demon general who threatened it as attempted retaliation for the death of the Demon Lord.
• Dork Knight: The single most powerful adventurer currently alive, she is also an extremely energetic and goofy teenaged girl.
• The Dreaded: High-level demons operating in the human world know about and are understandably terrified of her. So much so that the she has to take precautions to hide her movements and box in target monsters just to keep them from hearing she's coming and then heading for the hills.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: She had a dream at the end of Year One of the Holy Sword she would one day claim.
• Dynamic Entry: Teleports into the stronghold of the Undead King mid-leap and roaring before running to kill a demon.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Chronologically speaking, she is introduced in Year One as a cheerful orphan with a bad habit of running off on her own to explore.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: She becomes one of a tiny handful of Platinum-ranked adventurers to ever exist after finding her divine sword, and is outfitted with armor and magic supplements of comparable resplendence while being granted full leeway to make her own path as she protects the world from demons and abominations.
• Fearless Fool: Much to the exasperation of her teammates, she has a love for shouting stock battle quips and jumping right into the fray without assessing the risks beforehand. Often times, she doesn't seem to have the foggiest idea about the gravity of the quests she takes. Fortunately for her and the rest of the adventurers, her talent and absurd luck does well to trivialize most dangers coming her way.
• Fiery Redhead: She has a deep red hue to her hair and eyes in the anime and manga and, is exactly the kind of loud, hot-blooded hero she looks like.
• Flash Step: When hopped-up to her gills with S-tier Magic Enhancement, she can cut down and rush between mobs of monsters in less than a second.
• Foil: She is opposite to Goblin Slayer in almost every possible way. As The Chosen One destined to save the world, she has had everything handed to her by her heroic fate, while Goblin Slayer is just an average person not destined for anything glorious who constantly fights an uphill battle and only makes it out alive through his own wits, resolve and sheer hatred for his sworn enemies. She routinely battles the most powerful demon lords, Goblin Slayer just slays goblins. She is clad in resplendent armor befitting a high-ranking adventurer and wields a wondrous holy weapon, Goblin Slayer refuses to use enchanted weapons and wears a simple, battered armor which has had its only aesthetic element — the horns on its helmet — cut off because they only got in the way in goblin caves. She is an incredibly powerful Magic Knight, Goblin Slayer is a fighter of only average skill with no special abilities. She is known to rush into battle headlong relying on her raw power and incredible luck to keep her alive, while Goblin Slayer adamantly refuses to rely on luck, prominently utilizes stealth and underhanded tactics, exploits the environment to his advantage whenever and however he can, and meticulously plans out every battle before it starts. Basically, the Chosen Heroine is the stereotype of what is expected of a powerful high-level adventurer, and the one the reader might have reasonably expected to be the main character, had this been a very different tale. Goblin Slayer is, well... Goblin Slayer. Ironically, the gods had planned for her to have a Dark and Troubled Past backstory through a Doomed Hometown...but then Goblin Slayer prevented that from happening by killing all the goblins.
• Forgotten First Meeting: By sheer coincidence, one of Goblin Slayer's earliest jobs happens to come from her hometown, where she is the first villager to meet him face-to-face. She took a shine to his activities, but has apparently since forgotten about him by the time she became a full-fledged adventurer herself.
• Genki Girl: In every appearance she makes, it is clear that she is a bundle of energy. So much so, in fact, that it is somewhat exhausting for her peers who deal with her on a regular basis. Even her relatively quieter moments involve running her mouth at top speed and getting easily distracted.
  Chosen Heroine: (Literal seconds after waking up) All Right! Time for another day of trying hard and doing my best!
  Sword Saint: A good night's sleep and you're back to full tilt, aren't you?
• Harem Seeker: She's not one, but she supports heroes making them much to her sidekicks' embarrassment.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Subverted and justified; her first encounter with Goblin Slayer actually left enough of an impression that she now believes helmets are befitting of a good adventurer. The only reason why she doesn't wear one herself is because she regularly deals with monsters that can effortlessly separate her head from her shoulders, with or without protection, so she forgoes it for a better field of view.
• Heroic Resolve: Even with her enchantments stipped, ribs cracked, and organs bruised, she still stands firm and walks steadily forward to finish off the Undead King.
• Hero of Another Story: Her exploits have been the subject of periodic side-chapters since the beginning of the story, but she has yet to join forces with Goblin Slayer and crew.
• Hero Worship: According to Spearman, her "regular rookie" disguise is meant to emulate Female Warrior from Sword Maiden's old party, just in green.
• Hot-Blooded: Very loud and passionate, though certain side materials make it clear this is a more nuanced case than the stereotypical archetype. She takes preparation for missions very seriously and can be surprisingly cerebral and even borderline philosophical on topics like the nature of adventuring.
• Humble Hero: She actually doesn't take it for granted that she'll win every time, despite her outward bravado. She also claims that each of her victories so far was mostly thanks to her allies' support, and she remains confident that the forces of good will ultimately win, with or without her.
  Hero: I guess if anyone was like, 'You sure you can save this world?' I’d be sort of like, 'I dunno!'
  Hero was supposed to save the world. She wasn’t the hero because she could save the world; it was trying to save the world that made her a hero. What she could do might not amount to much. But she had friends who mattered to her, and there were so many people in this world. So she had to save it, and she was confident it would work out somehow.
• I Always Wanted to Say That: Chuckles and says this in the anime after crashing a necromancer's attempted Virgin Sacrifice and announcing that evil would not win this day.
• I Choose to Stay: Deliberately spends months making a physical journey through several alternate dimensions to get back home so she could carve through the demon armies on their own turf and trim down their threat at the root.
• I Just Knew: The gods occasionally send her premonitions of her next task in her dreams, and she can apparently accurately pick out relevant locations and people to go to for those quests off of gut feeling.
  Demon General: How did you know the location of our secret meeting place?!
  Chosen Heroine: I had a hunch!
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Downplayed, she occasionally wonders if being a regular adventurer would be a more free and satisfying existence, but is still more than content with the trials and triumphs of her own career.
• In a Single Bound: The anime has a scene of her leaping tens of feet in the air to come down on an evil priest with a downward slash worthy of a Dragoon.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: The Volume 11 illustration gives her very pale blue eyes, to the point of also being Icy Blue Eyes, but she's still the pinnacle of heroism in her World.
• King Incognito: The Drama CDs reveal she likes to sometimes sneak off alone, disguise herself in basic gear, and do low-level quests anonymously. These charity runs almost always end with her running into a high-ranking demon, but her innate power is enough to take them out anyway.
• Large Ham: Unsurprisingly, she has a shamelessly loud presence and a love of theatrics.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Slightly downplayed in that she actually takes pre-mission prepping and equipment maintenance very seriously, but she has no regard for stealth or preemptive strikes, being more than strong enough to get away with announcing her presence and charging, and with a love of theatrics big enough to do just that every time.
• Legendary Weapon: The magic sword she found on her first quest is a sign of the gods' favor and task for her.
• Licked by the Dog: It says something that, barring a possible candidate or two, she is the only person to have never been taken aback by Goblin Slayer's appearance or regard him with suspicion upon first impressions.
• The Lightfooted: She leaps superhumanly high, prefers to dodge rather than block despite her excessive magical defenses, and can hop around on top of pressure-sensitive traps at her leisure.
• Magical Gesture: Is said to trace sigils in the air when casting.
• Magic Enhancement: Besides her magic sword, her usual suit of armor is enchanted, and Sage gives her a plethora of charms and buffs before a fight starts.
• Magic Knight: Can sling spells as easily as she chops heads, as she is described as casting at least a half-dozen Firebolts on her first quest without running her limit.
• Magnetic Hero: Befitting a deliberately overblown Distaff Counterpart of a shounen action hero, a lot of people ruefully admit that something about her personality makes them fond of her in spite of themselves. Priestess is drawn into a conversation after catching Heroine spying on her dance practice, and is pleasantly surprised to realize her usual self-conciousness and sensitivity are in no way kicking in while chatting with her. In Volume 8 the King outright says her ability to calm hostilities and befriend the untrusting without thinking is a greater boon than her overpowered combat abilities.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Physique-wise, she's a regular, skinny teenage girl, and is if anything on the small side. Doesn't stop her from leaping into the air and freely swinging around a sword nearly as big as her.
• One-Hit Kill: Before she even officially became an adventurer, she was so used to monsters dying at the slightest blow from her that a top-ranking demon she found on her first quest not doing so caused her an Oh, Crap! moment. Then she found her Legendary Weapon and rectified that black-mark on her record.
• One-Man Army: Regularly enters hell and faces off against entire demon legions effectively singlehandedly, and wins.
• Parental Abandonment: Her parents died in a war. She still was able to enjoy a somewhat happy childhood at the orphanage she grew up with and with a strong mother figure who raised her.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Discussed. Chosen Heroine actually isn't one, and laments she doesn't have the power to scythe entire undead armies and level mountains with one sword-swing. Sword Saint rebuffs her by saying she wouldn't trust anyone with that kind of power, let alone someone as lackadaisical as her leader.
• Playing with Fire: Mentions that she can cast Firebolt in Volume 1, although being The Ace she stated that she was able to spam this attack five or six times before getting tired, a feat that most veteran adventurers can't do.
• Plucky Girl: Even on the rare occasions an enemy proves able to overpower her, she never gets discouraged in a fight and always gives her all and feels assured she and her friends can pull through any trial.
• The Pollyanna: While she can acknowledge that she's only human and there is always a chance she could fall in battle, she nonetheless remains perpetually cheerful, optimistic, and with an unquenchable love of life, celebrating her every victory and new experience while confident in the belief that even if she one day fails, humanity as a whole will always find a way to beat back even the most apocalyptic of its foes.
• Power of the Sun: Claims to have this in Volume 10, and names several of her personal, magic-enhanced blows with sun-themed names such as "Dawn Strike".
• Red Is Heroic: The anime gives her red eyes and bright red hair, something reflected in a Year One Manga colored illustration.
• Saving the World: Does this semi-regularly, though we usually only see part of the final battle each time.
• Seers: She has some method of scrying on faraway monsters. She spies on a demon fortress in a drama cd before sealing it up with a Barrier and heading inside to clean it out.
• Shipper on Deck: Ships the Rookie Duo... and ships them with Harefolk Hunter. She even supports Rookie Swordsman gathering a Battle Harem that he's not trying to form.
• Slasher Smile: Flashes one as she squares off against the metal spider monster leading the demons in Volume 7.
• Small Role, Big Impact: From Goblin Slayer to Chosen Heroine. In one of his unending attacks on the many goblins planning to attack villages, one of those said villages was where Chosen Heroine lived as a child. Because of this, she was spared from going through a tragic past as Goblin Slayer did as a child and had the chance to become a powerful, outgoing, and inspiring hero that Goblin Slayer never had.
• Smarter Than You Look: She comes off as an endearingly earnest Idiot Hero in the main storyline, but the side materials portray her as more aware of her surroundings than most assume, with surprisingly meticulous preparations for her quests and well-considered thoughts on the nature of adventurers and the problems of the guild ranking system. She's just too confident and content in her strength to get bogged down with more intense introspection.
• Summon to Hand: Her magic sword is bound to her soul. So long as they are in the same dimension, it will appear at her side if she but holds out her arm and wills it.
• Sword Beam: Her "Dawn Strike" move is a massive green slash of energy that burns anything in its path.
• Technicolor Eyes: They're red in the anime.
• Third Line, Some Waiting: She gets at least one chapter every other volume chronicling the latest of her increasingly high-octane demon-hunting forays, and her lingering presence in the narrative is clearly building up to something, though so far the closest she's gotten to involvement in the main story is in Volume 3 when she partners with Sword Maiden to fight off a rampaging Physical God in the B-plot.
• This Is the Part Where...: Jokes when first standing-off against the Undead King that this should be when he makes an offer of You Will Be Spared or We Can Rule Together, but that doesn't fit because its her team that busted in and is currently holding the advantage and issuing threats.
• Tsundere: Grew up in an Orphanage of Love way out in the countryside, run by a nun of the God of Trade. Even years later, she still thinks of the matron as a mother figure, though she'd never admit it out loud.
• Unskilled, but Strong: She's got no refined techniques or elaborate spells, just the sheer raw might to make moves she does have hit with the force of a meteorite.
• The World Is Always Doomed: By Volume 13, even she is starting to get exasperated by the constant cropping up of cataclysmic threats.
  Chosen Heroine: I wish we could do one adventure that doesn’t involve the fate of the world!
• The World Is Just Awesome: Takes delight in all the world has to offer, from its most fantastic vistas to its simplest comforts, and she wants to protect every bit of it.
• World's Strongest Man: She is easily the strongest character in the entire story, and would normally be the one to take care of any powerful Greater-Scope Villain that are working behind the scenes of main casts' adventures. While Goblin Slayer is on his "small-scaled" quests, she is the one preventing The End of the World as We Know It.
• Your Size May Vary: Not her, but rather her Holy Sword. In the light novel and manga, the sword is massive, being as large as she is despite her small stature. However, in the anime, the sword is much smaller to the point of being a short one-handed sword compared to her and probably just a step above a long dagger for anyone bigger than her.

Sword Saint & Sage

Voiced by: Haruka Tomatsu (Sword Saint, Japanese), Honoka Inoue (Sage, Japanese), Jad Saxton (Sword Saint, English), Megan Shipman (Sage, English)

Sword Saint (left) and Sage (right)

Two Gold-ranked adventuresses, Sword Saint and Sage, who team up with Chosen Heroine.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • Sage has blue dark blue hair and purple eyes in the anime, but a chibi icon in light novel Volume 13 depicts her with Mystical White Hair and Supernatural Gold Eyes. Her dress was also shades of blue and her cloak grey in the anime, while her chibi has them both pure white with silver trimmings and pale green underside.
  • Sword Saint had green eyes, olive-tinted dark hair, and a slight tan compared to her teammates in the anime. Her chibi icon in Volume 13 has red eyes, pure black hair, and is as pale as the other girls. Also, in the anime she had a dark red outfit with a navy blue capelet and gunmetal grey armor bits, while in Volume 13 her armor bits have a black finish with gold edging, her cape is white with pale red underside, and she wears a bright crimson vest.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Sword Saint gives Chosen Heroine a Dope Slap for being nonchalant about their slog through the Plane of Annihilation but the two of them laugh over it and treat it as a lovetap.
• All Amazons Want Hercules: Sword Saint will only consider a man more physically powerful than her as a proper romantic prospect, and since becoming Gold-ranked regularly laments her fear that she'll be single forever. Sage is unsympathetic, and in Volume 8 tells her to go get hitched to a dragon if she's that desperate for a husband.
• Amazon Brigade: The two of them are part of one with Chosen Heroine.
• Animal-Eared Headband: Sage's cloak has a hood with sewn-on cat ears sticking out the front that she always wears up.
• The Archmage: Sage in volume 12 is called undisputably one of the strongest magic-users currently active in the Four-Cornered World, opposite Undead King.
• Badass Normal: Sword Saint can’t cast spells, but her natural strength of arms is enough to keep up with the likes of Chosen Heroine.
• Bag of Holding: Sage has one to pack and organize her armory's worth of epic-tier Magic Enhancement consumables.
• Big Eater: Chosen Heroine giggles in volume 12 about how Sage's delicate constitution belies a robust appetite.
• Blood from the Mouth: Sage starts spitting up blood during the fight with Undead King due to entering Overcast.
• Boobs of Steel: Sword Saint is one of the series' strongest melee fighters, and noticeably has the largest "assets" among her party.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Mostly just following Chosen Heroine to make sure she doesn't get too distracted while on a mission.
• Counterspell: Sage can negate the Undead King's curses with spells of opposite effect.
• Deadpan Snarker: Sage has a tendency to coolly glide through her scenes while dispensing soft-spoken verbal jabs.
  Sage: (in response to Chosen Heroine loudly giving away their presence so she could make a cool statement) I can't fathom why you would throw away the advantage of a sneak attack.
• Death Flight: Sage can use a Float spell to lift dozens if not hundreds of assorted demons and monsters into the air (it even renders flying creatures helpless), and then extinguish the spell to have them splat against the ground.
• Dimensional Traveler: They and their leader spent several months fighting demons in the "Plane of Annihilation" after defeating Hecatoncheir in Volume 3. They are also known as "the knights who traversed the storms of the three thousand realms."
• Elites Are More Glamorous: They are both Gold-ranked adventurers, regarded as among the very best in their respective spheres of battle and study, and were hand-picked to be the long-term companions of the current divinely-favored, Platinum-ranked, world-saving heroine.
• Fantastic Nuke: Sage has a spell called Fusion. It can blow off the top of a mountain.
• Heroic RRoD: The battle with Undead King takes so much from Sage she Overcasts and vomits blood just to keep up.
• Heroic Second Wind: Exhausted from cutting through demons, lacerated by a blade barrier, and stripped of her buffs, Sword Saint nonetheless picks up her mundane sword and overpowers an epic-level lich in a final exchange of blows.
• Iaijutsu Practitioner: Sword Saint nearly gives Goblin Slayer an Impromptu Tracheotomy with the same movement she unsheathes her blade while questioning him after bumping into each other in the woods.
• I Choose to Stay: Deliberately spend months making a physical journey through several alternate dimensions to get back home so they could carve through the demon armies on their own turf and trim down their threat at the root.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: While Sword Saint is just one girl among many in the running for biggest bust and hips in the series, its painfully undeniable that she has by far the spindliest waist. In some shots her midriff appears to actually be thinner around than one of her thighs, which can be seen here◊.
• Katanas Are Just Better: As the first and most prominent melee-focused Gold-rank adventurer, Sword Saint would of course carry one of these rather than a western blade.
• King Incognito: Occasionally join Chosen Heroine in disguise as "fellow rookies."
• Laser Blade: Sage can conjure a "force-sword" to slice down any monsters that get too close to her.
• Magic Enhancement: Sage provides her team with a plethora of super high-tier buffing consumables before the fight with the Undead King. Beyond the Magic Potion list below, she provides quite a bit of Miracle Food and bevy of further stuff the narration says could go on for pages.
• Made of Indestructium: Sword Saint boasts that her katana can never break or bend, though it has no offensive enhancements beyond that.
• Magic Map: Sage has two; one that gives an unerring path to any stated goal, and one that shows traps on the way.
• Magic Potion: Sage collects and brews especially powerful ones that can grant buffs like Super Strength, Nigh-Invulnerability, Flight, and Telepathy.
• Master Swordsman: Sword Saint natch. Even Goblin Slayer, who takes a dim view of literally everyone and everything that doesn't have to do with goblins, instantly pegs her as at least Bronze level when he sees how quickly and smoothly she unsheathes and resheathes her sword when threatening him in Volume 3.
• Meteor-Summoning Attack: Sage's opening attack against Undead King is to conjure a hail of flaming meteorites.
• Most Common Superpower: Both are packing noticeable bust lines in addition to their prowess. Ironically, this means the strongest member of their party also happens to be the smallest.
• Mrs. Exposition: Sage occasionally tells the rest of her party the background of whatever big monster they're fighting that day.
• Mystical White Hair: Sage’s hair in the light novel is eventually revealed to be a stark white.
• Nice Mean And In Between: Including the head of their little Power Trio Chosen Heroine; she is the Nice, with her boundless optimism and ability to befriend others being highly regarded in-universe. Sage is the Mean, being quite snooty about her intelligence over everyone else. Sword Saint is the In Between, being fairly stiff with outsiders, but striving for professionalism and apologizing if she gets overly aggressive, while being equally likely to join in on Chosen Heroine's playful regard for their quests as she is to try to smack her into comporting herself like a proper champion of the realm.
• Nonchalant Dodge: Sword Saint ducks the Undead King's Laser Blade with a slight shuffle of her feet and a headtilt.
• Pocket Dimension: Sage stores her equipment in a zero-space bubble she can access by opening a hole in the air next to her.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Sword Saint in the light novels is eventually revealed to have pale rose colored irides, and as a Gold-rank she is handily one of the greatest melee warriors in the series.
• Red Is Heroic: Sword Saint in the light novels at least, when her vest or minidress is eventually revealed to be an especially vivid scarlet.
• Self-Duplication: Sage can maintain four Other Selves with barely any visible strain where just one would have a mid-to-upper level mage like Half-Elf Warlock or Witch suffering debilitating fatigue and migraines.
• Squishy Wizard: Sage is noted to have an abysmally weak constitution in Volume 4 when Sword Saint worries she has gotten sick when she oversleeps and misses breakfast during Chosen Heroine's vignette. In Volume 10, she runs out of breath extremely quickly while running under the effects of Haste.
• Stone Wall: As the only member of the party without magic supplementing her power, Sword Saint's role in combat is the living sand-wall covering Sage as she prepares a big ritual spell to end the fight.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Sage’s eyes in the light novels are eventually revealed to be a bright, gleaming yellow, like certain other veteran magic-users.
• Supporting Leader: Sword Saint is stated to be the formal head of the party, but Chosen Heroine is very clearly the star of their show.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Sage thinks so every time Chosen Heroine puts her foot in her mouth in front of a noble client, or when she and Sword Saint understate the threat-level of a world-ending horror they have to fight.
• Team Mom: Due to Sage being so standoffish, Sword Saint is all on her own in wrangling Chosen Heroine, lecturing her on their duties for the day and admonishing her more wild tangents with a long-suffering smile, while also defending her against Sage's more acerbic put-downs. It even extends back towards Sage herself, as Sword Saint shows great concern after her health in their downtime.
• Those Two Guys: In their first few appearances, their contributions to the scene broadly consisted of just hanging back together in the dungeon room entrance and snarking to each other about Chosen Heroine's rambunctiousness as the other girl merrily charges up to the monster of the day to bisect it with one blow.
• Tsundere: Sage adores her teammates, and shows it by grousing over how dumb they are at every opportunity. Sword Saint herself scolds Heroine and knocks her upside the head regularly out of sisterly concern and affection.
• Wrong Assumption: Sword Saint nearly runs Goblin Slayer through in the forest because she thought he was an undead. Chosen Heroine chides her, while Sage actually maintains that Goblin Slayer looks suspicious regardless.

