Characters / Darkest Dungeon: Heroes (M to Z)

Darkest Dungeon Main Character Index
Heroes (A-F, G-L, M-Z) | NPCs and Merchants | Darkest Dungeon: Monsters | Darkest Dungeon II: Monsters | DLC Monsters

The Man-at-Arms

"We hold as one and strike as one!"

^{Click here to see him in the first Darkest Dungeon.}

"The raw strength of youth might be spent... but his eyes hold the secret of a hundred campaigns."

The Man-at-Arms is a seasoned veteran of combat, and has been rewarded for his toil with haunting guilt and stoic resilience in equal measure. Immovable, commanding, and focused, the Man-at-Arms breaks down enemy lines with his mace, buckler, and furious battle cries.

See the Man-at-Arms' comic here◊.

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• Ambidextrous Sprite: Par for the course, but the Man-At-Arms' eyepatch switching eyes makes it especially noticeable.
• The Atoner: Dialogue spoken during both Affliction and Virtue suggest that his long career as a soldier has weighed heavily on his conscience, and that the dungeon is his Redemption Quest, with the war in question has resulted in the slaughter of all of his men in one particular horrific campaign. The second game expands on this. The Man-at-Arms was originally an incompetent officer who wormed his way into a coveted command through politics, but the first battle he led was a disaster that resulted in the loss of many men and his eye. Worse, as he was bedridden, he was haunted by the dead soldiers of his regiment who damned him for his incompetence causing their deaths. From then on, a demoted Man-at-Arms devoted himself to become a better officer and perhaps being killed in battle like he thinks he deserves.
• Battle Cry: His Bellow skill has him strike terror into his enemies with a mighty war cry, reducing their speed and dodge stats and making them receive crits more frequently. At release, it even dealt a few points of Scratch Damage. In The Butcher's Circus, it instead applies a damage debuff to the enemy party with a side of Stress infliction. In II, it just reduces enemy Speed as well as removing Riposte and Crit tokens.
• Canon Name: The default name for the Man-At-Arms is Barristan, after Ser Barristan Selmy from A Song of Ice and Fire, the allusion being that they are both Old Soldiers and Cool Old Guys. Ironically, their military success rates are complete opposites, with Ser Barristan being one of the oldest and most decorated knights of the Kingsguard while Barristan the Man-At-Arms was a General Failure who got his men slaughtered.
• Carry a Big Stick: Favors a large, spiked morning star. The weapon itself and its associated combat skill Crush is actually weaker then most blades — although that might be a function of the Man-at-Arms' age.
• Cool Old Guy: The Man-At-Arms' military buzz-cut is white with age and accompanying his mostly-salt-with-a-little-pepper beard, but he is still a mega-tough Sergeant Rock who can rally his teammates around him and can whip them into shape to become a hyper-efficient combat unit.
• Counter-Attack: Retribution grants a Riposte with reduced damage (-20% at best). It can be combined with Defender or the Antiquarian's Protect Me skill to both soak up damage and dish it out simultaneously, and often deals more damage this way than the Man-at-Arms' direct attacks. When worn as a set, his Crimson Court trinkets boost his Riposte damage by +25%, making his counterattacks hit harder than his best direct damage skill.
• Death Seeker: Revealed in II: his incompetent command of his first battle resolved him to continue fighting in more battles in the hopes he would receive a petty demise he believes himself to deserve.
• Draw Aggro: Retribution marks the Man-at-Arms for a few rounds, giving him more chances to pull off a Riposte.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: The Man-At-Arms becomes incredibly nasty, like a particularly mean drill sergeant, if he ever gets Abusive.
  You are like a gaggle of pathetic recruits!
  Incompetent fools!
  Truth is, most of you won't survive this.
• Eyepatch of Power: Wears one over his right eye. Frankly, due to everyone having Hidden Eyes, it doesn't make much of a difference. Some of his specific trinkets are other eyepatches.
• Eye Scream: A tragic example of this. It's heavily implied by the second game that instead of losing his own eye in battle, he actually tore his own eye out himself due to the trauma and guilt of sending his own men to their deaths.
• Fantasy Character Classes: The Warlord. The Man-at-Arms deals lower-than-average damage but can build up PROT to absorb attacks easily, and his camping and combat skills greatly buff his party.
• A Father to His Men: The Man-At-Arms has an almost paternalistic instinct towards the soldiers under his command, which includes the other adventurers, especially while Virtuous. Rather tragically Deconstructed, however, the same care he had for his men drove him to the Hamlet in the first place, as he couldn't cope with watching them all be butchered.
  Lean on me, you need not ask!
• Funetik Aksent: II gives him a more pronounced one, with various clipped consonants and frequent use of the word "yer" instead of "you", implying he might have something sounding like a Bristol accent.
• General Failure: Only briefly in his past, but he had obtained a coveted position in the army through political wrangling rather than personal merit. During his first battle, he led many men to their deaths through his incompetence. The trauma and guilt broke him, leading to some much-needed Character Development.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: His second Hero shrine mission sees him re-living the battle where he got his own troops slaughtered as it slowly dawns on him that he no idea what he's doing. At first it looks like you'll be commanding a group of NPC soldiers and giving them buffs, with the objective simply being "Onward to victory!". However, the descriptions of the Man-At-Arms' commands are lying, and all they do is apply debuffs and make his soldiers confused and inflict Daze on themselves. After a few rounds of this, the only move available to the Man-At-Arms will be "I DON'T KNOW!" Which inflicts 16 Stress onto himself.
  The Academic: A massacre. A rout. A complete and total failure of command.
• The Leader:
  • A bit like the Crusader, but in a more Mastermind and Levelheaded flavor, having two abilities for buffing allies in his party in combat, a moveset based on around controlling the battlefield, and as well the Tactics and Instruction camping skills to prepare them for the job ahead. Justified, as it's heavily implied that the Man-At-Arms was an infantry sergeant or captain of some kind, so it's his job to make sure that unit cohesion remains in place during battle. Darkest Dungeon II establishes that he was at least a regiment commander.
  • His Camping Skills, besides Maintain Equipment (which buffs him), are all some training or planning. Tactics buffs the dodge and crits of the entire party, Instruction buffs the accuracy and speed of a lone Hero, and Weapons Practice buffs the damage and crit chance of the party. These powerful buffs are balanced by their high cost in Respite Points during camping.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: The Man-At-Arms carries a heavy, metal heater shield, and he can use it to protect his allies with the Defender skill. His enemies get a devastating Shield Bash with Rampart, which pushes them back with a chance of stunning. He also uses his shield as a weapon when Riposting. Some of his trinkets are other shields.
• My Greatest Failure: He was demoted and disgraced after his first battle that saw his troops utterly crushed and routed from his incompetent command. He continued to fight on battlefields all over in the hopes that he would eventually be given the ignoble death he believes he deserves… as well, judging from his skills, his commanding ability improved significantly with practice.
• Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack: "Bellow" reduces the evasion and speed of all enemies on the field and increases their chances of taking critical hits.
• Obi-Wan Moment: If chosen to sacrifice himself against the Heart of Darkness, he states that he has come to terms with his Survivor Guilt, and atoned for his past sins.
  I go with a clear conscience. I've given my all.
• Old Soldier: A veteran of countless campaigns, the Man-At-Arms is clearly out of his prime, but he makes up for it with his unmatched experience and tactical knowledge.
• Plagued by Nightmares: Seen in his hero shrines. His dead soldiers haunted his dreams until he went to the the battlefield they fell on and performed memorial rites for them.
• Sergeant Rock: He seems to be much, much better at commanding a small group of people whom he knows well and is attached to at small-scale combat operations then he was as a general in charge of an entire army. He has some extremely useful buffs such as Guard, Command and Bolster which can seriously boost the effectiveness of his teammates, and his Sergeant Path in II is all about this, giving him even stronger buffing capabilities at the cost of doing very little damage.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran:
  • While he usually hides it underneath a layer of stoicism like a proper soldier, his afflicted barks show just how broken and tormented he really is, bitterly lamenting the countless comrades he's seen die over the years, not to mention his whole life being spent on endless war. In particular, while Hopeless, he expresses guilt over all the lives he's taken.
  When did I become Death's right hand?
  • The sequel shows that he personally blames himself for the slaughter of every man under his command, since it was his incompetence that got them killed, and even with all the good he's done since in an effort to atone(along with becoming a genuinely good military leader), it still bubbles up in his mind from time to time.
  The Man-At-Arms[having a Meltdown]: Howls down the hospital corridors...
• Shield Bash: He does this when riposting or using the Rampart skill.
• Stone Wall: Has lower speed than most classes and doesn't do much damage on his own, but he makes up for it with the second-greatest base health pool, as well as several skills that give him a massive boost to defense. On the other hand, Retribution combined with Guard can, like the Highwayman, turn him into a steady source of off-turn damage.
• Survivor Guilt: Starts displaying this in spades if he becomes Hopeless. All the more so in his background comic, where he was the Sole Survivor of one battle where his unit failed to reach the green flag. Darkest Dungeon II modifies his backstory, making him the leader of his regiment, if not his army — his lack of tactical accumen and practical experience resulted in a bloody rout.
• Support Party Member: The Man-at-Arms is a tank, first and foremost. He also has buffs and debuffs, his ability to defend a specific hero, and his Camping Skills confer additional buffs. His Guardian's Shield trinket delegates him to the very back of the formation for increased defense, dodge, and healing received, but also locks him out of his attack skills.
• War Is Hell: A very firm believer in this trope; not only was his entire unit slaughtered in front of his eyes, the scars of his endless battles still weigh heavily on his soul.
• You Shall Not Pass!: Several of his barks, especially when Virtuous, emphasize the Man-at-Arms' tendency to put himself between the enemy and his comrades.

