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Unavowed is a 2018 Urban Fantasy Adventure Game, developed by Wadjet Eye Games. It takes place in the same universe as the developer's previous games, The Shivah and The Blackwell Series, albeit with a markedly sharper focus on said setting's fantastic and supernatural elements. Writer and head-developer David Gilbert have cited The Dresden Files, Hellblazer, and White Wolf's Old World of Darkness as strong influrences for the game's story and atmosphere.

One year ago, your life was changed forever. As you were going about your rather mundane life in New York City, you had a chance encounter with the supernatural, resulting in you getting possessed by an especially insidious demon. The demon has been in control of your body for all that time, using it to spread death and horror around the city. Fortunately, you were finally tracked down by the secret organization known as the Unavowed, a ragtag bunch of experts in the supernatural sworn to protect the innocent against the forces of evil from beyond, and they were able to exorcise the demon, leaving you in control of yourself again.

Unfortunately, your old life is in tatters. You have no home, no friends, and are wanted by the police for all the grisly crimes the demon carried out while wearing your skin. The Unavowed, desperate for support in a time where hostile supernatural actively is sharply on the rise for unknown reasons, and seeing your potential after your ordeal from beyond the veil, decides to recruit you into their organization, putting their trust in you to help turn the tide.


Tropes:

  • 11th-Hour Superpower: The final location sees the Player Character discover the ability to summon any supernatural allies they may have made to help with a problem.
  • Abstract Apotheosis: Calliope The Muse and Stan Bates while he's unwittingly in control of her stolen powers is a spirit of art.
  • Alchemic Elementals: Jordan the East Village cultist turns himself into a fire elemental by accident as the result of a spell gone wrong. Or horribly right, since he was just trying to keep himself warm. Various other creatures end up covering water, ice, wood/nature, and darkness. All of these, along with a spirit of art, can be summoned to aid the party during The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
  • Action Girl: Both female companions. Mandana, being half-Jinn, is the team's physical muscle. She's a deadly swordswoman and can use her scimitar to physically pry open locked doors and vents. Her strength also lets her climb, run, and jump considerably faster and farther than any normal human. Vicki, on the other hand, is a Badass Normal, and a crack shot with a handgun.
  • Actor Allusion: Logan Cunningham plays Loganinvoked Brown — after having played another hero with a floating, zany sidekick in Primordia (2012), also published by Wadjet Eye.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: Demons are said to operate on this, causing havoc by dealing with humans. The one that possessed your character however appears to have done so with a purpose, making it a subversion. Further subverted when it turns out you were playing as the demon (or rather, daimon) the whole time, who didn't exactly approve of the bloodshed, meaning that not all of them are inherently evil. Though whether a knowledge spirit counts as a demon is somewhat unclear.
  • Amazing Technicolor Population: Mandana's father, Kalash, being a full-blooded Jinn, has blue skin. Naturally the tone and nature of the game allows you to comment on this.
  • Ambiguously Brown: The male Player Character has light brown skin and dark curly hair, but your background beyond that is never specified. Mandana is Irish on her Fiery Redhead mother's side and a blue-skinned Jinn on her father's — she has brown skin, black hair, and wears a hijab, so Jinns in this case seem more than just culturally related to people of Middle Eastern descent.
  • And the Adventure Continues: In the "Good" and "Best" endings, we see that the members of the Unavowed are still out there, fighting supernatural threats as a team. The epilogue has the team coming off another mission and are discussing late-night meal plans when an insectoid abomination/Evil Overlord suddenly materializes in the middle of the street. The team gives a collective Badass Boast — and the thing does a take at the camera, then disappears back from whence it came.
  • Arc Villain: Usually a spoiler, given the episodic mystery format of the game, although about as many of them are equal parts victims of the Big Bad's machinations:
    • The East Village: Jordon the cultist-turned-fire elemental, who accidentally burned down a homeless shelter during his transformation.
    • The Bronx: The ghosts in the Edding house, who the Big Bad goaded into killing each other so that their rage would create a poltergeist.
    • Staten Island: The merfolk General, kidnapping locals to fight a war on land in another dimension, and Captain Joy Harrison, who the General gave More than Mind Control powers in order to pressgang those same locals for him.
    • The North Woods/Central Park: Galene the Dryad, an old enemy of the Unavowed who holds Mandana and Eli hostage in exchange for a wish from Kalash which she intends to use to return all of Manhattan to the pristine forested state of 400 years ago.
    • Brooklyn: Stan Bates, a retired painter who has unwittingly been granted the powers of a muse and is driving people to feverish, self-destructive bouts of creative obsession.
    • Wall Street: Roy Fellows, the new CEO of Grant City Trust, actually a high-ranking member of the Unseelie Court, none other than Robin Goodfellow, who's stolen a child and ruined several lives in a bid to gain an heir who can rule over a kingdom in the mortal world on the Fae's behalf.
    • Chinatown: The Ba Jiao Gui, an eastern dragon trapped in the netherworld between life and death. She and Kevin Huang are tormenting each other, but in this case neither one actually did anything to anyone else — it's all purely the Big Bad.
  • Ascended Extra: Logan's spirit guide, KayKay, is revealed to be Detective Pierro's daughter Kendra from The Blackwell Series.
  • Awful Truth: The version of the origin story the player goes through first, isn't what actually happened back then. It is a result of Melkhiresa's mind melding together with the Summoner's upon their summoning, and them getting so utterly horrified by what they found in the Summoners mind, that they decided to suppress the memory of what happened that evening and turn it into some more acceptable. Later in the game, when the Summoner returns, Melkhiresa has had time to process everything, and the real version of the night of their summoning plays out.
  • Badass and Child Duo: Spirit medium Logan Brown and his spirit guide KayKay, the latter being the ghost of ten-year-old girl.
  • Badass in a Nice Suit: Eli wears a classic suit-and-tie ensemble under his trenchcoat, and it is noticed by the Player Character that due to his fire powers it never gets wet in the rain (because he uses his magic to evaporate the raindrops just before contact).
  • The Bartender: A possible background for the Player Character. Appropriately, this choice of background means that you can access dialogue choices that are based more around being a trustworthy and sociable person and making people open up about their problems to you.
  • Benevolent Genie: Kalash, although he says he doesn't grant wishes. Unless circumstances absolutely require it, that is — he says that he doesn't grant wishes, not that he can't.
  • Big Bad: The spirit Eli exorcises from the Player Character at the very beginning of the game is responsible for all the horror the Unavowed spend the entire game undoing, with no idea of its name or overarching goal. They're also the original human spirit of the body which the Player Character is inhabiting.
  • Bittersweet Ending: The best endings still have the Player Character separated from their new friends in the Unavowed, either by death or by being freed from the human body they're possessing. Though their friends move on and continue to fight the good fight.
  • Brainwashing for the Greater Good: The Arc Villain for Staten Island believes they're doing this, though the general consensus among your teammates is that they're just fooling themselves.
