Characters / Exmortis

Mr. Hannay

Mr. Hannay

A survivor of the onslaught of humanity by the Exmortis. He lost his wife and daughter to the demon horde, and is just about to give up hope when a mysterious "man" persuades him to do what must be done to save mankind.

• Anti-Hero: A solid Type IV by the third game.
• Badass Normal: A mortal man who single-handedly guns down a swarm of demons and kills the Hand of Repose. Lampshaded by Vlaew. He also manages to infiltrate the Resistance's base with relative ease. After Azrael transfers the Ancient powers to him, he becomes an Empowered Badass Normal. He’s still a mortal man, but manages to slaughter Vlaew’s guards and Vlaew himself.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Three times. First the Hand of Repose, then the Reader, and finally, Vlaew. However, once he destroys Vlaew and goes through the portal opened by him, he finds himself in ancient Earth, long before the birth of man and beast ... and with Vlaew gone, he no longer possesses the Ancient powers and thus, can't bring himself back to his own time.
• Evil Stole My Faith: Along with the rest of humanity's.
• The Faceless: You never get a good look at his face, except in the original trailer for Exmortis III.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Towards the end of the second game, he is forced to shoot himself in order to take out the Hand of Repose. Subverted in that he regains his physical form after leaving the spirit realm.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Risks this depending on his actions in the third game. For instance, killing the scavenger instead of knocking him unconscious will drive him closer to "evil" on the Karma Meter, as will any dialogue options in the final battle with Vlaew. Downplayed, however, in that it doesn't affect the outcome of the ending at all. At the very worst, he becomes an Unscrupulous Hero.
• Hollywood Atheist: Lost his faith when he saw his wife and daughter disemboweled on his front lawn. Although this is justified, as he knows from firsthand experience that Heaven doesn't exist.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Sure, Mr. Hannay, go ahead and trust the obviously inhuman figure that left behind bloody footprints and a horrible odor in the adjacent confessional. Justified because he has no choice but to trust the "man" in the confessional, Vlaew.
• Kick the Dog: Refusing to Mercy Kill Azrael and keeping the Ancient powers for himself.
• Last-Name Basis: His first name is never given, although according to Word of God, he takes his name from an Australian baseball player named Joshua Hannay.
• Messianic Archetype: Graffiti found in the third game refers to him as the "redeemer", and implies that he is prophesied to defeat Vlaew and save the human race from his tyranny.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: His primary motivation by the third game. And the bad guys better stay out of his way, unless they want to die a gruesome death.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Kills Vlaew, but ends up trapped in a parallel Earth, eons before the dawn of man and beast.
• Tragic Hero: His wife and daughter were brutally killed by the Exmortis. The Reader tries to exploit this in the third game.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Ends up on the receiving end of this after killing the Hand of Repose. Can be on the giving end of this when he’s finished interrogating the scavenger.

Lord Vlaew

Lord Vlaew

The last survivor of the Ancient Dominion War, he fought his brothers Azrael and Kfafta to claim the Earth Realm for himself. He eventually succeeded, but was later overthrown and trapped in a spirit realm along with his fallen brethren, the Exmortis.