The Musketeer

“The thrill of the hunt clears my mind!”

"A champion markswoman — keen for a new kind of challenge."

A reskin of the Arbalest. Originally a Kickstarter backer exclusive, then added as Free DLC two years later.

See The Musketeer's comic here◊.

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• Canon Name: Her in-file name is "Margaret", a reference to Margaret Murdock, a competitive markswoman who set several world records.
• Combat Medic: She has the same healing skills as the Arbalest, renamed in the case of her combat heal Patch Up. It isn't anywhere near as much a part of her personality or backstory as it is for the Arbalest, however.
• Chicken Joke: An irrational Musketeer drops a variation when refusing to perform camping skills:
  Musketeer: Why did the cockerel cross the lane? To reach the other side! Hahahahaha!
• Divergent Character Evolution: A very mild example. Her unique Crystalline trinket in Colour of Madness is different than the Arbalest's.
  • Gets less mild in the Butcher's Circus, where several skills and character-unique trinkets differ between Arbalest and Musketeer. Their usage is similar, but different enough to prefer one over another.
• Egomaniac Hunter: She becomes this when Abusive or Selfish.
• Glory Hound: To a greater degree than the Arbalest, in fact. She even seems to find some glory in being sacrificed to the Heart of Darkness, unlike her counterpart.
• Great White Hunter: Her attitude toward the whole endeavor, as long as she's not afflicted. Most of her combat barks, particularly while Virtuous, speak fondly of the hunt, and herself, and sometimes her allies, as great hunters.
• Hunter of Monsters: By nature of her quarry.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: When hunting bandits and cultists.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Part of the job, as a championship markswoman, and also a large part of how she defines herself.
• It's Personal: Her being drawn to hunt the eldritch abominations of the Hamlet Estate might have something to do with an Eldritch Abomination showing up and ruining her shot, causing that one pride-crushing My Greatest Failure moment that ruined her whole career as a professional competitive marksman.
• Long-Range Fighter: Like the Arbalest, she has only two attacks capable of working in the front ranks or even hitting the front row of enemies (a buckshot blast and a pistol sidearm which targets a random rank), both of which are considerably weaker than her rifle attacks.
• Moveset Clone: Of the Arbalest, with all her upgrades and even her trinkets being reskinned versions of the Arbalest's. Only their unique crystalline items introduced in The Color of Madness differ mechanically: both grant a +20% DMG boost (which is a big deal given how much damage they do by default), but at a cost, like all crystalline trinkets: the Musketeer's Icosahedric Musket Balls bestow a 20% chance of randomly hitting a different target than the one she aims at — much like how she missed her mark in that fateful contest the first time she caught a glimpse of the Heart of Darkness.
• The Musketeer: In Name Only, as she exclusively uses firearms and, like the Arbalest, is almost helpless if forced into the front ranks.
• My Greatest Failure: Despite a specially crafted bullet and the finest powder she can procure, she was unable to win the trophy of a shooting competition and had to settle for second place. Furthermore, it is implied that she lost out by only that single missed shot. All thanks to her freakout from a brief manifestation of a hideous disembodied eye in place of the bullseye which threw off her shot. Apparently, the search for the owner of said eye brought her to the Hamlet.
• Noble Wolf: While Virtuous, she compares herself to the mighty wolf and refers to herself and her "packmates" as having the scent, stalking their prey, and so on.
• Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack: "Call the Shot" inflicts the Mark status and massively decreases the target's evasion.
• Rich Bitch: She repeatedly alludes to a noble upbringing and mentions being accustomed to hunting alongside servants that cater to her needs. An abusive Musketeer fully embraces this trope, displaying naked disdain for her social inferiors.
  Musketeer: The rabble's opinions are the bleatings of simple sheep.
• Second Place Is for Losers: Based on her Crimson Court special trinkets, the Musketeer suffered a blow to her confidence after getting second place in a prestigious marksmanship competition, having missed a single shot.
• Sheltered Aristocrat: According to the Guild menu, the Musketeer is "A competitive sharpshooter with little practical experience", and she approaches the expeditions akin to the game hunts she would undertake while surrounded by attendants. Fortunately, this sheltered upbringing does not make her any less effective of a markswoman.
• Shout-Out:
  • Her predetermined name was originally Quiet, but this was later changed to Margaret.
  • Her quote if chosen as the sacrifice to the Heart of Darkness is "All for one, and one for all!"
• Technician vs. Performer: The Technician to the Arbalest's Performer, as noted above: a hobbyist hunter and wealthy competitive marksman who spent her whole life training to shoot, rather than an army medic who picked up her skills in the field. As also noted, like many Technicians in fiction, she has a bad habit of choking under pressure.
• This Cannot Be!: The quote from her Crimson Court trinket set. As with the others, it ties in with the backstory revealed in her origin comic:
  Musketeer: I... I missed!? But how...?

