Characters / On the Edge of Eureka

The Revolution

Imperatrix Acidalia-Planitia Cipher

Imperatrix of the Eleutherian Empire, leader of the Revolutionary Party, and Ambassador for Earth in the Corps. She's a well-intentioned but highly manipulative politician who wants nothing more but to bring freedom to her people at whatever cost it takes, even if it means lying, cheating, and stealing her way to victory. Can come across as a violent, war-mongering dictator or as an enlightened despot, depending on who you're talking to.

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• Abusive Parents: Who knew that a murderous dictator might not be the best mom?
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Shooting down Nova soldiers, modifying DNA from afar, shutting down a planet to stop a violent civil war, bashing Cassiopeia's skull in with an empty gun over her dead brother's corpse...
• Badass Family: With T and Alestra. And maybe Kate.
• Bastard Angst: Eleutheria doesn't have any concept of marriage or even monogamy, but the fact that she's the child of a random guy instead of a carefully hand-selected supersoldier has some negative effects.
• Berserk Button: T's death drives her to smash Cassiopeia's head in with a blaster gun.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Alestra stabbed Celestia, framed Avina, shot her husband, had her son assassinated, and turned her youngest daughter into a space assassin to murder her older daughter.
• Boring, but Practical: She's one. of the only members of the main cast to recognize that they actually need to start thinking about drafting a constitution and rebuilding a government.
• Broken Ace: Her inability to protect her sister, save her brother's life, and stop the Civil War from happening weigh down on her.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: Her Imperial Guard.
• Color-Coded Patrician: Only royalty wears white, and the colors get darker the further you go down the castes.
• Cool Big Sis: Aleskynn doesn't think so, but Carina does.
• Cool Crown: Naturally.
• Cultured Badass: She spends 90% of her free time reading historical diaries and playing a handful of different instruments. She also does ballet, but not professionally.
• Damsel in Distress: Once. It ended badly for both her captors and the man that tried to save her, and almost killed her, too.
• Dance Battler: She doesn't directly use dance to fight, but she attributes her speed and grace to years of ballet.
• Disappointing Older Sibling: In Alestra's eyes, at least.
• Dissonant Serenity: Her lack of a visible response to anything freaks people out.
• Dramatic Wind: She has tiny robots whose only purpose is to ripple her hair and cape to make her look more dramatic when she's on camera.
• Electric Torture: Happened while she was captured by the Nova. It left her with epilepsy and post-traumatic stress disorder.
• Ermine Cape Effect: Word of God says she owns hundreds of tiaras.
• Force and Finesse: The finesse to Andromeda.
• Gold and White Are Divine: Everything she wears is white and precious metal, and it seems the government wants it to have this effect.
• Good Is Not Soft: Again, bashing a woman's skull in with an assault rifle over a dead body. She also murders two men in cold blood for torturing her during the war.
• Handicapped Badass: She has frequent grand mal seizures, which are probably some type of epilepsy.
• Happily Married: As of Nemesis War.
• Humanoid Abomination: Some people think she falls into the Uncanny Valley because she's spoiled heavily genetically modified. She also has cyborg legs from the knees down and brain implants, though the latter aren't visible.
• The High Queen: High Imperatrix, actually.
• Lady of War: She leads the whole Revolution, after all.
• Light Is Good: Constantly wears platinum and white.
• Line-of-Sight Name: She's named Acidalia Planitia because she was born on Acidalia Planitia. According to Word of God, Alestra didn't care much about her older daughter from the get-go and just picked the first word she saw.
• Lonely at the Top: Especially after her brother's death and Andromeda's betrayal.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: She's bizarrely protective of her hair.
• Meaningful Name: After Mars, where she was born.
• A Mistake Is Born: Paired with Bastard Angst.
• My Greatest Failure: T's death, Aleskynn's corruption, her mother's general psychotic-ness, the genocides, the war... she blames pretty much everything that ever goes wrong on herself, because she thinks it's her duty to protect her whole planet.
• Medical Monarch: A non-magical kind. The Cipher house has the ability to edit DNA, something that others could potentially do but can't because only royalty has the education and technology for it. DNA mods have been shown to both kill and heal humans.
• Not So Above It All: When she's gossiping about other politicians with her brother.
• Overly Long Name: Imperatrix Acidalia Planitia Alestra Cipher. It's justified, given she's royalty in a setting where the other names are already crazily long.
• Not Worth Killing: At the end of the war, she tracks down TB and is about to shoot him when Rune tells her he's "not worth the wasted bullets." Acidalia looks at him for a minute, agrees, and then stabs TB to death.
  Acidalia: Knives can be cleaned.
  Rune: Sometimes you scare me.
• Person of Mass Destruction: She's one of the only people who knows how to wield the true power of the Ciphers- DNA modification en masse, from a distance. Unfortunately, her psychotic mother is the other person who can do this.
• Proper Lady: Always.
• Rebel Leader: She built her cult of personality around it.
• Requisite Royal Regalia: Ballgowns even she describes as obnoxious, and a revolving cast of fancy tiaras and the Imperial Crown.
• Royal "We": Given the story, Pluralis Maiestatis might be more appropriate.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Including leading a faction in the Civil War. Ave the Revolution, indeed.
• Ruler Protagonist: The High Imperatrix of Eleutheria.
• Ruling Family Massacre: Alestra killed Avina, Celestia, Harmonia, and their husbands/fathers, plus lobotomized Anatolia and killed a handful of other Dictatorum.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With Aleskynn.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Sometimes literally.
• Sleepyhead: She invariably falls asleep after a seizure, but otherwise gets almost no sleep.
  Acidalia: See, when I don't sleep, it triggers [the seizures], but I can't sleep because I never have time, so then I have a seizure and then I have to sleep and... well, basically, I'm a mess.
• Stepford Smiler: She acts like everything is fine for the sake of her people, despite her screwed-up family and the brewing civil war.
• The Spock: To Andromeda's McCoy.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Her entire personality flip-flops based on the people she's surrounded by. She can go from a dictator-esque persona to a regular young woman the minute she's off-camera, and she can also go from a dictator to an enlightened despot depending on the situation. And rarely she's a stone-cold killer with deep-seated grudges and fantasies of violent revenge, but that's more of a situational thing.
  Acidalia: Stars, I don't even know who I am anymore.
• White Sheep: Most of her ancestors were either incompetent, apathetic, or borderline insane.

