Character Sheet for the 2021 novel After the Revolution. Currently under construction.
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Main characters
Manny
Emmanuel "Manny" Sanchez
A twenty-one year old native of the Ciudad de Muerta, currently living in Austin, Manny is a child of post-Revolution Texas and familiar with both its fractured landscape and fractured power blocks. He works as a 'fixer', an inside-man with connections for foreign war journalists reporting from the Texas frontlines, with an eye towards saving up enough money to escape Texas for California or Europe.
- Action Survivor: He is more or less forced into the role as a result of his interaction with the Heavenly Kingdom.
- The Chains of Commanding: As the head of a local group of fixers, Manny is responsible for a few men who work under him as scouts and guides. When one of his men, Oscar, goes missing during the Heavenly Kingdom's first offensive, Manny is wracked with guilt as he ruminates about what might have happened to Oscar, blaming himself for sending him out into danger.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": He dislikes his first name and prefers "Manny".
- The Face: He is hired to perform this job for Roland's rescue mission because of the latter's lack of social skills.
- The Fixer: His job, having started his own business providing news clips and guided tours to the Austin-Dallas area to foreign news organizations.
- Foreign Cuss Word: Switches to Spanish when cursing.
- Grass is Greener: His overriding motivation is to get out of Texas: Initially the plan was California, but with the rise of the Heavenly Kingdom and the troubles on the west coast his new goal is to apply for immigration to one of the European nations.
- I Choose to Stay: Instead of going to Europe, he gives the money he saved up for his visa to Oscar's widow and moves to Rolling Fuck.
- Manipulative Bastard: Manny is very skilled at charming people. He succeeds at shaming Roland into fighting again for the Battle of Waco. He's uncomfortable as he's doing it, and later comes to regret it, even though it ensured Rolling Fuck's victory.
- My God, What Have I Done?: He blames himself for Roland's unstoppable killing spree and subsequent suicide attempt, as he knows it was only his pleading that convinced Roland to fight.
- Mister Exposition: Serves this during his early chapters, both with dialogue to Reggie and with his internal monologues.
- Non-Action Guy: Manny is a regular civilian, with only basic civilian-grade chrome and no military training at all. His one fight in the book results in a Groin Attack and a bloodied nose before he's put down.
Roland
Roland
A rogue post-human super-soldier with amnesia and a major drug habit, Roland is a hermit living in the commune of CamelToe, Arizona (on Camelback Mountain, outside the former city of Phoenix) with his drug collection and a computerised hind-brain containing several Petabytes worth of information on everything except himself and his own history. When an old friend from the Revolution appears with an offer almost too good to be true, Roland finds himself roped into one last mission over the fate of Texas.
- Ambiguously Gay: His orientation is never clearly identified, but he does seem to enjoy having sex with men. It's not completely clear if he's only exclusively attracted to men though, since he was in love with Topaz who's introduced as a woman but Topaz is also a literal Sex Shifter thanks to their augmentations, so some ambiguity remains.
- Amnesiac Dissonance: The more violent Roland gets, the more memories he recovers. Most of those memories are of him committing more violence, and he doesn't like them. At the end of the first novel, a memory of him engaging in a nuclear bombing of civilians drives him to commit suicide.
- Amnesiac Lover: To Topaz. Upon encountering her again Roland can only recall that he used to love her, but nothing about their actual relationship.
- Amnesiacs are Innocent: Downplayed; the amnesiac, in this case, is definitively not "innocent", but definitively more mellowed out and much less dangerous than whoever he used to be.
- Awful Truth: It is not an exaggeration to say his memories are literally soaked in blood, and it bothers Roland immensely. But when he recalls his two most awful memories — namely that he killed his brother and that he was the one who planted the Lakewood nuke — it finally becomes too much for him to bear, and it sends him into an acute bout of suicidal despair.
- The Berserker: Engineered to be one, with his augmentations being designed for "sustained maximum aggression" by pumping him full of combat drugs that focus him on targets and literally get him high on continual killing, to the point that if he's forced to keep fighting for too long he won't want to voluntarily stop. His Technical Pacifist attitude is essentially him trying to "stay on the wagon", and the vast quantity of recreational drugs he takes help him to control the craving to give into it.
- Easily Forgiven:
- Manny decides not to be angry at him about the Lakewood nuke, because Roland doesn't remember it and being angry wouldn't serve any purpose.