  • Broken Record: From the good people of Staten Island, regarding the recent rash of murders: every one of them, just tragedies. That's all they were, just tragedies. Not quite a Madness Mantra since they're not even aware they're doing it. Also in the "cop" origin where everyone says the fight that didn't actually happen was "like a Bruce Lee movie", every single one of them (the game's also given away by one of the people who says that not knowing who that is).
  • Brooklyn Rage: Vicki has the requisite snark and foul mouth, and twelve years on the NYPD. She generally calms down after her introductory chapter, but she can still work up a pretty good head of Staten Island Rage when the need arises.
  • Brought Down to Normal: Calliope — she prefers Calli — actually revels in losing her muse powers, since while she could inspire creativity, in all her three-thousand years of life, she could never once enjoy anything.
  • Bruiser with a Soft Center: Played with with Logan, a muscular black man with tribal tattoos and multiple piercings... who's the Non-Action Guy out of your possible party members, and generally the voice of reason and probably your most consistently compassionate teammate.
  • The Cameo: The hostess of Pushing Up Roses appears at the very beginning of the "cop" origin sequence.
  • Cannot Tell a Lie: As a half-Jinn, Mandana is compelled to always tell the truth if she is asked a direct question. She explains that all Jinns feel unbearable physical pain if they attempt to tell a lie, but also that they are still capable of trickery and subterfuge through the use of Exact Words, and laments that the latter is why many people don't fully trust Jinns.
  • Cant Hold Their Liquor: Nice Guy Logan is described by everyone who knew him before AA as having been a mean drunk. He knows it, and entering a bar leads to a cutscene where he needs to steel himself against the prospect. Despite knowing this, the game doesn't give you the option of leaving him outside when you go into Vinny's on Staten Island (probably for in-engine reasons and the game does acknowledge it in dialogue, but still).
  • Captain Obvious: Played for Laughs early in the game, where the Player Character, still adjusting to the existence of the supernatural can respond like this to the strange sights they are confronted by. It almost always elicits a funny response from the other characters:
    Player Character: (to Kalash) You're blue.
    Kalash: No, I am Kalash.
  • Cavalry Refusal: Early on, Kalash attempts to make an appeal to the Unavowed's chapter in Dublin for assistance in getting the current string of supernatural crises under control. Their leader, Lady Aralax, turns down his request, saying that they are currently having too many problems of their own to deal with.
  • Character Customization: Downplayed, but considerably more than you'd usually get in a point-and-click adventure game. You first get the choice of whether you want to play as a male or female protagonist, but their looks are set from the beginning. You do, however, also get choice of defining who your character was before the demon possessed them, by choosing from three different origins stories, which further vary depending on your gender.
  • Character Overlap: Many of them, not to mention the World of Blackwell's habit of reusing surnames for characters who may or may not be related. Beware of spoilers, of course.
    • KayKay's photo is the same one on Detective Pierro's desk in The Blackwell Epiphany. Which fits with the way that game ended — Joey was no longer a spirit guide, so a new one needed to be called, and like Joey, KayKay, real name Kendra Haskins, was the last lost soul the previous medium/guide duo managed to send before they no longer could.
    • Detective Sam Durkin, introduced in The Shivah before becoming Rosa Blackwell's Friend on the Force in The Blackwell Deception, is a regular at a restaurant in Chinatown.
    • The uniformed officer guarding the arson scene in the East Village is Cory Palmer, the desk sergeant from The Blackwell Epiphany. The commentary track points out the scar on his forehead, just visible under his cap, which he got when Rosa headbutted him into unconsciousness in that game.
    • If you bring Vicki along, the security guard at Grant City Trust is established as being the same one who worked at Bellevue back in The Blackwell Legacy, all those years ago. He's even given an actual name (Robby Siegel) this time around and is apparently friends with Vicki's father, even though he doesn't seem old enough for it to be plausible.
    • One of the offices in the Grant City Trust is labelled "Tony Meltzer". Presumably, he is related to Paul and Charlie Meltzer from The Blackwell Convergence.
    • Logan and Jonah Brown's struggles with alcohol are both reminiscent of what we hear about Isaac Brown from Blackwell Unbound, especially Logan who similarly has a violent streak when drunk. He even shares a voice actor with Jonah. Granted given how generic the surname "Brown" is, it might just be a coincidence.
  • Da Chief: Kalash is the head of the local chapter of the Unavowed. He's stern, wise, and not above engaging in a little snark from time to time.
  • Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Though he isn't the Player Character, Logan and his spirit guide, KayKay, serve as this to Rosa and Joey from The Blackwell Series.
    • Rosangela Blackwell was a dorky, skinny white woman without much in the way of a physical presence, who was socially awkward, worked alone, and had very limited contact with the other parts of the supernatural community. Logan is a soft-spoken but confident, physically-fit black man who becomes a member of a organisation dealing with all kinds of supernatural activity. And where Rosa helping a ghost to move beyond always resulted in her collapsing to ground, Logan instead calmly sits down in a dignified meditation pose.
    • Joey Mallone was a hard-nosed, cynical Badass in a Nice Suit from the 1930s, generally dismissive of modern technology (which tended to short out in his presence anyway), whereas KayKay AKA Kendra Haskins from Epiphany is a plucky 10-year-old girl from the present day, and a bit of a video game junkie.
    • Rosa and Joey had an occasionally fractious and always snarky working relationship — gradually becoming close friends, but mostly in spite of their differences and through sharing the work. Logan, meanwhile, sees himself as a parent figure (or at least a cool uncle) to KayKay, patiently trying to set boundaries but also making sure she can still have fun — basically trying to make sure she has something resembling a normal childhood, even though she'll never grow up.
  • Consummate Liar: Choosing the Actor background for the Player Character opens up dialogue choices about using your acting talent to deceive and distract people with tall tales. Even a Living Lie Detector like Mandana can barely tell when you're lying.
  • Creator Cameo: Outside of the in-game commentary track, Wadjet Eye founder and lead designer Dave Gilbert also has a speaking role, as per usual with his games. This time it's the Big Bad, or rather the male version of the original inhabitant of the Player Character's human body. It also sounds like he voices Lady Aralax, the dragon that heads the Dublin chapter of the Unavowed that Kalash had a brief conversation with.
  • Cult: Your first mission with the Unavowed deals with one set up by your demon, with them as High Priest, in the East Village. The excess belief is being fed to the dryad Galene, so that she can expand her forest domain beyond the North Woods which in turn creates even more raw magical energy for the Big Bad's master plan.
  • Darker and Edgier: The Blackwell Series was no stranger to tackling somewhat dark subject matters, it treated them in a more melancholic and sombre manner, whereas this game has markedly more scenes of violence, frequently takes up even darker themes in its story, and treats said themes in a more raw manner. This is also reflected in the overall aesthetic which is both gritter and favors the use of bright red lighting, where Blackwell leaned more towards cooler and darker blue lighting.
