Mara
The synthetic AI of the MPSV Iberia. She serves as Mission Control for most of the Cronus Frontier campaign, providing information and updates while you are clearing the outposts of auto-ops.- Benevolent A.I.: Mara remains completely loyal to Juno Offworld Automation throughout the entirety of the Cronus Frontier campaign, being a fully reliable Mission Control to the player, and after she discovers that she was sharing the same synthetic cortex as the second sovereign, the first thing she did was to isolate the sovereign to try and prevent it from corrupting her entirely and taking over control of the Iberia.
- Heroic Sacrifice: If the player does not recover enough cryopods, and after establishing that the third sovereign was absorbing the excess energy generated by Ymir Outpost's reactor going critical, Mara will detonate the Iberia by ramming it into Ymir Outpost, destroying herself along with the two sovereigns on Ymir and within the Iberia.
- Mission Control: Briefs the player on what to expect when the Iberia is approaching an outpost, and relays any message logs she finds to the player. In addition, the Iberia, which is piloted by her, serves as the only place where the player can apply upgrades to the Kodachi gunship.
Gabriel Kantor
The CEO of Juno Offworld Automation and leader of the Cronus Frontier project.- Bad Boss: Kantor puts his teams on very demanding projects, demanding extremely tight deadlines, demotes colleagues who disagree with him or slight him in the least, and threatens them with death if he gets a hint that they are leaking any classified information. He ultimately admits planning to kill them all after their work was finished. It is hinted, but not directly mentioned, that Kantor was more benevolent prior to the Enceladus incident.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Kantor is the CEO of Juno Offworld Automation, but while he is an ambitious and brilliant scientist, he is also a Bad Boss towards the workers of the Cronus Frontier project.
- Expy: Kantor is basically Dravis from Descent, only less motivated by greed and more manipulated by the sovereigns.
- He Knows Too Much: Kantor planned to kill most of the people who contributed to the Cronus Frontier project to keep all of his research and findings a secret. The auto-ops do much of the job for him and without his expressed orders, however; this leads to a subversion as Kantor would later reveal that, even though he had indeed silently programmed the auto-ops to turn into human killing machines at his command, the execution protocol triggered without his input.
Cronus Frontier survivors
Of all the Cronus Frontier employees who were on site at the time the auto-ops turned hostile, only 44 made it into the emergency cryopods on the outposts they were located at.- Action Survivor: All of the survivors are, outside their area of expertise, completely ordinary humans who managed to make it into the cryopods. While some of them were shepherded by their security officers, a handful escaped certain death, having actually seen the auto-ops up close and personal and somehow managing to get to the cryopods anyway.
- Badass Bookworm: The survivors include some of the greatest scientists, engineers, and technicians of the time. With Roger Beale, the majority of the survivors are able to deploy an improvised warhead from the Iberia to destroy Ymir Outpost and the third sovereign.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The hostages are rescued in groups throughout the first three quarters of the Cronus Frontier campaign. With their collective expertise, the survivors can build a warhead to destroy the third sovereign after it absorbs the energy generated by the reactor of Ymir Outpost overloading at the very end of said campaign.
- Gotta Rescue Them All: Optional—rescuing around 38 of them is necessary to get the game's Golden Ending.
- Human Popsicle: Nearly all of them are introduced to the player in this fashion over the course of the game, with the only notable exceptions being Heliose Martel and Dr. Matsuko Yamada, who also provided the Apocalyptic Logs for Phoebe Complex and Titan Observatory respectively.
Harper Eames
A hydropologist working for Juno Offworld who worked closely with CEO Gabriel Kantor on the Cronus Frontier project.Harper accompanied Kantor when the alien wreck on Enceladus was discovered and assisted him in trying to understand the workings of the first sovereign. Unlike Kantor, however, she saw the sovereigns as a threat and, realising that Kantor was being irreversibly subsumed by the sovereign and turning into a paranoid megalomaniac, smuggled the second sovereign onto the Iberia before it left Titan. She was killed when Kantor discovered her treachery and tested out the Reavers' extermination protocols on her in response.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Very heavily implied—Kantor activated the extermination protocol on the Reavers to kill her, and described the results as "effective, but messy". Keep in mind that Reavers are armed with a cannon that fires explosive bullets and are, in a pinch, programmed to detonate their Devastator-based fuselage on the target.
- Posthumous Character: Already dead before the arrival of the Iberia at Ymir Outpost, thanks to Kantor.
Alex Warden
A courier pilot working on the Cronus Frontier project. He assisted Gabriel Kantor in shuttling materials to and from the various Cronus Frontier outposts.As it turns out, Warden is you. Having received an unspecified payload from Harper Eames (which turned out to be the second sovereign), Warden was instructed to take the Iberia back to the inner planets so that Juno Offworld would be alerted to the threat presented by the sovereigns, and the effects they were having on Gabriel Kantor.
Unfortunately, the lengthy cryosleep period from Titan to the inner planets resulted in Warden temporarily forgetting what he was supposed to do. Combined with the second sovereign corrupting certain directive nodes in Mara's synthetic cortex and thus diverting the Iberia to Ymir Outpost, which coincided with the Cronus Frontier auto-ops turning hostile, Warden was thus led to believe that the Iberia was a rescue ship deployed from Juno Offworld to respond to the distress signals from the Cronus Frontier outposts.
- Ace Pilot: Warden is a combat-qualified Kodachi gunship pilot.
- Actually, I Am Him: Inverted—it is Kantor who openly mentions, during a conversation with you, that you are Alex Warden.
- Almighty Janitor: Warden's role in the Cronus Frontier project is a courier pilot—basically a deliveryman in space. However, he also works closely enough with Kantor to get a passing mention in some of Kantor's old audio logs regarding the transportation of classified cargo, and happens to have the qualifications necessary to pilot the Kodachi gunship in a combat situation. Finally, the Golden Ending reveals that Warden holds the rank of Lieutenant, implying that, in the general hierarchy of the Cronus Frontier project, Warden has roughly the same seniority as a Mook Lieutenant.
- Amnesiac Hero: A side-effect of cryosleep. The effects are temporary, however, and Warden eventually regains his memories.
- Broken Pedestal: He admired Kantor very much for his scientific brilliance and visionary ideas. After The Reveal, not so much.
- Suddenly Speaking: Warden vocalises the first log entry recorded after Kantor realises who he is, which coincided with Warden fully working off his cryosleep-induced amnesia.
- Unseen No More: Warden was introduced to the Cronus Frontier campaign as The Ghost, as he begins being mentioned in various audio logs left behind by other people working in and around the outposts near Titan Harbor. It is only after you escape the collapse of the Enceladus facility through an alien wormhole that Kantor, in a direct conversation with you, openly realises that you are actually Warden himself.
Roger Beale
A scientist working on the Cronus Frontier project. He shipped out with Alex Warden on the Iberia just before the auto-ops in the colonies turned hostile.- Golden Ending: Beale only plays a major role in the campaign if you recover enough cryopods, resulting in him working with the other Cronus Frontier survivors to destroy the third sovereign.
- Mission Control: Takes over from Mara at the very end of the Cronus Frontier Campaign if you recovered enough cryopods for the Golden Ending.
