The Nature of Predators universe has many different aliens within it, and a large cast of characters. Let’s take a look at some of them.
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The Humans
You know, 'em, you (might or might not) love 'em, this is humanity essentially as we are after a few more major global conflicts and the discovery of a method to travel faster than light. Word of God tells us that humanity’s main areas of strength compared to the Federation are as follows: ground combat, prosthetics and medical knowledge, and ecology. We’ve also got a mess of politics, and enough skeletons in our closets to fill a cemetery. In General
Tropes that apply to humanity as a whole include:
- Global Warming: still a problem in the year of 2136, with several natural disasters in one year and as usual, politics meaning that nobody is doing much about it.
- Humans Are Special: Humanity is one of the only two carnivorous species known to the Federation, and the only one to be omnivorous. Unfortunately, since the other one is the Arxur, this lands Humanity in a lot of troubles.
- Humans Are Warriors: In space, humans quicky retrofit Venlil tech to use on their vessels, and are the first known species to use drone ships on the battlefield. On the ground, they are capable of enduring assaults from Arxur without breaking formation.
- Kill Sat: implied that humans had these at one point with the reference to "satellite wars" being made in chapter 5.
- Super-Persistent Predator: While they aren't especially strong, humans are noted several times in the story to be relentless and are adept at slowly wearing down opponents.
- United Nations Is a Superpower: directly stated in chapter five that the UN is now somewhat of a central government, although all of the earth's countries still exist (probably)‘’The United Nations had taken on a role as a central world government following the Satellite Wars of the late 21st century’’
Noah Williams
Tropes that apply to Noah include:
Sara Rosario
Tropes that apply to Sara include:
Elias Meier
- “If we’re going to do this, we need unity at home. People need to know what they’re signing up for. Release everything to the public, and let them make the decision. If there’s broad support for a war, then we’ll fight the bastards.”
Tropes that apply to Meier include:
- Action Politician: Meier fits this trope to a tee when he decides to head over to an Arxur spy outpost and make a deal for the release of prisoners.
- The Apocalypse Brings Out the Best in People: Invoked Trope (or otherwise played with) by Meier when he orders for the first contact information to be distributed to the populace in the hopes that the information will cause people to unite around a common cause.
- The Bus Came Back: Meier gets one chapter from his point of view, disappears for a while to only pop up in the background and occasional scenes, and then returns in force for the federation's attack on earth and its fallout.
- Deadpan Snarker: Meier gets a moment of this in his first scene when he is told about the Arxur being the only other predator-evolved sapients.Sec-gen Meier: So I’m hearing not to invite the Venlil to the family barbecue. Yes, Doctor?
- Had to Be Sharp: implied due to meier's apparent age and his discussions of the problems affecting earth in his fist point of view chapter
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Meier is by far the most level-headed of all the politicians and high-ranking figures that we have seen.
Marcel Fraser
Tropes that apply to Marcel include:
- Bash Brothers: Whenever he and Slanek get into a mission, expect both of them to cover each other's backs.
- Papa Wolf: He is fiercely defensive of Nulia.
- Interspecies Adoption: Adopts Nulia, a Gojid cub who lost her parents to a stampede during the attack on the Cradle.
- Rage Against the Reflection: Discussed Trope as part of the lead-up to Marcel's The Reason You Suck speech. Marcel voices the fact that he can't look in the mirror without being reminded of Sovlin's cruelty. Doubles as Physical Scars, Psychological Scars for this reason, and causes a Precision F-Strike when Marcel rants about that fact.Marcel: “Every time I close my eyes, I’m back there. I can’t be touched on the neck, without thinking of your fucking collar. I can’t look in the mirror, without seeing your fucking scars! I’m reminded of you by everything.”
- Symbolic Mutilation: During the time that Marcel was imprisoned by Sovlin he suffered multiple beatings, mainly ones targeting his binocular eyes. After his eventual escape with the aid of Recel and Slanek, he had lost faith in the universe, essentially no longer being able to truly see the good in other people.
Carlos Romero
Tropes that apply to Carlos include:
Samantha Harris
Tropes that apply to Samantha include:
- Heartbroken Badass: Samantha loses most of her family to the destruction of Melbourne by the Extermination Fleet. She still kicks asses after, but she is nevertheless devastated.
- Hand Signals: Samantha is proficient in Signed Language, as she has a deaf brother. Unfortunately, the translator implants don’t translate sign language so she is unable to use it to communicate with Talpin, at least at first.
Arjun
Tropes that apply to Arjun include:
- Hostage Situation: Arjun falls victim to this when Kalsim and his band capture him. due to Arjun's youth and the fact that his father is somewhere in the preserve, likely armed, he also falls into Political Hostage when Kalsim decides that they can probably use Arjun as leverage.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: At least when compared to Kalsim and Zarn. You'd think that people coming to wipe out predatory life on earth would at least study what animals are dangerous. they wind up thinking that a venomous snake is harmless, while Arjun is extremely familiar with all of the potential dangers on the reserve.
