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Protagonists
Sylvia
Potion Brewer
The main protagonist, who inherited a potion shop and a massive debt from her uncle.
- Guile Hero: Sylvia doesn't have the strength of the Heroes Guild, and may not even be the most skilled potion brewer in Rafta, but she manages to run a successful business by learning how to properly haggle and manipulate her customers, the debt collector, and an ancient Witch-Queen.
- Perpetual Poverty: Not necessarily played straight, if players are careful with their ingredient purchasing and investment. Sylvia does joke about living in near perpetual poverty, as the money she earns is needed for ingredients and shop upgrades. She even laments how the second contest's prize of 40,000 gold could've bought her a lot of ramen.
- Pragmatic Hero: She grows into one during the course of the game as she becomes a better haggler; by the Post-Climax Confrontation, it turns out she secretly brewed a second transmogrification potion that she planned on selling to Maven herself despite knowing the Witch-Queen's evil intentions, before having to trade one to Helene in exchange for letting Oswald go.
- Magnetic Hero: Sylvia’s skill in potion making is only one part of her success. Her ability to make friends with seemingly every talented individual on the island (including her foes) is crucial to giving her the resources and the haggling techniques needed to thrive.
- Shockingly Expensive Bill: The amount of money her uncle owed to the debt collectors, alongside the rundown shop at the beginning, had her briefly thinking of going back to her parents.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Sylvia often comments that the money she wins in competition would be better spent buying vast quantities of ramen than paying off Oswald's debt.
- Work Off the Debt: She wasn't expecting to have to do this, but as she is Oswald's heir to the shop, she's forced to sell potions to pay off his debt.
Owl
Freeloader
Sylvia's mentor, who claims to have been the former business partner of her departed uncle Oswald after falling from the shop's rafters and meeting Sylvia for the first time.
- A Dog Named "Dog": He's a talking owl that he claims was named Owl by Sylvia's uncle. Sylvia remarks that her Uncle Oswald was a "first idea, best idea" kind of person upon learning this.
- Lazy Alias: Soon after meeting Boss Fin, he confesses that he isn't actually an owl named Owl. His true name is Oswald.
- The Owl-Knowing One: Owl is the one to give all of the tutorials on how to manage the shop, as well as teach Sylvia techniques such as how to perform a "mental mulligan" during her sales pitches.
- Trickster Mentor: From the start, it's clear that he has a few secrets he's keeping from Sylvia, while also genuinely teaching her how to be a better saleswoman and potion crafter in the hopes that she can cure his transformation.
Merchants
Quinn
Ingredients Salesperson
A wandering ingredients salesperson.
Their deck is the closest the game gets to "DPS", being oriented towards stacking as much interest as possible in a short amount of time or over multiple terms, status effects be damned.
- Abusive Parents: Quinn's own parents tried to exploit their seer talents in order to make a profit, and sealed Quinn in a tower in order to make sure they didn't escape. Despite breaking out as soon as possible and never contacting them again, Quinn's final bonding events have them trying to hone their talents to find out what happened to them after Quinn left, and is unsurprised but slightly bothered when discovering that their lives have basically returned to normal despite the absence of their only child.
- Chest Monster: Boxer, their loyal companion that's a living, toothed trunk that stores Quinn's wares.
- Crystal Ball: Quinn carries a large red crystal orb around with them, which they peer into after being given a new ingredient in order to locate harvesting spots and upgrade their store. It's implied that they don't actually need it to use their seer power but it does help them hone in on specific targets without the downside of being completely zoned out for a while.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Forming a close bond with Quinn will have them reveal that they grew up sealed in a tower, with parents more concerned about their vineyard and exploiting Quinn's seer powers to make a profit than about Quinn's well-being. Quinn made sure to torch the vineyard when breaking out.
- Extreme Omnivore: It's implied Quinn was meaning to eat some of the mildew growing in Sylvia's store before she renovated. Given their animation it's also likely they scry for ingredients by eating them first.
