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Earth Shin
Earth Shin is another Earth and one of the three major political powers along with Earth Gimel and Earth Cheit. It was formerly under the complete control of the parahuman Goddess, but broke free from her control after Gold Morning.
As a whole
- Alternate History: A version of Earth where an extra landmass inside the Atlantic Ocean allowed for earlier settling of North America. In the present day, their technology is more advanced than that of Bet and Gimel, and they have different languages and cultures. And that's not counting Goddess's rule.
- Common Tongue: Goddess enforced English as a universal language here. Many people still don't speak it and require translators when dealing with Gimel, however.
- Muggle Power: The populace is deeply distrustful of Parahumans as a whole. Understandable, given their conquest at the hands of Goddess and her army of brainwashed Parahumans.
Government
Luis
The leader of "the Founders," a moderate faction on Earth Shin that cooperated with Goddess' reign.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: At least, he is one in comparison to the rest of Earth Shin's leadership as he doesn't seem to share their frothing hatred of parahumans.
Yosef
The leader of an anti-parahuman extremist faction of Earth Shin's leadership.
- Faux Affably Evil: He's capable of acting friendly even to his enemies for a few seconds when greeting them, but invariably ends up letting his hostility show through not much later.
- Sociopathic Soldier: Yosef generally comes across as one of these, seemingly viewing the atrocities that he partook in while fighting Goddess not as unfortunate necessities, but as outright badges of honor.
- Would Hurt a Child: He killed a child younger than Kenzie while fighting Goddess' forces.
Shin Defense Initiative
As a whole
A group of powerful clones made by Shin-allied parahumans to protect the world against threats like the Machine Army. Along with them there's a huge number of parahuman criminals that have sought refuge in the planet and that nominally serve their government. Their loyalty and competence is often put in doubt by the less parahuman-friendly on their host planet. They are technically allied to Gimel and the Wardens in much the same way that Shin is but the powers that be on Shin are more than willing to condition their support on a dime.
- Enemy Mine: They have the same enemies as Gimel, namely the Machine Army and the Titans, but the Wardens feel (justifiably) that their irresponsible methods cause more damage than good and only have a nominal alliance with them.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: For a highly influential team of powerful parahuman allies, it's interesting to note that the Wardens feel neither respect nor fondness for them.
- Gilded Cage: for several of its members: Shin greatly controls their movements and their often draconian politics put severe danger over their heads.
- Nominal Hero: They are technically allied to the Wardens and Earth Gimel, but the Wardens fear them in account of the shady background of their members and their lack of control or accountability.
- Our Giants Are Bigger: Their main weapons are a series of gigantic clones with superpowers, inciting fears in Gimel that they will precipitate the already delicate dimensional situation of the multiverse.
- Reformed Criminal: For a given value of "reformed". Lots of them are criminals that have been "touched" by the Red Queen, while others are simply personas non grata from Gimel that started to work for Earth S.
- Wild Card: Shin has a very strained relationship with Gimel and generally dislikes parahumans. They are the parahumans that serve Shin, most of them from Gimel. Their situation is complex and delicate both inside and out, basically.
- With Friends Like These...: While their choice in allies makes it so that it's hard to blame them, Shin is not nice to the people that technically are their own answer to the Wardens of the Protectorate.
Red Queen
Amy Dallon (Red Queen/Panacea)
Victoria's adoptive sister with whom she's heavily distanced herself. Has the ability to exert absolute control over any organism she touches, including the ability to reshape and modify its body and brain as she pleases. For tropes related to her appearance in Worm, see here.
Classification: Striker (Master/Trump)
- The Atoner: Zig-zagged. Worm seemed to end with Amy having gotten over the irrational elements of her self-loathing (such as Murder by Inaction for not destroying her health enough constantly healing people, worrying evil was In the Blood, etc.) and desiring to atone for her genuine wrongdoing. By Ward she's back to being a wreck over-extending herself and keeps taking worse and worse actions in the name of atoning for her sins, but she also feels that she's already atoned enough that she should be Easily Forgiven by Victoria and she will deny or excuse any specific wrongdoing when directly raised by herself or others.
- Black-and-White Insanity: Amy has a very warped way of thinking that's entirely out of touch with reality. One of the particulars is her stubborn insistence on seeing herself as a good person- people are either good or bad, no in between, and if she were a bad person, then she would have just used her power to make Victoria love her romantically and make Carol and Mark love her like their own daughter, and since she didn't do that, obviously she's a good person, right? Right?
- Cain and Abel: The Cain to Victoria's Abel. Even if you put aside the whole incident where she turned Victoria into a malformed garden of meat that can only experience happiness while Amy's around, she willingly works with Goddess with no Master persuasion required.
- Dating Catwoman: She dated Bianca/Goddess for some time while working with the Wardens.