The Occultist

"How uncivilized."

^{Click here to see him in the first Darkest Dungeon.}

"To fight the Abyss... one must know it."

A lifetime of scholarly inquest into ancient and forbidden lore has opened the Occultist's mind to the powers of the void. Debilitating curses and maddeningly impossible support skills are his specialty. The void, however, is an unpredictable power, and consequently, skills' effectiveness can vary dramatically and usually come at the cost of light or stress.

See the Occultist's comic here◊.

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• Alpha Strike: His Aspirant Path in II is designed to turn Anamnesis into one, giving him extra melee damage and a 125% damage buff to Anamnesis specifically, meaning it turns a pretty good Status Infliction Attack into an enemy-obliterating Limit Break.
• The Anti-Nihilist: A camping skill, called Abandon Hope, causes him to vocally express his lack of care over his remaining days, which naturally stresses out the rest of the party. For him, he loses stress as it's his acceptance of fate that allows him to keep his sanity despite whatever forbidden lore he finds.
• The Atoner: For the death of his followers and bringing the Shambler to his world.
• Avenging the Villain: Albeit unintentionally. The Shuffling Horror is a version of the Shambler corrupted by the Heart of Darkness, and killing it at the end of the game presumably spares any other Shamblers from such a fate as well.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: As his quote above would indicate, this is his reason for studying dark magic.
• Black Speech: Sometimes speaks this way while casting his spells or upon dealing a crit.
• Casting a Shadow: In The Butcher's Circus game mode the Occultist gains Stygian Embrace, a skill that slightly heals and grants Stealth to a party member, granting temporary safety and increased Stress infliction.
• Combat Medic: As unreliable as Wyrd Reconstruction can be, it can be used from any rank,^note compare the Vestal, whose single-target heal is only available in the back two ranks, and her area-of-effect heal can never be used at the forefront. This allows the Occultist to fit comfortably anywhere in the party, the only concern being his main attack skills.
• Canon Name: The default name for the Occultist is Alhazred, after Abdul Alhazared of the Cthulhu Mythos.
• Combat Tentacles: Three of his spells involve creating portals from which giant demonic tentacles attack his foes. Abyssal Artillery creates a portal above to strike the 3rd and 4th enemy ranks, Hands From The Abyss stuns a single enemy at the cost of torchlight, and Daemon's Pull summons a great tentacle to entangle an enemy and drag them forward. In II, the Occultist adds to his skills Anamnesis, which summons many tentacles that attack and inflict a party-wide bleed on the enemy.
• Charged Attack: In Darkest Dungeon 2, the Occultist has a specific "Unchecked Power" token which accumulates via specific skills. With enough tokens, the Occultist can unleash his true power and his skills are greatly empowered. For instance, Wyrd Reconstruction gives crit healing, or he can use his most powerful skills like Anamnesis or The Burning Stars.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The Occultist uses eldritch magic and dark rituals but he genuinely wants to use those powers to fight against evil forces. He is one of the hero classes, and while some of their spells have drawbacks (such as a healing spell that causes an ally to bleed, or attack skills that dim the torch), they aren't inherently evil. On top of that, they get resistances to the attacks of Eldritch enemies, and do more damage to them as well.
• Deal with the Devil: Presumably how he got most of his magical ability, if his injured quote is any indication (he points out that his dying wasn't in the contract; but it's usually never stated that a supernatural creditor has to wait for natural causes to kill a debtor...). The sequel reveals it to be a Shambler, whose power he stole. It continually stalks him, occasionally possessing him, to this day.
• Death Seeker: According to the demon possessing him when he is Masochistic, although this could be it tempting the enemy to free itself with his death.
• Demonic Possession: Afflicted Occultists will sometimes get possessed by whatever dark power they've made a pact with, saying all manner of unsettling things and engaging in the usual bouts of unhelpful behavior that afflicted heroes are prone to.
  • The reverse may happen as well with virtues. A vigorous Occultist will receive healing as his voice speaks about "still having use for you, mortal".
• Driven to Madness: In The Butcher's Circus the Occultist can weaponize his black magic to inflict Stress and Horror on the enemy team, aiming to turn them Afflicted and allowing his Sacrificial Stab to deliver the finishing blow easily.
• Emergency Weapon: The Occultist is fragile and mediocre dodge, and when finding himself at the front, only really has his dagger to attack through Sacrificial Stab. It has a nice bonus damage against eldritch monsters and a good crit modifier, but other Heroes are better-suited to that task. It is no longer the case in II because the dagger is also used for the Binding Shadows skill, which has the Occultist stab a target for potentially extra Unchecked Power.
• Ethnic Magician: The Abdul Al-Hazred variant, naturally. He's a vaguely Indian-looking man with a turban and flowing robes who wields a curved Persian-style dagger. Interestingly, his Hero Shrines suggest that it's a costume he puts on when doing occult-related stuff and not his plainclothes, since he is depicted in his past without the robes and a regular suit and tie instead, though he keeps the turban◊.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Played straight whenever an Occultist has a Heroic BSoD, many of which imply that the forces they consort with have turned on them.
