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Main Characters
Robin
- Anime Hair: Rather than tie her hair into a ponytail, Robin turns her hair into a big "U" stuck to the back of her head, most likely to resemble the head of a wrench. Just look at it!
◊ - Character Development: Over the course of the game, Robin becomes more confident in her abilities — she starts flexing more as the game progresses to show confidence, and stoically staring down foes that would have before frightened her, starting with the Silver Watchman before he tries to have a fifth rematch. On the negative side, Robin also becomes increasingly regretful of her actions. It isn't made clear if Robin wouldn't have listened to General Chrome's insistence they both needed to die after Robin's actions essentially kick-started a civil war. After being forced to leave Royal behind on a decompressing space station, all Robin can do is curl up against the escape pod and cry until Mina comes out to comfort her. Interestingly, the Final Boss weaponizes the second point of growth for Robin by having her face shadow bastardizations of the four people Robin felt she's wronged the most; Mina, Elro, Royal, and Black. All these 'shadow matches' are fought by Robin fixing a nut, symbolic of her coming to terms with and fixing her regrets.
- Charged Attack: Robin's gun has a different charged attack depending on the bullet equipped. The regular stun projectile launches a massive close-range burst that can propel Robin upwards, the rolling bomb projectile launches a missile, and the Usurper swaps Robin's position with her target's.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Robin will always offer a helping hand. Even if it's for an enemy soldier who tried to kill her a few minutes ago. Elro even asks Robin why she keeps doing this, since she doesn't owe these people anything. It eventually leads to a civil war and almost leads to The End of the World as We Know It when Robin just can't help but play the hero one too many times (albeit indirectly, as a result of wanting to saving her friends).
- Determinator: It is hard to put this girl down. The Final Boss has an attack which causes Mind Rape in the form of a Battle in the Center of the Mind, during which Robin is forced to go through all the times she failed in life. It doesn't stop her. And considering that this same move caused Royal to become suicidal, it's a testament to how utterly determined Robin can be when she sets her mind to something.
- Do Not Go Gentle: Right at the end of the game, when it looks like The End of the World as We Know It is about to happen, nothing she's done to prevent that has worked, and there's no hope of turning things around, Elro says that he and Robin should just stay together and wait for the end. Robin, in her own way, says "screw that noise" and goes off to face the Final Boss by herself.
- Dragged by the Collar: After Robin realizes that Royal took her to a One Concern Camp, she tries to stealthily walk away, only for Royal to notice and drag her toward the camp.
- Fatal Flaw: Her Chronic Hero Syndrome. Robin will always do what's right regardless of the consequences. All she desires is to protect her friends but in doing so indirectly causes a Civil War in City One among the One Concern, and nearly causes The End of the World as We Know It.
- Heroic Mime: She never speaks outside of Pictorial Speech Bubbles and a few chosen dialog options. According to Elro, she wasn't so quiet before their father's death, suggesting that being so quiet is her way of dealing with it.
- Humble Hero: If Chrome's speech is anything to go by, Robin will eventually be idolized for how her actions helped to change the world. The girl, however, doesn't seem to care in the slightest. She was just trying to help people.
- Improbable Hairstyle: She keeps her hair in an enormous bun shaped like the head of a wrench. Somehow. Even her official sketches◊ imply that "magic" is how she gets her hair to do that.
- Little Miss Badass: She's 17, has a bubbly demeanor, and topples a theocratic regime, kills several of its superhumanly powerful members, and stops The End of the World as We Know It by taking out its deity and using an Isi seed to regrow the damaged planet. Should she take out the Superbosses, Robin also defeats two of the strongest swordfighters in the world in a two-on-one fight, and even defeats a precursor to all of the Agents, all by herself.
- Men Are Strong, Women Are Pretty: Defied. A vision from her past shows Robin dressed like a proper lady and wearing a ponytail. In the present, Robin dresses as a mechanic, styles her hair to resemble the head of a wrench, flexes her muscles a lot, and the trailer shows her working out. There's also a shot of Robin and her father in a One Concern meeting where Robin is covered in oil.
- Not So Stoic: Her patience crumbles when Elro and Mina take their anger too far, and she's visibly pissed after the Starworm tries to Mind Rape her.
- Painted-On Pants: Zigzagged. Robin's appearance in the art and trailer for the game show her pants as more loose-fitting, but the pants on her in-game sprite perfectly cling to and outline her butt.
- Recoil Boost: She can use her any of gun's Charged Attacks to proper herself upwards as a Double Jump.
- Shock and Awe: Her wrench upgrades give it the ability to generate electricity to power rails and electrify her attacks.
- Spin to Deflect Stuff: She can spin her wrench super fast to deflect oncoming projectiles. She even disarms the Silver Watchman this way by blocking his katana with her spinning wrench.
- Technical Pacifist: All of her attacks are nonlethal to humans and only serve to knock them out cold. The only person Robin explicitly kills is Agent Black, towards the end of the game. And even then, Black refused to stop fighting with Robin for the rocket that would save the world, as Black had gone insane with grief and had been transformed into an Eldritch Abomination. So Robin had no choice but to kill Black, lest an even greater tragedy unfold.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Robin's weapons don't kill humanoid enemies; her weapons either stun them or knock them out. The fight against Agent Black in the Detrius Sand Pit even ends with Robin having the perfect opportunity to kill Agent Black, but Robin just knocks her out, which Mina even comments on if you choose to have Robin reveal this fact. However, Robin explicitly kills Agent Black during their final fight. And even then, Robin had to employ a Rasputinian Death just to stop Black — repeatedly shooting her, using Isi seeds to turn Black's Ivory blood against her, blasting apart the Eldritch Abomination that Black became as the Ivory Beast, then finishing off Black by literally splitting her head open and sending what was left of Black's body to burn away in the atmosphere when the One Concern's rocket launched to the moon. Also, the world would end if Black wasn't dealt with, and Royal tried to talk Black into just standing aside, but Black refused to budge owing to some major Sanity Slippage. So Robin is willing to kill people, but only if there's no other option and/or it would mean an even greater tragedy if Robin didn't kill her opponent.
- Throw Down the Bomblet: One of the upgrades to her stun-gun turns it into a Grenade Launcher.
- The Unchosen One: She was in no way destined for greater things like Royal, the Agents, or Mother were. Robin is just a girl who wants to help as many people as she can. And by doing so, she ends up saving the entire world when no one else could. For all of the clout and supposed divinity of everyone involved, it's this ordinary mechanic who does the most good, all while being pegged as a sinner and a troublemaker.
- Wrench Wench: Which is a problem as she's not an officially sanctioned mechanic, and is thus considered apostate / heretic.
- Wrench Whack: Naturally for a Wrench Wench, her wrench is her melee weapon. She can also spin it really fast to deflect projectiles, or charge up electricity with it.
Mina
- Canon Immigrant: Mina was originally the focus of another Konjak project, though she was redesigned significantly for this game. Her original design was recycled for a unique NPC in Isilugar.
- Changed My Mind, Kid: Pick the right dialogue options throughout the story, and Mina will show up to help with the final fight instead of going home. It makes the Final Boss a little bit easier.
- Character Development: She becomes considerably less headstrong after Samba gives her a talking-to when they escape from The Tower. It helps that Samba gave Mina a minor "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how she wants to be with Mina, but Mina will never stay at home long enough to work things out.
- Deuteragonist: She's the most consistent party member besides Robin, and the only Guest-Star Party Member that the player controls more than once. Also, Mina's determination and goal to fight the One Concern prompts Robin to help Mina in this respect, and the growing friendship between the two ladies is one of the game's most-explored points of emotional grounding.
- Gayngst: Downplayed. Mina has a lot of trouble with the fact that the Isi faith holds procreation as the ultimate good, while Mina is in a romantic relationship with another woman. It is thus implied that Mina is gay, and therefore won't have children. Part of the conflict Mina has with her mother Minora is that Minora isn't all that nice about this, either. However, Mina also remains one of the most upbeat characters in the game, and certainly one of the most proactive in fighting the One Concern. And while Mina does angst about her relationship with Samba, it's about how Mina is always running off to fight the One Concern and making both Samba and her mother Minora worry about Mina's safety. There's no angsting about the fact that she's in a relationship with another woman, per se; it's angsting that said relationship is a bit rocky because of Mina's constant fighting.
- Guest-Star Party Member: She helps out Robin during the fights against Kathunk (she shoots the weak spot on its spike when Robin reveals it, and then shoots at the mecha itself), Inti (she's fully controllable and handles the right side of the arena), Agent White (she plants seeds into his body while he's regenerating his health), Ash (she's controllable again, and her wide attack range is useful in hitting the boss from far away), Mother (she shoots at some of the rocks and smacks Mother with a seed whenever Robin pulls her down), and the Starworm (she'll provide extra firepower if her Relationship Values are high enough, and provide some context for the ending's events).
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: Mina calls herself "a piece of crap" to her mother, and admits that she's causing her girlfriend no end of heartache by trying to topple the corrupt regime of the One Concern, always leaving and never staying at home to help the Isi. After fighting and killing Agent White with Isi Seeds, Agent Black kidnaps Samba, Mina's girlfriend, causing Mina to get especially worked up. Once she's packed, Mina tells Robin to ditch her if she starts causing any more trouble. All of this suggests that Mina has some major self-esteem issues.
- My Beloved Smother: Her mom, Minora, never seems to treat Mina very well. The two times Minora is on-screen, it's spent yelling at Mina about how she's always running off to try and fight the One Concern instead of staying at home with her. Also, tying into Mina's angst about being gay is the fact that Minora isn't exactly nice about it; Isi faith holds procreation as the ultimate goal of the faithful, and Mina naturally won't be having any children if she's in a relationship with another woman. The second time, Mina engages in both Heroic Self-Deprecation and Calling the Old Woman Out at the same time, saying that fighting the One Concern is her way of keeping the Isi safe.
- The Pig-Pen: A Running Gag throughout the game is that Mina smells bad. She smells so bad that it nearly gives away her position when she sneaks past One Concern guards, despite being one floor below them. And in the one stealth-based boss battle, Mina will be found because of how bad she smells unless she's hiding in pools of water.
- Pistol-Whipping: Her melee attack has her grab her shotgun by the barrel and swing it downward like a hammer, striking with its butt.
- Sarcastic Clapping: When Royal called the Tower guards to accompany his 'friends' into it and they instead arrested them, she gave this.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: Her primary weapon, which she stole off the wall in her jail cell, as her original knife is nowhere to be seen. Unlike Robin's weapons, Mina needs to aim her gun before firing it when controlled by the player.
- Undying Loyalty: Her friendship with Robin eventually grows into this. Instead of going back home, Mina chooses to search for Robin after she falls onto the Darland Ascent. If the player picks the correct dialogues, Mina will do so again to join Robin against the Final Boss. While Mina's presence isn't strictly necessary to win the fight, it does make taking down the boss a bit easier since Mina can deal free damage to the boss. Also, Mina will provide some more context for what happens in the ending if she's there.
- You Lose at Zero Trust: Downplayed. Should you fail to get your Relationship Values with Mina high enough, Robin will face the Final Boss alone; if said values are high enough, Mina will turn back to help Robin. Mina's presence isn't necessary to win the fight, but you'll miss out on a bit of context during the ending because Robin won't comment on it.