Ace

T's old best friend and Lyra's eventual love interest. He was briefly in the same centurion as T before his untimely death, and was apparently in the Revolution from a very young age. He had a Precocious Crush on Acidalia, but became resentful of her after T's death, and generally became an angry, reclusive shut-in.

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• The Ace: He was apparently going for this type of reputation when he picked his name, but in practice... not so much.
• Military Brat: He grew up in the military, though he never met his parents.
• You Should Have Died Instead: Nearly every time he meets Acidalia, he tells her this.

Alpha-24

A humanoid android found by Lyra in the Terminal. He was built in the mid-3500s and put on display in Appalachia City's capitol, where he remained for the next few centuries. Lyra and Acidalia rescued him in 4052, and he's been following the Revolution around the galaxy ever since.

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• Crippling Overspecialization: He was created for the 3678 World's Fair as an example of a near-human robot, so his only skills include what ordinary humans can do.
• No Social Skills: He has no idea how to interact with people, but he's so nice in general that it doesn't matter much.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: Aside from the metal, he's pretty much a regular human guy with some strange quirks (and given that it's Eleutheria, his quirks aren't even that strange.)
• Robot Buddy: Of course.

Athena Stellara Scientia

A 17-year-old "astrophysicist" who has no idea what she's doing and chases action out of boredom. Idolizes gang members and the mob because she thinks they're cool and thinks politics are boring. Known for being lazy and annoying to the higher-ranking people, but the young recruits see her as interesting and funny.