Human Kingdom Royalty

The King

A former adventurer and current ruler of the country.

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• The Ace: Was the most successful and celebrated adventurer during the rush to clear the Dungeon of the Dead.
• Always Someone Better: Was seen as this by Samurai Captain, who nearly unsheathed his blade in resentment at seeing a celebration break out for the Knight of Diamond discovering a path to the third layer of the Dungeon of the Dead the night his own party just barely limped home from their first group excursion to the front of the first layer.
• Animal Motifs: Later light novel have the King described as "like a lion" in varying points.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: In the past, he was a powerful warrior whom even veterans respected, during a time when adventuring itself was considered a far more dangerous career prospect compared to its modern iteration. Volume 8 shows that he has not lost his edge.
• Big Good: Well, he is the king of a country that is continuously being at war with evil, devil-worshipping monsters, so he kind of has to be this.
• Bishōnen: Unlike most stereotypical kings in fantasy stories, he is a handsome young man with the looks of a Prince Charming, although he did ascend to the throne at a young age due to the death of his father.
• Bling of War: As an adventurer, he wore a magic suit of armor that was encrusted if not made of diamonds. Samurai Captain finds it hard to take seriously his claim of being from a poor noble family when seeing him in it (this of course assumes the suit was not loot found in the Dungeon of the Dead, or a heirloom deemed too precious or put in too much active use to be counted as a mere part of the treasury.
• A Child Shall Lead Them: Was in his mid-to-late teens when the war against the Demon Lord ended and he ascended to the throne.
• Close to Home: His angst about his little sister's abandoned twin drives him to try to reach out to lost or distressed little girls. He wonders if this makes him self-centered.
• Conspicuous Consumption: He and Female Merchant lament that though he doesn't care to waste money on unecessarily fancy stuff like quill pens, if the king lived austerely there are many people who would look down on that as false modestly or a sign of financial crisis, more than are currently looking down on him as a luxury-craving spendthrift.
• Dork Knight: As a young lord he was loud-voiced and awkward around children and adventurers outside his party, contrasted humorously against his status as the celebrated premier dungeon-delver of Fortress City. Over a decade later and as a matured King, he is still brash and hot-headed, his inner circle needing to exasperatedly shoot down his hammy declarations that he can solve all his nation's financial and bureaucratic woes if he was just allowed to take up his sword again to go slay some gold-hoarding dragons or not-so-secretly evil noblemen.
• Dual Wielding: Decides to take up a parrying dagger after almost dying to a cheapshotting "scruffy man."
• Elites Are More Glamorous: He was dubbed Diamond Knight in his adventuring days, likely to signify his royal status. He certainly had the armor and plethora of powerful charms to show for it.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Uses a shiny broadsword to fight. It goes with his truly brilliant armor and self-image.
• Holier Than Thou: Considers himself and Samurai Captain to be on another level ethically as well as martially over the other adventurers for being the leaders of two of the only parties that are actually trying to put an end to the Dungeon of the Dead instead of keeping the loot train going. Samurai Captain thinks he's a little sanctimonious about it, despite repeatedly thinking almost exactly the same thing in his internal monologue.
• Impoverished Patrician: Describes his family as poor for nobility. Samurai Captain wonders if relative poverty among the nobles isn't still fabulously wealthy objectively, if the quality of his gear is any indication (which, given that Samurai Captain knows the Knight of Diamonds is a successful adventurer and has been for a while, he shouldn't be taking as a given.)
• Innocently Insensitive: Talks about how goblins aren't a significant enough threat to be bothered with to Sword Maiden, a woman who had been tortured and traumatized by such creatures.
• Militaries Are Useless: Goblin Slayer and Sword Maiden don't hold very high opinions for how the King distributes the country's military, especially since he believes that the Adventurer's Guild should be more than sufficient to counter the Frontier's threats. Because he keeps most of his forces stationed at the Capital to ward off demons, a lot of villagers are left to fend for themselves without expecting a response from the government. Even when there is a goblin infestation in a city's sewers, Sword Maiden has to request Goblin Slayer because her requests to him for military assistance are brushed off. This is discussed further in Volume 4 of the light novel. Most of the military is exhausted and suffered heavy losses from fighting the Demon King's armies, and any army he does raise to deal with threats like goblins will be peasant levies who cannot stay in the field for very long and will be poorly suited to fighting in tight, close quarters like ruins, sewers, and caves. Adventurers don't cost money to be deployed, and are much more experienced, well-armed, and motivated.
  Lizard Priest: Two sure fronts of trouble are human money and human politics.
• Minor Major Character: He is the king of the country where all the characters reside and is mentioned several times, but only makes a few appearances in the story.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Pretty much the government's unwillingness to deal with the goblin threat can be traced back to him. Although in his defense, the guy is dealing with a world-ending threat on a weekly basis, so it is understandable why he is prioritizing his fighting force to prevent The End of the World as We Know It. That said, him complaining about Sword Maiden's request for military force to deal with a goblin infestation in the Water Town's sewers despite the risk of them invading the town from the inside if left alone does raise some eyebrows.
• Noodle Incident: In Volume 4, Sword Maiden mocks him by bringing up a time when a bushranger ambushed him and beat him so badly he was sent running with his tail between his legs and his pants ripped.
• No Social Skills: He gets easily flustered when dealing with children, attempting to console a lost child by stomping up to her and yell "Don't you dare cry!" to his teammates' incredulity.
• Obstructive Code of Conduct: When Princess gets kidnapped by a goblin ambush in Volume 8, he cannot bring himself to simply summon up his forces to go on a search and rescue; considering that he had been hands-off concerning goblin exterminations throughout the series, to suddenly gather his army for a goblin-slaying manhunt simply due to personal involvement would be political suicide, so he's forced to hire a discreet adventuring party.
• Reluctant Ruler: Has expressed his annoyance at being unable to act from beyond his throne on more than one occasion. During his meeting with Sword Maiden in Volume 4, he tiredly confesses how he wishes he was dungeon-diving with his old party like the good old days.
• Red Baron: As an adventurer during the days of the Dungeon of the Dead, he was publicly known as the Knight of Diamonds.
• Retired Badass: Between being Gold-rank and the current ruling king, his skin is too valuable to let gallivate off to kill monsters and brigands. He takes this with ill-grace, and sneaks out to fight whenever he can.
• The Rival: Is personally familiar with Sword Maiden because his party was the main competition hers had in their attempts to reach the bottom of the Dungeon of the Dead first and exorcise the Demon Lord.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Dismissive attitude towards goblins nothwithstanding, one doesn't stay the leader of a nation without a sharp head on his shoulders and a willingness to act. And that's not going into the occasions when he picks up a sword once more...
• Slashed Throat: Courtesy of the large ax-wielding leader of the "scruffy men." He recovered fully though.
• Spare to the Throne: Was the third-born son of his line, which was itself a minor branch family of the royal dynasty.
• Unexpected Successor: Apparently his family was minor nobility that were only distantly related to the royal family, but when the latter were all lost early in the war against the Demon Lord, he was the closest suitable inheritor.
• Vigilante Man: Recognizing a conspiracy within his court to have the Princess captured and used as a pawn for Chaos, he dons himself in his old armor and promptly slays all of them single-handedly. In fact, he had been cutting down corrupt figures who were otherwise untouchable by law for the past few years.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: The King started out as an adventurer, and wishes he could keep solving every problem as if he still was. Conspirators in his capital city? Let him personally gut them. Royal budget in the red? Let him go slay a dragon for its hoard. Unusual winter storm? Let him take his sword and find the evil wizard obviously responsible! His advisors coach him to refrain from leaping into action with only partial success.
• Young and in Charge: Samurai Captain, in his first proper conversation with the "Knight of Diamonds", is shocked to realize the boy is actually younger than him; only fifteen, maybe just turned sixteen. Which means that he's still in his mid-to-late twenties when seen in the main story, and even back then he was involved with organizing his family's vassals and levies on top of being the head of his own adventuring party.

Princess

The King's little sister. A major person of interest in Volume 8.

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• Always Identical Twins: Slightly Averted, Princess & Priestess are indeed identical in looks, but the defining physical difference aside from hair length is Princess is far more well-endowed than her very likely (still unconfirmed) long-lost twin sister.
• Buxom Beauty Standard Priestess is quite put out when she compares their bust-lines.
• Damsel in Distress: The main action of Volume 8 happens when goblins are sent to kidnap her for a Virgin Sacrifice when she sneaks out of the capital.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: Both her mother and father are described as "dearly departed" and she pines for them.
• Didn't Think This Through: She wanted to be an Adventurer for one day and thought she could handle it. Lone, sheltered girl with little to no combat experience at all fueled by romantic dreams and fantasies running head first into danger; what could possible go wrong?
• Exact Words: When Priestess, thinking her to be just another eager wannabe, warns her to make sure to shop for full and proper equipment, the Princess promises to take the advice to heart. Cut to Priestess bawling her eyes out when she realizes that Princess stole her favorite chainmail and left a handful of gems behind as "payment".
• Guest-Star Party Member: She tags along with Chosen Heroine, Sword Saint, and Sage in their quest to put down Jupiter's Ghost, helping in the fight by casting Purify on the monster.
• Hero-Worshipper: Becomes one to Priestess after being saved from the goblins of the Dungeon of the Dead, to the point of devoting herself to the Earth Mother to be more like her.
• Identical Stranger: Is stated to heavily resemble Priestess, just with shorter hair and larger breasts. Likely subverted after Daikatana Volume 2 and Volume 13 of the main story both reveal that Princess actually had a twin sister that disappeared somehow while still a baby.... In case you haven't got it, it's all but said (currently still unconfirmed) that Princess & Priestess are twin sisters.
• King Incognito: Comes to Frontier Town in volume 13 by posing as the priestess observing Guild Girl's practice-dungeon festival idea.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Her decision to take Priestess' equipment was obviously done at the spur of the moment, and the girl quickly felt ashamed of herself upon noting the care and attachment given to them. She resolved to return Priestess' belongings after her little adventure, but outside forces conspired otherwise.
• One Twin Must Die: The Volume 14 blurb reveals that Princess had a twin sister that was tossed out or abandoned as a newborn because the kingdom believes keeping twins under one roof invites misfortune.
• Plucky Girl: She maintains her cheery personality even after being abducted by goblins, and indeed used that experience to temper the worst of her prior frivolousness.
• Rebellious Princess: Is infuriated with her brother's rank hypocrisy in denying her the chance to experience life as an adventurer when that was what he built his ascension to royalty on. In Volume 8, Princess steals Priestess' equipment to try slumming it as a sellsword for a night. Goblins immediately get their claws on her the instant she's away from her handlers.
• Revive Kills Zombie: Attempted this against Jupiter’s Ghost, casting Purify on the seething mass of magically produced and mangled bodies that formed its being. How effective it was is unclear, as the Chosen Heroine immediately launches a follow-up attack and the scene cuts away before the fight can be joined in earnest or the monster can display any reaction.
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: She understands monetary value, but decided that precious gemstones would be suitable for her plans to escape the Citadel. It's a miracle that the few people she paid with such conspicuous wealth were honest folk who wouldn't have mugged her for the rest of it.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: She has become an ordained priestess of the Earth Mother, and has some actual clerical responsibilities and powers.
• Virgin Sacrifice: The reason she wasn't raped or harmed by the Goblins unlike most of their victims is because they intended to use her as this. Thankfully, Goblin Slayer and Priestess saved her.
• The World Is Always Doomed: Her reaction when seeing Chosen Heroine out and about speaks volumes.
  Princess: What kind of danger is the world in this time, O Great Hero?

Kingdom Court

All of the King's advisors and policymakers, in particular his personal inner circle of: An elderly minister, a red-haired cardinal, a tan-skinned court mage, a royal guardsman in silver armor, a Gold-ranked Padfoot adventurer-turned-advisor, and a silver-haired attendant.

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• Ambiguously Brown: The court mage is described as tan-skinned. Given how his complexion is not similarily emphasized in Daikatana, it probably is just a tan.
• Beast Man: The Gold-ranked adventurer is described as a Padfoot with the head of a dog, stubby hands, and copious bushy black hair.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: For all the royal guard's dismissiveness of his liege's combat ability, the man he is in charge of protecting is a celebrated veteran both in dungeon-delving and wars against demons.
• Cloud Cuckoolanders Minder: The cardinal's role as an advisor seems to mainly encompass him exasperately telling the King he can't run off to personally kill evildoers and loot dungeons at the slightest problem.
• Court Mage: One of the prominent advisors is this.
• Curtains Match the Window: Silver-Haired Attendant, as revealed by a character spotlight picture in volume 15, has limpid grey eyes to go along with her trademark mane.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Several if not all of the advisors are Gold-ranked holdovers of the King's old personal adventuring posse, and while not all of them flex their battle prowess, they all maintain close ties with their old leader and have been granted positions in the highest and closest levels of royal appointment.
• Gambit Roulette: Silver-Haired Attendant in volume 12 gives the Face and familiar-controlling wizard of the Shadowrunner party a secondary mission to take out the corrupt Fantastic Racist city guardswoman trying to murder her half-elven bastard sister, and it is possible the initial contract (a hit placed on the half-elf by drug-runners she was in debt too) was a fake made by them as an excuse to get the party in conflict with the real killer. Of course the other four members of the party were kept completely in the dark on the real objective, with no guarantee or even real incentive that they would go after the guardswoman when the initial assassination fell through, to say nothing of keeping the poor, opioid-addicted, discriminated-against prostitute alive on the off-chance they had reached her first.
• The Good Chancellor: The minister is an old man who handles most of the actual management of agreed-upon action.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Silver Haired Attendant can down two glasses of dwarven fire wine in a single quaff each, and is barely affected by them.
• High Priest: The cardinal presumably is one, though it's never clarified what god he serves.
• Honest Advisor: Everyone of them is on the side of good and firmly in their king's corner, and also rarely hesitate to openly call him an idiot when he behaves childishly or pursues short-sighted plans.
• Innocently Insensitive: The elderly minister keeps butting into conversations to suggest minor incentives be made to make more rookie adventurers take goblin-slaying quests, or for Sword Maiden herself to lead a nest-clearing task force. He's not being dismissive or malicious about it; he genuinely is trying to come up with cost-effective solutions for the stated problem with no awareness of how dangerous goblins are to novice fighters and why precisely Sword Maiden simply cannot deal with it herself despite considering it such an issue.
• Jerkass: The royal guard is a mouthy asshole who makes repeated digs at the physical ability of the rest of the court (the majority of whom are spellcasters and retired adventurers) and who mocks the plight of goblin rape victims while saying he doesn't mind "broken goods", in front of two women who suffered exactly that. The King makes excuses for him because he's an old adventuring buddy, but everyone else in the room either completely ignores him or views him with naked contempt.
• Mystical White Hair: The attendant has silver hair.
• Ninja Maid: The attendant is formally part of the service staff, but is also a high-level ex-adventurer. She also accompanies the King on his Vigilante Man hijinks.
• Older Than They Look: Silver-Haired Scout is at least the minimum age to become an adventurer in Daikatana, but is small and fresh-faced enough to be mistaken for a ten-year-old girl. This becomes far more the case when she’s pictured in the main series; twelve or thirteen years have passed since her heyday, and she is exactly as young-looking as she was before, just with longer hair.
• One Degree of Separation: Silver-Haired Scout and Female Warrior at least casually know each other, and Samurai Captain speculates that they grew up in the same orphanage together.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Silver-Haired Scout is described as barely taller than a Rhea or a ten-year-old child, but she's still a competent and decorated veteran adventurer.
• Platinum Makes Everything Shinier: The royal guard wears an entire suit of platinum armor.
• Praetorian Guard: The royal guard captain is a powerful former adventurer sporting conspicuous Bling of War.
• Retired Badass: Daikatana reveals that all of these courtiers (except for the elderly minister) were members of the King's main adventuring party.
• Secret-Keeper: At the very least the attendant knows about and participates in the King going out to lynch corrupt nobles and evil cultists he can't reach legally. It's hinted the others know or suspect, but they do nothing to stop it.
• Shipper on Deck: Or at least that's what Noble Fencer assumes. Whenever she serves as a personal assistant to the King, most of his other attendants like the red-haired cardinal tend to clear the room and leave them alone together as noted in volume 14, and the conclusion she leaps to as for why they do so is that they want or expect her to make a move on him to become his mistress or concubine.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: The cardinal who is one of the chief advisors is prominently described as redheaded.
• The Smurfette Principle: The only member of this little coterie that is a girl is Silver-Haired Scout.
• The Spymaster: Silver Haired Attendant is effectively this as the main direct hirer and liason of Shadowrunners commissioned to tidy the kingdom's diplomatic messes. Her appearance as a maid is a cover (and also she maybe likes to dress and act as one.)
• Standard Royal Court: Beyond the described inner circle, the King has a full-sized council of major-and-moderate ranking wizards, merchants, religious figures, and bueaucrats all jostling to bring their concerns to the fore.
• The Stoic: Silver-Haired Scout is described by Samurai Captain as slight of expression if not emotion, though she loosens up substantially with a cup of wine.
• The Team: The King was The Leader of their adventuring party when that was all they were in Daikatana. Silver-Haired Scout was The Lancer, as the one most at his side, even when he's dealing with social issues. The Mage was The Smart Guy, the Padfoot and the Guard are both The Big Guy, and the Cardinal is The Heart on account of valiantly reining in the King's worst excesses when it comes to his desires to flee his court duties and hack up more monsters.
• Walking the Earth: Despite the Kingdom having a capital city that the King himself is pretty much shackled in, his council is stated to be a traveling court; a form of government from European antiquity in which the ruling authority packed and moved up and down its territory, setting up shop in a various cities to address local issues and coordinate regional projects temporarily before moving in a manner comaprable to a Circuit Judge.
• Wizard Classic: The court mage, when seen as an active adventurer a little over a decade in the past, is described as a very large man, obviously much older than the rest of his team, and with a traditional long, bushy beard.

Northern Kingdom Royalty

Chieftain

A knight of the Kingdom that helped the Northern tribes fight monster incursions in the last Demon King war, married a woman there, and was appointed viceroy when the region agreed to become the Kingdom's vassal.