The Venlil
In General
Tropes that apply to the Venlil as a whole include:
- Airstrip One: Before the Federation came, Venlil Prime was once known as "Skalga", which quite literally translates into Death World.
- Awful Truth: The Venlil as they are now are the result of Federation genetic tampering and indoctrination due to their fierce resistance towards Federation occupation.
- End of the World: What the Venlil believe the arrival of humanity's first interstellar craft is.
- Fire-Forged Friends: After the humans lose dozens of ships protecting a Venlil space station from an Arxur raid, the two species become inseparable. After multiple Federation species vote to exterminate us, the Venlil send what few warships they still have to help protect Earth.
- First Contact: The Venlil are the first alien species that humanity comes into contact with.
- Proud Warrior Race: Prior to being indoctrinated by the Federation, the Venlil were actually a combative species with a honor culture. The Federation destroyed their natural defenses and broke their spirit by gaslighting them into believing themselves to be weak.
- Tidally Locked Planet: Venlil Prime, which is the exoplanet Gliese 832 c
. Also cue Big Dumb Object for the orbital infrastructures deployed by Venlil scientists in additions to smaller scale measures that expanded the habitable regions of the planet, including atmospheric aerosols and an artificial cloud cover. this can be looked at as terraforming efforts, if not for Sovlin's statement that Venlil Prime was actually more habitable than some of the Federation's colony worlds.
Governor Tarva
Tropes that apply to Tarva include:
- Action Politician: After realising that the humans are unarmed and seemingly uninterested in conquest, she meets with Noah and Sarah and personally gives them a tour of Venlil Prime, placing herself (she thinks) in terrible danger of being eaten, all to buy time for the special forces teams to muster and for the Gojid to answer their distress signal. She later accompanies Noah to the Federation summit and remains at his side for the duration. Perhaps most amazingly, she accompanies Meier on his mission to contact the Arxur.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: While every other Venlil is panicking about humanity's arrival, Tarva contacts the approaching ship, hoping to beg for mercy and save at least some of her people.
- Did Not Think This Through: Tarva's handling of first contact with the humans is somewhat complicated by her decision to completely quarantine Venlil space immediately after expelling Solvin and the Gojid fleet when they came in response to the distress signal that she sent out. When combined with an information blackout that would make North Korea envious, it's not surprising that the Federation concluded that Venlil Prime had been occupied. Still, at least she's decisive.
- Precision F-Strike: Tarva gets this in chapter 46, when she finally looks an Arxur in the eyes and manages to stand up to it.Tarva: “F-fuck you, scaly wretch. I hope you rot in a furnace.”
- Reasonable Authority Figure: She is willing to believe that Noah and Sarah were unaware that Venlil Prime was inhabited, opening the way to the realisation that humanity is not like the Arxur. She goes out of her way to accommodate humanity and prepare them for integration into the galactic community, and not only accompanies Noah to the Federation summit to plead humanity's case, but makes every effort to convince the Kolshians that he should be heard.
Slanek
Tropes that apply to Slanek include:
- Bash Brothers: Whenever he and Marcel get into a mission, expect both of them to cover each other's backs.
- Break the Cutie: It's subtle, but it's clear that Slanek's experiences are slowly taking a heavy toll on his mind as time goes on, culminating in him executing a scientist.
- My God, What Have I Done?: His execution of a Jerkass Kolshian scientist results in this, to the point that he tries to lie about it so Marcel doesn't disown him. It doesn't work.
- Nice Guy: Extremely cordial and friendly, especially towards his friend Marcel.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: The repeated traumas of combat, including several near-death experiences, along with Marcel's seemingly confusing, and even humiliating to Slanek, forgiveness towards Sovlin causes Slanek to grow increasingly bitter. He mellows out a bit after Marcel chews him out for executing a captured scientist and feeling horrified about the act, before and after attempting to lie about his war crime to save his friendship with Marc.
Doctor Ilja
Tropes that apply to Ilja include:
The Gojid
In General
Tropes that apply to the Gojid as a whole include:
Captain Sovlin
Tropes that apply to Sovlin include:
- Arc Villain: He serves as the primary antagonist up until the conclusion of the "Gojidi Cradle Invasion" arc.
- Character Development: He goes from utterly hating the humans to being willing to try his best to save them. Meanwhile, he grows increasingly disillusioned with the Federation.
- Death Seeker: He became this after losing his family to the Arxur. However, his resulting aggressivity towards the Arxur led him to several victories instead of death. He still shows signs of this post-Heel–Face Turn due to guilt over his attitude towards humanity, his actions towards Marcel in particular.