• Expy: II makes it more explicit that he's supposed to be based off of a combination of Abdul Alhazred and Randolph Carter from the works of H. P. Lovecraft.
• Fantasy Character Classes: The Theurgist. The Occultist has made a bargain with an eldritch entity and borrows its power to mainly apply debuffs and status effects, but can also deal some damage and heal.
• Flaming Meteor: The Burning Stars skill from Darkest Dungeon 2 has the Occultist summon a small shower of fiery meteors, inflicting heavy damage, ignoring protection token and also putting a combo token on the target. However, it is a Charged Attack which needs two Unchecked Power tokens to be usable.
• Godzilla Threshold: His Dark Ritual camping skill was clearly designed with this kind of situation in mind. It removes the mortality debuff inflicted by a hero going on Death's Door during a quest and heals them for a huge 50% of their total health… but it causes stress to the Occultist while darkening the light to pitch black. A player using this better have plenty of light sources to alleviate it or expect to finish the quest soon...
• Harmful Healing: Wyrd Reconstruction has the highest possible healing. But its balanced out by its unreliability and chance to cause bleeding, as there's always a risk of it giving no healing and a bleed status effect. Because of this, Wyrd Reconstruction is better suited to topping off health than rescuing a party member from Death's Door.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: Naturally. He summons parts of eldritch creatures and performs horrifying rituals, thankfully for your sake.
• Magic Cauldron: Some of his trinkets are cauldrons.
• Magikarp Power:
  • Wyrd Reconstruction starts out somewhat weak and runs the risk of dealing more damage than it heals. Fully upgraded, the Occultist's Bleed chance is reduced by the right Trinkets or his heroic targets gain enough resolve levels that he probably can't bleed them anyway, he can become the best single-target healer in the game. Supplementing the Occulist with either an Arbalest, Musketeer or Plague Doctor help boost his healing and negate his bleed debuffs respectively.
  • His debuff skills are not all that strong and the enemies are usually weak enough that you'd prioritize consistently attacking to finish the fight quickly. At higher levels, the skills would be improved enough to have some weight to them, and the longer fights with tougher enemies make them worth the slot.
• Meteor-Summoning Attack: The Burning Stars is implied to be this, with the Occultist building up so much unchecked power that he can just teleport a falling meteor on top of one of his enemies for massive damage.
• No Indoor Voice: Whenever the source of the Occultist's eldritch powers takes over, it always shouts, represented by uses all capital letters.
  The Occultist[having a Meltdown]: IT CALLS. I AM UNABLE TO RESIST.
• Noodle Incident: He attended a liberal arts school. There is no other elaboration on that end other than he attended it.
• Power at a Price: Chaotic Offering is a new skill in Darkest Dungeon 2 which allows the Occultist to build up power (represented by the Unckecked Power tokens) and gaining a 15% damage bonus at the cost of inflicting himself with a burn.
• Reduced to Dust: His corpse sprite in the Butcher's Circus depicts his remains as bleached bones strewn about a pile of sand, without a single speck of blood.
• Shout-Out:
  • Some of the Occultist's battle quotes are in R'lyehian, the fictional language of the denizens of the sunken city of R'lyeh from the Cthulhu Mythos.
  • The Ritualist skin for his weapons in II turns his ritual skull into a miniature statue of Cthulhu himself, specifically the one described at the beginning of The Call of Cthulhu.
• Sistine Steal: The icon for Unspeakable Commune copies the detail of Adam reaching for God's hand, but God is replaced with a tentacle.
• Soul Jar: The candle-topped skull is actually connected to him, and he will die if the candle is completely melted to the point of snuffing out.
• Summon Bigger Fish: This is effectively how all of his non-curse offensive spells work. He either opens a momentary portal through which an Eldritch Abomination will lash out and attack his target with its tentacles, or he'll just build up so much raw power that he can summon a meteor to fall on a single target.
• The Spock: A bit. With his encourage camping skill, he remarks how songs are "proven" to raise morale and that fear is simply a state of mind.
• Squishy Wizard:
  • He has the lowest starting hit points, and their increase from armor upgrades is low, too.
  • Downplayed with his Aspirant path in II, where he gets a 20 percent max HP bonus and starts every combat with a Block+ token, allowing him to become a frontline monster who can build up Unchecked Power by dealing damage and unleash it for explosive results.
• Status Effects: The Occultist specializes in dealing these. Weakening Curse will lower the damage of a single monster, Hands From The Abyss stuns a monster, Vulnerability Hex marks them and lowers their dodge, Daemon's Pull displaces their enemy formation, presumably pulling a monster into a disadvantegeous position. In II, the Occultist's new skill Malediction now curses a target to receive supplementary blight, bleed or burn damage each time they are damaged.

The Plague Doctor

"Bones break and flesh tears!"

^{Click here to see her in the first Darkest Dungeon.}

"What better laboratory than the blood-soaked battlefield?"

A doctor, researcher, and alchemist who prefers to hang back, eating away at her foes with stacking damage-over-time abilities like toxic clouds & plague-filled grenades. She is equally effective in a support role, blinding and confusing foes while enhancing a party's survival with damage-increasing tonics, and remedies for bleed and blight effects.

See the Plague Doctor's comic here◊.