- Hidden Depths: They volunteer at an animal shelter and have a nice singing voice.
- The Nicknamer: Midway through Quinn's bonding events, they decide to nickname Sylvia "blightworm". If the relationship becomes romantic, Quinn suggests alternate nicknames such as "canoodle poodle", "sweetle beetle", "cutey-slime", and "turnip tush", all of which Sylvia turn down.
- Oracular Urchin: They're sarcastic and have a morbid sense of humor, and their biography states that they practice looking into the future on unsuspecting customers, often leading them leaving in terror. They also scry for ingredients and their clairvoyance is quite powerful.
- Power Incontinence: Their later rank up events reveal that Quinn doesn't exactly have complete control over their visions. As a child they would zone out at random and when they came to they would simply know things about people. They have to experiment with what ingredients have the right association with a target to hone in on specific ones, but even then they have a bit of a problem with the range of what they can see.
- Purely Aesthetic Glasses: In their case, purely aesthetic monocle, which constantly hangs from their neck but is never needed for scrying or examining ingredients.
- Purple Is Powerful: Shop expansion works this way. After giving Quinn some new ingredients, both of their eyes (usually mismatched) glow purple as they scry with their ball for a few seconds.
- Seers: To be precise, Quinn is a telemetrist, requiring an item in order to perceive events relating to said item, whether it's where to harvest more of a mundane item or what's happening with the owner of a unique treasured memento.
Muktuk
Blacksmith
A traveling blacksmith who would gladly create art for art's sake if it wasn't for the steep cost of materials.
His cards focus on either granting buffs to Sylvia or greatly raising interest, although usually at a steep cost.
- Ancestor Veneration: His people believe that their ancestors live on in them—no, literally in their bodies—and can communicate with them.
- Big Fun: He's a stout, walrus-resembling man whose culture believes that the spirits of their ancestors reside in their muscles, and whose jovial nature encourages Sylvia to learn skills like "Enthusiasm" from him.
- The Blacksmith: He's a blacksmith by trade who also does some carpentry by making and upgrading shelves for Sylvia.
- Boisterous Bruiser: True to his personality, Muktuk’s cards are all about making or setting up BIG plays. With the right setup, a single card can be made to fill several customer Interest gauges in one shot.
- Interspecies Romance: Sylvia can romance him, if the player so wishes, despite Muktuk being a giant humanoid walrus. They bond over their desire to improve in their respective crafts, he appreciates the emotional support and inspiration she gives him and she digs his philosophical side (as well as his muscles).
- It Was with You All Along: During his storyline, he comes to realize that the works he made to support himself in his search for artistic greatness have improved peoples' daily lives with their standout quality and thus are masterpieces in their own right.
- Little Bit Beastly: His walrus tusks and nose are the only thing visibly non-human about him, he otherwise looks like just a really big dude. It is mentioned on several occasions that he has flippers (with thumbs) in those mittens, though.
- Mission from God: He's on a pilgrimage to refine his artistic abilities and seek the guidance and wisdom of his ancestors. ...but for as long as he's traveled, he hasn't heard a word from them. At the end of his romance storyline, he does have the feeling that they are proud of him.
- Stout Strength: As both a blacksmith and being from a people who believe in the power and mystical properties of having muscles, this is justified. Muktuk may not look like your stereotypical strongman, what with his massive gut and all, but all that weight and size of him is made up of a good proportion of muscle, most prominently seen in his arms.
- Ultimate Blacksmith: Seeks to become this. Muktuk emigrated to Rafta to hone his craft while taking advantage of the island’s unusual and magical ingredients. One day he hopes his skill will advance to the point where he crafts a single item so profoundly wondrous it changes the world forever.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Muktuk never covers his chest. Probably justified because of the bright and sunny atmosphere where his smithy is in Rafta and how much heat his walrus-man fat would retain. It also gives him the perfect excuse to show off the muscles in his arm and his prominent gut for those that are attracted to bulkier men.
