Characters / Wildermyth

This page describes the characters in Wildermyth.

The Heroes

The Player Character heroes are randomly generated, yet are able to seamlessly take part in story events based on their rankings in 11 personality values: Bookish, Coward, Goofball, Greedy, Healer, Hothead, Leader, Loner, Poet, Romantic, and Snark. Generally, the top two personality values will decide the hero's role during events and color their dialogue.

Personality only affects role playing, story, and eligibility for certain events. It has no direct impact on any combat stats. For that reason, it's possible to build many well-known character archetypes, such as Warrior Poet, or some rather unlikely combos.

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• Cowardly Lion: Coward heroes are very open about their concerns and fears, but it doesn't stop them from pulling off whatever heroics need to be done. It's less that they're cowardly, and more that they act like ordinary people faced with a choice to either fight monsters, or to sit back and allow the world to end.
• The Heart: Healer heroes are defined by their compassion. They see the hidden vulnerability in everyone, and they are always ready with gentle words or a spot of empathy for those in need.
• Hot-Blooded: Hothead heroes are recklessly aggressive toward monsters, often (and loudly) expressing their desire to punch something in the face or hack it to bits with their weapon.
• Flowery Elizabethan English: Downplayed for Poet heroes. They don't speak archaically or rhyme. Rather, they lace their speech with evocative imagery and metaphor, turning even casual conversation into a heartfelt soliloquy.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Romantic heroes, of all the personalities, see themselves as being heroes first and monster-slayers second. They have a notably inflated idealism and sense of self-worth, but always for the sake of defending the weak and innocent.
• Only in It for the Money: Downplayed for Greedy heroes. The word "Greed" is a misnomer here, as these heroes follow the stereotypical adventurer motivation of "kill monsters and loot their stuff", with saving the world as an incidental benefit. They tend to be materialistic and possessive, but rarely in any way that's not Played for Laughs.
• Safety in Indifference: Loner heroes are introverts, seeing a big hero group as a mutually convenient means to an end (defeating the monster threat), and little more.
• The Smart Guy: Many plot events select the hero with the top Bookish value (besides the Leader) as the one to read a book or do some research. This can create some odd moments if it has to select someone whose Bookish value is third or fourth in line behind their most dominant personality traits.
• Spock Speak: Bookish heroes are often more verbose than they need to be, using longer words and phrases when something shorter might have gotten the same point across.
• Standardized Leader: Leader heroes are fairly generic and inoffensive. Their two key features are their inclusive, team-player personality, and the fact that many plot events will select the hero with the highest Leader value as the primary speaker. This allows the player to easily manipulate which of their heroes is the de facto leader just by tweaking this score. It doesn't need to be that hero's top value, it just needs to be higher than everyone else's Leader value.
• The Snark Knight: Snarky heroes are self-described cynics, ready with a sarcastic barb for everyone and everything, self included.

Gorgons

An eldritch take on the mythical stone-gazers. Neither gorgeous nor humanoid, Gorgons are an ancient race of tentacled beings that in the far past were forced to recede beneath the earth, and now seek to reclaim the world they. Led by a massive Gorgon named Ulstryx, the Gorgons seek to terraform the planet back to their liking, and make still all life that is not their own.

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• Always Chaotic Evil: Unlike the other monster factions who can sometimes be reasoned with and have benign members who may help you or even join your party, the gorgons are shown to be universally wicked supremacists who seek only humanity's destruction. They don't even get along with the other monsters, one of your biggest allies in stopping Ulstryx are the Deepists.
• And I Must Scream: Though being turned to stone entirely is treated like death, certain events indicate that animals partially corrupted by the gorgons are still conscious to a degree, and in pain.
• Eldritch Abomination: Gorgons, especially the most powerful ones, approach this. They exist under the Earth, capable of bending life to their will both indirectly and by outright controlling their minds. Their very presence is a literal disease to others, invariably leading to a zombie plague, and though they can be killed they cannot truly die.
• Fastball Special: Amusingly, Ulstryx can hurl one of his weaker units at the player as a swift action. Until the party starts thinning the herd (or unless they charge him), he will mostly do this during the boss fight.
• The Virus: Gorgon infestation spreads from contact and drives non-gorgon life crazy and violent before turning them to stone entirely. Gorgon armies are largely composed of animals forcibly puppeted by these means.
• Zerg Rush: Emphasized. Gorgon enemies are based mostly around sending huge waves of smaller, weaker units at your party to break through lines, bust through shields and eventually whittle the player down with sheer numbers. Their more powerful units (and the buffed versions of their earlier ones) are built to accentuate this, either by attacking more than once, by preventing the player's party from regrouping by pinning them or limiting their movement, or simply by summoning even more units.

