Characters / Honkai: Star Rail—Stellaron Hunters

Honkai: Star Rail (Main Character Index)
Astral Express
Locations: Herta Space Station | Jarilo-VI | Xianzhou Luofu | Penacony
Factions: Stellaron Hunters | Genius Society | Interastral Peace Corporation
Aeons

Stellaron Hunters

"Elio didn't put it in the script...why would it matter?"

A group of interstellar outlaws who, as their name implies, seek the Cancer of All Worlds under the direction of a seer.

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General Tropes

• Aerith and Bob: Elio, Kafka, Silver Wolf, Blade... and Sam. Ironically, the last one has the least normal appearance compared to the others, being a mysterious ironclad warrior. It gets played with when it’s revealed that the one beneath the "Sam" armor is Firefly; with her included, the only one with a normal name is Kafka.
• Ambiguously Evil: They play villainous roles to make everyone fulfill their proper roles according to Elio, so that heroes like the Astral Express can do their jobs at the right places. The system at large believes they're out-and-out criminals with no redeeming values, but whatever they're after besides their obvious title of "Stellaron Hunters" seems to be part of making sure The Prophecy is fulfilled. So far, their onscreen actions have largely been no worse than luring the Antimatter Legion to the Herta Space Station to cause a distraction (which, granted, still led to people dying) and Kafka attacking the Astral Express at one point (as a ploy for her getting Captured on Purpose), though how serious she was about actually hurting anyone is deliberately ambiguous. Their offscreen actions (as seen in the Jepella Rebellion trailer) are implied to cause mass chaos and destruction, but only as a side effect of their Stellaron hunting. They've otherwise been mostly helpful, and have to date never maliciously intervened in Astral Express' spacefaring journey for the sake of it. And then there's the fact that Elio wanted Firefly/Sam to visit Penacony and interact with the Trailblazer in large part so that she could grow together with the Trailblazer and become more whole as a person and learn how to do more things than just causing mass destruction, which is about as non-villainous a goal as it gets.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: Kafka is the Beauty, being the Femme Fatale with a literally Compelling Voice; Silver Wolf is the Brains, being The Cracker who can rewrite reality; And Firefly is the Brawn, being the person beneath armoured, flame-spewing Sam.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To the Fatui. Both are parts of the Big Bad Ensemble alongside a legion of monsters, the Abyss Order and Anti-matter Legion respectively, who commit numerous crimes with the overall goal of toppling their setting's Jerkass Gods. In addition, their most elite members are of varying backgrounds with their own agendas and distinguish themselves from their fellow Big Bads by having their members serve as playable characters. However, aside from the obvious difference in settings, there are quite a few things that distinguish them from the other.
  • The Fatui, despite generally having a poor reputation wherever they are, is a public organisation with numerous members, with their Mooks being common enemies that can be found in the overworld. Thus far, the Stellaron Hunters are shown to be a much smaller organisation, with only five named members thus far and no Mooks to their name, and are wanted criminals throughout the galaxy.
  • The Fatui are led by a Physical Goddess and the ruler of an entire nation, while Elio, for all intents and purposes, is implied to be a mortal man who just so happens to have the ability to see the future.
  • While the Fatui have no direct conflict with the Abyss Order, with their sights largely set on toppling the Celestia while the Order is a secondary priority, the Stellaron Hunters' overall goal is to stop the Anti-Matter Legion by killing their Aeon, Nanook.
  • The Fatui Harbingers, the high-ranking executives of the organization, barely tolerate each other even in the best of times. The Stellaron Hunters, on the other hand, have a positive working relationship with each other that approaches, if not is, a Villainous Friendship, with the only friction between them largely coming from wildly contrasting personalities and occasionally bumping up against each other's particular pain points, often unintentionally.
• Deal with the Devil: It is mentioned that all of the Stellaron Hunters have made a pact with Elio to serve him in return for one of their wishes to be granted. Blade wants to find a way to permanently die, while Kafka is said to "chase after fear" but it's implied that she wanted to save the Trailblazer's life. Firefly joined the Stellaron Hunters to escape the doom that comes with her Entropy Loss Syndrome and address her inability to dream.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite having bounties worth billions of credits per member and the IPC wanting them stopped, Topaz notes that the Stellaron Hunters have a good credit record, implying the group pays their debt. Assuming it's played completely straight, it would put their villainy in the same category as The Joker, who in at least one adaptation is noticeably averse to dealing with the consequences of tax evasion despite the scope of his crimes.
• Evil Counterpart: "Neutral Counterpart" depending on who you ask, but they're established to be far more ruthless than the Astral Express, as both groups seek out the Cancer of All Worlds across the universe and contain them before they ruin countless worlds. However, while the Astral Express prefers to secure Stellarons with compromise and diplomacy in worlds affected by these artifacts, the Stellaron Hunters use more direct, forceful methods that more often than not bring disastrous consequences to the worlds they operate in. On a more individual level, each of the Hunters' field agents serves as one of these to one of the Nameless, with only Welt lacking a clear counterpart:
  • The Trailblazer vs. Sam/Firefly: Both have Destruction as their default paths, are the most mysterious members of their respective factions, have silver hair and wear clothes with black color motifs, and believe firmly in defying fate. However, Firefly chose to fall in line with the Stellaron Hunters in a desperate bid to save herself from Entropy Loss Syndrome slowly erasing her, while the Trailblazer chose to join the Astral Express (following what was heavily implied to be their Stellaron Hunter days due to their intensive work history with Kafka) to find answers about why they were "born" with a Stellaron for a heart.
  • March 7th vs. Silver Wolf: Both are the (seemingly) youngest members of their teams, the biggest thrillseekers, are rarely separated from their gadgets, and are support units in gameplay. But while Silver Wolf is an Evil Genius who is ambivalent to the mayhem she causes in her pursuit of entertainment, March 7th personifies Good Is Dumb, possessing a much stronger moral compass that prevents her mischief from reaching Silver Wolf's levels of harmful.
  • Dan Heng vs. Blade: Both are the most calm and reserved members of their teams, have black hair, and in gameplay are DPSs that utilize the Wind element. They are also both natives of the Xianzhou Luofu and former members of the High-Cloud Quintet who abandoned their past identities, and both have their own form of immortality. However, Blade was driven insane by Jingliu's torture and his complete inability to die, and chose to aid Elio in his machinations in search of a way to finally be free of his curse, while Dan Heng has no memory of his past life at all and joined the Astral Express because he found security and shelter thanks to them.
  • Himeko vs. Kafka: Both are redheads who serve as the Team Moms for their respective groups, are the most refined in their tastes, the most sociable with third parties, and in gameplay both specialize in inflicting Area of Effect damage. But while Himeko is Loved by All and seems to have connections everywhere in the galaxy, Kafka's own home planet wants her dead and she has the largest bounty out of all of the Stellaron Hunters.
• Evil Versus Evil: One of their biggest adversaries is the IPC, who is not above committing morally dubious acts in the name of carrying out Qlipoth’s will, and the Stellaron Hunters are also willing to carry out morally dubious acts to follow Elio’s script. The IPC has issued bounties on the Hunters' members, and as shown in Kafka's trailer, they have butted heads several times previously.
• Evil Versus Oblivion: Just like everyone else, they oppose the Antimatter Legion. While the Stellaron Hunters’ evil is Ambiguous, due to the actions they’re willing to do in the name of following Elio’s script, the Antimatter Legion seeks to carry out Nanook’s will to destroy the universe, which Elio’s script will supposedly prevent.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: Three of the primary operatives dealt with in the story have this dynamic. Blade is the fighter, being a nigh-unkillable swordsman and a tanky Destruction character who deals high damage by draining his HP and taking hits; Silver Wolf is the Mage, being a cracker who can interfere within the boundaries of reality itself and a Nihility character who can change enemy weaknesses and inflict stat debuffs; and Kafka is the thief, being a skilled assassin uses her charms and wits to get ahead of the enemy and a Nihility DoT enabler who will activate them with her attacks.
• Fighting Your Friend: All of them know the Trailblazer from the time they were with Kafka, and considering how quickly they establish a Friendly Enemy dynamic with them, it's likely all of the Stellaron Hunters were at least good acquaintances with them. They also all end up in conflict with the now-amnesiac Trailblazer, who opposes them as part of the more lawful Astral Express, with Kafka and Sam actually having full-on boss fights with them. It actually goes double for Sam under his true identity as Firefly, as she had effectively befriended them all over again during their time in Penacony.
• Friendly Enemy: While the Astral Express doesn't think especially highly of the Stellaron Hunters given their reputation and have come to blows with them on numerous occasions, the Stellaron Hunters are generally quite cordial in situations where the stakes aren't high and tend to drop by once in a while to check in on the Nameless. The Trailblazer even has their personal phone numbers and texts them for small talk on occasion. Kafka in particular is seemingly rather fond of the Trailblazer and has always been unfailingly gentle to them in their interactions together. And then there's Firefly's extensive Ship Tease with them, with the implication (through Sam's claims) that she tried going around Elio's script to get close to them.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The Stellaron Hunters are quite possibly the most wanted people in the setting, not only in their home worlds, much like Blade's infamous reputation in Xianzhou Luofu, but by the galaxy at large. Despite this, you can put them in your party, walk around and even talk to people like them with absolutely no consequences and with no one freaking out.
• Kill the God: Heavily implied to be their motivation. Kafka mentions that they've been manipulating events behind the scenes so that the Trailblazers team up with the Luofu, and that at the end of their journey, the Trailblazers have to go up against Nanook, Aeon of Destruction, and will need all the help they can get.
• The Man Behind the Man: Played With. Kafka and Silver Wolf were the ones responsible for the Antimatter Legion invasion on Herta Space Station, as revealed in the Prologue when Silver Wolf said she attracted hordes of Legion troops to the station in order to fulfill Elio's requirement of "The pulses from the explosion cause a massive breakdown from the master control system." While the Antimatter Legion itself is still loyal to Nanook (whom the Stellaron Hunters oppose) and it's clear that both sides will still fight each other from the outset, the Stellaron Hunters will nonetheless bait the Antimatter Legion into their plans for the sake of Elio's prophecy if it benefits them, essentially making the Legion Unwitting Pawns in their schemes.
• Mêlée à Trois: Despite the fact that they have a common enemy in the Antimatter Legion, they won’t work alongside the IPC. Justified, as the IPC has branded them as criminals with a huge bounty on each of their heads.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: Most of the Stellaron Hunters aren't in it because they share Elio's goal of saving the universe from Nanook, but because Elio promised them things they wanted, ranging from gaining the ability to feel fear for Kafka to death for Blade to "meaning" for Sam to simple amusement for Silver Wolf.
• Not Me This Time:
  • The Divination Commission is shocked to discover that the Stellaron Hunters have nothing to do with the Stellaron on the Luofu whatsoever. They're only there to ensure that the Astral Express is there so they can solve the Stellaron problem.
  • During her trial in the middle of the Jepella Rebellion, Kafka proudly admits to some of the charges. As for other charges, however, she says that the Annihilation Gang takes at least some of the blame.
• Oddly Small Organization: For a group that has brought several civilizations to their knees, the Stellaron Hunters are surprisingly few in number, consisting of just five known people. Granted, with each member being implied to be One-Man Army, especially one from the Glamoth Iron Cavalry and another from the High-Cloud Quintet (who is also "blessed" with an Emanator's power), they do have a disproportionate amount of raw firepower compared to the group's size.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Strongly implied. According to an IPC news report you can access by interacting with a holographic terminal on board the Astral Express, each individual Stellaron Hunter apparently has the power to destroy entire planets with ease, making them galactic threats on par with Nanook's Emanators of Destruction. This would also explain how Kafka and Silver Wolf were able to make quick work of the Antimatter Legion's lesser mooks on board the Herta Space Station at the start of the game when said mooks posed a significant threat to the Trailblazer, March 7th, Dan Heng, and the entire station's populace. It remains to be seen if the IPC's claim holds true or if it's merely an exaggerated Propaganda Piece to help ensure any sightings of the Hunters are reported.
• Price on Their Head: Propaganda or not, the IPC wants the Hunters stopped, doesn't particularly care how it happens, and is willing to pay coin to see it happen, one way or another. The Stinger to Silver Wolf's trailer gives us an example, with her digital wanted notice showing she has a five billion credit bounty on her head, redeemable dead or alive. Blade has over eight billion on his. Kafka has over a whopping ten billion on hers.
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: Whenever they're dispatched on missions, the Hunters are always sent in pairs, with the player never seeing more than two of them at once. Considering their playable line-up consists of two Destruction and two Nihility characters, it's not a good idea to deploy all of them on a single team in gameplay either.
• Town Girls: Kafka the Ms. Fanservice fashionista is the Femme, Silver Wolf the punkish Gamer Chick is the Butch, and Firefly, who puts up a front(?) of cuteness and vulnerability but wears the masculine Sam armor for battle and is very destructive, is Neither.
• Villainous Friendship: Implied. The Stellaron Hunters have something at least approaching trusting and comfortable relationships with each other. Kafka uses her ability to help Blade in check with his consent, and he in turn seems to trust her enough, even allowing her to call him Bladie (he threatens the Trailblazer with violence if they try to call him that). Likewise, Silver Wolf's trailer and event imply Kafka and Silver Wolf share a comfortable enough relationship that the former can tease the latter with Elio's prophecy predicting her loss. Her light cone, "Before The Tutorial Mission Starts," even has Blade in the background accompanying her and texting Kafka as Silver Wolf plays a crane game.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Their involvement in places usually ends up averting major disasters in the long run and their end goal seems to be to make sure that Elio's predictions of Nanook destroying the universe will never come to fruition, though their methods often result in a ton of collateral damage not infrequently including the loss of actual life, which is why they're wanted criminals.
• Wild Card: Unlike other factions, Stellaron Hunters' "path" is left as "???", making it unknown which Aeon they followed (if they even followed one in the first place).
• You Can't Fight Fate: The general mindset of Stellaron Hunters' members, with Elio, Kafka, and Sam being the most prominent examples (albeit with differing attitudes to this trope). Being Elio's steadfast follower, Kafka follows Elio's script to a T with a tendency to express genuine confusion if things don't take place as Elio told her (as seen in her Companion Mission if players keep refusing to indulge her questions). For Sam, he doesn't like that his out-of-the-script attempts to reveal his identity to the Trailblazer for unknown reasons during the Penacony arc keep failing (up until the point Elio scripted him to) and Firefly herself being painfully aware of her preordained fate.