- Averted with Topaz, who still cares for him but refuses to forgive him for leaving her when he promised not to. She refuses to factor in his memory loss in her judgment, not because she thinks it doesn't matter, but because it doesn't change the effect on her and she won't set herself up to be hurt again.
- Functional Addict: Roland consumes enough drugs to kill a baseline human at least two-three times over on a daily basis, and even then it only partially reduces his deadliness — in fact, he prefers being doped out because it mutes his kill-reward systems.
- Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: His implants reward his pleasure centers when he harms or kills people.
- Healing Factor: He regularly tanks enough bullets to kill a battalion and shells to destroy a tank, and heals from it. In chapter 23 he even recovers from a self-inflicted shot through the forebrain, though he develops amnesia, again.
- Hidden Weapons: He has several, most of whom he's forgotten even exists. He has a Blade Below the Shoulder implanted in his right arm, and a handheld Grenade Launcher (essentially a bolt pistol) hidden in his intestines.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: His hindbrain is intact, leaving Roland with Petabytes worth of knowledge, but his personal memories are scrambled into non-existence. He suffers a second bout by the end of the first book.
- Last of His Kind: Roland is frequently described as such. It is confirmed that all other known Project Orange subjects were killed by some vaguely defined accident in space.
- Made of Iron: Literally. His skeleton is armoured to the degree that if his bone armouring is on, armour-penetrating ammunition won't harm it, and his healing factor allows him to recover at frightening rates. He's also near immune to fatigue and can keep working way beyond human standards.
- Martial Pacifist: Roland wants to be this trope, but the realities of modern war means he's often put in positions where it isn't possible. Hence why he wants to stay away from the front lines if possible. Even killing in defence of Manny and Sasha disturbs him, even as he recognizes it was the enemy combatants or his companions. He fully abandons the attempt during the Battle of Waco, and the ensuing stress and recovered memories causes him to attempt to kill himself.
- No Social Skills: Roland's interpersonal skills are fairly rusty, to say the least.
- One-Man Army: Roland is implied to be former U.S. Army special forces (even if he can't remember it) and chromed far and beyond even your 'average' posthuman: Even in his current state he's the deadliest thing on two legs in the book. As another posthuman mentions, there may be several posthumans worth a rifle platoon amongst them, but there is only one Roland. Skullfucker Mike later confirms this, claiming Roland is the Sole Survivor of a US Super-Soldier programme.
- Scary Black Man: Subverted. Roland is black and extremely dangerous, but he's also extremely easygoing and spacey. Double Subverted by his final chapter, as Roland begins unlocking more memories and combat skills and goes from reluctant warrior to bloodthirsty one-man-army.
- Shapeshifter Baggage: Regenerator variant. Roland frequently re-grows pieces of his body wholesale, with no explanation as to where the extra mass comes from.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Roland has forgotten more military action than most people would experience in several lifetimes, but the impressions they've left behind has deeply affected him.
- Sole Survivor: He's the only known survivor of his unit from the US Army. What we can glean from fragments of his memory heavily imply he was involved in getting the program shut down by attacking the lab that made their implants and possibly killing the general behind the program.
- The Stoner: Cyborgs tend to be found of drugs, but Roland takes it even further, being near constantly high or drunk on anything he get his hands on at any given time. But other than the sheer quantity of drugs he consumes, it is not really played for laughs, as it gradually becomes evident that Roland is using near constantly as a way of numbing himself to his own overwhelming feelings of guilt, self-loathing, and shellshock, and it is portrayed as a sign that he is at least passively self-destructive, even at the best of times.
- Super-Soldier: Was part of a pre-Revolution US Army program called Project Orange, of which he's the only known survivor.
- Super-Strength: Capable of tearing pieces off military-grade vehicles with his bare hands when sufficiently cheesed off.
- Super-Toughness: Roland's augmented body can take a lot of punishment, shrugging off small firearms with ease, and being able to withstand explosions.