Elro
- Ambidextrous Sprite: Elro's eyepatch switches from left to right when he turns, as does the arm in which he's holding his sword. As does his entire missing arm and massive bloodstain on his shirt late in the game.
- An Arm and a Leg: When Black finally has some time with him, she rips off his right arm, and decides to watch him bleed out. Elro's arm remains missing for the rest of the game. Also, late in the game, Mina shoots Elro in the left leg when he stubbornly refuses to press the button to launch the One Concern's rocket to the moon, despite it being humanity's last option at the time.
- Big Brother Instinct: Played for drama. Elro takes this way too far, nearly dooming the party's goals several times because he just can't admit to himself that Robin is fine on her own. This is partially due to Elro's wife and child being killed in the Penance, so he doesn't want to lose his little sister too. It's only once Robin literally kills God (or a powerful star ship everyone thinks is God) that Elro grudgingly concedes that Robin can actually take care of herself, and that he'll stop being such a Knight Templar Big Brother from now on.
- Combat Pragmatist: His sword is deadly, but he is very slow, so you are encouraged to creep up to soldiers and kill them while playing as him. And then, come the battle with Lawrence, Elro ends the battle by going up to Lawrence while he is down and stabbing him through the back, killing him without mercy.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: On the receiving end of one, courtesy of agent Black. He really should have come into that fight with a better plan than "point sword menacingly at the Super-Soldier with a personal vendetta". Elro gets an arm ripped off for his trouble.
- Despair Event Horizon: Gets pushed through this in the second half of the game, to the point where he refuses to launch the rocket in One Concern East.
- Determinator: Lawrence can barely slow him down in the boss fight against him, despite Lawrence repeatedly hitting Elro with Megaton Punches to knock Elro backwards. Even losing an arm and an eye hardly seems to keep Elro down for long.
- Didn't Want an Adventure: Elro would really prefer to hide out with his sister and keep her safe until One Concern stops targeting them. Unfortunately for him, Robin is insistent on saving Samba and helping Mina do the same when they reunite, so he reluctantly tags along.
- Eye Scream: He loses his left eye during a Penance. It's bandaged for the rest of the game.
- Face Palm: When Royal called the Tower guards to accompany his 'friends' into it, only for the guards to throw them all in jail, Elro gives a facepalm.
- The Fatalist: After meeting Mother in City One and watching the world effectively become doomed as a result, Elro just wants to go home and ignore everything going on around him. He says that if they're all going to suffer the wrath of the Starworm, at least they can do it in their own house.
- Guest-Star Party Member: In the second part of the Carver battle, Elro assists Robin by jamming his sword into the machine's buzzsaw to stop it, allowing Robin to grab the overhead rail and ram into it.
- Handicapped Badass: Losing an eye doesn't stop him from helping Robin fight the Carver machine. Losing an arm affects him even less, as he takes on someone who's Transcended and wins. Granted, it's because Lawrence simply wouldn't shut his damn mouth and fight, but Elro still won all the same.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Subverted. He intended to go through with this in a one-on-one battle with Agent Black. It didn't take; Elro got his arm ripped off by Black, and he was about to be subjected to even more torture before other One Concern members stopped Black from doing it.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Elro keeps a sword on display in his home, but the blade broke in half when he used it to fight a Controller. He still manages to make his half-sword work pretty well, considering that it's a One-Hit Kill on most common enemies.
- Hypocrite: He will constantly call out Robin for acting recklessly and trying to get involved with Mina in opposing One Concern. Note that Robin has a reason for doing so, as she owes Mina and wants to help save Samba. Turns out, Elro is just as guilty as Robin, if not more so; the whole mess started when he acted recklessly, flew off the handle, and killed agent Grey... in full view of Agent Black and Agent White. As for opposing One Concern, he's been doing that from the sidelines even longer than Robin has, as he's been a part of the ChemiCo Contra for what's implied to be a long time, given that Teegan, another ChemiCo Contra, knows all his quirks by now and can trust him not to go through with something when he tells her to stay behind or let him handle a problem.
- Indy Ploy: Defied. His plan for dealing with Agent Black was "lock Robin out, point broken weapon at Super-Soldier, and bluff". He came up with this plan in the spur of the moment. It does not go well for him; he ends up getting his right arm ripped off for his trouble. It would have been even worse if not for the sudden appearance of the Silver Watchman forcing everyone in the room to turn their attention elsewhere.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While no one likes what Elro has to say, it'll usually turn out he at least has a point. The main issue is that Elro's so argumentative and confrontational that no one wants to listen to him.
- He's correct to be wary of entering a house in the middle of the Shockwood because it could be set to be demolished by the Penance. He turns out to be right moments later when that happens, forcing him to grab Robin and yank her out of the house to safety.
- He consistently points out flaws in the Isi faith and hypocrisy in their way of life by showing how the Isi aren't that different from the One Concern. It gets to the point that Mina, a member of the Isi, gets angry when Elro makes a good point because she legitimately can't refute his argument.
- Elro also calls out Mina for being convenient in her friendship with Robin and essentially using her as a means to an end, which is part of what kickstarts her Character Development into being a more thoughtful, considerate person when Mina realizes that Elro is right.
- Knight Templar Big Brother: Granted, if your entire family barring your little sister was killed, you'd probably be a bit overprotective too. But Elro takes it to ridiculous extremes. His stubborn refusal to do anything that could possibly put Robin in danger (despite Robin being more than capable of handling herself) makes him The Millstone. It also costs him an arm when he locks Robin and Mina out of the room to try fighting Agent Black by himself. He's even so uncooperative at the end of the world that Mina shoots him in the leg when he refuses to press the rocket button, still insisting that he wants to go home with Robin and let God sort out everyone else. It's later revealed that Teegan had to press the button instead, knowing that Elro wasn't going to go through with it. At the end of the game, Elro admits he could stand to ease up a bit, but that's only after Robin has saved the world, eliminated the One Concern, and effectively killed the worshiped deity of the entire world in doing both.
- Made of Iron: Elro inexplicably survives so much of the game. First, there's his house getting wrecked by a Controller, to which he gains an Eyepatch of Power and otherwise seems no worse for wear. Next, Agent Black tears his arm clean off. While he's brought to medical attention soon after, the KOed One Concern grunts in the medical room suggest they didn't get many chances to treat his wounds, and he spends the rest of the game with a bloodied stump where an arm should be. Finally, he takes a shotgun blast to the leg and is still alive for the game's epilogue. While we don't get to see how well he took it (he spends the rest of the game sitting down), Elro still takes way more punishment than would be expected of a normal human.
- Mighty Glacier: Plays like this the one time he's playable. He's very slow, and his jump can't clear anything like what his sister can, but his sword kills Concern soldiers in one hit. He gets very little chance to show it off though, since he only comes across a couple of mooks before facing off against Lawrence. As with all other bosses, the damage you can deal at a time is understated.
- The Millstone: Several times, he actively makes things harder for Robin and her allies out of a desire to protect his sister and send her home. Not only do these efforts almost always fail, but they don't even work; Robin is too much of a Determinator and Chronic Hero to listen to him. It's only right at the end of the game after Robin has beaten the Final Boss and the world is saved that Elro admits that he could stand to back off a bit.
- No-Sell: During the boss battle with Lawrence, Elro getting punched in the face doesn't even damage him; it just knocks him backwards.
- Not in This for Your Revolution: Elro has issues when set to a task that would endanger his sister. He only tags along with the rest of the heroes because it's either the only way to protect Robin or because he just plain has no choice; whenever he sees a chance to shunt Robin out of the fray, Elro will drop all pretense of cooperation and take it, regardless of logic or complaint. Since Robin is the main Player Character, this naturally causes a lot of problems.
- The Reveal: He's the one who murdered Agent Grey, which in turn caused Agent Black's vendetta against him and Robin.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: The Trauma Conga Line he goes through during the game takes a toll on him. By the first time he and Robin are reunited, he's very traumatized but still actively trying to bring Robin home. By the end of the game, he's nearly silent; whenever he does talk, it's very terse, to the point, and combative. Even things like using Isi Seeds to kill Mother, who is the head of the One Concern and basically queen of the world, and in such a violent way at that seems to hardly faze him.
- Token Evil Teammate: Downplayed. Unlike the other party members and his sister, he doesn't hold back against the Concern, and outright kills them. He's also one to the ChemiCo Contra, and killed Agent Grey (who was friendly with him to boot) in cold blood, kickstarting the plot via Agent Black's vendetta against his family. He's also only aligned with the party to stop Robin from hurting herself, and actively sabotages them at several points. However, he's doing all of this out of a concern for his sister's well-being. The game presents his actions both as coming from a place of love yet terribly misguided.
- Trauma Conga Line: He goes from angry and upset about his father's death and having problems with his marriage to murdering an Agent in front of the Concern, which gets his daughter and wife killed and costs him an eye. Then Agent Black tears his arm off, the end of the world happens, and eventually he proves so stubbornly uncooperative that his own ally shoots him in the leg.
- The Unfettered: Nothing will stop him from avenging his father's death.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Elro is not nearly as agile as Robin, Mina, or Royal, and uses a broken sword as his only weapon. He makes up for it with sheer strength; when he's playable in One Concern East, his stab attack takes out Concern soldiers in one hit, and he kills a Transcended human with it.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: None of this mess would have happened if he didn't ask Robin to help fix his house. And even less of it would have happened if he hadn't killed Agent Grey in a Moment of Weakness, making Agent Black utterly despise Elro.
Royal
- Ambiguous Situation: It's unknown if he managed to recover from the Starworm's Mind Rape in time to find a safe area of the colony, or if his regeneration ability would keep him in an infinite loop of asphyxiation and revival in the event he doesn't.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Royal allies with Robin because she doesn't treat him with disdain (her helping him fight off a killer robot also contributed), unlike the Concern officials he's known for his entire life. This explains why he up and saved Robin from execution. The player can go against this later in the game by insulting him with dialogue choices.
- Berserk Button: Royal does not take kindly to being ignored or otherwise treated as lesser than he believes himself to be. This more or less gets him killed when he attacks the Starworm in anger, and gets Mind Raped for his efforts.
- Break the Haughty: He considers himself on the same level as Mother. However, it has a good reason at first, since he was groomed since birth to be her son and her successor. But as the game goes on, Royal has it repeatedly drilled into his head that he has nowhere near as much power and influence as he thinks he does, and that he makes his own cause worse just by his mere presence. First, his orders to leave Robin alone are ignored by the One Concern. Then, when he tries to escort the party into the One Concern's tower, his orders are once again ignored, and his magic is revealed to be unable to affect Isi plant life. Later in the game, he miscommunicates his intentions in such a way that convinces the party that Mother can heal Elro's missing arm, when what Royal meant was spiritual healing. Even, this ends up getting Mother killed and allows Agent Chrome to take over, sparking a civil war in the One Concern. At this point, Royal begins to openly engage in Heroic Self-Deprecation, turning to Robin for most things because he keeps messing up. Once he gets to the moon base, the Starworm ignores Royal, so he attacks it in frustration, causing the Starworm to Mind Rape Royal, ultimately sending him into a Heroic BSoD from a Battle in the Center of the Mind that Royal fails to win. This, in turn, gets him killed when he won't even move to save his own life, forcing Robin to abandon Royal at a checkpoint just so she can reach an escape pod. Royal's ultimate fate is left up in the air, though his chances of survival are quite low.