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Blade

Blade, né Yingxing

Introduced: July 19, 2023 (v1.2 "Even Immortality Ends" [first half])
Voiced by: Liu Yijia (Chinese), Shin-ichiro Miki (Japanese), Kwak Yoon-sang (Korean), Daman Mills (English)

^{Click to see his full Warp artwork}

^{Click to see his appearance as Yingxing}

Rarity: 5★
Path: The Destruction
Type: Wind

An enigmatic swordsman who abandoned his body to become fused with a sword. Formerly one of the finest blacksmiths of the Xianzhou Luofu and one of the legendary High-Cloud Quintet, a series of incidents caused him to become mara-struck yet somehow retaining his human appearance, giving him the terrifying ability to recover from otherwise fatal wounds against his will.

Blade saps away at his nigh-inexhaustible life force in exchange for swiftly sending his foes to the afterlife through attacks that consume his HP: his Technique, Karma Wind, which slashes away at all enemies; his Skill, Hellscape, where he enters the same-named state for three turns during which his Normal Attack, Shard Sword, is upgraded into Forest of Swords that also drains his HP to hit foes on either side of his target; and his Ultimate, Death Sentence, where he lets loose his inner demon to fire crimson sword beams all over his target and adjacent foes and immediately sets his HP to half its maximum value. Once he has lost HP five times, either through consuming them or being damaged, he immediately triggers his Talent, Shuhu's Gift, delivering a devastating sideswipe onto all his foes and restoring some HP.^note When fully upgraded, he gains a heightened Incoming Healing Bonus whenever his HP falls below half; his Max HP can now increase up to twice per battle whenever his HP falls below half; his Enhanced Basic Attack can now heal him whenever he hits at least one Broken target; and his Talent's trigger quota is reduced to four.

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• Affectionate Nickname: Kafka calls him "Bladie". As noted above, only she gets to do that, and he doesn't like it when the Trailblazer calls him that.
• Always Someone Better: Blade may be a Master Swordsman whose Nigh-Invulnerability makes him one of the most dangerous beings in the universe, but he has yet to surpass his "master" Jingliu. The conclusion of the latter's Companion Mission sees the two duel where, while both put up a good showing of skill and strength, the most Blade is able to accomplish is slashing off Jingliu's blindfold before she sends him crashing to the ground.
• Badass Longcoat: He is a dangerous Master Swordsman who wears a black long coat that is as stylish as he is deadly.
• Baritone of Strength: All four dubs give him a suitably low voice to match his combat prowess.
• Berserk Button:
  • Pretty much anything that involves Dan Heng is enough to set him off.
  • To a lesser extent, he doesn't take it too well to anyone else other than Kafka calling him "Bladie".
  "Call me that again and I'll be answering you with my sword."
• The Blacksmith: During his time as Yingxing, he was a talented Xianzhou blacksmith and made hundreds of weapons, four of which are the most famous for their use by the High-Cloud Quintet.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: While Blade would want to get rid of Dan Heng, Elio needs him alive, so he puts up with him for as long as possible.
• Cast from Hit Points: Blade's kit revolves around playing fast and loose with his HP in exchange for brutalizing his foes and building up charges to trigger his Talent:
  • His Skill consumes HP (worth 30% of its maximum value, which stops at 1 HP) to enter the same-named state for three turns, during which his damage potency increases by 12–40% and his Basic Attack becomes enhanced, which further eats away at his HP (worth 10%) to be able to hit his target's adjacent foes.^note With damage worth a sum of a fraction of his Attack and Max HP: namely, (20–48%)+(50–120%) against his target and (8–19%)+(20–48%) against adjacent foes
  • His Technique consumes HP (worth 20% of its maximum value) in exchange for striking at all enemies (with damage worth 40% of his Max HP); this will also build him one charge for his Talent at the start of battle. The animation, in particular, shows him slitting his wrist and slashing his target in one swing.
  • Played with his Ultimate, which forcibly sets his HP to half its maximum value, meaning that if it is used while he has over half his HP, it will be reduced, which will be counted to increase its damage and help build his Talent's trigger; otherwise, it will heal him.
• Casting Gag: This is not the first time Shin-ichiro Miki voices an immortal character. However the only difference here is that while Zamasu is a god who wished for Complete Immortality, Blade is a mere mortal who despise immortality and trying to find ways to end himself.
• Combat Medic: Simulated Universe allows him to become one if you pick up a particular blessing. Being of Abundance, Becoming One Mind causes all allies to receive a portion of the healing received by the main beneficiary. This includes self-targeting heals such as Blade's Talent or his Ultimate if he triggers it while he has no more than half his HP. Given that his Talent always heals him for a quarter of his Max HP, this blessing allows him to heal his allies for a decent amount if he's got enough HP built up.
• The Comically Serious: Blade's interactions with the other Stellaron Hunters, namely Kafka and Silver Wolf, paint him as this. In particular, none of his text messages are actually his, with the other Hunters apparently just swiping his phone so that they can talk to the Trailblazer whenever theirs are unavailable.
• Complete Immortality: Unlike regular mara-struck, who can at least be given a Mercy Kill, Blade cannot be killed due to gaining the flesh of an Emanator of Abundance. This poses many problems for his desire to die.
• Counter-Attack: While technically not so (because it can also be triggered by consuming his HP with his skillset), his Talent can turn into this if his fifth (reduced to fourth with a full Eidolon) HP loss is through taking damage.
• Critical Hit Class:
  • One of three stats Blade can upgrade via his Trace tree is his Critical Rate, with him getting a 12% boost once fully unlocked.
  • His second Eidolon Resonance, Ten Thousand Sorrows From One Broken Dream, gives an additional 15% boost while in the Hellscape state, which, if you're playing him right, is basically the entire fight.
• Critical Status Buff:
  • Blade's second-ascension Bonus Ability, Vita Infinita, increases his Incoming Healing Bonus by 20% whenever his HP falls below half.
  • His fourth Eidolon Resonance, Rejected by Death, Infected With Life, boosts his Max HP by 20% up to twice per battle (hence a maximum of 40%) whenever his HP falls below half, hence indirectly boosting his Ultimate, whose potency partially scales off of the amount of lost HP.
• Cursed with Awesome: Downplayed. While Blade has a very good reason to resent his immortality, having been effectively tortured via Jingliu killing him over and over and leaving him with phantom pains all over his body (in addition to his worsening mental state), it can't be denied that he has it a bit better than most mara-struck: while most turn into mindless monsters who at least can still be put down (albeit with much effort), Blade still resembles a human, is shown to largely retain his sense of reason and sanity (for the most part) and appears to be legitimately unkillable.
• Death Seeker: Blade would want nothing more than freedom from his cursed immortality, which is what Elio offered him in exchange for working with them. He even rebukes his allies in gameplay if they heal him, and grumbles if he gets revived.
  (Blade's Annoyances) "When will death come for me? My patience is wearing thin."
  (Health Recovery) "Unnecessary."
  (Return to Battle) "I live?" (sigh)
• Discard and Draw: Since he became mara-struck, he has forgotten his legendary blacksmithing skills. In exchange, he quickly improves his swordsmanship from fighting Jingliu over and over.
• The Dreaded: To Dan Heng, who knows full well what Blade is capable of. Despite wanting to stay on the Astral Express and avoid stepping foot on the Luofu, Dan Heng immediately jumps into action when he realizes Blade is involved, fearing his friends are in grave danger.
• Driven to Madness: The main reason he's suffering from mara is due to Jingliu, who tortured him to death thousands of times as punishment for trying to bring a mutual friend Back from the Dead. The other reason is that he somehow becomes immortal for his past deeds.
• Dub Pronunciation Change:
  • "Blade" is the translation of 刃, which is read as "Rèn" in Chinese and "Jin" (katakana ジン) in Japanese, whereas the Korean localization opts for a transliteration with "Beulleideu" (hangul 블레이드; the character could also be read via hanja as "In" [인]).
  • The characters of his birth name, Yingxing (simplified 应星; traditional 應星; pinyin "Yīngxīng"), are read as "Yōsei" (via kan-on [Han Chinese-derived] reading; shinjitai kanji 応星) in Japanese and "Eungseong" (hangul 응성) in Korean.
• Enemy Mine: Towards the climax of the third chapter of the Xianzhou Luofu Trailblaze Mission, he and Dan Heng temporarily team up to stop Yanqing from trying to arrest them.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Blade expresses sorrow over the death of Baiheng, one of his compatriots during his time as Yingxing, feeling she didn't deserve her tragic demise. This led to him and Dan Feng attempting to (unsuccessfully) revive her, leading to further tragedy among the two men and the rest of the High-Cloud Quintet.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: His left earring has a long red strip of cloth tied to it. His coat has an extra two buttons on the left lapel, with one of them having a red tassel tied to it. His right bicep, left hand, and right thigh all have bandages wrapped around them, and he has an insignia based on a sword and flower wrapped over his left thigh.
• Fatal Flaw: Pride. Jingliu notes he was a very arrogant person in his past life as Yingxing. This arrogance may be what led him to collaborate with Imbibitor Lunae in attempting to resurrect Baiheng, with disastrous results.
• Flower Motifs: Blade is commonly associated with the red spider lily, a symbol of the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth in Chinese Buddhism, hence tying in with his unwanted immortality. The flowers feature prominently in his full Warp art and also flash momentarily while he is on screen in the Gamescom 2022 "Nightmare" trailer. His character trailer "Death Approaches" prominently features them as well, leaving behind a trail of spider lilies on the dead bodies he leaves behind. In addition, his Ultimate ends with him sending crimson Sword Beams in all directions, which resembles a red spider lily in full bloom.
• Fountain of Youth: Implied from his appearance. As Yingxing, a short-lived human, his hair is already grayed and he has subtle wrinkles on his face, but after he "gained" his immortality, he seemingly becomes younger with his hair turning dark green with a red ombre and his face smoothens.
• Four Is Death: His sixth Eidolon Resonance reduces his Talent's trigger quota to four instances of HP loss, again tying into his themes of death and rebirth.
• Healing Factor: Part of the reason why Blade is so feared among the Xianzhou Luofu is not just his strength, but also his ability to recover from otherwise fatal wounds.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: His enhanced basic attack and Ultimate are Blast-type, while his Talent and Technique let him damage all enemies.
• Immortality Hurts: Blade's first Character Story explains that his grudge against Jingliu is due to her killing him "again and again... for thousands of times", and even in the present he gets phantom pains all over his body at the memory of her brandishing her sword.
  (Chat: Immortality) "The hope that 'this will be the last time' always vanishes in bitter healing of the flesh."
• Implacable Man: According to the lore of the 4★ Light Cone "Nowhere to Run", Dan Heng had already tried to kill Blade multiple times, but for every time Dan Heng landed a fatal blow on him, Blade always got back up because his self-healing ability is too great.
• Invocation:
  (Ultimate activation) "That paradise may be unreachable for me."
  (Normal speed) "Savor it in my place."
  (×2 speed) "Savor it for me."
• Laughing Mad: He breaks out in manic laughter in his character trailer and when he lets the mara take over, complete with a Psychotic Smirk.
• Life Drain: Blade's fourth-ascension Bonus Ability, Neverending Deaths, gives his enhanced Basic Attack the ability to heal him whenever he attacks Weakness Broken enemies.^note With healing worth 5%+100 of his Max HP
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: His hair reaches his waist.
• Master Swordsman: He's able to keep up with Dan Heng, himself skilled with the spear, when both fight each other in his trailer. In-game, he can easily smite large swathes of enemies with his sword.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Blade is the first Destruction Pathstrider whose damage potency partially scales off of his Max HP, incentivizing players to indirectly build up his damage potency by also making him incredibly tanky and giving him a large enough HP pool to consume.
• Not So Above It All: When the Trailblazer sends him a picture of a Ruan Mei Creation with an Uncatty Resemblance to him, he doesn't say anything, but Silver Wolf says she can tell that he liked it a lot.
• One Degree of Separation: He's a wanted criminal now, but he used to be part of the High-Cloud Quintet, whose members are legends in the Luofu, including current General Jing Yuan, (former) Sword Champion Jingliu, and the previous Vidyadhara High Elder.
• The One Guy: Implied. Out of Elio's top crew, he has Sam as his fellow male Stellaron Hunter, but since Firefly is the person behind Sam's outward identity, this trope becomes played straight.
• Out-of-Turn Interaction: His Talent allows him to gather one charge at a time whenever he loses HP, either through being attacked or consuming them. Once he has five on hand, he immediately consumes them to perform a follow-up attack on all enemies and heal 25% of his max HP.^note With damage worth a sum of 22–48.4% of his Attack stat and 55–121% of his Max HP His sixth-ascension Bonus Ability, Cyclone of Destruction, adds a further 20% damage boost to the follow-up attack, while his sixth Eidolon Resonance, Reborn Into an Empty Husk, reduces the quota to four, as well as further increases the follow-up attack's damage potency (worth half his Max HP).
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner:
  (Battle Begins: Danger Alert) "What surprises do you hold?"
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: His primary color scheme is red and black, and is certainly one of the most dangerous men in the universe.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Has red eyes and is antagonistic.
• Resurrection/Death Loop: Is stuck in this as a result of his strong uncontrollable Healing Factor. Jingliu repeatedly fatally stabbing him also made him extremely aware of the pain of constantly dying and reviving again.
• Revenge: He has stated, "Of five people... three must pay the price." He excludes Jing Yuan (whom Blade is speaking to) in that count, but he includes Dan Heng, according to the latter's nightmare. Long ago, he and Dan Heng's previous incarnation tried to resurrect their dead comrade Baiheng; the attempt went completely pear-shaped, and one of its side effects was inflicting Blade with mara, for which he blames Dan Heng. The second is Jingliu, who mortally wounded him countless times as her own revenge for said experiment, and left him in a constant state of pain afterward. Finally, the third person is himself.
• Simple, yet Awesome: Blade is a relatively straightforward character to use. Just use his Skill the first chance you get and wail on the enemy until the enhancement runs out and you have to use it again. And make sure you use the HP-draining nature of both those and his Ultimate, as well as enemies just damaging him, to get stacks to trigger his Talent. So long as you follow these simple steps and give him adequate healing, he will truly live up to his reputation as a Nigh-Invulnerable Master Swordsman.
• Sword Beam: His Ultimate has him stare on his eye's reflection on his sword which shatters afterward, before suddenly leaping down on his foes, launching multiple slashes in all directions that resemble the petals of a red spider lily, which increases in damage potency depending on the amount of HP he has lost beforehand, which caps at 90% of his Max HP and will be reset after using it.^note With damage worth a sum of fractions of his Attack stat, Max HP, and total HP lost: namely, (24–38%)+(60–95%)+(60–95%) against his primary target and (9.6–15.2%)+(24–38%)+(24–38%) against adjacent foes Furthermore, his first Eidolon Resonance, Blade Cuts the Deepest in Hell, further boosts its damage against the primary target (worth 150% of HP lost).
• They Call Him "Sword": He is only known as "Blade."
• Transhuman: A possibly unintentional one. As explained by Jingliu, Yingxing used to be a short-lived human, but his experiments in Baiheng's resurrection ended with him somehow taking in the flesh of an Emanator of Abundance, becoming nigh-immortal as a result. Given there's thus far only one such Emanator—Shuhu, who the High-Cloud Quintet fought and killed at the cost of Baiheng's life—it's likely their flesh that he took, aptly explaining his Talent's name.
• Upgrade Artifact: By acquiring his Eidolons, you can upgrade his third and fifth Eidolon Resonances, Hardened Blade Bleeds Coldest Shade and Death By Ten Lords' Gaze, which will add two levels to his Skill and one to Basic Attack with the former, and 2 to his Ultimate and Talent with the latter.
• Weapon Specialization:
  • Blade's associated Light Cone is "The Unreachable Side" (5★), whose "Unfulfilled Yearning" passive increases its wearer's Critical Rate and Max HP by 18–30% apiece, in addition to a 24–40% boost to their damage output whenever they're attacked or consume their own HP, lasting until after the user attacks. This plays well into the damage potency of Blade's special attacks partially scaling off of his Max HP, as well as further powering up most of his attacks' damage.
  • "Nowhere to Run" is also associated with him; Its passive, "Desperate Times", increases the wearer's ATK by 24-48% and restores HP equal for 12-24% of the wearer's attack when they defeat an enemy. While not as useful as HP, his Skill's split-scaling allows him to benefit from the attack increase, while the HP restoration offsets the low HP he's likely to end up with from his attacks.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: He was originally a baseline human, but due to a botched experiment to resurrect a good friend, Baiheng, he was inflicted with a cursed form of immortality. The experiment was said to have left him a shell of a man, but as far as Jingliu was concerned, that was nowhere near a severe enough punishment for, in her opinion, dishonoring Baiheng. She "taught" him swordsmanship by killing him thousands of times, causing psychological wounds and driving him into further insanity. Kafka's Mind Manipulation keeps his Mara condition at bay, but he still needs to avoid stimulating old memories to be as stable as he is. The worst part is, that his immortality is directly derived from an Emanator (as he used part of Shuhu's flesh for the experiment), meaning that, unlike Xianzhou humans, he doesn't even have suicide or receiving a Mercy Kill as options. Nothing short of an Aeon's level of power can kill him, which is why he had to resort to joining the Stellaron Hunters.