  • Deadly Book: The book in the prologue that when opened leads to your Demonic Possession.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Eli and Vicki, occasionally Kalash, and possibly the Player Character if you choose the snarky options.
  • Deal with the Devil: In looking for a way to save his bank, Jason Grant ultimately loses everything. He gives up the child of one of his employees to Robin Goodfellow along the very company he was trying to save — its prosperity now assured. His waning health and death by heart attack are honestly probably the least of his regrets.
  • Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: There are ways you can die or get arrested which should rightly end the game, but you'll always find yourself right back to where you where before you made your fatal mistake to try again. Overlaps with Anti-Frustration Features, since the difference between reloading the game yourself and automatically flipping you back to the previous checkpoint is an aesthetic one. Basically, it's a middle ground between Sierra-style The Many Deaths of You and Lucasarts' "you can't die" philosophy, encouraging experimentation while still acknowledging some degree of danger.
  • Developer's Foresight: '
    • At the game's start, if you attempt to name your character "Melkhiresa" (AKA the name of the demon supposedly possessing the protagonist), Eli will exclaim "No CHEATING!" and give you another shock, while Mandana will comment on how you are making things deliberately difficult.
    • During the first mission, using the password "Wendy" in Jordon's computer before actually meeting her will cause the machine to emit a big beep and the message "playing out of order, are we?" to show up on screen. Eli and Mandana will wonder out loud why that happened.
    • Trying this yet again in Chinatown with the dragon mural will also have Mandana comment.
  • Didn't Think This Through: The Big Bad in one of the endings. They chose being depowered over death, but forgot that they're wanted by the police for many murders, and now don't have any supernatural protection.
  • Dragons Up the Yin Yang: The Dragon Tree restaurant in Chinatown has two Chinese dragons coiled around the pillars of its front entrance. There's also a reason they're called the Dragon Tree — their patron spirit, the Ba Jiao Gui, is a huge spirit dragon summoned via its connection to a banana tree in the Huangs' rooftop garden, which can be summoned once every decade or so in order to grant winning lottery numbers.
  • The Dreaded: Aldin, a Mage who went on a destructive rampage that wiped out whole towns of humans and fae, who was so evil that he had an entire order, the Hunters of Aldin, dedicated to his destruction. He was Eli's great-grandfather, though he'd already lived for hundreds of years before Eli's grandfather was born.
  • Earn Your Bad Ending: Downplayed. Getting the worst ending requires that Player Character decides to refuse the Summoner and instead declare that they desire to fight them head on. The Summoner will warn them that doing so is a bad idea and implore them to reconsider. The player is then given three chances to change their mind and try to find another solution.
  • Evolving Title Screen: The title screen changes as the player progresses through the game, showing all the members of the Unavowed as they either met or recruited. That even includes the first time the game is started up, where only Mandana and Eli are visible; the Player Character first appears once the prologue is completed.
    • After completing the game, the title screen reflects which characters survived your chosen ending.
  • Exact Words:
    • Since Jinns Cannot Tell a Lie, they're very careful about phrasing. This actually plays right into the Jerkass Genie stereotype, since they're so good at this that everyone is always on guard against them inserting some double meaning which turns every agreement to their advantage. This foreshadows the only way to defeat Galene in the North Woods. The rules of engagement for the duel specify that it can only end with Galene or Kalash's death, but the wording is that the winner of the duel is the one who strikes the killing blow — but that doesn't require the killer to be either one of them, meaning that the solution is for the Player Character to kill Kalash. In keeping with their nature, Kalash and Mandana both see the truth of this — regardless of how the player themselves feels about it, neither of them blame you for finding the only loophole available.
    • Also plays into the exorcism spell performed on the Player Character in the beginning of the game. The spell Eli uses is meant to cast out a "wicked spirit" from a body. It turns out that Melkhiresa wasn't a "wicked" spirit. The person that summoned them was — and that person isn't you.
  • The Fair Folk: The Fae are considered highly dangerous, infamous for trading in "favors" which those who seek them out swiftly come to regret. The Arc Villain for Wall Street is Roy Fellows, AKA Robin Goodfellow of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
  • Fiery Redhead: Keara, an Irish pirate captain, according to Kalash. Apparently that's where Mandana gets it from.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • Playwright Zack hangs a big lampshade on the death of the heroine's father in the first act in his play. Guess what happens to Mandana's father Kalash in the game?
    • When you talk to Jonah in the bartender origin, the words “help him please” can be seen on the mirror in the background. This turns out to be KayKay, who writes similar messages when you meet her on the Bronx mission.
    • When Stanley Bates attacks the protagonist's party with the Creative Force in Brooklyn, the protagonist wakes up to find themselves spraypainting the name Melkhiresa on a wall. Stanley Bates later tells them that he has given them a deep, clear understanding of their deepest selves. Guess who the protagonist of the story actually is?
  • Friend on the Force: Vicki is sort of this, although she's on leave and most of her former colleagues spent the last year thinking she'd gone nuts. Her main advantage as a teammate, however, is that if there's a cop in the neighborhood, it's pretty much a guarantee that she'll know them, and despite being on leave, she can usually wheedle a favor or two out of them.
  • Genie in a Bottle: Both Kalash and Mandana are capable of turning into smoke, and have their own bottles (over the hearth and in the armory respectively) in Unavowed HQ which serve them as both beds and bedrooms. Jinn can actually occupy any bottle, and having Mandana do so is a possible solution to one of the obstacles you have to get past during the Wall Street case.
  • Glamour Failure: Kalash hasn't reapplied his veil in some years, but let's face it, a blue man on a New York subway isn't the weirdest thing anyone's ever seen. On a broader note, the veil doesn't apply to the void-touched, which is anyone who's been sufficiently exposed to the supernatural that they could no longer pretend it away.
  • A God Am I: Said by proxy, actually. Upon confronting their summoner, the Player Character can ask them if their plan to create a pocket realm is because they want to become a god. The summoner mulls over these words, and replies that they haven't thought of it in that way exactly, but find they do find the description rather apt.
  • Gray Rain of Depression: It never stops raining for the entire week in which the main game takes place.
  • Guest-Star Party Member:
    • Kalash comes along in Central Park when either his daughter or Eli are kidnapped by Galene. He ends up making a Heroic Sacrifice as the first main character to die to the BigBad's machinations.
    • Calliope the depowered muse tags along with the Player Character (though she isn't quite a full-fledged party member) at one point during the Brooklyn mission when it turns out Stanley Bates has been gifted with her muse powers, but has no idea how to wield the creative force responsibly. At one point early in development she was considered as a possible fifth teammate.
    • Chinatown has you venture into the shadow realm between life and death where you join forces with Logan's spirit guide KayKay, allowing you to see her in person and speak with her directly as you stage a jailbreak on the Tombs.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Mandana is half-Jinn on her father Kalash's side.
  • Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Played with. Due to the nature of the relationship between the Player Character, who was actually Melkhiresa all along, and the Big Bad, you are not actually naming the former when Eli asks your name in the intro, but the latter. After this has been revealed, the player can choose a new name for the Player Character or just go by Melkhiresa, or "Mel" for short.
  • Heroic Mime: The Player Character isn't voiced, with their dialogue being entirely in text-boxes. Which plays into The Reveal, since the Big Bad is voiced when they return to the body from which they were exorcised.
  • Hidden Villain: Most of the missions hinge on discovering the true culprit for the various evils being perpetrated in a given neighborhood. The Big Bad, the spirit which controlled the Player Character's body for the past year, is exorcised in the prologue, but eludes capture. Played with in that all of its machinations were set in motion before the beginning of the game, and continue without its involvement as the Unavowed work to repair the damage done. After the second mission of the second act, the spirit comes back and takes back the Player Character's body for itself.
  • Hot-Blooded: While Mandana tends to act like The Spock thanks to her father's influence, when she's drunk or when Eli is in danger, she channels her mother's impetuousness and accent.invoked
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: When Roy Fellows threatens to drop baby Elijah Cook unless the Unavowed promise to stop pursuing him while he takes the boy to raise as his own son (promises and contracts being very powerful magic among the Fae), Elijah activates his Fire Mage powers and begins immolating a hapless Roy. The Player can then respond to Roy's cries for help by saying that there is a contract not to come into contact with the child.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: Several cases:
    • Staten Island's Captain Joy Harrison committed their crimes for far more selfish reasons than the ostensible monster of the episode.
    • Not-quite-Mad Artist Stan Bates (he's an unwitting Muse) is a deconstruction of the idea of Doing It for the Art being treated as an unimpeachable defense, indifferent to the chaos and violence being stirred up in the neighborhood and several grisly deaths inspired by their words.
    • And then there's the Big Bad, who turns out to be the person you thought you were playing as — actually an ordinary human (other than their complete Lack of Empathy) who used dark magic to bind the Player Character, a knowledge spirit, into their service. Every horrible act they committed over the course of the past year was out of pure selfishness and sheer misanthropy.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: Vicki says this almost word for word in her recruitment mission.
    • Calliope, the Muse, is overjoyed having her powers removed, allowing her to experience joy and appreciate art for the first time in millennia, with no desire to return to her old self.
  • I See Dead People: Being void-touched allows the characters to see and be seen by ghosts... up to a point. This is Logan's specialty, with him being a spirit medium, or Bestower — rather than just the greyish blobs the rest of the group sees, he sees lost spirits as they looked in life, and vice-versa, allowing him to guide them to their proper rest.
  • An Ice Person: Roy Fellows, the Arc Villain for Wall Street, has extensive powers over cold, having created a pocket dimension out of ice high above the city.
  • Identical Grandson: Downplayed. Eli's grandson, Travis, happens to look a lot like him. It's not a perfect match, but since Eli doesn't age like a normal human, the two are similar-looking enough that Eli can successfully impersonate him, give or take twenty pounds. Eli is also a dead ringer for his great-grandfather. Who was The Dreaded Fire Mage Aldin.
  • In Spite of a Nail: If you pick the Cop background, Vicki will be your former partner and the events of the prologue led to her becoming void-touched. If you pick a different background, she still gets caught up in a similar supernatural altercation, but you're not involved.
  • In Vino Veritas: In one mission Mandana imbibes a whole bottle of wine by temporarily inhabiting the bottle as a hiding place, and as a result gets absolutely smashed (although maybe the exotic method of "drinking" makes alcohol more potent than usual). She drops into a pseudo-Irish accent and slang centuries out of date, uses a few contractions, and is generally much more emotional (not to mention sentimental) than she is sober.
  • Insistent Terminology:
    • Mandana quickly explains that her people are not "genies" but "Jinns".
    • Eli doesn't like to be called a "wizard", explaining that doing so is a serious faux pas around people like him. Sort of. He's never met another Mage himself, so it's all just based on books he's read, but he's a "Mage with a capital 'M'."
  • Lady Swears-a-Lot: Vicki drops a lot of casual profanity, and has to be reminded to tone it down around kids. Usually by Logan.
    Vicki: ...What in the crispy fried fuck IS this place?
  • Last-Second Ending Choice: Downplayed. The ending itself is entirely determined by how the player chooses to handle the final confrontation with the Summoner. Getting the Good or the Best ending triggers a Modular Epilogue where the various choices the player made throughout the game are reflected, but getting the Bad or Worst ending instead means that the epilogue is entirely skipped.
  • Late to the Tragedy: Practically every time the Unavowed shows up to a location in their hunt for the Big Bad, said villain has already done the damage they wanted to do in that area. The group's missions are ultimately centered less around figuring out how to stop the Big Bad's plans, and more around figuring what they did and how to mitigate the damage — or at least stop it from getting any worse than it already is.
  • Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Upon investigating the Eddings' house, the Player Character discovers through a vision that their demon-self talked Art Eddings into having a tryst with them. One of the possible responses to this revelation is to tell the companions who witnessed it never to talk about it again.
  • Literal Genie: Deconstructed. Jinns Cannot Tell a Lie, which makes them naturally excellent at finding loopholes, which of course allows them to get out of granting wishes they don't want to grant. Kalash isn't the kind of Jinn who grants wishes, however. Not that he can't, he just doesn't want to. This ends up saving the city from Galene in the Central Park arc.
  • Living Lie Detector: Jinns Cannot Tell a Lie because the presence of a falsehood causes them physical pain. Mandana describes it as the mental equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. The Actor mitigates this effect by just being that good an actor — they really believe the words they say.
  • Loophole Abuse: A Jinn's rules of engagement specify the combatants and that the duel can only end when one of them is dead, but not that one of the combatants deal the deathblow. Kalash and the Player Character end up exploiting this to stop Galene, once he realises that his battle against her for one of his wishes is hopeless. He quickly shares a written copy of the rules with the Player Character in the hopes that they will figure out the loophole and deal him the killing blow, thereby snatching the victory away from Galene.
  • Lotus-Eater Machine: After the reveal, it turns out your other self is building a self-inflicted one in their own pocket dimension.
  • Louis Cypher: Roy Fellows, AKA Robin Goodfellow.
  • Mad Artist: Stan Bates and the depowered Calliope aren't (though the latter is a Giftedly Bad poet), but playwright Zack from the Actor's prologue has gone completely off the deep end, and in Brooklyn, artists seem to be succumbing to the "artistic temperament" in droves, to the point where a local beat cop claims they're worse than gangs or drugs. It turns out that the latter is the result of your demon-self stealing Calliope's powers and giving them to Stan without the latter's knowledge, spreading the creative force across Brooklyn with no regard for whether or not the artists are ready to channel it into anything constructive. Stan, for his part, believes that any art is good — the game sets out to deconstruct this with a sculptor who immolates himself in front of the Prospect Park bandshell.
  • Magical Barefooter: Calliope is sans shoes, both before and after she loses her Muse powers.