- Determinator: Deconstructed. He's constantly doing his best to prove himself worthy of his title and never gives up, but this always ends up making things worse. And he slowly comes to realize he's The Millstone to the rest of the party on top of that. Over the course of the game, Royal's dogged insistence to keep trying to get what he wants places the planet in a bad situation, starts a civil war within the One Concern, gets Mother killed, and undergoes a plan that does nothing to help anyone besides giving Robin a weak point to hit on the final boss fight. And that last one only happened because Royal threw a temper tantrum and attacked it first, having to be left behind by Robin in order for her to escape. The last point also indirectly gets Agent Black and Lawrence killed.
- Fatal Flaw:
- Pride. Royal is an overall good human being who grows as a person over time and shows a lot more empathy than a lot of the characters, especially when placed next to Elro. But Royal's pride is never curbed, even when he realizes he isn't as godlike as he thinks he is. Royal's pride gets him killed when he decides to attack what many consider to be a god for daring to brush him off, and the Starworm retaliates with a Mind Rape attack that forces Royal to face his inner demons; a fight he loses, which causes him to refuse to be saved from a decompressing space station.
- Ignorance. Royal wants to do what's right, but is the product of the world that made him. Kept in the dark as he is to the Tri's plans, Royal has to fill in the gaps of his knowledge with holy teachings, but said teachings are all half-truths or outright lies. Royal repeatedly makes every situation he's in worse because he habitually relies upon or invokes religious authority, when said religion was only ever really meant to keep people in line.
- A God Am I: Granted, it's in the heat of the moment, but when the Starworm refuses so much as to speak to him, Royal throws his worst tantrum yet, declares himself divinity on a level with the Starworm, and attacks it.
- Green Thumb: His psychokinesis extends to being able to hasten the growth of or even spontaneously create plant life, and Robin first meets him after having created a bed of flowers in a desert cave. However, he can only affect plant life from the planet itself; Isi plants, which are implied to be plants from Earth, are impossible for him to grow or manipulate. This is the first sign to him that he isn't as all-powerful as he thinks he is.
- Guest-Star Party Member: He helps Robin in the fights with Kibuka (he uses his powers to flip the robot over, and tosses chunks of the ground at it once its face chips away), the Omega Controller (he doesn't directly fight, but he starts up the elevator in a scripted event), Mother in City One (he uses his powers to hold back massive boulders so Robin can break them apart), and Agent Black at the rocket platform (he distracts them while Robin does what she has to do, and then helps Robin wear them down in the real fight).
- Hated by All: Royal is hated by practically everybody for basically being a superpowered spoiled brat. Pretty much the only person that shows him any kindness or respect is Robin, and even then, it can be up to the player's dialogue choices. That said, being rude will come to bite Robin in the ass come the first phase of the final boss.
- Healing Factor: Like the agents, he can heal by drawing Ivory out of matter, leading to a
Fridge Horror situation when his ultimate fate is to be left behind on a decompressing moonbase, potentially dying from lack of oxygen and then reviving, on an endless loop. - Heroic Self-Deprecation: Late-game, Royal begins to realize exactly how much trouble he's caused, and so he starts openly insulting himself. Royal defers to Robin's judgment more often, openly admits that he's screwing things up, and compliments everyone else while putting himself down. This reaches its nadir during the meeting with the Starworm, as he gets Mind Raped in such a way that he won't even try to save his own life when the entire base is set to blow up.
- Lack of Empathy: Royal's reasons for lacking empathy are mundane, realistic and called out by Agent Black. His lack of empahty doesn't come from malice, but from being sheltered to the point to being unable to relate to anyone or understand suffering.
- The Millstone: Played for drama. Royal fails miserably at everything he tries to do, and many of the game's larger plot complications are caused by his arrogance, his ineptitude, or both. By the end of the game, he's keenly aware of how badly he keeps messing up. Whatever he saw during the Starworm's Mind Rape, it affects Royal badly enough to spend his final moments lamenting his worthlessness and begging Robin to let him die. Even then, Robin wants to save him. Ironically, his very last act was actually somewhat useful, since he damaged the Starworm just enough to create a weak point for Robin to attack. Of course, if he hadn't attacked it and pissed it off (or rather, pissed off its pilot), then Robin might not have even had to fight it in the first place, and even if she did, Royal wouldn't have gotten Mind Raped and would still be alive to assist in the battle, so...
- Mind Rape: On the receiving end thanks to the Starworm, pushing him well beyond the Despair Event Horizon. The game doesn't elaborate on what he saw, but it was enough for Royal to tell Robin to leave him behind and let him die.
- Reality Warper: Just like Mother, he has the power to directly manipulate the Ivory in matter, and thus matter itself, moving it or reshaping it as he desires. However, Mother's power is much stronger than his. Having entirely Ivory-based powers means that he is especially vulnerable to Detritus, which leaves him completely powerless, as opposed to the Agents, who only have their Healing Factor taken away but can still use their other abilities.
- Royal Brat: Also a Meaningful Name, he's supposed to be Mother's successor, and acts arrogant to everyone else. Even when he gets stripped of his title, Royal still acts like he's better, and that this all must be a huge misunderstanding. He keeps appealing to higher and higher authorities to try and convince them that he really is every bit as good as he says he is. This never ends well.
- Squishy Wizard: Take his power out, and he's just a whiny weak kid. He found out the hard way when Black blocked his path, and he was basically helpless to stop her.
- Super-Speed: One use of his powers lets him chase down a freight train.
- Uncertain Doom: Robin has to leave Royal behind in order to reach the escape pods on the moonbase. What actually happened to Royal isn't explicitly shown, but he has no way off the station, he was in the base when it blew up, and he's never shown again for the rest of the game. While it can thus be assumed that he's dead, Royal has the same Healing Factor that the Agents have, and he's on a planet that's made entirely of Ivory, which could lead to an And I Must Scream situation if he survived the blast. Either way, Royal's ultimate fate is left up in the air after Robin escapes from the moon base.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: By trying to destroy the Omega Controller, he winds up summoning the Starworm.
Agent Black
- Always Accurate Attack: During the first fight with her, there's no way for Robin to avoid Black's time-stopping attack, where she repeatedly slams Robin into the ground. Good thing it's just an HP to One attack, and she summons Controllers who are guaranteed to drop health pickups afterward while taunting Robin.
- Berserk Button:
- Reminding her about Agent Grey is a quick way to anger her (more so than usual). And because of his involvement in Grey's death, Elro's mere existence is enough to set her off; the moment Elro shows his face to her, Black instantly flies into a rage.
- Royal also manages to find another way to anger Black, when he tells her "This is bigger than you." while trying to persuade her to leave the B-17 launchpad so that they can fly to the Star Worm. The sheer hypocrisy of an Agent who sacrificed her humanity to Mother's service hearing this from someone who followed his whims all his life completely crosses out his earlier efforts:Black: HAHAHAHA! So right! THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANYTHING SMALLER THAN ME. BUT YOU TAKE THIS ROCKET OVER MY DEAD BODY.
- BFG: Totes a bazooka for her final battle. At that point, she's so far gone she'll occasionally opt to beat Robin to death with it instead.
- Blessed with Suck: She decided at some point to go through the procedure that allowed her to Transcend, and it does have a plethora of benefits: immortality so long as she dies somewhere where she can access Ivory (which is virtually anywhere that isn't a detritus pit), increased strength and speed, monstrous durability, and presumably supernatural powers. Half of those benefits she absolutely despises, and all of these powers come with terrible drawbacks. First, her arms melted off during Transcendence, meaning she needed to be given metal arms that are incredibly heavy. Even with Black's new strength, and she admits they cause her pain. The second and far worse aspect is that she's been cursed with an eternal splitting headache. Hearing loud noises causes her pain as a result, and she's developed a habit of tapping her head whenever she's stressed or angry, presumably to try and dull the pain when her brain exerts itself. And that immortality means that she can't even kill herself to end all the suffering; during a Villainous Breakdown, Black admits she's killed herself several times, but she keeps coming back to life, and that this has presumably kept up for 187 years.
- Body Horror: Three doses of it. She's the only Transcended character who keeps on fighting as the Isi seeds began sprouting, so we get the lovely image of tree branches growing out of her spine as she continues to try and beat on Robin. When the blue-eye corruption starts to swarm her, it merges with the Isi seeds and the Ivory in her blood to create a massive Ivory Beast that looks like it's melting, all still with Black's dogged determination to keep Robin and Royal from taking the rocket. You have to destroy the tumors on its back and head, as well. After that, a brain with arms rips itself out of the Ivory Beast's skull, hinted to be the only thing left of Black's mind, and you're forced to shoot it until Black has her last headache. Oh, and the arms of the Ivory Beast are Black's robotic arms mutated with the Blue-Eye, Isi Seeds, and Ivory. No wonder Robin has a nightmare about those arms in the trailer.
- Came Back Wrong: All Agents are people who imperfectly emerged from Transcendence, but Black is among the worst. Her Ivory infusion dissolved her arms and left her with an endless, intense migraine.
- Cyborg: One Concern's Agents are all this to some degree due to their imperfect Transcendence destroying some of their previous limbs and organs, but it's most visible on Black, who sports two purple robotic arms.
- Dark Action Girl: She is the best and strongest Agent in the Concern who regularly beats and incapacitates several characters. When Chrome starts his insurrection, she rips apart almost every soldier who tries to stop her from murdering Chrome. He only gets away by the skin of his teeth due to some unforeseen complications on the part of Robin and Royal. This is also not counting every time she beats the crap out of Robin and Elro, the former of which is essentially the only person who stands a chance against her. In fact, the one time Robin beats her without outside assistance, it was because the fight took place in an area where Black was at her weakest. And she starts that fight with a brutal HP to One attack that she repeats two more times at specific intervals throughout the fight.
- Despair Event Horizon: Agent Black went careening past it long ago, according to herself. She almost came back when Agent Grey started trying (successfully if her dialogue before her final fight is any indication) to woo her, but that ended when Elro killed Grey.
- Determinator: Black in her final battle is absolutely determined to protect the rocket from you, to the point that she eventually breaks open the rocket's fuel tank and starts drinking the Ivory fuel just so her Healing Factor can keep up with the damage you are dealing. She apparently didn't get the memo that Isi seeds were supposed to be a death sentence for those with ivory blood, as she's the only transcended character who keeps on fighting even after the seeds start sprouting. In fact, the Isi seeds don't kill her; by the end of the fight, Black is weakly shambling around, with multiple Isi Seeds sprouting out of her back, barely able to form a complete sentence, and vomiting up the fuel she's been guzzling. But Black still refuses to stop fighting until she is swarmed with the blue eye parasites and dragged offscreen. And even that still wasn't enough, because she manages to mentally overpower mind-controlling fungi, become a giant blue and white monster, and keep her one goal of defending the rocket going until her head literally explodes from Robin shooting it over and over. Keep in mind Agent White only took three Isi seed injections to kill, and Mother took four; Black takes seven, and that's still not enough to kill her. It's only after all that, her brain exploding from one whopper of a headache, and falling into Earth's atmosphere (literally burning her body down to ashes) that Black finally dies.
- The Dragon: To Mother, as her most trusted Agent. A visit to the base of the Starworm even shows she has a room all set out for her as one of His chosen ones.