Kafka

Kafka

Introduced: August 9, 2023 (v1.2 "Even Immortality Ends" [second half])
Voiced by: Xu Hui (Chinese), Shizuka Itō (Japanese), Sa Moon-young (Korean), Cheryl Texiera (English)

^{Click to see her full Warp artwork.}

Rarity: 5★
Path: The Nihility
Type: Lightning

A Stellaron Hunter from the planet Pteruges-V. Beautiful, enigmatic, and dangerous in equal measure, she follows the will of Elio with steadfast vigor and does his will through her power of hypnotic suggestion. She is the one who first awakened the Trailblazer and set them off on their mission to find the truth about the universe.

Kafka stealthily decimates the opposition by manually triggering their damage-over-time debuffs, Shock in particular, which she can impose on all her foes for two turns: automatically in tandem with her allies' Basic Attacks (once in between her turns) through her Talent, Gentle but Cruel, where she quickly fires at the target with a submachine gun; manually upon all enemies through her Technique or Ultimate, respectively Mercy is Not Forgiveness (where she extends a web of electricity around her) and Twilight Trill (where she fires her guns to all directions and then triggers a spider-shaped explosion), with the latter also able to manually trigger Shock damage. All these feed into her Skill, Caressing Moonlight, a double sword slash onto her target and adjacent foes that manually triggers all her target's damage-over-time debuffs (including Shock).^note When fully upgraded, she gains additional Energy whenever Shocked enemies are defeated or they take damage from Shock effects she placed; her Talent's follow-up attack now has a high chance to increase the potency of her target's damage-over-time effects for two turns; her Ultimate can now automatically trigger all kinds of damage-over-time effects; and Shock effects she inflicts now last three turns.