• A God Am I: He considers himself humanity's "god". He might as well be, given the sheer extent of his power.
• Ambiguously Human: Not really, but when Mr. Hannay first meets him, he only sees his silhouette, which has the general outline of a human head wearing a hat.
• Asshole Victim: Given all the horrible things he's been responsible for throughout the series, being blown up by Mr. Hannay is the least he deserves.
• Badass Boast:
  Vlaew: Petulant fool! You dare challenge me? You are nothing more than an insignificant distraction! I am your lord! I am your god! I AM FOREVER! You know as well as anyone else that only another Ancient can bring harm to me. Your efforts will be without reward and your death will be exquisite!
• Badass Longcoat: Wears one in the second and third games.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: See for yourself.◊
• Berserk Button: Doesn't take kindly to defiance, especially from humans.
• Big Bad: Of the entire series.
• Cain and Abel: The Cain to Azrael's Abel.
• The Chessmaster: He counted on Mr. Hannay to take out the Hand of Exmortis and seal his brethren away for good ... so that he could rule the world for himself.
• The Corrupter: Slowly drives the player character of the first game to insanity until he kills five campers and becomes the Hand of Repose.
• Entitled Bastard: He believes the Earth realm is rightfully his to rule over.
• Evil Gloating: Quite fond of this.
• Face Death with Dignity: Quite surprisingly, when Mr. Hannay has him in his grasp, he handles realizing he's about to die pretty well, taking 90% of the tropes associated with him into account.
  Vlaew: Do what you came here to do, human. Release me from this world forevermore.
• Faux Affably Evil: Vlaew is charismatic and very polite towards both Mr. Hannay and the Hand of Repose. Underneath that façade, he's a vain megalomaniac who deems everyone and everything around him inferior and deserving of death or oppression.
• Humanoid Abomination: He has a clear human outline, but predates the human race by billions of years and has immense, destructive power.
• It's All About Me: Thinks that the world "has always been rightfully [his]."
• It Amused Me: His reason for keeping the remaining humans alive and occasionally turning them into demons.
• Jerkass: Beneath his affable persona, he’s a cruel, callous bastard who will Kick the Dog for no other reason than to show what an asshole he is.
• Kick the Dog: If Mr. Hannay spared Azrael (which qualifies as this trope by itself) and reveals this to Vlaew, he’ll respond quite harshly.
  Vlaew: You will not hear me scream as your whoring wife and your pathetic daughter did, when my legion ripped them limb from limb!
• Large Ham: Especially in the third game. See his Badass Boast above.
• Manipulative Bastard: It's his entire m.o., enough for Xavier to call him "the Manipulator". His elaborate scheme to open the gates of the Spirit Realm so that he can reclaim the Earth Realm revolves around deceiving several Soul Bearers into doing his dirty work, then backstabbing them when he has no more use for them.
• Mind Rape: Does this to Xavier, his daughter Gwen and the protagonist of the first game.
• Obviously Evil: During Hannay's first encounter with him in the church, he is invisible, leaves behind bloody footprints, and a vile stench in the confessional adjacent to Hannay's. In Exmortis III, he resides in Shadow Citadel, a tower with Alien Geometries, in which can be found statues of demons and a golden goat head above the door to his throne room! Come on, he can't spell out his evil anymore than that.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He calls Xavier's daughter and Mr. Hannay's wife and daughter "whores".
• Puny Humans: Shows this attitude towards Soul Bearers, due to ease he's had with deceiving them in the past. This arrogance eventually gets him killed.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In the third game.
• Satanic Archetype: An ancient, egotistical manipulator and tempter who usurped a god-like being with the help of a band of rebellious lesser entities. He seeks to establish a kingdom on Earth. To put the icing on the cake, the symbol on the pillar in the Temple of Exmortis is an inverted pentagram. Furthermore, Vlaew just might be the In-Universe basis for Satan.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Him and the rest of the Exmortis are trapped in a spirit realm that can only be opened by the blood of five innocents, and someone willing to become the gateway to that realm.
• Smug Snake: Arrogant enough to believe that the empowered Mr. Hannay can't defeat him, and as such, holds back in the final battle by throwing bricks at him. Of course, he ends up proven wrong.
• Time Abyss: His existence predates not only that of humanity, but of the Earth that we know today.
• Villain Respect: Once Mr. Hannay reaches him, he'll compliment him, and even allow him to deal the first blow in their fight, expressing surprise when he sees that he's been imbued with the Ancient powers.
• Villains Want Mercy: Pleads for his life when he realizes that Mr. Hannay has him pinned down, using the Ancient powers as leverage. It doesn’t work.
• Voice of the Legion: When he speaks, his voice has a sort of echoing effect. This is because he is the embodiment of the Exmortis.
• Xanatos Gambit: In the first game, even if the protagonist flees from his destiny, Vlaew keeps resurrecting him in the hopes that he'll submit. Given the start of the second game, it works eventually.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Does this to everybody. Subverted in one case when it's revealed that Azrael is alive, but only to consolidate his own power.