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• All the Other Reindeer: Suffice to say, she was not the most popular student in her university. Her controversial and unconventional theories served to only earn her the scorn of both her fellow students and her teachers. It would serve to only further encourage her to dive into her studies, and made the decision to use her professors death as an opportunity for her extra credit project all the easier.
• All There in the Manual: An official illustration by Chris Bourassa, the game's lead director and artist, displays the molecular formula for sulfuric acid along with the Plague Doctor. This rather implies at least one of her concoctions is just sulfuric acid.
• Artistic Licence Medicine: The Leeches camping skill can somehow remove diseases and cure blight. The good doctor also seems to obtain great results from inhaling vapours, although this was an ineffective Middle-Age healing method in real life. Then again, she can work actual necromancy through her scientific knowledge, so it could be that medicine works differently in her universe.
• The Atoner: For her ill-advised experimentation with necromancy.
• Boring, but Practical: Battlefield Medicine heals for a minimal amount compared to other single-target heals, but it also cleanses the target of both bleed and blight. Most players will tell you the value of preventing damage over healing it. Given that some enemies, such as the Ucas or the Templars, can dish out some hefty Damage Over Time with their attacks, the cleanse can prevent quite a bit of damage indeed.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: Giving her most alcoholic beverages in an inn will usually elicit complaints about how badly it burns her. She seems to be quite the lightweight.
• Cool Mask: As part of the standard "plague doctor beak" look. She appears to have had said mask for a while since it appears in her character comic depicting her back when she was a university student.
• Combat Medic:
  • Her primary role is to lob toxic grenades at the monsters. But she's just as good at curing bleed and blight with Battlefield Medicine. During camping, all her skills are geared toward healing wounds or diseases and facilitating healing.
  • She's a much more straightforward example in Darkest Dungeon II. Her healing is much better and is the party's starting primary healer. Her "Surgeon" Hero path makes her even more of one, as it buffs her healing abilities and the strength of her "Incision" move, turning her into both a reliable damage dealer and healer.
• Canon Name: The default name for the Plague Doctor is Paracelsus, after the revolutionary German alchemist who's also known as 'the father of toxicology'.
• Creepy Good: For starters, she's a Plague Doctor, which already sends off a sinister vibe. She's also a bit too interested in diseases and experimenting (read: dissecting cadavers). But she's also one of the heroes that fight against the abominations threatening the Hamlet.
• Deadly Doctor: Wearing a doctor mask and a cloak, she is a master of alchemy and contagions; she deals in concoctions and withering tonics.
• Deadly Gas: Used as a weapon in the form of blighting grenades. Noxious Blast is a short-range powerful blight effect, and Plague Grenade lobs an AoE weaker blight effect.
• Emergency Weapon: Her skills can only be used at the back. If she gets dragged all the way forward, her options are to either spend her turn retreating, or slice into the opposition with Incision, which is a weak attack. Unless you giver her the "Bloody Herb" trinket, anyway, which significantly buffs the damage and accuracy of the move and puts it on par with those of dedicated damage dealers.
• Fantasy Character Classes: Surprisingly, not Healer, but Assassin, as she specializes in dealing blight damage and stunning enemies to put them at a disadvantage, though there's a bit of Healer in her camping skills and her Battlefield Medicine ability.
• The Faceless: Averted. She's notably the only female hero whose face is completely covered in-game. However, her full appearance is shown in her comic.
• For Science!: The Plague Doctor is far more interested in satisfying her own morbid curiosity than fighting for some greater cause. In fact, the reason why she got expelled was because she dissected her professor who died of a plague (and had no clear qualms doing so). Or so it seems. In reality, it's just as much her being The Atoner for a horrifically bungled resurrection attempt.
• In the Hood: Works in concert with the Cool Mask to completely envelop the head.
• Limited Move Arsenal: While she is the premier dispenser of blight for the heroes, the Plague Doctor suffers from the fact that she must use up two of her four skill slots to be able to blight any rank of the enemy team.
• Mad Scientist: There are implications of this, as her backstory comic involves her dissecting the corpse of her professor, and marking him as Subject #40, as well as her Crimson Court trinkets having her reference "Those fools at the university…", along with her fascination with the wounds and diseases of her allies when treating them. It's eventually revealed in II that she tried to cure death with necromancy combined with her brilliant knowledge of anatomy… to horrific results.
• Master Poisoner: The crux of her character. She is geared to deal Blight damage and Disorienting Blast shows her throwing a grenade full of unknown chemicals to stun and displace an enemy.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Darkest Dungeon 2 reveals this is the core of her shame; she tried to resurrect a professor she disliked through a combination of her brilliant biological knowledge and necromancy largely to show him up. However, he was in a constant state of absolute, terrified pain and even moving horrifically damaged him, forcing her to Mercy Kill him. It's quite clear from her flashbacks and quotes that she was regretful and utterly disgusted with her own actions, as even she realizes she crossed a line there.
• Nightmare Fetishist: She gets rather excited when treating her allies' injuries in camp and will sometimes comment on wanting to keep bits of the slain enemies. This comes to the forefront should she become Masochistic. Her comic also shows her being rather giddy when dissecting one of her professors after finding him dead…
• Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack: "Blinding Gas" stuns the farthest two enemies for a turn. Her "Disorienting Blast" does the same thing in addition to shuffling their order, but only effects one enemy at a time.
• Noodle Incident: From her exclusive Crimson Court trinkets, it's clear she did something involving a "Subject #40" and a dissection kit that got her kicked out of the University. Her comic reveals she began dissecting one of her professors after she poisoned him, or he died from the plague. Only Subjects #1, #25, and the eponymous #40 were shown, leaving the open question of what exactly she was up to.
  • Darkest Dungeon 2 provides an explanation. She was experimenting with dead bodies in order to cure death itself, struggling mainly in acquiring one of "sufficient freshness", and used her professor's recently dead body in order to achieve this.
• Only a Flesh Wound:
  • A Virtuous Plague Doctor will shrug off their injuries and all the Body Horror by focusing on the clinical aspects of the damage, sometimes even calling out the trope by name. This greatly reduces their stress and the damage they receive.
  • A Plague Doctor with a Heroic BSoD will focus on them in a much darker and more negative way; the creepiest by far is the Masochistic Plague Doctor, whose methods of decrying the damage are far more Gorn, up to and including injuring herself and describing in loving detail the damage it inflicts on her body. Understandably, the other heroes don't appreciate the sentiment.
• Opaque Nerd Glasses: Whenever she's depicted maskless, she's shown wearing a pair of these.
• Plague Doctor: Both in profession and aesthetic.
• Samus Is a Girl: It's not readily apparent to anyone looking that she's a woman. Her feminine features are visible the most when her resolve is tested. Darkest Dungeon 2, has a costume-less model of her in a dress.
• Shorter Means Smarter: Her model in Darkest Dungeon II shows she's on the short end (the second shortest character, with the Runaway, a teenager, as the shortest overall), and her knowledge of medicine is enough that she can cure death itself... to an extent, at least.
• Super Serum: The Plague Doctor can buff allies by having them inhale the vapours of some concoction best left to the imagination: Emboldening Vapours boost the damage and speed of a hero while the Camping Skill Experimental Vapours buffs their healing received.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Her backstory is one to Herbert West–Reanimator. After a professor she has a grudge against dies, she revives him from death using an experimental technique of her own design, only to discover that she's created a barely-sentient simulacrum of life that can only wail helplessly and tear itself apart at the stitches.

The Runaway

"And there's more where that came from!"

"Fire and smoke - destruction and concealment."

The Runaway is a Hero who debuted in Darkest Dungeon II. She is a young girl armed with a fire iron who's learned how to survive by herself and has developed an unhealthy liking for fire. The Runaway is rather frail and her fire iron doesn't inflict much raw damage. However, she excels at applying fire DOT to the enemy, can easily disrupt the enemy, and has several ways to evade enemy attacks.