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• Barbarian Long Hair: Wears his hair out in a silky mullet.
• Blood Knight: Is always raring for bloodshed and stays nonchalant even when being ambushed by a giant sea monster.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Strolls around on deck and laughs at his men being eaten by a sea monster and panicking.
• Clothing-Concealed Injury: Is first seen wearing his cloak sideways to cover his arm being crippled from a stab in the shoulder during a routine raid some time beforehand.
• Feuding Families: His father ran away from the North with immediate family in tow to avoid being on the losing side of a blood-feud. He returned as an adult and nullified the feud by marrying into another family and fighting demons.
• Going Native: Is a Viking by blood, but lived as long as he could remember in the southwestern Kingdom. He feels no particular kinship with his brethen and even years after moving back he still can't grasp their language or culture.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Apparently fought a giant bee demon barehanded while courting his wife. He claims it was the only way to keep the battle fair in an apparent inside-joke with his bondsmen.
• Happily Married: Was and is deeply in love with the woman he married.
• Language Barrier: The Vikings have their own unique dialect of the Common Tongue that makes it difficult for outsiders to follow their conversations. He has been trying to learn their speech to fit in among them, but still needs his wife to supply specific words for him from time to time.
• Macho Masochism: He allegedly hasn't had his wounded arm magically healed because his wife is saving her miracles to interrogate prisoners, but it stands to reason that followers of the Sadistic Goddess look down on those who seek a swift remedy to injuries. Priestess offers to heal him when she meets him, which he allows solely because it would be ungracious to refuse a guest offering their services.
• Master Swordsman: Is called as such and is able to duel with a giant sea-monster with a mundane longsword.
• One Degree of Separation: Is the maternal uncle of the current King of the human kingdom.
• Pretty Boy: On top of being unexpectantly young, Priestess notes him as being much more svelte and refined than the stereotypical viking. He even refuses to grow a beard despite the wife he excessively adores asking him to try it.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: He and his wife are constantly cooing over each other with pet names, to the point that his bondsmen and the party roll their eyes or avert them from their extravagances.
• Spell Blade: The climax of the fight with the sea-monster is a full-power blow from his sword enhanced with the Shock and Awe blessing of his wife.
• Sword Plant: Is repeatedly noted to have a habit of stabbing his sword into the ground to lean against the hilt.

Husfreya

A woman from the North who is a religious leader and married to their viceroy.

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• Accent Interest: She has been learning the standard Common Tongue from her husband for a while, but still has a distinct accent. Priestess finds it bewitching to hear, but she's embarrassed of it and has been practicing by herself in secret to speak without it in preparation for a possible future trip down south to the Kingdom's court.
• Blemished Beauty: Her extensive lightning scar is said by her to have scared off many potential suitors before the man who eventually became her husband moved in from the south.
• Character Tic: She reflexively fiddles with her keys when embarrassed or insecure.
• The Chief's Daughter: Was born into a family of prominence among her people.
• A Child Shall Lead Them: She defensively states she was "hardly in the cradle" when her father and siblings died, but if she's really only a few years older than Priestess than she was certainly not mature when she rose to power.
• Claimed by the Supernatural: Her lightning scar is considered to be a sign of favor by the Mother of Darkness. She can call upon a miracle through it.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Gets moody and passive-aggressive if her husband's attention turns to anyone else.
• Cool Key: Wears a collection of gold, silver, and black-metal keys at all times. Priestess at first assumes that they are a symbol of office, then later concludes they are an indicator of a married woman.
• Crush Blush: Frequently gets a radiant blush when teased by her beloved husband, or just thinking of him.
• Eye Scream: As a little girl she was struck by lightning in the eye.
• Happily Married: Was and is deeply in love with the man she married.
• I Am Not Pretty: Despite her scar supposedly being "a gift from the Mother of Darkness" and a point of pride, she considers it ugly, states prospective suitors turned her away because of it, and disbelieves both Priestess and her beloved husband that they still consider her beautiful regardless.
• The Medic: She has no healing magic, but her service to the Mother of Darkness has made her an exemplary surgeon.
• The Power of Love: She and her husband carry on about how the enhancement miracle she can cast on him is borne out of their mutual devotion and faith for each other as much or even more than it is a boon from the goddess she serves.
• Roadside Surgery: Performs top-notch surgery on a longship deck in the middle of a pitch battle.
• Scars are Forever: She got struck by lightning in the eye as a little girl, and to this day has a lichtenberg figure on her face, neck, right arm, and over her heart.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: She and her husband are constantly cooing over each other with pet names, to the point that his bondsmen and the party roll their eyes or avert them from their extravagances.
• Skip the Anesthetic: A good surgeon she may be, but as a devotee to "the sadistic goddess" she is hardly about to deign to offer something so heretical as a painkiller unless absolutely necessary.
• Super Empowering: The only miracle she exhibits is when she grants her husband a strengthening aura of Shock and Awe magic at the end of his fight with the sea-monster.
• Torture Technician: As a devotee to a goddess of pain, she of course is always ready to interrogate prisoners with stuff like serrated scalpels and the like.
• World's Most Beautiful Woman: Priestess thinks she matches if not exceeds Sword Maiden in the looks department, and that she could hold her own against the elves in a beauty contest.
• Younger Than They Look: With how voluptuous and mature she is, she should be about as old as Sword Maiden. But no, Priestess deduces after a few conversations that she is maybe a few years older than her own 17-going-on-18.

Desert Kingdom Royalty

Desert Princess

The next in line ruler of the Desert Kingdom. Abducted after her parents were killed in an attempt to intimidate her into giving away her throne.

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• Abdicate the Throne: Was being pressured to do this by the Regent, but refused.
• Animal Companion: Has a pet rat, trained enough to sneak messages out of the palace in lockdown.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Is described as having an ample chest in one instance.
• Death Glare: The prime minister feels she can have frozen and killed him with the venom of her outraged look.
• Face Death with Dignity: Refused to abandon her castle with her servants, even against their desperate warnings she would likely be abused and executed by the usurpers, charging them to secure outside help as she held her ground.
• Forced to Watch: As the Regent's goblin army had their way with breeding slaves, as a threat to her integrity if she continued to hold out on him.
• Gilded Cage: Her servants liken her sheltered upbringing to one. Becomes more literal when she's captured by her Evil Chancellor, how keeps her in her rooms but threatens her life with curses.
• Lady and Knight: With the Young Knight that the handmaidens found.
• Race Against the Clock: She is bonded to a cursed hourglass that will kill her if the prime minister lets it run out.
• Rescue Romance: If the rumors are to be believed, Guild Girl states the young knight who liberated her is "by her side" now; implying the two have formed more than a Lady and Knight relationship.
• Rightful King Returns: While she was never out of power offically, she was pretty much a puppet queen by the Prime Minister until her handmaidens found a young knight that restored her to power.
• Sheltered Aristocrat: Was never let out of the castle or exposed to shady diplomacy, like her father before her.
• The High Queen: Mature and firm in the face evil most depraved, she is poised to grow into a strong queen after being liberated by the Young Knight.

Young Knight

A farm boy in the desert with his uncle that agrees to go with the Handmaids to rescue the Desert Princess.

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• And the Adventure Continues: Volume 11 ends with him becoming companions to the Royal Handmaidens and agrees to help save the Desert Princess; to which he succeeds.
• Cool Sword: Wields a beautiful ancestral sword that his family sealed away long ago. In his hand is emits a whitish-blue glow and hums with power.
• Heroic Lineage: He becomes the personal Knight "Like his Father before him"
• Hero of Another Story: Even the Great Gods were extremely interested in his incredible tale of rescuing the Desert Princess, defeating the Prime Minister, restoring the Desert Kingdom to the Forces of Order, and becoming the Desert Princess's personal knight and implied lover all off screen in between Volumes!
• Lady and Knight: Becomes the "Knight" to the Desert Princess
• Rags to Royalty: Implied, he starts as a farmer in the desert and succeeds in a quest to rescue the Desert Princess, and if rumors are to be believed, he forms a Rescue Romance with the Desert Princess. At the very least, he has become her personal knight which is a major boost to his lifestyle.
• Undying Loyalty: Agreed to go on a quest to save the Desert Princess and restore her to power out of the blue, liberates her and the Desert Kingdom from the Prime Minister, and becomes her personal knight.

Handmaids

A pair of handmaidens to the Desert Princess, an elf and a rhea, trying to get help for their mistress.

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• And the Adventure Continues: Volume 11 ends with them becoming companions to a farm boy with Heroic Lineage that agrees to help save the Desert Princess.
• Break the Haughty: The elf is incredibly snooty, and gets an inordinate amount of abuse compared to her rhea friend. She eventually breaks down to a Farm Boy, kowtowing and weeping for help.
• Haughty Help: The elf is prideful even compared to other elves despite serving humans.
• Silent Bob: The rhea doesn't talk where the reader can see what she's saying.
• Made a Slave: At one point they get caught by kidnappers with the intent of selling at the market. They get bought by a farmer and escape with help of his nephew.
• Those Two Guys: A pair of servants joined at the hip trying to get someone to help save their lady.
• Trauma Conga Line: The number of ambushes and attacks they suffer in their quest is ridiculous.
• Undying Loyalty: They will not abandon their young charge, no matter how bad things get for them.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Always fighting, but they're good friends and care for the other almost as much as the princess.

Shadowrunners

As a whole

An underground organization of unauthorised adventurers and related shady characters that do dirty work that not even the more conventional adventurers would do.

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• The Casino: One of their major fronts in Water Town is a gaming hall that is open to the public. People that want to make use of its Rogue elements have to take a circuitous route to reach it as a signal of shady intent.
• The City Narrows: Their dives tend to be tucked away deep within city slums.
• Den of Iniquity: Their gathering places are hidden, password-requiring bars that are both better appointed and far sleazier than the open taverns of the regular guild.
• Nominal Hero: The plot relevant Shadowrunners initially come off like good guys only because the missions they take in their Sympathetic P.O.V. segments all just so happen to advance the causes of good, even if in incidental or tangential ways. In truth, the Shadowrunners as a whole are violent crooks for hire, and openly don’t care if the missions they're given are meant to advance good or evil and they admit to committing heinous crimes behind the scenes. Clearest example comes in volume 12 when the crew accept a job to kill a prostitute that racked up a debt to a drug-running gang, and only take down her Fantastic Racist half-sister instead out of revenge for doing a Kill Steal and siccing the city watch on them, which pays out as part of a secret second-mission only their handler and one member of the strike-team was aware of.
• Professional Killer: Most of their jobs at least involve hired wetwork against political or personal targets.
• Thieves' Guild: They're the "extra-legal" counterpart to the official Adventurer Guild, doing the jobs that you can't get away with advertising or taking out in the open, such as spying or assassinating.

Burglar

Voiced by: Nobuo Tobita (Japanese), Charlie Campbell (English)

An old rhea who rescues the preteen Goblin Slayer from being run down by the goblins that destroyed his home village, and then trains him to become an adventurer.

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• Abusive Parents: For five years he was basically Goblin Slayer's guardian. He probably did the world a favor by bringing forth another goblin-slaying maniac like himself, but make no mistake — he spent a good part of those years beating the boy's ego and self-esteem into the dirt, and another good part literally doing so with stones. The end result is more automaton than human, and it has had a real effect on the young man's future relationships.
• The Bus Came Back: After being kept squarely as a backstory-only presence, he finally stopped by Cow Girl's farm at the end of Volume 9 to check on his pupil. Only Cow Girl was available to talk, and she was less than amused when Burglar proceeded to badmouth him as usual.
• But Now I Must Go: Stopped training Goblin Slayer suddenly and left him years ago. He apparently didn't even declare their training complete or anything, just said that he was going on another journey one day and Goblin Slayer never heard from him again.
• Desecrating the Dead: Sits on and plays with the corpse of an elvish adventuress during an excursion with the young Goblin Slayer.
• Dirty Old Man: On top of fondling the body of an elf that died fighting bandits (which to be fair may have just been meant to further desensitize Goblin Slayer), he catcalls Cow Girl quite disgustingly while looking for his old apprentice.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Goblin Slayer could have had no better mentor than the person whose chronological first appearance sees them slice off the heads and limbs of multiple goblins with one swing of a knife. That said, Goblin Slayer most definitely could have had a more humane instructor.
• Famed in Story: Apparently, Druid Girl is a huge fan of a famed Rhea Adventurer called "Burglar" who stole a massive fortune once and Guild Girl at one point even recalls the a Rhea Adventurer called "Burglar" as an Adventurer of great fame. Whether Burglar and the "Burglar" from these stories are one in the same is one of the great mysteries about him.
• Foil: To Goblin Slayer, both being adventurers obsessed with killing goblins, which is fitting since he was Goblin Slayer's mentor. However, whereas Goblin Slayer can be approachable and friendly in his own warped way, Burglar has clearly lost any social skills to properly interact with people in a non-aggressive manner. He is essentially what Goblin Slayer might become if he backtracks from his Character Development; a crazy goblin-obsessed old man living in solitary.
• Genuine Human Hide: In the light novels he is noted to wear a mask made from the peeled face of a goblin.
• Hero of Another Story: He was basically the "Goblin Slayer" of his time, before he disappeared.
• I Have Many Names: According to Volume 10, when operating as a Shadowrunner he goes by 'Ninja' and 'Barrel Rider'.
• Know When to Fold Them: Does not believe in self-sacrifice, and tried to beat into Goblin Slayer that he should always cut his losses on a quest going south to fight another day. Given Goblin Slayer's track record of workaholicism and and perseverance in seemingly hopeless odds it seems this was one of the few lessons he refused to take to heart.
• Living Legend: The Narration of the Capital Inspector implies that he is far more famous than he lets on.
• Ring of Power: It functions as an Invisibility Cloak, and is one of the bigger hints as to who he is an Expy of.
• Sink or Swim Mentor: Metaphorically (see Training from Hell below) and also quite literally, as he taught Goblin Slayer how to swim by throwing him into a river and telling him to learn to swim if he didn't want to die. Also, the river was frozen over and he had tied his young charge's arms behind his back.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Has quite a few unsavory things to say about conventional heroes in Goblin Slayer's flashbacks, and naturally cusses his pupil out quite liberally when verbally abusing him during training.
• Spiteful Spit: Waters the ground while lambasting the concept of heroism while showing off the aftermath of a failed bandit-clearing quest to a still in-training Goblin Slayer.
• Taught by Experience: Believes in this fanatically. He goes on multiple rants lambasting people who need to be granted strength and knowledge to achieve their goals, and tells the young Goblin Slayer that it was his lack of will to act that cost his sister her life. As shown in Volume 6, Goblin Slayer has internalized this view thoroughly.
• There Is No Try: He expresses extreme contempt for the idea of people holding back from committing to a task out of a desire to be "prepared fully beforehand". Training only takes you so far and the world won't wait, so just go and start doing the first chance you get with whatever skill you already have if you want to get anywhere.
• Training from Hell: He spent five years in an ice cave brutalizing Goblin Slayer; from pelting him with rocks until he got knocked out, to subjecting him to constant Breaking Speeches blaming him for his sister's death, to tying his hands behind his back and throwing him into an iced-over lake.
• Uncertain Doom: He disappears after going out on one of his excursions without giving Goblin Slayer a proper goodbye, and has not been seen or heard from since. It does leave one wondering if he survived the last adventure he went on. No longer uncertain, as he later appears completely fine at the end of Volume 9 and has a conversation with Cow Girl.
• Weak, but Skilled: While it is uncertain if he is strong or not, he is definitely a firm believer that strength means nothing in a fight and a person should instead use their mind and anything on hand to win. He also believes that if a person loses something (i.e. Goblin Slayer losing his sister to goblins), that person lost it due to doing nothing to stop it rather than not being strong enough to do so.
• Whole-Plot Reference: His entire chapter and training of Goblin Slayer is a huge shout-out to the confrontation between Bilbo Baggins and Gollum in The Hobbit, complete with a life-or-death riddle game that ends with Burglar asking "What have I got in my pocket?"

Spy

A masked Shadowrunner who fights with a gun.

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• Anachronism Stew: Is dressed and equipped like a mid-17th-century-or-later highwayman in what has so far been a squarely Medieval European Fantasy.
• Artificial Limbs: His limbs have been mostly replaced with metal shells powered by magic runes.
• Automatic Crossbows: His primary weapon is a repeating crossbow that can make a target resemble a porcupine with a few seconds of sustained firing.
• Badass Normal: Downplayed; he's apparently the only member of his crew that can't cast spells (yes, he includes the fixer in the lineup), but his body is packed to the gills with, and only still standing because of, extensive magic enchantments.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: After sneaking through a Desert Kingdom garrison in the middle of a goblin riot to assassinate the Guard Captain in his office and snatch his documents, he gets out by loading the body on a stretcher and just marching to the medical tent while pretending to be a bodyguard delivering an officer downed by the goblins.
• The Big Guy: His crew's "expert on violence."
• Book Dumb: He's very poorly educated and disinterested in reading.
• Boom, Headshot!: He has a flintlock pistol with enough kick to splat a troll's head, and the enhanced body to keep such a weapon under control to aim correctly.
• Career-Ending Injury: He was a Wizball player that suffered an accident that left him a quadriplegic and also missing an eye. He became an assassin to pay for the replacements, but still loves to watch and gamble on the game for nostalgia and vicarious fun.
• Coat, Hat, Mask: Wears this getup.
• Commissar Cap: Wears a military style peaked hat as part of his ensemble.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: The enhancements he's put on his body are repeatedly stated to be illegal, and moreover put his physical and spiritual integrity under great jeopardy.
• Explosive Overclocking: Putting his limbs into "Overdrive" gives him temporary Super Strength, Super Speed, and accelerated conciousness, but burns the shells. Crosses into Heroic RRoD too, as he gets a brain-fever as an aftereffect.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Smokes wolfberry-laced cigars as an antipyretic for his brain overheating.
• The Gunslinger: Wields a flintlock pistol to devastating effect.
• Hand Cannon: His flintlock is big and powerful enough that he needs to enhance his limbs or steady it with both arms in order to get a shot lined up, and almost every shot he lands makes heads explode.
• Has a Type: The cleric and second mage on the team tease him for supposedly having a "thing for elves."
• Magic Eye: One of his eyes is enchanted, giving him night vision, boosted far-sightedness, and very mild x-ray sight. It apparently uses echolocation.
• The Night Owl: Acknowledges that staying up til almost dawn and sleeping past noon are unhealthy, but it's what his job and lifestyle have driven him to.
• No Questions Asked: Avidly doesn't want to know the motives or contexts of any of the jobs he's given or conspiracies he's involved in.
• One Head Taller: Has about this much height on Changeling.
• Pistol-Whipping: Kills the Coachman by cracking him over the head with his gun hard enough to break his skull.
• Politically Correct Villain: He’ll accept a contract from a violent drug cartel to kill a poor prostitute that got in debt to them with little hesitation, but he'll coldly turn his nose up at her corrupt guardswoman half-sister attempting to recruit him into her Fantastic Racist cabal. He wouldn't be able to pick up elf women if they were all run out of town after all.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Whenever one of his heists goes wrong and the city watch get on his tail, he’ll lay down cover fire but actively try to miss them; after all, a reputation as a guard-killer would only make his life vastly harder.
• Super Hearing: He has a "Bat Eye" that apparently lets him see sound. Don't ask how that works.
• Third Line, Some Waiting: He and his party are at the center of substantial sideplots in Volumes 10 and 11 that run concurrent to Goblin Slayer's quests and are wrought with political intrigue and still ongoing.

Changeling

An elf-like woman who is a Shadowrunner alongside Spy.