  • Make a Wish: Kalash isn't the kind of genie who grants wishes. Which isn't the same as saying he can't, just that unless circumstances demand it, he won't. Galene the dryad's wish is to return Manhattan to the vast forest of its past; upon defeating her, the Player Character gets a wish of their own, which they can use to either trap Galene, destroy her, or turn her to stone.
  • Man of Wealth and Taste: Roy Fellows again. With his fancy three-piece suit, tie clip, pocket square, slicked-back hair, and the too-good-to-be-true deals he's offering, he's positively Mephistophelean. Played with when you board an elevator in Grant City Trust going up to a pocket realm of ice, rather than a fiery hell.
  • Masquerade: A self-enforcing one, where mundanes will seemingly go to great lengths to rationalize away the supernatural. Bystander Syndrome plays a heavy part of it; Eli mentions that he fully expects an Unmasqued World to break through at some point in the future.
  • The Master: Your demon self went under this title for a while, as the leader of a cult in Chelsea.
  • Mauve Shirt: Discussed by playwright Zack in the Actor prologue. He mentions that one of the revisions he needs to do to his script is to expand the role of the hero's father, saying his death will leave a bigger emotional impact on the audience if he is a more developed character, rather than some minor character with just two lines.
  • Meaningful Echo: Mandana echoes her father's words about the Unavowed being the wall against the darkness in the ending.
  • Mentor Occupational Hazard: You're forced to kill Kalash halfway through the game. Not because he turns against you, but because someone has to kill him who isn't the Arc Villain of that chapter. His Heroic Sacrifice is the only way to save the rest of the city.
  • Multiple-Choice Past: You have three backgrounds to choose from: Bartender, Actor, and Cop, each with their own playable prologue, a la Dragon Age: Origins.
  • Multiple Endings: There are three major endings depending on your decision at the last level:
    • If you agree on the terms of your summoner, the two of you merge. With a newfound power, your summoner keeps their word, not hurting your friends as the two of you resume work on building the pocket dimension.
    • Refusing these terms results in your summoner taking back control of their body, killing your Unavowed friends, and resolving to resume their work by taking magic from the real world as before.
    • You can turn the tables by walking towards a ledge, either killing the two of you via suicide or using it as leverage for your summoner to free you. If you do the latter, your summoner is brought to the police by the Unavowed. Your Unavowed friends narrate the aftermath, which can change a bit depending on prior decisions. Regardless, the murder cases are finally closed, with the Unavowed continuing the good fight against the supernatural.
  • The Muse: Calliope, an actual Muse — yes, that one — who first appears as the source of Zack's Mad Artist tendencies in the Actor prologue. She later appears in Brooklyn, having been completely depowered. It turns out that the Big Bad stole her powers and gave them to an unwitting Stan Bates, a kindly retired painter who has been throwing the muse's power around like a sledgehammer, driving Brooklyn's artists to obsession and death. He'd be more sympathetic if he didn't care more about the artistic statements being made than the blood on the streets.
  • Must State If You're a Cop: Not always true, of course. Doug Wang gets it wrong in the usual way, asking about it once you start pressing him about the illegal holistic sleeping aid he is selling under the table. If Vicki, an actual cop, is present, she rolls her eyes when Doug asks if it's a real rule, and says that it doesn't matter because she is currently on involuntary leave from the force.
  • Mythology Gag: Many of them, and something of a staple for Wadjet Eye games. See also Character Overlap.
    • Various characters share last names with minor NPCs, the Unavowed have a vague awareness of Rosa Blackwell's activities (but never reached out, since a spirit medium's work is "mundane" business by their standards).
    • Grant City Trust is first mentioned as part of a ghost's Unfinished Business in The Blackwell Deception.
  • Never Heard That One Before: Eli at one point stays up for 24 hours doing research. One possible response to this is asking him if he has "been burning the midnight oil". Eli dryly replies with this trope.
  • Nice Guy: Logan is soft-spoken, kind, thoughtful... and six years sober. He was apparently a mean drunk.
  • Non-Action Guy: Logan and the Player Character — any magic the both of you have is more on the ethereal, intangible side of things. As a standard adventure game protagonist, the Player Character is unarmed and has no real combat ability. Gameplay and Story Segregation if you chose the Cop background, though of course when fighting the supernatural, hand-to-hand skills aren't the most useful anyway — but regardless, your contribution mostly comes through your wits and connection to the Big Bad. Logan is in a similar position: despite being outwardly the buffest member of the team, his powers as a spirit medium lend themselves more to investigation and talking his way through puzzles rather than fighting monsters.
  • Noodle Incident: One subway conversation has Vicki questioning why the New York Unavowed chapter always seem to use the subway, as it could be a problem if the supernatural activity was of an urgent nature, like a monster assaulting City Hall, pointing out that a slow response in that hypothetical situation could mean that the mayor might lose an arm or something like that. Both Mandana and Eli are nonplussed at this, responding that it wouldn't be a problem as the mayor could easily grow himself a new arm. Vicki is rather disturbed at the implications of this, and a worried Mandana and Eli realise that they might have said too much and drop the subject.
  • No-Sell: In addition to negating Eli's fire powers using her protective wards, Galene is able to continuously reform herself out of the surrounding trees no matter how many times Kalash shatters her wooden body with his axe.
  • Not in Front of the Kid: Logan feels protective of his spirit guide KayKay as she is technically only ten years old, and he is therefore quite unhappy about Vicki's Lady Swears-a-Lot tendencies.
  • Occult Detective: All of the Unavowed, but Eli dresses the part while Vicki (and possibly the Player Character) is/was an actual NYPD detective.
  • Oddly Small Organization: At the start of the game, the Unavowed are made up of, in their entirety, Mandana, Eli, and Kalash. Of course, prior to the last year, void activity was so far down that this was more than enough. You also learn later that the organisation does have quite a few other chapters around the world, and that the home office seems to be located somewhere in Ireland.
  • Older Than They Look:
    • Mandana is 419 years old, but looks like she's in her late twenties. It comes with being a half-Jinn.
    • Eli is actually 92, having joined the Unavowed in years of the Nixon administration. He would have been pushing fifty at the time, but looks younger, if somewhat careworn. He explains that being a Mage tends to prolong both your life and your youth.
  • Old Cop, Young Cop: The game enforces this dynamic, as the player is always restricted to bring at least one of the experienced Unavowed members (Eli and Mandana) along for every mission. It is impossible to assemble a team consisting only of the rookies (i.e. the Player Character, Logan, and Vicki).
  • Once More, with Clarity: The Reveal has you play through the events of the prologue again, this time from the point of view of the Big Bad.
  • Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Mandana, when she's drunk or when her temper's up.