Morthagi

A group of half-mechanical, half-zombie automatons, the Morthagi are the servants of an ancient civilization that is only known in the present as the Mortificers. Despite their masters no longer being among the living, they continue to follow their old orders while maintaining themselves - a problem given that they need the bone and flesh of the living to do the latter.

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• Acid Attack: A common trait among the Morthagi. Not only is an acidic fluid their main fuel source, a number of their units have weaponized it.
• Brain Uploading: It is possible for humans to upload their minds to Morthagi bodies, achieving immortality of a sort. One of the heroes is offered the chance to do exactly this in The Enduring War campaign.
• Breath Weapon: Weldlings, apparently originally created for portable cooking and forging, discharge their glowing embers with their Firebelch attack, scorching everything in a line.
• Mook Maker: Their Wardrobe unit, which continuously spawns weak Morthagi until brought down.
• Mundane Utility: They are the products of people who mastered blending steampunk technology and necromancy, who used it to make servants and laborers.
• Servant Race: The original point of the Morthagi. This is reflected in the names of many of their units - butlers, bellhops, groundskeepers, and so on.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Some of the ancient Mortificers had a very dim view of using the Morthagi technologies for immortality. One of them setting the Morthagi to hunt down the rogue Mortificers who took this route is the driving factor behind the events of the Morthagi campaign.

Deepist

Cultists dedicated to the worship of their underground, bull-headed god. Most Deepists, save for the minotaurs at the top of their society, are humans who either joined willingly, or were abducted and brainwashed as slaves, cannon fodder and sacrificial victims.

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• Our Minotaurs Are Different: Minotaurs are elite Deepist enemies, a secretive race Deepists regard as incarnations of their god.
• Was Once a Man: Deepists, for the most part, are transformed humans.
• Zerg Rush: Horn Children are very weak, typically with only 1-2 Health and minimal attack power. The problem is their tendency to show up in groups of a half-dozen, chipping off just enough health and armor in combination for a bigger Deepist enemy to swoop in and finish your weakened characters off.

Thrixl

Psychic, insect-like interlopers from the neighboring world of Terrafract, with a destructive curiosity about the world. They think they know what is best for humanity, unaware that their attempts at "helping" cause total chaos and horrifying affects on humans and their world.

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• Asteroids Monster: The Thrixl unit called Nightmare will split in two upon taking damage. Each half is just as strong as the original, but inherits only half of the original's remaining HP.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Thrixl really don't get things like mortality, change that is traumatic or painful, or a world that doesn't warp to perceptions.
• The Fair Folk: Psychic, glamour-weaving raiders from a strange and magical world with an alien perspective that results in them becoming unintentional horrors to humans.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: Seeker Thrixl have the ability to trap your units in a dreamstate, called Stasis.
• Painful Rhyme: A couple interlude events may have your heroes attempt to rhyme "Thrixl" with "fix'll".
• Psychic Powers: During story scenes, Thrixl are capable of all sorts of psychic powers, including Glamour, Telepathy, and trapping people in a Mental World.

Drauven

A race of humanoid lizards with connections to dragons, they dwell in forests and have tribal societies. They are the least overtly evil of of the monster factions, but their love of warmongering still makes them a serious threat to human villages and it isn't easy to reason with them.

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• The Beastmaster: Stormthroats can send their trained hawks to harry and harass players, applying a damage-over-time debuff until they take an action to shoo the bird away.
• Gradual Regeneration: The Drauven's innate ability, Drauven Blood, lets them recover 25% of their missing health at the end of their turn.
• In the Back: The Haunt serves the rogue's roll in Drauven ranks, coupling an innate stealth ability with an enhanced melee attack that lets them either attack twice or run to safety.
• Lizard Folk: Drauven are basically this, although some (including some Drauven) would call them dragon-folk. A few do look more draconian than others, and they are associated with dragons, particularly in the "All The Bones of Summer" campaign.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Many Drauven are described this way, from their Stump foot soldiers' proud bearing, to the joyful battle songs sung by their bards.

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