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• Astral Projection: Can do this to scope out a job site for her crew, but she moves slow in the immaterial realm and the spiritual echoes of people and places don't always match 100% with their actual physical status.
• The Beastmaster: She can communicate with all manner of animals and monsters, and utilizes them in her jobs, such as having a larval Rock Eater eat through the plaster of a mansion windowsill.
• Beta Couple: Priestess is deeply if unconciously envious with her easy and deep rapport with her Spy companion, compared to her still hesitant and unbalanced dynamic with Goblin Slayer after two-and-a-half years.
• Berserk Button: Given what is known about her backstory, it comes as no surprise that she gets murderously angry at the thought of kidnappers or slavers running around with impunity.
• Bouncer: She works security the Water Town casino while disguised as a floor attendant.
• Casting a Shadow: Knows a spell that can construct solid objects out of darkness.
• Changeling Fantasy: "Changeling" is the name given to children with majority elvish blood born to otherwise mundane human parents. No one is sure if its just ancient ancestry becoming awakened, or indeed some trick by the Fae. The main sign of them is having ears noticeably longer than a half-elf, but not so long as a pure elf. Priestess notes that she is remarkably lively and self-assured, and feels guilty for presuming she would suffer Half-Breed Angst.
• Charm Person: She knows a spell to influence people's perception and memory with her commands.
• Heh Heh, You Said "X": Mentions it was her "first time doing... that" ("that" being goblin slaying) which prompts two of her companions to rib her for making it sound dirty.
• I Am Not Pretty: Insists to herself that she doesn't have the body to pull of a Playboy Bunny uniform.
• Kill the Lights: Can use illusion magic to plunge building interiors into total darkness to hobble pursuers.
• Living Shadow: For battle magic, she can summon a magically constructed purple panther from her shadow to attack.
• Ma'am Shock: Is surprised and irritated at Apprentice Cleric repeatedly referring to her as "Senior" in the casino.
• Made a Slave: Speculated by a Shadowrunning crewmate of being one or living under threat of it as a child. It was the second one, and she intends to avenge the ones who defended her with their lives.
• Photographic Memory: Can recall with decent detail and accuracy the heraldry stamped on a murder victim's furniture that she saw for scant moments before being ambushed.
• Playboy Bunny: Dresses as one while working in the Water Town casino. Then she has to chase a target in the get-up.
• Revenge: Became a shadowrunner to avenge her dear childhood friend who was hurt or killed stopping an attempt to kidnap her.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: A big emphasis is put on her striking red hair, and her importance in the plot grows at an exponential rate.
• Third Line, Some Waiting: Shows up in Volumes 10 and 11 as part of a shadowrunning party doing political perilous missions that incidentally relate in some way to Goblin Slayer's most recent quest.
• Weather Manipulation: Reveals herself to be a Rainmaker in volume 11 and conjures a monsoon to boost the speed of the Kelpie one of her teammates summoned to pull a sled.

Rogue Party

The auxiliary members comprising the remainder of Spy and Changeling's usual shadowrunning posse. Consisting of a spirit-taming driver, a familiar-possessing mage, an acolyte of the God of Knowledge, and their agent.

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• The Beastmaster: Unlike all the previously seen shamans that mostly call upon swarms of elemental sprites to amass around and bolster their spells, the Driver mainly just calls up one big, animalistic spirit that he then puts to a sustained task.
• Cartoon Creature: It is stated in volume 12 that most wizard familiars are magically constructed beasts, with the Familiar Mage's vessels being vaguely catlike but otherwise of indescernible species.
• The Driver: One on the team, who saves on upkeep by summoning a kelpie to pull his carriage rather than rear and keep a regular horse.
• The Face: Also one on the team. Spy considers him a full member despite his only role being to negotiate contracts for the rest.
• Familiar: The second mage of the group has a couple that can channel her magic and consciousness so well that she needs not go on jobs in person.
• My Girl Back Home: The Driver has a steady girlfriend he is thinking of proposing to.
• Our Kelpies Are Different: The go-to summon of the Driver; a horse-shaped lake-inhabiting fey that he hitches to his wagon. It can only move on water, and can generate only very limited amounts in arid environments, so Changleling has to use her Rainmaker ability to give it a boost when they need to book it.
• Remote Body: Familiar Mage for whatever reason refuses to show her true body on the job or to other Shadowrunners, and thus conducts business by putting her spirit in the heads of her familiars.
• Secret-Keeper: The Fixer and the Familiar Mage are the only two members to know that the hit put out on the half-elf drug thief is a ruse to get close to her murderous guardswoman half-sister. Likely because they do not actually take part in the heists, and as such would not be at risk of being caught and interrogated into spilling their real contract if something went wrong, unlike the teammates they are leading around by the nose on false premises.
• Seeker Archetype: Knowledge Acolyte became a Shadowrunner to find and steal hidden knowledge to bring back to her home temple's library. Precisely what that knowledge is and why it was hidden, whether it be forbidden dark magic or some nobleman's record of personal skullduggery, she honestly doesn't care; any new information to contribute raises her esteem among her church.
• Summon Magic: Driver can call his kelpie carriage-puller to anywhere and at anytime, including in the middle of a giant desert.
• Symbiotic Possession: Familiar Mage's vessels have minds of their own that she doesn't completely suppress when bodyriding them, as seen with a couple of small My Instincts Are Showing scenes in volume 12.

Desert Rogues

A semi-retired old crew of shadowrunners, now mostly running a big restaurant together in the Desert Kingdom capital. Consisting of the Veiled Server, Rhino Man Bouncer, Birdwoman Dancer, the Owner, and their old Dwarf Leader that still remains an active agent.

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• Ambiguous Gender: The Veiled Server wears a body-covering robe, and while Priestess' first impression is of a feminine figure, she second-guesses herself.
• The Bartender: The Veiled Server fetches drinks and meals from behind the counter, though she doesn't serve alcohol.
• Battle Couple: The Birdwoman Dancer and the Owner are ex-shadowrunners and very passionate for each other.
• Beast Man: The Bouncer is an anthropomorphic Rhino Man.
• Bouncer: The role of the Rhino Man teammate in their new enterprise.
• Chef of Iron: The Veiled Server seems to also be the cook (and fries a mean manta fillet) as well being entirely ready to back up the bouncer against a bunch of thugs starting trouble.
• Coolest Club Ever: Their restaurant, in contrast to the gloomy hidey-holes of the westerly Rogue Guilds, is a massive and airy multi-story establishment cloaked from unwanted eyes by a mild Perception Filter, with gold-embossed furnishings, high quality food, an expansive pool for mermaids, sundry other Cute Monster Girl staff or clientele like a lamia wandering about, and the Birdwoman Dancer is regarded as one of the greatest performance artists in all the Desert Kingdom and beyond. Priestess is awed by every detail that catches her eye.
• Dance of Romance: Variant; the Birdwoman Dancer performs interpretive dance reenactments of old adventuring ballads and legends, but only does so as a display for her paramour the Owner, who sneaks into the audience for every major performance and the two lock eyes throughout them all.
• Harping on About Harpies: The Birdwoman is of course a harpy in all but name.
• Mysterious Veil: The Veiled Server obviously. It's so obscuring, Priestess starts second-guessing their gender.
• Retired Badass: Four of the five have largely put the Rogue's Guild racket behind them and are running a legitimate business together. The odd girl out does not begrudge them and wishes their endeavor success (and not just because they let her meet clients on the premise).
• Rhino Rampage: The Padfoot on the team is a fairly exotic and curmudgeonly Rhino Man. Priestess thinks of him as a unicorn even after being corrected.
• Sand Blaster: According to the ex-Dwarf Leader, the Owner of the restaurant is a wizard with a specialty for spells that control and attack with black sand.
• The Teetotaler: Given they live in fantasy-Arabia, their restaurant naturally forgoes stocking alcohol.
• Young and in Charge: The Dwarf Leader is noted to still be a young girl by the standards of her race. Probably why she’s the only member of the crew that doesn’t want to settle down just yet.

The Golden Party

As a whole

From left to right: Half-Elf Scout, Female Warrior, Sword Maiden (or rather Female Bishop), Samurai Captain, Myrmidon Monk, Female Mage

Sword Maiden's old adventuring party that worked together to kill the Demon Lord ten years before the start of the main series. The other members were Samurai Captain, Myrmidon Monk, Female Mage, Female Warrior, and Half-Elf Scout.

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• A Day in the Limelight: This group of adventurers will star in the web serialized novel Goblin Slayer Side Story 2: Tsubanari no Daikatana, chronicling how the party reached and defeated the Demon Lord.
• Cold Equation: Though they usually decide to do the right thing, most of the party have moral considerations that are... extremely utilitarian at best, naked "fuck you got mine" at the worst, such as when the boys of the team strongly consider not bothering with the Escort Mission. At one point, Samurai Captain is bleeding out after a critical hit, and Female Mage decides not to use any healing magic on him in case the extra spell slot is needed while the party fights their way back out.
• Combination Attack: Female Mage, Female Bishop, and later on Samurai Captain can all link incantations to cast one big spell together with extra power.
• Due to the Dead: For what it's worth, they make a point of collecting the dog tags of every dead adventurer they come across and pay to have them buried by the Trade God's church out of their own pockets.
• Escort Mission: Their first proper quest as a team is to help two rookie girls find and extract the rest of their party and a second group that succumbed to a trapped chest and are stuck in the Dungeon of the Dead.
• Experienced Protagonist: Female Warrior, Bug Monk, and possibly Half-Elf Scout are all veteran adventurers with multiple trips into the dungeon under their belts, which is why the rest of the group is so keen to secure their camaraderie.
• Fantastic Nuke: The three arcane casters working together can cast Fusion Blast.
• The Fettered: They are noted to be proceeding through the Dungeon at an unusually fast pace. Samurai Captain credits their growth to the fact they seek to clear the Dungeon instead of just farm the upper levels for loot like most.
• Foregone Conclusion: Readers know going into their story that they all make it through the Dungeon of the Dead together and triumph over the Demon Lord, though the Action Prologue Flash Forward tries to inject some tension by strongly signaling most of the party besides Sword Maiden die in the final battle.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: Three boys and three girls.
• Glory Seeker: Most of the party, for one reason or another, seek to make their mark on history by being the ones to wipe out the Dungeon of the Dead.
• Good Is Not Soft: Samurai jumps to Female Bishop's aid when a transaction between her and some adventurers turns ugly — because he doesn't know their capabilities, he readies himself for a swift fight to kill. Although Diamond Knight did confirm Samurai would have likely lost the fight with the far more experienced adventurers if they survived the initial Single-Stroke Battle.
• Most Common Superpower: Both Female Mage and Female Warrior are rather stacked. Funny enough, Female Bishop/Sword Maiden, the poster girl of this in the main series, actually had the smallest bust line out of the three when the party first formed.
• Noodle Incident: In Volume 4, King spitefully throws in Sword Maiden's face a mention of a time when her party almost got wiped by a slime. We see the event in Daikatana and what really happened was that the slime surprised Female Warrior and enveloped her head as the party was making the trip back out of the Dungeon of the Dead after their first excursion, and the party had to scramble to figure out how to get it off before she drowned.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The group doesn't break their various cools (Female Mage's optimism, Myrmidon Monk's aggressive apathy, etc.) unless confronted with something major, like the Demon Lord's human guise slaughtering a helpless party right in front of them.
• Retired Badass: As Gold-ranked adventurers, they are pressured to recuse themselves from regular fieldwork and take up governmental sinecures or act as noblemen's attendants until a national-scale monster emergency rears its head.
• Robbing the Dead: Most of the party will readily strip adventurer corpses for an extra bit of pawnable loot. After all, the dead don't need armor. To their credit, they'll at least put some money back into burying the "donors."
• Saving the World: Daikatana is the story of how they eventually manage this against the Dungeon of the Dead.
• Uncertain Doom: Most of the party, notably Samurai, have yet to appear in present day. Combined with Sword Maiden's knowledge on the dungeon's chances of survival, it paints an unclear picture on their fate, though we know that at least she (along with Myrmidon Monk) have survived into the present day.
• The Unchosen One: No member of the party, not even Female Bishop, was especially favored by the gods or was born with a notable destiny. They rose above their fellow dungeon-delvers and saved the world from the ravages of the Demon Lord only by dint of their own skill and dedication to proving their strength over the monsters.

Samurai Captain

A young man from the East who wants to hurry and find the "source of the Death" to strike down the curse plaguing the land.

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• Allergic to Routine: Hates falling into a pattern of behavior, both because fighting the same enemies in the same location means his growth is stagnant and because he gets sick of doing the same thing incredibly fast.
• Attack Reflector: Once used his Magic Missile variant to send an enemy's thrown weapon back into their face.
• Berserk Button: Becomes infuriated on learning about the concept of "newbie hunting."
• Big Little Brother: Downplayed. For one, their cousins, and for another, she's only a few days older than him, but still, Female Mage is his elder relative, and he is massive compared to her.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: Steals Myrmidons line about how "It's all the same to me" while performing the Escort Mission. The big guy actually gets affronted and sulky about it for a bit.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Can never resist the urge to help those in need, even if it's likely to go badly for him.
• Contrasting Prequel Protagonist: Samurai is this to Goblin Slayer. Goblin Slayer by his debut is an Experienced Protagonist who already had already become a Silver-ranked adventurer, while Daikatana begins with Samurai only just starting off his career as an adventurer. Goblin Slayer is The Stoic who rarely shows much emotion, Samurai is more emotive. They are also both Clueless Chick Magnets, but while Goblin Slayer is completely indifferent to women's attraction to him, Samurai is more awkward in his interactions with women as seen with Female Warrior and Female Bishop, and especially gets flustered by the former's teasing.
• Diagonal Cut: Kills a goblin by slashing it through the shoulder and abdomen.
• Dork Knight: He is the chivalrous leader of a party that saved the world from the Demon Lord and a skilled swordsman completely devoted to cultivating and proving his strength. He is also horrendously socially inept, prone to exaggerated theatrics, and is the butt of multiple running jokes from most of the rest of his party's members.
• Dual Wielding: Knows how to use a dagger in his off-hand to parry, if not exactly well yet.
• The Dulcinea Effect: Samurai is willing to fight a pair of veteran adventurers for Female Bishop despite knowing that he might get beaten up or even killed if he doesn't beat them in a Single-Stroke Battle, despite only just meeting her.
• Eyes Out of Sight: His hair cover his eyes.
• Gut Feeling: Is highly sensitive to bad premonitions around cursed items and adventurer fraggers.
• Hidden Eyes: The top half of Samurai Captain's face is always obscured by his bangs and the shadow of his helmet.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Knows a spell that lets him throw objects with the accuracy of a top-tier archer.
• Insistent Terminology: Whenever he's annoyed at Female Mage, he will excessively stress to himself and everyone that she is not his sister, she is his cousin. More than that, his second cousin.
• I Should Have Been Better: Any injuries his party suffers, he blames on himself as a failure to be vigilant or provide adequate direction. Though he may be affecting this attitude to highlight to his more insecure companions that they shouldn't keep making every stroke of bad luck out to be a greivous personal failing.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Samurai Captain is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, complete with the appropriate sword, and also a future Gold-ranked adventurer who leads the party that ended up killing the previous Demon Lord. He swears by the trope too; goofily praying that one of the loot drops they get will one day turn out to be a fancy new katana.
• Large Ham: He kicks down doors and announces his presence to expected monster ambushes because he thinks it makes him look badass, and often plays into his teammates' ribbing by loudly beseeching the gods for a new magic sword.
• Magic Knight: Female Warrior reveals to Samurai in secret that she knows that he is capable of using spells, which he withheld from using during their first sparring match. Samurai's reaction confirms her suspicions.
• Near-Death Experience: Almost got decapitated by a ninja, to the point of needing Resurrection.
• No Social Skills: Is constantly putting his foot in his mouth, making insulting or ghoulish remarks, and just generally is incapable of reading the room or responding properly to his teammates' emotional vulnerabilities. They only reason they don't get more pissed is that they realize he isn't knowingly malicious.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Got carried away loudly hoping that one of the pieces of loot the fished from the Dungeon would turn out to be an enchanted katana that just needs polishing. When it was all rusted junk he got a ribbing that became a long-running tease. To his credit, he took it in stride and even leans into the joke during subsequent Identification sessions.
• "Open!" Says Me: Makes a habit of exagerratedly kicking in Dungeon doors when in a theatrical mood.
• Playing with Fire: Can cast Firebolt, though it's still weak and needs strategic application.
• Slashed Throat: Nearly dies from an opened neck to a ninja in the Dungeon's third floor.
• The Scrooge: Despite being easily able to avoid even Fortress City's inflated prices with the loot they consistently earn, Samurai Captain buys only one cheapest-tier room for the girls to share while he and the guys sleep in stables.
• Seppuku: Rather casually muses about how he'd have to kill himself in shame if he ever developed a reputation as a coward for any reason.
• Skilled, but Naive: Samurai Captain was extensively trained in swordplay and even some magic before he set off on his quest, but he also readily admits to having no experience in actually delving dungeons, and needs Half-Elf Scout to explain the mechanics of a Dungeon-Based Economy to him when they first go out into town.
• Small Steps Hero: Encourages himself on his quest by reminding himself that surviving to tomorrow is always the priority goal.
• Tempting Fate: After killing a group of goblins as a first encounter and looting a treasure chest without it blowing up, Samurai Captain goes on in his thoughts about the party's first trip being so smooth and all they have to do is go home. Cue the slime that almost drowns Female Warrior.
• Terse Talker: Usually keeps his conversation short, blunt, and occasional.
• To Be a Master: Claims to have devoted his life to becoming and proving he is an elite swordsman.
• Unknown Rival: Is madly jealous of the Knight of Diamonds and pushes himself to match or exceed his pace whenever he is reminded of the nobleman's lead. The Knight for his part considers him a helpful acquaintance.
• Walking the Earth: He was wandering up and down various lands looking for random monsters and other challenges to test his mettle against before the discovery of the Dungeon of the Dead, and voices his intention to go right back to doing that once the world-endangering threat has been sealed away again.
• Workaholic: Trains day and night, and doesn't let a little something like a Near-Death Experience get in the way of his workout schedule.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Downplayed Trope, he will if it's her life or his, but is still disturbed by the act.

Female Warrior

A mysterious, flirtatious, and deadly Dungeon veteran that joins Samurai Captain right on the heels of losing her most recent party.