  • Our Demons Are Different: They're intangible spirits who are described as Always Chaotic Evil psychopaths, with the demon who possessed you being alarming due to how much of a Diabolical Mastermind (and thus capable of long-term thought) it was. Because Melkhiresa isn't that kind of demon; it's a knowledge spirit (aka, a daimon), a morally neutral race of living record keepers, who as shown by the fact you can play Melkhiresa as a better person than their summoner, are generally normal people with perfectly functional consciences.
  • Our Dragons Are Different:
    • Aralax, the head of the Unavowed chapter for Dublin, is said to be a dragon, but only after you catch the tail end of Kalash's conversation with her. It's her only appearance in the game... In which she says she won't be able to send help.
    • Chinatown, meanwhile, has a classic Chinese dragon in the form of the Ba Jiao Gui or "banana ghost", summoned by a special ritual involving the banana tree that lent the restaurant its name. The dragon is only visible in the spirit world, meaning the Player Character has to find a way to cross over in order to speak with it. It's been in the void between our world and its own for months and is slowly starving, driving it mad thanks to your demon self framing Kevin Huang, thus preventing him from sending it back.
  • Our Genies Are Different: As Mandana explains, the correct term is "Jinn", not "genie", and she might live in a bottle and have access to certain magic powers, but she doesn't grant wishes, though her father, Kalash, a full-blooded Jinn, can indeed do so. Jinns are also unable to tell outright lies and can always sense when people are lying to them.
  • Perception Filter: To help the Player Character hide from any authority on the lookout for them, the Unavowed places them under a so-called "Veil" to protect their anonymity, changing the user's features just slightly and ensures they won't be recognized, which is pretty much an absolute necessity for the Player Character, since the Big Bad has been using your face to perpetrate horrible murders and other, more anonymous crimes over the past year. The Veil taps into the generalized Weirdness Censor most mundanes have, and can prevent them from seeing objects (like Mandana's sword) as well as those who the Unavowed work to protect — those who would still be wanted for crimes of which they cannot be proven innocent under mundane law. The Veil doesn't work on the "void-touched", however, those who have — for one reason or another — been in close contact with magic and the supernatural.
  • Phrase Catcher: To Vicki, in pretty much every neighborhood:
  • Pirate King: Mandana's mother Keara, the Hot-Blooded Pirate Queen of Ulster, a Fiery Redhead who looks and dresses a little like Captain Kate Capsize from Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge.
  • Plant Person: Galene, the dryad of Central Park's North Woods.
  • Playing with Fire: Eli's speciality, being a Fire Mage. He mostly relies on pitching softball-sized fireballs, but he has enough control to drain heat and fire from his environment or cause rain to evaporate before it even touches him.
  • Poisonous Person: The dryad Galene uses her powers to concentrate hemlock into a form which can harm even a Jinn.
  • Psychic Link: All members of the Unavowed share one. Among other things, it allows your teammates to share your visions, and when Logan is present, you can understand ghosts, who can normally only be heard in groans and screams even by the void-touched.
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The New York chapter of the Unavowed consists of a person who was a vessel for a demon and is a wanted criminal as a result, a Fire Mage with a background as an accountant born into the Silent Generation, the several hundred-years-old half-human daughter of a Jinn and a Irish pirate, a hard-nosed, Hot-Blooded cop on involuntary leave from the force, and a soft-spoken spirit medium who is a recovering alcoholic and is followed around by the ghost of a ten-year-old girl.
  • Reality-Breaking Paradox: The Player Character, faced with the decision of killing Kalash to avoid having Galene getting her hands on his wish, asks him if they can use the wish to bring him back to life afterwards. Kalash tells them that it will be a terrible idea to do so, as it will create a paradox that will in all likelihood destroy the entire dimension.
  • Recessive Super Genes: Apparently being a Fire Mage skips one or two generations at a time. Eli's great-grandfather was Aldin, a Fire Mage so evil that the group which formed to kill him, the Hunters of Aldin, has gone on to dedicate themselves to wiping out all Fire Mages. Meanwhile, shortly after meeting his great-grandson for the first time, Eli also discovers that the baby boy is also a Fire Mage, and a prodigy at that, able to burst into flames before he can even walk.
  • Recovered Addict: Logan is a former alcoholic.
  • Recurring Extra: True to tradition for Wadjet Eye games set in New York City, you once again run into police detective Sam Durkin, who first appeared in The Shivah, then went on to become Rosa's Friend on the Force in subsequent Blackwell games.
  • Red Sky, Take Warning: A pink sky which might just be a stylistic choice to represent the supernatural world. The sunrise over the city in the ice realm over Wall Street is a hellish red.
  • Repeating So the Audience Can Hear: An example that doubles as an In-Universe example. Since neither the other members of the Unavowed or the player themselves are able to hear Logan's spirit guide, KayKay, he has to do this at times for her.
  • The Reveal: The true identity of the Big Bad isn't revealed until quite late in the game. It turns out, when you are re-possessed by the "wicked spirit" from the prologue, that you were Melkhiresa, the supposed demon, this whole time. The Big Bad is the real (human) owner of your body, was never possessed to begin with, and all of their worst crimes were entirely their own, including all the people brutally murdered at their — your — hands. They were the one who summoned and bound a knowledge spirit — you — for their own gain, then used your own memory-editing powers to ensure you would remember events whatever way would let you live with them. A sociopath with nothing but contempt for others who'd grown tired of pretending to care, the reason the Big Bad was exorcised from their own body by Eli's ritual is because the Exact Words referred not to a demon, but to a "wicked spirit", and human or not, they certainly qualified — Melkhiresa, meanwhile, was just another one of his victims.
  • Rewatch Bonus: A couple of examples related to The Reveal.
    • At the beginning of the game, you encounter a void creature who calls you "Demonspawn" and says that the "corruption lingers" within you. On the first playthrough, the natural assumption is that the creature is referring to some residual effects of your demonic possession, since the demon was only just exorcised by Eli. On subsequent playthroughs, you can see that this is a very early clue that you're actually Melkhiresa, the demon, and the void creature was Right All Along.
    • When you first learn that the name of the demon who possessed you is Melkhiresa, Eli does some research, but can't find any examples of anyone being possessed by them. On subsequent playthroughs, you realize Eli can't find anything because Melkhiresa didn't possess you: the human owner of your body summoned them and used their knowledge to commit terrible crimes. Eli's research about Melkhiresa being a knowledge spirit was completely accurate, but he didn't have the key piece of the puzzle to interpret his findings correctly.
  • Rooftop Confrontation: The game begins with this having happened to you, with The Unavowed finally tracking your possessed body down and restraining it, allowing a much-needed exorcism to be performed.
    • Later in the game, the final confrontation takes place within a pocket dimension, on top a mirrored version of the Empire State Building, with you confronting the Summoner one last time, BookEnding the game.
  • Rousing Speech: Eli tries to bring Vicki into the fold with one of these. It doesn't quite take.
  • Running Gag: When you recruit Logan to the team, it is possible, with him being a spirit medium/Bestower to straight up tell ghosts that they're dead. It's about as effective as it ever was in The Blackwell Series — which is to say: not at all.