The Hand of Repose

The Hunter/The Hand of Repose

The living gateway between the human realm and the spirit realm. The Apocalyptic Log in the first game chronicles his descent into madness that lead to his servitude to Lord Vlaew. It's revealed at the end that he is the player character.

• And I Must Scream: The parchment, "Prophecy of the Hand", implies that this is the case after his transformation. And scream and scream and scream he does.
  My soul ripped from my shell was flattened and became a pathway. It became a link between the ancient world and my reality.
• The Antichrist: Well, kinda. He serves as a conduit for the game's Satanic Archetype to rise to power.
• Ax-Crazy: He violently murdered a group of campers outside the house, and clearly has a poor grasp on reality by the time Vlaew had him completely under his thrall.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Courtesy of Vlaew. Being trapped inside a haunted house for a year with no means of escape will do that to you.
• The Dragon: To Vlaew.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Sort of. In the alternate ending, he's horrified at the realization that he's the killer and flees the temple, taking this trope slightly literally when he escapes. But just when it looks like he can return to civilization, he's attacked by an apparition and has to relive the events of the game all over again until he submits and becomes the Hand.
• Humanoid Abomination: After completing his transformation into the Hand of Repose, he's nothing more than just a shell of a man who acts as a gateway to the limbo in which the Exmortis are sealed.
• Mook Maker: When Hannay confronts him, his only means of attack is summoning Exmortis to aid him.
• No Name Given: Not even in his diary.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: Hannay meets (and kills him) in II.
• Sanity Slippage: After finding the house and reading the Book of Exmortis, his sanity begins to deteriorate while he's trapped there over the course of a year.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Turns out that he's the player character, and had lost his memory while trying to back out of his deal with Vlaew.
• Tragic Monster: He never asked to become the Hand until he was Driven to Madness. And when he realizes who he really is, he is horrified.
• Villain Protagonist: He's the player character and Vlaew's right-hand-to-be.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Being Brainwashed and Crazy after a year of being trapped inside a haunted house, he qualifies as this. Taken even further if you take into account the possibility that after his transformation, he may not be acting of his own volition.
• You Can't Fight Fate: No matter if he flees the temple. Vlaew will eventually force him to submit and become the Hand of Exmortis.

The Exmortis

The Exmortis

A demonic legion of lesser beings that had been banished after Vlaew was overthrown. They eventually joined forces with him and were cast into the spirit realm at the dawn of man and beast.

• Cruel and Unusual Death: Seem quite fond of eviscerating people and animals.
• Hive Mind: One of the newspaper clippings in Exmortis II suggests that they have a telepathic link.
• Holy Burns Evil: Averted. They slaughtered everybody in the Vatican without any issue.
• Legions of Hell: Not literally Hell, but they certainly qualify.
• Mind over Matter: Demonstrate telekinetic powers, according to one article.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Apparently, their ultimate goal is to Kill All Humans. Quite contrary to their master’s goal.
• Our Demons Are Different: In this case, they’re ethereal beings who become corporeal by transitioning through a portal in the spirit realm, and demonstrate telekinetic powers and share a Hive Mind. They can be killed by conventional means (albeit temporarily), but avert Holy Burns Evil.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: Their return to the Earth Realm is marked by the sky becoming increasingly red with the blood of the Ancient Dominion War.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Are trapped in a spiritual limbo along with their master.

Xavier Rehayem

Xavier Rehayem

A scholar and the former owner of the house in the first game, he translated the Book of Exmortis. Appears as a ghost in the second.

