Characters that appear in Close to the Sun.
open/close all folders
Rose Archer
A reporter who is the sister of Ada Archer, a scientist onboard the Helios. She heads to the ship at her sister's request only to find that the boat has been turned into an abattoir.
- Action Survivor: She's able to push through numerous physical obstacles, a knife-wielding maniac, and time monsters despite being unable to fight back.
- Cool Big Sis: Rose was protective of Ada when they were younger and treks straight into Helios to get to her.
- For her part, Ada looks up to Rose, characterizing her own work as following her example and bragging about her to Tesla himself.
- Heroic BSoD: After Ada's death she gives up and decides to wait for the Time Abominations to kill her. Only Aubrey indirectly reminding her of her promise to protect Ada's notes gets her going again.
- The Promise: Rose's primary goal is pretty much always connected to some sort of promise she's made, and she goes through hell to keep them.
Rose: I promised Ada I'd get her research, and I did. I promised Aubrey I'd get him out, and I did. Now what has all that work given me? A broken rib and a concussion... at least I promised Aubrey I'd kill him, let's see how that goes...
- Intrepid Reporter: She mentions at one point that she's a journalist and plans to write a story about all the crazy happenings on the ship.
Ada Archer
A brilliant scientist working onboard the Helios. Known as one of Tesla's favorite workers, her research held the possibility to change the world... or possibly destroy it.
- Mission Control: She assigns Rose the missions of rescuing her research notebooks from around the ship.
- Smart People Play Chess: A signed flyer implies she beat Professor Steinitz, the reigning chess master on the Helios.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: She serves as this before Aubrey kills her.
Nikola Tesla
The genius inventor who created the Helios.
- Good All Along: Despite his role in the disaster and impeding Rose's progress for the sake of quarantine, Tesla is legitimately trying to fix the situation and even saves Rose's life towards the end.
- Historical Domain Character: An alternate history version of the real inventor and engineer. This one has significantly more resources than his historical counterpart and less qualms about achieving his goals.
- Properly Paranoid: He frets about Thomas Edison sending spies and institutes various draconian security measures in response. It turns out, though, that Edison really was sending spies.
Thomas Edison
Another noted inventor.
- The Ghost: Doesn't appear in the game proper.
- Historical Domain Character: Like Tesla, he's based on the historical figure. Unlike Tesla, he seems to have just as much resources as he did in reality, meaning he's unable to do much but constantly attempt lawsuits to tie up Tesla's Company in legal actions(something he was known to do in real life) and send spies to Helios.
- The Rival: To Tesla.
Aubrey King
A scientist who was reassigned to the Helios's maintenance division after Ada Archer took his place.
- Bad Boss: His reports show him as incredibly harsh towards the maintenance staff following his demotion. At one point he dismisses their concerns over workplace safety in the same report that he announces the funeral of one of their co-workers.
- Green-Eyed Monster: He is very jealous of Ada having taken his place as Tesla's favorite scientist.
- Mission Control: He acts as this in the period between Ada's death and his betrayal of Rose.
- Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: He's clearly unstable, as shown by his chatter with the corpse of a guy named Benny.
- Stalker Shrine: Downplayed. His apartment is decorated with posters of Tesla, but it's not that weird... until you see the Tesla face taped onto the bathroom mirror at head-height.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: He's one of these, chiming in through Rose's radio on occasion to give advice or missions.
Ludwig J. Ostrog
Chief of Surgery onboard the Helios.
- Ax-Crazy: His role is mostly to chase people around with his knife, and if he catches Rose he brutally murders her. It's also not entirely clear how many of the bodies are 'his' doing but considering the Madness Mantra he writes on the walls it's a truly incredible number of people he's killed.
- Historical Domain Character: It's heavily implied that his true identity is Jack the Ripper. He even seems to have been named after two of the suspects.
- Madness Mantra: He can be heard muttering "time is not a river" and "the circle must be broken". He also writes these around his victims. In their blood.
- Psycho Knife Nut: He exclusively uses a rather fancy-looking knife to brutally murder his victims.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: He seems to have some awareness of what is going on, albeit limited. In particular he recognizes Rose and assumes she's to blame for what's happening, attempting to kill her to rectify the situation.
- They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: He describes having calmed his murderous urges through his disciplined life on the ship, appearing fairly unremarkable. Even his apartment is incredibly normal. Helios security only catches onto his past shortly before everything goes wrong.
Eliza Fairchild
A friend of Ada's who works on the Helios.
- Blackmail: She was blackmailed into sabotaging the experiment under the threat of having her removed from the Helios. It was only supposed to delay the experiment. It did much more than that.
- Hanging Around: You find her hanging in her apartment bathroom; a note reveals she was so stricken with guilt at having unintentionally caused so much death that she killed herself.
- Small Role, Big Impact: In Game she is described as one of Ada's close friends to the point that she has a spare key to her room which Rose needs, but only appears as a hanging corpse, having killed herself from guilt. Nonetheless she is the reason, if inadvertently, for all the terrible events that befell the Helios. At the behest of a mysterious entity blackmailing her by threatening to have her removed from the Helios, possibly Edison's agents, she was ordered to sabotage the machine reactor during an experiment. She intended to only cause a delay but her meddling caused the experiment to go out of control and break completely which lead to the outbreak of "bleeding time" that would prove uncontainable and engulf the ship. In her suicide note she blames herself for all the death and destruction and understands why anyone reading could not forgive her.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: A note in her room heavily implies that she sabotaged the experiment which went haywire and resulted in the various temporal anomalies destroying the Helios.
Time Abominations
Monsters seeking to kill everyone involved with the Helios and its work on channeling energy from time itself.
- Clock Roaches: Their function.