- Dragon Their Feet: Agent Black is busy with her Sanity Slippage when Mother is killed, and by the time she confronts Robin again, the One Concern is fragmented beyond recognition and the Starworm is a more pressing problem for the heroes.
- Driven to Suicide: During her Villainous Breakdown, Black mentions she's killed herself multiple times, eventually giving up when it was clear that she was just going to keep reviving because of the presence of enough Ivory to being her back.
- Empowered Badass Normal: Since she's first fought in a detritus pit where her transcended powers are suppressed and eschews any super powers in her rematch in favor of a rocket launcher, we never see what her transcended powers are beyond the standard healing. This doesn't matter much, though, because it turns out her ability to punch people across the room is just natural for her, as is her ability to leap across a room and brutalize someone so fast they don't take damage until the full attack is finished.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: She doesn't handle Grey dying well. It drives a non-insignificant portion of the plot, namely her desire to kill Elro.
- Flipping the Bird: She threatens one of the One Concern soldiers with a rather lethal variant of it, crushing their head using her Super-Strength with just her middle fingers on their temples.
- Genre Savvy: What makes her Robin's strongest foe. She quickly realizes how dangerous Robin is once the woman escapes from One Concern the first time around, and demands immediate measures be taken to just kill Robin outright whenever the two come face-to-face rather than cavort around bloviating about the One Concern's plans. The only time she delays the most expedient route to killing Robin is when she has Elro dead-to-rights and wants Robin to feel the pain she felt losing Grey. The issue is that something always bails Robin out before Black can act on her desire to deal with Robin. At one point, she gets so fed up with the delays she just puts a gun to Robin's head and tries to pull the trigger, and is only stopped by the Silver Watchman blasting in to do the job himself; from then on, Black only ever gets to encounter Robin on a playing field that levels their overall power.
- Healing Factor: Like any other agent, she can heal by drawing Ivory from the matter around her. Except when she's in the Detritus Pit.
- The Heavy: She’s Mother’s most trusted agent, and since Mother is busy residing over City One, Black is Robin’s biggest adversary for much of the game. She manages to outlive both Mother and Chrome, and fights Robin one last time as the game’s penultimate boss.
- HP to One: Well, not exactly one, but close enough. At set intervals, Black will slam Robin against the ground and drop her to critical health levels during their fight in the Detritus Pit. This attack cannot be dodged or blocked, or prevented by Iron Heart; it will also just finish Robin off if her HP was already critical.
- Hypocrite: She's a brutal enforcer for a fascist regime, confident in her own superiority, and has executed entire families simply for stepping outside of social norms in any way. Despite justifying this by claiming one should care little for the lives of individuals in favor of the collective of humanity, and belittling regular humans who take offense at her actions, Black is increasingly motivated by horror and grief when someone manages to kill someone she cares about, as shown by her attempt at Cold-Blooded Torture on Elro. At no point does Black ever see the irony or the hypocrisy. It's especially galling when, before her first boss fight, she calls out Royal for being incapable of caring about other people when Black's own words describe herself far better.
- I Know Your True Name: Subverted. Just before the last boss fight with Black, Royal reveals that Agent Black's real name is "Madelyn", as he read in a file once. The moon base expands this further, as a room is reserved for a "Madelyn Binoche", which is most likely her full name. However, Black has gone so insane with grief and rage that she doesn't care what her name is, and the game keeps referring to her only as "Agent Black".
- It's Personal: The reason she hates Robin and Elro so much is because that Elro personally wrong her. Agent Grey was killed by Elro in a Cruel and Unusual Death, and their death was implied to come at a time when Black was developing feelings for him. As such, when Elro next shows his face to Black, she instantly flies into a rage.
- It's Personal with the Dragon: Robin and Elro both have more personal stakes with Agent Black than they do with Mother or the Starworm, mainly from Black constantly putting the two siblings in danger. However, it's also personal on Black's end towards them, as Elro killed Agent Grey, who may or may not have been Black's lover. But Elro causing Gray's death developed a lifelong hatred of Elro by Black.
- Lawful Stupid: Played for drama. By the time you meet her as the penultimate boss, she has lost everything. Mother is dead, the organization she works for is rapidly falling apart from infighting, the only two people she tolerated (and, in Grey's case, possibly loved) are dead, the headaches have taken their toll, and she was unable to exact her revenge on Elro because Chrome stopped her right before she could snap Elro's neck. She's latching onto the only point of stability that's keeping her sane: her final order, which is to guard the rocket that leads to the moon. Royal nearly gets Agent Black to see reason by bringing up how much the world needs the rocket to launch, but accidentally presses her Berserk Button, causing Black to double down on her orders and get into a final fight with Robin.
- Lightning Bruiser: She's tough, agile, and hits hard. As expected from a Super-Soldier, she's a monstrous opponent. The only reasons that Robin is able to stop her during the boss fights with her is because (respectively) detrius sand prevents her from healing, and because she gets hit with so many Isi Seeds and the mind-controlling fungi that her body simply can't take it.
- Madness Mantra: "THIS IS MY ROCKET!" becomes one during her third and final boss fight. She's lost everything else by that point, and is clinging onto the only thing she has left.
- Moral Myopia: All of the Agents and Once Concern, but Black most strongly of all. The Agents kill as they pleases, disdaining common people and seeing no issue with harming them or taking their lives for anything as simple as disobedience. To One Concern, regular people's lives are unessential. But if one of those people happens to kill an Agent, then it's the worst travesty in the world. One of Black's most defining traits throughout the game is her outrage over Agent Grey's death, and insistence that Elro must die for fighting back, which - to the protagonists - never comes off as much more than self-centered.
- Morphic Resonance: After being turned into the Ivory Beast, the Blue Eyes substance coating her skull resembles her hair.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
- Delivered one to Chrome when he started his revolt. Having gotten fed up with his preaching, Black jumps on top of him and delivers some Extreme Mêlée Revenge.
- An unavoidable part of her boss fight is an Always Accurate Attack that sees Black beating Robin within an inch of her life.
- No-Nonsense Nemesis: She is without a doubt the most pragmatic and efficient character in the game. She'll shoot Elro while he's giving a monologue, disobey orders to attack the woman who has frequently escaped from prison and killed other operatives while that woman's guard is down, will always insist on just shooting people instead of holding religious ceremonies first, and will take hostages if she deems the action necessary. It's telling that Robin mostly survives encounters with Black only as a result of outside interference that stop her from acting on her pragmatism.
- Not So Stoic: The first few times you encounter Black, she acts completely unconcerned by anything facing her and downright bored. However, after White is killed, she freaks out.
- One-Winged Angel: Her Ivory Beast form, resulting from the combination of an Ivory overdose (both from Black’s Transcended status and from the fuel she ingests), the Isi seeds, and the Starworm’s blue-eye corruption.
- Only Sane Man: Repeatedly demonstrates pragmatism over religious fanatacism, unlike the other agents; when the attempt to execute Robin goes south due to Royal using his powers to break her free of the metal support that was supposed to be plunged into the earth, an understandably pissed Black asks "Why can't we just shoot people?!"
- Pragmatic Villainy: Zigzagged. At one point, Black asks "Why can't we just shoot people?!" when they've got Robin cornered and dead to rights. That being said, when Elro confronts Black, It's Personal because he killed Agent Grey. Black rips off Elro's right arm, and was about to proceed with some more Cold-Blooded Torture before she was stopped by Chrome and other members of the One Concern. Had Black taken her own advice, Elro would be dead and Black would have gotten her revenge.
- Pre-Final Boss: The second battle against her is the penultimate boss before the final battle against the Starworm. While there are two battles available before the Starworm fight, they are both Optional Bosses.
- Rasputinian Death: Even in a game full of Cruel and Unusual Deaths like this one, Black takes the cake. Nothing says "dead" quite like getting stuffed full of Isi seeds which promptly burst out of your spine, having your head explode after being blasted by gunfire, and what remains of your body burning up from exiting the atmosphere.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The reason behind her obsession with capturing and/or killing Robin turns out to be Agent Grey's murder at Elro's hands and for her previous humiliations. By the time One Concern East rolls around, she's stopped caring about her cause and just wants to brutalize Robin.
- Running on All Fours: Does this during her boss fight for extra speed.
- Sanity Slippage: She undergoes this throughout the story, including the backstory. The reason she hates Elro so much is Elro's two-part compound makes Agent Grey literally explode. And since Grey was the one person that Agent Black truly loved, this made Elro into her Arch-Enemy. Within the game proper, Black's tendency towards Pragmatic Villainy keeps being thwarted, repeatedly letting her enemies get away through no fault of her own, which builds her frustrations. Then, the battle in a detrius sand pit causes Black to lose a fight to Robin. And that's when Black completely snaps. After the civil war in the One Concern and Agent Chrome's death, Black holds onto the one point of stability: the One Concern's rocket ship, which she was ordered to guard a long time ago. She repeatedly shouts "THIS IS MY ROCKET!" at Robin and Royal, then has to be killed in a boss fight in order to get Black to finally stop. Even then, by the end of the fight, Black was little more than a raving lunatic, lashing out at the world around her.
- Shout-Out: After using her unavoidable attack, Black taunts Robin with the "Well? What is it?" gesture.
- The Coats Are Off: before her boss fight, she throws off her coat, revealing her prosthetic limbs.
- Tragic Villain: By the end, she's completely lost it due to the heroes unintentionally removing almost every single purpose she has in life, leaving her to die fighting for the only purpose she has left; defending a rocket. It was the last order given to her by Mother, and Black will fulfill that order, come Hell or high water.
- Villain Has a Point: Frequently, she's just trying to promote her own narrative when ranting, but Agent Black is a highly efficient, logical woman who calls out incompetence all throughout the game and is usually justified in her frustration. Some Examples It's made abundantly clear at multiple points that if Black wasn't just an enforcer within One Concern and could actually modify the rules like the Suits, there wouldn't be a game given how practical she is.
- Villainous Breakdown: Undergoes one over the course of the entire game. She utterly hates Elro for what he's done to Agent Grey, intending to kill him. As things with the One Concern slip further and further out of control, Black becomes utterly delirious and unable to say a complete sentence by the end of phase one of her final boss battle. Her last order is to protect the rocket, and she'll follow it in spite of the world coming to an end if she doesn't. Not that she was all that sane before, but the final boss battle against her has reduced Black to little more than a violent, screaming maniac.
- Villainous Valour: Give the woman credit — she does not go quietly. She manages to have enough willpower to overcome mind-controlling spores, and it takes seven Isi Seeds to bring her down. It took three to kill Agent White, and it took four to kill Mother, who was supposed to be the closest thing to a living goddess. The amount of resilience that Black shows is enough to make both Robin and Royal pity Black in her final moments.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: She's sarcastic, temperamental, and incredibly violent by the end of the game... but when she's had to see nearly everyone who gave a damn about her die in increasingly nightmarish ways, it's easy to see where it all comes from.
- Your Head Asplode: After depleting her health for the third and final time, Black (as the Ivory Beast) has one final headache, and it's a doozy. The beast screams "HEAD... ACHE..." before her brain explodes.
Allies
Samba
- Advertised Extra: Despite appearing on the title screen and being animated in the trailer, Samba doesn't have much role in the story other than being a motivator for Mina to keep fighting One Concern, or as a Damsel in Distress during a section of the game. Samba returns back to Isilugar in the latter half of the game.