• The Atoner: After unwittingly unleashing the Exmortis upon the world, he seeks to right his wrongs by seeing to it that the Hand of Repose is destroyed.
• Badass Bookworm: Can translate Aramaic, and aids Mr. Hannay in slaying the Hand of Repose.
• Big Good: Of the first two games.
• The Chessmaster:
  Xavier: Yours is a destiny I’ve spent eternity engineering.
• Ghostly Goals: His death didn’t stop him from trying to put an end to the Exmortis.
• Heroic BSoD: Killing Gwen drove him to this, although he snapped out of it to pen Vetus Hostillis Exmortis and defeat Vlaew's demonic legion.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Translating the Rite of Charging The Hand caused him and the rest of the world a lot of trouble.
• Put on a Bus: By the third game, his arc no longer has any relevance to the plot.
• Tragic Hero: Lost his wife and daughter prior to the events of the first game.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Between his daughter’s possession and The End of the World as We Know It, translating the Book of Exmortis turned out to be … not such a good idea.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: As of Exmortis III, not a word is said or heard of him.
• Would Hurt a Child: Justified in that his daughter, Gwen, was possessed.

Gwen Rehayem

Gwen Rehayem

Xavier’s daughter.

• Demonic Possession: Happens to her after Xavier translates the Book of Exmortis.
• Creepy Child: After her possession.
• Undead Child: In the first game, you encounter her as a ghost.

Lochear Family

The Lochear Family

The recently-deceased residents of the Lochear Ranch.

• Apocalyptic Log: The diary kept in the master bedroom.
• Death By Sex: Mr. Lochear shot his wife Anna after having sex with her one last time.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • A man — presumably Joe — is found hanging from a beam ... with his arms, legs, heart, and eyes removed. One can only assume that he killed himself and the Exmortis tore him apart upon stumbling across his corpse for their own sick amusement.
  • Mr. Lochear himself. After he killed his wife and children to spare them from being tortured to death by the apporaching Exmortis army, he shot himself out of guilt.
• Drop Dead Gorgeous: Anna's naked corpse is found lying on her bed.
• Family Annihilator: Mr. Lochear killed his wife and children to spare them the pain of being torn apart by the Exmortis.
• Happily Married: Mr. Lochear and Anna, at least before the Exmortis' invasion.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Mr. Lochear is shown to be really short-tempered and often swears in his diary, but he genuinely loves his family and wants to protect them from the invading menace.
• Kill the Cutie: Zoe, the most upbeat of the family, is shot to death by her deranged father.
• Mercy Kill: Mr. Lochear's reasoning for killing his family then himself was to spare them a painful death from the Exmortis, since he knew they would reach them sooner or later.
• Posthumous Character: By the time Mr. Hannay reaches the ranch, they're all dead.
• Sanity Slippage: Mr. Lochear's diary chronicles his slow descent into madness as the Exmortis lay waste to everything he once knew.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Claire had several night terrors prior to the invasion, before she eventually just shut down and spent the rest of her days staring out the window.

The Resistance

The Resistance

A group of human soldiers rebelling against Vlaew's tyranny.

• Crazy-Prepared: Have a decoy entrance to their base to gas intruders.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Mr. Hannay never gets a chance to actually meet them before the Shadow Army invades their base and brutally murders most of them. Judging by his narrations, though, it appears that some of them survived and made it to the Shadowlands, where Vlaew resides.
• Genre Blindness: They're vaguely aware of the series' mythology, such as how them having souls makes them special, but they believe they can banish Vlaew just by bombing him in his citadel. Unfortunately for them, that's not how it works, and it gets a good chunk of them all brutally slaughtered.
• La Résistance: As you might have gleaned from their name, they're battling it out against Vlaew and his Shadow Army.

The Shadow Army

The Shadow Army

Vlaew’s Praetorian Guard in the third game, acting as a replacement for the Exmortis.

• Authority Equals Asskicking: Make a point to show Vlaew's intolerance for rebellion by skewering the severed heads of Resistance members on posts.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Rival the Exmortis in this area, and may end up on the receiving end of this if Mr. Hannay uses his Destruction ability.
• Decapitation Presentation: Are fond of skewering Resistance members’ heads on posts.
• Les Collaborateurs: They are traitorous humans allied with Vlaew.
• No Kill like Overkill: When Hannay escapes his cell, he stumbles upon the terribly mutilated corpses of Resistance members, all slain by the Shadow Army.