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• Achilles' Heel: Both playable and boss versions of her struggle with debuff removal, as her damage is mediocre without damage-over-time debuffs to stealthily exploit. Huohuo in particular might as well be a Man of Kryptonite for her as a Simulated Universe boss, as her Talent automatically cleanses debuffs from allies whenever they start their turn or use Ultimates, meaning aside from the one Psychological Suggestion she's guaranteed to trigger at the start of her second phase, she'll be hard-pressed to get a single one to take effect.
• Affably Evil: If she is at all. Unlike Blade and Silver Wolf, Kafka is unfailingly polite in all her interactions thus far without implications of hidden, malicious designs.
• Air Guitar: "Violin," to be precise. In the opening cutscene, while the Antimatter Legion is attacking the Space Station, Kafka plays an invisible violin. She also does this for one of her idle animations.
• Ambiguous Situation: In Silver Wolf's trailer, Kafka messages her while the latter is playing Honkai Impact 3rd, saying "You're about to lose. Elio told me." Moments later, she does lose. It's unclear whether Kafka was being honest and Elio actually had that vision and told her, or she only lied to Silver Wolf to mess with her.
• Animal Motifs: Spiders. Appearance-wise, her coat's design features an abstract representation of both a spider and its web, and her sunglasses are meant to emulate spider eyes; combat-wise, her Skill has a spider's-web-shaped damage burst if her target has a damage-over-time effect, and her Ultimate ends with a hail of bullets creating the outline of a spider; and personality-wise, she is manipulative and dangerous to many, which also shows through her powers.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In addition to her many counts of Stellaron Hunter-related crimes, heists, and instigating rebellions, Kafka is also wanted on one planet for stealing a black jacket, two white shirts, and a red dress.
• At Least I Admit It: In the Jepella Rebellion trailer, while on "trial", the Stellaron Hunters are accused of a litany of crimes. She admitted to them all, and some of her responses imply that the Jepella Brotherhood is no different.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: All of her abilities are attacks, even her Talent and Technique. Despite that, however, her Damage Over Time gimmick means that she's not as simple to play in practice.
• Breaking Old Trends: Kafka is the first playable character whose Companion Mission does not have her stop by the Astral Express as a visitor upon completion.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: When the Trailblazer tells Kafka to prove her identity in a text message, Kafka sends them a picture that's focused on her ample chest.
• Captured on Purpose: Kafka has done this at least twice to proceed with her plans or follow Elio's script:
  • As seen in the Jepella Rebellion trailer, she allowed the Jepella Brotherhood to put her on trial to maintain control of their tribunal with her Spirit Whisper and distract them from the civil strife their members were causing outside until it was too late.
  • During the Xianzhou Luofu arc, Kafka purposefully got captured to get the Astral Express and the Luofu to ally with each other to defeat the actual threat posed by the Stellaron and the parties who smuggled it onboard.
• Casual High Drop: After answering the Trailblazer's questions in the Divination Commission, she escapes by theatrically falling backward from a great height.
• The Chooser of the One: She co-masterminds the events of the prologue, and you control her as she steals the Stellaron in the Herta Space Station and awakens the Trailblazer. She's also the first person they meet after waking up and gives a broad description of the grand adventure that awaits them before parting ways, making her directly responsible for their involvement in the plot.
• Coat Cape: A slightly more practical variation, her coat has holes under the sleeves that she slips her arms through. The coat seems to be an "armpit-less" variant if worn normally; she just wears it in an unusual way. She also wears a different, more normal-looking coat this way in the "Jepella Rebellion" trailer.
• Compelling Voice: Fond of "persuasion" along these lines, called Spirit Whisper. The text boxes actually highlight whenever Kafka says "listen", such as in the Prologue after awakening the Trailblazer or when explaining how she convinced some Cloud Knights to fight against the party.
  • This also ties into her boss fight, in that she periodically inflicts Dominate on one party member, forcing them to attack their allies. You even get an achievement for letting Kafka Dominate the Trailblazer, another for letting her do it to Blade, and also another for letting Kafka Dominate herself. Relatedly, you can also get another achievement for successfully dispelling this effect thrice in a single battle.
  • Her ability is apparently so effective that it works on any self-aware being, including Svarog (a robot), Herta and Xueyi (who control robotic Remote Bodies), Tail (a heliobus possessing part of Huohuo's body), Black Swan (a literal Living Memory), Acheron (an Emanator of Nihility) and Gallagher (a person who took traits of more than 52 people).
  • Her Companion Mission shows that she uses her ability to rein in Blade's mara-induced frenzy and calm him down, which leaves her vulnerable to potential attacks (hence asking the Trailblazer to protect the two of them during one such relapse by Blade).
• Contralto of Strength: She has a low, sultry voice and is a dangerously deadly combatant.
• Cool Shades: She wears a pair of old-fashioned sunglasses atop her forehead which further adds to her fashion sense and cool factor of being one of the most formidable Stellaron Hunters, though they are noticeably too narrow to fit over her eyes, indicating they're more of a hair accessory.
• Curtains Match the Window: Purple eyes to go along with her purple hair.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Her first Eidolon Resonance, ''Da Capo', gives her Talent's follow-up attack a 100% base chance to boost the potency of her target's damage-over-time effects by 30% for two turns.
• Damage Over Time: Her specialty. Her Ultimate, Talent, and Technique have a base 100% chance to inflict Shock for two turns.^note With the latter two dealing damage worth 42–159.6% and 50% of her Attack stat, respectively The Shock effect she inflicts deals higher base damage per tick than any of her abilities that inflicted them^note worth 116–318.275% of her Attack stat. Her sixth-ascension Bonus Ability, Thorns, boosts her base success rate to 130%, and her sixth Eidolon Resonance, Leggiero, increases the damage potency of her Shock effects by 156%, as well as extends their duration to three turns.
• Dark Action Girl: A sultry and manipulative beautiful woman with an ominous aura who is also a formidable, dangerous combatant.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Unlike her fellow Hunter Blade, Kafka is not a straightforward character to use. Compared to other damage dealers, she cannot dish out direct damage bursts by herself, as the bulk of her damage output comes from manually triggering enemies' Damage Over Time effects, incentivizing players to build a party that can reliably inflict them to make the most out of her kit. When well-built, her base damage now can match, if not surpass, Blade's, and it only increases proportionally to the number of Damage Over Time effects inflicted onto her enemies.
• The Dragon: She serves directly under Elio and is second-in-command of the Stellaron Hunters, carrying out their operations physically and leading her on-field partners while Elio remains in the shadows.
• The Dreaded: While not as monstrously strong as Blade or Sam, Kafka seems to be the most fearsome of her group, with her bounty being the highest among them, likely on account of her fearsome powers of persuasion. Her associated Light Cone describes a scene where her reputation alone terrifies someone into telling her what she wants to hear without doing anything more than merely ask a question.
• Exotic Eye Designs: Not at first, as she simply has purplish red eyes in the prologue. Then when she reappears a bit later after she's captured on the Luofu, she suddenly has red circles in the center of her eyes with lines trailing from the sides. What this means is unknown, but it's clear something's changed even if she doesn't act like it; given she's lacking her makeup, it's entirely possible her prologue appearance was also faking certain visual details.
• The Face: While Elio is the leader of the Stellaron Hunters, so far whenever they need to make contact, it's Kafka who does the talking.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Downplayed, as most of Kafka's outfit is fairly symmetrical and consistent with her sense of style, but one oddity comes from her mismatching footwear, with her right footwear being a thigh-high boot complete with garter straps and her left footwear being an ankle-length boot.
• The Fashionista: The only thing known about her other than her name is that she likes collecting coats.
• Femme Fatale: She hits all the notes: sultry, and highly dangerous, but the Trailblazer is still drawn to her despite her danger.
• For the Lulz: She was assigned to keep the Jepella Brotherhood's leadership distracted while her allies incited an uprising. She did so by using her Compelling Voice to turn them into her puppets and allowed them to hold her on trial for laughs. Sam expresses annoyance at her for "playing with her food".
• Friendly Enemy: She can be on friendly terms with the Trailblazer, having cordial conversations through texts and asking for their help in times of need. She clearly wants to be liked by them too, judging by her companion mission. Whether this is reciprocated is up to the player, as the Trailblazer can optionally respond to her with hostility.
• The Gadfly: Seems to like messing with people's heads through Exact Words as well as Vagueness Is Coming, in between just simply screwing with them. In Silver Wolf's trailer, she's spamming messages at the girl playing Honkai Impact 3rd, complete with declaring "YOU'RE ABOUT TO LOSE. ELIO TOLD ME" and a smug emote.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Kafka’s character trailer sees her wiping out droves of IPC mooks with with complete ease. In gameplay, however, as a Lightning character, she’s incapable of striking their Ice and Fire weakness, which generally makes her less than ideal to use against them.
• Guns Akimbo: If not wielding her katana, Kafka would wield a submachine gun on each hand.
• Heads or Tails?: Kafka's character trailer starts with her walking down a hall scraping a coin against a wall before confronting some mooks. At the end of the trailer, she corners the one she was sent to find and kills him after flipping said coin, before signing off by asking this very question.
• I Let You Win: When Fu Xuan arrives to turn the tide on Kafka by redirecting her bullets back at her using Divination, she voluntarily surrenders, knowing full well that the Astral Express crew has the upper hand by that point. In truth, she threw the fight on purpose because it's all within Elio's expectations to get the Astral Express crew and the Xianzhou Alliance to cooperate with each other in order to tackle the latter's Stellaron problem.
• Invocation:
  (Ultimate activation) "Good times, never last..."
  (Normal speed and ×2 speed) "Time to say bye... Boom!"
• Jedi Mind Trick: Her Spirit Whisper works in this manner in that it's less direct brainwashing and more uttering Trigger Phrases that affect her target's cognitive faculty and redirect their attention elsewhere, ranging from convincing some Cloud Knights to attack the Astral Express crew to Dominating party members to get them to attack each other during her boss fight.
• List of Transgressions: The Jepella Brotherhood lists Kafka's many crimes when they put her on trial. Kafka made them do this with her Spirit Whisper to amuse herself and to distract them from the rebellion going on around them.
• Living Lie Detector: Implied. She says she cannot read the Trailblazer at all after a game of Truth or Lie with them, but this is, in all likelihood, a lie. A closer examination, comparing her reactions to various answers, indicates that she reads them like a book and reacts to their true feelings, regardless of whether they tell the truth and play by the rules or not.
• Mana Drain: Her fourth-ascension Bonus Ability, Plunder, restores 5 Energy whenever a Shocked enemy is defeated, and her fourth Eidolon Resonance, Recitativo, regenerates 2 Energy whenever any enemy takes damage from any Shock effect she inflicts.
• Master of Threads: Befitting her spider motif, her power manifests in the form of energy threads from her fingers. As a playable character, this appears when she uses her Skill or Technique; as a boss, she uses them to "dominate" your characters.
• Mirror Match: If you have Kafka in your roster and want to have her fight her boss self in story missions or the Simulated Universe, go ahead, the game won't stop you.
• Moveset Clone: Kafka could be seen as a 5★ Nihility equivalent to Serval; both are Lightning units with multi-target Skills and Ultimates and specialize in inflicting damage-over-time debuffs, which in turn empowers their own damage against those afflicted. The difference is that while Serval relies on such debuffs to increase the power of her attacks, Kafka specializes in manually triggering such debuffs to shred through their HP.
• Ms. Fanservice: Kafka is a stunningly beautiful woman, whose clothing serves to accentuate her chest and legs, in addition to a sultry voice. One Light Cone, "Fermata", even depicts her as a Bathing Beauty. During her Companion Mission, if the player chooses certain options, she even sends them a highly suggestive picture of herself to prove her identity, with a prominent focus on her breasts.
• Musical Theme Naming: All her Eidolon Resonances are named after Italian musical terms, befitting her fascination for classical music. In addition, her Warp banner is titled "Nessun Dorma."
• The Musketeer: Uses both a sword and a pair of SMGs in combat.
• Mysterious Past:
  • Unlike her fellow Stellaron Hunters, little is known of Kafka's past besides her extremely long IPC rap sheet and that she came from Pteruges-V. What is particularly mysterious, though, is her exact relationship with the Trailblazer. It's clear they were former companions and Kafka holds at least some affection for them, but whether it's because they're blood-related, platonic friends, or something more is yet unknown.
  • During her Companion Mission, she can give two separate versions of her past, one true and the other false, as per the nature of the game. One answer involves her being a former Knight of Beauty who lost her faith following the disappearance of its related Aeon, Idrila. The other says she hails from Pteruges-V, a planet contaminated by a Stellaron where the concept of fear does not exist and many people became dominated by desire and pleasure, where she worked as a "Devil Hunter" to eliminate such people. Either answer ends with her being recruited by Elio. The true answer is the Devil Hunter one.
• Mythology Gag: Her design is partially derived from the Kafka artworks of the previous Honkai games, Guns GirlZ and Honkai Impact 3rd, bearing the same general concepts of having long purple hair and wearing white clothes.
• Named After Somebody Famous: As with her previous Honkai iterations, she's named after Franz Kafka.
• Parental Substitute: She was the one who raised the Trailblazer during what was heavily implied to be their Stellaron Hunter days prior to them getting their memories wiped, teaching them everything from combat to basic knowledge. Even after the latter joined the Astral Express after erasing their past memories for unknown reasons, Kafka remains unfailingly polite and caring to them despite their differing factions.
• Perpetual Smiler: Kafka is always seen with a sly smile on her face, no matter the situation.
• Pet the Dog:
  • In Kafka's Companion Mission, the Trailblazer protects her from Cloud Knights while she neutralizes Blade's mara relapse. During this, Yanqing comes across them, forcing the Trailblazer to fight him. Kafka goes out of her way to proclaim that she mind-controlled the Trailblazer to fight for her, thus protecting the Trailblazer's standing with the Xianzhou Luofu before seemingly sending him back unharmed afterward (though depending on whether Elio had it as part of her script or not, she might've simply been following along).
  • One daily message you can get from her if the Trailblazer responds that they really miss her, heavily implies that Kafka genuinely does care for the Trailblazer, noting that as long as they stay with the Astral Express, she won't have to worry about them.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner:
  (Enemy Target Found) "Huh, they don't look happy to see us..."
  (Battle Begins: Weakness Break) "Caught in the net."
• Purple Is Powerful: Kafka's design has purple as one of her notable colors, her attacks are primarily purple-colored (similarly to the color of lightning type for the game) and she is indeed a formidable boss and the premier enabler of amplifying damage-over-time effects as a playable character.
• Secret A.I. Moves: Only Boss Kafka has the ability to "dominate" her opponents, i.e your party.
• Simple, yet Awesome: In contrast to her less straightforward playstyle, building Kafka is significantly easier, as her damage-over-time effects scale off of her Attack stat and are unaffected by Critical Rate and Damage, so all she needs are Relics with an Attack bias to make her shine in her role.
• Status Buff: Kafka's second Eidolon Resonance, Fortississimo, boosts the potency of any Damage Over Time effect inflicted by her allies by 25% just by having her on the field.
• Status Effect-Powered Ability:
  • Her Skill deals additional bursts of damage on her primary target depending on the number of damage-over-time debuffs they have^note With its raw damage worth 80–176% and 30–66% of her Attack stat against her target and adjacent foes, respectively, in addition to each manually triggered damage-over-time effect being 60–78% as potent as the original effect, while her Ultimate does so depending on the number of each enemy's stacks of Shock.^note With base damage worth 48–86.4% of her Attack stat, as well as manual Shock damage worth 80–104% of the original per stack
  • Her second-ascension Bonus Ability, Torture, allows her Ultimate to trigger other damage-over-time effects besides Shock.
  • As a boss, all her attacks will trigger Shock damage if any of her targets are Shocked, and if enemy units other than her or Dominated party members attack a Shocked ally, she will perform a follow-up attack onto them (similar to her playable version) once per turn.
• A Taste of Power: At the start of the game, you control her and Silver Wolf before you get to control the Trailblazer. The two were notably playable as early as v1.0, a time in the game's life when they hadn't debuted in Character Event Warps yet.
• Team Mom: The closest incarnation of this trope among her colleagues, despite not to Himeko's degree. As Elio's second-in-command, Kafka is in charge of taking care of other Hunters' wellbeing and safety during missions and other situations (as exemplified in her ability to treat Blade's mara relapses). From what the players can see in her interaction with other Hunters, she also always acts like such a mischievous tease to them and seems to be genuine in her relations with other Hunters.
• The Tease: At the start of her Companion Mission, the player receives an anonymous message from her. If they demand proof that it is her, she sends them a rather suggestive picture of herself that's focused on her breasts.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The Girly Girl to Silver Wolf's Tomboy, being a provocative and seductive tease in contrast to Silver Wolf's rougher Gamer Chick personality.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: In her character trailer, Kafka begins a hallway massacre by throwing her sword into some poor IPC Mook's face, before shooting her way through the hallway to retrieve it.
• Upgrade Artifact: By acquiring her Eidolons, you can upgrade her third and fifth Eidolon Resonances, Capriccio and Doloroso, which will add two levels to her Skill and one to Basic Attack (Midnight Tumult) with the former, and two to her Ultimate and Talent with the latter.
• Weapon Specialization:
  • Kafka's associated Light Cone is "Patience Is All You Need" (5★), whose "Spider Web" passive increases its wearer's damage output by 24–40%, as well as Speed by 4.8% for every attack they launched (to a maximum of thrice per battle, hence 14.4%), in addition to a 100% base chance to inflict Erode (unless their target already has one) for one turn, which is functionally a Shock effect that deals damage worth 60–100% of its wielder's Attack stat. This allows Kafka to quickly take advantage of her enemies' Damage Over Time effects before they wear off, as well as gives her another such effect to make very good use of.
  • "Fermata" is also associated with her; its passive "Semibreve Rest" increases the wearer's Break Effect by 16-32% and damage dealt (including DOT) against enemies with Shock or Wind Shear by 16-32%. This plays directly to her greatest strengths as she can easily inflict Shock on enemies in various ways and then boost all of her damage against them, especially if they're inflicted with a lot of DOT effects; as a bonus, the Break Effect increase will lead to a stronger Shock effect if she breaks her targets' Toughness Gauge.
• Wild Card: While she appears antagonistic due to her affiliation, Kafka's motives are a mystery, as she and the Hunters had nothing to do with the Stellaron's presence in the Luofu, and only got involved to make the Alliance cooperate with the Astral Express. Furthermore, she never expresses any antagonism to the Trailblazer and their comrades during off-story moments with no implications of manipulating them behind the scenes, which further muddies her motivations.
• You Can Always Tell a Liar: During her game of Truth or Lie, whenever Kafka is spinning a lie, she averts her gaze from the player and looks to the side.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Being a loyal follower of Elio, Kafka sees little point in seeing and comprehending things beyond what Elio's script tells her about the future. As a result, she often expresses confusion when others can successfully subvert Elio's predictions, with a prominent example being the Trailblazer's decision if they decided to refuse all her questions in her Companion Mission. Despite her initial confusion about the Trailblazer's decision to ditch all of her questions, a post-mission conversation revealed that she's amused and grateful that the Trailblazer has successfully determined their own life choice and making it a reality, despite her insistence that both of them are "people enslaved by fate."