- Damsel in Distress: Agent Black kidnaps Samba before fleeing Isilugar, prompting Robin and company to pursue her to the Tower to rescue her.
- I Will Wait for You: After being rescued, she will stay near entrance of Isilugar waiting for Mina's return. Talking to Samba as Robin will have Samba admit that she's getting tired of waiting for Mina to come home, and that it's been a consistent problem with the two of them, hoping that it will one day get better. And after defeating the Final Boss, it most certainly does. With the Starworm dead and the One Concern fractured beyond repair, Mina has no more reason to keep leaving.
- Love Interest: Though the game heavily hints at it throughout the story, the ending confirms that Samba and Mina are girlfriends. Upon arriving back home, whether Mina helped out against the Final Boss or not, the two ladies embrace and start passionately kissing one another, confirming that their relationship is a romantic one.
Gustavo
An Isi doctor recognizable by his pink suit. He doesn't spend much time in Isilugar, instead traveling around the world and frequently crossing paths with Robin and company.
- Disease by Any Other Name: He reveals that he's an outcast among the fertility-worshiping Isi because he's living with a disease that makes it impossible to reproduce without passing it on. It's never named, but the way he describes it makes it sound an awful lot like HIV, or some in-universe analogue.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: He's an outcast in his society because he carries an incurable disease that makes reproduction without infecting others impossible. His situation sounds awfully similar to the real-life discrimination and prejudice against people with HIV/AIDS.
- Hidden Depths: He knows a lot about the world for an unassuming doctor; he introduces Robin to the warp system hidden underground (which means he may be aware that the planet is completely artificial), and he's friends with Ash, a One Concern outcast.
- Informed Self-Diagnosis: He's a doctor, and thus seems perfectly aware of how the incurable, sexually-transmitted disease he carries works.
- Offscreen Teleportation: After you meet him in Isilugar, you encounter him several times in other regions, even when you just saw him several several rooms behind. What gives?
- It later turns out that he is using an underground warp system, that he eventually teaches Robin how to use.
ChemiCo Contra
- Badass Pacifist: They seek to undermine the One Concern while working directly under them... Using purely non-violent tactics (mostly researching alternatives to Ivory in secret to weaken the Concern's control on humanity). In fact, as Teegan points out, Elro's Agent-killing binary serum is considered a huge no-no among them, because using it the way Elro intended is pretty much terrorism.
- Cloudcuckoolander: They've got about the same level of general goofiness as One Concern's grunts.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Their suits are green rather than the standard One Concern purple.
- Hero-Worshipper: By the second half of the game, they start to recognize Robin from her continued heroics and adventures defying the One Concern. They all fawn over her in admiration. One of them even asks for her autograph!
- La Résistance: Albeit a rather pacifistic one.
- Non-Action Guy: None of them are fighters. At its core, their struggle is a peaceful one.
- Science Hero: A rebel group that seeks to help humanity purely through science and research. And the use of said science is entirely meant to be non-violent.
- Token Evil Teammate: Maybe "evil" is a bit harsh, but Elro, while a supposed member of their organization, is the odd one out by not only not being against using deadly force, but also resorting to it several times.
Teegan
- Head Swap: She's the only member of ChemiCo Contra that is seen without her helmet. When doing anything other than standing or taking a bow, she puts it on before doing so.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: After Robin comes back from a failed attempt to reason with the Starworm on the moon base, Teegan very heavily implies that it was her who pushed the rocket launch button when Elro refused to do so out of being such a Knight Templar Big Brother.
- Straight Man and Wise Guy: She's about as loony as the other ChemiCo members, making her the Wise Guy to Elro's Straight Man.
One Concern
In General
The main enemy faction of the game. Built around the religion of the Tri, which worships the three figures of the Starworm, the Medium, and the Stars, the organization controls nearly the whole planet. Controlling state, church, and corporate practices, they have a monopoly on Ivory, the substance that fuels everything, and want to get rid of their competitors, the Isi, as well as any heretics who disobey their laws.
- A Nazi by Any Other Name: They are a theocracy that sees those who are chosen by Mother and the Starworm as superior to everyone else, and their ritualized murders known as Penance are reminiscent of Jewish mass-murder during the Holocaust. Their aforementioned leader, Mother, is treated as a messiah figure and has a cult of personality similar to Hitler. Their rivals, the Isi, though having more in common with island religions, are somewhat of a Jewish analogue, as the Concern refer to them as "pirates" (which they explicitly consider a slur) and demonize them as the source of all ills in the world, and it is all but stated that they aim to exterminate every last one of them.
- Church Militant: The One Concern acts as the sole military power of human civilization. While the Isi can at least fend off the church's attacks long enough to escape, they're not equipped to handle any kind of full confrontation.
- Corrupt Church: The One Concern has control over virtually all of human civilization, and it's not particularly shy about doing whatever it takes to keep things that way. Its monopoly on Ivory and relentless mining of it regardless of the economic destruction also makes it a rare cross between this and MegaCorp.
- The Empire: They are the rulers of the planet and an oppressive government that wants to conquer the few lands not under them.
- Law Enforcement, Inc.: Their agents and soldiers are basically the only law enforcement in the planet, who exist to serve their whims and keep their power.
- MegaCorp: They are basically the sole company on the planet and behave much like a typical portrayal of a Big Oil company, mining and monopolizing Ivory (the oil analogue) with little care for the environmental destruction that results, and are willing to murder to maintain their stranglehold on the planet.
- The Theocracy: They are built around the Tri religion, and their leader is the Messiah.
Mother
- Abusive Parents: At first, she simply coddles Royal, shielding him from the outside world and leaving him unprepared when he does leave City One. As a result, he is mocked by everyone else in the Concern. When he finally does return to her, however, she goes full into this trope as she declares him a sinner and orders him imprisoned for accidentally awakening the Starworm and dooming the world, and when he escapes, she tells him that she never loved him, disowns him, and tries to kill him.
- Bait the Dog: She initially seems to genuinely believe in what she and One Concern is doing, and seems to genuinely care for all her "children", which is seen very well when she's contrasted with Royal. Her original plan to finish the B-17 rocket so that it would hold as many humans as possible and take them to a new world, before this one breaks apart from Ivory overuse could also have saved the world, even if at an enormous cost. When the heroes finally meet her, she seems reasonable and fair. Then she starts losing her composure and yelling at Royal, her own adopted son, disowning him and telling him that she hates him, then tries to kill him. Also, it turns out that she only planned on saving those who were loyal to her to the exclusion of everyone else, cementing her as a selfish tyrant.
- Big Bad: As the leader of One Concern, she is responsible for the despotic tyranny it is subjecting the world to. Though, when she karks it, there's still Chrome, Black, and the Starworm to deal with.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Implied; while Darland and the other Suits are officially her subordinates, they often seem to have at least as much power as she does, directly running and overseeing her various projects.
- Body Horror: Having a massive tree sprout from your body is a pretty painful way to go. Mother even tries to heal with the Ivory in her blood beforehand, but since Isi seeds absorb Ivory, that just makes it even worse.
- Broken Pedestal:
- The lore builds up Mother as a kind, all-knowing holy figure who can solve all of the world's problems by consulting the Starworm. In reality, she's little more than a temperamental, narcissistic, pompous super-soldier who's willing to kill hundreds to maintain her image and is in cahoots with the corrupt One Concern elites. She is neither able nor willing to placate the Starworm, and has planned for a long time to abandon the planet instead of facing it.
- In a direct example, Royal's worldview gets hit hard when he learns that his dear Mother never really loved him and blames him for all of the world's current problems.
- Climax Boss: As the leader of One Concern, she is one of the most important opponents Robin will face. However, the existence of the Starworm makes it clear that she will not be the final enemy. Her defeat may cause the collapse of One Concern, but there's still a few areas and several bosses left, ending at the Starworm himself, before the story concludes.
- Dark Messiah: She outright makes herself into a Crystal Dragon Jesus and is the head of the Tri religion who has everyone worshipping her. She runs the society as The Theocracy complete with dictatorial measures and executing anyone who does not comply, and she only plans on saving those loyal to her.
- Dirty Coward: Rather than placate the Starworm or do anything to stop her environmental destruction, she opts to work with the suits to build a rocket and abandon the rest of humanity to die.
- Ethereal White Dress: She wears a long white dress to emphasize her mystique and divine status as the messiah of the Eldritch Abomination known as the Starworm.
- Evil Matriarch: She behaves as a mother to her followers in the One Concern, but is a cruel despot who uses them to enforce her will. Most directly, she is the adoptive mother of Royal, her eventual successor, but she coddles him and shelters him from the outside world, shows an unwillingness to actually educate him properly, and when this bites her in the ass because Royal accidentally awakens the Starworm and puts the planet in danger, she drops all pretenses of loving him and tells him what a failure he is.
- Faux Affably Evil: She puts on a ‘loving mother’ act and behaves as though she cares about her subordinates. However, she still presides over a theocracy which liberally executes those violating its decrees and hunts down dissenters like Isi, as well as creating a Tower complex to indoctrinate chosen pupils into worshiping her above everything else, and considering them a priority to save over everyone besides the agents. When Royal confronts her, Mother lets the mask slip and shows just how selfish and arrogant she truly is.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: She's the queen of the world in all but name, and is worshiped as the vector between humanity and the divine. And yet, she seeks constant praise from everyone at all times. She also chastises Royal when he asks for her help, though Royal kind of had it coming with all the trouble he caused. She also insists on hunting down mechanics, sinners, and basically anyone who tries to find out what's actually happening to the world, putting anyone who falls into those categories to death.
- I Have No Son!: When Royal accidentally dooms the world and confronts her later, she tells him this:Royal: M-Mother...?Mother: Don't you call me that!! You are no son to me!
- Light Is Not Good: She looks angelic, wears an Ethereal White Dress, has white hair, lives in the shining City One with white buildings, is surrounded by light imagery, and is a messiah figure of a religion. She is also a theocratic, mass-murdering dictator who is mainly concerned with keeping power and feeding her own ego.
- Malevolent Mugshot: While not overtly scary or threatening like most examples, she puts posters, statues, and busts of herself everywhere.
- Narcissist: She is the head of the Tri religion and the One Concern, and loves to remind everyone at every opportunity she gets by plastering images of herself everywhere and running the Concern as a cult where everyone must worship her 24/7. She also has a secret operation where she has children brainwashed into worshipping her and wants to escape the dying planet only with those who she knows will bow to her.
- No Name Given: She's only ever referred to as "Mother" throughout the entire game. Even the private room reserved for her on the moonbase of the One Concern calls her "Mother", as opposed to almost everyone else being referred to by their birth name on the base.
- Offing the Offspring: When Royal, who accidentally doomed the planet, asks Mother for help, she first opts to leave him behind and die as she goes to the rocket, but instead tries to kill him in the boss fight against her.
- One Bad Mother: She calls herself Mother to project a motherly image, but is the Big Bad and an Evil Matriarch who rules over a theocratic dictatorship, spams her image everywhere, and uses her protective image for manipulative purposes, all in a similar manner to Big Brother.