The Scavenger

The Scavenger

A cannibal living in the subway.

• Ax-Crazy: He's a cannibal hellbent on survival, what do you expect?
• Blade Enthusiast: When you encounter him, he's sharpening a knife, and has a rack full of them which you can use to interrogate him.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Admits to having "forfeited all that remains of his humanity in order to endure".
• Death Trap: Many of them, spread throughout the subway with the intention of killing intruders and dragging them away to eat.
• I'm a Humanitarian: He butchers and eats anyone he can get his hands on.
• Sadist: Displays a bit of pride in his actions, like when he cut out the Resistance soldier's tongue.
  Scavenger: It's hard to speak with tongue cut out, yes?
• Tragic Monster/Tragic Villain: He abandoned his humanity so he could survive after his family was murdered by the Exmortis.

The Reader

The Reader

A mysterious entity that tries to hinder Mr. Hannay’s efforts in getting his revenge on Vlaew.

• Affably Evil: Is unfailingly polite (if condescending) to Mr. Hannay, despite the latter’s repeated insistence on getting revenge.
• Deal with the Devil: Tries to offer to return either Mr. Hannay’s daughter or wife to him, in exchange for dooming the rest of the earth. It’s also implied that Mr. Hannay would be trapped in his subconscious.
• The Heavy: Torments Mr. Hannay with the apparition of his daughter for the majority of the game, until he is killed by a curtain rod to the face.
• Humanoid Abomination: Roughly human in appearance and has the ability to — among other things — alter reality.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: How Mr. Hannay refuses his offer.
• Reality Warper: His signature power.
• Was Once a Man: Says he was.

Azrael

Azrael

Vlaew's brother and the last of the Ancients beside him. Was previously believed dead, but Vlaew needed him to keep his powers intact, so he imprisoned him in a hellish limbo to be tortured for all eternity.

• Affably Evil: Whether he can actually be seen as "evil" is debatable, but despite being an Ancient, he's a lot nicer than his brother.
• Ambiguously Evil: His intentions are noble, if vengeful, but he threatens Mr. Hannay a horrible fate if he refuses to Mercy Kill him. Then again, considering that he'd been suffering for an eternity, you can hardly blame him.
• And I Must Scream: He's been sealed in a virtually inaccessible hellish prison in an already terrible afterlife where he's tortured by electrical shocks for billions of years, unable to die except at the hands of another Ancient.
• Anti-Villain: Despite his past misdeeds and lust for power, now he wants nothing more than to see Vlaew destroyed.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Inverted. If anything, the eons he spent being tortured made him LESS evil.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He threatens to ensure that Mr. Hannay will suffer a Fate Worse than Death if he refuses to Mercy Kill him.
• Big Good: Of the third game, which is kicked off with him imbuing Mr. Hannay with his powers.
• Black Speech: Not really a bad guy, but he speaks in the Ancient tongue.
• Cain and Abel: The Abel to Vlaew's Cain.
• Humans Are Special: Unlike his brother, he seems to firmly believe this, using it as a means to motivate Hannay.
• Kill It with Fire: If Hannay chose to kill him, he will cast him into the pit of lava beneath his platform.
• Mercy Kill: Requests Mr. Hannay do this to him after transferring his powers. Hannay can either oblige or not.
• Noble Demon: Even before his imprisonment, he showed compassion to a defeated Vlaew, and with his help, slew the armies of Kfafta. Granted, this was an act of Pragmatic Villainy in that he did it for his own reasons, but it DID show he was perfectly willing to put aside his differences with his enemy. In the third game, he gives Mr. Hannay a pep talk about defeating Vlaew and giving man a chance to rebuild.
• Sealed Badass in a Can: He's a former Ancient whom, with Vlaew's help, destroyed Kfafta and his armies. He's chained down in a Fire and Brimstone Hell, which is sealed by a cube puzzle, which is sealed within a hole guarded by a force field.
• Walking Spoiler: Though interestingly, he actually shows up at the beginning of the third game.

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