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• Accidental Murder: The last chapter of her backstory reveals that she accidentally set fire to the house of the couple who kindly adopted her. She tried to stop the fire by smothering it, but it only worsened it. She managed to escape but had to witness the death of her foster parents, who were trapped in the bedroom.
• Baby Of The Bunch: Compared to the rest of the playable characters in either game, the Runaway is implied to be teenaged, while everyone else is explicitly an adult.
• Boyish Short Hair: The Runaway has short unkempt hair.
• The Atoner: For causing the death of her adoptive parents.
• Canon Name: The predetermined name for the Runaway is Bonnie, probably a reference to the song "Runaway" by Bonnie Raitt.
• Covered in Scars: Her exposed right arm is carpeted with burn scars that The Prioress inflicted upon her as punishment at St. Martha's Orphanage. She probably has a lot more underneath her clothing that aren't visible.
• Crippling Overspecialization:
  • She is heavily centered around Burn, which means any enemy with high burn resist - like everything in the Sprawl, for instance - she is really going to struggle against.
  • Her Orphan path allows her to choose one of two different areas to overspecialize in; she can either be an amazing Long-Range Fighter who can apply lots of Burn but deal almost no damage or a frontliner who can deal a lot of damage but inflict almost no Burn.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She was once in an Orphanage of Fear where the sisters that ran the place branded her with a hot iron several times. She then escaped and lived homeless until a kindly couple adopted her, but then she accidentally set fire to their house and killed them.
• Heal It With Fire: One of her Skills is Cauterize, by which she can heal 25% of her or an ally's health and cure Bleeding, as long as the target is actually bleeding.
• Improvised Weapon: She uses a simple fire iron.
• Molotov Cocktail: She uses these for a few of her skill and they predictably cause the burn effect.
• Never Be Hurt Again: The cause of her obsessive pyromania. She felt that if she made fire her friend, the hot poker used by the mistreses at the Orphanage of Fear she spent her childhood in wouldn't hurt her.
• Playing with Fire: The Runaway specializes in using fire, being armed with a hot fire iron. The majority of her moveset is themed around applying fire, be it directly, giving an ally the possibility to inflict fire damage, or applying fire to a specific position. This makes her especially powerful in the Tangle where the enemies here are susceptible to fire, but weaker in the Sprawl where the Fanatics there also use and are resistant to Fire.
• Pyromaniac: A more subdued and tragic example than the usual. The Runaway is fascinated with fire, but it resulted in the accidental death of a kindly couple who adopted her when she set fire to their house without meaning to. Despite the obvious trauma from both her childhood and this event, she is still quite obsessed, but the shame of the latter caused her to control her urges. To a certain extent, anyway - if you bring her along to the Librarian boss fight, while everyone else will be horrified watching him burn the whole thing down she will get quite excited.
• The Runaway: But of course. She ran away from St. Martha's Orphanage due to being horrifically abused there as a young child, and she later ran away from her adoptive parents' home after she accidentally burned it down with them still inside as a teenager.
• Smoke Out: Her Smokescreen skill has her disperse a large cloud of smoke at one enemy to blind them.
• Story Breadcrumbs: Given that one of her trinkets is a carved toy which gives her a speed penalty when fighting Gaunts, there is a bit of evidence to suggest that the Woodsman enemy is supposed to be her foster father, given that he wears a belt of carved toys, has a move called "Carve the Toy" and sometimes drops carved toy trinkets.^note Speed debuffs in Darkest Dungeon are sometimes used to denote being frightened or apprehensive, and the Woodsman is a Gaunt enemy. The Runaway's foster parents are also described as woodcutters in her second Hero Shrine.
• The Sneaky Guy: In a roster of rather violent seasoned fighters, the Runaway is a young street urchin who does damage but largely prefers to stay in the shadows. She notably has the Run and Hide skill which pulls her backward and gives her a Stealth token. Conversely, her Heartlight skill allows her to uncover Stealthed Enemies.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Ransack makes the Runaway hook an enemy with her fire iron, which not only pulls them forward but also pulls her forward, which sets the target for further attacks.

The Shieldbreaker

“Sever the weakened limb; the protected foe.”

"Shifting. Swaying. She mesmerizes her prey before the final strike!"

A sandstorm of grace and fury, the Shieldbreaker dances through the ranks delivering precision strikes of remarkable power. Sundering armor, breaking enemy formations, and leaving the taste of venom wherever she goes, the Shieldbreaker is a remorseless combatant.

See the Shieldbreaker's background comic here◊.