- Orcus on His Throne: Mother is essentially the goddess of the One Concern and the ruler of the planet, but she hardly does anything herself with this power, and simply stays in City One, waiting for the B-17 rocket to get finished and take her to the moon and only venturing out to inspire her "children", where she ends up killed by an angry Mina with Robin's assistance. While she does have direct control over the Bastion soldiers and Agent Black, everything the One Concern does during the game is initiated by the lower-level leaders, be they Transcended, like Agent Black or General Chrome, or even regular humans, like Ferrier and Darland, while Mother mainly just gives orders to them. It's implied that she's lived for so long, she's beginning to enter the kind of decline seen in Father and Fitzroy, so her commanders have taken on the active roles, and are already squabbling for succession.
- Pragmatic Villainy: She briefly tells her Corners and audience in the parade to take refuge before battling the heroes. However, she only wants them alive because she wants people that will worship her- when two soldiers stay anyway for some reason, she callously hurls then away with her giant stone mech and shows no acknowledgement for their safety.
- Right-Hand Cat: She owns a pet cat named Oedipuss, the only cat seen in the game, and in her boss fight, she pilots a stone machine made to resemble Oedipuss. The cat isn't too loyal, though, as it decides to tag along with Robin after its master dies.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Instead of trying to appease the Starworm, she's chosen to dedicate all the world's resources to building a rocket ship, in order to flee to a new planet alongside the rich elites of One Concern, Royal, and Agent Black.
- Villainous Breakdown: When Royal accidentally puts the planet in danger and comes to her for help, she initially tries to keep her composure... only to publicly break down and start angrily ranting at her own son, verbally abusing him, and vainly trying to make it look like she cares about her followers but letting it slip that she is mainly occupied with her own safety. When defeated in her boss fight, she expresses disbelief that she cannot heal and can barely speak before she finally dies.
- Villain with Good Publicity: As the head of the One Concern and the Tri religion, she is beloved by everyone and seen as a benevolent Messianic Archetype despite being a dictator who has heretics executed, human experimentation conducted to create Agents, and is a terrible mother to Royal. Also, she plans on abandoning most of humanity to die on the planet while she and her brainwashed followers escape to the moon.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: While the specter of Mother pervades most of the game, she literally only gets two scenes, with her boss fight between the two. She gets stuffed full of Isi seeds by Mina during the boss fight, and dies halfway through the second cutscene. At least Agent White got more than three scenes, even if he was quiet for most of them.
Mother's Corners
Mother's personal guards who accompany her whenever she makes a public appearance. In addition to being powerful warriors, they are fiercely loyal to Mother and her ideals.
- Ax-Crazy: They get no characterization before, but by the time you fight them, their sanity seem to take a dive, hard. They have been hunting and killing the Tower pupils under the desperate delusion that their deaths will redeem them and bring Mother back. They admit the whole thing while rambling and shaking.
- Badass Normal: Despite being completely normal humans, they more than earn their status as Mother's guards, proving to be even deadlier combatants than Mother herself in their boss fight.
- The Battle Didn't Count: They jump off the screen after Robin bests them, no worse for wear. It's unknown if they continue hunting the pupils afterwards.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The duo have a red and cyan trail as a boss, with the active Corner showing a trail.
- Cool Sword: Unlike the Agents, they do not have any superhuman abilities - just gymnastics, teamwork, and swords that fire lightning and lasers.
- Combination Attack: By moving in unison, they can produce a giant explosion and throw fire around the arena. Somehow.
- Confusion Fu: The reason why they're challenging as Dual Boss. Each of them has different mechanics, and they randomly switch out with the other, making it necessary to keep an eye on both Corners. And when they're on their last bar, they will both join the fray simultaneously.
- Dual Boss: They share a life bar, so attacking either one will deplete it. Sometimes they'll fight simultaneously, while other times one will jump into the background to rest.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Averted. Following the game's pattern of sword wielders not being very nice people at all, the Corners carry swords as their main weapon, and they promptly use them to murder the pupils from the Tower.
- Optional Boss: The Corners can be fought as one of the game's two secret bosses after Robin escapes from Midway. To fight them, Robin has to retrieve notes from the bodies of pupils found in the Blockrock/Shockwood/Tower region, which hints her to drop through a floor in Ferrier Shockwood where their room is hidden.
- Praetorian Guard: A duo of elite warriors that serve as Mother's personal security detail. And quite the warriors they are, too: When fought as bosses, they prove to be more challenging than Mother herself.
- Sanity Slippage: By the time you find them as an Optional Boss, they're not exactly in the best of mindsets. They've been killing children who were Mother's pupils in the Tower, somehow believing that murdering the "impure" will bring Mother back or save them from the Starworm's wrath. The whole time, they're rambling, shaking, and screaming out their desires, as if that's somehow going to work. When Robin shows up — the person responsible for Mother's death — that's when the Corners really lose it. Even defeating them in their boss fight doesn't seem to snap them out of their insanity.
- Shock and Awe: One of them can fire a ball of electricity that follows Robin horizontally. Both can make electric shockwaves.
- Throwing Your Sword Always Works: One of the attacks they both share is simply throwing their sword at Robin and then rolling to grab it.
- Would Hurt a Child: If you manage to find them and fight them, you'll find what they have been doing after Mother died: Convinced that it will bring things back to normal, they have been killing the Tower pupils, who have become impure from interacting with the real world (according to them, at least).
General Chrome
- Affably Evil: A top-ranking Transcended general in the oppressive One Concern army, and a religious fanatic. He also happens to be very insightful, and very respectful of the soldiers under his command. His first act is to kick a man to his death off a cliff over a philosophical disagreement, but he's a genuinely nice and devout man who prefers to avoid violence. This affability disappears during his Villainous Breakdown after he realizes that he's not The Chosen One, and that the binary liquid that Elro injected him with is going to kill him.
- A Father to His Men: Absolutely. He's often compared favorably to Royal by the One Concern outside City One, due to a combination of treating his men with utmost respect and care and his own natural charisma. His men, in turn, are incredibly loyal to him and rarely question his judgement. Once it becomes clear Mother and the 'suits' that agent Black referred to don't give a shit about the normal One Concern soldiers outside of hunting for pirates, and consider them expendable, all it takes is Chrome dropping the bombshell that Mother fully intends to leave the planet and let the soldiers face the Starworm's wrath for the soldiers to defect and join Chrome in a rebellion.
- As the Good Book Says...: He's fond of quoting verses from One Concern's holy book, and can be seen reading from it in the title screen and even in his boss battle.
- Big Bad Wannabe: He betrays Mother and stages a takeover of the One Concern, making it seem like it he will become the new Big Bad, only to be killed shortly after.
- Body Horror: Boils alive and explodes thanks to Elro hitting him with a complete dose of anti-Ivory serum. Just before he explodes, his body has turned purple and is visibly boiling.
- The Fundamentalist: Very fond of quoting One Concern's equivalent of a holy book.
- A God Am I: After he seemingly No Sells the syringe that can kill Transcended humans, he thinks it must mean he is The Chosen One and develops this mentality. Except that it's a binary liquid, and he only got injected with the first component. He gets an injection of the second part later, which kills him. Explosively, at that.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: He gets flattened after the boss battle on the train, but the Ivory nearby lets him get right back up. Later, after Black hears Chrome ramble on for too long and attempt to take over the One Concern, she beats the holy hell out of him with some Extreme Mêlée Revenge until Chrome stops moving, his ivory blood leaking onto the floor. But, like the rest of the Transcended, he gets better shortly thereafter.
- He Knows Too Much: After hearing that he's caught on to Mother's true plans, the staff at One Concern East send Nobel to assassinate Chrome before he can get to City One. She only makes the problem worse by not using the proper dosage of anti-Ivory serum.
- Nice Guy: Among the transcended humans, he's nearly up there with Grey as being the nicest person in the group. He'll kill people, yes, but he's not exactly looking out for himself; he's looking out for his soldiers and the citizens of the planet. Once he goes full Dark Messiah, he still maintains the people come first and genuinely believes that Robin and himself must die so they won't be looked upon as leaders and the Starworm must leave so people can forge their own path, free of a commanding influence that may become corrupt like Mother did.
- Narcissist: Believes himself to be The Chosen One, due to reading the One Concern books that describe such a person and Chrome deciding he met the depiction.
- Not So Stoic: He's something of a Cold Ham, repeatedly using religion and faith in the Starworm to justify himself in spite of that. However, the last time he's faced, this is revealed to be a façade during a Villainous Breakdown. Chrome proves himself to be a self-righteous hypocrite after being injected with the second part of Elro's formula. Once Chrome realizes he's going to die (and quite painfully at that), he suddenly becomes a screaming Dirty Coward, begging for the Starworm to save him.
- The Starscream: He starts a rebellion against Mother after discovering her escape plans, which quickly escalates into an usurping of power once the heroes kill Mother and he becomes convinced of his holiness. He only manages to start a massive in-fight before being killed by Elro.
- Technical Pacifist: Chrome is against killing sinners without following proper rituals (such as driving the sinner into the ground on a girder), which puts him at odds with Black several times. He was still willing to kick an Isi man off a cliff when he refused to cooperate. He forgets the pacifism when he gets Drunk with Power, leading him to shoot the previous Father of One Concern through the heart.
- The Unfought: Robin never gets to truly fight him (he never attacks during the helicopter battle, only the pilot does) before Elro syringes him in the Bastion. As such, his Transcended powers are never shown.
- Villainous Breakdown: After he gets injected with the second part of Elro's anti-Ivory formula. And once Chrome realizes what's happening to him, the calm and cool demeanor he's had all game instantly drops. He grabs his subordinate, screaming "WHERE IS HE?! WHERE IS HE?! SAVE ME!" before trying to run for the balcony of his room, where he explodes.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: For some reason, Chrome never puts a shirt on. It's especially jarring when he's meeting agents Black and White, who are both wearing coats and clothing underneath.
Emmet Darland
The leader of the Bastion Suits that administrate the One Concern. He is in charge of several operations in the Concern. Greedy and corrupt, he only cares for profit.
- Badass Normal: To a degree. He is a regular human who nevertheless became One Concern's most important civilian commander, who oversees its most important projects like The Tower and B-17 rocket, while agents and Chrome, powerful as they are, are simply guarding them.
- Big Bad: After Mother dies, he, as the unofficial leader of the Suits, takes over the organization and tries to carry out Mother’s plan to use the rocket to escape to the moon.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: An implied de-facto one; while he officially works for Mother, he and the other Suits have at least as much power as she does, and Darland in particular bosses around the other suits.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Because One Concern is a MegaCorp analogous to Big Oil companies, he behaves like a typical portrayal of a Big Oil CEO- willing to destroy the environment (through the mining and harvesting of Ivory) and, along with his fellow Suits, runs human experimentation, a child brainwashing operation, and a plot to escape the planet with his fellow elites and leave everyone else behind to die.
- Dragon Ascendant: After Mother dies, he takes full control of the Concern.
- Faux Affably Evil: He is a soft-spoken and thoughtful man, who nevertheless oversees the cruel projects of the Concern and supports Mother’s plans because he can profit off it.
- Karma Houdini: Downplayed: while the organization he leads is reduced to nothing but a group of soldiers and Tolo by the end of the game, Darland manages to never be confronted by the heroes. He's last seen during the credits, sitting alone on the peak of Darland Ascent with a bloody forehead.
- Make an Example of Them: When Gerry escapes the Tower and realizes that the outside is perfectly safe, Darland has him kill himself in front of his fellow children to frighten them from leaving.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Unlike Mother, who does have Transcended powers and gets a boss fight, he is a normal human who relies on his subordinates to do the physical work.
