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Shipbreaker #9346- 52 AKA "Rook"
- Body Backup Drive: The process LYNX uses to map their genome for the sake of cloning them literally and intentionally kills them. The game actually opens with their death.
- The Faceless: It's their face on the art for the game and even in-game they are depicted as being in their full space suit.
- Heroic Mime: Never says a word, though they do make sounds of pain if they take damage during a shift.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Lou calls you "Rook" (stands for "Rookie"), Deedee calls you "Newbie", Weaver and Kai calls you "Cutter" and Hal just calls you 52 (short version of 9346-52, the number attributed to the player by Lynx).
- Purely Aesthetic Gender: You can only roughly choose your gender based on the type of grunt you want your character to make. It doesn't factor into the game, otherwise.
- The Voiceless: Aside from grunts, gasps of pain, and heavy breathing when hazards are active, they don't speak.
Joseph Weaver
- Voiced by: Aaron Douglas
- A Father to His Men: He does his best to look out for his crew, and Hal's reckless behavior really gets on his nerves.
- But Now I Must Go: Retires once Hal has been dealt with, the Union successfully forces LYNX to back down, and everything is getting back to normal. He says that he wants to retire on a high note, and it is indeed at the happiest part of the story that he leaves.
- Clone Degeneration: He used to be a shipbreaker himself until a mishap with his cloning forced him to hang up his cutting gear. Other dialogue suggests that this also left his body ill-suited for gate travel as well, which is why he passes his armadillo down to Rook to fix up.
- First-Name Basis: Only Hal Rhodes calls him by his first name, Joseph; Weaver's too on-edge by Hal's other general behavior to make a point about it.
- Mission Control: When he was forced to hang up his spurs as a shipbreaker he was relegated to training and supervision. This may sound like a promotion, but LYNX threw all the fees of his training for the position onto his debt and he's no closer to being free than anyone else in the company.
- Nice Guy: He's very friendly and does his best to keep things safe for both him and his crew. He helps you get settled into the job of being a shipbreaker so you don't end up dying repeatedly until you finally get the idea, and he regularly chimes in throughout shifts to remind you of the time limit or give important updates.
- Not So Stoic: He's normally a calm, soothing voice of reason, but even he has his limits. When Hal starts being needlessly cruel with LYNX's approval, Weaver snaps and Hal has to mute him. Goes up to epic proportions when Kai at first seems to be permanently killed by Hal's desperate attempt to stop the crew in the final mission.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Weaver does not try to sugar coat or lie about the conditions of working for LYNX but he does almost always prefer to work within the system. Given he has leeway to set conditions he can assure that at least his team has a decent working experience and is as safe as possible under the circumstances of their employment. His suggestion of Industrial Action and move to undermine LYNX directly is a sign of how serious things have gotten.
- Reasonable Authority Figure:
- In contrast to other LYNX personnel, Weaver tries to keep everything running as smooth as he can. He's very uneasy about Ghost Ships when they start appearing, and when Lou suggests you make use of the spare and likely very old oxygen or fuel tanks, he notes that it's against regulations but you should at least keep an eye on your vitals if you plan to use them anyway.
- Once Act II kicks into gear, he's the only mitigating force between Hal and the cutters of the sector, and clearly the level-headed one of them all.
- Walking Techbane: He repeatedly states that him and technology don't get along, with whatever cloning accident he had being just one event of many; he also cites is as a reason to pass the Armadillo on to you.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Before he got into the shipbreaking business, he used to salvage androids. One time he had a job to break down a high-end 'droid that could reasonably pass for human, and found it so uncomfortable that he switched careers.
- You Remind Me of X: Just before Weaver passes his fixer-upper of an Armadillo down to Rook he tells them that he sees himself back in his early days in them.
Lou Steiner
- Voiced by: Anesha Bailey
- Ambiguously Gay: In one private chat, Lou mentions being attracted to another woman.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Lou eventually loses patience with Hal's behavior and reaches out to the union to organize against LYNX. The call is intercepted and LYNX goes full fascist in response, revoking the human rights of the Cutters and exercising full control over their lives until the union is no longer a threat. This works out well for the workers and the union in the end though, as LYNX's horrifying reaction leads to public outcry strong enough to get the government to step in and dramatically increases union membership among shipbreakers.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: She's part of an underground resistance movement against LYNX fighting to have the workers unionize. She starts sending Rook the newsletter unprompted which causes problem later on when LYNX, the driving force behind the original wholesale destruction of unions to begin with, catches wind of the unionization attempts and in a company wide announcement sends administrators to all sectors until they're certain they've completely weeded it out.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: Lou's faith in the union is practically unshakeable. It turns out that she's completely right, as the union is a crucial part of getting the workers out of enslavement to LYNX.
Deedee Curazon
- Voiced by: Ma-anne Dionisia
- Bullying a Dragon: Goes off on a rant on Hal Rhodes after he brings up "spark-free" Demo Charges, mouthing off at him and the gear; this gets her long-distance call privileges cut.