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• Book Dumb: She's a "scientist" who clearly has never even read the Wikipedia article on astronomy.
  Athena: So apparently there are six types of quarks. Huh.
  Acidalia: Aren't you an astrophysicist?
  Athena: Sorta.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: She's pretty smart, and could probably be less Book Dumb if she cared even a little bit about her job.
• Fearless Fool: She craves adventure so much that she never really sees how dangerous it is, and she wants to be right on the front lines despite having no battle experience and not even knowing how to use a laser pistol.
• High Hopes, Zero Talent: All of her goals are either impossible or unrealistic, and she simply doesn't have the skill to be the badass super-soldier she wants to be.
• Genius Slob: According to Carina.
  Carina: It's a good thing we work in astronomy. If we did infectious disease research we'd both be dead.
• The Nicknamer: The only person she ever refers to with their full name is Acidalia. Everyone else gets increasingly weird nicknames.
• Tomboyish Ponytail: She never has her hair down.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Despite not knowing anything about astrophysics, she frequently chimes into conversations with "I'm a scientist!"
• The Slacker: It's implied that she could have done quite well at her job, she's just horribly lazy.
• Too Hungry to Be Polite: The first thing she asks Acidalia is if she has pasta.

Carina-Nebula Julia Maxima Scientia

Athena's sort-of-sister and best friend. She's completely the opposite of Athena in every way, and is a quiet, soft-spoken genius with no confidence in herself. She eventually goes into bioweapons development, but stops after a combination of her technology and Athena's ignorance gets several people killed.

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• Beware the Nice Ones: She's a tiny, sweet-seeming young woman, who's been making violent bioweapons since she was 15.
• Foil: To Athena.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Athena's more rational best friend.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: To Aleskynn and her mean Socialite friends.
• Nice Girl: Just a good person.
  Cressida: She has zero personality outside of "nice."
• In-Series Nickname: Rina or Ree.
• Overly Long Name: Carina-Nebula Julia Maxima Scientia, Astrophysica. Considering Eleutheria's strange naming conventions, it's justified.
• Weak, but Skilled: Physically weak, but very, very smart.

Cressida Marie Seren

David Seren's bratty teenager, a spoiled Martian "princess" whom he absolutely loves regardless. Demanding, arrogant, and ignorant, but secretly extremely skilled at flying and deeply insecure. Very good at painting, but hopeless at math and science.

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• Alpha Bitch: Apparently was this when she used to attend Martian boarding school. That being said, given Mars's insanely competitive meritocratic government, being an insanely popular Alpha Bitch has more real-life benefits than it would in an actual high school.
• Audience Surrogate: At first, she appears to be a regular high-school girl witnessing the inhumanity and insanity of Eleutheria from an outsider's perspective. Then it turns out that she doesn't harbor any normal values, either—Mars is just as messed up as Terra, but in a different way.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: To everyone but her father, who absolutely dotes on her.
• Culture Clash: She's a spoiled Martian brat who doesn't understand anything about Eleutherian society. What little she does understand, she doesn't like.
• In Name Only: In the original draft, she barely appears, and when she does, she's mostly just confused. She has no issues communicating with the Eleutherians and nothing against them. In the second draft, she acts much more like you'd expect a teenage girl to respond to being suddenly dragged out of their home by a war they don't understand.
• Innocently Insensitive: Being unfamiliar with Terran customs, she often calls higher-ranking people by their titles or their caste, which is a major faux pas.
• Missing Mom: She didn't know her mother until she was almost 17 years old.
• No Social Skills: She was evidently pretty popular on Mars, but has no idea how Eleutherian etiquette is supposed to work, and frequently makes people angry because of it.
• Odd Name Out: Because Eleutherian names work differently, she's the only main character with a name that could be considered "normal" by modern standards: she has a given name and a last name, which she inherited from her father. Everyone else has a given name, a matronymic, and a caste name.
• Phoneaholic Teenager: Initially portrayed as such. She's obsessed with her "points," and is constantly trying to increase her number of points by posting glamorous social media photos and interacting with important people. The main cast first thinks it's just attention-seeking, but it turns out that Mars is a meritocracy, and the "points" are linked to a person's reputation. Not having enough points could destroy Cressida's life.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Estella is the smart sister, Cressida is the beautiful sister.

David Seren

Cressida's biological father, Estella's father in everything but DNA, and Theodora's husband. He escaped Eleutheria with his youngest daughter and settled on Mars, first working as a farmhand, and eventually becoming the Secretary of Agriculture via connections in government. He unexpectedly became the President after the first eight people in line to the Presidency were killed.

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• Action Dad: To Cressida.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parent: He's not that bad, but he has his moments.
• Our Presidents Are Different: He's much more down-to-earth and normal than other political leaders.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Out of every authority figure in the story, he's probably the most normal.
• Unexpected Successor: He never intended on becoming the President and was ninth in line to the position.