  • Sadistic Choice: Every mission ends with one. Sometimes more than one. The Wall Street mission is the exception - it briefly taunts you with the illusion of one before baby Elijah's fire powers kick in, leaving you with the much less sadistic choice of whether to blast Roy or let him leave, still owing you a favor.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Mildly. Vicki's 'power' (such as it is), more than being the only teammate who carries a gun, is that the Santinas are a cop family going way back, and she knows a cop or city worker in pretty much every neighborhood you go to. This lets her ask (or call in) any number of favors to smooth the Unavowed's way in their investigations. She's still a cop at heart and won't do anything actually illegal, but they're a lot more likely to talk to you with her around than they otherwise would be, since unlike a Player Character with the cop background they actually recognize Vicki (she didn't want or need the veil when Kalash and Eli offered).
  • Self-Immolation: The artist in Prospect Park who set himself on fire. Also Jordon the cultist, who was just trying to get warm.
  • Sense Freak: A muse's powers allow them to inspire others to create great works of art by simply spending time in their presence, but the muse is also unable to feel any emotions, and therefore rendered unable to appreciate the resulting art, or any art at all — nor create anything oneself. Calliope, after being Brought Down to Normal, is downright amazed at being able to respond emotionally to her every sensory input, even the most mundane things, as she hasn't been able to do that in all the three thousand years of her existence.
  • Shear Menace: Due to Demonic Possession you kill two characters with a pair of scissors in the prologue.
  • Shout-Out:
    • One of the individual bricks in a brick wall you can study up close is labelled "Just a brick in the wall."
    • When Calliope suggests that the Player Character tries drawing on the Psychic Link between Unavowed members to help snap the other members out the trance Stanley Bates has put them in, one of the possible replies is ask if she is seriously suggesting that you try a a mind-meld on your team members. Calliope says that she gets the reference and is quite amused by it.
    • The Ice Nanny, a golem made of ice, simultaneously shouts out to Mary Poppins (Vicki calls her "Mary Popsicle") and, at the same time, Robocop and The Terminator.
    • Among other things: a protagonist who's constantly recovering terrible Repressed Memories (in this case of the things they did while possessed rather than memories of a past life), and a man who was turned into a fire elemental in the middle of poor neighborhood.
  • Shout-Out to Shakespeare: Mr. Roy Fellows, the Arc Villain of the Wall Street mission, turns out to be none other than Robin Goodfellow of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
  • Sincerest Form of Flattery:
    • Dave Gilbert openly admitted that the game, at least in the story structure department, was heavily inspired by BioWare's modern titles, such Mass Effect and Dragon Age. You similarly choose either a male or female protagonist and then choose their origin story (like in Dragon Age: Origins, it is actually playable). You also have a cast of companions to join you on missions, with you starting out with two, but then you recruit some more and then get to choose which of them join you on your missions, with the different choices resulting in different dialogue and interaction options during said mission; Unavowed can even be said to take this idea a logical step further, as different companions offer alternate solutions to different puzzles encountered along the way.
    • Gilbert has also referred to The Dresden Files as a huge inspiration for the game, as it came about after he unsuccessfully tried to acquire the license for an official game adaptation of the novels, and he then decided to Start My Own when the attempt fell through.
    • On a slightly lesser note, Gilbert has referred to Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines as an inspiration for the game's overall look and aesthetic.
  • Sinister Scimitar: A heroic version with Mandana, who wields one as her weapon.
  • Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Mandana's mother was one, as seen in the portrait of her in the study, which has her holding Mandana as a baby while in full pirate queen regalia.
  • The Smart Guy: Eli is the resident researcher in the Unavowed's New York chapter, and is as a result very well-versed in factoids and lore about the supernatural creatures encountered along the way and is more than happy to share his insight into the subject of the supernatural in general.
  • The Sociopath: A few of the humanoid monsters in the game act this way. The biggest example of all is the Big Bad, the ordinary human who summoned Melkhiresa and whose body you are currently inhabiting. Entirely remorseless, they don't think twice about the death and suffering they cause to achieve their goal. Their Inner Monologue in the Once More, with Clarity segment, also show that they have a very inflated sense of themselves and view the world and everyone around them with utter disdain. What's most impressive of all, however, is that they've had absolutely everyone fooled for years. And what was their great, overarching goal? To take the raw power and knowledge you provide and create a new miniature world in their own image — one where they don't have to pretend anymore.
  • The Spock:
    • Mandana in some regards basically is Spock, a half-human, half-Jinn, torn between the two. She has a Jinn's gift for logic and reasoning (and the faculty for Exact Words that provides), and is always striving to keep her human emotions in check. She's even got the moderate superstrength of the Trope Namer, although not to the same degree. Most damning of all — she avoids contractions, presumably as part of the innate Jinn predilection for Exact Words. Noticeably, her father Kalash doesn't speak like this, presuambly because as a full Jinn the tendency comes more naturally to him.
    • Calliope The Muse is a somewhat bored, disinterested version of this when she still has her powers. She can inspire creativity, but never experience it herself — she can create nothing, and derives no pleasure from any aesthetic object. After spending some time as a human she's horrified by the idea of returning to that life, but if you choose to force her to take back her powers during the Brooklyn mission, she no longer has the emotional depth to care afterwards, let alone be bothered by it. Which is somewhat horrifying in its own right.
  • Summon Magic: The Big Bad's specialty, summoning a different creature for each area. The book that allowed them to possess the Player Character turns out to be a book which allowed them to summon all the various supernatural beings from across the void, including the knowledge spirit Melkhiresa.
  • Super Smoke: Jinns can do this, but only in order to go inside a bottle. Any bottle, as it turns out, but only bottles. Handwaved in an early puzzle where you ask if Mandana can turn to smoke to pass through the edge of a door; no, she can't.
  • Supernatural Gold Eyes: These are the only outward sign that Mandana is half-Jinn.
  • Talking the Monster to Death: Par for the course in an adventure game, but stands out because of the number of cues the game takes from Bioware-style RPGs. The final confrontation with the Big Bad boils down to this, since Melkhiresa has no combat abilities of their own and the summoner renders all your other teammates unconscious with a spell (assuming they made it to the end).
  • Team Dad: Eli, who talks about his actual kids constantly, takes it upon himself to mentor the various recently-mundanes the Unavowed have taken in. Being a dad is the most important thing in his life, even though his own children grew up years ago — and he hasn't been able to see them in person in decades, having faked his own death to protect them from the dangers of his life as a Mage in particular the danger of being hunted down and exterminated by the Hunters of Aldin.
  • Teamwork Puzzle Game: Think Maniac Mansion (each character has unique abilities and different options for solving puzzles) by way of Sam & Max Hit the Road (party members are treated as inventory items which are used on other objects when you want them to put their skills to work), with the Mass Effect-like twist of being able to choose a different party of two companions each mission.