- Death Seeker: When presented with the potentially lethal dream virus, she immediately breaks her recent resolution to avoid using her powers to overcome Marquis' attempt to stop her from taking it.
- Didn't Think This Through: A chronic problem with her. She tends to make monumentally poor decisions based both on her warped views of good and bad, as well as more wishful thinking on her part. The fact most of her experience is as a healer in a purely support role, rather than as a fighter or leader, also doesn't help her to predict the consequences of her actions.
- The Dragon: She's Goddess's most prominent minion and seems to be with her most of the time.
- Dude, She's Like in a Coma: She kissed Victoria while she was unconscious at least once, and is implied to have done so (and possibly done more than kissing) on several other occasions.
- Easily Forgiven:
- Played with but ultimately heavily averted. Amy seems to be operating under the assumption that things aren't nearly as bad between her and Victoria as they are and that they can repair their relationship fairly easily. Victoria, on the other hand, is nowhere near willing to forgive her and increasingly infuriated by Amy's inability to recognize this.
- This is however, played straight with Amy and Vicky's mother Carol, who constantly displays a willingness to excuse and overlook Amy's past and current acts no matter how increasingly egregious they are, much to Vicky and Sveta's disgust.
- Emotion Suppression:
- Victoria recounts how, when Amy returned Victoria to normal at the end of Worm, she suppressed Victoria's emotions before asking her whether she wanted Laser-Guided Amnesia, ostensibly so that the programmed obsession wouldn't bias the answer.
- After Goddess' death, she offers the prison's criminals the opportunity to submit to her power should they travel with her to Earth Shin. For those who agreed, she used her power to tone down the impulses and aspects of their personalities that got them into the prison in the first place. She also does something similar to Hunter, although that one comes with a side of enforced loyalty to Amy. A confrontation between Gimel and Shin sponsored Fallen that took this option shows it's not nearly as affective as Amy claims it to be.
- After exposure to a power with weird mental effects, Victoria eventually re-remembers how, before turning her into the Wretch, Amy had systematically suppressed each emotion that sprung up opposing what Amy was doing to her.
- Exhaustion-Induced Idiocy: The routine she describes to Yamada indicates she is heavily overworking herself and depriving herself of adequate sleep, which is likely a factor in many of her bad decisions. Her ability to understand herself and others seems to peak when the option to overwork herself is taken from her (after staying in the Birdcage a while, after agreeing to take a day off and get therapy).
- Fighting from the Inside: Since shards crave conflict, Amy's attempts to be a healer and not a fighter put her at odds with her power's desires, contributing an ambiguous amount to her Power Incontinence and mental problems. She tries to resist this influence and lists it among her Never My Fault justifications. When she starts building an army for Shin she wonders if she's finally doing what it wants.
- Has a Type: She isn't just attracted to Victoria; she has a thing for blond girls in general. Though that might be because they remind her of Victoria...
- The Heavy: Shares the role with Teacher. He's the more plot-relevant antagonist involved with the encroaching apocalypse, and Amy's stint as a genuine threat to Gimel through her giants doesn't last long, but the sheer trauma she's responsible for instilling in her sister—which Victoria spends the entire series working to overcome—makes her one of the most important, personal antagonists in the story.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: She is very easy to persuade when the subject isn't directly related to her neuroses. She works with the Wardens, then joins up with Goddess's takeover plans with only a minimum of complaining, then is persuaded by Chris to betray her and take the villains to Shin, and is then persuaded by Victoria to sit things out to get therapy.
- Heel Realization: talking to Victoria's therapist gets her to finally acknowledge several of her faults and apologize for her behavior. Unfortunately, the epilogues indicate that not all of it stuck.
- Hypocrite: Her lack of empathy and emotional intelligence results in several of these:
- She gives Jessica Yamada a "Reason You Suck" Speech about how over-working herself is starting to make her resentful and soon she'll reach a breaking point, while completely failing to connect this to Yamada's points about how Amy over-working herself is leaving her depressed, stressed, and exhausted.
- During an interlude, she notes to herself that Flashbang's lack of forcefulness means he can't act as a moral counter-balance to the villains they're working with, so it's up to her - failing to realize how susceptible she is to influence.
- Her call to the Wardens where she unleashes four giant jail-broken clones of other parahumans, is full of this, justifying herself by pointing to the various failings and lack of control of Gimel, while completely ignoring her own long history of the same; especially notable is her calling out their failures in Gold Morning, while she was also a part of the crises.
- Ignored Epiphany: Downplayed. Victoria's therapist gets her to finally acknowledge her problems, apologize for them, and have a plan to work on them. By the time of the epilogues she has a new therapist and is once again demonstrating It's All About Me tendencies and chomping at the bit to get back into healing, but has retained some of the insight (such as that she needs to be seeing a therapist, and that she and Victoria need space from each other).