- Technical Pacifist: Anything up to a significant chance of death is still an 'acceptable level of force' in Roland's book, but he dislikes killing. The trope gets slightly deconstructed in one of Sasha's chapters when she's forced to treat survivors of one of his rampages, as without AmFed-grade medical treatment none of them will ever recover the use of their limbs or senses. The 'pacifist' part gets more and more abandoned during his mission to the Heavenly Kingdom, with Roland moving from breaking half the bones of the training facility to outright butchering a large part of the Dallas garrison.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: His many mods include a chameleon system that allows him to take on the appearance of any other human he gets a good look at. He spends a good chunk of the novel posing as a dead (white) Texas citizen in order to infiltrate the Heavenly Kingdom.
- Undiscriminating Addict: If it's mind-altering, he'll take it.
Sasha
Sasha Marion
A seventeen year old native of Virginia in the North American Federation, Sasha is a high-schooler living a comfortable life in the better half of the remains of the old US Federal State. Having become a born-again Christian, Sasha has tired of life in the secular Federation. She spends her spare time secretly supporting the fundamentalist rump state of the Heavenly Kingdom, with the goal of eventually emigrating to what she sees as God's chosen state on Earth.
- Action Survivor: As an eighteen year old pre-med student with no inclination toward or experience with combat, Sasha spends most of the story as very much a non-action character. By the end of the book she's bashed in a military officer's skull with repeated blows from a helmet held in both her hands and shot a man who was going for a gun while she was hijacking his truck. She ultimately ends up falling in with Jim's mercenary company.
- Fallen Princess: A downplayed example: Sasha was well aware she was going down in social status in the Heavenly Kingdom — she simply failed to understand just how badly.
- The Fundamentalist: A born-again Christian of unknown denomination (some form of Charismatic Protestantism).
- Grass is Greener: Sasha's beginning motivation is to aid and possibly emigrate to the Heavenly Kingdom as she sees it as a life with purpose compared to her empty existence in the AmFed.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Sasha is blonde-haired and fundamentally a decent person — not that it stops her from aiding the Heavenly Kingdom, a Christo-Fascist state that openly espouses 'displacement' or 'conversion' of vulnerable minorities. Only after she sees firsthand what it's really like there does she come to her senses.
- I Just Want to Be Badass: After escaping the Heavenly Kingdom, re-obtaining some power of her own becomes important to her. Jim preys on it.
- Hated Hometown: Sasha is, just as many of her peers, unhappy with her life in the AmFed, feeling that they are stuck in an ideologically and spiritually dead place and have no real future to look forward to. It is what motivates her attempt to emigrate to the Heavenly Kingdom in the first place.
- Nerves of Steel: For an ordinary high-schooler, Sasha is very cool under pressure. Her ability to take charge of the situation when one of the other women in the House of Miriam gets injured catches the eye of Dr. Brandt.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: After killing Darryl she goes numb and spends the rest of the book in a half daze. Something Tule recognizes as an early sign of developing PTSD.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: She has a very rose-eyed view of the Heavenly Kingdom, which doesn't work out all that well for her. Just because she gets away from the Heavenly Kingdom doesn't mean she's overcome the psychological vulnerabilities that Alexander and Pastor Mike used to sucker her in—which Jim handily takes advantage of.
The Secular Defence Forces
Clark
Major DeShawn Clark
A major in the Secular Defence Forces. A modern-day warrior-poet and minor celebrity of the anarchist cause, and also one of Manny's most valuable contacts in the SDF.
- Eye Scream: He loses an eye in the initial Heavenly Kingdom offensive.
- Old Soldier: His age is kept vague, but he's one of the SDF's most veteran commanders and has personally faced incoming fire enough to be blasé about it.
- Uncertain Doom: He's wounded but alive after the Heavenly Kingdom attack his command post at the beginning of their Dallas offensive. He later shows up alive in Rolling Fuck, having avoided capture.
- Warrior Poet: He uses poetic metaphors and books of his poetry are popular overseas.
Peron
Major Peron
A major in the Secular Defence Forces and Manny's honorary uncle, being the father of one of his childhood friends.
- Honorary Uncle: To Manny.
- Uncertain Doom: The Heavenly Kingdom is implied to overrun his position shortly after he helps Manny escape. He's taken prisoner by the Kingdom and lynched in front of Manny's eyes.
The Heavenly Kingdom
Pastor Mike
Pastor "Mike" Donaghan
The mysterious spiritual leader of the Heavenly Kingdom, whose sermons and columns serves as the core of their beliefs, law-code and their primary source of recruitment material for outsiders.