- You Are in Command Now: Weaver leaves her in charge when he retires until LYNX finds them a replacement overseer.
Kaito Kovechkin
- Voiced by: Hyuma Frankowski
- Born in the Wrong Century: Kaito makes several comments about how sad the current state of the earth is (despite still loving the planet) and tells the protagonist "Could you imagine living in the early 21st century? Gah, what a dream. They were so lucky."
- Butt-Monkey: With his tools and gear falling apart, he's not doing especially great; even his intro has him fumble with his radio, unable to make himself audible.
- Dirty Coward: Downplayed. He cracks like an egg once Hal pulls him aside for a one-on-one and sells out the union newsgroup to save himself, which in turn lets Hal intercept Lou's message to them reaching out for help, send it to LYNX, and allowing them to go full fascist on the company's workers. Weaver and Deedee are openly disgusted when he comes clean and reveals things going From Bad to Worse was his fault.
- I See Them, Too: Kaito's the only other person who notices that the sound the AI nodes make when destroyed sounds uncomfortably like screaming.
- The Load: Weaver describes him as someone who can be taught the same lesson a thousand times and never once retain it, no matter how earnest he is in his desire to do better. And during the Industrial Action mission, where you can see his progress bar while everyone is purposefully trying to completely trash the ship, he still screws up enough to almost get a salvage goal.
- Running Gag: Kaito just can't deal properly with reactors, and every time you overhear him on the radio trying to handle one, you can expect it to go boom. It takes a darker turn when it goes off during Industrial Action, right after Hal deleted his backups in a rage.
Calyssia Rai-Paulsen
The CEO of LYNX.
- Affably Evil: She tries to project an image of LYNX as a big family that's glad to have you, and that it's a benevolent and happy workplace, and she has the company send out curated snippets of its own history to the cutters. This is in stark contrast to the realities of the crippling debt the company hands out to new hires, its incredibly faulty and worn out equipment, and frequent union busting to keep cutters under their thumb.
- Black Boss Lady: She's the CEO of LYNX, and is also black.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: She's the CEO of LYNX, the megacorp that puts its workers in debt just as part of their employment and fears unionization above all else. You bet your ass she's as corrupt as they come. She sends LYNX administrators out at the mere rumor of unionization claiming that LYNX has their workers' best interest at heart. The degree to which she is corrupt would be comical were it not for the fact that it's not played for laughs in the slightest.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Not to the same degree as her grandpa, seeing as she didn't start LYNX's regular violations of human rights, but she sure has no qualms about keeping them going.
- Karma Houdini: She suffers zero personal consequences for the entire story. Even after Rook, Weaver, Kaito, and Deedee blow the lid on LYNX's practices, she pins it all on the administrator teams, allowing her and her family to continue profiting off of the salvage business, though having to play by government rules.
Exeter Paulsen
LYNX's first CEO proper, and the one who took the minor salvage company and turned it into a planet-running conglomerate, while starting LYNX down the path of dystopian megacorp.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Calyssia is just following her grandpa's footsteps on the matter, he was one of the main causes humanity was overtaken by corporate nightmares.
- Greater-Scope Villain: All that is LYNX today, including the union-busting that it seemingly spread to all human governments and companies as a whole, can be blamed squarely on him.
- The Ghost: He has no direct presence in the game, and has presumably been retired/dead for a while.
- Expy: Calls himself "founder" of a company he actually just bought. Built private space transportation infrastructure using public government subsidies. Yup, that's Elon Musk.
Hal Rhodes
- Voiced by: Adam Nurada
- Bad Boss: He'll always be on the cutters' collective case for things as innocent as just greeting each other at the start of a shift. And no matter how fast you're working he never finds it fast enough, pressuring you with snide comments and the occasional terrible idea. Hal also takes noticeable enjoyment out of getting rid of Lou and throwing his weight around when he finally has an excuse.
- Big Bad: While he's ultimately just a middle manager, he's a far more direct threat, and it's his direct, cruel treatment of people he directly knows that drives the plot.
- Category Traitor: He actually comes from a similar blue-collar, oppressed background as the cutters, but he managed to climb up into management. And up there, he changed into a thorough company man that will impose the same conditions he once suffered. Though it bears mentioning he worked in Processing, which is shown to be the equivalent of doing inventory in a warehouse.
- Closed Circle: He relishes the chance to clamp down on all communications outside the station as soon as he has the excuse, and takes away the Armadillo as well, making sure no one can leave or get in contact with the outside. It backfires on him right at the end: After the Union gets established and LYNX gets forced to adapt their practices they are not happy with Hal, whose crew was ground Zero of the movement and who cannot blame anyone else but himself for having the workers revolt like that. He ends up right back in processing.
- Gonk: His portrait goes out of its way to make him look ugly, from his unkempt beard to the many lines on his face. Especially noticeable when the credits present his old concept art and you see his portrait getting progressively uglier.
- Hate Sink: He's an obnoxious, condescending, egotistical asshole who's also a complete buffoon that is all-too-willing to put the crew's lives at risk for stupid and often downright petty reasons. On top of that, he's as ugly on the outside and he is on the inside. It's obvious the player is meant to hate him just as much as the rest of the salvaging team does. It makes it all the more satisfying when he gets his comeuppance in the end.