- The Man Behind the Man: Mother may be the head of One Concern, but it's implied that she's mostly there as a powerful representative for the public to see. The Suits, Darland among them, manage most of the organization's projects and propaganda, with Mother in a secondary role in comparison.
- Sole Survivor: Hinted to be the only Suit to survive the events of the game. He's the only one seen during the credits, with the rest having either committed suicide as the Starworm approached or vanished with no explanation.
- Soft-Spoken Sadist: He almost always stays calm, never raising his voice, but is a Corrupt Corporate Executive fully on-board with the Concern’s mass murder.
- The Unfought: While Chrome at least plays a minor role in one boss fight, Darland gets no fights; Robin doesn't directly meet him at all. Justified since he's a normal human with no Transcended powers and stays in the background for the entire game.
- Villainous Breakdown: The last time Darland and his fellow suits are encountered, all of them are in this mode. Ferrier's screaming at Darland about how this wasn't supposed to happen, Glass is burying his face in his hands and mumbling to himself, Shard is desperately screaming to the heavens in prayer for the Starworm to save her, and the last of them is slumped over a desk, having blown his own brains out with a gun.
- Would Hurt a Child: He orders for Gerry, a frightened pupil at the Tower who left it too early and saw that the outside world is not the wasteland as the pupils were told, to be shot with a prototype of the Starworm's guilt weapon, so that he would commit suicide on a stage in front of the other pupils, and thus dissuade them from ever leaving it again.
Agent White
Agent Black's muscle, and the only person she regularly tolerates. White is a man of few words and more finger-pointing, and he's loyal to Black and follows her orders well.
- Body Horror: Gets killed by Mina slamming an Isi seed into him. As Agents have Ivory for blood, and Isi seeds grow rapidly when exposed to Ivory, the tree sprouts from his body and rips him apart.
- Eye Beams: His specialty. He can shoot off beams of both heat and cold from his eyes, using the former to cause explosions and the latter to freeze the surface beneath his feet. He almost traps Robin under frozen water before Mina lands on top of White from above, briefly stopping him.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: By all appearances, he plays the role of Bad Cop to Black's Good Cop. Not that Black is all that Good, but White does things like shout "LIAR!" and "HERETIC!" at Robin.
- Large Ham: His dialogue is pretty much 100% shouting.
- Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: He is quite fond of doing this. Even a dash attack in his boss battle has him doing this.
- Goggles Do Something Unusual: They alter the properties of his Eye Beam. Red for heat vision, blue for freeze ray.
- Shoo Out the Clowns: He is by far the most comedic of the One Concern villains, so once he dies, things quickly go to hell as his successors are much less comical than he was.
- Terse Talker: Very much so. He is never shown saying more than 4 words at any point in the game, and the most he talks is during Robin's interrogation at the start of the game, where Agent Black does more than 95% of the talking.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: White gets fairly little characterization before being killed off in the first third of the game.
Tolo
Chrome's second-in-command, and nobody understands why Chrome chose him of all people. He's very enthusiastic about his job, even if he is one of the least competent members of One Concern.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Even the basic Concern grunts are stronger than Tolo, though he's decent at giving commands to troops.
- The Millstone: He causes more problems than he solves. For one, the only boss battle where Tolo is involved has him launching shock grenades at Robin, which at the only thing that can damage the helicopter that's attacking her.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Great idea, go ahead and toss grenades at the person who can whack them back. It's not like she'll bonk them into your leader's personal helicopter or anything...
- Number Two: He's Chrome's personal assistant, making him one of the few people whom the Concern soldiers will willingly take orders from. Tolo's reliance on Chrome's leadership ends up being the basis for Chrome's argument for a
Chaotic Neutral world later on during the civil war at City One; Tolo and others like him would be lost without guiding figures, and it's largely because guiding figures exist in the first place that this is the case. - Smug Snake: Largely this. He's a shriveling coward when push comes to shove and doesn't even come close to Robin in a fight, but he still maintains a sense of smug superiority whenever Chrome is around because everyone listens to Chrome and being Chrome's assistant gives him a lot of power.
- Unwanted Assistance: He tries to help the Concern helicopter fight Robin during the Traintop Battle by throwing grenades at her; however, Robin can use her wrench to hit the grenades up into the helicopter, causing massive damage. This is actually the only way to damage the helicopter during the first phase of the fight, so without his "help", the fight would be impossible to win. Eventually, the helicopter pilot gets wise and scoops him up to take him away from the battlefield before returning for round two.
- You Are in Command Now: The credits reveal that Tolo has started leading Chrome's troops after his death, making him the leader of the remains of One Concern (which is a few dozen people at most thanks to the massacres at One Concern West and City One).
The Silver Watchman
One Concern's resident silent samurai. He's the main guard of the Tower, and clashes with Robin several times as she tries to explore it.
- Defeat Means Friendship: One way to interpret him bowing before Robin after she frees him from the Possessed Thunk's control. Had Royal not killed him, he probably would've become an ally to her.
- Determinator: He wants Robin dead by his sword and nothing that isn't named Royal is going to stop him.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: Oddly enough, he only reveals his considerable non-Teleport Spam dependent swordsmanship when under Mind Manipulation.
- Katanas Are Just Better: His weapon. Unfortunately for him, wrenches are better still.
- Not So Stoic: He gets upset when Robin defeats him three times in a row and smashes his fists in frustration after the elevator battle.
- Master Swordsman: His assortment of techniques include Sword Beam, Sword Lines, Razor Wind, and Spin Attack.
- Puppeteer Parasite: Becomes a victim of this, courtesy of the blue eyes. In this state, he abandons teleportation in favor of wildly swinging his sword, and he gets dragged around the arena, much like a puppet on a string.
- Recurring Boss: Fought a total of four times: the first two fights are nearly identical, the third is him ambushing Robin inside a cramped elevator, and the fourth has him under the control of the Possessed Thunk.
- Samurai: His attire, personality, and fighting style. Funnily, Robin erroneously identifies him as a ninja.
- Teleport Spam: His superpower.
- Villainous Rescue: Accidentally saves Robin from being shot dead by Agent Black by charging into the room and trying to kill Robin himself, tackling her through the wall.
- Weaksauce Weakness: His teleportation ability doesn't work underwater for some reason, and his implants aren't waterproof. He drowns to death after Royal drops a boulder on him, trapping him in a small pool of water with no room to breathe and no escape.
The Reborns
- Ambiguously Gay: Mendeleev's pre-boss dialogue with Mina can easily be interpreted as flirting and one of her attacks has her hold Mina in a romantically suggestive pose before immolating her.
- Body Horror: Implied. Every Agent loses some part of their body when Transcending (Black her arms, White his eyes, Chrome his legs, etc.), which are given mechanical replacements. Mendeleev's appearance seems to imply she lost her skin.
- Combat Pragmatist: During her boss fight, Nobel never fights directly. Not only does she flood the room with poison gas to earn an advantage (since she wears a gas mask), when Robin confronts her she takes ChemiCo Contra allies and uses them as human shields (Robin's arsenal is non-lethal, but still).
- Meanwhile, averted with Lawrence. He instead overpowers his enemies in head-on fights.
- Convenient Weakness Placement: Mina's shotgun barely deals any damage at all to Mendeleev, but deals significant knockback whenever she's not fired up. There just so happens to be electrical hazards in the arena...
- Disturbed Doves: Appear during Lawrence's fight.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Mendeleev first shows up hanging on a girder in One Concern West, while Nobel appears as the assassin sent to kill Chrome. Both Nobel and Lawrence are also present during Darland's speech in One Concern West, though during the speech agent Black gives Nobel an assignment in the background; presumably, her orders to assassinate General Chrome.
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: Nobel is the Thief, with the power of invisibility, quick enough to steal a vital key off an NPC and tasked with assassination. Lawrence is the Fighter, who doesn't seem to use any transcended powers; he fights with throwing knives, a gun, and his fists. Mendeleev is the Mage, primarily relying on her fire power during her fight.
- Healing Factor: They have the healing abilities of other Concern super-soldiers; however, they are much less potent since it hasn't been long since they received them. Sure enough, Lawrence becomes one of the only two Transcended to be killed without an anti-Ivory weapon by being stabbed through the back with Elro's sword.
- In the Back: Lawrence is killed by Elro ramming his sword through Lawrence's spine.
- Large Ham: Deconstructed with Lawrence. The only reason Elro stands a chance against Lawrence is because the guy simply will not shut up about war, humanity, and human nature. He doesn't even move from his spot as Elro keeps stabbing him.
- Playing with Fire: Mendeleev's specialty. She lights herself on fire, does fiery tackles, and shoots fireballs with her feet.
- Quirky Miniboss Squad: For One Concern East.
- Shock and Awe: Nobel's attacks focus on electricity.
- Superpowerful Genetics: During the credits, Nobel is stitting with Mendeleev while Ash secretly watches the two of them, implying one of them is his daughter whom he spoke of earlier. Since Nobel and Ash both have invisibility powers, it's most likely her.
- Theme Naming: Though they are the result of science rather than scientists themselves, they appear to be named after famous scientists Alfred Nobel, Earnest Lawrence, and Dmitri Mendeleev.
- Time-Limit Boss: Nobel. Her attacks don't directly damage Robin's health, but the boss room is full of toxic chemical-laden air that slowly drains Robin's health meter, to the point that damage is unavoidable.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Nobel accidentally speeds the collapse of One Concern by means of a failed assassination on Chrome, which fully convinces him that he has been blessed by Him, leading to him attempting to take the reigns after Mother's death and starting a massacre in City One.
- The Voiceless: Nobel doesn't speak a single line during the whole game.
- Warrior Poet: Lawrence has an almost religious fascination with war and spends his boss battle talking about the purpose of war in-between tossing daggers at Elro.
The Starworm (HEAVY SPOILERS)
Birdman/Lucas Birbasaurus Rex
- Alien Blood: The birdman has green blood, as seen when the Starworm's claw crushes him.
- Aliens Are Bastards: While it is unclear if he is deliberately malicious or not, he is still trying to destroy the planet to get at its Ivory and refuel his ship.
- Ambiguously Evil: It's hard to tell if Lucas is actually evil or not, but whatever his moral affiliation, he's certainly unhappy with the state of affairs and wants to take out his anger on Robin.
- Big Bad: Of the final act of the game (from the moon onward), as he threatens to destroy the world so he can get its Ivory.
- Bird People: He is a giant blue bird and mechanic who pilots the Starworm as his ship.
- The Corruption: From what can be glimpsed of its insides, it contains the "blue eye" substance that shows up in the latter half of the game that possessed various other people and machines. It is unlikely that the Starworm is the exact source of the substance, though, as it can be seen near the core of the planet and on the Omega Controller, suggesting that the substance is part of either the planet or the depot's inner workings.
- Demiurge Archetype: It is worshipped by the oppressive One Concern, a cross between a MegaCorp and The Theocracy, as their god, with them killing anyone they consider heretics. In the endgame, it turns out that the Starworm is not a god at all, but a humanoid bird alien named Lucas Birbasaurus Rex piloting a freaky spaceship who is mining the planet of its Ivory to fuel the ship.
- Doing In the Wizard: The supposed Eldritch Abomination that the One Concern worships as a god? The one who will supposedly save everyone with His immense power? Just a trucker in a spaceship.