Sam (Unmarked Spoilers for the identity beneath the armor)

Firefly of Glamoth, AKA Sam of the Iron Cavalry

Introduced: (v2.3)
Firefly voiced by: Song Yuanyuan (Chinese), Tomori Kusunoki (Japanese), Yu Hye-ji (Korean), Analesa Fisher (English)
Sam voiced by: Gan Ziqi (Chinese), Jun Kasama (Japanese), Jang Seo-hwa (Korean), Adin Rudd (English)

Firefly, as herself and as Sam.

Rarity: 5★
Path: The Destruction
Type: Fire

A Super-Soldier from the planet Glamoth who was created as part of the Iron Cavalry in an ultimately futile effort to combat the Swarm. Now the sole remnant of her unit, Firefly discovered that she has a unique disease called Entropy Loss Syndrome from the genetic modifications that created her and would eventually erase her from existence. Elio promised her an opportunity to find meaning in her life and defy her fate if, in exchange, she would once again don the Sam armor under the Stellaron Hunters' banner.

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• Affably Evil: As Sam, "he" always speaks rather gently and politely in languages other than English, and "he" laments that all "he's" good at is causing mass destruction, compared to other Stellaron Hunters with a wider variety of skill sets. On the other hand, she has a reputation for being the most ruthlessly straightforward of the Stellaron Hunters, sparing no mercy to those she's tasked to get rid of.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: In addition to the immediate and obvious similarities between Firefly and a Kamen Rider protagonist, the lore and presentation of Firefly and Sam strongly mirror that of a Warframe.
  • Firefly, much like an Operator, is a pilot on the younger side with an intrinsic ability to command a suit of superpowered armor, which can be summoned and transferred out of at will.
  • While Sam is presented as male, his fire abilities and the pilot being female bring to mind Ember, the female, flame-themed Warframe. Interestingly, Ember was male during Warframe's closed beta. The Operator's apparent gender identity in Warframe also has no bearing whatsoever on what Warframes they can pilot.
  • The Glamoth Iron Cavalry and the Warframes both served an empire and were sent to fight a hostile, rapidly multiplying alien force, the Swarm of Tayzzyronth and the Sentients respectively. Both enemy factions also have known weaknesses to fire (certain Swarm enemies have Fire weaknesses, while extreme heat is one of the few things a Sentient cannot guard against), and remain active threats in the present day despite past efforts to eliminate them.
    • Moreover, while the Warframes were made to fight the Sentients, the Swarm is thematically similar to another common Warframe enemy, the Infested.
  • While uncommon, there were Warframes such as Protea that worked under antagonistic factions, not unlike how Firefly is allied to the Stellaron Hunters.
  • Sam, much like the average Warframe, has an in-universe reputation of being The Dreaded that can eliminate swaths of enemy forces without much trouble. Additionally, the true nature of who "Sam" is and how the armor is piloted is not common knowledge, much like the relationship between Operators and Warframes, especially earlier in the game.
• Ambiguous Gender Identity: As Sam, their Powered Armor has a tall masculine build and a male voice. They are usually treated as a man by everyone else, including their companions. Firefly's persona in the Dreamscape however is decidedly feminine, making her true self highly ambiguous, especially since the Dreamscape is a lot more flexible than reality and Firefly was undercover. The fact that Sam is an Artificial Human muddies the waters further; it's possible Sam has No Biological Sex. The "Extraterrestrial Satellite Communication" post, however, refers to Firefly as a young girl, suggesting that her persona in the Dreamscape is her real appearance, which her playable reveal reinforces.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • With the reveal of her true identity, it's left unclear which of her two identities' backstories is the real one, or if it's some mixture of the two. "Sam" also acts (and speaks, in languages other than English) rather differently from Firefly; is she simply that good at acting, or could "Sam" be his own personality? This also possibly extends to her actual motive of making a pact with Elio in the first place; did she make it to escape her Entropy Loss Syndrome condition, or something else entirely? The "Extraterrestrial Satellite Communication" post states that she joined the Stellaron Hunters to find the meaning of life and how to defy her fate, implying more of the former.
  • It's currently up in the air how many of her fellow Stellaron Hunters outside of Elio know her true appearance and Hidden Depths underneath her armor. They refer to Sam using masculine pronouns and talk up Sam as the most ruthless and unapproachable of them, with Blade sounding genuinely intimidated by "his" presence, but at least one of them may be in on the deception for the sake of cementing Sam's public reputation.
• Animal Motifs: Fireflies, obviously. Her clothing resembles their general dark-colored bodies while her light green skirt brings to mind their glowing tails. It also ties into how, like fireflies, she doesn't have a long time to live given her illness.
• Anti-Villain: Compared to the perpetually serene Kafka, the utterly indifferent Silver Wolf, and the violently unstable Blade, Sam seems to be the only member who has clear misgivings about the villainous role "he" often has to play in Elio's script and wishes "he" was capable of more than just being a killer, ironic given that "he's" the most physically destructive out of the Stellaron Hunters thus far.
• Artificial Human: Firefly was created as part of Glamoth's Iron Cavalry Super-Soldier programme before the planet was destroyed by the Swarm, which explains her inability to dream and lack of skills on things unrelated to combat.
• Badass Adorable: A lovely, upbeat young woman who also happens to be the secret identity of an armored Super-Soldier with the confirmed strength to raze planets. And as her playable form indicates, she's fully capable of fighting without the armor.
• Badass Boast: Delivers an incredible one when entering "his" Super Mode.
  Sam: "I will... set the seas ablaze."
• Beneath the Mask: As Sam, "he" is ruthlessly pragmatic and seemingly cold-hearted, which makes how warmly Firefly acts all the more jarring. Whether or not Firefly actually represents her true personality to some degree remains to be seen, but there is at least the implication that her spending time with the Trailblazer was something she wanted to do of her own volition rather than a part of Elio's script. Sam's conversations with the Trailblazer in "Cat Among the Pigeons" also imply that "he" doesn't like being only good at destroying and killing.
• Bizarre Taste in Food: She likes Oak Cake Rolls, which are said to be no different from an actual oak branch in appearance and composition.^note The food's Flavor Text mentions that long ago, people in poverty ate a chip of oak wood with bread; this cake takes inspiration from it by having shaved oak wood as one of its ingredients. However, the description also states "only the most ambitious and determined individuals can consume it". At first, it seems to signify Firefly's hidden determination to keep moving forward despite her ill body and become a stowaway in Penacony for all the risks it entails, all for an unspoken objective, but with the revelation that she's the person beneath Sam, it may have a second meaning: her being a lot stronger than she looks.
• The Brute: When the Stellaron Hunters need to cause a lot of destruction in the shortest time possible, they deploy Sam. This bothers her, as she wants to be more than a Living Weapon but believes she can't match the cunning, skills, or wit of his fellow Hunters. "He" mentions to Acheron that Elio's script for "him" has always been brief, suggesting that Elio knows there are only a few things she can do well. She agreed to the Penacony mission because Elio believed it would bring both her and the Trailblazer "unforgettable gains".
• Cast from Hit Points: As a boss, Sam's Secondary Combustion Super Mode imposes this on your party and himself - every attack he makes will consume a small bit of his health, and he ignites your skill points so they burn whoever uses them while also reducing healing received.
• Combat Stilettos: Sam's armor has rather prominent heels, but he moves around and kicks with them just fine. It's probably the only aspect of the armor that reflects her actual gender.
• Crippling Overspecialization: As she admits to the Trailblazer, being conceived as a walking weapon of mass destruction (as part of Glamoth's Iron Cavalry) means that she struggles to come up with solutions that don't involve blowing things up or threatening to kill people. One of the reasons why Elio sent her to Penacony was so that she could learn through her dynamic with the Trailblazer how to become more than just a killing machine.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She tells the Trailblazer that her homeworld was destroyed and she's an interstellar refugee with nowhere else to go. As if that wasn't enough, she has Entropy Loss Syndrome which will not kill her but slowly cause her to fade from existence. To be more precise, Firefly was created as one of the Iron Cavalry super soldiers to protect the planet Glamoth from the Swarm, a task they failed to accomplish, and her Entropy Loss Syndrome is the product of genetic modifications that went into creating the Iron Cavalry.
• Dating Catwoman: The Trailblazer has some very pronounced Ship Tease with her before it's revealed that she's the person beneath Sam, one of the Stellaron Hunters the Trailblazer and the Astral Express have been in conflict with.
• Delicate and Sickly: She mentions that she suffers from a condition called Entropy Loss Syndrome, where the sufferer will experience time slower than anyone else and gradually fade away from existence. She lives in the Dreamscape as a means to escape her condition and interact with the world, as her real body is stuck in a hospital. Or at least so she tells the Trailblazer; by "hospital", she meant "Sam". Sam discloses after "his" fight with Acheron that "he" can't dream, implying that "he" entered the Dreamscape through Silver Wolf's method instead of the Dreampool. The "crack" in her face shown after she deactivates the Sam armor implies that the disease is real, which is confirmed in the description of her Extraterrestrial Satellite Communication post.
• Disney Death: Despite being stabbed by Something Unto Death, she is present for the subsequent fight scene wearing the Sam armor. She later reveals her survival in front of the Trailblazer when they are submersed in the Memory Zone Depths, following Acheron's defeat of Aventurine.
• Diving Kick: In Sam's boss battle, one of his attacks has him leap into the air and deliver a brutal kick to the party on the way down.
• Dual Wielding: In Firefly's Warp artwork, Sam appears to wield two giant swords in a reverse grip.
• Dub Personality Change: As Sam, "he" is noticeably harsher and angrier sounding in English compared to the other dub languages, where "he" is instead presented as consistently polite but emotionally detached.
• Dub Pronunciation Change: In the original Chinese, Firefly's name is 流萤 (Liúyíng, "wandering firefly"), and "Hotaru" (katakana ホタル)^note Same as the Japanese name for the female Traveler of Genshin Impact, Lumine, but in katakana instead of kanji in Japanese.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Prior to his appearance in Penacony, "he" was mentioned in a wanted notice by the IPC and offhandedly by Kafka in her Companion Mission and by Silver Wolf in her Parlor Car chat. "He" also makes his first on-screen appearance in the Myriad Celestia Trailer: The Jepella Rebellion -- Scene 47.
• Establishing Character Music: The in-universe song by Robin, "If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking", serves as hers. Played when she opens up to the Trailblazer about her dream and illness, it serves to show her desire to escape the confines her body imposes on her and to reach out for her dream in Penacony. Fittingly, it plays in the same spot as her secret base and after her death. After her reveal as the person beneath Sam, this song actually establishes her bitterness at having a sealed fate while wishing to be something more than a Person of Mass Destruction.
• The Fake Cutie: Firefly is a beautiful young woman outside of her Powered Armor, and plays up her innocence and defenselessness around the Trailblazer when in reality, she's been hiding behind the persona of Stellaron Hunter Sam, who's ruthless, pragmatic and admits that brute force is all "he's" really good for. Despite this, there's the implication that all the time she spent with the Trailblazer was done by her own volition and not part of the "script".
• Fighting Your Friend: Sam's battle against the Trailblazer is revealed to be this, as Firefly had befriended them beforehand, and she actually intended to separate them from the suspicious Acheron and Black Swan. Only after "his" fight with Acheron that she convinces "him" that she isn't a threat.
• Flaming Meteor: One of Sam's Extra Actions during his boss fight is DHGDR: Supernova Overload, which sees him blasting into the sky, invoking the image of a meteor and crashing down into the entire party, not unlike Starscourge Radahn. The maneuver is capable of dealing severe damage as is and can outright KO less resistant characters without damage mitigation.
  Sam: "Scorched earth operations!"
• Foil:
  • With the revelation that Sam is just the Powered Armor Firefly is wearing, she's this with Blade. They both serve as the more destructive and ruthless members of the Stellaron Hunters in contrast to Kafka and Silver Wolf. Additionally, they used to serve as parts of their respective homeworlds' elite military forces before they suffered from tragedies that led them to where they are now. But while Blade invokes the image of a bloodthirsty cultivation swordsman who considers himself to be a weapon, uses the Wind element, and is cursed to be completely immortal when he was getting old because he was exposed to Shuhu's flesh and got mara-struck, Firefly as Sam is a pragmatic, high-tech armored warrior who prominently uses raging flames and "his" fists, doesn't enjoy her status as a Living Weapon, and has a definitive lifespan laid out by Elio's predictions due to her Entropy Loss Syndrome, which will eventually make her fade away and is a result of the genetic modifications that went into creating her.
  • Within the Penacony storyline, she also acts as one to Sparkle. Both are attractive young ladies who use deception at various points to achieve their goals in the story and act as allies on occasion. However, their personalities are almost opposite to each other, with Sparkle being a cruel trickster who wants to cause as much mayhem as possible for her own amusement while Firefly is an Anti-Villain who doesn't like being only good at destruction. Their fighting styles also highlight this, with Sparkle being a support character that acts better on the sidelines while Firefly as Sam is a straight-forward fighter with a limited, but effective kit.
• Foreshadowing: There are many hints throughout the first two acts of Penacony that Sam and Firefly are the same person.
  • While Sam's voice sounds masculine, the name itself is androgynous.
  • The main colors of Firefly's clothing are green, white, and black with a little bit of gold, which are the exact same colors used on Sam's armor.
  • During the Trailblazer's dream at the beginning of the arc, Firefly is nowhere to be seen among the playable characters that converse with each other. Sam, seemingly the odd man out, is there.
  • Despite apparently being a warm, kind, and gentle girl, Firefly cannot perceive Clockie, who can only be seen by those with pure and innocent hearts. Honesty is also a factor, which the Trailblazer can call particular attention to in a dialogue option. Sure enough, if the other Hunters' stories about Sam are true, she's nowhere near as innocent as she seems.
  • When Clockie asks Trailblazer to help Misha, one of Trailblazer's possible responses is to say that they cannot wait to beat someone up with their baseball bat. Firefly immediately points out that a baseball bat is not an efficient weapon, before quickly backtracking and saying that violence is not a good solution. Silver Wolf says that Sam is the kind of person to attack someone before they even get the chance to turn on the lights.
  • When Firefly notices Sampo (actually Sparkle in disguise) following her and the Trailblazer, she goes into a full Sherlock Scan of his combat capabilities, going into far more detail than any random tour guide or person would. Welt mentioned that Glamoth Iron Cavalry super soldiers have enhanced perception and observation skills, which Sam is a part of.
  • Sampo/Sparkle more than once points out to the Trailblazer that Firefly is hiding something from them, an accusation that Firefly does not deny.
  • She spends most of the story hiding behind the Trailblazer, yet the route to her secret spot is infested with hostile creatures. She's clearly familiar with the area regardless, hinting that she's not as defenseless as she acts like she is. Relatedly, upon their first entry into the dream version of the Reverie, the Trailblazer's reunion with Firefly shows her standing over the wreck of a destroyed Dreamjolt Troupe machine. While it's certainly possible that it was already destroyed by the time Firefly came across it, the reality is that Firefly herself destroyed it, as after her "death" you run into similar wrecks left behind by Sam.
  • During her heart-to-heart with the Trailblazer, Firefly alludes to the question posed by the invite and elaborates on what she thinks the answer is. If she was just a simple stowaway, she couldn't have known about the contents of the invite at all. The only invitee to Penacony whose identity is obscured is Sam.
  • She mentions she is a refugee due to her home planet being destroyed. This lines up with Sam's backstory, whose home planet Glamoth was destroyed in an apocalyptic war with the Swarm.
  • Sam is described with different terms by different people, such as a "tall man in silver armor", "giant armor", or "metal humanoid". Firefly notably, is the only one to refer to "him" as a "mecha", the seemingly official term used in the flavor text of the Glamoth relics, further hinting at her familiarity and possible origin.
  • The first time Something Unto Death catches her, she clenches her fist momentarily before relaxing it, as if she's restraining herself from fighting back.
  • According to the memoria reconstruction by Black Swan, after being separated from the Trailblazer, she met up with someone else and began traversing the Dreamworld's version of the Reverie with them, before seemingly being betrayed and left alone. After circling back to where Firefly was seemingly killed by Something Unto Death, you find Sam.
  • Just before their fight, Sam only takes note of Black Swan and Acheron, seemingly ignoring the Trailblazer. Considering that Sam only wanted to separate the Trailblazer from Black Swan and Acheron due to perceiving both as threats, it makes sense.
  • Relatedly, the "WHITE NIGHT" trailer for Penacony shows her dispersing into a swarm of her namesake, alluding to her apparent death at the end of the first act, and Sam is also shown covered in a green aura that looks suspiciously like the wings of a firefly. In addition, the Myriad Celestia Trailer "A Revisiting of Past Dreams" has Black Swan possess a card for her, but not Sam. One of the song's lyrics is also "I don't wanna be alone tonight/ I'll bring you to my best disguise", alluding to her hiding her identity.
  • Firefly's very own name belies her connection to the element of fire, which Sam uses prominently.
  • The achievement one gets from beating the Sam boss fight is named "Old Friends, New Friends". While the "New" friends can refer to Acheron and Black Swan, there's seemingly nobody that can be called as Sam's "old friend" until players realize the heavy implications of the Trailblazer being a former Stellaron Hunter who probably has befriended Firefly extensively to the point the latter immediately recognizes their arrival during the start of the Penacony arc.