- Don't Think, Feel: A large part of the spiritual philosophy he preaches involve learning not to overthink, that true faith requires being willing to let go of rational thought, to just take righteous action and trust completely in God to see them through. This gets reflected in a lot of the way the Heavenly Kingdom does things.
- The Ghost: None of the main characters directly interact with him.
- Greater-Scope Villain: He's the driving force behind a Christo-fascist state that rules over and harms thousands of people, but he's not directly involved in the story of the first book.
- The Leader: A charismatic preacher, his writings and personality is the foundation of the Kingdom.
- One-Steve Limit: Skullfucker Mike does not want to be confused with Pastor Mike.
- Shrouded in Myth: His backstory is littered with previous incidents of uprisings; he's previously been exiled from both the Christian Union and Louisiana before forming his Kingdom in Texas.
- Sinister Minister: While not encountered in person, he preaches a very fundamentalist gospel with very negative views on all kinds of minorities. Some of those views he keeps quieter than others to not scare off potential converts while he lures them in by appealing to more "acceptable" bigotries they might hold.
Alexander
Martyr Alexander Dubois
A young martyr in the Heavenly Kingdom and member of a sect within called the Jacobians. Sasha's boyfriend, and also her main contact and recruiter from within the Heavenly Kingdom.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: Exploited and averted. Both Sasha and Roland note that Alexander is a very good looking young man, which is why he's made a Jacobian to try and entice women online to come and join the Heavenly Kingdom. He's still a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, but he doesn't let that mask slip until he meets someone in person.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Not that you'd expect a recruiter for the Heavenly Kingdom to be a particularly nice person, but he quickly proves to be odious even towards fellow believers like Sasha.
- Exotic Extended Marriage: Alexander has several wives, his faith apparently allowing for such a thing for Jacobins like him, considering their primary duty to bare the Heavenly Kingdom his children. The women he entices to come and join the Heavenly Kingdom are generally unaware of this until they arrive, and Sasha was not thrilled to have been mislead in such a manner.
- The Heavy: Alexander isn't the head of the Heavenly Kingdom, but he is a ranking officer in the forces of it controlling Dallas, and the one that serves as a focal antagonist for the point of view characters more than any other representative of that state.
- Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: He's never seen wearing a helmet, preferring an officer's beret instead. Roland notes that he does this even when leading an assault team, so his handsome face extruding confidence can be clearly seen by those around him. It becomes a fatal error for him when he's literally beaten to death with a helmet.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: He's killed in an Extreme Mêlée Revenge by Sasha, the woman he'd deceived, mistreated and induced into abandoning the Heavenly Kingdom.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: He's a white supremacist, believing that Latinos were responsible for the fall of old America, as well as viewing women as chattel solely good for producing (white, Christian) babies. Not that he's open about that at first, not wanting to scare people away until they're in a position where he can be open about it and they can't do anything to effectively challenge his bigotry.
- Smug Snake: He's extremely smug and self-confident in inevitable victory for 'true believers' like himself.
The House of Miriam
Helen, Anne, Susannah and Mae
The House of Miriam is the gathering house for young women who immigrate to the Heavenly Kingdom, who live there under the aegis of Helen. During her time in the House of Miriam Sasha gets to see the underside of the Heavenly Kingdom and gets to know several of the young women living there.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Helen is fully aware of the true purpose of the House of Miriam, and keeps going along with it anyway. It's implied she's less than entirely pleased by the process, however.
- Breeding Slave: The purpose of the House of Miriam; any Martyr of the Heavenly Kingdom can 'choose' and 'marry' any of the inhabitants at any time. Anne and Susannah both fall victim to this, and Sasha was intended to be as well.
Dr. Brandt
Dr. Brandt
Chief medical officer of the Heavenly Kingdom, being its most senior (and possibly its only senior) doctor. He quickly takes Sasha under his wing when he realises her pre-med education makes her the closest thing he can get to another nurse.
- Disappointed in You: He quickly figures out Sasha is willingly helping Manny and Roland with their break-out and tells her he's deeply disappointed in her, and also that she needs to leave with them because he's not going to protect her if she stays in the Kingdom.
- Forced to Watch: Manny threatens him with letting Roland rampage through the Kingdom while leaving Brandt intact to deal with the ensuing suffering. It is enough to make him give in.