- Fantastic Racism: His attitude towards predators as expected of his Federation upbringing as well as being forced to listen to hie family being brutally killed in an Arxur raid. Even after his Heel–Face Turn he still struggles with discriminatory urges, particularly towards Onso who's a Yotul; a "primitive" species who resent the Federation for "uplifting" themnote .
- Heel–Face Turn: Sovlin has one after realizing how terrible his actions were.
- Mysterious Informant: He was Cilany's, having revealed several of the scandals that helped build up her carrier.
- My God, What Have I Done?: After his actions end up getting his homeworld invaded, and seeing that he was wrong thinking that Humans are monsters, Captain Sovlin decides to surrender himself to them.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Sovlin's entire family was killed in an Arxur raid, while he was on a video call with them. This led to him utterly hating the Arxur, and predators in general.
- Villainous BSoD: Sovlin has a severe one in chapter 26, after seeing humans save civilians even in the midst of the Arxur invasion of the Cradle, and comes to realize how evil he was against Marcel. He openly weeps, considers taking his own life, and finally decides to surrender himself to the humans.
Nulia
Tropes that apply to Nulia include:
- Broken Bird: While she typically acts cheerful, her bonus chapter reveals that she has deep trauma from the stampede that crippled her.
- Cheerful Child: She is almost always cheerful, and unlike most aliens, isn't scared of humans at all.
- Children Are Innocent: She plays with a human child in her bonus chapter, without much of a care about the complex politics of the world around her.
- Interspecies Adoption: She, a Gojid, is adopted by Marcel, a human.
Talpin
Tropes that apply to Talpin include:
- Cute Mute: Talpin, who is deaf is described by Sovlin as being a youth, and he possesses a sort of innocence in his interactions that most of the other characters do not. However, after learning of Sovlin’s actions towards Marcel and witnessing the Arxur attack on the homeworld of the Harchen species, that innocence is likely to be shattered
- Hiding the Handicap: Shortly after arriving on Earth, the Gojid refugees are under the assumption that only healthy beings will be kept alive, as they fully expect the Predators will be trying to make slave camps. Thus, they try to hide Talpin's disability from their human "Captors."
- Machine Monotone: Talpin eventually has a computer made for him by some humans, which he uses to speak. Presumably it also displays text for him. This also ventures slightly into Creepy Monotone from the perspective of Sovlin, as most of the Federation species that we have seen have described human voices as being intimidating and Sovlin describes the machine as having “a bit of human growl”
- The Speechless: Talpin is deaf and cannot speak verbally. Given the physiology of Gojids, this makes things even more complicated as he also cannot participate in the tail language employed by most of the other Federation species.
Berna
Tropes that apply to include:
- Big Sister Instinct: Berna seems to typically be a nice person, but when we first meet her she initially behaves aggressively towards Sovlin because he arrived with human soldiers and as such his affiliation with them could mean danger for her deaf younger brother.
- Promotion to Parent: given the fact that Berna and Talpin’s parents don’t show up at all during chapter 29, it is likely that Berna has been pulled into a parental role for Talpin.
The Krakotl
In General
Tropes that apply to the Krakotl as a whole include:
- Absolute Xenophobe: Downplayed Trope (somewhat), as they are members of the Federation and end up leading a multi-species coalition against the 'Human Menace'. However, their inability to see humans as anything other than Always Chaotic Evil, combined with even the most sympathetic Krakotl (Captain Kalsim, the bastard who bombs Earth from orbit) seeing humans as, at best, a race of conquerors who will sweep across the galaxy like Mongols with spaceships, and most seeing them as Predators Are Mean meets I'm a Humanitarian, means that they ignore all evidence that humanity wants peace, in favour of killing them all. Later on Averted as a friendly Krakotl lady makes an appearance, her dialogue making clear that not every Krakotl is a xenophobic bastard.
- Bird People: The Krakotl are feathered, have beaks, and possess grasping talons on their feet. While they do seem to have rudimentary grasping digits on their wings, their main form of object manipulation seems to be their beaks and feet.
- Feathered Fiend: Due to their high aggressivity against predators, we had yet to see one who isn't openly hostile towards humans, let alone friendly. Eventually subverted once we meet a helpful Krakotl character in chapter 83, as well as Luala from the Human Exterminator side story.
- Never My Fault: Even though humanity has pleaded for peace and provided ample proof that they are helping the Venlil, not occupying them, the Krakotl, and Kalsim most of all, still attempt to genocide them on the grounds that they are predators. The moment that this has consequences, in the form of the Arxur protecting Earth and launching strikes at the worlds that the Anti-Human Alliance left undefended, the Krakotl (and the Federation as a whole) behave as if this proves mankind's villainous intentions.