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• Animal Motifs: Called catlike by Samurai Captain for her seductiveness and lethality. She also has a tendency to smile like a cat whenever she teases Samurai Captain, and the manga gives her eyes shaped like that of a cat's.
• Aroused by Their Voice: Her voice is described as enchanting, with even her battle cries being sweet to listen to.
• Badass Normal: Female Warrior is a regular human with nothing but her skill in handling her polearm, but that has been enough to see her survive multiple trips through the Dungeon of Death where dozens of fellow adventurers perish.
• Blade on a Stick: Female Warrior prominently makes use of a glaive as her primary weapon.
• Blood from the Mouth: Dribbles blood-streaked spittle after getting gut-punched by Black Hat Wizard.
• Blood Knight: The most eager and sadistic fighter in the whole party.
• Bloodlust: Makes a show out of licking blood during battle. Quadruply nasty for being goblin blood.
• Boobs of Steel: Female Warrior is well-endowed, and is the only female on the team who is a front-line fighter.
• Broken Bird: Has experienced almost constant tragedy sense she arrived in Fortress City and isn't as blase as she attempts to appear to her friends.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: Has a big, crooked, catlike smile whenever she teases Samurai Captain.
• Close to Home: News of rogue adventurers preying on rookies in the Dungeon gets her uncharacteristically upset and eager to go and take care of the issue. She's been on the receiving end of such scum herself.
• Combat Stilettos: Wears heels as part of her get-up, which she augments with sabbatons. Funnily, Samurai Captain has nothing to say about it despite trying to get on his cousin's case for that exact fashion statement.
• Covered in Gunge: She always gets splattered in slime remains whenever the party has to fight some.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Has clear past experience with "scruffy men". She claims her first party was formed with her friends from an orphanage, and they all died to "newbie hunters." Samurai Captain accuses her of making it up for some hare-brained reason, which rather abruptly shuts down whatever moment she was trying to have with him.
• The Fashionista: Updates her armor for style as much as function, demanding each new set be more form-fitting.
• I Should Have Been Better: Beats herself up for developing a phobia of slimes and getting snuck up on by one.
• It Gets Easier: She tells Samurai Captain this is true of burying an entire adventuring party. She done it twice.
• It's Probably Nothing: Dismisses Female Bishop's concerns of a sixth slime lurking right before it drops on her.
• Killing Intent: Samurai Captain didn't notice her until she let her desire for a fight show on the surface.
• Minidress of Power: She wears an armored one.
• Ms. Fanservice: Female Warrior is a very attractive woman with large breasts, wide hips and shapely legs. It doesn't help that both the light novel illustrations and the manga take the opportunity to have a few close-up shots of her rear.
• My Greatest Failure: One of her party members in her first group was apparently her older sister. She dropped everything to get her out of the Dungeon alive, and was still too late to get her a Preservation miracle.
• Obviously Not Fine: Tries to make Gallows Humor out of how "I only almost suffocated" to a slime in the immediate aftermath, but Samurai Captain can tell how shaken and close to death she was and tried to support her.
• Only in It for the Money: Deserves a unique mention just for the joke she made that she's only still an adventurer because they're allowed to not pay any taxes.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Samurai Captain keeps making fun of her fear of slimes. In fairness to him, it seems to help her make light of the past trauma and she does sometimes encourage or partake in it.
• Pet the Dog: Actually hung out with and was nice to Female Bishop in the past, if only very casually.
• Punched Across the Room: A hiltstrike sends her rolling all the way back through a long corridor.
• Ship Tease: There's a lot of Unresolved Sexual Tension between Samurai Captain and Female Warrior. At the end of the first volume, she even reveals to him her real name, which Samurai chooses to hold deep to his heart.
• Slashed Throat: Gets sliced through the neck by the Demon Lord in the Action Prologue Flash Forward.
• Slasher Smile: Has a sharp, feral grin as she hacks apart goblins.
• Smells Sexy: Samurai Captain thinks so, even under sweat and gore.
• Sole Survivor: Female Warrior is introduced barely surviving a goblin ambush only to find the corpses of the rest of her party in a heap. She comments to herself that this is not the first time that's happened. It's how she lost her sister and friends when she first became an adventurer.
  • The rebooted manga introduces her hauling five body bags to the temple for burial.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Sneaks up on Samurai Captain from across a church after he already noted her presence.
• Supermodel Strut: Rolls her hips deliberately and salaciously when Samurai Captain is behind her.
• The Tease: Female Warrior often does this to Samurai Captain, such as by pressing her generous bosom against his arm while leaning on him, and often leaves him flustered.
• Too Injured to Save: Her disastrous debut dungeon crawl with her original party of friends from the orphanage saw her as the last one standing after an ambush and only able to drag her big sister out of the pit back into town, but by the time she made it back to the Trade God chapel her sister was too far gone for even Preservation to do any good.
• Tragic Keepsake: Her spear is either a gift from her sister or her old weapon when she was still alive.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
  • After a near-death experience, Female Warrior gets PTSD and freezes at the sight of slimes.
  • She also is scared of zombies, they remind her of how her original party is dead and gone.
• Wrecked Weapon: Her spear's blade is shattered in a fight with the fallen party.
• You Are Number 6: Female Warrior claims to not have a name when Samurai Captain asks after it, identifying herself by the number the Guild gave her when she became an adventurer (presumably on her dogtag.) Only Samurai Captain by the end of the first volume knows her name, which is left undisclosed to the readers.

Half-Elf Scout

An irreverent human/dark elf mixed-blood that guides Samurai Captain and Female Mage into and through Fortress City.

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• Blood from the Mouth: Vomits a stream of blood after getting stabbed in his exposed bowels.
• Cowardly Lion: Plays up how he's scared to enter melee but doesn't hesitate to guard his charges with his body.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Evidently was used to putting down highwaymen before the party took it upon themselves to track down and eradicate the newbie hunters.
• Deadpan Snarker: Sometimes joins Female Mage in ribbing Samurai Captain, such as by claiming he's just at a "rebellious age" after he insists once again that she isn't his sister.
• Gutted Like a Fish: Gets his abdomen slashed open by the Demon Lord in the Action Prologue Flash Forward.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Half-Elf Scout is bi-species human and dark elf.
• Impromptu Tracheotomy: Tried to copy a ninja's spearhand attack. It was successful enough to pulp a windpipe.
• Master of Unlocking: As the one who knows how to open locked and boobytrapped doors or treasure chests, he is considered to be probably the most essential member of the team.
• Mr. Exposition: Is the main guy providing the backstory and rules for how the Dungeon and Fortress City operate.
• Noiseless Walker: After a point, Samurai Captain realizes he no longer makes noise with his steps.
• Noodle Incident: Once got stuck in a tree after a wizard he pranked hexed him with a "bug-attracting spell," the full story of which Female Mage holds over his head to embarrass him or get him to back off.
• Punch Catch: Caught a ninja's ankle in the hook of his blades when it kicked him, before countrattacking.
• The Reliable One: Is the most personable and knowledgeable member of the Golden Party, and the one Samurai Captain takes advice from most readily.
• Reverse Grip: Holds his knife in an icepick grip to better deflect incoming attacks.
• Seeker Archetype: His personal goal is to uncover all the secrets of how the Dungeon of the Dead works.
• Street Smart: Is a longtime resident of Fortress City and shows Samurai Captain the ropes.

Female Mage

Samurai Captain's cousin who follows and supports him on his quest.

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• Anti-Magic: The spell Silence can not only atop other casters from casting, but can negate spells mid-activation.
• Big-Breast Pride: Never misses an opportunity to puff out or pat her own considerable chest.
• Born Lucky: Samurai Captain calls her exceptionally lucky, and always does well at games or endeavors she tries even though she rarely comes to fully understand them.
• Call-Forward: While playing a cardgame with her team, she plays a hand that constitutes a "Fusion Blast" combo. Fusion Blast is also her ultimate Combination Attack against the Demon Lord in the Flash Forward.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: Passes out drunk after a celebration with the party, and is limping along begging for a hangover cure the next morning.
• Cleavage Window: Female Mage's outfit reveals much of her breasts from the top.
• Combat Stilettos: Wears heels into the dungeon. When Samurai Captain tries to gainsay that, she points out that the Dungeon of the Dead has a completely flat paved floor, she's not a melee fighter and thus doesn't need to worry about footwork, and if she needs to run fast she can kick them off or would already be carried by someone else because she's so short she wouldn't be able to hold up in a chase no matter what shoes she had on.
• Counterspell: She also knows a variation of Dispel.
• Coup de Grâce: Shoots a fireball directly into the belly of a ninja Mymidon Monk was holding down. Even he comments on the ruthlessness of the move.
• Depending on the Artist: In the Year One prologue's illustration, Female Mage is a willowy, sharp-faced adult woman in a full-body covering robe and cloak. In Daikatana, she's a tiny baby-faced young teenager barely attired in a mini-dress and cape.
• Ditzy Genius: She's a brilliant wizard, but also incredibly bratty and scatter-brained.
• Fireballs: She knows this spell and can lead her teammates in a group chant to make it truly massive.
• Human Packmule: Self-appoints the role of "resource manager" for the party, and frequently passes around snacks.
• Heroic RRoD: Overcasts a Lightning spell to the point of charring her fingers in an effort to down a dragon.
• Hypocritical Humor: Admonishes her cousin for acting like an overeager rookie, with to her credit a well-developed sense of irony.
• Insufferable Genius: Samurai Captain considers her the best spellcaster he knows, but will never admit it for fear it'll give her an even more swelled head.
• Involuntary Dance: Learns a Dance spell that causes this in humanoid opponents.
• Magic Missile Storm: Knows a spell for this, but it's very weak.
• Minidress of Power: Wears a white one with a cape.
• Nerves of Steel: Despite how flighty she acts, she rarely loses her head in a combat crisis.
• Older Than They Look: Is elder (if only by a few days) than Samurai Captain, who is himself at least a couple of years older than the typical fifteen-going-on-sixteen upstart adventurers the franchise usually follows.
• Plucky Girl: Something Samurai Captain admires about her despite everything; she is always optimistic, always wants to help others, and never gets discouraged from seeing something through.
• Shana Clone: Female Mage is pushy, nosy, always involving the party in drama, and attempts to enforce a big-sister dynamic between herself and Samurai Captain, which he is resistant against. She at one point calls him and Half-Elf Scout her servants and orders them to shut up.
• Shock and Awe: Learns a Lightning spell in the second volume.
• Spell Book: She makes a hobby out of hunting and collecting them from traders to study with Female Bishop.
• Sweet Tooth: Spends most of her personal money on candy and baking supplies to make extra sugary travel rations.
• Variable Terminal Velocity: Assures the party that she can save them if the elevator collapses with Falling Control.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Jokes about holding the party's extra potions inside her cleavage.

Myrmidon Monk

A belligerently apathetic bugman priest of the Trade God who agrees to round out the party on a whim.

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• The Captain: Twelve years after the events of Daikatana, he has returned to his tribe living in the "sand sea" of the Desert Kingdom and piloting his own ship during giant manta hunts. He picks up Goblin Slayer's party when they get stranded after a sandstorm.
• Catchphrase: Sundry variations of "I don't care," "It doesn't matter, and "It's all the same to me."
• Character Tic: Clacking his mandibles when annoyed or not wanting to talk.
• Counterspell: Can cast Dispel to destroy magic constructs.
• Danger Sense: Has a "Precog" miracle that can let him sense if a trap is about to go off.
• Extra Eyes: He has four separate compound eyes.
• The Gift: Shockingly good at drawing, everyone is impressed by the quality of his hand-made maps.
• Hidden Depths: Though he's embarassed by it, he's an excellent drawer and was sketching a map of the Dungeon of the Dead before joining the party and letting Female Bishop take over the task.
• Holy Hand Grenade: Can buff his teammates' attack and defense with a Blessing.
• Insectoid Aliens: Myrmidon Monk is a giant humanoid ant.
• Magical Gesture: Forms hand-signs when casting miracles.
• The Navigator: Is evidently a gifted map-maker, though he lets others take a go at it to free his hands for battle.
• Never Win the Lottery: Gambling on combat sports is the one thing he's enthusiastic about, but he always loses.
• Punch Catch: Grabbed by the knee a ninja that tried to kick him in the gut.
• Reverse Grip: Often handles his axe-like blade backwards.
• Super Toughness: Ninja can cut through flesh with a spearhand, but a myrmidon's carapace breaks their fingers.
• The Strategist: Described as this to his party in the Daikatana character bios.
• Turn Undead: The go-to man on the team for neutralizing skeletons and other hostile undead.
• Winged Humanoid: Myrmidon have wings, but need a boost to even be able to glide with them.

Other adventurers

Wizard Boy

A newbie adventurer in Volume 6 who only wants to hunt goblins.

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• Animal Motifs: Frequently compared to a scrappy dog for his constant whining and affected, bullying swagger.
• Arc Hero: Of Volume 6.
• Army Scout: Shows up in volume 12 sent to do recon in a Chaos-ruined city alongside Rhea Fighter.
• Battle Boomerang: Illustrations in volume 16 reveal he eventually starts carrying one strapped to his side.
• Big Sister Worship: He clearly regarded her very highly — part of the reason why he is so hellbent on killing goblins in revenge and quitting magic school is because he could no longer deal with people at the Academy mocking her memory for falling victim to common goblins.
• Blood from the Mouth: An improvised sonic spell shows why not utilizing the proper magic formulas is a bad idea when he ruptures his throat due to the lack of safeguards.
• Break the Haughty: Having to be saved by Goblin Slayer from a troll forces him to admit he was wrong about him. While he still remains prickly to a near-intolerable degree, he becomes more malleable to the party's advice and eventually fixes his attitude. By the end of Volume 6, he sets out as a proper adventurer with Rhea Fighter by his side.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: The Brooding Boy to Rhea Fighter's Gentle Girl.
• The Bully: To Priestess. The guy really loves insulting her and putting her down. Like with some bullies, he picks on his victim as an outlet with dealing with his own insecurities, along with the stress of dealing with his sister's death. Luckily, he grows out of it by the end of Volume 6.
• The Bus Came Back: He and his rhea partner run into Rookie Warrior and Apprentice Cleric at the end of Volume 9, having somehow become pack carrier for Chosen Heroine's party.
• Covert Pervert: As standoffish as he is, he has been caught many times Eating the Eye Candy. He couldn't help ogling Cow Girl's breasts the first he meets her, was blushing very intensely when Female Knight invades his personal space, and along with Priestess was admiring a pair of scantily clad elves during their first mission together.
• Establishing Character Moment: His first appearance in Volume 6 has him shove Priestess aside, then cuss Dwarf Shaman out without even turning around to face the group as he makes his way towards the Guild. A clear sign that this boy is going to be difficult to handle.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge: Tackles a goblin and beats its face with his staff before thinking to Fireball it.
• Fiery Redhead: His hair is noted by the narration to be a bright red, tying into his hot-blooded tendencies and aggressive attitude.
• Foil: Like Goblin Slayer, here is a young man driven to become an adventurer to wipe out the goblin menace after their sister was murdered by goblins, but in stark contrast with Goblin Slayer he is a dedicated magic user as opposed to a Combat Pragmatist Multi-Melee Master; a Naïve Newcomer to the rigors of adventuring as opposed to going through Training from Hell before he even started; open-faced and socially out-going as opposed to The Faceless and completely emotionally closed-off; and inspired by intellectual disgust at reports of goblin behavior as opposed to personally experiencing them from a Dark and Troubled Past. Also, Guild Girl sees him as a complete nuisance as opposed to a breath of fresh air. And ultimately, unlike Goblin Slayer he was able to move on with his life, cheerfully departing from the Frontier Guild Town with Rhea Fighter on their dream of becoming adventurers.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: While Goblin Slayer was considered a weirdo for a time, but slowly and eventually accepted, Wizard Boy on the other hand is considered annoying by the Guild, adventurers and staff, alike. It doesn't help that he picks on Priestess, who at this point has become Everyone's Baby Sister to most of the Guild, and some of the offensives thing he says towards her sound like insults against clerics in general and the people saved by them, in other words, all of the Adventurer's Guild.
• Goal in Life: At the end of his debut novel, he resolved to one day take down a dragon. A noted generic boast for many rookie adventurers, but it's significant for him as a sign he's finally moving on from his bitterness over his sister's death.
• Guest-Star Party Member: He and Rhea Fighter show up as bag carriers for Chosen Heroine's party in volume 9. No explanation for how they came into this position is provided, and next time they are seen, they have left that party and are doing freelance work for the army.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Months of putting up with people badmouthing his sister have left him belligerent. He snarls at Cow Girl's Uncle for thinking he might be just another thuggish adventurer and almost gets kicked over it.
• Hero-Worshipper: Downplayed, but he knows Goblin Slayer's reputation and has personal reasons to seek to become like him. He drops his irascible rudeness when Goblin Slayer confirms his identity and begs to be taught his techniques.
• Hot-Blooded: Even after losing the worst of his attitude problems, he is noted to have a "fiery forcefulness" still.
• Human Pack Mule: Has somehow become this to Chosen Heroine's party in Volume 9, along with Rhea Fighter.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Much like his sister he is arrogant and waspish, but ultimately trying to do right.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: The main reason nobody likes him is because he acts likes he's hot stuff and insists on bossing the other low-ranking adventurers around, despite being a magic school dropout and the only one without field experience. He tries to usurp command from Priestess (who is Obsidian-rank and has a decent amount of field experience after being an adventurer for a year) leading a practice rookie mission twice, the second time leading the group into a troll's nest and putting everyone in danger.
• Leeroy Jenkins: On Priestess' first quest as the leader of the group, he ignores their advice and rushes to save Acolyte from torture. Not only was it a trap, but he expends his only Fireball on a common goblin when it could've found better use against the troll that had been waiting to ambush him.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Neither Goblin Slayer nor Priestess have the heart to tell him that they were witnesses to his sister's demise.
• Magic Staff: He got one from his Wizarding School when he left, though his lacked the gem on top that signified proper graduation.
• Make Me Wanna Shout: He uses a spell to increase the volume of his voice in order to release a scream powerful enough to knock out Goblins that are close-by and scare the rest off, saving the other rookie adventurers. Mind you, in the aftermath he was left with blood coming from his mouth.
• Never Speak Ill of the Dead: He dropped out of Wizarding School because he wouldn't take people mocking his sister for dying to goblins lying down.
• Pet the Dog: While generally rude and snappish, he does have enough sense of manners to thank Guild Girl for her tea.
• Playing with Fire: His only spell at the beginning of Volume 6 is a Fireball.
• Portal Picture: Given a jar of magic paint in volume 12 to draw a tunnel out through the walls of the Chaos-destroyed city he was sent to scope out.
• Reflective Eyes: A point is made about how Goblin Slayer is reflected in his eyes when they are first properly introduced, as a showcase of his troubling desire to emulate his crusade.
• Shared Family Quirks: Just like his sister, he's an inexperienced Know-Nothing Know-It-All who treats himself like he's hot stuff, likes to mess with Priestess and makes newcomer mistakes that puts his team in danger. However, unlike her, Wizard Boy manages to live to see another day and grow out from his attitude.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Has the same dark red hair and green eyes as his sister, his presence dregs up really bad memories for both Goblin Slayer and Priestess, dealing with him becomes a significant milestone in both of their individual character arcs, and he keeps showing up around major adventurers and battlefields after leaving town.
• Sixth Ranger: Serves as the Chosen Heroine & her company's packmule with Rhea Fighter during one Quest.
• Sword and Sorcerer: The Sorcerer to Rhea Fighter's Sword after they pair up and leave town.
• Tsundere: A Rare Male example: Spearman can readily tell the boy has interest in Rhea Fighter and that he is too proud to admit it.
• Unknown Rival: Seems to consider himself as a Rival to Rookie Warrior, often comparing their "achievements" and getting annoyed when meeting during the middle of a Quest, especially when Rookie Warrior completely his Quest. Rookie Warrior ironically, not only doesn't seem to notice or care, but he actually treated Wizard Boy the nicest out of all their peers who basically wanted to kick the crap outta him.
• You Killed My Father: Decided to copy Goblin Slayer's modus operandi after hearing that his sister met her demise in a goblin-clearing quest.

Rhea Fighter

A newbie adventurer in Volume 6 that is desperate to learn all she can from the veterans before starting her own career, ends up becoming Wizard Boy's partner at the very end of the book.

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• Army Scout: Shows up in volume 12 sent to do recon in a Chaos-ruined city alongside Wizard Boy.
• Big Eater: Being a rhea, she has a naturally large appetite.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: The Gentle Girl to Wizard Boy's Brooding Boy.
• Butt-Monkey: A lot of Silver ranks, including Female Knight and even Lizard Priest, get a kick out of spooking her or putting her through the wringer.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: At least for a Rhea, she is noted to be quite well-endowed.
• Cowardly Lion: Called "quick to fear" by the narration, but unhesitantly goes on quest well-above her weight class.
• Diagonal Cut: Kills her first goblin by slashing it from shoulder to hip.
• Does Not Like Shoes: Goes completely barefoot aside from the stirrups of the leggings she's wearing under her shorts.
• Dwindling Party: Her original party was led by a noble's son that was called back home after his three older brothers all died in battle. The rest of them quit or moved to a new town one by one until she was left alone to pair up with Wizard Boy at the end of the book.
• Fiery Redhead: Colored illustrations from the manga depict her with scarlet hair, which goes along nicely with the passion she displays for her dream to become a swordswoman of great renown.
• Guest-Star Party Member: She and Wizard Boy show up as bag carriers for Chosen Heroine's party in volume 9. No explanation for how they came into this position is provided, and next time they are seen, they have left that party and are doing freelance work for the army.
• Hidden Buxom: The light novels consistently call her well-endowed, but she has fairly small breasts even for her size in both the illustrations and manga adaptation, until chapter 65 of the manga has her take off her breastplate and reveal she’s been pressing down a pair of breasts each nearly the size of her head this entire time.
• Human Pack Mule: Has somehow become this to Chosen Heroine's party in Volume 9, along with Wizard Boy.
• Nervous Wreck: Very, very anxious about copying as many survival techniques she can before she's put in a situation that needs them.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: She isn't there yet, but aspires to be this.
  Rhea Fighter: I'm gonna be big! So big, no one will care that I’m little!
• Plucky Girl: Cheerful and go-getting even in the grip of fear, and a constant morale boost for Wizard Boy.
• Proportional Aging: Rheas live longer than humans, and hit their maturity at thirty. Priestess muses on the surreality of being senior, physically and experience-wise, to a girl twice her age.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Gets a decent bit of limelight for a newly-introduced side character in volume 6, shows up alongside Wizard Boy in a couple of important events afterwards, and is eventually depicted as having orange-red hair and bright green eyes in a colored manga illustration.
• Sixth Ranger: Serves as the Chosen Heroine & her company's packmule with Wizard Boy now.
• Stop Being Stereotypical: Wants to be a Fighter because she doesn't want to live down to expectations that "all rheas are stealth/support/Fragile Speedster."
• Sword and Sorcerer: The Sword to Wizard Boy's Sorcerer after they pair up and leave town.