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• Action Girl: An ex-slave dancer and one hell of a fighter.
• Amazonian Beauty: She is consistently described as beautiful and graceful, and her artwork and battle sprite in show the most muscle definition among the whole cast of the first game.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: In most of the promo art, including her background comic and the portrait above, she lost her right hand. In-game, when she's facing to the right (which is almost always), her left hand is missing. For simplicity's sake, the examples here refer to her right arm as the one from which she lost her hand and the side she wields her shield with.
• Ambiguously Brown: The Shieldbreaker is dark-skinned, but her face is covered and her outfit only vaguely references a Middle Eastern culture.
• Amputation Stops Spread: Her attempt to escape the Vizier's men ended with her arm pinned by wreckage. She manages to escape, but in the process snakes envenom her hand, forcing her to hack it off later with a dull knife.
• An Arm and a Leg: Her backstory, from both the background comic and in-game journal entries, shows that her right hand was crushed by a wooden plank when a chariot she was fighting on fell into a cliff. Snakes bit her hand, poison inching up her arm, and she had to hack it off afterward.
• Animal Motif: The snake, specifically the Adder. A majority of her combat and camping skills reference snakes and she can inflict Blight on enemies, invoking ghostly snakes with Adder's Kiss.
• Armour Piercing Attack:
  • Pierce has the Shieldbreaker leap forward to attack an enemy and bypass their armor. Puncture does that, too, damaging enemies that are guarded by others, leaving them exposed by pulling them forward.
  • Her camping skill, "Snake Eyes" gives the entire party an Armor Piercing buff which helps negate enemy armor.
• Canon Name: The Shieldbreaker's default name is Amani, which means desires, aspiration or wishes in Arabic. This is both a double meaning on how she is very desirable and also greatly desired freedom when she was enslaved.
• Critical Hit Class: Her base crit chance is 7% then goes to 11%, even higher than the Grave Robber. However, she has little in the way of improving their natural stats.
• Dance Battler: Justified as a former belly dancer; several of the Shieldbreaker's attack sprites are graceful jumps and leaps. Moreover, most of the skills make her move across the ranks either forward or back.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • The Shieldbreaker's constant movement makes playing her more difficult than other classes as she may disrupt your formation, so you must carefully prepare your party around her. However, if that disadvantage is alleviated (or better, used to get another teammate into ideal positioning), her powerful kit makes her very fulfilling to use.
  • Her nightmares can make lengthy dungeons difficult if you're not prepared for the unavoidable battle that will start up. However, suppose you succeed at the battle. In that case, you get special consumables that render a character entirely immune to the next attack to hit them, which can be a godsend with certain bosses with powerful, telegraphed hits or if a hero has hit Death's Door.
• Every Scar Has a Story: The journal pages dropped each Nightmare tell that story - she lost her hand as she tried to escape being Made a Slave to a tyrannical vizier while on a caravan. Her captors were all dead, but the caravan crashed, pinned her arm, and a snake promptly bit that hand. She quickly hacked it off to prevent the venom from killing her, and found the obvious imperfection now burdening her from her missing arm to be as liberating as being able to get away from the caravan.
  At last, I finally understand: a thing cannot be truly beautiful until it is broken.
• The Faceless: Wears a veil across the lower half of her face at virtually all times, with her Affliction portrait being the main exception.
• Fantasy Character Classes: The Shieldbreaker roughly fits the Assassin archetype. She is an agile but fragile fighter who specializes in bypassing defenses and can deal Blight damage. Her Serpent Sway does allow her to take a few hits, though.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: The Shieldbreaker is barely protected on the left side but wears some armor on the right arm and leg to complete her targe.
• The Fighting Narcissist: Not normally, as the Shieldbreaker is pretty demure outside of the occasional boast when landing a crit, but it's played straight when she's afflicted, especially when Selfish. She'll constantly declare herself to be perfection incarnate, demanding praise and adulation from the others to satiate her now overblown ego.
  "Shine the light upon me, and marvel!"
• Fragile Speedster: Depending on her skill loadout — the Shieldbreaker is fast and agile, but her bedlah offers little protection. On the other hand, she does have a shield, and her Serpent Sway ability grants two aegis blocks, which will negate any direct damage.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Although the artwork and the backstory comics show her right arm being damaged, the sprites show the left one being cut off and bandaged instead.
• Glass Cannon: In the later stages, the Shieldbreaker can deal a lot of damage — Impale can potentially blight an entire formation, high-PROT enemies weep at a crit from Pierce, and even at low levels, a critical hit from Adder's Kiss can one-shot a Bone Defender — but that shield is the only bit of protective gear she has.
• Handicapped Badass: Her right hand has been cut off. She compensates by strapping the shield to the handless arm.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: The reason for both the loss of her right hand and her abject fear of snakes.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: The Shieldbreaker uses a buckler on her right arm. The Serpent's Sway skill allows her to use the buckler to entirely negate physical damage from incoming attacks, although she can still be stunned.
• Made a Slave: Because of her dancing talent and beauty, the Shieldbreaker was enslaved by a powerful local Vizier, but she escaped. Her Fearful and Paranoid barks shows that she still fears that the Vizier's agents are hunting her.
• Magikarp Power: Although she has powerful basic attacks, her set is underwhelming in the first levels because of the negative damage modifiers. Moreover, the first times you are camping with her, her nightmares make your heroes go through an obligatory fight on top of her. Stress increases at an alarming rate, so she'll likely be Afflicted and become a liability. However, at Veteran and Champion levels, her kit will shine. She can counter Stealth, break Guard so the team can attack the enemy Squishy Wizard, and her ability to block damage becomes even better against the more powerful attacks. In addition, her crit chance scales well, and her armor penetration becomes relevant against the Veteran monsters dotted with armor. Finally, if you get through all her nightmares, the entire class will get a free bonus to their stats every camp, making them even more effective in the long run.
• Master Poisoner: The Shieldbreaker has two combat skills that inflict Blight to enemies, Adder's Kiss and Captivate. At higher levels, Impale gets a blight chance, and it's the one that hits every single enemy. Results can be messy.
• Ms. Fanservice: The Shieldbreaker is a Sultry Belly Dancer who shows off the most skin and has the most sex appeal out of any female character in the first game. Her backstory goes into detail about just how strikingly beautiful she is, and several of her abilities have her doing provocative belly dance moves.
• Never Going Back to Prison: Her greatest fear is being carried off to the Vizier's harem once more, as shown in her Fearful state:
  One misstep and I will find myself in chains again!
  N-no! I will not be delivered to the palace!
• Nonchalant Dodge: She has a decent Dodge progression and is one of the most mobile classes, with most of her combat skills changing her rank as she dances her way out of harm's way.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: The Shieldbreaker was beautiful and could mesmerize men with her dancing, and thus was allowed to do only that. Then she attracted the attention of the wrong kind of men. Throughout her journal, the constantly laments how all the men around her think of her as a beautiful thing. So when she was forced to cut off her own hand to save herself from the snake venom and thus ruin her appearance she actually felt relieved.
• Sultry Belly Dancer: She manages to be both this and a Dance Battler who uses the erotic dancing techniques she learned as a slave dancer to deftly maneuver around in combat.
• Took a Level in Badass: She was once an excellent dancer. On her way to the Vizier's palace, she figured that being a frightened woman wouldn't cut and kill her captors before escaping, eventually becoming an accomplished spearwoman.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Despite snakes being a recurring motif, the way the snake "helped" her still forced her to amputate a hand, and her recurring nightmares are proof of that.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Puncture allows the Shieldbreaker to break an enemy's guard and pull them further in the ranks, which is perfect in case your current target is the Squishy Wizard.

The Vestal

"Light take you!"

^{Click here to see her in the first Darkest Dungeon.}

"A sister of battle... Pious and unrelenting."

The warrior nun channels her zeal for battle into healing abilities, holy judgements, and dazzling explosions of light. A strong backbone to any party, the Vestal can also hold her own on the front line with a powerful mace bash and close-quarters condemnations.

See the Vestal's comic here◊.

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• Abusive Parents: Her parents and her upbringing are a frequent target of her anger when Afflicted.
• All Men Are Perverts: Because of her sexually-repressed upbringing, an afflicted vestal often fixates on the notion that monsters and other members of the party are after her purity.
• All Women Are Lustful: When afflicted, she starts to think this about any other female party members you might have.
• Ambiguously Bi: Her backstory comic shows her lusting over a naked couple in the gardens, but it's ambiguous if she was lusting over the woman as well or if she imagined herself in her place. Her flashbacks in II make it less ambiguous, as she is shown ogling over both the man and woman.
• Bolt of Divine Retribution: Her Judgement skill calls down lightning from above to strike the enemies.
• Broken Bird: The Vestal had a very repressive, demanding childhood that left her deeply ashamed of herself and bound to follow a long set of commandments. Beneath her pious exterior is a deep well of resentment and wrath that shows through even without an affliction to accentuate it.