- Tomato in the Mirror: It turns out that the Krakotl were the first intelligent, meat-eating race discovered by the ancestors of the Federation- mind you, they were primarily herbivorous and only occasionally scavenged a few bits of meat here and there. They were also the first attempt to "rehabilitate" a sapient race into total herbivorism, with a combination of genetic modification, cultural reprogramming, and establishment of a false religion that demonized the existence of predators.
Captain Kalsim
- I considered broadcasting an apology to the surface, once Earth’s space fleet was exhausted. The unfortunate civilians knew they were witnessing the last day of their civilization. Did the humans not deserve the solace of an explanation?
Tropes that apply to Kalsim include:
- Apologetic Attacker: At seemingly every opportunity, Kalsim 'apologises' for his bombing of Earth... but continues to claim that it was justified.
- A Nazi by Any Other Name: Readers have noticed that Kalsim's reasoning for
killing over 1 billion humans mirrors that of SS members and senior Nazi figures for the Holocaust. - Believing Their Own Lies: Kalsim keeps making up new lies to justify his actions whenever he's proved wrong.
- Condescending Compassion: To him, it's not a predator's fault that it is born an abomination to be ruthlessly slaughtered.
- Cruel Mercy: Despite his claims to be merciful, his mercy tends to amount to this, such as when he ponders whether he should instead let all humans die of Childless Dystopia instead of antimatter-induced holocaust. In other words, his "more merciful alternative" for genocide is another, slower genocide. He is also confused whenever it is rejected.
- Even Evil Has Standards: He views torture such as Sovlin and Zarn's torture of Marcel with distaste, preferring a clean and painless execution instead.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He is neither able nor willing to understand that Humanity has no desire to become another Arxur.
- Evil Counterpart: To Sovlin. Both are high ranking members of the Federation who were brought up and strongly believe in their propaganda but have sympathetic qualities (Sovlin losing his family to an Arxur raid and hating all predators for it, Kalsim preferring merciful methods of killing predators and lamenting how their young will "lose" their innocence growing up). However, whereas Sovlin has a Heel Realization and struggles against the conditioning and Fantastic Racism of his Federation upbringing, Kalsim remains steadfast in the Federation and his own views to the point of engaging in Doublethink to justify information contradicting his mindset.
- For the Greater Good: Kalsim sees the 'culling' of humanity via anti-matter bombs as this, and even the alternative he comes up with (sterilising any survivors/POWs and leaving them on a planet to die of old age) would have the same effect. When confronted by Arjuns father about his actions, Kalsim responds:"I wonder if there could have been another way. Human conquest is as inevitable as your growth. There are no future generations, for any other race, with you alive"“I have killed a lot more living beings than I like to recall. But I have to believe that somewhere, for how we slowed Earth’s expansion, there’s a hatching who will live to adulthood.”"I don’t hate humans for what they are. It wasn’t personal, it’s just the reality of the situation.”
- Nothing Personal: He doesn't hate predators... or so he claims. Killing them all is just his job.
- Pet the Dog: He decides to spare Arjun, and protects him when Zarn and Jala try to kill him.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Kalsim is this to Sovlin, becoming the new anti-human viewpoint character shortly after Sovlin turns himself over to the UN.
- Villainous Breakdown: He starts out utterly convinced in the superiority and necessity of the Federation and its methods, and even in his trial he is confident that his Federation ideology will win out whatever sentence humanity throws at him, especially because other "prey" species are attending it. However, he is increasingly frustrated and baffled by the decisions of what he perceives to be a Kangaroo Court heavily controlled by humans, becoming shocked and angered when Thyon, whom he considers a friend, speaks out against him. It all comes to a head when his verdict is revealed to be life imprisonment, which angers him as to who would think of such a decision until it is revealed to be a human decision, leaving him stunned silent as he is dragged off to prison.
- You Will Be Spared: He promises this to the pilot of a downed craft so that he may become a conserver of Earth's culture. The human refuses since that would amount to seeing all humans die, including his loved ones Kalsim refused to spare, much to Kalsim's confusion.
Jala
Tropes that apply to Jala include:
- Ax-Crazy: Jala is very violent, and loves killing predators in particular.
- Lack of Empathy: Jala has "predator disease", which seems to be the Federation equivalent of sociopathy. In particular, Jala shows no regret for coldly executing a dying Zarn who's slowing the group.
- Would Hurt a Child: She immediately suggest killing Arjun when he meets the group, racks his back with her talons when he flees the cobra, and finally tries to kill him again after killing Zarn.
Ambassador Jerulim
Tropes that apply to Jerulim include:
- "Ass" in Ambassador: Jerulim, the Krakotl ambassador, is absolutely vitriolic in his rhetoric against humanity, even suggesting to kill Noah, in spite of any Diplomatic Immunity!
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Does not take well the reveal that his species ate meat in the past and orders his own holdout worlds be bombed, which is thankfully refused.