Barbarian

A mighty adventurer a goblin lord encountered and defeated during his rise to power. Barbarian's battleaxe would become a war trophy for the goblin lord and a major hindrance to Goblin Slayer.

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• The Ace: He's an unusually active Gold-ranked adventurer, supremely self-assured and on the ball in the battlefield, and Young Warrior awes over him as almost a living statue or platonic ideal of masculinity.
• Always Save the Girl: The young goblin lord was able to stop and distract the man by tossing its hostage forward to make him reflexively go to catch her.
• Badass Cape: In his reemgerence during Year One its shown he's added a crisp white cape to his adventuring ensemble. Chapter 68 reveals it also carries a powerful defensive enchantment.
• Barbarian Hero: Half-naked, muscle-bound, fancy weapon? Check, check, and double-check. On his reappearance in Year One he also displays many of the negative aspects of old-school depictions, such as a pronounced anti-intellectual streak and a mien of such casual violence and mercurial temper that it leaves his new allies terrified he'll get offended and try tp kill them at the drop of a hat.
• Barbarian Long Hair: A long, dark mane of rough hair.
• BFS: When he reappears in Year One he has replaced his stolen battleaxe with a simpler, wide-bladed greatsword.
• Boisterous Bruiser: He is a wildly expressive man with an erratic sense of humor and gleeful eagerness for a fight.
• Book Dumb: He can read and has a head for tactics, but complex verbiage flies in one ear and out the other and he has a bit of antipathy for scholarly-types, though he proves receptive when Professor draws an analogy between academic debates and his own rigorous sword drills, with the former being "training" for the fields of magic and concepts of knowledge.
• Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon: As is fitting a barbarian, he wielded a magnificent battleaxe... the very same weapon the goblin lord would wield in his battle against Goblin Slayer.
• Cross-Popping Veins: Several veins stand out on his face as he stands off with the younger goblin lord as it holds a hostage.
• Death Glare: His face is set in a stony, determined look of focused violence, pinching into a snarl of fury when confronted by a goblin holding a woman at knife-point.
• Deflector Shields: His cape can create a quick, strong barrier in front of him to counter at least magical attacks.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Young Warrior notes that he has a Gold-ranked tag, and spends his conversation with him awed and intimidated by this larger-than-life titan of a man that possesses more majesty and command of violence than he has ever so much as dreamed of attaining.
• Expy: Of Conan The Barbarian, given his build, size, clothing, and temperamental nature.
• Flourish Cape in Front of Face: The way he deploys his cape's shield enchantment is by pulling it across his front.
• Graceful Loser: While he nurses a bit of a sorespot for the sucker-punch the goblin lord dealt him, he's endeavored to put that incident behind him and has adopted the ideal that living well is the best revenge.
• Guest-Star Party Member: He ends up running into Young Warrior's party in Year One and stick with them as they mop up the last of the dark elf cult, though really it's they who are auxillary to his battle-prowess.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Chapter 67 of the Year One manga shows him to be prone to sudden scowling fits of dark mood mid-conversation, and the Misfit Party are all on tetherhooks worried on wrong word will put him in a berserk rage.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Himself and the Damsel in Distress he tried to rescue, in the same attack, by the future goblin lord. He somehow survived.
• Instant Runes: His cape's barrier enchantment takes the form of a large circle in the air festooned in sigils.
• Is That the Best You Can Do?: Mocks the dark elves attempting to hunt him in the sunken city by asking if they think their fight will go differently if they're just as weak as the group he killed in their sacrificial chamber.
• Leeroy Jenkins: His first and only response to seeing a group of demon-worshipping cultists gathering is to plunge into the thick of them sword-first to interrupt their scheme, every time. Questioning what they're doing and why is a waste of time that's just letting them get closer to conjuring something nasty.
• One-Man Army: Beyond ripping through a goblin nest with no backup, clever maneuvering, or anything so much as slowing him down until faced with a hostage at swordpoint, Year One has him go on the offensive against and practically solo a dark elf hunting party, which included magic-wielders and giant spider mounts, while the Misfit Party barely held their own against a section of the unridden spider pack. At the end of the melee, the rookie adventurers are collapsing in exhaustion while he is isn't even winded, and when he leads them to the site of the dark elves' magic ritual in the sunken city's castle, they pass through a large courtyard absolutely littered with more elf and spider corpses, which were also his sole handiwork.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: Hacked through a goblin nest as a whirlwind of steel to get to a woman held by them.
• Scars are Forever: Has a large, roughly diamond-shaped scar just under his sternum from getting run through with a flamberge by the younger goblin lord.
• Sixth Ranger: Technically this to the Misfit Party, but in practice he's still just carrying out his personal mission and those newbies are just haplessly following along and trying not to die in the sidelines.
• There Is No Try: Gets outright annoyed by Young Warrior's party lamented that they are underpowered to help fight off the spider-riding dark elf hunting party, telling them that rank is meaningless and all that matters on the battlefield is getting one over on the enemy.
  Barbarian: You want to survive? Start killing. You want to save your friends? Keep killing. Kill 'em all!!
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: Barbarian was injured by a goblin lord after lowering his guard to save the Damsel in Distress.
• Unexplained Recovery: He makes a bombastic appearance at a big city Guild-hall early in the third major story arc of Year One, evidently some time after being run through by the nascent goblin lord if the big scar below his sternum and plain broadsword on his hip are any indication.
• Victory Is Boring: After finishing off the last of the dark elf mob, he contemptuously snorts that they didn't put up much of a fight.

Swordswoman

A young woman who made a mistake of sparing one goblin child and got killed by it for her trouble. The goblin child would later become the goblin lord that attacks the Farm Goblin Slayer lives at.

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• Heroes Prefer Swords: Her weapon of choice.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: She spared one goblin child and died for it.
• Posthumous Character: Killed by a goblin child long before it became the goblin lord that later attacks the farm Goblin Slayer lives at.
• Tragic Mistake: Sparing one goblin child was this as the child killed her the moment she faced the other way. This proves Goblin Slayer has a point about having to kill goblin children.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Not only did sparing a goblin child get her killed, the goblin child grew to be the Goblin Lord that later attacked the Farm Goblin Slayer resides at.
• The Voiceless: Had no dialogue in the short screen time she had.
• Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Displayed these in the Manga and the Anime when the future goblin lord stuck her in the back of the head with a rock.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: She spared one goblin child after it promised to be good. However this was a bad idea as said child brained her with a rock and killed her the moment she turned her back.

Padfoot Soldier

A young female dog-girl who is part of a military unit in Water Town.

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• Bar Brawl: Provokes High Elf Archer into one.
• Butt-Monkey: Gets on the losing end of the bar fight she started, and is last seen getting chewed out by an officer.
• Fantastic Racism: Rants to High Elf Archer's face that elves are stuck-up, hide in their forests from the problems the rest of the world has to deal with head on, and cheap.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Her goading High Elf Archer into a Bar Brawl made Dwarf Shaman see the latter as more than his stereotype of elvish nobility, and finally agree to join the multiracial alliance party.

Knowledge Cleric

A young adventurer and priestess of the God of Knowledge, who met a tragic demise while escorting a wagon through a valley taken over by Evil Wizard.

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• Bring My Brown Pants: Wets herself when the gargoyle that kills her first swoops down in front of her.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Gets her shoulders torn up by the gargoyle carrying her into the air, gets shot in the leg twice by a party member trying to hit said gargoyle, and is implied to have died of fright as she fell.
• Deer in the Headlights: She freezes in shock when a gargoyle swoops down to carry her away, and then is too frightened and in pain to chant a proper miracle to try to free herself.
• Palette Swap: Looks exactly like Priestess, but with black hair.
• Prayer Is a Last Resort: Begged her god for aid as she fell, but nothing came from it as she was too panicked to structure a proper prayer.

Noble Retinue

Voiced by: Aya Yamane (Half-Elf Fighter, Japanese), Hiyori Kono (Rhea Scout, Japanese), Ryo Sugisaki (Dwarf Monk, Japanese), Akira Koga (Middle-Aged Wizard, Japanese), Krystal LaPorte (Half-Elf Fighter, English), Suzie Yeung (Rhea Scout, English), Kent Williams (Dwarf Monk, English), Mark Allen Jr. (Middle-Aged Wizard, English)

From left to right: Rhea Scout, Dwarf Monk, Middle-Aged Wizard and Half-Elf Fighter

A group of four adventurers that were Noble Fencer's companions that were all lost in their calamitous goblin quest. Consisted of Half-Elf Fighter, Rhea Scout, Dwarf Monk, and Middle-Aged Wizard.

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• Cold-Blooded Torture: When the goblins captured Noble Fencer and Half-Elf Fighter, they determined that Half-Elf Fighter was the more "disposable" one of their two captives as the Goblin Paladin determine that Noble Fencer's Shock and Awe could be useful and end up getting the brunt of the goblins' cruel treatment. By the the time Goblin Slayer finds Half-Elf Fighter's corpse, she is missing the lower half of her body and the tips of her ears were cut off and stuffed in her mouth.
• Decapitation Presentation: The goblins present Rhea Scout, Dwarf Monk, and Middle-Aged Wizard's decapitated heads to Noble Fencer after they ambushed her when she returned from her supply run.
• Drop the Hammer: Dwarf Monk wields a hefty one with a prominent claw.
• Ear Ache: Half-Elf Fighter loses one of her ears during the goblins' ambush that leads to her and Noble Fencer's capture, and the deaths of the rest of their party. When Goblin Slayer's party discover her body, the tips of her ears are found in her mouth.
• Fair-Weather Friend: They all fawned over their leader Noble Fencer, but when their first quest dragged too long they were were quick to unanimously hold her solely responsible for the "bad" plan they all agreed on and begin hazing her.
• Fan Disservice: Half-Elf Fighter is easily the most attractive member of the four. Unfortunately, this leads to the goblins keeping her alive a little while longer than outright killing her like the rest of the party. She spent her final days being tortured, raped, and possibly used as a Breeding Slave by the goblins. By the time Goblin Slayer's party find her, she is just a naked corpse that is missing the lower half of her body.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: Half-Elf Fighter and Dwarf Monk share the position of Fighter, Middle-Aged Wizard is the Mage, and Rhea Scout is the Thief.
• Hartman Hips: Half-Elf Fighter, which you can see here◊.
• Half the Woman She Used to Be: The lower half of Half-Elf Fighter's body is missing by the time Goblin Slayer's party finds her corpse.
• Honor Before Reason: Once it became clear that the plan to starve out the goblins has backfired as they are running out of supplies, which left the group unfit for combat, it's pointed out that the safest thing to do would be to cut their losses and accept the mission as a failure. However, not wanting to look incompetent for quitting a goblin-slaying adventure, they decided to continue on.
• Magic Missile: The Wizard could cast the spell Arrow, which formed a number of magic orbs that launched at his foes.
• Off with His Head!: How the goblins kill Rhea Scout, Dwarf Monk, and Middle-Aged Wizard. Poor Half-Elf Fighter on the other hand was given a Fate Worse than Death.
• One-Steve Limit: There was already a Rhea Scout who was a villain in Volume 2, and a male Half-Elf Fighter who is a member of Heavy Warrior and Female Knight's party. These ones don't last long enough to get the narrative mixed up.
• Rape as Drama: While the rest of the party were quickly killed off, the goblins elected to keep the attractive Half-Elf Fighter alive a little longer to be their "plaything".

Commander

A Bronze-ranked adventurer who is the overall leader of the mass hunt for the rock eater at the end of Year One.

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• Adaptation Expansion: The fight against the rock eater cuts away after Newbie Swordsman is knocked out in the light novel, but the manga showcases the rest, including this man's part in it.
• Badass Cape: Wears a crisp one over his armor.
• The Brigadier: Organizes a crowd of at least 40-50 disparate adventurers into a cohesive unit.
• The Cavalry: When Heavy Warrior's squad gets pinned down by the rock eater and the black slimes, he shows up with the rest of the adventurers just in the nick of time to rally everyone to fight back.
• Continuity Nod: Spearman reminesces about him in Volume 10 when lamenting that he has no resources, contacts, or experience for navigating a city or investigating a shady noble or merchant, ruefully admitting that he now sees the value in an adventurer becoming well-connected in the political or upper-class spheres.
• Frontline General: Takes point position in the defense line against the rock eater, even as he belts out orders.
• Knightly Sword and Shield: Is outfitted like a proper banneret, complete with an arming sword and heater shield.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Calls for a shield wall to halt the charging rock eater, and takes point-center position in it alongside the young Heavy Warrior.
• Manly Facial Hair: A long, pointy, slightly curled English style that advertises his role as a fighting leader.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: A nobleman actually, but still. Spearman scoffs that the man looks like he's been in more political squabbles than actual battles, but he nonetheless proves to be competent and stalwart when facing off against monsters.
• The Team Benefactor: The compact ballista and dwarf-forged black iron arrow used against the rock eater were implicitly provided by him, and they cost quite a pretty penny.

Failed Heroine

Another of Illusion's personal PCs who was meant to stop Dark Elf from obtaining the cursed artifact of Hecatoncheir on her first mission, which ended very badly for her.

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• Amazon Brigade: Forms a band of five girls to quest with. They all die to Dark Elf.
• Born Unlucky: Due to Illusion critically fumbling her every attack roll, her every strike and spell went wide and she died on her first quest.
• The Caretaker: She became an adventurer in the first place to look for a cure for her childhood sweetheart's chonic ailments, that she had spent much of her childhood trying to help him manage. It's implied he succumbs to his sicknesses without her around to care for him.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: In the manga. Whereas Dark Elf's recollection of their encounter has him boasting that they were easily trounced, and Illusion despairs over her dying without landing a hit, the illustrated flashback shows her party having taken down several goblins and heavily roughing up Dark Elf before they all were put down.
• Dual Wielding: In the manga, she is depicted with two short curved swords in hand.
• Foil:
  • To Chosen Heroine. She is almost exactly the same as her, but without her ridiculous luck, and thus dies ignobly before her legend can even start, despite taking adventuring more serious and having more allies.
  • Also to Priestess, as another of Illusion's lost girls, but she doesn't even get the saving grace of a Goblin Slayer rescuing her from the jaws of death to fulfill a more modest life of quests.
• Magic Knight: Fights with both sword and spell, though sadly with success in neither.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Becomes a adventurer to heal her best friend, is born with the potential to be another world-saving Gold-or-Platinum adventurer, and is the first to challenge the Dark Elf and his attempt to summon a Chaos God. But because her patron deity fails her dice rolls, she goes down like a chump on her first outing, her potential unfulfilled, her friend condemned to a wasting death, and seeing Dark Elf pull through convinces Truth to start patronizing him more seriously and turn his scheme into a full-on campaign.

Fallen Party

Sword Maiden's original party who went to great lengths to obtain more power, and paid a greater price. Consisted of Magic Knight, Black Haired Lord, Priest, Sand Bandit, and Black Hat Wizard.

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• Ambiguously Brown: Sand Bandit is described as obviously hailing from the eastern deserts going by her complexion.
• Cards of Power: Magic Knight can cast magic by whipping out and burning spell cards.
• Charm Person: Black Hat Wizard amplifies the negative traits of his students to foster conflict, and lulls Samurai Captain into disregarding how Obviously Evil he is.
• The Corrupter: Black Hat Wizard is who drove the party to gain experience by ganking other adventurers.
• Chekhov's Gun: All the party except Black Hat Wizard are prominently stated to wear rings, immediately after Female Bishop freaked out at seeing a cursed ring in the stock of a random merchant. Sure enough, those same rings end up killing them later.
• Cruel to Be Kind: The party seemingly replaced Female Bishop after her goblin accident and abandoned her in town to fend for herself. In truth Black Hat Wizard was a mentor promising them an easy level-grinding technique and they left her behind out of overprotectiveness and not wanting her to be involved in their killing, not realizing how poorly Female Bishop would be treated while alone.
• Deal with the Devil: Though they never realized it, the party came under mentorship of the Demon Lord, who was only toying with them so they would be a stronger meal.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Were all set to stop the hostilities and acknowledge the Golden Party as adequate protectors of Female Bishop when they lost their brawl. Then Black Hat Wizard decided to harvest them.
• Devil in Plain Sight: Black Hat Wizard's description almost cartoonishly signals his true alignment. The only question is the extent. It's Demon Lord evil.
• Devious Daggers: Sand Bandit, like almost all rogue-types, uses a dagger in battle.
• Easily Forgiven: The original team of four are accepted by the Golden Party as friends after losing their duel and accepting Female Bishop’s decision to switch groups, completely sidestepping how they were willing to kill the protagonists to force their old teammate back into their circle and murdered dozens of adventurers as part of their "training." To be absolutely fair, all that was done under the heavy influence of the Demon Lord in disguise as Black Hat Wizard, who summarily kills them.
• Entitled to Have You: Sand Bandit does not want to let Female Bishop leave the party as they were "her friends first." The rest of the team start showing this attitude after being prodded by Black Hat Wizard.
• Eeriepale Skinned Brunette: Black Hat Wizard is sickly pale and midnight-haired under his voluminous robes.
• Evil Mentor: Black Hat Wizard trained the party just to have a bigger meal.
• Fantastic Nuke: Black Hat Wizard can solo-cast Fusion Blast without help or strain, another sign of his true nature.
• Flunky Boss: Two ninjas join the team in their battle against the Golden Party.
• Hero Killer: Have murdered enough adventurers to render a storage center, complete with side rooms, overflowing.
• Holy Hand Grenade: Black Haired Lord can cast Blessing on his sword.
• Human Disguise: Black Hat Wizard is the Demon Lord, cultivating adventurers to feast on later.
• Identical Stranger: Priest is described by Samurai Captain as looking incredibly similar to Female Bishop, just curvier and with a more seductive face. They are never stated to be related, so the resemblence has no explanation.
• I Should Have Been Better: Precise details are never stated, but during their first quest together the other party members somehow lost track of Female Bishop or let her fall behind while exiting the cave, leaving her at the mercy of the remaining goblins. Their guilt over that day is such that they become murderers in pursuit of the power to always protect her from now on.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Magic Knight uses a katana with a red blade. Black Hat Wizard takes it back after exposing himself as the Demon Lord by killing him.
• Magical Weapon: Magic Knight's katana carries an incredibly powerful enchantment.
• Magic Knight: Who is even called Magic Knight, though his magic seemingly comes from consumables. Black Hat Wizard is also handy with both spell and sword inhumanly so.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: If Female Bishop won’t rejoin the party because she prefers her new friends, they’ll just have to beat those interlopers until they won’t or can’t keep adventuring so she’ll reenter the fold.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Samurai Warrior assumes the "penance" they say they left Female Bishop to perform was for slaughtering other adventurers. In truth that was their act of penance for their true cause of guilt; letting goblins take Female Bishop.
• My Greatest Failure: Letting Female Bishop be taken by goblins is something they never want to be weak enough to allow happen again. They will murder if that gives them the strength faster.
• Necromancer: Black Hat Wizard was making zombies out of the adventurers they murdered so the party could keep farming experience between kills.
• Never Be Hurt Again: Not themselves but their mutual teammate. The four have devoted themselves to becoming strong enough to guarantee the safety of Female Bishop after letting her get assaulted be goblins. The lengths they go to in that effort damn them.
• Nonchalant Dodge: Black Hat Wizard's ducking of Female Warrior's lunge is so fast and minute that Samurai Captain can barely follow what he saw.
• Ominous Adversarial Amusement: The last hint that something is about to go very wrong after the fight between the Golden Party and the Fallen Party is in the immediate aftermath when Black Hat Wizard is slumped in a corner and starts chuckling creepily as the winners go around checking the status of the losers.
• Paladin: Black Haired Lord can use divine magic to supplement his swordsmanship.
• Redemption Equals Death: The rest of the party repented of their ganking and acknowledges the validity of Female Bishop making her own choices scant seconds before Black Hat Wizard killed them.
• Reduced to Dust: What the curse of their rings does to the party.
• Scary Teeth: Black Hat Wizard has teeth that are stained if not glowing red after outing himself as a demon in disguise.
• Serial Killer: The party killed dozens of adventurers of all stripes because it got them more experience than hunting monsters in the Dungeon.
• Sixth Ranger: Black Hat Wizard joined the party after they benched Female Bishop as their "Teacher."
• Slasher Smile: Black Hat Wizard has a smile that literally extends from ear to ear in one illustration. "Over and past his cheekbones" literally. Demons have malleable anatomy.
• Smells Sexy: Samurai Captain goes so far as to describe Sand Bandit's blood as faintly sweet.
• Training from Hell: The secret fast track to power Black Hat Wizard is peddling involves ambushing and killing other adventurers in the Dungeon of the Dead, piling their corpses together, and standing ground against a massive tide of undead countless times on repeat.
• Unfriendly Fire: The party was killing other adventurers in the Dungeon of the Dead as extra experience, their actions covered by the high casualty rate, presence of "scruffy men", and the cover of the Dark Zone.
• Unskilled, but Strong: They are all uncommonly strong for their amount of time and experience as adventurers thanks to their strong equipment and killing adventurers instead of monsters. However, they do not fight as a cohesive unit, which gives the Golden Party an edge to secure victory.
• Vampiric Draining: Black Hat Wizard is the Demon Lord, and trains up adventurers to have more filling souls.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Samurai Captain can forgive them their crimes because they only did what they did in an effort to make themselves better protectors of Female Bishop.