- It's All About Me: She wants and tries to repair her relationship with Victoria, completely ignoring the fact that Victoria isn't and may never be comfortable around her again. Throughout her conversation with Jessica, she makes it clear that her priority is getting back with Victoria, and refuses to admit that Victoria wants nothing to do with her. She also makes it clear that she won't countenance any other possibilities, and becomes frustrated that Jessica refuses to endorse her dating Victoria.
- Lack of Empathy: She uses Jessica Yamada's overworking as a way to "win" their conversation rather than relating it back to her own problems, it doesn't sink in for her at all that Victoria hates her until her Telepathy confirms it for her, and she only understands how stressful being around someone who's hurt you can be after Victoria maybe drops rubble on her.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: One of the ways she can mess with people's brains is suppressing memories. When she returned Victoria to normal at the end of Worm, she offered to make her forget the whole Body Horror experience of the last few years, but Victoria asked to remember everything. Victoria still has gaps in her memory around the incident itself though, which an encounter with a mental power starts filling back in. Amy claims she blocked the memories to protect her.
- Love Makes You Evil: Many of the most horrific things she's done were motivated by her love for Victoria, or were mistakes she made because she was distracted by it.
- Meaningful Rename: As a hero, she called herself Panacea, a cure-all, since she restricted herself to only using her power to heal. Upon turning to villainy, she renames herself the Red Queen, an antagonistic character from Alice in Wonderland and a name suggested to her by insane former villain James Rinke (Nilbog), who is obsessed with the Alice mythos. It also relates to her prison tattoos which prominently feature the color red.
- Never My Fault:
- When confronted by Victoria on Shin, she constantly makes excuses when her mistakes are brought to light. In the rare instances where she admits some measure of personal responsibility, she still tries to argue on other factors causing the problem more than her. Probably best exemplified in 14.7:
Kenzie: There's nothing sadder than someone who's unwilling to change for the better.Amy: There's something sadder. When the rest of the world won't let you change.Victoria (thinking): There we go. One shot and you missed it.- In From Within 16.y, when Jessica Yamada confronts her over her past behavior, while Amy is filled with plenty of self-loathing, she doesn't quite make the jump to stop blaming others for her actions. Since this interlude is chronologically set at the beginning of the story, it's clear that she still hasn't learned anything by the time of the Shin arc.
- It's gotten to the point that she mentally tries to avoid responsibility for what she did to Victoria by saying that she wasn't the same person when she did those things, and even when she's willing to admit that her actions caused bad things to happen, she'll only concede that they were some of the cause.
- Powerful, but Incompetent: One of her defining characteristics. Her biokinetic power does have drawbacks (primarily it needs physical touch —but even then she's shown to be able to create bacteria) but it is almost universally considered one of the most powerful in the setting, allowing for the creation of an instant apocalypse if the user desired it. It could be used offensively and to create minions, and that's not even taking into account its potential for brainwashing and its hidden trump ability to unleash a shard's potential. Either for a hero or a villain, it is a power that would automatically take its users to the big leagues in terms of notoriety and effectiveness. Too bad that Amy has no creativity using it, either for heroic or villainous uses. Even back in Worm Taylor wondered to herself the kind of plays she would be able to make with a power like that, while noting that Amy simply was not comfortable with out-of-the-box thinking to do anything with it and just wanted to heal and that's it.
- Power Incontinence: Has some trouble controlling her power when she is stressed and/or upset, particularly when the person she is using her power on reminds her of Victoria:
- In Worm she lost control and altered Victoria's brain to make Victoria fall in love with her, then later lost control again while trying to heal Victoria and transformed her into a grotesque "garden of flesh" with too many hands, legs, faces, and other body parts, unable to move under her own power. In Ward, while trying to help some villains alter their personalities to make them less villainous she accidentally completely rewrites one teenage cape's personality, to the point that it is difficult for her to revert, because the girl has long blonde hair like Victoria does. Said cape being Hunter, the same girl who Victoria learned about at the hospital in Flare 2.2. It is also heavily implied, if not stated, that Amy used her status as "Victoria's sister" to get her to accept help. This caused severe changes to her personality and according to Chris, her Shard got involved in the process and "filled the gap", so Amy cannot revert the changes.
- Some of her other screw-ups include: Snapping a girl's spine, growing a bunch of ear holes into a person's head, and messing up an attempt to turn back the clock for a powerful politician in order to earn favors with Shin.
- Surprisingly, Ward also reveals some of her power incontinence wasn't as strong as it appeared. Near the end, Victoria recovers the memory of Amy starting to turn her into the Wretch. Amy had completely succeeded in saving Victoria from Crawler's acid, but then continually modified Victoria's emotions in real-time to undermine her objections and started the Body Horror intentionally. The drunk-like state Amy was in might have been a different kind of power incontinence, but she didn't lose control while fixing Victoria.