Lyra

A Cantator and the whole world's scapegoat. She was abandoned by her mother as a child, and got swept up in to Eleutherian revolution when Ace found her half-dead on the ground in Appalachia. She's idealistic, naïve, and book-dumb, but kindhearted and sweet to everyone she comes across. The Revolution uses her "Cinderella" story in their propaganda, but she has almost zero actual power.

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• Because You Were Nice to Me: The entire reason she follows Ace and T is because they didn't murder or rape her. Lyra has pretty low standards for human interaction.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Along with Andy.
• Jumped at the Call: She wants nothing more than to leave her terrible life behind, so a civil war was the perfect adventure opportunity.
• Kick the Dog: When she gets beat up in the second chapter, it's a Kick the Dog moment for the soldier.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: The soldier in chapter 2.
• Meaningful Name: She's called Lyra because she plays the lyre. She doesn't have or doesn't know her actual name.
• Missing Mom: Lyra doesn't know her own mother, which is why she has no real name and doesn't exist in Eleutheria's records.
• Orphan's Ordeal: Not having parents doesn't make for a fun time, especially considering Lyra- and others like her- doen't even exist according to the government.
• Parental Abandonment: According to both Lyra and the other Cantatores, Lyra's mother just left her in a brothel. Parent of the year.
• The Pollyanna: Her childhood was so awful she considers pretty much anything else to be luxury.
  * Really Gets Around: She doesn't even have a boyfriend until several books into the series, but apparently she has this type of reputation.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: Either they're not a thing, or they don't care about Cantator children. Either is likely.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: On Mars and Cirya.
• Street Urchin: Called that by name.
• Troubled, but Cute: Ace thinks of her as a beautiful, rough, hardened ground-level gangster. In reality, Lyra's more of a Broken Bird than a troubled teen.
• Unfortunate Name: In-universe. "Musical" names like Lyra, Aria, Melody and Viola are considered trashy and low-class, and Lyra is about the most stereotypically Cantator name you can get.

Raeilya Aeshiel

An alien ambassador from the planet Cirya and Rune's adopted sister. She's one of the catalysts for the Eleu-Ciryan war and the Interstellar War, and is an outspoken activist for the rights of the southern Mira.

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• Abusive Parents: Not physically, but rather emotionally abusive. Rae and Rune both say that their adoptive parents favored their biological children, and treated their adopted kids as charity cases and ways to appear more sympathetic to the press.
• Altar Diplomacy: She is supposed to be in a relationship with Cadé, but the pair completely hate one another.
• Character Tics: As a side effect of the disease she got as a child, she sometimes starts bleeding from her face randomly at inopportune moments.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Her entire family died of The Plague when she was young, and she was adopted by a different family that obviously didn't care about her.
• Fish People: Basically a human, but more suited to life underwater.
• In Name Only: Like Cressida, she barely appeared in the first draft, and when she did, she was nearly indistinguishable from Cadé. She seemed bored with, but not angered by, her relationship with him, and her family and background wasn't mentioned. In the second draft, she's much younger and more inexperienced than Cadé, openly resents him and their arranged relationship, and has a fully fleshed-out Dark and Troubled Past.
• In-Series Nickname: Pretty much everyone calls her Rae. Raeilya is just an approximation of the English pronunciation, and the actual name is far too complicated for humans to actually say.
• Meaningful Name: "Lightbringer," but it's spelled wrong.
• Sole Survivor: She's the only one in her immediate family to survive the plague that killed the rest of them.
• Shout-Out: Acidalia says she looks straight out of Innsmouth.
• Token Minority: her Northern family treats her and Rune like this, parading them around in public to show how tolerant they are and then making them feel unwanted behind closed doors.
• The Unpronouncable: People call her Rae because her real name is impossible to say out loud.

Rune Archer Sagan

Acidalia's love interest and Rae's adopted brother, an Eleu-Ciryan soldier boy adopted by a Miran couple. He's an advocate for human rights and a well-respected socialite on Cirya, and also an ameteur chef. He likes fishing and art, and has his own sailboat that he never gets to use.