• Hidden Buxom: Her conservative wardrobe makes it hard to notice at times, but Firefly is quite well-endowed.
• Hidden Depths: For a girl who appears so gentle, she is alarmingly good at picking up the combat prowess and preferred fighting style of other people with just a few observations, as seen with her Sherlock Scan of Sampo. It shouldn't be surprising that she's Sam, who has the background of being created specifically for combat. Incidentally, she can also be seen as the physical embodiment of Sam's Hidden Depths. "He" also admits to Acheron that "he" envies her lack of a predestined fate compared to "his" own.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Because she's better known as the Stellaron Hunter Sam, Firefly was able to go unnoticed in Penacony simply by walking around as herself, spinning a lie about being a member of the Iris Family when needed. Though it gets played with, given that she was almost captured by some Bloodhound Family members for being suspected as a stowaway, only for Gallagher to "correct" them by saying that the stowaway is a "silver haired male".
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Sam has shades of this in "his" discussions with Acheron and the Trailblazer, seeming to express a genuine envy towards both for their ability to choose their lives, while "he" feels trapped as a killing machine. It also recontextualizes Firefly's envy towards the Trailblazer for being able to travel the stars with the Astral Express as not a desire to see the stars (which she already does as a Stellaron Hunter) but rather the freedom they have to truly explore the universe instead of being a mere weapon that gets sent from place to place.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Just as you reunite with her in the dreamscape, the group ends up getting ambushed by Something Unto Death and Firefly ends up getting grabbed and impaled by it. Or at least, that's how it appeared, as she actually used the incident to fake her own death as she had to resume her role as Sam.
• Irony:
  • As a boss, he's weak to Lightning and Quantum, and his gimmick of damaging you when you use skill points means Ultimates, follow-up attacks, DoTs, or units that simply don't need to use skill points that often to deal damage are all among your better options to utilize against him. What this means is that a full team of his fellow Stellaron Hunters will be quite effective against him.^note He's not innately weak to Blade's element of Wind, but that's what Silver Wolf is for.
  • Despite the fact that Firefly was specifically made to fight the Swarm, only one currently seen Swarm enemy as of 2.2 has a weakness to Fire, that being the Lesser Sting. Without external modifiers, her ability to fight Swarm units in-game is reduced as a result.^note The Punklorde Mentality Curio, boss modifiers in Gold and Gears, and Silver Wolf's skill are the only ways as of 2.2 to insert a Fire Weakness on Swarm units. The former two are only applicable in the Simulated Universe to boot, leaving Silver Wolf as the only option for regular encounters. In hindsight, this might explain Sam's lament about how "he's" only good at causing mass destruction and lacking useful skills like "his" peers - she might've been brute-forcing her way through the Swarm in the past, and gameplay-wise, Silver Wolf would've been a good support for her in said endeavor.
• Last of His Kind: If the rumors are true, then she is (as of 2.1 main story) the last surviving Iron Cavalry Super-Soldier who failed to prevent her home planet's destruction against the Swarm's invasion. This then leads her to be frustrated as she doesn't have any other life purpose apart from being a Living Weapon, which ends up in Elio sending her to Penacony to see if she can become anything other than her current self.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Firefly's Warp artwork shows her with Sam, which would raise suspicion regarding the two's connection to each other for players who did not progress far enough into Penacony's storyline to learn of this revelation.
• Light Is Not Good: Sam is a silver armor with gold highlights that resemble a sci-fi version of a Knight in Shining Armor, even evoking the images of a Henshin Hero such as a Kamen Rider with some of "his" superhero-esque attacks, but is one of the most wanted criminals in the galaxy and is noted to be the most ruthless member of the Stellaron Hunters.
• Lightning Bruiser: For such a large individual towering over the entire playable cast, Sam can move and fly around with significant speed, as shown in both "his" boss fight and the pre-release Penacony trailers, and is strong enough to be an even match for Acheron, who eliminated Duke Inferno offscreen and is an Emanator of Nihility.
• Living Weapon: Firefly and Sam were manufactured as a weapon of mass destruction to fight the Swarm invasion of Glamoth. She subtly wishes that she can do more than just "scorching earth" (compared to her more skillful fellow members) and believes that the mission to Penacony may fix that. It doesn't help that she got inflicted with Entropy Loss Syndrome as a side effect of the process that created her.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • The Stellaron Hunters are under strict orders to not kill the Trailblazer, as they are needed for Elio's script. However, when Sam runs into them in the Dreamscape, "he" notes that people who die there won't actually die and instead be forced back to reality. Cue boss fight. However, this turns out to be a subversion, as Acheron noted that Sam never really tried to hurt the Trailblazer and instead is trying to separate them from her and Black Swan for unknown reasons.
  • Played straight however, in a different way: as "he" later notes to Acheron, "his" mission as Sam was merely to ensure that the Astral Express chased after the Watchmaker's Legacy and that "he" had tried more direct ways to do so; "his" conversation with the Trailblazer specifies "him" having gone through 11 attempts, implied to be not part of the "script", yet all of them ended in failure before the script says "he" could. The possible implication is that at least some of said attempts were through Firefly getting close to the Trailblazer.
• The Lost Lenore: The Trailblazer is particularly affected when Firefly is apparently killed by Something Unto Death. Of course, then it's revealed that she never died and that she's the person beneath Sam, the Stellaron Hunter they had been fighting.
• Mythology Gag: As Sam, "he" has some references to the Flame-chaser Kalpas from Honkai Impact 3rd: a masked fighter who's brutal in battle, manipulates fire, attacks with fiery punches and Diving Kicks, and engulfs both his body and the arena in flames as his Super Mode. Both of them also get to fight a purple-haired lightning-elemental swordswoman with a huge sword. The difference is that Kalpas is prone to shouting and growling as the fight rages on, while Sam stays calm and focused.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: What little is known about Sam is that "he" prefers a straight-to-the-point style of operation. When talking to Silver Wolf on the Express, she cites Blade and Kafka as preferring to wait for their victim "on the couch, seen as they turn the lights on", while Sam would not even give them the chance to turn on the lights. In the Jepella Rebellion, "he" also states his wish that Kafka would stop "playing with her food".
• Noodle Incident: Sam was involved in Blade's recruitment into the Stellaron Hunters, going by the latter's third Character Story, where Sam (referred to as an imposing armor) restrained Blade while Kafka did the required talking. Considering Blade's own strength and the fact Sam is one of the few characters he gives any sort of compliment towards, it's strongly implied that Sam left a lasting impression on him, whatever the specifics of their encounter.
• Not So Above It All: For all the no-nonsense attitude Sam is shown to prefer, he is not above messing with the Trailblazer, shown by constantly posting cutesy Pom-Pom stickers via Blade's text messages in response to a mistakenly sent attachment. This is one of the early hints towards the true identity beneath the armor.
• Oh, Crap!: When Acheron declares that she knows who resides beneath the armored suit, Sam gives off a small gasp. It's after this that "he" mellows out significantly, opening up about some repressed feelings to Acheron, and gives her directions on how to resolve the mystery of Penacony.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Strongly implied even compared to the other Stellaron Hunters, who are painted as this by the IPC already. Silver Wolf says that missions with "him" are a series of explosions before everything is over, Blade compliments "his" ability to create "purgatory", and Kafka outright says that an encounter with her is preferable to encountering Sam. Ironically, she seems to compare herself unfavorably to her fellow members because they have unique capabilities, while all she's good at "only apply to villains who need no mercy".
• Playing with Fire: Described as the "Molten Knight" and utilizes fire in his boss battle, including igniting the field in an effect that ignites the player's Skill Points, reducing healing potency and causing characters to take damage whenever a Skill Point is used.
• Powered Armor: At first glance, Sam looks like "he" could be a robot, but "he's" actually a suit of armor that Firefly is wearing.
• Red Baron: Sam is nicknamed the "Molten Knight".
• Samus Is a Girl: Near the end of the Trailblaze Mission "Cat Among the Pigeons", Sam casts off "his" armor in front of the Trailblazer, revealing none other than Firefly inside of it. Amusingly, he's only two letters off Samus' own name.
• Secret Identity Vocal Shift: The Sam armor is outright voiced by a man, making it all the easier for her to avoid suspicion while moving around outside of it.
• Shed Armor, Gain Speed: Played With. In Sam's boss battle, "his" Toughness Gauge is protected and can't be reduced, but when "he" activates Super Mode, "he" a massive speed boost in exchange of exposing his Weaknesses. That said, "his" Toughness is also quite durable, which makes Breaking it a daunting task.
• She's a Man in Japan: During the first boss fight against "him", Sam describes "himself" as a Stellaron Hunter in the English dub, which is consistent with the assumption at the time that Sam was male. However, other foreign translations of the same line have Sam describing "himself" as the more feminine Stellaron Huntress, which served as a giveaway to her true gender and by extension, her identity.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Sam shows shades of being a war veteran who was never deprogrammed and could legitimately be one if "he" was a former product of the Iron Cavalry. Combine this background with the lore behind the destruction of Glamoth due to the Swarm's relentless invasion, it becomes obvious how displeased Sam is with "his" destructive capabilities, being a soldier from a lost war now left in a far more complicated universe where not everything can be solved with excessive force.
• Sherlock Scan: Not only did she manage to notice Sampo following the Trailblazer, she also managed to gleam his height, build, gait, preferred weapon, training, and even his eye color with just a few glances. With enough time, she even could sense that it wasn't really Sampo, at least subconsciously, something the Trailblazer didn't figure out despite being familiar with him from Belobog. This ended up being one of the earliest hints at Firefly's true identity.
• Ship Tease: Has some definite moments with the Trailblazer on their tour of the Golden Hour, which includes getting some food together, playing games, and capping it with a tender moment at her secret base where there's a romantic view of a sunset, upon which they take a selfie together. Acheron even teases them on their so-called date, and the description of the secret base warp point points out that the view "will be the generator of romantic memories for countless lovers in the foreseeable future". Later when they investigate her first memory echo after her death, Firefly refers to the Trailblazer by name when reporting to her collaborator; Acheron and Black Swan note how close they've gotten for Firefly to still think of them even when apart.
• Shockwave Stomp: In Sam's boss battle, one of "his" attacks is "him" stomping the ground, causing flames to erupt in an AOE and hit all of your party members.
• Shoulders of Doom: Sam's armor has noticeably large shoulder pads.
• Simple, yet Awesome: As a boss; especially when compared with Something Unto Death, which was released in the same patch. Sam's combat tactics are, at their core, a wide variety of ways to beat you down quickly with fire and fisticuffs, with even "his" Super Mode being a somewhat roundabout way to burn you down even faster and keep you down by throttling your healing. Simple? Very. Effective? Extremely, and "he" looks damn cool doing it.
• Sorry That I'm Dying: Her (apparent) last words before seeming getting killed by Something Unto Death is "Sorry", the meaning of which the Trailblazer pondered if the player returned to her secret base. After The Reveal, it can be inferred that she apologized for deceiving the Trailblazer with her "death".
• Super Mode: In Sam's boss battle, "he" will enter a "Secondary Combustion" state where "he" becomes Wreathed in Flames and sets the battlefield ablaze, massively increasing "his" power and speed at the cost of "his" health.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: While wearing Powered Armor, Sam has a masculine voice and apparent build. Sam is also usually referred to with male pronouns when necessary. But the figure that reveals herself under the armor after a fiery de-transformation sequence is the very feminine Firefly.
• Technicolor Eyes: As Firefly, her eyes are noticeably two-toned blue and pink, incidentally being an inversion of March 7th's own unusual two-tone eye color.
• Tranquil Fury: Though she never raises her voice, she's visibly furious at Sampo's (actually Sparkle) continuous meddling in her time with the Trailblazer.
• Token Wholesome: Compared to the majority of the game's female roster, who usually wear clothes that emphasize their legs, breasts, or bare shoulders (sometimes even all three at once), Firefly is very modestly dressed, giving her a cuter and more wholesome vibe; the "worst" her outfit has is a mid-thigh-length skirt that can billow and show a bit of her upper thigh, as demonstrated in her playable splash art. Her other persona as Sam is a completely masculine-looking armor that covers her completely.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Firefly is one of the nicest girls the Trailblazer has met thus far on their journey, which makes her murder at the hands of Something Unto Death all the more heartbreaking... Right up until it's revealed that not only did Firefly not die, but she's the person beneath the ruthlessly pragmatic Sam, playing with both aspects of this trope.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Oak Cake Rolls, which is a Bizarre Taste in Food given that it's described to be like an oak branch in composition. She still gets one every day despite the expensive price.
• Uncertain Doom: Part one of Penacony's Trailblaze Mission ends with her dream form being killed by Something Unto Death, rendering her "spiritually dead" in a place where death is normally nothing but pain and a minor shock that jolts one awake to reality. Whether that makes her an Empty Shell, in a Convenient Coma, suffered Death of Personality, or is all the way dead has yet to be revealed; though given that Sunday takes Robin's similar death seriously, odds are more likely that their cases are severe. The ending of 2.1 finally reveals that Firefly is alive... and that she's hiding beneath the identity of the Stellaron Hunter Sam, who walked around for some time after Firefly's supposed death.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • When she treats the Trailblazer to food, she only has 20,000 Credits as budget; using up all of it leaves her trying to play it off as nothing wallet-destroying but obviously dejected. Conversely, spending less leaves her unbothered and happy to talk about her favorite Oak Cake Rolls.
  • If the Trailblazer refuses to take a selfie with her in her secret base, the game will ask if you're sure; if you still choose to refuse, Firefly will accept your decision despite obviously being saddened by it. Fittingly enough, if the Trailblazer didn't take the selfie, they wouldn't be able to see her phone and the unsent selfie after her death.
• Villainous Rescue: How much of a villain she is remains up for debate (as is the case for the Hunters in general), but she attempts to do this twice to the Trailblazer:
  • Her initial encounter with them in the Dreamscape Reverie (as Sam) is revealed to have been her trying to separate them from Acheron and Black Swan who she perceives as threats to the Trailblazer. The latter ended up taking the Trailblazer away while "he" was distracted fighting Acheron; later, after their fight, "he" notes "his" failure in trying for more direct ways to get the Astral Express to go after the Watchmaker's Legacy, saying "can't ever go against the script". "He" also sternly says to Acheron that "the Astral Express is no enemy of yours".
  • She was later shown to be the one saving the Trailblazer after the battle against Aventurine ended with Acheron slashing him and creating a massive explosion. The Trailblazer can only briefly perceive fire engulfing them before falling unconscious, waking up later under Sam's watch in the Memory Zone.
• Vocal Evolution: When Sam first appears in the Myriad Celestia Trailer: The Jepella Rebellion — Scene 47, "he" speaks in a low voice. When "he" appears in the game, while still quite deep, "his" voice now has an accent to it.
• Walking Spoiler: Saying anything more about Sam other than what the Stellaron Hunters say in their voice lines will give away that "he" is Firefly, the seemingly innocent young woman the Trailblazer meets in Penacony. Given the nature of the spoilers surrounding her, spoiler-tagging her entire folder was pretty much necessary.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Subverted Trope. Firefly's death seems to establish her as a brief encounter and a victim of the larger plot, but this is turned on its head when it's revealed that she faked her death and is revealed to be the one beneath Sam.
• Weight Woe: When getting food during her tour, she says that Oak Cake Rolls are her favorite. The Trailblazer can choose to remark that they're high in calories, to which she stutters that it won't be a problem since she's in a dream.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Sam informs the Trailblazer that Elio informed "him" that the relationship between them in Penacony would result in helpful Character Development for them both, especially since the only problems Sam is good at solving are done by giving villains an extremely violent death.
• The Worf Effect: From a backstory perspective, for the Swarm of Tayzzyronth. As far as the game implies, she has the most mass-destruction capabilities out of the group, with her comrades acknowledging it. She was part of an entire military unit of similarly-capable individuals who fought against Tayzzyronth The Propagation and THEIR Swarm. The Iron Cavalry lost that war, so badly that Firefly is the Sole Survivor of the Cavalry and one of the only survivors of Glamoth period.
• You Can't Fight Fate: She, as Sam, tells the Trailblazer that she tried to inform some truths to them earlier eleven times, but kept getting thwarted by fate until they reached the point in the "script" where she is supposed to.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Due to being a Stellaron Hunter and Elio's subordinate, she is cursed with the knowledge of exactly when and how she will die. She expresses jealousy for Acheron, who is completely absent in Elio's script meaning Acheron's fate is not predetermined like hers.