Saffron
Carpenter
A hermit craftswoman.
Her deck style focuses around stress relief and rewarding Sylvia for staying at low amounts.
- Animal Motifs: As a faun, she has a deer motif. She has antlers like one, the freckles on her skin resemble the patterns that deer can display, and of course, her lower legs are a deer's with hooves on the ends.
- Artificial Limbs: Her right arm is an artificial replacement made entirely of wood.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Saffron was one of the original group of heroes who arrived in Rafta to challenge Maven's rule. She was seriously injured while battling Maven's kraken and had to sit out the rest of the adventure. Her friends conscripted Robin as a guide to Maven's castle and were killed in the battle that destroyed the area.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: She's been isolated for so long that she's astonished when she sees how many people now live in Rafta, and all the shops and professions they've developed.
- Older Than They Look: She was alive back when Maven was originally controlling the island, back in Baptiste's great-great-grandfather's time.
Luna
Marketing Guru
A mothgirl who runs the local marketing agency.
Her deck focuses on making the best of a stressful situation, rewarding Sylvia for managing to stay in a certain range with added interest.
- Animal Motifs: She's a moth-woman and she's attracted to the big city, running a social media advertising business that involves her being near-constantly glued to computer monitors, tablets, and her phone, and she constantly takes selfies with the flash on. Like her real-life counterpart, Luna is attracted to bright, artificial lights.
- Education Mama: Luna's mother was one, to the point that when Luna's childhood best friend Sol got an A+ grade than her on a test that Luna only got a B+ on, Luna's mom hung Sol's report card on their fridge. When recounting the event in one of her bonding events, Luna still isn't sure whether it was meant to inspire her or to show how little her mother cared about her if she wasn't always at her best.
- Gift-Giving Gaffe: Giving Luna (a moth) a Bug-type ingredient as a gift goes over so poorly the game calls you out on it with an achievement.Luna: I ... think I see what you were going for?
- I Want Grandkids: On the receiving end from both her parents. In Luna's penultimate romance ending, she warns Sylvia that they expect double-digits.
- Leitmotif: Her main theme is "Busy Being Luna," a very upbeat and pleasant shopping mall tune but crowded with various instruments, that, if played faster, might sound more like Songs in the Key of Panic. It fits with how Luna is constantly stressed out, and strung up, but keeping it together regardless and making sure to put on her best face to the world and her selfies. It also noticeably includes more modern, electronic instruments like synthesizers to match Luna's modern technology in contrast to the rest of the Medieval Fantasy world. She also has "Luna's Coffee Break," a much more chill, relaxing tune that retains much of the electronic and computer-generated sounds like a synthesizer.
- Must Have Caffeine: It's not that surprising that she's utterly addicted to coffee and relies on it to function in the high-stress, high-speed environment of social media marketing. To add to this, one of her themes is "Luna's Coffee Break."
- Nervous Wreck: She's constantly on edge due to the stress of running her own business in an unfamiliar land (not to mention the constant large doses of caffeine) but she's incorporated it into her business strategies rather than be deterred by it.
- Opaque Nerd Glasses: She always wears octagonal-framed glasses that show only the black pupils of her eyes, and even those are obscured when they shine.
- Scary Shiny Glasses: Whenever she starts talking about marketing schemes and manipulating her clients' customer bases, the lenses of her glasses start shining.
- Selfie Fiend: As expected of a hyper-urban marketing agent, Luna is never seen without her phone and constantly uses it to take selfies. At her max platonic relationship, she decides to celebrate with Sylvia by taking a selfie with her, which Sylvia smiles and obliges. At max romantic relationship, Sylvia and Luna close their eyes and share a romantic kiss before Luna opens one eye to take a quick selfie of the act.
- Start My Own: She originally worked for a larger marketing agency on the mainland before deciding to start her own business in Rafta.
Salt and Pepper
Cat Pirates (Left is Pepper, Right is Salt)
A pair of cat pirates.