- Psycho Lesbian: Her character tab speaks for itself. Her romantic obsession with her sister, deluded view of the world and herself, and actions during and after the ninth arc makes her one of the most twisted characters in the series.
- Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: Ward reveals that her touch lets her not only get an instant understanding of people's biological makeup and maladies, but that this also gives her an understanding of their emotional makeup as well. This seems to have stunted her regular emotional intelligence, as she constantly misreads others (most prominently how Victoria's frequent and intense expressions of hatred towards Amy don't sink in; she only recognizes it once she gets a chance to touch her) and herself (which her power can't effect) when she can't rely on it.
- Sanity Slippage: Basically her entire character arc. While she started in Worm as a generally depressed and miserable person that had an unspoken crush on her sister, and used her power to heal under very strict guidelines; as the story progresses in Ward she's become someone who freely uses her power to alter the minds and bodies of numerous people to sometimes disastrous consequences, obstinately denies any personal responsibility while dismissing all forms of advice and criticism, deludes herself into believing she's still moral by not engaging in the worst acts she frequently entertains, becomes obsessed with her sister and is implied to have molested her while unconscious, and wears a living patch of Victoria's skin over her heart while working to create pseudo-Endbringers with Cryptid on Shin.
- Stalker with a Crush: Is completely obsessed with Victoria and has absolutely no inclination to try getting over her. Throughout her conversation with Jessica in From Within, she's not-so-subtly begging Jessica to endorse her trying to get back with Victoria, and becomes incensed when Jessica subtly refuses to do so and advises her to stay away from Victoria.
- The Starscream: She hatches a plan with Cryptid to kill Goddess and take over her army. It works.
- Tattooed Crook: She has numerous tattoos that she got during her time in the Birdcage.
- Telepathy: The biological knowledge she gets from those she touches includes their thoughts and emotions in real-time as well as details about their recent mindset. She uses this to give Jessica Yamada a "Reason You Suck" Speech and in the past used it to systematically chop off any thought Victoria had that would lead her to insist Amy stop what she was doing.
- Tragic Dream: Her vision for what forgiveness from Victoria would look like and her idea of what an acceptable romantic relationship with someone other than Victoria would be like are nearly impossible:Amy: I want to skip forward to the point where I've known her for ten years. Where we've been there for each other's trigger events, where we went to high school, middle school, and most of elementary school together. And I had that. I almost had that.
- Unreliable Narrator: Her interludes let us see her self-delusions first-hand. This is also leveraged for the twist that Amy a bit more in control of herself than she let on when she first altered Victoria in Worm.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: In Shardspace, Victoria sees a memory of her and Amy as children before either had triggered. Their casual sisterly intimacy, including Victoria sticking her feet in Amy's face and Amy being grossed out by it, contrasts starkly with Amy's later obsession with Victoria's body to the extent that the Body Horror form appealed to her and with their antagonistic relationship in the present day.
- Villain with Good Publicity: One of the most incisive takedowns of this trope. Showing what happens when you give one overpowered narcissist the benefit of the doubt because they unemotionally helped thousands while the one person they passionately abused is lower on the totem pole.
- Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: Would like to resume a continuation of her relationship with Victoria because she's not bad and/or crazy. That one time was a total fluke; it's been X-n days since she bio-raped anybody, and total accidents/neglecting to wear gloves obviously don't count. It's not deliberately creating hideously rampaging biological horror that counts!Amy: "The point is, I could, very easily, but I haven't. You know how bad I was at my lowest point. You should have a sense of how I’ve been doing since. But I didn't. I fantasize about it, because of course I do, when I'd rather have Victoria back in her inhuman shape than not have her in my life at all. I love her. More than Carol. More than Mark. More than Crystal. And I know she doesn't have anyone else. But I don't do anything. That’s what’s important."
- Workaholic: She runs herself ragged with her healing, leading to Exhaustion-Induced Idiocy. After she has her Heel Realization and tries to swear off using her power at all, she's given up on the idea by the epilogues.
The Traitor (Spoiler character)
Chris Elman (Cryptid)
A member of Breakthrough who stayed with Red Queen even after being freed of Goddess's control. His tropes can be found on the Breakthrough page. Dot
One of Nilbog's creations who has taken to Amy as a new master.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: She can be very sweet (in an
Ugly Cute kind of way) and even behaves humanely. But, she is simultaneously very unhuman in her thought processes. Her morality is strongly skewed by the drives 1) to survive (her own survival, her group's survival and her leader's survival all rate highly) and 2) to serve her idea of who Nilbog is. - Disproportionate Retribution: Her reaction to Nilbog telling her that he won't come back to his creations is to start planning to steal a part of the Machine Army and let it infest the city.