- Eldritch Abomination: Has the appearance of one and is capable of altering the mental states of others. Though it's only this in appearance; in reality it's just a bipedal avian's starship.
- Eldritch Starship: Who'd thought this massive thing is actually just a space truck with rather familiar layout inside?
- Evil Counterpart: To Robin herself, more specifically, the pilot of the worm. He's a literal bird while Robin is named after one, he is armed with a giant wrench which he can electrify, he utilizes plenty of Ground Pound moves, and he has no text dialogue.
- Final Boss: He is the last boss of the game, and his true form changes the entire context of the story when he shows himself.
- Final-Exam Boss: The first phase requires you to use various non-combat abilities with your wrench.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Not the worm itself, as it is featured heavily in the plot, but it turns out it's just a vehicle for an alien birdman trucker. This is never indicated at any point. It even has one of those fuzzy dice ornaments.
- Greater-Scope Villain: He's the entity worshiped by the One Concern and its subjects, and is held in high regard by everyone except the Isi, but has no direct influence on One Concern, and its pilot doesn't even know what the One Concern is. He only directly becomes a threat after being awakened and encountering Robin.
- Handy Remote Control: The Starworm's pilot carries one that he uses to summon native creatures and reactivate the heavily damaged Starworm. It ends up killing him when he pushes the wrong button, and gets his head crushed in.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The pilot gets splattered when the Starworm malfunctions and crushes him instead of Robin.
- Humans Through Alien Eyes: According to the game's worldbuilding, Robin's planet was originally just a fuel depot, and was converted into a livable mechanical planet by space-faring humans who had no idea the birdmen existed. As a result, the birdman is incredibly confused as to why the planet has almost completely run out of fuel (said fuel being Ivory, which humans have been overusing for hundreds of years partially to honor the Starworm), or why there are little people bothering him about it and breaking his stuff.
- Humongous Mecha: The Starworm is a gigantic machine with a head, arms, and a serpentine body.
- It's Personal: The Starworm gets absolutely pissed when Royal damages him. Later, the Starworm's pilot squawks in fury when Robin breaks his ship and he learns of the Ivory shortage, before deciding to beat her down.
- Lack of Empathy: He doesn't care that the whole planet will be destroyed if he gets his Ivory, nor that the entire population of Robin's planet reveres him as a god and that there was a massive civil war in his name. All he wants to do is fuel up his ship and leave.
- Leitmotif: Cosmic Event and Castle Doctrine.
- The Man Behind the Curtain: That Eldritch Abomination about to bring the end of the world? Just a spaceship for an avian alien trucker. And you fight the pilot as the final boss.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's unclear as to whether the Starworm is a lifeform converted into a spaceship or just a very convincingly disguised transport. Its Mind Rape abilities seem to imply the former.
- Mind Rape: Inflicts this on Royal and Robin to make killing them easier. Robin gets better, Royal... well, it's hard to tell, but Royal most certainly does not get better, and is most likely dead.
- Mirror Boss: Not so much the Starworm, but Lucas is definitely this. He has many of the same abilities as Robin, including a stomp attack, skillful use of his wrench, and spinning it to electrically charge it, which allows him to create explosive electrical orbs. He's essentially Robin with infinitely more experience.
- No Name Given: The birdman gets a picture in the credits, but no name alongside it. According to Word of God, his canon name is Lucas Birbasaurus Rex.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Lucas literally just wants to refuel his ship, and is understandably pissed when you break his machine. It's entirely possible he would have communicated as such, if he could understand what Royal was saying.
- The Reveal: After you defeat the Starworm, its face opens up to reveal a bird-like alien being who just wants to refuel his ship with Ivory in order to leave the planet. It turns the entire story on its head, as it turns the fight from battling a religiously-revered cosmic horror into someone who just wants to refuel his spaceship and leave the planet, and is frustrated at the lack of fuel in the planet.
- Sequential Boss: The fight has three phases. First, he traps Robin inside a nightmare, and she must fight the four manifestations of her failures using her abilities. Then the Starworm ship fights her directly. Afterwards, the Birdman/Lucas pops out and fights Robin personally.
- Shout-Out: The birdman's moveset in the final battle is practically identical to that of Kudgel, the club-swinging third boss of Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest.
- Stop Worshipping Me: The birdman has no idea that his spaceship is revered by a planet of humans. And even if he did, he would be more concerned with refueling his ship than with giving them divine retribution.
- The Unintelligible: Not the Starworm (which is The Voiceless), but its pilot doesn't quite have the vocal chords for speaking Robin's language. His gesturing gets the point across that he's incredibly pissed about the whole Ivory shortage affair.
- This Cannot Be!: He hits Robin with the blaster that causes a Mind Rape in the victim, which sends Robin into a realm of her nightmares. However, Robin manages to break out and keep fighting, causing the Starworm to recoil in shock.
- Visual Pun:
- The Starworm's head opens up to reveal that a birdman is piloting it from the inside, making it a case of the early worm catching the bird. Doubly so when the birdman is eventually killed by being squished by the Starworm.
- The birdman uses a wrench just like Robin. This means that the final battle of the game is between a bird mechanic and a mechanic named after a bird.
- Lucas is a blue bird. Blue Jays are mimics. Lucas is mistaken as a god while piloting the Starworm.
- Walking Spoiler: Although the Starworm is referenced plenty by the cast, he is built up for most of the game as an Eldritch Abomination with godlike powers and is revered by the One Concern as a deity. Him actually being an alien birdman piloting a ship is a major twist.
- Wrench Whack: The pilot carries a giant wrench with him that he uses liberally.
Other
Polro
The father of Robin and Elro, and a mechanic himself. Polro died prior to the events of the game, but he appears in Robin's thoughts several times to address her.
- Posthumous Character: He died under unclear circumstances before the game began, and only makes appearances in dream sequences.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His death ends up triggering most of the game's conflict in one way or another.
Settlement 17 Residents
Henetta & Ella
Elro's wife and daughter.- We Hardly Knew Ye: Destroyed along with their home in a Penance session.
Myron, Pola, and Vonn
A group of seafarers. Myron is the captain and a cartographer, illegally making maps of the world; Pola and Vonn are his two dour assistants.
- Bad Boss: Myron keeps a weapon that shoots the same Mind Rape beams the Starworm does, and his notes imply that he uses it on Pola and Vonn to keep them in line. So often, in fact, that they've started to build up a resistance to it.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: When you first meet him, Myron seems to be chatting about existential nonsense; he doesn't get any better when Robin and Mina confront him later, and the notes in his boat don't exactly paint him as the picture of sanity. By the time you meet him again at Darland Ascent with Royal, a lot of the things he's alluded to in his notes now make sense and in many cases have been proven true, and he proceeds to give Royal valuable advice... that Royal, in his pride, refuses to take.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Myron is fond of verbose turns of phrase, much to the annoyance of anyone talking to him.
Ash
A resident of Ferrier Shockwood, Ash prefers to be secluded and ignores the world at large. Robin and Mina come to him in order to gain advice about infiltrating One Concern's headquarters.
- Defector from Decadence: Seems to have cut ties from One Concern despite being an Agent and still believing in the faith.
- Disappeared Dad: His dialogue implies that he's estranged from his daughter over a disagreement in her decision to go through with Transcendence. During the end credits, he briefly appears behind Mendeleev and Nobel and sighs before disappearing, implying one of them is his daughter (most likely Nobel, due to their shared invisibility power).
- Invisibility: Ash's main ability. Since he's invisible, the player has to rely on his text boxes and foliage particle effects to find him in his boss battle.
- Stealth-Based Mission: How his boss battle plays out.
- Strength Equals Worthiness: In order to test if Robin and Mina should get his help, he challenges them to a deadly game of hide-and-seek.
Agent Grey
The third agent of One Concern, who unfortunately died not too long before the game starts. They stand out for being a lot more sensible than most of their co-workers.
- Ambiguous Gender: Grey is only ever referred to with they/them pronouns, making it unclear as to what Gray's gender was or if they were simply nonbinary.
- Ambiguously Evil: Their affability and condolence to Elro after Polro had been executed might sound fake and insincere... But they still tried to be reasonable when Elro reacted with hostility, and preferred to just lock him for a time rather than executing him there and then even after Elro stabbed them in the back.
- Anime Hair: They have what can only be described as a big, fluffy mohawk.
- Body Horror: We get to see first-hand the effects of Elro's anti-Ivory serum as Grey boils alive and explodes into splatters and a cloud of Detritus.
- Love Redeems: They've been courting Black for 187 years, and Black has finally been starting to accept their advances. Had they not been killed, Black might've been much more stable than she is.
- Nice Guy: Offered their condolences to Elro for Polro's death, and when Elro reacted in hostility, simply offered him some time off. Then Elro stabbed them in the back, and they still chose to throw Elro in the cell instead of just executing him there and then. Pity the stab was done using the syringe of anti-Ivory serum, subjecting them to Cruel and Unusual Death.
- Posthumous Character: They are already dead when the story begins. The important part is how they died: it was Elro's doing.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: While already dead at the start of the story, they still appear in Teegan's flashback cutscene... a flashback to the day Elro murdered them.
Letícia and Fitzroy (SPOILERS)
Letícia is a hooded nomadic woman who tells stories to Robin whenever they cross paths. Her stories speak of the long-lost hero Fitzroy and his lover, though there may be more to the tale than it seems.
- All Myths Are True: Fitzroy is a real person, and his long-lost lover is Letícia.
- Blessed with Suck: Fitzroy is a massive showcase of why Transcendence is most certainly not the amazing process One Concern makes it out to be. Despite having powers on par with Mother (even down to the rising Tri symbols Mother and Royal have while using their powers), his mind has been gone for a long time. It's likely his muscles and motor functions aren't doing so well either, seeing as all he can do for the most part is crawl after Robin in between attacks, and he outright collapses after some attacks (assuming that's not just from use of his powers in general).
- Butter Face: Letí's face became so hideously deformed after her Transcendence that not even The Fog of Ages would let Fitzroy forget what it looked like, no matter how much he wanted to.
- The Fog of Ages: While the Ivory certainly played a part in destroying Fitzroy's mind, Letícia also points out the human mind was never meant to hold literal centuries' worth of memories and information. Being alive for so long meant Fitzroy's mind simply stopped being able to remember information, which combined with the Ivory degradation to leave him in the state he is now. Ironically, the one thing he hoped his Fog of Ages would delete from his memory — Letícia's deformed appearance — never faded.
- Optional Boss: Fitzroy is one of two secret bosses in the game. He's considered the second one and is thus the game's ultimate bonus boss, though he can be fought a lot earlier than Mother's Corners if you know how to find him (the earliest opportunity to fight Fitzroy is after the first visit to Darland Ascent, while Mother's Corners don't appear until after the Impact Zone opens up at the very end of the game).
- Our Zombies Are Different: Letícia looks like a rotting corpse, but retains human intelligence (for now). Fitzroy is the opposite: he looks normal, but is as mindless a zombie, and he can only shamble around.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: As the oldest living Transcended human, Fitzroy has powers rivaling or even surpassing Mother's, at the cost of his mind being lost to time. Letícia's post-fight dialogue implies she's not exempt either, just that her mind is merely taking longer to degrade.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Letícia and Fitzroy are examples of the biggest consequence of immortality through Transcendence: the Ivory overwhelmed them, destroying Fitzroy's mind and Letícia's body.