  You shall suffer as I have!

• Charged Attack: In II, the Vestal has a unique "Conviction" token that gives her moves additional properties the more "Conviction" tokens she has, up to three max. Uniquely, her paths change how she gains these Tokens, and which moves are affected.
• Canon Name: Her default name is Junia, after the only female Apostle named in The Bible.
• Carry a Big Stick: Her melee weapon is a spiked mace. While she can strike enemies with it, it's also used as a catalyst for the Vestal's powers.
• Celibate Hero: Based on the Roman vestal virgins, she mentions being a virgin, states that an "unchaste vestal" is put to death and that she's wearing a chastity belt, and implies that her magic runs on Virgin Power. Not that any of this stops her from visiting the brothel, or getting the 'Nymphomaniac' quirk. Of course, it's worth considering that there are… a variety of things one could do without technically losing one's virginity. Some of them can even bypass the problem of a chastity-belt.
• Combat Medic: The Vestal is the dedicated healer class of the game who has some offensive skills under her belt. Divine Grace is a powerful single target healing skill while Divine Comfort is a party-wide weaker healing skill. However, she also has some support and attack skills up her sleeves. Notably, Judgment heals the Vestal while damaging the enemy (though it's not a Life Drain, since the amount of healing is constant and independent of the damage dealt).
• Church Militant: A nun who ventures into the accursed areas near the estate, wielding the power of Light to slay her foes. Everything about her is themed after her religion and prayers. The Vestal synergizes exceptionally well with other religious characters due to how her Camping Skills work, giving better bonuses to the likes of the Crusader, Leper, and Flagellant. Chant and Pray will also reduce the stress of these characters more.
• Covert Pervert: One of her lore-related trinkets is the Salacious Diary. Because of her upbringing, she's ashamed and afraid of her impulses.
  I fear the whispers of my mind!
• Crippling Overspecialization: The Vestal's strongest healing spells are available only while she's in the back two positions. A lot of her attack skills, being melee-ranged, are not accessible from those positions, so it's not unusual to see a player focus on a skill set specialized for the back. Her low mobility doesn't help if she's denied her healing by being forced to the front.
• Crutch Character: Her abilities combine to make her a solid option for newer player parties. She has reliable heals, can stun, and even debuff Dodge or reveal Stealth. The trouble here is that players over-reliant on a few Vestals can quickly run low on options when their Vestals hit higher Resolve levels sooner and would not party with the lagging roster on easy dungeons. In the sequel, ironically the opposite is true - her conviction mechanic is an extra layer of complexity over most of the other characters, and it can be challenging to work out how to best utilize it.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She was raised in a highly strict, repressive environment where discipline was paramount and any 'immoral' desire or failure punished severely. Her Shrines reveal that she was locked in an oubliette and tortured for an unknown period of time after letting the fire go out; she broke out with the aid of her Light-granted powers, only to find that her sisters had been walled up inside their quarters and left to die for their association with her.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Played for drama; the Vestal was indeed responsible for keeping a sacred fire lit, but being distracted by a couple and their sensual interactions led her to let the fire die and being heavily blamed for it.
• Divine Intervention: The Vestal's powers are not an innate ability she was born with, nor the result of training. While being imprisoned and tortured for letting the Sacred Fire go out a divine light miraculously penetrated the darkness of the oubliette and granted her the power to smite her jailors.
• Fantasy Character Classes: Battle Priest. She's more known for healing but offers a range of support attacks.
• Gathering Steam: Her unique mechanic in the second game, Conviction, involves building tokens over a number of turns to power up certain abilities.
• Happily Ever After: Her ending in II, shows her holding an unseen person's hand, having finally found the love that she had yearned for.
• Holy Hand Grenade: Save for one attack (the Mace Bash), all of her skills rely on divine power, some of which damage enemies.
• Heroic Resolve: The Vestal's resilience is remarkable, remaining defiant and fighting back against her jailors even under torture, until Divine Intervention could eventually allow her to smite her captors and break free.
• In the Hood: Every single Vestal wears a robe with a hood covering her head.
• Light 'em Up: The Vestal uses the power of the Light to deal damage and debuff. Dazzling Light increases the Light Meter and has a chance to stun the targeted enemy. The Illumination skill cancels stealth by lighting enemies, and Hand of Light even deals increased damage against undead.
• Light Is Good: A few of her attacks use light to debuff or mark your enemies. They also strengthen your torch.
• Magic Knight: To a smaller extent than the Crusader, but she has decent armor and health, plus has damage-dealing abilities and the healing ones.
• Nun Too Holy: She dresses in a nun's habit and seems to have been part of a convent: the term "Vestal" implies virginity. However, whatever monastic community she came from, she's left it far behind when she reaches Hamlet. She visits the Tavern like any other adventurer, meaning any vows of temperance or chastity are likely broken.
• Parental Abandonment: Her miserable childhood becomes apparent if she gets irrational or fearful.
• Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny:
  • Her upbringing and training have conditioned her to be terrified and ashamed of sexuality. At the same time, her comic shows her fantasizing about sex to the point of neglecting her duties, one of her trinkets is the Salacious Diary, and she repeatedly assumes party members are after her virginity if she becomes afflicted. Of course, she can still use the brothel to relieve stress.
  • II reveals that it's more complicated, and tragic, than simply a repressed upbringing. The Vestal remained defiant, and ultimately vindicated, in the belief that her desires for love were not a sin even in the face of torture. However after breaking free of her jailors she discovered that her fellow sisters were killed due to their association with her, which lead to a downward spiral of Survivor Guilt and self loathing.
• Survivor Guilt: This is at the core of her Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny attitude - her being distracted with a couple having a tryst in the courtyard led to the abusive abbot killing many of her friends and fellow sisters in retaliation, leading to a lot of self-loathing.
• Took a Level in Badass: Once a lowly nun caring over a fire, her determination and willpower in the face of torture got her blessed by the Light itself. She now fights as a holy warrior, smiting her enemies with divine wrath, or plain bashing their skulls in with a big mace.
• White Magician Girl: The closest the game has to a traditional healer. Though she carries a mace, it's generally a last resort when she gets pushed up to the front line for whatever reason. Most of her skills are based around ranged attacks and healing, and she can only use her healing powers from the back row.