Elvish Kingdom

Forest Princess

High Elf Archer's older sister, and princess of the elves. Shows up in Volume 7 to invite the party to her wedding.

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• Aloof Big Sister: Considers herself above freely expressed affection, and as such masks her concerns for her sister with constant put-downs and declarations of disappointment.
• Always Someone Better: Forest Princess is this for her sister High Elf Archer; being able to shoot arrows with accuracy into the eyestalks of a Gazer while engaging in intense acrobatics is resentfully stated to be child's play for her. In the Memoria Freese tie-in event and later volume 10, it is also claimed she once destroyed a human battleship with a single arrow. She's also much better endowed up top.
• Big Sister Bully: Her first conversation with Goblin Slayer sees her telling the man she bets that her little sister was The Load in all their adventurers together and encouraging him to dump her for a more skilled elven ranger, while High Elf Archer is standing directly between them.
• Fantastic Racism: Her biggest objection to her sister's adventuring career was her partnering with a dwarf.
• Feminine Women Can Cook: Attempted to bake Shining Helm a meal to signal her reciprocation of his feelings (though that ended up getting burnt), and taught her little sister about herbs and foraging.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Openly says that demons are second to humans in capacity for hatching insidious plans.
• Immortal Procreation Clause: High Elf Archer, when announcing her sister's engagement, claims with sincerity that a couple having kids in "the first two or three hundred years of their marriage" is moving too fast.
• Royal Inbreeding: Her future husband, Shining Helm, is stated to be her cousin.
• Stay in the Kitchen: She was actually the one who attempted to forbid High Elf Archer from leaving home, against the vouching of their male guardians and teachers to boot.
• Tsundere: Was frigid towards Shining Helm's attempts at wooing for millennia and constantly belittles her little sister, but cares for them both deep down and drives herself sick with worry for them.

Shining Helm

High Elf Archer and Forest Princess' cousin, the former's scouting teacher, and the latter's fiance.

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• Big Brother Mentor: Was High Elf Archer's first teacher in archery and scouting.
• The Fighting Narcissist: He sang to his beloved as is traditional among elves. What was not traditional was his choice to sing a ballad about his own martial feats rather than a love song dedicated to his intended, which earned him a walloping.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Averted, in fact he is identified by the mithril skullcap he never takes off.
• Kissing Cousins: He has been pining for his cousin for centuries at least before she agreed to marry him.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Leads the border guard of the elvish forest kingdom.
• Small Role, Big Impact: He's the first and only one to ever call Goblin Slayer out for blaming himself over his older sister's life circumstances. Specifically, he tells him that "a flower chooses not where it blooms", and that his sister chose not to marry and move away, but to raise him and to die for him because she loved him. (In comparison to Burglar, who spent five years nonstop blaming Goblin Slayer for every bad thing that happened to his sister.) This speeds up Goblin Slayer's emotional recovery exponentially, making him noticeably more amenable to participating in regular adventures.

Starwind

The Chief of the Elves. Forest Princess and High Elf Archer's father.

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• Death Seeker: It's explained that elves only lose their physical forms naturally when they want to die. Why he did is never specified, though a later conversation makes it clear that it's generally caused by hitting the Despair Event Horizon, usually by an elf losing a mortal they cared about.
• No Name Given: Is the first non-god and non-monster to avert this so far in the series.
• Transflormation: Has become a part of the great tree containing the elvish royal court.

Elf Scout

A scout for a nearby elf settlement in the forest who was assigned to spy on a goblin nest controlled by an ogre. Unfortunately, she was found out and captured by the goblins by the time Goblin Slayer's party arrived.

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• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted in all forms of media. The right side of her body was shown to be covered in numerous deep gashes, bruises, and burns.
• The Bus Came Back: Shows up in Volume 7 when the party arrive at the site for Forest Princess' wedding, still baring the scars of her captivity, blind in one eye, and reportedly largely unresponsive. Goblin Slayer goes to her and assures her that all the goblins from the tower are dead, to which she lets tears fall.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Ends up being tortured and raped by the ogre and the goblins he commanded, and then left in a room that was used as the goblins' waste heap.
• Damsel in Distress: Functioned as this during Goblin Slayer and Priestess's first mission with Lizard Priest, Dwarf Shaman, and High Elf Archer.
• Fan Disservice: She was found naked by Goblin Slayer's party, chained to a wall with the right side of her body covered with bloody gashes and other injuries.
• Godiva Hair: In the anime.
• Heroic Willpower: Although she is clearly mentally damaged by the time the party finds her, as she repeatedly begs Goblin Slayer and the others to kill all the goblins in the nest, this is actually a slight improvement from the state that most goblin captives are found in.
• Small Role, Big Impact: After seeing what the goblins have done to her, this apparently made the Silver-ranked trio, especially High Elf Archer, realize how truly diabolical goblins are, and makes them going on more goblin-slaying quests with Goblin Slayer even after their mission with him was finished.

Centaur Tribes

Baturu

An impetuous young centaur warrior searching for her missing princess.

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• Blood Knight: While she looks down on the adventuring lifestyle, she has her own lust for battle.
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: Gets drenched in the gore of the Immortal Sorcerer after cutting him down. It was the worst thing she could have done, seeing as his blood is the catalyst of a life-draining curse.
• Death Glare: Is noted to constantly be shooting everyone else venomous stares.
• Diagonal Cut: Kills a few goblins and the Immortal Sorcerer this way. The later gets up at her expense.
• Hot-Blooded: Is irascible, impatient, and constantly shouting.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: She's the little sister to Centaur Waitress actually, but since the youngest inherits in centaur clans she feels stewardship and leaps to defend her big sister's honor (quite unnecessarily).
• Napoleon Complex: Is noted by the narration to be exceptionally small for a centaur, and consistently behaves as their most foul-tempered and chauvinistic specimen.
• The Paranoiac: Thinks of human towns as "enemy territory" and refuses to tell even her sister of her business while in front of them, until made to understand she won't be allowed to progress her mission without human oversight.
• When She Smiles: Priestess is able to calm her down occasionally, and she is stated to have a "blooming" face when not angry.

Silver Blaze

A beautiful centaur princess who left her tribe to find her own path.

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• Charm Point: A thin white streak in the center of her bangs is her most distinguishing feature and the aspect of her appearance everyone credits as making her so exceptionally beautiful.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Is rather ditzy and hardly reacts to violence being aimed at her, more focused on amping up for her next big race.
• Competition Freak: Her first reaction when being rescued from an evil sorcerer trying to harvest her life energy is to ask if she's been imprisoned so long that she missed her next big race.
• Face Death with Dignity: Averted. Her ignoring the sorcerer about to sacrifice her appears to be this trope, but then it's revealed she was just getting herself in the zone for her next race.
• Fearless Fool: She barely pays attention to the goblin-leading sorcerer that kidnapped her, even as he rants about how much she is aggravating him and how he can't wait to use her as fodder for his rituals.
• Happiness in Slavery: She is technically a circuit gladiator racing under a slave contract, but is having the time of her life doing laps and is treated well by her contract owner Noble Fencer, and so never complains.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Is stated by Baturu and those who know her in Water Town to be a great looker for a Centaur.
• Human Sacrifice: Well, Centaur, but the immortal sorcerer wanted to kill her to fuel a life-extension ritual.
• Killing in Self-Defense: Her personal trainer wasn't killed by her kidnappers, but by her own hooves when he tried to cripple her leg so that he could cash in on bets made against her in her next race.
• Made a Slave: Tricked into signing a slave contract by the "Coachman" when she was brought to Water Town. She doesn't really care, as it's not for life and she loves being a racer.
• Morality Pet: Her earnest excitement to experience the human world revived a small spark of conscience in the Coachman, who decided to put her to work as a racer like she asked instead of selling her to a brothel.
• Naïve Everygirl: She is extremely oblivious and never seems to fully register that malevolent actors around her mean her harm. She doesn't even acknowledge the life-stealing sorcerer while he has her in his clutches, and its not made clear if she ever realized that the Coachman tricked her into slavery.
• Plucky Girl: Being technically enslaved and almost butchered by an evil sorcerer and his goblins isn't enough to keep this gal's mood down for long.
• Skewed Priorities: She blithely asks if her rescue party has found her in time for her to run in her next scheduled race, in the middle of a pitched battle.
• Speed Demon: By her own declaration, she loves running. Not necessarily to go somewhere or do anything, just the act itself.

Lightning

A large, bright-eyed centaur under Noble Fencer's employ.

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• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Hands these out liberally to Baturu when she gets bratty in front of her.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Conspicuously wears a suit jacket when racing, and is a champion runner.
• Competition Freak: Her horse body is actually so heavy that running competitively is destroying her legs under her own weight, but she doesn't care and is determined to keep racing for as long as she can.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Is very pretty and feminine besides her habit of running in a man's jacket, and openly declares that she prefers female companionship.
• Statuesque Stunner: She's absolutely massive even for a centaur, and is described (if not actually illustrated) as curvy on a level with Sword Maiden. She is actually so big, she can't safely engage in strenuous activity the way she does.
• The Tease: Aggressively flirts with basically every female character she shares a scene with, including Noble Fencer her nominal boss.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: She's not nicknamed Lightning thanks to becoming one of the top racing champions in the centaur circuit, but rather because she has brilliant yellow eyes that gleam whenever she so much as tilts her head and which nearly everyone around her can't stop gawking over.

Centaur Waitress

Baturu's older sister who lives and works in Frontier Town.

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• Cool Big Sis: Is far more worldly and level-headed than her little sister, and does her best to reel her in.
• Early-Bird Cameo: First appeared way back in volume 6 during a guys night out between Goblin Slayer, Heavy Warrior, and Spearman.
• Fanservice with a Smile: She works as a server in the Dear Friend's Axe tavern, and is very pretty.
• Only Sane Man: Is the only centaur with a speaking role to not be characterized as a Fearless Fool or Competition Freak with Skewed Priorities, and the one most able to navigate human social etiquette without major faux pas.

Villagers

Cow Girl's Uncle

Voiced by: Daichi Hayashi (Japanese), Jarrod Greene (English)

A dairy farmer and Cow Girl's current guardian after her parents death.

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• Accidental Hero: When he took Cow Girl into the city on the fateful night that goblins attacked her village. He didn't realize it at the time, but this action saved his niece's life.
• Blatant Lies: When Goblin Slayer comes home late and asks about the Wine Merchant's carriage driving out from the farm, Uncle denies awareness of it and claims he was only outside to check on the cows. It's abundantly clear to Goblin Slayer, let alone the reader, that he's trying to avoid the topic for a while longer.
• Cool Uncle: To Cow Girl. He is willing to let Goblin Slayer live on his farm at her request, even though he clearly disapproves of the goblin-obsessed adventurer that his niece's childhood friend has become.
• Curtains Match the Window: In the anime, he has brown eyes and brown hair.
• Creature of Habit: When discussing the Wine Merchant's offer to buy his farm from him and turn his mixed farming cattle ranch into an industrial barley plantation for beer-brewing, he admits his main problem is that he's so used to the way he's lived and operated that to switch to a new production is almost unthinkable for him.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Losing his sister and old home has hurt him terribly, and is why he's so standoffish.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Although Cow Girl and Goblin Slayer aren't dating, he is aware that his niece is in love with Goblin Slayer and has voiced his disapproval of him to Cow Girl many times. He even outright tells his niece that he believes Goblin Slayer has lost his mind after witnessing his sister's death. In Year One, he tells Goblin Slayer that he was willing to marry Cow Girl off to the boy she grew up with, but not to the adventurer he has become.
• Doting Parent: He tries his hardest to support and accommodate his niece after taking her in. Despite all his misgivings about adventurers, he still allows Goblin Slayer to stay mostly because doing so was the first request Cow Girl ever made of him.
• Feeling Their Age: In volume 14 even Goblin Slayer notes how he looks perpetually fatigued nowadays, the specter of senescence hovering over him and ready to sap all his strength.
• Go-Getter Girl: A rare male example, Cow Girl's Uncle may own his own land and make a decent living as a dairy farmer, but he's not one to just let a good, honest deal by to further his income. Twice thanks to Goblin Slayer he's found ways to use his farm to make further products.
  • After Goblin Slayer returned from Water Town with tools to make ice cream, Cow Girl's Uncle jumped at the chance to borrow Goblin Slayer's tool (with his permission) to sell Ice Cream in the Frontier town during Spring and Summer to good fiscal success.
  • When Goblin Slayer went to the Desert Kingdom, he sent back a female Camel to the farm as a souvenir for Cow Girl; Uncle has since been collecting her milk to see if he can make some cheese (Camel cheese is indeed real) and sell it as a rare exotic good.
• Hidden Depths: He is a highly introspective man, he sometimes gets absorbed in his thoughts about if he is doing the best for his niece, or agonizing about the fact that maybe he is overstepping, not wanting to replace her parents.He is also a former mercenary, so he is well aware how Adventurers can be. He is also willing to offer Goblin Slayer advice about how to live a more normal life.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Has this talk twice with Goblin Slayer.
  • The first time, in Year One, he prejudged Goblin Slayer to be a typical roughneck, saw his orphaned niece visit the barn he was spending the night in and leave the next morning distraught, and confronted Goblin Slayer with a pitchfork in hand before figuring out the truth of Cow Girl's visit and reaction to Goblin Slayer's personality change.
  • The second time, in Volume 3 of the main story, it's a defeated and chagrined plea for Goblin Slayer to realize how much their upcoming date means to Cow Girl and not lead her on. He gives up when he sees the boy isn't getting it.
• Innocently Insensitive: Early in Year One Volume 2, he makes numerous flippant remarks to Cow Girl about how Goblin Slayer might have a lover or be seeing prostitutes. It takes her running off for him to realize that her crush on the boy would have made such gossip hurt, and that bringing up hookers to his 13-year-old niece was inappropriate.
• Minor Major Character: His farm is considered an extremely important asset and Branch Castle or "fallback position" for the Frontier Town; in short, he's kind of a big deal, just not to the story. Because of this, he's not only part of the town's leadership and attends their meetings regularly, but the threat of his farm falling to Goblins was enough for the Guild to put a special incentive on Goblin bounties in order to convince higher ranked adventurers to protect his farm.
• No Sympathy: Knows that Goblin Slayer has every reason to hunt down goblins, but still believes that this same trauma will prevent his niece from finding happiness with the adventurer.
• Overprotective Dad: Thinks all adventurers are thugs and not good enough for his niece. That includes Goblin Slayer.
• Papa Wolf: To Cow Girl since she is the only family that he has left.
• Parental Substitute: Is this to Cow Girl, and feels guilty for taking the place of his sister and her husband.
• Parents as People: In chapter 57 of Year One he reflects on his time looking after Cow Girl so far. He acknowledges in detail their occasional arguments, mutual hangups, and how he still doesn’t fully understand her, but he cares for her the best he can and their are slowly making it work.
• Retired Badass: Not something he usually talks about, but as a young man he fought his good share of wars.
• Self-Made Man: Proudly describes himself as a yeoman or freeholder. He's personally earned his land and cultivated his farm, and he's not about to sell out to anyone. He doesn't even want any farmhands beyond his niece yet, even as he acknowledges that he's a few years away from the age when his body can't keep up with farm labor anymore.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: He earned the right to own his own land by serving as a yeoman in a noble’s retinue. He saw “more than his share of death” while fighting for his prize, and to this day has a deep-set dislike of career warriors beyond the typical mistrust of parochial homesteaders.
• Shipper on Deck: He likes the idea of Cow Girl settling down with a "good man" when she reaches marriage age, and not averse for that man to be her childhood crush... but not the Goblin Slayer said childhood crush has become. Therefore many of his private conversations with Goblin Slayer are attempts to plant the seed of giving up his genocidal quest and become a normal villager again with Cow Girl.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: With Goblin Slayer, though he's the one with the problem. Goblin Slayer's presence brings up bad memories, causes his beloved niece emotional turbulence, and comes with numerous quirks. He eventually acknowledges that the boy is harmless and stops being hostile, but even that is more out of grudging exhaustion than a positive change in perspective.
• Survivor's Guilt: He takes both Cow Girl and Goblin Slayer in at least in part because he feels an obligation to their deceased families and destroyed childhoods, and sometimes wishes he could take the place of his departed sister.
• Tsundere: He is one to Goblin Slayer. Though he never voices it aloud, he does pity the lad and understands his life has been nothing but hardship. Because Goblin Slayer's death would devastate his niece, he fears for the man's mental and physical well-being. In various passive-aggressive ways he explains disapproval of Goblin Slayer's genocidal obsession and expresses there are other lifestyles available. He dangles a future with Cow Girl on the farm as one possibility, but only if Goblin Slayer gives up being an adventurer.
  • He also reminds Goblin Slayer to take care of his body and turned down an offer to have Goblin Slayer married off in Volume 10 by a wealthy merchant for a not-insignificant amount of money. Even though he doesn't approve of his lifestyle he genuinely does care about him.

Goblin Slayer's Sister

Voiced by: Reina Ueda (Japanese), Rachel Glass (English)

Goblin Slayer's older sister. Years before the main story began, she was raped and murdered by goblins right in front of her younger brother, which kickstarted his genocidal hatred of goblins.

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• Brainy Brunette: Had brown hair and was noted by her brother to be wise. In the light novels, Goblin Slayer even recollects that his sister was the sharpest person in their village and earned her food by teaching the village children how to read and write. He also remembers that she could have made a good living in the city, but chose instead to stay in the village to raise him.
• Death by Origin Story: Her death is what turned her little brother into Goblin Slayer.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: Or at Parental Substitute siblings, as Goblin Slayer reveres her memory. This trope was in turn true for her, and she always told Goblin Slayer what wonderful people their parents were and offered him their father's hunting knife as a memento.
• Eaten Alive: Implied to have died in this manner after a horde of goblins were done with her, while her little brother was Forced to Watch. The horror and indignity of it all was the first, and likely biggest, blow to Goblin Slayer's psyche.
• Face Death with Dignity: Even as her hands trembled, she refused to allow fear to show on her face and spent her last moments before being found by goblins ensuring her brother was hidden and assuring him of his safety with a smile.
• Feminine Women Can Cook: Was apparently a dab hand at stewing, just look at Grandma's Recipe.
• Good Is Not Dumb: A kindly, loving big sister and guardian to a young Goblin Slayer, she was also her hamlet's resident tutor for hire. She was even a devotee to the God of Knowledge, and maintained a shrine in the village.
• Grandma's Recipe: She had her own special way of preparing beef stew, that she also taught to Cow Girl. The latter insists its not some grand secret recipe, but the memories it conjures for Goblin Slayer and herself are such that she makes it for his dinner almost religiously.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Allow herself to be captured by goblins knowing that they would be too busy with her to notice her hidden little brother.
• Hidden Depths: Later light novels eventually reveal she studied both her parents trades and was the one who first gave Goblin Slayer training in basic woodsmanship and archery.
• Loose Floorboard Hiding Spot: Hid her little brother from goblin marauders by stuffing him down a trapdoor into a little storage space under their house.
• Motherly Side Plait: Of the "doomed anime mom" variety. Having this hairstyle marks her as a goner in this universe.
• Nice Girl: Selfless, loving, kind, and wise.
• Posthumous Character: In the early volumes she was mostly a case of The Lost Lenore, providing a Small Role, Big Impact that brought forth the existence of Goblin Slayer. But later Volumes and the Year One spinoff provide increasing amounts of info about her character from people that knew her while she was alive, especially Goblin Slayer showing readers more of his memories, painting an ever-expanding rounded image of who she was despite even the prequel starting shortly after her death.
• Promotion to Parent: Her and Goblin Slayer's ranger father and herbalist mother died during a plague while Goblin Slayer was still very young, so she raised him herself as far back as he can remember.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Is long dead by the time the story begins, but her teachings and the manner of her demise are what made Goblin Slayer into the man he is today.