- Killer Rabbit: She's a tiny goblin with a box cutter who can and will kill anything in her path. She's also happy to drink human blood.
- Mercy Kill: Kills the superhero Burnish, who was dying of Machine Army-inflicted wounds.
- Theme Naming: She's a child of Polka.
- Undying Loyalty: To Nilbog, despite having never met him before the interlude.
Crock O'Shit
Crock O'Shit (formerly Fidelis)
An inmate in the prison, who eventually joins with Earth Shin.Classification: Changer/Thinker
- Animal Motifs: Crocodiles, though they have no actual connection to even the appearance of her powers.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: The underlining cause of the Protectorate's issue with her when she was a hero, as her changer state is described as "unsettling." After becoming a villain, her Changer form has become much more monstrous.
- Body Horror: Her Changer state is powered by "absorbing the ugliness of lies," and it shows. Her face seems to melt off her head to expose long rows of sharpened teeth, her body parts elongate and twist as if they were braided, and the whole thing webs into claws and teeth and scales. When she changes enough she loses all humanoid form, becoming nothing but a "pod" from which Changer mutations stretch out, akin to a fully organic Hookwolf."Branching, forking limbs formed a webwork between one arm and one leg, bristling with claws. The overall form was more like something between a naked mole-rat and a bat without wings, with skin like a callus, only resembling scale when it was pebbly and not a sheet of the stuff. The tattoos stood out and multiplied as the skin did, casting whole areas of her in blue-green. There was more to it, he saw. Folds and flaps parted as she breathed or moved one way or the other, and he saw hidden teeth or limbs, buried within."
- Boxed Crook: Like everyone in the Birdcage, she was freed for Gold Morning. But even with that and the amnesty established afterwards, she was bad enough that she was put back in the box.
- Dead Guy on Display: After killing a crime boss and taking over his organization she left his mutilated, partially eaten body on the floor for a full day as she conducted business as a demonstration to his lackeys.
- Empathic Shapeshifter: Her power causes her to "absorb" the ugliness of lies, which charges her Changer power.
- Face–Heel Turn: Is revealed to be a former marine who joined the Protectorate, but eventually was dropped and became a villain after a mysterious incident.
- From Camouflage to Criminal: A marine-turned-superhero who ended up becoming a criminal kingpin, cannibal, and general villain, ending up in the Birdcage as a result. Though it turns out she wasn't so heroic as a marine either, as she was the leader of a drug-running ring and actually Triggered under the stress of an investigation that started after someone cut her product poorly and people died.
- The Hedonist: She casually talks about herself like she's the scum of the Earth and genuinely doesn't care. So long as she has her servants, booze, drugs, and other fleshy pleasures cared for, she's fine with just about anything else.
- I'm a Humanitarian: She took over a criminal organization by eating a third of the former crime boss, starting at the genitals and ending at the throat. Of note is that there is absolutely no mention of her killing him first. Whether she'd done it before, she definitely kept it up afterwards until "half-eaten body" became a well-known modus operandi of hers.
- Just Between You and Me: She tells Armstrong about her Mysterious Past when she's about to kill him, then gets interrupted when he reveals that he's pulling an Engineered Public Confession on her.
- Living Lie Detector: Her power allows her to detect when people are lying. This is actually a side effect of her real power, as she can feel when she "absorbs" lies and thus tell when someone is being dishonest. Her powers also works with the spirit of dishonesty, so Exact Words can't hide deception from her.
- Mysterious Past: An investigation into a crime ring led her into being disowned by the Protectorate and becoming a villain, but the details are shrouded in mystery. All they know is that she went deep undercover with a crime ring, cut off contact, and eventually resurfaced as a villain with tattoos, filed teeth, and blood on her face from when she bit out a man's throat.
- Small Role, Big Impact: She only appears briefly during Gleaming, but her choice to tell Goddess that she had nearly succeeded in aligning Cryptid when she actually had not is what enables him to kill her.
- Super-Strength: Her Changer ability gives her enhanced strength.
- Tattooed Crook: She has the words "Crock" and "Shit" tattooed under her eyes, as well as scales inked onto her arms.
Coalbelcher
A parahuman prisoner who fell under Goddess' sway and later moved to Earth Shin.
Classification: Blaster/Brute
- Glass Cannon: His powers give him major offensive abilities, but no real defensive ones.
- Required Secondary Powers: Averted. His power gives him a level of Super-Strength but little to no enhanced durability to go with it.
- The Rival: Was part of a group that challenged Cinereal, but was the only one to survive and succeed as a villain while opposing her.
- Super Spit: His primary power allows him to spit large quantities of a combustible liquid that he can detonate either immediately or afterwards.