Their cards provide either a defensive or offensive approach in a way that it's like two cards in one, such as Good Cop/Bad Cop-type tactics to either shield or go all out.
- Afraid of Blood: Their final few bonding events have them perform a metaphorical "Blood Oath" with Sylvia, with Salt saying that it won't be a literal blood oath because someone can't stand the sight of it. Pepper than adds that the "someone" is actually Salt herself.
- Big Guy, Little Guy: Salt is roughly half the size of Pepper, and tends to stand on crates or other objects in order to look more impressive.
- Friend in the Black Market: They sell crates full of treasure they've "acquired," but you didn't get it from them, understand?
- Hates Being Touched: When Sylvia first asks if she can pet them, they refuse, considering the act demeaning and clashing with their pirate image. They finally give her permission in their final bonding event, after she fully earns their trust.
- Leitmotif: "The Cat Pirates," a classic adventurous pirate theme tune made entirely of meows.
- Must State If You're a Cop: Salt insist that Sylvia has to tell them if she's a member of the city guard, beacuse "It's the Law!"
- Pitbull Dates Puppy: Salt is boisterous and aggressive, while Pepper is much more polite and gentle. They are very much a close couple regardless. Although according to them, Pepper is the scarier of the two.
Heroes Guild
Mint
Rookie Hero
The newest recruit of the Heroes Guild.
Her deck is geared towards a mild approach, foregoing big bursts of interest in favor of stacking status effects like Sympathy and putting up Shields.
- Ascended Fanboy: Mint grew up collecting trading cards and posters of the very heroes she now gets to work alongside.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: Despite all of her genuine heroism, she suffers from Impostor Syndrome due to being a fresh face surrounded by the heroes she had admired since childhood, with her bonding events leading her to try and obtain a legendary weapon in order to catch up to the rest of the Guild.
- Massive Numbered Siblings: She has at least seven siblings.
- Stone Wall: Her deck focuses primarily on defense and protecting Sylvia from stress.
Baptiste
Hero Guild Master
The current administrator of the Heroes Guild.
His deck utilizes flattery to get ahead, focusing more on strong openers and time management to keep the haggle going to get large amounts of interest before backing out.
- Bully Magnet: Due to his sheltered upbringing and naivete when it comes to the life of commoners, the heroes of the Heroes Guild enjoy hazing him, as indicated in his first conversation with Sylvia when he asks if the scorpions and whipped cream that have been placed in his shoes for the past few months are supposed to be gifts or pranks.
- Disinherited Child: As the youngest of three sons to a Duke, Baptiste was entitled to little, and what he would have been granted amounted to a Reassigned to Antarctica post, had he not struck out on his own to Rafta instead. His own father described him as the latter of “the heir,” “the spare,” and “the stay-over-there.”
- Heroic Lineage: His great-great-grandfather first established the local Heroes Guild, and Baptiste hopes to follow in his footsteps rather than merely being a shrewd investor like the more recent generations of his family.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: Baptiste has more than one card that block off the last level of interest for a certain benefit. Said cards are usually characterized by Baptiste showing Sylvia how to compromise on deals or knowing when she's been outmatched.
- Large-Ham Announcer: In addition to managing the Heroes Guild, he's the announcer for all of the competitions between Rafta's potion sellers, which Sylvia must compete in.
- The Perfectionist: One bonding event he has with Sylvia has her note that, while he's incredibly slow at tasks such as polishing a trophy, he makes it shine as bright as when it was first made, rather than her own efficient but only satisfactory cleaning style.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: An unwanted third kid of a noble who finds fulfillment in managing the Heroes Guild.
- Sheltered Aristocrat: Having grown up as a noble whose needs were always attended to, Baptiste is fascinated by the life of everyday people, taking the hazing from heroes in stride and being so enamored by a store that sells four-in-one shampoo & conditioner that he buys their entire stock.
Xidriel/Xid
Celebrity on a Sabbatical
A traveling bard that works with the Heroes Guild whenever she's in town. Her deck works on lowering a customer's Patience cost as well raising their Interest. Raising her relationship level also decreases the cost of adventuring.