- Noble Demon: He's an eager and willing supporter of the Heavenly Kingdom, but unlike most of its citizens he doesn't approve of the brutality — not that he has much ability to change it.
- Pet the Dog: He ends up helping Sasha by giving her a job in the Heavenly Kingdom hospital and rescues her from Alexander at one point. While partially Pragmatic Villainy — Sasha is trained in medicine and therefore too valuable to waste — he also offers her genuine respect and praise for her work.
- We Have Reserves: He ends up on the receiving end of it and is hosed down by automatic fire in an ambush set to kill Roland.
Rolling Fuck, the City of Wheels
Topaz
Topaz MacMillan
A posthuman soldier of Rolling Fuck, and half of the "welcoming committee" that crosses paths with Manny and Reggie. Slightly more understanding of human reactions to posthumans than her counterpart, she is also revealed to have an unresolved past with Roland that he's long forgotten.
- Battle Couple: With Skullfucker Mike.
- Friendly Sniper: A handy shot with a battle rifle, and also quick to warm up to Manny and Reggie once plied with some whisky.
- Scary Teeth: Has huge chrome fangs.
- Sex Shifter: Shown to be pretty literally genderfluid when he decides to be male for the battle of Waco.
- Those Two Guys: She was in the same unit as Skullfucker Mike in the Revolution and they've stuck together since.
Skullfucker Mike
Skullfucker Mike
A posthuman member of Rolling Fuck and half of the "welcoming committee" that first meets Manny and Reggie. Mike is an archetypical 'friendly bruiser', though his extensive modifications occasionally makes it hard for him to 'get' the point-of-view of baseline sapiens.
- Battle Couple: With Topaz.
- Emotional Bruiser: He's very friendly to Manny and Reggie and later breaks down in tears in front of Manny over concern for Marigold.
- Insistent Terminology: It's Skullfucker Mike, not "Mike". "Skullfucker" doesn't even seem to be a nickname or epithet, it seems to be his actual first name. He will accept "Skully" by friends however.
- Noodle Incident: Dishonorably discharged from the US army, but we never find out what for.
- One-Steve Limit: Skullfucker Mike does not want to be confused with Pastor Mike.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: A downplayed example; he mentions having been alienated by the Revolution and not knowing what to do until he met Marigold and Rolling Fuck.
- Those Two Guys: Served in the same unit as Topaz in the Revolution, and they're still fighting together in Rolling Fuck.
Nana Yazziee
Nana Yazziee
An elder of Rolling Fuck, and de facto ambassador for visitors to the City of Wheels. While anarchists don't have leaders, Nana Yazziee is one of the most highly respected of the leaders they don't have.
- Cool Old Lady: So cool that when she tells Jim to shut up, he listens.
- Last Chance to Quit: A non-villainous version. She offers to put Manny on a transport to Austin instead of helping Rolling Fuck recover their negotiators.
- The Leader: Nana Yazziee will protest that she's not Rolling Fuck's leader because Rolling Fuck has no leaders. But just because there is no formal hierarchy in the City of Wheels doesn't mean she doesn't wield a lot of influence there. When she speaks, others listen.
- Neutral No Longer: Although Rolling Fuck normally takes no part in the struggles of the American successor states, the imprisonment of their citizens by the Heavenly Kingdom causes her to involve them directly.
- Wasteland Elder: An anarchist, rolling-city variant.
Donald Farris
Donald Farris
An ageing British documentarian and film-maker turned semi-permanent resident and advisor to Rolling Fuck.
- Actual Pacifist: He favours the path of peace for Rolling Fuck, arguing that too much war can cause their warriors to jump down the slippery slope.
- Mister Exposition: Shares this role with Skullfucker Mike regarding Rolling Fuck and its political situation.
Marigold
Marigold Fulton
An ambassador and negotiator for Rolling Fuck, facilitating trade and communications between the posthumans and the baseline citizens of territories visited by the City on Wheels. She was inside the city of Plano when it fell to the Heavenly Kingdom and currently 'enjoys' the Kingdom's hospitality.
- Deadpan Snarker: Spends a lot of her incarceration snarking at Sasha.
- Defiant to the End: She dies facing down a Kingdom assault squad — intended to kill Roland, a posthuman — with only a pistol stolen from one of them. She manages to kill two of them before they tear her apart.