- Super-Strength: Has enhanced strength to go with his Super Spit.
Hunter
A young cape just getting the hang of her powers.
Classification: Shaker
- Hope Spot: She initially went to the Parahuman Asylum, but later travelled to Shin to see if Amy could help her fix her powers. This might have been possible... but unfortunately for Hunter, she reminded Amy of Victoria. Things went downhill from there.
- Humanoid Abomination: When reality breaks, Hunter's one of the capes who becomes a Titan.
- Not Himself: Amy and Hunter's shard drastically changed her personality, making her more manic and uncontrolled.
- Power Incontinence: Her power was initially uncontrollable, but Panacea managed to fix that. Unfortunately, the personality change means that she'll often use her power just for the sake of using it.
- Razor Floss: Her power creates a web of black wires around her that cuts anything that touches them.
Marquis
An influential Brockton Bay villain and former Birdcage inmate. Also Amy Dallon's biological father. He has some undisclosed influence over the villains in Earth N and joins his daughter after she leaves for Earth Shin to provide moral support. Rarely if ever shows his full hand.
Has the ability to manipulate the bones of his own body, which he has refined to great effect.
- Bad with the Bone: His power includes manipulating the bones of his own body to the degree of creating constructs. He's also quite known for being particularly good at finding creative ways to take advantage of powers, so much so that Lord Of Loss credits him with helping improve his combat abilities.
- The Corrupter: He tries to steer Amy to villainy, but in this case it's less "away from heroism" and more "away from aimless insanity".
- Even Evil Has Standards: A strong proponent of this even back in his Brockton Bay gangster days. He doesn't attack women or children and respects the Unwritten Rules.
- Man of Wealth and Taste: Noted by Antares and several others to always dress nicely, and he's a villain.
- Papa Wolf: There's no doubt that he loves his daughter dearly and that he would go to any length to help her, but it's deconstructed in that this includes enabling her worst impulses and motivating her towards villainy.
- Silver Fox: He's more middle-aged than outright elderly, but he's noted as an attractive older man in-universe.
Flashbang
Mark Dallon
Victoria's biological father and Amy's adopted one, he joins Amy in Shin in a desperate attempt to prevent her from slipping further down the path of insanity.He himself has struggled with depression and has an introverted personality often at odds with the eccentric figures surrounding him.
Has the power to create light-based objectives that explode according to his desires.
Classification: Blaster
- Parents as People: Mark is trying to redeem himself as a father from what he sees as his own failures during Amy's childhood. He's shown to constantly be on the line on how to react to her actions and overall is deeply unhappy.
- Token Good Teammate: the only unambiguously heroic member of the group and deeply uncomfortable with the dynamics surrounding him.
The Giants
The Giants
The result of Red Queen and Cryptid combining blank-slate clones with genetic material from various capes, separating the power from people and creating potent weapons.Gibborim Knight
A giant based off of Chevalier. He looks like a giant of a man with gray skin and brutish features, whose body parts occasionally refract into multiple translucent versions.- The Ace: Of the first set of Giants made, he's the one most capable in a direct fight, can stand up to Titans, and take a hit even from their jail-broken attacks, and his dimensional powers are stated to being a direct counter to the Machine Army.
- Improvised Armor: As he travels towards the Machine Army, he collects materials to twist and refine into armor.
Mother of Mothers
A giant based off of Nursery. She looks like a woman wreathed in a draping of flesh so thin it's almost translucent, with veins webbing through that flesh with enough density to preserve her modesty more than the flesh itself.Classification: Master
- Body Horror: Much like Nursery, her power is pretty nightmarish. The ground around her becomes flesh, and that flesh is torn bloody from the other side as her minions claw free. These minions come in both male and female versions. The males are, in Victoria's words, "violently erect," to the point that she could imagine someone getting cut in half by the blood pressure if it were to get pricked by a pin. The females are all pregnant and wet "from inner thigh to heel."
- Meat Moss: She covers both herself, and the surrounding ground in it.
- Zerg Rush: When fighting the Ophion Titan The Giant resorts to generating massive volumes of flesh. As the Ophion Titan is capable of mutating and manipulating organic material, and therefore turning it against the Mother of Mothers the Giant attempts to overwhelm it with the sheer volume of flesh.
The Goddess Giant
A giant based off of Goddess.- Combat Clairvoyance: The Giant's version of Goddess' danger sense allows her to see attacks coming during the middle of a pitched battle.
- Mind over Matter: She has telekinetic powers like Goddess did, but dramatically enhanced in power, allowing her to create large numbers of carbon nanotube chains in the midst of a fight.
- More than Mind Control: She has some power to control capes, and even unpowered humans, though one that specifically propagates itself through media.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Due to her power, we don't get a look at her, or even a description, when she first shows up in the story.