- Jerkass: Nobody on the crew likes him, to put it simply. He's rude, overbearing, constantly harping on the cutters about their "faults" that boils down to nitpicking at best, and he regularly cuts off Weaver whenever he tries to rein Hal's antics in. All in all, he's a prime example of an interfering busybody who everyone would be better off without.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: Weaver's assessment of the situation with Hal is that he's utterly terrified of losing his job, and so he's taking it out on the cutters and hard-assing them as much as possible to drive their productivity up. Due to this fear, Weaver thinks, Hal's getting irrational and antagonizing him will only cause him to lash out, hence his mediating approach.
- Insufferable Imbecile: He thinks his time in processing seems to have make him an expert in engineering. It has not.
- Lethally Stupid: In a way that highlights how impatient and ignorant he is of how shipbreaking is done. One example has him say something to the effect of "eh, screw the training, just let Rook figure it out themselves"... while casually ignoring the fact that Weaver's training is the entire reason that Rook doesn't kill themselves repeatedly and waste time trying to fix their screwups. He also nearly kills Lou by turning off her suit controls and her narrowly avoiding getting into the furnace.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: He was brought in specifically to root out unionization efforts at Lynx, but his awful treatment of the shipbreaking crew ends up getting the skeptics like Deedee and Weaver on board with the first industrial action against Lynx. Even better, recordings of his deranged threats and attempt to inflict Final Death on Kai during the sabotage end up leaking to the public, resulting in an outrage that winds up forcing Lynx to accept unionization. Nice going, Hal.
- Oh, Crap!: He nearly has a panic attack when he realizes in deleting Kaito's backup trying to punish him, right as he turned off his controls while he was threatening to dunk a reactor into the furnace, that he just killed a LYNX worker for real. Even after finding out he survived, Hal gets most of the wind taken right out of his sails afterwards, in contrast with his earlier fury.
- Pet the Dog: As terrible a boss as he may be to everyone else, he seems to like Rook. He'll call you in private and tell you you remind him of himself and his path to a managerial position, and try to give you some encouragement to get there yourself. Doesn't stop him from getting on your case at the end of Act 2, however.
- Pointy-Haired Boss: In some aspects. We don't know how well he did at processing back when he still had a blue collar, but it's made very clear very quickly that he has no idea how shipbreaking actually works. He's constantly pressuring the team to move up to higher hazard levels and recommends the most unsafe methods in the name of expediency. His advice on dealing with Class II Reactors will get you killed. And he tries to veto Generator Extraction training, reasoning that he should just let you learn the caveats of the operation (which will light you up like a Christmas tree if you make a mistake at any step) all by yourself and that "a couple spares" will drive the lesson in better. In one particularly galling moment, he cuts off Lou's suit controls for some impromptu yoga while she's in the middle of her shift, nearly causing her to float into the furnace.
- Smug Snake: Once he manages to get evidence of the union to LYNX and he's confident he's in control, he becomes absolutely insufferable - but doesn't actually do anything competent with the information, not realizing that the unionization is still going on and eventually ends up screwing his efforts up so bad he ends up causing such a major scandal that forces LYNX to accept a union.
- Villainous Breakdown: Hal loses his shit so badly during the Industrial Action plan that he rants, or rather highlights, every damning aspect of LYNX's practices. He also nearly kills Kaito. After having deleted his DNA backup. It's a terrible look... and it's all recorded and made public, which finally forces the hands of forces bigger than LYNX.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Attempts this on you at the very end when you join in on trashing the ship during the Industrial Action mission. He explicitly calls you out, telling you he thought you'd be better than this and regretting ever saying you reminded him of his early years.
The Machine God
An enigmatic AI entity that LYNX refuses to acknowledge, beyond the direct order that all shipbreakers are to immediately destroy any and all traces of its work that they can find upon the abandoned vessels they sometimes tow in.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Especially when it gets its hands on a Bible, and somehow ends up with the notion it's the Almighty.
- Apocalyptic Log: Logs found on Ghost Ships often take this turn, ending right as the Machine God intervenes.
- Deus est Machina: So it intends to be, and the Machine God is thoroughly convinced it already is the God, enforcing His will upon His wayward children.
- The Dreaded: LYNX statements tread very carefully around this thing, and AI in general. Just thinking of using AI as a theme in an employee-run roleplaying game makes them nervous, and when confronted with the real thing, they will pay shipbreakers for every last node they destroy.
- The Ghost: Unless the AI Nodes are an indirect presence and a way for it to manifest against you, you never truly meet the Machine God. And if you value your humanity and free will, it appears you should be thankful for this.
- Unwilling Robotization: Those crewing the vessels it captures are apparently turned into mind-linked cyborgs that act as its "Angels", spreading its gospel.
- Villain of Another Story: While it's certainly a threat to you, the havoc the Machine God is wreaking in the solar system has struck many others far harder than you.