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• Abusive Parents: See Rae above.
• Awesome McCoolname: He was apparently going for this when he picked "Ruin" as his name when he was 8. He later got it changed when he realized how stupid he sounded. His entire squad is made of of people with borderline insane and clearly made up names, probably because they all chose their own when they were kids.
  Rune: At least I'm not Wolfgang Deathridge.
  Wolfgang: I can't change it now, it's part of my brand.
• Beta Couple: He and Dalia flip-flop with Ace and Lyra, but in general, Rune and Dalia have fewer problems and their relationship is a source of less drama.
• Big Man on Campus: Extremely popular among female students in secondary school, mostly because he was one of two human males in the entire school.
• Chick Magnet: Only because he was one of two human males at a school with nearly fifty human girls.
• Dark and Troubled Past: He was a child soldier who was rescued by the Ciryans in the Eleu-Mira war.
• Happily Married: To Dalia.
• Lady and Knight: Gender-swapped in that he's usually the Lord to Dalia's Knight, but played straight in Nemesis Star.
• Meaningful Name: "Sagan" is a Shout-Out to Carl Sagan. Rune had fond memories of watching Cosmos (somehow.)
• The Nicknamer: He calls his wife a bunch of nicknames that she won't let anyone else use.
• Nobility Marries Money: Acidalia is royalty and Rune was adopted into and old-money family.
• Shout-Out: He tacked the "Sagan" onto his name after Carl Sagan.
• Only Friend: He's Rae's only friend for a big part of the series
• Straight Man: To Acidalia whenever they're having a conversation that isn't about intergalactic politics.
• Team Dad: He's easily one of the most mature, responsible people in the cast.
• Unfazed Everyman: He barely bats an eyelash about his girlfriend being the empress of a dystopian planet engaged in a multi-solar-system interstellar war.
• Unfortunate Name: Ruin, before he had it changed.
  Rune: In retrospect, telling a bunch of little kids they could pick whatever they wanted might have been a bad idea.
• Unlucky Everydude: Depends on how you see "lucky." On the bright side, he's married to a beautiful space queen and got a free royal title, pretty much becoming a multi-trillionaire overnight. On the downside, the planet he now has control over is a dystopian nightmare world, his whole family is in danger by virtue of being related to him, and everyone in his life is trying to manipulate him because he has insane amounts of power but almost no real experience in Terran politics.

T

Acidalia's little brother who is killed in the first book trying to defend his sister. He's generally a stoic, reserved soldier, but is pretty much like any other seventeen-year-old behind closed doors.

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• The Stoic: Usually.
• Precocious Crush: Mostly on fictional characters, apparently including Gamora and Princess Leia (though they're never actually referred to as such, just called "the green chick from the new Ultores movie" and "the principessa from Stella Bella.)

The Nova

Aleskynn Cipher

Acidalia's little half-sister and Alestra's youngest daughter. A spoiled princess with an inferiority complex. She eventually becomes a trained assassin under TB's leadership, but never really achieves anything of note. Her biggest success was her involvement in Nova propaganda.

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• Always Second Best: A good chunk of the reasons she dislikes her sister, despite the fact that they're seven years apart and barely even knew each other.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Princesses usually are.
• Cool Crown: Many.
• Desperately Craves Affection: From the entire planet.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The foolish one to Acidalia.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: She sees the entire war as a stupid fight between sisters, often trying to get bac at Acidalia without realizing the damage she's causing.
• Gold Makes Everything Shiny: Her clothes are all white and gold.
• Half
• In-Series Nickname: Leski.
• Meaningful Name: "Smaller Alestra." Word of God also says that she intended to make Aleskynn's name as irritating-sounding as possible.
• One-Hour Work Week: She complains frequently about the responsibilities of being royalty, but given that Alestra is still regent, her job basically amounts to this until she turns 15.
• Princesses Rule: Technically she's still a principessa, but Alestra styles her like she's the Imperatrix.
• Royal Brat: A spoiled little princess.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Most of the time it has almost nothing to do with ruling, but Leski does take part in the war.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: She considers herself to be this to Acidalia. Acidalia doesn't particularly care.
• Silk Hiding Steel: When she gets a little older.
• Socialite: Of course.
• Spell My Name With An S: It's always Leski, never Lexi.