Grape Nun

A nun devoted to the Earth Mother and Priestess' surrogate sister. Met in Volume 10 as the manager of a vineyard in a new town and the victim of some truly awful rumors.

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• Ambiguously Brown: She's moderately dark-skinned, but with bright green eyes, and said to be descended from immigrants who "crossed the southern mountains."
• Big Sister Mentor: She avoids town while the rumors are flying mostly so it doesn't cause problems for the other nuns around her, and gives Priestess advice when the stres of dealing with the situation starts to overwhelm her.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Like many other girls before, the narration is happy to note how ample her bustline is, and how attracted the background males can be to it.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: Gets a wide, toothy, crooked grin when teasing Priestess or sizing up her adventuring party.
• Cool Big Sis: Is this to Priestess, who in the present is delighted to link back up with her and introduce her new friends to her, and is adamant about laying to rest the horrid rumors besmirching her.
• Fantastic Racism: Played With; the crux of the rumors surrounding her is the insistence that she's somehow "a goblin's daughter," but such a thing is impossible and she's clearly entirely human. She is dark-skinned and explicitly of a non-native ethnicity, and it's implied her appearance is what people use as an excuse to entertain the notion, but she's also not being targeted for being a person of color, her status as one is treated as the obvious counter to the allegation, no other non-white humans are subject to bigotry, and the whole fiasco seems to imply that different races of humans aren't discriminated against on grounds of merely being different races.
• The Pollyanna: She pays no personal mind to the rumors and remains focused on her work and finding joy in her daily routine. She genuinely has to stop and think when Priestess asks her how she can remain so cheerful all the time.
• Plucky Girl: Extremely vivacious, enthusiastic about working the orchards and making new friends, a personality as magnetic as her body, and far too strong-willed and self-assured to let herself be negatively affected by the wild rumors circulating about her.
• Remember the New Guy?: She's Priestess' beloved senpai from her training days that was never seen or mentioned for 9 volumes and two in-universe years. In fairness, the rest of the party never really has reason to follow Priestess into the temple or ask about it, and the narration never follows Priestess in her off-duty time.
• Senpai/Kōhai: The senpai to Priestess, always mother-henning her and encouraging her to blossom.
• Younger Than They Look: Is just two years older than Priestess and barely 19, but her emotional maturity and certain illustration of her next to Priestess make her look well into her twenties.

Mother Superior

An abbess devoted to the Earth Mother, and Priestess' direct superior.

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• High Priest: The closest to one we've seen so far for the faith dedicated to the Earth Mother, and she is at least prestigious enough to oversee regional religious rituals and have dealings with other high-status clerics like Sword Maiden.
• Improbable Age: Volume 10 says she is shockingly young for being an abbess of a major temple, not even having reached middle-age yet despite some years in the post.
• Irony: She laughs off (in a good way) the idea of Priestess being The Chosen One or Secretly Royalty... and as of Volume 13, there are a lot of hints that Priestess is both those things.
• Orphanage of Love: Runs one out of her abbey, which is where Priestess was raised and trained.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Reportedly gave Priestess a strident chewing-out off-screen over her purchasing chainmail, but didn't do anything more when Priestess held firm, and later on vouches for her and Goblin Slayer's trustworthiness during a meeting of state heroes and religious authorities in Volume 3.
• So Proud of You: Greatly respects Priestess' magical talent and achievements, and has high hopes for what she will accomplish in the future, even if she does laugh off the idea that Priestess is The Chosen One, hidden royalty, or anything like that.

Village Chief

Heavy Warrior's best friend and a former mercenary who was forced into early retirement after receiving a Career-Ending Injury. He used his status as a war veteran to claim chieftainship of his hometown as a reward for his service.

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• Always Someone Better: Heavy Warrior viewed his best friend as this, at least until he received his Career-Ending Injury.
• Career-Ending Injury: He once was a mercenary, but then he took "an arrow to the knee".
• A Child Shall Lead Them: Downplayed. Goblin Slayer comments on his young age the first time he meets him in Year One, stating that the Village Chief is "only just barely an adult". Its implied he is around the same age as Goblin Slayer and Heavy Warrior, meaning he was just a teenager when he became the chief of his village.
• The Ghost: He was talked about bit in the main story by Heavy Warrior, before making a proper introduction in the prequel story.
• Happily Married: To his wife, who is pregnant with his child during their introduction in Year One.
• Hero of Another Story: He and Heavy Warrior joined the army, became mercenaries, and went on several adventures together. Their journey together came to an end when he received a Career-Ending Injury and Heavy Warrior decided to become an adventurer afterwards.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: His hair is longer than his wife's.
• Really 17 Years Old: Admits that he lied about his age so that he could go off to war early, which is meant to explain how he became a chief as such a young age.
• Retired Badass: He was a former mercenary and supposedly was Always Someone Better to Heavy Warrior, before an arrow to the knee forced him into early retirement.
• Stealth Insult: An innocent example, when asked about his limp, he explains he "took an arrow to the knee", which is both accurate and a playful "Ball and Chain" joke about his wife; let's just say his wife got the joke and wasn't exactly amused.
• Younger Than They Look: Although he looks like a man in his 20s during his introduction in Year One, Goblin Slayer is quick to point out his young age, implying the Village Chief is actually a teenager when Goblin Slayer first meets him. However, Goblin Slayer does also mention that his eyes does carry the composure of someone much older, and he does show a great deal of maturity during their conversation.

The Village Chief's Wife

A village girl from Heavy Warrior's hometown. She was his former crush, but ended up settling down with his best friend instead, the Village Chief.

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• Ambiguously Brown: She has a darker skin complexion than the other people in her town.
• The Caretaker: To her husband, thanks to the bad knee he got from his Career-Ending Injury.
• The Ghost: Like her husband, she was talked about a bit in the main story, but didn't get a proper introduction until the prequel story.
• Happily Married: To the Village Chief.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: Her husband's innocent joke about his limp is because he "took an arrow to the knee" is not lost on her.
  • An explaination, the phrase "took an arrow to the knee" is a euphamism akin to "the ol' ball and chain", a marriage joke. So it's not only an innocent joke at her expense, it's made even funnier because her husband also took an arrow to the knee literally.
• The One That Got Away: Apparently, she is this to Heavy Warrior. Part of the reason why he decided to become an adventurer and move out of his hometown was because of the humiliation of her settling down with his best friend before he got a chance to admit his feelings to her.
• Teen Pregnancy: Assuming that she is around same age as her husband, she would have been a teenager during her introduction in Year One, when she was pregnant with his child.

The Three Sisters

Three sisters that lived in same village as Goblin Slayer and Cow Girl, and were victims of the goblin attack on it.

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• Big Sister Instinct: The eldest sister is willing to suffer a Fate Worse than Death if it means protecting her family. Not that it did her much good.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The eldest sister is blonde, the middle sister is a redhead, and the youngest is a brunette.
• Breeding Slave: Their presumed fate.
• Decoy Protagonist: Of Year One. The prequel story opens on them as their village is attacked by a goblin horde, with the sisters seemly being standouts from the rest of the townsfolk. Unfortunately, in the first couple of pages in Chapter 1, the girls are overwhelmed and captured by the goblins. The story then switches its focus to the true protagonist, the boy who would one day become Goblin Slayer.
• Deer in the Headlights: What ultimately gets the two younger sisters captured, due to a combination of their fears of the goblins and their unwillingness to leave their older sister behind.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: While the goblins were having their way with them.
• Foil:
  • The eldest sister is this to Goblin Slayer's Older Sister. Both are attractive young women that try to protect their family on the same night goblins attacked their village and were subjected to a Fate Worse than Death. The difference being Goblin Slayer's Older Sister succeeded in protecting her brother by hiding him, while the eldest sister failed to protect her two younger sisters by trying to get them to run away. Additionally, Goblin Slayer makes it clear that his sister died that night, while it's implied the three sisters got to live on a little longer... each as a Breeding Slave.
  • They can be seen as one to the Greenhorn Party. Their situation was clearly meant to be reminiscent to what happen to the women of the party, with the eldest sister taking the place of Fighter, while her younger sisters took the place of Priestess and Wizard. Unfortunately, the eldest sister is not a skilled combatant like Fighter, so she is quickly overwhelmed by the goblins when she attempt a You Shall Not Pass!. Unlike Priestess, the two younger sisters were overcome by fear and did not take their chance to run away, resulting in all three women being captured. Worst of all, without an adventurer like Goblin Slayer around to save them, the sisters most likely spent the rest of their lives as Breeding Slaves to the goblin horde, a fate that the women of the Greenhorn Party were barely able to avoid.
• Ms. Fanservice: All three sisters are very attractive, buxom, and cute. Unfortunately, this seems to be why the goblins gave them a horrific Fate Worse than Death instead of outright dismembering them like the other villagers.
• Oh, Crap!: The eldest sister has several of these moments in quick succession of one another. First, when a goblin flanks her and she realized too late its performing a Diving Kick towards her head. Second, is when the goblins quickly strip her down naked after pinning her. The third and the worst one, is when the goblin pried open her legs with the poor girl being unable to move. She can only react with pure terror when she realized what was about to come next.
• Rape as Drama: All three sisters ended up being gang-raped by goblins, despite trying to defend themselves. They are the first shown example of this in the Year One manga.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: The youngest sister has long, black hair.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Their only purpose is to show the fate of any woman unfortunate enough to be captured by goblins.
• Senseless Sacrifice: The eldest sister tried to hold off the goblins to let her two younger sisters escape, unfortunately her sacrifice was in vain as they were captured anyways.
• Uncertain Doom: The last time we see them, they were captured and gang-raped by a large group of goblins. Although it is not shown what happens to them afterwards, it's safe to assume they are no longer around by the time of the main story. There is a slight chance they might have been saved by an adventurer, especially since Burglar was tracking the horde that attacked their village, but they would be deeply traumatized for the rest of their lives in that case.
• You Shall Not Pass!: Attempted by the eldest sister, who tried to hold off the goblins invading her home so that her sisters can escape. Unfortunately, her sisters refuse to leave her and all three of them got overwhelmed by the horde.

Goblin Mother

A captured village girl who spent a week in a goblin nest. She is the first person Goblin Slayer ever saved as an adventurer.

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• Angst Coma: She is completely unresponsive when Goblin Slayer finds her, with her light breathing being the only indication that she is still alive.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Surprisingly, played straight in the Year One manga. For a woman who spent a week in a goblin nest and given birth to multiple goblin children within that week, she doesn't have a single scratch on her. Averted in the light novel as she was mentioned to be covered in filth and goblin bites.
• Breeding Slave: She is the first person confirmed to have given birth to goblin children, and delivered 3 of them by the time Goblin Slayer saves her.
• Damsel in Distress: The very first one that Goblin Slayer saves as an adventurer.
• Outliving One's Offspring: This is possibly the only example where this is a good thing. Goblin Slayer slaughtered the goblins she gave birth to, while she got to live on.

Village Boy

A little boy who Goblin Slayer saves from running into a goblin nest.

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• Fake-Out Opening: The first few paragraph make his story look like a flashback to Goblin Slayer's childhood, right up until Goblin Slayer himself actually shows up on a quest.
• Foil: Due to the bait-and-switch of the beginning, the boy is deliberately crafted to have a life almost identically to the young Goblin Slayer, but several personal aspects are in direct contrast to how Goblin Slayer was like in actual flashbacks. Like Goblin Slayer, this is a little Farm Boy who plays at and dreams of being an adventurer, has a female best friend and next door neighbor who is visiting family in the city, and is an orphan being raised by an older sister who also serves as a teacher in a temple of the God of Knowledge. However:
  • The boy is a rambunctious Bratty Half-Pint, while Goblin Slayer has consistently been shown as always having been naturally pensive and introverted, if less so than how he becomes post-trauma.
  • The boy is extremely cheeky towards his frazzled sister, while Goblin Slayer was a dutiful Momma's Boy towards a sister who was always ladylike and composed even at the razors edge of death and dishonor.
  • The boy and his female friend have a slight Vitriolic Best Buds dynamic in how he recollects their back-and-forths and attempts to one-up each other, while Cow Girl has so far been unilateral in her teasing of her childhood friend, with the occasional fights between them arising from and causing very real and extreme bad feelings between them.

Bard

A bard that sings ballads of Goblin Slayer's adventures.

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• The Bard: We first see him singing the tale of a hero on a street corner for crowds. In fact, this is how High Elf Archer, Dwarf Shaman, and Lizard Priest find Goblin Slayer in the first place.
• Character Exaggeration: In his ballads, he exaggerates Goblin Slayer as a wandering Knight in Shining Armor that always save the Damsel in Distress. It is somewhat justified as he has never actually met Goblin Slayer. However, High Elf Archer did catch him lying about Goblin Slayer being a wanderer when the bard stated Goblin Slayer lived in a town.
• Lighter and Softer: His ballad are what one would expect to hear from a modern fairy tale, noticeably omitting the darker parts of Goblin Slayer's adventures like the loss of innocent lives and rape that occurs.
• Small Role, Big Impact: He was the one that got High Elf Archer, Dwarf Shaman, and Lizard Priest interested in recruiting Goblin Slayer for their mission and told them where they can find him, so without the bard they would have never partied up with Goblin Slayer. Additionally, it was implied his songs are what made Sword Maiden seek out Goblin Slayer to both take care of Water Town's goblin infestation and to be her Living Emotional Crutch.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In-Universe, his ballads have Goblin Slayer always rescuing goblin captives even when it isn't true. The bard's song about Goblin Slayer burning down the mountain fortress talked about how Goblin Slayer saved a princess, when the harsh reality was Goblin Slayer was too late to save the captured village girl or the female party during that mission.

Attendant

A nun of the Supreme God who serves as Sword Maiden's personal assistant.

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• Bodyguarding a Badass: She (or at least an attendant) apparently has assassin training and is charged with defending the famed demon-slaying Sword Maiden from any who means her harm during her travels.
• The Caretaker: Watches over Sword Maiden and helps her with daily tasks that her blindness hampers. She is personally grateful to Goblin Slayer for giving her charge peace of mind.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Feels like this when Sword Maiden lets her lovesickness interfere with her daily duties.
• Hartman Hips: Noted to have well-formed hips, and she works them.
• Naughty Nun: Downplayed, but the narration tells us she knows exactly what she's doing when she shakes her hips.
• Servile Snarker: Jabs at Sword Maiden about her "love letters" to Goblin Slayer when she has to write to the King.
• Supermodel Strut: Rolls her hips as she walks so much so that even Goblin Slayer takes note.

Abbess

A nun who runs a convent to the God of Trade in the pioneer village where Chosen Heroine grew up.

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• Muggle: Never received any miracles from her god, according to Chosen Heroine.
• Orphanage of Love: Looked after several foundlings, and raised them right if Chisen Heroine is any indication.
• Parental Substitute: Is one to Chosen Heroine, though she’d never admit it.
• Stern Nun: Is quite liberal with tough love correction, though a kid like Chosen Heroine hardly responds to gentle admonishment.
• Tasty Gold: Scratched the silver coin Goblin Slayer offered for lodging.

Informant

An enigmatic young woman that occasionally gives Samurai Captain news and advice in Daikatana.

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• All-Encompassing Mantle: Wears a heavy, figure-obscuring cloak to go along with her cagey way of approaching others.
• Cryptic Conversation: Never gives a straight answer about the things she warns about.
• Gossipy Hens: Claims to be this, presenting her information as mere rumor.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Samurai Captain completely forgets her existence after they talk, but not the information.
• Mysterious Waif: Who is she? How does she know so much? Why is she helping Samurai Captain? What's her goal? We have no solid clue.
• Quest Giver: Effectively this, as her information on new foes usually drives Samurai Captain to seek them out.

Trade Nun

A woman of the cloth that runs the temple of the Trade God in Fortress City during the events of Daikatana.

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• Healing Hands: She and her fellows know a plethora of recovery magic, and will perform them for a price.
• Nun Too Holy: She's irascible, sardonic, flirtatious, and mercenary in attitude, but a devout person regardless.
• Only in It for the Money: Is rather blunt about not caring much for most adventurers that come to her for aid, and monetizes every single aspect of her church's healing services.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: She performs the Resurrection miracle for Samurai Captain when he gets his throat slashed, and when he wakes up as she is getting dressed she flaunts her naked body while joking about charging for the view.
• Stern Nun: She is the apparent head of her chapel and runs a tight ship. Samurai Captain is constantly reaffirming how cold and apathetic her eyes are and how obviously insincere her smile is anytime he sees her, she has no qualms about kicking ailing adventurers to the curb if they can't pay upfront for healing, and she is capable of cowing even veteran dungeon-delvers into fearful contrition if she catches them being rowdy in her domain.
• Suspended Animation: One of her miracles is Preservation; a spell that puts mortally wounded adventurers into a frozen state for a long while, giving their comrades a chance to raise the funds to pay for a Resurrection.

Royal Guardswoman

An elite warrior charged by the crown to stand sentry at the opening of the Dungeon of the Dead to sound an alarm if the monsters within start coming out.

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• Cool Big Sis: She has a 10 year old sister that she looks after and adores, and becomes friendly with the future Golden Party when Samurai Captain and Female Bishop bring said sister back to her after she got lost in the market.
• Gallows Humor: Makes rampant use of it most times she's spoken to, such as when she states 50% of rookies die on their first trip in the Dungeon of the Dead and cheerfully guesses the other half "eventually die exploring" when asked what happens to them, then gives the Golden Party five body bags while sardonically pointing out that if they end up needing bags for their full six members, they're not getting carried out at all.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Despite Samurai Captain praising her vigilance and warrior mien on first meeting her, she and her coworkers consistently miss every adventurer Serial Killer that flits in and out of the Dungeon of the Dead. Apparently when charged to be on the look-out for escaping monsters, they took it to mean only the magic beasts.
• Praetorian Guard: Her position, as one of the old king's hand-picked bodyguards.

Female General

An older military woman placed in charge of defending the Kingdom's eastern border. Seen in a flashback to the war against the Demon Lord from a decade before the story's start, and running her own fortress in volume 12.

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• Always Someone Better: Insists to other people that she's not impressive compared to her younger sister, Arc Mage.
• An Arm and a Leg: Loses half her limbs in one of the concluding battles of the previous war with the Demon Lord. They're not commented on in the main series like her single eye, so she either restored or replaced them.
• Blood Knight: She admits in the prologue of Year One volume 2 that she is disinterested in peace and only feels alive on the battlefield.
• Eye Scream: Lost her left eye in a battle during the days of the Dungeon of the Dead.
• One Degree of Separation: Actually fought alongside Lizard Priest towards the end of the days of the Dungeon of the Dead. She's also the sister of Goblin Slayer's second mentor, Arc Mage. And somehow has a personal connection to Half-Elf Light Warrior.
• Rebellious Princess: Comes from a very high-ranking family, but left it all to become a soldier because she didn't want to be married off or shackled to a bureaucratic position.