- Celebrity Is Overrated: She considers Xid to be the "real" her, and decides to take a break from being a superstar in order to help Rafta as a hero and temporarily live a comparatively more normal life.
- Chest Monster: Her guitar case is one of these apparently. She has to collect tips for her street busking with a tin can because her case has apparently developed a taste for money.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Xidriel is a famous musician with dyed blonde hair, makeup, and piercings, whereas her civilian identity of Xid has naturally blue hair and none of the additional accessories. Xid herself remarks that it's not much of a change while asking Sylvia not to spill the secret to the paparazzi.
- Signature Instrument: An electric guitar. This is what she performs with in-universe and unsurprisingly, her Leitmotif, "Xid's Theme", prominently involves an electric guitar being played alongside other companion instruments like drums and a bass guitar.
Rivals
Roxanne
Con Artist
A curvaceous entrepreneur who likes competition.
- Big Beautiful Woman: She is larger than the other female characters in the game and is considered beautiful enough to string people along in her schemes.
- Can't Act Perverted Toward a Love Interest: If romanced, she will say that as a demon, she may have trouble separating genuine romance from physical attraction, but since Sylvia is important to her, she will do this properly.
- Charm Person: As an ally, she sells charms that make customers ignore negative traits or be more interested in positive traits on potions, which don't affect the potions themselves.
- Con Artist: Her potions are fairly low-quality, but she makes up for it with marketing and flooding the market. Fittingly, her cards tend to allow Sylvia to employ more manipulative methods when haggling.
- Defeat Means Friendship: A few in-game days after besting her in a contest, which leads to her closing down her shop, she decides to move into Sylvia's basement and provide assistance.
- Exact Words:
- When introducing herself to Sylvia, she makes it clear that, despite running a competing business, she doesn't want to be enemies. She then makes some rather rude comments about Sylvia's store and lack of sex appeal, before clarifying that she doesn't want to be friends either.
- For her introduction in the competition against Sylvia, she states that her home was "someplace very hot". As she's actually a devil, her home is indeed quite hot.
- Graceful Loser: Upon losing her competition against Sylvia and having to close her shop, she turns down Sylvia's offer for help, telling her that she doesn't need to pity her.
- Hot as Hell: Her glamor drops in the competition against Sylvia upon losing a round and getting frustrated, revealing that she has purple skin, horns, and a demon tail, which she was hiding from the public so they'd be willing to buy her wares.
- Ladykiller in Love: She mentions that she can usually separate emotional relationships from sex, but in Sylvia's case, she can't (so she's as exclusive as any other romance option).
- Large Ham: She's quite theatrical and bombastic.
- Noblewoman's Laugh: Frequently... not that you actually hear it since the game has no voice acting.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Was apparently under the impression that her glamor hid all of her "diabolical fabulousness" and made her look more like an "average, everyday potion witch", rather than the same vivacious bombshell she always is, just with a human skin tone and no tail or horns. Being a demon may account for her unusual perception of beauty.
- Ponzi: Parodied. Roxanne mentions that one of her previous scams was a pyramid scheme — as in, convincing people that she needed money to build an actual pyramid and vanishing once she'd gotten it.
- Proud Beauty: She is attractive and knows it, taking great care to maintain her good looks and using them to get her ways.
- Snake Oil Salesman: Her potions are implied to do little to nothing, but she dresses them up nicely and badmouths her rivals.
- Starter Villain: She's the first of the rivals that competes with Sylvia, and prefers style over substance.
- Took a Level in Kindness: She is haughty and underhanded as a rival. After losing to and becoming friend with Sylvia, while she retains a con artist's edge, she is more disinclined to take advantage of innocence, citing Sylvia's influence.
Corsac
Survivalist Hunter
A survivalist who takes more pride in the adventures that lead to rare ingredients than the potions he brews with them.