Alestra Maximillia Cipher

Acidalia's mother and Harmonia's daughter. The middle child between Alestra and Celestia. A psychopathic dictator who murdered her sisters to take the throne, then tried to kill Acidalia in order to keep it. The leader of the Novagenetica and an ally to the Galactic Alliance, and known for being a war-mongering chessmaster who's always two steps ahead of her enemies.

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• Abusive Parents: She forced Acidalia to do ballet until her feet were so messed up she had to have them replaced, frequently hurt and neglected her, and, oh yeah, had her men shoot T to death and try to kill Acidalia.
• Big Bad: At least on Eleutheria. It's also implied that she forced a lot of Acidalia's various genetic mods and implants on her.
• Bright Is Not Good: Her whole wardrobe is bright white, and she's easily one of the most evil characters.
• The Chessmaster: Her plans are extremely elaborate.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: She never partakes in it herself, but she's not above making her soldiers do it to their prisoners.
• Creepy Child: According to Harmonia's diary, she always felt there was something "off" about Alestra. Being Harmonia, she didn't do much about it.
  Harmonia: Maybe if I don't think about it, it'll just go away...
• Evil Matriarch: She's Acidalia, T, and Aleskynn's mother, and a sadistic psychopath.
• The Evil Princess: A serial killer slash genocidal maniac who stole the throne from Avina and murdered her whole family.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: She's described as quite attractive, which is no surprise considering the amount of surgeries and modifications she's had (and put her daughters through.)
• Forced into Evil: It's implied that she had to kill Avina to keep her place in society. The subsequent murders were all Alestra, though.
• Freudian Excuse: She felt she wasn't getting enough attention from her mother, so she committed multiple homicide. As one does.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: She's the Imperatrix. A very violent, murderous, borderline genocidal Imperatrix.
• The Lost Lenore: Elijah Kaiser.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: When she goes from killing a 19-year-old in questionable self-defense to murdering a seven-year-old for no reason but jealousy.
• Middle Child Syndrome: being that Avina was the dauphine and Celestia had her own cult, Alestra got it worse than most.
• Non-Action Big Bad: As Acidalia puts it, she prefers to let her lackeys do the "dirty work."
• Self-Made Orphan: It's never mentioned what happened to her father, but it's heavily implied that she had some role in her mother's death.
• The Unfavorite: The forgotten middle sister.
• Villainous Underdog: Out of the three sisters, the least powerful and least liked.
• Would Hurt a Child: Murdered a 7-year-old for no real reason other than sibling rivalry.
• The Wrongful Heir to the Throne: It should have gone to Avina, though Acidalia says that there can never be a "rightful" heir in an absolute monarchy because a dictatorship is inherently bad regardless of who the head of state is.

Cassiopeia Anatolia Nayla Generalis

TB-1125's "girlfriend" slash stalker with a crush, and Acidalia's biggest enemy. Also a mentally unstable cyborg who won't stop seeking attention.

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• Ax-Crazy: More like blaster gun crazy.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: A member of one of the most ancient families in Eleutheria, and apparently one that at one point had some type of power.
• Cloudcuckoolander: A less innocent version.
• Cyborg: After Acidalia smashed in her skull with an empty laser gun when T was killed.
• Foil: In a way, to Alestra. Alestra truly believes in her cause, goes about achieving her goals in a methodical and rational way, and is never sidetracked by emotion. Cassiopeia couldn't care less who wins as long as she's on their side, never stops to plan before she does anything, and is frequently distracted by her grudge against Acialia or her crush on TB.
• Dark Mistress: She wishes.
• Did Not Think This Through: This could apply to any of her "plans," really.
• Evil Is Hammy: In contrast to TB-2115 and Alestra, Cass is all about theatrics.
• Green-Eyed Monster: She has bright green eyes; apparently it's a trait associated with Generalises.
• Ignored Enamored Underling: Not strictly *ignored* by TB since he constantly uses her affection for him to his advantage, but definitely not loved.
• In-Series Nickname: Cassia, meaning dumb or empty-headed.
• Psycho Supporter: She doesn't care about the Nova, she's only on their side because she likes TB and she likes hurting people.

TB-1125

Alestra's second-hand man and chief "interrogator," whose role is mostly torturing people and doing dubiously ethical experiments on his prisoners.