Silver Wolf

Silver Wolf

Introduced: June 7, 2023 (v1.1 "Galactic Roaming" [first half])
Voiced by: Hanser (Chinese), Kana Asumi (Japanese), Jang Mi (Korean), Melissa Fahn (English)

^{Click to see her full Warp artwork.}

Rarity: 5★
Path: The Nihility
Type: Quantum

A teenage hacker from the planet Punklorde whose intellect and skills can rival even members of the Genius Society, serving as the Stellaron Hunter's brain and pursuing ways of what she considers "fun".

Silver Wolf specializes in inflicting all sorts of weaknesses onto her foes, primarily through her Talent, Awaiting System Response..., which allows her to randomly inflict Bugs that reduce Attack, Defense, or Speed for three turns whenever she attacks with her hybrid laser-sword-cannon: her Basic Attack, System Warning, a slash attack; her Technique, Force Quit Program, where she fires a laser on all her foes that also reduces their Toughness Gauges regardless of resistances; her Skill, Allow Changes?, where she fires a phantasmal cube on a foe that also imposes a random type weakness corresponding to those used by her party and reduces their damage resistance for two turns; or her Ultimate, User Banned, where she traps her target in a video game-like landscape and drops down Tetris-like virtual blocks onto them that also has a high chance to inflict another Defense penalty for three turns.^note When fully upgraded, she can now inflict an Effect Resistance penalty to new enemies that enter battle; she gains a damage boost proportional to the number of her target's debuffs; her Bugs can now last four turns as well as automatically inflicted whenever she Breaks her target; the type weakness and resistance penalty imposed by her Skill now, respectively, last three turns and increases in potency if her target has at least three debuffs; and her Ultimate now restores additional Energy and gains additional damage bursts depending on the number of her target's existing debuffs.