His deck focuses on buff increasing interest during a haggle session, while granting Sylvia some protection against negative comments and stress.
- Defeat Means Friendship: After beating him in the second contest, he starts to assist Sylvia by helping to locate rare ingredients for her potions.
- Internal Reformist: After their match, Sylvia convinces him to register with the Heroes Guild in order to help teach the other heroes how to be more respectful to the environment.
- Nature Hero: He prefers the wilderness over civilization, he performs non-lethal surgery on dangerous wild animals to obtain some of his ingredients, and he uses the potion marketing competition in order to speak out against how the Heroes Guild has little regard for damaging ecosystems in their rush to slay monsters for loot and experience.
- Socially Awkward Hero: Has shades of this archetype. Being out in the wild so much has not done much for his social skills or tolerance for crowds. During his introduction in the competition, all he can give is a very stiff, nervous wave to the audience.
Boss Fin
A sharkman willing to exploit any loophole to make a buck.
- Animal Motifs: Sharks, obviously, but more so their association to criminals with a financial bent such as con artists, extortionists, and bookies.
- Double Entendre: Of a non-sexual kind. He addresses Sylvia as "chum", which can mean either "friend" or pal, a species of salmon which is commonly eaten by sharks, or chunks of meat used to lure fish to a particular spot.
- I'm Not Here to Make Friends: He makes it clear to Sylvia in one of their first encounters that, unlike how her previous opponents both had a Defeat Means Friendship moment, he doesn't plan to show any mercy or compassion towards her.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: During his arc, he'll frequently prevent Sylvia from being allowed to sell certain types of concoctions (Potion, Tonic, etc.) by filing patents on his own creations and cornering the market while she (or rather, Owl) is busy having to fill out paperwork.
- Shark Man: He has the fins, the skin coloration, and the pointed teeth of a shark.
- Sore Loser: Upon losing, he gets into an outburst before declaring that he's quitting the potion business.
Anubia
A princess from a distant land who seeks to become a mogul.
- Maniac Tongue: Upon losing one round during the end-of-week tournament, she threatens Sylvia while striking a pose and sticking her forked tongue out long enough to go past her chin.
- MegaCorp: Anubia's business in Rafta is just the latest in her global chain of convenience stores, specializing in convenience and accessibility rather than artisanship.
- Me's a Crowd: She's been spying on all of Rafta's other businesses by conjuring up a clone army to act as delivery people.
- Nepharious Pharaoh: Her name and appearance is inspired by Egyptian myths, she has her own sarcophagus, and she wants to oust Rafta's local salespeople in order to replace them with her convenience stores.
- Older Than They Look: Claims to be thousands of years old despite looking like a young girl and being prone to temper tantrums.
Robin
A celebrity alchemist, known as the Witch-Killer for having been present for the defeat of Maven a long, long time ago. He judges the contests between Sylvia and her various rivals, and also serves as her final challenge.
- Child Soldiers: Evidently conscripted into fighting Maven while still a kid.
- Final Boss: He's the fifth and final competitor in Rafta's potion competitions. Or rather, Mae is.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: In the finale, it turns out that Mae, the goofy pet lizard of the celebrity hero Robin, is actually the Witch-Queen Maven, and she's been controlling Robin in order to regain fame and power.
- Historical Hero Upgrade: In-Universe example; as Xid states after performing a song about his heroics for some quick cash, Robin was merely a young boy guiding the real heroes to Maven while carrying their bags, and the actual reason he was the Sole Survivor of the group is that he took cover when the others caused and got caught in an explosion at her tower, but the propaganda sells far better than the truth.
- Lovable Lizard: He's always accompanied by his pet lizard, Mae. However, Mae becomes a lot less lovable when she reveals her true identity.
- Older Than They Look: He was a member of Rafta's original Heroes Guild, founded by Baptiste's great-great-grandfather.
- People Puppets: Upon losing to Sylvia, it turns out that he was being puppeteered by Mae, AKA Maven, ever since the day that Maven was supposedly slain.