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• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Just before his Karmic Death in Transcension Hypothesis.
• Ax-Crazy: Slightly less so than Cassiopeia, but he's still violent and out of his mind.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Half of his appearances include him repeatedly tasing people and/or beating them with cattle prods.
• Combat Sadomasochist: He murders his victims with glee.
• Foil: To T, who's one of his "brothers."
• The Dreaded: Nearly everyone is scared of him, including his own men.
• Karmic Death: Acidalia stabs him to death with his own knife.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue to Cassiopeia's red, though not by much.
• Torture Technician: Alestra gives him this job, but he doesn't really use any high-tech interrogation methods. Mostly he just shocks his victims, even to the point of causing serious long-term damage.
• Sadist: He commits horrible crimes against humanity with excitement and zero remorse.

Other

Praetor Andromeda Amalura

Praetor of the Revolution up until the mid 4050s, when she got discharged for committing several serious war crimes. She started as Acidalia's closest friend and confidant, then became an enemy when the war was nearly won and Acidalia wanted to strip her of her title in favor of democracy. She supports a fascist government because it would make it easier for her to feed her war machine, and is a secret control freak with a violent side.

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• An Arm and a Leg: And an eyeball, and half her scalp. She apparently lost them in a factory fire.
• Artificial Limbs: Two of them.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: The main reason she joins the Revolution. When you're a child laborer, a daughter of a meretrix and a drug addict, and a Labora, it's hard to find people who will even tolerate your presence, much less give you actual medical care.
• Berserk Button: She doesn't take kindly to being made fun of. Fire also sets her off.
• Control Freak: She does not like not having direct power over the military, and the thought of having a democratic society in which she has a lot less power doesn't make her very happy.
• Cool Sword: She has a bunch that Dalia gave her as presents, but she never actually fights with them.
  Andromeda: You don't bring a sword to a blaster fight unless you want to get shot.
• Cultured Badass: She likes musical theatre and singing.
• Creepy Good: She looks like a terrifying cyborg, but she's an experienced member of the Revolution.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Outright averted; Andromeda says they do nothing to a person unless they "screw with their brain."
• Cyborg: A benevolent example.
• Cyborg Helmsman: On the Scorpio.
• Cyberpunk: She practically encompasses the aesthetic.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She won't even talk about it, but she was apparently a slave for a while. She knew her mother but won't speak about her.
• Dark Is Not Evil: She wears all black, but it's not to be evil- it's because she wants to stay true to her Labora roots.
• Desperately Seeking A Purpose In Life: After the violent fighting of the war ends and the Revolution's focus changes from winning battles to drafting peace treaties, Andromeda realizes she has no idea what she wants to do because she hates politics.
• Electronic Eyes: Well, one electronic eye.
• First-Name Basis: Acidalia and her team call her Andy.
• Force and Finesse: The force to Dalia.
• Friendly Address Privileges: Dalia and her friends have them.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Along with Lyra.
• Grizzled Veteran: By the end of the books.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: She likes to hit things.
• Made of Iron: Literally.
• Lady of War: Even more so than Dalia.
• Odd Friendship: With Acidalia. Andromeda is masculine, rough, extremely strong, prefers to solve problems with her fists, wears all black, and is from one of the lowest castes. Acidalia is feminine, elegant, agile, focuses more on diplomacy and politics, wears all white, and is from the highest caste, Naturally, they're best friends.
• Pro-Human Transhuman: Her entire job is fighting for human rights, despite the fact that she's only physically half organic.
• Rebel Leader: Her entire job.
• Rebellious Rebel: Later in the war, she becomes unhappy with the way things are going and decides to invade an entire planet despite direct orders not to. She also gets involved in Project Quantum, inadvertently killing about sixty thousand people, and later tries to have a communist revolution of her own.
• Still Wearing the Old Colors: She always wears the Labora colors. Even Dalia switches her wardrobe up one in a while, but Andromeda is always in black.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: She's usually rather casual and goofy, but will change into a murderous warlord at the drop of a hat the second it looks like her power might be threatened. It unnerves many of her friends.
  Acidalia: You're not the person I thought I knew.
• Unwilling Roboticisation: She didn't get the cybernetics because she wanted to- she got them because she lost half her body to horrible burns during a factory fire when she was 11.
• We Can Rebuild Him: How she survived the fire.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: She has bad pyrophobia.

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