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The Jazztronauts
The Band as a Whole
An all-cat Jazz Band that scours Source Engine maps for money and food. Each of the four members of the band has their own Hidden Depths, and the player's interactions with them help mediate subsurface tensions between them.
- Funny Animal: All of the Jazztronauts are cat people, but this isn't too remarked upon or explained.
- Reality Warper
- Really 700 Years Old: The cats offhandedly mention having lived for hundreds of years. This affects how they think a lot.
The Bartender
"Welcome back. What can I get you?"
Owner of the Bar Samsara and "leader" of the group. Enigmatically, copies of her are reference posed throughout the void. Her quests for the player are related to the upkeep of the bar and home base.- Odd Name Out: Her name isn't related to musical talent whatsoever.
- Physical God: A revelation at the end of their arc related to her Dark and Troubled Past.
- Straight Man: The Bartender has the most no-nonsense personality of all the Jazztronauts; contrasting with the Singer's mute enthusiasm, the Pianist's barely-restrained violent urges, and the Cellist's complete disregard for sobriety.
- Time Abyss: Even more long-lived compared to the others.
The Singer
"HI!!! WELCOME TO THE MEWSEUM!!"
A Wide-Eyed Idealist who preserves copies of things stolen for the bar in their pet project "Mewseum", a side area that provides Source Engine Edutainment. Ironically to their name, they are mute and talk with a keyboard based device.- Ambiguous Gender: Is officially Nonbinary.
- Companion Cube: Emily, a plush Brontosaurus that a previous guest gave them.
- Collector of the Strange: They act as the curator for the Mewseum, a massive gallery of Source Engine exhibits. Definitely strange in comparison to a typical museum.
- Cute Mute: The Singer has a very enthusiastic personality that's expressed solely through body language and texting.
- Morality Pet: The Singer acts as this to both the Pianist and Cellist, frequently de-escalating any conflict the latter two bring up.
- Suddenly Voiced: Actually sings in both their final scene and the Golden Ending.
- What Measure Is a Mook?: The Singer cares a great deal for any NPCs that find their way into the Mewseum, treating them with as much kindness and respect as possible. The Pianist and the Cellist... do not share their mindset, to put it lightly.
The Pianist
"What? Did you think I was actually broke? I'm morally bankrupt, not destitute."
A cynical Deadpan Snarker with traces of Blood Knight, the Pianist is initially distrustful of guests and generally disdainful for antics from the other members of the Band - but is also an excellent planner.As it turns out, her calculation skills are a Blessing With Suck - Her band profession requires improvisation, and overplanning has bled into her everyday things, leaving her unable to do anything without forethought.
- The Big Guy: The Pianist is the largest member of the band and is also the most prone to throwing hands.
- "Eureka!" Moment: In her final scene. While pouring her heart out to the player, she pounds her piano in frustration, accidentally producing a chord. This shocks the Pianist, and gets her to finally let loose and improv for the first time in recent memory.
- Fashionable Asymmetry: The Pianist's right sleeve is always rolled up much higher than her left.
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Loves violence and bloodshed. Since the targets of her violence are usually Garry's Mod NPCs or players, the consequences of her murderous tendencies are downplayed. She's forced to rethink her behavior when it begins to hurt The Singer.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's abrasive, prone to anger, and picks a lot of fights, but she legitimately cares about her friends.
- Technician Versus Performer: The Pianist is prone to overthinking, but this hampers her ability to improvise, leading to a huge case of creative block.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: With the Cellist.
The Cellist
"oh thank fuck i was beginning to perceive time as a linear series of cause and effect that shits terrifying"
The Cellist would rather have his paws on a lit bong and a full pint glass than on a bow and cello, and has been high so long that sobriety is a detriment to him and his body is "biochemical pachinko." Most of his quests involve fetching him substances he needs for drug experiments.Things start to take a dive for him in his fourth scene, and in his final scene an ironically sobering truth is learned about them: The Cellist delved into substance abuse to try and escape his own self-loathing, causing him to unintentionally achieve Higher Understanding Through Drugs - and ever since he crashed, he's been chasing that high with increasingly insane mixtures ever since, leading him into self-destruction.
- all lowercase letters: Speaks like this, with little punctuation as well; the main exception is when the Pianist gets on his nerves, which inverts it into Caps Lock. This is put on hold in his final scene.
- Cerebus Retcon: His behavior in almost every part of the game, once you complete his arc.
- Erudite Stoner: The Cellist knows quite a lot more about art history than you'd expect from him. One scene has him going over the history of the Sistine Chapel, specifically about the beef Michaelangelo had with papal officials during its commissioning.
- Expy: His manner of speaking and rather creative implementation of the English language is very similar to Dave Strider, including an excess of self-loathing hidden underneath a "cool" exterior.
- Fantastic Drug: Played with: most of the "drugs" are actually existing things like explosive fluids, cleaning chemicals, etc. What's "fantastic" is that the Cellist uses them as drugs in the first place: he should not survive consuming these substances, much less getting high off of them.
- Ambrosia was also one of the things he slammed in the past, and apparently was so bad about it that the Bartender had to ban it from the Samsara. The Cellist is still sore about this.
- Functional Addict: For a given definition of "functional", yet despite his near-perpetual trip, the Cellist manages to remain competent. He's only barely keeping it all together, though.
- Gargle Blaster: The 'Good Shit.' Players aren't as susceptible to it as cats.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Feels this after he unleashes a cruel verbal tirade on the Singer.
- Rummage Sale Reject: His choice of outfit makes him look like a walking collection of wrapping paper. The Pianist chews the Cellist out when he starts going on about cool outfits, as she thinks he's the least-qualified person on the subject.
- The Stoner: For most of the game. It backfires in his last two scenes.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: With the Pianist.
Spoiler Characters
SPOILER CHARACTERS
The Bortles
A band at the Center of the Universe that may or may not exist, visited during your Shard Juice powered trip. You can ask them either one of two philosophical questions, or if they know any good recipes.
- GIS Syndrome: They're static, 2-d images of musicians, and stick out like a sore thumb even more than the Jazztronauts themselves in the Source engine.
- Stylistic Suck: All of the band members are 2-dimensional cutouts of Stock Images.
NG+ SPOILER CHARACTER
"???" / The Eclipse / Ash
A mysterious and powerful Living Shadow cat who has seen, done, and made "everything". Their appearance in New Game Plus is linked to the appearance of a grave in the Samsara, along with the Black Shards.
- All There in the Script: The code for the Golden Ending refers to them as Ash.
- Artifact of Doom: Black Shards, cubic shards that make unholy noises and ANNIHILATE MAPS. You must activate ten for the Bad Ending and Golden Ending, and the sixth onward is a Point of No Return that locks out the normal ending.
- Eldritch Abomination: Is essentially a walking Black Shard, and as Ash, a walking Shard. They imply that Shards are parts of their body scattered across reality.
- I Never Told You My Name: Name-drops the player in their first line.
- Knight of Cerebus: No humor is ever present in a direct interaction with them apart from one optional sarcastic comment from the player. They also destroy the Samsara and Voidway 66 and very nearly succeed in killing off the band and erasing everything.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Wants everything to "Stop forever", finding the silence satisfying.
- Reality Warper: Like the Band.
- Straw Nihilist: Believes nothing of the "everything" they have experienced has mattered.
- Victory Is Boring: Is still unhappy and empty after annihilating Home Base with a Black Shard.
- Villainous Breakdown: Flips the fuck out if you sic the Trolley on them, almost killing everyone.