- Sole Survivor: He was the only surviving member of the team of heroes that went to take down Maven.
- Walking Spoiler: Robin and Mae's actions in the game's finale cause some rather significant twists.
Others
Helene
The debt collector that makes sure Sylvia doesn't skip on her payments.
- Book Ends: Helene is both the first and last customer that Sylvia has to deal with.
- Controllable Helplessness: At the start of the game, Helene offers to be Sylvia's first customer after saddling her with her uncle's debt, but Sylvia's complete lack of haggling skills and her rapidly-increasing Stress makes it an unwinnable segment.
- Evil Debt Collector: Although she acts civil to Sylvia, Owl states that if Sylvia tries to just call it quits and forfeit the shop without paying off her uncle's debt, then the people Helene works for will track Sylvia to the ends of the earth and chain her to a cubicle until she can repay them. It eventually turns out that, while Sylvia was still soul-bound into paying off the debt, Owl was lying about how evil she is in order to keep Sylvia in Rafta.
- Post-Climax Confrontation: At the end of the game, she figures out that Owl is really Oswald and plans to punish him for shifting his debt onto Sylvia, but Sylvia convinces her in an unlosable haggling segment to let him go.
Maven
The former Witch-Queen of Rafta, who the first incarnation of the Heroes Guild defeated a long time ago.
- Evil Gloating: She has a propensity to this, which is how Sylvia is able to goad her into a "fair" competition to solidify her victory rather than just control Sylvia's mind and finish her evil plan.
- Evil Sorcerer: She was a Sorceress who took over the island with an army of monsters. This is according the the Heroes Guild propaganda that tried to justify invading her island in order to obtain its magimin-rich resources, though her actions afterwards certainly can't be called "good".
- Faking the Dead: As she was trapped in the form of Mae the lizard after the heroes of old blew up her lab, she decided to let the world think she had died and regain her power through Robin.
- Forced Transformation: It turns out that she wasn't slain by heroes; rather, the heroes blew up her lab while attempting to kill her, causing her to transform into the lizard creature Mae.
- Karma Houdini: Downplayed. On the one hand, after trying and failing to beat Sylvia in a potion competition and realizing too late that she spent all of her mind-controlling gem's power on the audience while trying to win, Maven just makes Robin leave the scene with her and suffers no consequences for her actions, due to everyone except Sylvia forgetting she revealed herself. That said, Maven's still stuck in her lizard form without any means to restore herself and the aforementioned gem - which was her last major source of power - is now useless to her, with Robin himself showing signs of breaking from her influence and acting like the child he was when she first started puppetting him.
- Mind Control: Upon revealing herself in the present, she admits to having turned Robin into her puppet long ago, tries to magically force Sylvia into handing over the Mavenbloom that can cure her transformation and restore her to her original glory, and then uses a gem to make the entire audience of the match between Sylvia and Robin forget the past few minutes so that she can rub her victory in by beating her in the competition and winning the Mavenbloom "fairly" as the grand prize.
- Posthumous Character: She was slain in combat a long time ago, but her influence is why there's still plenty of work for the Guild even in the modern age. Additionally, she's a lot less dead than the stories claimed.
- Walking Spoiler: Although her legacy is mentioned occasionally throughout the game, the things she had done in secret become very important in the endgame.
Oswald
Sylvia's departed uncle, who used to run a potion shop in Rafta and racked up a huge debt in the process.
- Faking the Dead: He was accidentally turned into an owl by a magic trap while trying to find rare and valuable treasures in Maven's old tower, and then let everyone believe he was dead in order to avoid repaying his debts.
- Forced Transformation: "Owl", Sylvia's mentor, is actually a very-much-alive Oswald whose form was changed while trying to get out of debt and now has to rely on Sylvia learning how to concoct a transmogrification potion to change back.
- Plot-Triggering Death: Sylvia inheriting his potion shop (and debts) through his last will and testament is what kicks off the plot. It later turns out that he's actually still around, just not as he used to be.