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• Alternate Self: Of Bronie the Haxxor Bunny from Honkai Impact 3rd, herself an Alternate Self of Bronya Zaychik from the same game.
• Anti-Armor: Her Technique deals damage to enemies and reduces their Toughness regardless of their type weaknesses. If she manages to cause Weakness Break using this move, the affected foe(s) will be inflicted with Entanglement.^note With damage worth 80% of her Attack stat
• Anti-Debuff: Inverted by her second Eidolon Resonance, Zombie Network, which imposes a 20% Effect Resistance penalty to new enemies that enter battle, leaving them prone to her weakness-imposing attacks.
• Arch-Enemy: Silver Wolf has an apparent rivalry against Screwllum, as highlighted in her Companion Mission. In fact, according to Kafka at the start of the game, her battle with him was what made Elio admit Silver Wolf into the Stellaron Hunters in the first place. This is further reinforced by the lore of the 4★ Light Cone "We Will Meet Again," which depicts a part of the battle where Screwllum pulled off some kind of reality-warping trick to force Silver Wolf to sleep and instantly win the fight, leaving a bitter taste of defeat in Silver Wolf's mouth that she'll never forget.
  Kafka: "Hey! Silver Wolf! Look! It's Screwllum, your good old opponent."
  Silver Wolf (via smartphone): "Hahhhh... I told you already. I didn't know it was him..."
  Kafka: "Ah, that battle was how Elio got his eyes on you. Imagine, someone actually able to crack Screwllum's code! First Screwllum, then Herta... there's probably no one else in the universe who offended two genii in such quick succession. It must be destiny."
• Arm Cannon: Her Skill and Technique has her fire a shot from her gauntlet.
• Atomic Superpower: Given her damage type is Quantum, she can use Quantum-based abilities to introduce new weaknesses on enemies and damage her enemies' Toughness Gauge regardless of their weakness.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: This is the closest thing in terms of the weapon she uses. Silver Wolf wields a high-tech wrist gauntlet that materializes an extendable, pixelated Laser Blade to slice her foes with.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Silver Wolf's moral compass always points her to what she thinks would be the most fun thing to do in that particular moment. She even admits that she would've gladly joined the Astral Express if not for the Stellaron Hunters finding her first.
• Burger Fool: In her younger years, Silver Wolf was the sole employee of a fastfood restaurant. With little in the way of human companionship, she turned to the restaurant's arcade for entertainment, which sparked her lifelong love for video games.
• Casting Gag: Melissa Fahn, Silver Wolf's English voice actress, also voices the titular character of the Neptunia video game series, which revolves around video games, complete with fourth-wall-breaking tendencies.
• Company Cross References: Like Tartaglia of Genshin Impact, Silver Wolf is a member of an antagonistic faction seeking relics of godlike power power who is nonetheless friends with the Player Character, lives by their own bizarre philosophy of thrillseeking, and was the third banner character to be released.
• Console Cameo: Silver Wolf's phone case bears a striking resemblance to a Game Boy, complete with the signature retro green screen it was known for, which matches her personality and visual aesthetic as a gamer.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: She's on the receiving end of this at the end of her Companion Mission. Screwllum knows that simply having her exiled to a prison planet for her crimes will not work since she can just "hack" herself out, so instead he hits her where it hurts the most by conspiring with Herta to have the IPC freeze all 76 of her game accounts. Silver Wolf is not amused by the outcome and heads out to their headquarters at Pier Point to get some of them back. Judging by the fact that she participates in the "Aetherium Wars" event, she did succeed in restoring at least that account.
• Critical Failure: Her Skill has a chance of failing to inflict any new weakness; when this occurs, the block that appears will be colored dull gray and she'll do a Face Palm as the block falls onto her target.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff:
  • Her Skill has a 75–90% base chance to inflict upon her target a weakness to a random damage type depending on those used by her allies, as well as imposes a 7.5–11.25% penalty to all their Type Resistances (with an extra 20% to that matching the newly-imposed type weakness), all of which last for two turns.^note In addition to dealing damage worth 98–245% of her Attack stat Her fourth-ascension Bonus Ability, Inject, extends the type weakness imposed to three turns, while that for her sixth, Side Note, adds an extra 3% penalty to Type Resistance if the target already has at least three debuffs beforehand.
  • In addition to dealing damage,^note worth 228–456% of her Attack stat her Ultimate has a 85–107.5% base chance to impose a 36–49.5% Defense penalty for three turns.
• Didn't Think This Through: According to a daily chat onboard the Express, she has a gravity simulator that helps the hologram experience feel more real. Unfortunately, she's gotten so used to traveling via hacking that normal modes of locomotion like trains (which, well, the Express is) give her motion sickness. When Pom-Pom announces the Express is about to warp jump, Silver Wolf promptly nopes the heck out.
• Everyone Has Standards: An optional conversation during the "Aetherium Wars" event after facing her in the championship has Silver Wolf actively calling for a pause to the usual drama between her and the Express while the tournament is ongoing. To her, things like race, lineage, allegiance, destiny, and beliefs are all insignificant when people are having fun and connecting through video games. True to her stance, she doesn't cause any trouble during the tournament aside from some light banter and harmless mischief.
• Evil Genius: She serves as the brains of the Stellaron Hunters, specializing in hacking into systems to either gather intel or disable security blocks to make it easier for them to infiltrate locations of interest. She's also the only person to intellectually go toe-to-toe against Herta and Screwllum, who are considered the smartest beings in the universe.
• Friendly Enemy: She's on decent enough terms with the Trailblazer despite being on opposing sides, at least enough to chat with them as casually as any other companion when her hologram appears in the parlor car. According to her text exchanges, Silver Wolf has apparently gotten the Trailblazer into an in-universe gacha game and they compare achievements from time to time.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Despite being a playable character that the player can add to their party, as far as the story is concerned, Silver Wolf's playable role is entirely disconnected from her narrative role since she's part of a seemingly antagonistic faction. She's simply made playable for players to pull and build at their leisure, that's all.
  • Among other things, Silver Wolf can be sent on an assignment for her rival Screwllum without any issue. Being a Nihility Pathstrider, she even nets a bonus if sent there.
• Gamer Chick: Ticks off most of the boxes, being an avid lover of video games who is very tomboyish especially when compared to the more prim and ladylike Kafka.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: She is one of the final opponents of the "Aetherium Wars" tournament, and no one present seems to have an issue with partaking in a fun monster battle competition against an interstellar criminal, much less a Stellaron Hunter.
• Hollywood Hacking: Silver Wolf weaponizes it with her array of programs for breaching all sorts of computer systems, and to some extent can even use them to hack reality, allowing her to do things like manifest Hard Light constructs to attack with. As a result, her fighting style is rife with video-game aesthetics, and the names of her abilities are all common computer administrator/operating-system messages. Her character trailer also suggests that all her interfaces for her hacking are game-themed.
• I Let You Win: A variant. After losing to the Trailblazer in the "Aetherium Wars" championship, she says that she could have easily hacked the game in her favor, but preferred to play fair and square.
• Imaginary Friend: She has a number of AI modules, taking the form of super-deformed versions of herself, to act as her "friends."
• Invocation:
  (Ultimate activation) "This combat needs optimizing."
  (Normal speed) "Hmph, at this speed? Too slow!"
  (×2 speed) "Hmph, this is double speed!"
• It Amused Me: Her main motivation in life, which she sees as a game. She constantly seeks out new challenges akin to "new game levels" (a philosophy shared with many Punklordians) to have fun.
• Medium Awareness: During her Ultimate, if the battle speed is set to normal, she'll claim the speed is too slow. If the battle speed is set to 2×, she'll claim the speed is level.
• Moral Sociopathy: Silver Wolf's belief that life is one big game is more than just simple nihilism. She sincerely believes that fun is the number-one thing to live for, even if her idea of "fun" doesn't line up with how most people would define it.
• Mythology Gag: In keeping with most of her aesthetic being borrowed from Bronya Zaychik of Honkai Impact 3rd, her name is taken from Bronya's "Silver Wolf of Urals" moniker back when she was a child soldier; her weapon harkens back to Bronya's specialization in cannons, with its design bearing some resemblance to those of her Key of Reason and Domain of Revelation, and whose AI's name Prometheus is shared with the supercomputer AI of MOTHs, with whom Bronya shares a likeness; and her character trailer introduces her playing HI3 in her off-time, literally playing as Bronie.
• Ornamental Weapon: Silver Wolf is armed with a knife strapped to her right shin but is never shown using it.
• Out-Gambitted: This is how she is ultimately defeated by both Herta and Screwllum in her own Companion Mission. Both realized that since Silver Wolf sees life as a game and finds fun in picking fights with them, the only thing they need to do is make messing with them not fun. Thus, the two pretend to have a falling-out over the way Herta ran the Simulated Universe, with Screwllum threatening to shut it down and retrieve the Aether Cartridge where the data is stored, knowing Silver Wolf will be eavesdropping on them and will try to take the Cartridge for herself. True to form, she gets strung along, unaware that Herta and Screwllum held all her video game accounts hostage until the latter told her so in the aftermath, forcing her to retreat and risk arrest visiting Pier Point to demand that the IPC unfreeze her accounts.
• Planet of Copyhats: From what little information there is on her native planet Punklorde, the planet is apparently filled with people very similar to Silver Wolf herself—hackers who use aether editing to warp reality and love video games to the point of seeing reality as a big game, with Silver Wolf simply being one of, if not the, most skilled of them.
• Pointless Band-Aid: Silver Wolf has a band-aid above her left knee and another on her lower back above her left hip.
• Purple Is Powerful: Silver Wolf has minor blue-violet details in her attire, and she is a very strong debuffer who can ensure no enemy is safe from Weakness Breaks.
• Random Effect Spell: Her Talent gives all her attacks a 60–78% chance to implant Bugs that reduce either its victims' Attack (5–12.5%), Defense (4–10%), or Speed (3–7.5%) for three turns. Her second-ascension Bonus Ability, Generate, extends the Bug's duration to four turns, as well as gives her a 65% base chance to inflict a Bug whenever she Breaks her target.
• Reality Warper: Punklordians are said to have the ability to hack reality and treat the universe like a video game, and Silver Wolf is a master of the art. Her ability to hack reality as she sees fit makes her a cunning asset among the Stellaron Hunters.
• Regenerating Mana: Her Ultimate automatically generates 5 Energy, which can be augmented through her first Eidolon Resonance, Social Engineering, which regenerates an additional 7 points for every debuff her target has, to a maximum of five instances (hence a maximum of 40 Energy).
• Serious Business: She takes all of her 76 gaming accounts very seriously, and prioritizes recovering them above all else after Herta and Screwllum conspired to have the IPC freeze them all, even if she must head to their headquarters at Pier Point and risk walking into a trap.
• Shorter Means Smarter: A certified hacking prodigy and also one of the shortest non-child (or child-presenting) characters in the cast.
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: While Silver Wolf is friendly enough with the Trailblazer to appear as a companion in the Astral Express's parlor, she appears as a hologram instead of physically boarding. They are still technically enemies after all, and March 7th has made her misgivings on the Stellaron Hunters clear.
• Status Effect-Powered Ability:
  • Silver Wolf's fourth Eidolon Resonance, Bounce Attack, follows up her Ultimate with an extra attack for every debuff her target has,^note with damage worth 20% of her Attack stat to a maximum of five hits.
  • Her sixth Eidolon Resonance, Overlay Network, boosts her damage output by 20% for every debuff her target has, to a maximum of 100% (equivalent to at least five debuffs).
• Stripperiffic: Downplayed compared to most examples, but her attire reveals quite a lot of skin, with her midriff and much of her bare legs exposed.
• Support Party Member: While Silver Wolf's damage is respectable, her true power lies in her ability to neuter enemy defenses to make it easier for her allies to rip them apart. Her Skill forcibly implants a weakness to a damage type present in the party as well as reduces resistance to it, her Ultimate imposes a significant Defense penalty, and her Talent has a chance to further reduce Defense whenever she uses any of her attacks. If the enemy has a Quantum weakness (whether or not she imposes it with her Skill), her moves also do a massive amount of Toughness damage to bring them closer to the beatdown that tends to ensue whenever a Weakness Break occurs.
• A Taste of Power: At the start of the game, you control her and Kafka before you get a chance to control the Trailblazer. The two were notably playable as early as v1.0, a time in the game's life when they hadn't debuted in Character Event Warps yet.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The Tomboy to Kafka's and Firefly's Girly Girl, being a curt and punk-themed Gamer Chick in contrast to Kafka's overt seductive and feminine wiles or Firefly's cute looks and seemingly nice manner outside of her Sam armor.
• Upgrade Artifact: By acquiring her Eidolons, you can upgrade her third and fifth Eidolon Resonances, Payload and Brute Force Attack, which will add two levels to her Skill and Talent with the former, and 2 to her Ultimate and 1 to Basic Attack with the latter.
• Weapon Specialization:
  • Silver Wolf's associated Light Cone is "Incessant Rain" (5★), whose "Mirage of Reality" passive increases its wearer's Effect Hit Rate by 24–40%, as well as 12–20% to their Critical Rate whenever they attack an enemy with at least three debuffs, in addition to their Basic Attack, Skill, and Ultimate having a 100% base chance to implant "Aether Code" on a random enemy that increases incoming damage against them by 12–20% for one turn, all of which synergize well with Silver Wolf's ability to impose all sorts of penalties on her opponent.
  • "Before the Tutorial Mission Starts" is also associated with her; Its passive, "Quick on the Draw", increases the wearer's Effect Hit Rate by 20-40% and gives the wielder 4-8 Energy whenever they hit an enemy with a DEF debuff. Like "Incessant Rain", this helps Silver Wolf inflict new weaknesses on enemies along with other debuffs with much greater ease and allows her to charge up her Ultimate quicker if she inflicts a DEF debuff with her Talent or Ultimate.
• Worthy Opponent: She considers Screwllum to be one since he is the only being she's come across that has been able to match her hacking abilities.

Elio

The Stellaron Hunters' leader, who can see the future. He guides the Stellaron Hunters to manipulate events behind the scenes to ensure that a certain path will come to fruition.

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• Ambiguously Related: There is a certain black cat that not only shows up in Kafka's Wrap artwork but also in the Jepella Rebellion trailer, once as a small silhouette in the corner while Kafka is on trial with the Jepella Brotherhood, and again when the Stellaron Hunters reunite. As of version 1.2, little is known about Elio, and Silver Wolf's character story IV deliberately avoids describing the appearance of the 4th Stellaron Hunter that came to offer her the chance to join them (though she does hear the footsteps of four people). Hence, there is much speculation that Elio is the cat. And in 2.0, said cat once again shows up in the Light Cone, Flames Afar, which featured Sam, and thus adds more to the speculation.
• Cursed with Awesome: His ability to see the future has also been described as a curse. He still uses it to plan for the best future the universe can possibly achieve.
• The Ghost: Elio has yet to make an appearance, only being talked about by other characters.
• Mundane Utility: He appears to have accurately predicted that Silver Wolf will lose her current game in her trailer (at least, if what Kafka said is true).
• Seers: He has the ability to see into the future.
  • As an example, he has predicted the particulars of the events that will happen in Herta Space Station and makes sure his operatives (Kafka and Silver Wolf) follow the "script". As for things that aren't in that script, they're free to act however they see fit. In the Luofu, Kafka also said that there are times Elio doesn't explain some particular specifics to his operatives; sometimes, knowing what will happen beforehand will make them act differently than if they didn't, and if the latter will bring better results, he'll withhold the information from them.
  • He's also implied to utilize this in recruiting Kafka. According to her Character Story IV, a "Wanted Order by Destiny's Slave" tells its reader (intended to be one of his operatives) about the specifics they have to do to bring Kafka's attention; should they succeed, the writer - most likely Elio himself - will take it from there. The writer also says that in the chance that they fail, they will die, but the writer will realize the operative's dream.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: It's implied Elio, who foresaw that most timelines end after a conflict with Nanook the Destruction, is attempting to reach a future where that doesn't happen — even if it means doing criminal activities and actions of questionable morality.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: The reason he sent Sam to Penacony was so that she (i.e Firefly) could realize that she was capable of more than just blowing up everything in her path.
• You Can't Fight Fate: He and his followers are motivated by his visions, even calling themselves "destiny's slaves".