    • Mandana is a skilled swordswoman and can also pry open locks (and manhole covers) with her scimitar. She's extremely agile, able to perform feats of climbing, running, and balance your other teammates can't match. And as one of the two veteran Unavowed members, she also provides much of the exposition on the world of the supernatural, and history of the city's more distant past.
    • Eli can sling fireballs, summon forth flames of various sizes, drain heat from any source, read any text which was ever burned, and is completely fireproof. He's also a capable and well-read ritual magician, a long-time native New Yorker with extensive (if somewhat outdated) knowledge of the city, and an accountant with thirty years' experience under his belt.
    • Logan is a spirit medium, able to perceive and speak with lost spirits — when he's with the party, they can see and understand ghosts as well. He also has a fully independent spirit guide, KayKay who can walk through walls and scout out locations the rest of the party can't go. This drastically simplifies many investigations, as you can simply ask a witness who was there, rather than having to piece together a secondhand account. A former alcoholic and longtime member of AA, he's also none-too-shabby as a Warrior Therapist.
    • Vicki is an NYPD detective with twelve years on the job (albeit currently on leave, possibly permanently), and as tough and smart as that implies. She's the only teammate to carry a gun — she's a crack shot — but one of her bigger advantages is that she has a ton of contacts in the police and city, who will readily open up and give her information and access none of the other party members can get.
    • Your Player Character has special dialogue options depending on what you went with for your origin story: the Actor can bluff like a champ and improvise fake excuses at the drop of a hat; the bartender can read people exceptionally well and get them to open up and empathize; and the cop has natural authority, a somewhat battered badge, and plenty of specialized knowledge of the city. They can also recover memories from their past (demon) self's exploits over the past year, and thanks to your Psychic Link with the rest of the Unavowed, they get visions of what you're seeing.
  • Token Human: Seemingly the Player Character at first — the other members of the Unavowed include a Benevolent Genie, his half-human daughter, a Fire Mage, and a guy who can talk to the spirits of the departed. Eventually, however, it turns out that having been possessed by a demon has left its mark and the PC is more unusual than it first appears, especially with The Reveal that you were playing as the demon rather than the possessee the whole time. Hotheaded Staten Island cop Vicki actually fits the bill better — the only supernatural things about her are being void-touched (which just means anyone who's seen through the Weirdness Censor that protects most mundanes) and, after being recruited, having a veil placed on her gun which lets her fire it without most mundanes paying the noise any mind.
  • Tongue-Tied:
    • Someone did this to most people on Staten Island to prevent them from talking about what the demon did there. It was a tragedy. That's all it was.
    • The protester in front of Grant City Trust (Hugh Kravitz, formerly a VP at the bank), is under a Geas which has a similar effect courtesy of The Fair Folk. He eventually finds a way to talk around it, but the spell detects what he is trying to do. The resulting feedback knocks him out cold and lands him in the hospital.
  • Trenchcoat Brigade: Subverted with Eli Beckett — veteran Occult Detective, Fire Mage, nice suit, nice hat, practically immortal... and an accountant in his mundane life, who still kind of looks like one. He's skinny, shorter than the Player Character, and his clothes look a little big on him.
  • Tropaholics Anonymous: Logan is a graduate of the actual AA. He's been sober for a few years, but still regularly attends meetings and frequently recalls his sponsor's advice. He's even introduced using the Serenity Prayer to placate a house full of angry ghosts.
  • Unfinished Business: As this takes place the same universe as The Blackwell Series, there are quite a few ghosts hanging around here and there due to this. Logan is the only who can talk to them and get a clue to what these business are about though.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: Galene was defeated by the Unavowed some centuries in the past, but Kalash decided to spare her life, referring to the fact that Unavowed's mission is ostensibly to pacify supernatural treats, not to act as butchers and exterminators of supernatural creatures, and instead had her agree to a treaty that banished her to the North Woods in Central Park. Galene was, however, not appreciative at all of the mercy she was shown, and while she has been adhering to the treaty, she has been plotting ever since to find a way subvert it and kill Kalash for her humiliating defeat and subsequent entrapment. Such an opportunity would show up in the form of the demon-possessed Player Character... And true to form, should the Player Character decide to extend the same mercy to her as Kalash did, even in spite of everything she has done, by using his wish to wish for peace rather than the alternatives (transforming her to stone or outright burning her to death), she will spitefully declare that she will find a new way to subvert the old deal, even if it takes her another four centuries.
  • The 'Verse: Takes place in Wadjet Eye's World of Blackwell, same as the Blackwell series and The Shivah, with many a winking Call-Back, including any number of recurring minor characters.
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Big Bad created a portal to a pocket dimension at the scene of the crime, the place where they first summoned Melkhiresa. The second act deals with finding a way to open it. On the other side, it's a fractured, empty version of New York, where your summoner awaits you on top of the Empire State Building.
  • Waistcoat of Style: Of sorts: Logan wears a sleeveless black vest with a jacket collar, to similar effect.
  • Weirdness Censor: The Veil simply reinforces the natural tendency of all mundanes to rationalize or forget the supernatural, which is always on by default. This seems to be a supernatural effect unto itself.
  • What If the Baby Is Like Me: Implied. When Eli opens up to Player Character about his family, they can ask him if his children are Fire Mages like him. Eli will reply that neither of them are, and he is very relieved by that fact, implying that he was worried about it in the past.
  • When Trees Attack: Galene, a dryad, can command vines and branches to do her bidding, and form her body out of any plants in her grove, effectively allowing her to teleport. She wants to cover the whole of Manhattan in trees and fights and very nearly wins a duel with Kalash for one of his wishes that would allow her to fulfill that goal.
  • Who You Gonna Call?: The Unavowed is a secret society that deals with supernatural threats against civilian society at large.
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: Downplayed. Eli, being a Fire Mage, is destined to live much longer than a normal human. He'd already outlived his wife before his powers kicked in (cancer), but he's well aware of the fact that, barring some accident on the job, he'll outlive his children too. While he's more or less made peace with the idea, it's evident from the number of photos he has of his family that it still bothers him on some level.
    • Downplayed even further with Mandana, who's secretly divided about her Half Human Heritage and seems to like humanity as a group more than she likes jinn as a group, but has seen too many teachers, friends, and lovers age and die to feel human herself.
  • Wreathed in Flames: Happens to Jordon, a cultist who picked up a little magic and managed to burn down a homeless shelter, accidentally turning himself into a fire elemental while trying to stave off hypothermia.
  • You Didn't Ask: Actually a limitation in Melkhiresa's powers. As a knowledge demon (or rather daimon), it possesses practically limitless knowledge, but it cannot recall or divulge any of it of its own volition — it must be asked a direct question by its summoner before it can access what it knows. The "Wicked Spirit" compares it to how a manual or a lexicon cannot read itself.
  • You Shouldn't Know This Already: In instances where you need a certain code or password to advance in the game, you can try to use knowledge from other playthroughs which the game will cheekily acknowledge but won't let you use it without going through the actions to discover the clue again.

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