The Mathers Giant
A giant based off of Mama Mathers. She looks like a tall, thin woman with silver hair and pale skin when perceived through her mental projections.- Brown Note: The Mathers Giant's powers are similar to Mama Mathers', but far stronger, even allowing her to instantly take over all five senses after she is perceived for even the briefest moment.
- Master of Illusion: The Simurgh takes the Mathers Giant over for her own ends as she battles the heroes in the old Cauldron base and makes good use of it. The Giant is able to create elaborate illusions covering all five senses; Vicky is exposed to a wide range of illusions that, among other things, cause her to see the Simurgh as present when she is not there, find the bodies of several supposed victims that are actually alive and well, including Imp, and be tricked into fighting fellow heroes who are still sane. Vicky is led on a wild goose chase for most of the chapter before Dinah finally helps her deactivate the Giant with Chris' syringe by ascertaining its true location.
Other
Goddess
Bianca (Goddess)
A cluster-trigger who figured out how to absorb the powers of her cluster-mates, becoming one of the most powerful Parahumans alive in the process. Cauldron moved her to Earth Shin, which she then conquered by mind-controlling every single cape on that world. Losing her powers after Gold-Morning, she seeks to regain them and gather an army of capes to regain her empire. Her powers are very strong and include large-scale general telekinesis, a danger sense, the ability to mind control others by "aligning" them to her cause emotionally, and a defensive power that she can tune to defeat specific threats one at a time.Classification: Master; Trump; Mover; Shaker; Thinker
- Arc Villain: Goddess' attempts to take over the parahuman prison, "aligning" Breakthrough to her cause in order to do so, make her the primary antagonist for the eighth and ninth arcs of the series.
- Ascended Extra: She was pulled into the battle against Scion by Khepri, but otherwise didn't appear in Worm.
- Brainwashed: What she basically does to capes. Except, she is incessant that, no, that is not what she does. She "aligns" them to her side of things. Yeah.
- Big Bad Wannabe: At first glance, Goddess appears set to be a major antagonist whose return to power will spell trouble for the whole world. However, her staggering incompetence leads to Teacher outmaneuvering her several times during her attempt to recruit an army, with only the aligned Breakthrough keeping her on top before she's suddenly killed and usurped by Cryptid and the Red Queen.
- Character Death: Cryptid kills her in Gleaming 9.15.
- Color Motifs: Blue.
- Combo Platter Powers: She's a cluster-trigger who subsumed the shards of the rest of her cluster. Tattletale specifies that she has a total of six powers, including:
- The ability to "align" parahumans viewing her. The people affected will retain their personality, but have their primary goals shifted to match those of Goddess. It can be used through live video, or even video of video. It also seems to have an amnesia effect, since Breakthrough initially has varying reactions to the change, but before long can't identify what's specifically different and eventually Victoria has to rely on her Master-Stranger expertise to recognize there's been any change at all. This is her primary power. When enhanced by her battery, the effect can be relayed through her thralls - parahumans can become aligned from viewing aligned parahumans, not only Goddess herself (which Crystalclear identifies as happening to him via Breakthrough).
- A powerful telekinesis that lets her fly and tear down buildings.
- A Trump power that lets her tune abilities and defenses, protecting her against powers used repeatedly against her.
- A power battery she can tap to enhance her other powers and refills over time.
- A versatile danger sense that not only warns her of immediate and upcoming threats to her, but also tells her the danger of actions she wants to take.
- And presumably a teleporting power that she can't use because its primary holder killed themselves.
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: In a way, she's this to Skitter from Vicky's perspective. Whereas Skitter was a cape who utilized ingenious tactics to compensate for a relatively unimpressive power, and genuinely wanted to make things better even while becoming a villain, Goddess has an array of more directly threatening powers, but whose modus operandi boils down to either "aligning" someone under her control, or simply smashing the threat if she can't, and conquered a world out of a spoiled sense of self-entitlement while merely claiming it fixed things. Even their mind control powers contrast, as Khepri's ability had a hard range and merely took complete control of the body, while leaving the individual's mind untouched. Goddesses' ability, however targets the mind itself to shift a person's emotional responses, and can be utilized just from perceiving her even through Tinker tech cameras or sensory powers.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Cryptid rips her open "from sternum to pelvis" and pulls out her organs. Victoria describes her body as looking almost torn in half.
- The Ditz: Of the rather rarefied, preppy, and spoiled kind. We're basically saying that she isn't exactly grounded in mundane reality, here. She's not thick, as such... but, both her gaps in and very strange takes on various aspects of awareness, common sense and knowledge are almost terrifying to behold. And, very few of her thralls can hope to think around her re"alignment" of them enough to adequately correct her.