- The Paragon: She was one of the firmest believers in the Rolling Fuck project and helped build the city up from nothing. Skullfucker Mike idolises her, and her death causes an outcry amongst the citizens.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: In their last conversation, tells Sasha she's smart enough to realise the Heavenly Kingdom is rotten to the core and she's better off leaving.
Tule
Tule Black Elk
Another member of Rolling Fuck's negotiators, part of the Plano delegation as the Heavenly Kingdom invaded.
- The Exile: She's a former citizen of Albuquerque, having left or been exiled around the time the King began 'boiling people'.
Rick
Rick Hartford
The third member of Rolling Fuck's Plano delegation, currently held prisoner by the Heavenly Kingdom.
- Non-Action Guy: He's another civilian and chromed well below the threshold of acceptance for Texas, and on top of it was treated very roughly by the Kingdom. He barely manages to stay conscious for most of the rescue mission.
- The Quiet One: Has no lines at all, mainly because he spends most of his screen-time being barely conscious and in a half-dead state from the treatment given to him by the Kingdom.
Independent characters
Reggie
Reggie
A British war reporter from the BBC, Reggie has come to Texas to report from the front lines of the current stalemate between the SDF and the Heavenly Kingdom, and a few mysterious bombings occurring on the front. He has hired Manny in order to accomplish this.
- British Stuffiness: He's much more prudish than Manny, especially when interacting with Topaz and Skullfucker Mike.
- Naïve Newcomer: A war journalist from Britain, he serves partially as a sounding board for Manny to explain the basics of life in post-Revolutionary Texas.
- Tagalong Reporter: He wasn't planning to get up close and personal to the conflict, but the Heavenly Kingdom caught everyone off guard. Still, he bails out almost immediately after reaching Rolling Fuck.
Jim
Jim Shannon
A posthuman, former revolutionary and former comrade of Roland's, turned independent entrepreneur with his own mercenary outfit who hires former military around Texas and the southwest. Has contacts in the government he used to fight against and has been hired to stabilize the increasingly volatile situation arising in Texas.
- Animated Tattoo: A pair of snakes on his chest, which can move in real-time. At one point they're dancing in tune to the ambient music, indicating they're at least partially connected to Jim's senses.
- Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: Played with. Jim believes in fomenting violent upheavals to kill the old order and make new things grow on the corpse. Most of the anarchists of the book do not agree with his tactics at all.
- Consummate Liar: Both Roland and Sasha note that it's essentially impossible to read his body language.
- Crazy-Prepared: He'd built a full suit of battle-armour for Roland years ago in case he managed to coax him back into fighting.
- Exotic Eye Designs: Thanks to his cyber-eyes, which constantly change the colour and size of his pupils.
- Full-Frontal Assault: Wears groinless chaps and precious little else.
- Manipulative Bastard: The most dangerous kind of charming, aided by augmentations that allow him to smell people's hormones and thus deduce their emotions.
- Toxic Friend Influence: He tries to push Roland into ever-greater acts of violence in the hopes that Roland will recover his memories. It backfires completely, as Roland recovers enough of his memories to realise his former crimes and violently suppresses them.
- Villain Takes an Interest: He takes an interest in Sasha, offering her an "internship" in his organisation.
Bigsby's Squad
The Squad
A squad of mercenaries used by Jim to "test" Roland, and one of several in his employ. The squad are varying degrees of chromed, though nowhere near Roland's level, and serve as his escorts in the initial sabotage mission into the Heavenly Kingdom.
- BFG: As the squad regularly hunts posthumans, they are all equipped with weapons that are massively overkill (or chambered with ammunition that would be massively overkill) for fighting regular people.
- Elite Mooks: Though undoubtedly skilled, Roland's opening chapters quickly show there are things even they aren't equipped to handle — they are a kill team, not a frontline combat unit, and crumple quickly under an assault of artillery and Powered Armour infantry.
- Perception Filter: Bigsby's implants makes him impossible to see through most standard data suites. Even Roland can only see him as a blank of a certain size and (probable) mass.
- Put on a Bus: They exit the story after their initial attempt of getting Roland into Heavenly Kingdom territory, only to show up as Jim's bodyguards shortly before the Battle of Waco.
- We Are "Team Cannon Fodder": They try to get Roland behind Kingdom lines for his initial sabotage mission. Though all of them survive the Kingdom assault they run into, they don't do so unharmed.