- The Dreaded: To pretty much everyone that knows about her, due to her sheer strength and ability to control others. This is especially true to the people of Earth Shin, who were brutally oppressed by her during her reign. It's telling that when Breakthrough decides to negotiate with her, they do so miles away through the use of Kenzie projections, and she still manages to align them.
- Early-Bird Cameo: In Scarab 25.6 of Worm a list of Endbringer attacks mentions "The Woman In Blue" as the target/consequence of a Simurgh attack in 2012. The actual details of the attack or the Simurgh's goals when doing this remain to be seen.
- Even Evil Has Standards: As one of Ward's foils to Amy, Goddess makes liberal use of her More than Mind Control ability when assembling her army, but pointedly avoids using it on the person she's dating. This ends up biting her when she and Chris betray her.
- Evil Overlord: Of Earth Shin, having control over all of its parahumans.
- Fish out of Water: Years before Worm started, after Bianca stole her clustermates' powers, Cauldron moved her to Earth Shin before she could become a problem on Earth Bet.
- I Have Many Names: Goddess, the Woman In Blue, the Blue Empress...
- Loophole Abuse:
- You know how most cluster triggers are some form of messed-up kiss/kill? Well, she got around that... by "aligning" the others so they basically handed her the reins to the whole thing. The others escaped her during Gold Morning, and she's had to hunt them down to regain her powers. By the time she shows up in the story, she's found all of them except Megan, the power battery primary.
- Since her alignment isn't direct mind control, it's possible to disobey her and to act against her with enough mental gymnastics, which Victoria exploits while under her thumb.
- Meta Power: Goddess has the ability to "align" any parahumans she sees with her primary Master power, and only parahumans, even over video communication, which would imply some manner of influence over the Shards. It's not outright mind control, but any parahuman under her thrall has their minds realigned to have their value systems be in line with Goddess' well-being.
- More than Mind Control: How her Master power seems to work. People are "aligned" to consider her well-being their ultimate priority but otherwise act as they normally would.
- Sheltered Aristocrat: Yes and no. To trigger, your shelter has to have failed dramatically at least once. However, her general attitude isn't... well... normal. Victoria and others theorize that she's spoiled and sheltered through and through, however. And, her rolling a natural twenty on her powers hasn't helped her in becoming grounded at all.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Goddess only appears in person for one arc, at the end of which she is killed off. However, this has profound repercussions on the rest of the story: Chris leaves Breakthrough and reveals his true colors, Amy gets in a position of power, Breakthrough becomes more relevant and connected in the cape scene, Shin-Gimel politics are affected, and the biggest Parahuman prison gets destroyed, leading to the events of the next few arcs, among other things. The backstory of her cluster is also tied to March's backstory, who is herself a major antagonist.
- Superpower Lottery: She won it twice in a way. Not only is she a cluster trigger, which gives her a greater range of abilities (and all of which happened to be very useful in their own rights), but one of her powers grants mind control, which allowed her to take over the other members, and avoid the normal kiss/kill issues of cluster triggers.
- Trapped in Villainy: Near the end of Gleaming, she admits that she doesn't feel she has a choice except to retake her position as ruler of Shin. Her sheer power and potential influence mean that, like how Contessa was captured by Teacher the moment she tried to step away, other powerful figures will kill or co-opt her if she doesn't take steps to secure herself. Sure enough, Cryptid kills her not long after.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Goddess won the power lottery, and took over an entire world. Both due to the strength of her powers, and the fact that Earth Shin has fewer and weaker capes than Earth Bet, it's likely she's never had a real struggle accomplishing her goals. Throughout Arc 9, she becomes frustrated whenever she ends up in a situation that she can't solve using her mind control or raw strength, and has to get talked down from several Attack! Attack! Attack! strategies, lest she unnecessarily escalate the situation. When she realizes that Teacher, a better mastermind than she will ever be, has her trapped in the prison's dimension, she goes into full-blown panic, and orders Victoria to find a solution.
- Weaksauce Weakness:
- She cannot "align" non-capes. The alignment has its limitations if the thrall has enough self-awareness and creativity. She also doesn't get any feedback as to whether her alignment succeeded or not. This proves to be her downfall when Crock o' Shit tells her that she almost succeeded in aligning Cryptid and she spends a moment too long trying it again.
- Her danger sense is often vague, failing to helpfully communicate non-localized threats like Gold Morning, Teacher sealing off the prison dimension to leave her to starve, or alignment-immunity meds successfully being passed around and apparently only works for actions, not intents. Even though Amy was plotting to take her down for an indeterminate amount of time, Goddess wasn't alerted to this because Amy didn't actually do anything to her, leaving the dirty work to Chris.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Sees herself as one, off-handedly mentioning that she took over to "solve all of the problems".
