This is a list of characters from the Left Beyond web collaboration.
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Left Beyond Quest: The Good? (Followers of God)
Jesus Christ/God/YHWH/TurboJesus/TJ
- Absurdly Bright Light: He emits a very bright shadowless light upon His arrival from heaven.
- Because I Said So: Takes this view of people's objections to Him, particularly when judging them, and has the narrative causality to make it true.
- Big Good: At least according to His believers. The Other Light think that He is evil, and the Omega think that He is a threat.
- Dystopia Justifies the Means: Jesus' body count is in the billions, not counting the fact that those He kills go to Hell. And the purpose of all this? Nothing more than to set up an eternal glorification of his own self.
- God in Human Form: He has access to all of Yahweh's powers, merely by using His voice. In Tripocalypse, a sonic weapon is used to destructively interfere with it in order to mute Him; in Left Beyond this plan fails, ushering His millennial reign.
- Gods Need Prayer Badly: Narrative causality research eventually comes to the conclusion that God is a sort of "karmavore" entity, and that Heaven and Hell are intended as infinite positive and negative feedback loops respectively, consuming most of the souls of those in them and leaving only enough behind to generate more for Him to eat.
- Good Is Not Nice: He didn't quite hesitate to condemn those to hell for not choosing Him.
- Good Is Not Soft: He isn't called the Lion of Judah and the Lamb of God for nothing!
- The Good King: After committing several war crimes during the Tribulation, He seems to rule by proxy, never leaving the Temple. At least until the Final Battle...
- Grandpa God: Depicted as this, based on the Book of Revelation. And according to Naomi Tiberias in the Dramatic Audio version of Glorious Appearing, He is handsome.
- Hot God: Naomi Tiberias sees Him as handsome.
- I Have Many Names: Jesus even recites them upon His arrival from heaven.
- Immune to Bullets: Even a missile does nothing to Him in His current state. In Tripocalypse, a sonic weapon and a vacuum chamber are sufficient to contain Him. In Left Beyond, no weapon forged of man or devil can harm Him, so Kat punches Him with a vat-grown giant mantis shrimp claw, and cuts Him in two using the portal to Hell that He himself created. Jesus still manages to win the fight.
- Incorruptible Pure Pureness
- Kneel Before God: Does this to Nicolae, Leon, and Satan. Tries to do this to Kat, and lives to regret it.
- Kung-Fu Jesus: Gets into a physical fight with Kat after destroying pretty almost every trace of humanity in the Solar System.
- Large Ham Title: Jesus has some interesting titles.
- Light Is Not Good: If you're on the Antichrist's side and you're facing Jesus at His Glorious Appearing, expect to kiss your life goodbye!
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": In Left Beyond, the reaction He gets from those who took the mark of loyalty and worshiped the Antichrist's image during the 'sheep and goats' judgment. In Tripocalypse, this is averted.
- Omniglot: He can supernaturally speak to people in their own languages.
- One Hit Poly Kill: Jesus' WMD is The Word Of God.
- Only I Can Kill Him: Jesus is the only one who can defeat Nicolae, Leon, and Satan.
- Perception Filter: Due to how narrative causality works, God's immense power is constrained by his inability to act on or understand things that happen outside the realm of His own prophecies. Which is how He ends up stuck judging infinitely replicating copies of Omega's soul for all eternity, incapible of just stopping.
- Person of Mass Destruction: His Word alone can kill many people en masse.
- Power Glows: He is literally "the Light of the world".
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: "I AM WHO I AM" (cue massive pwnage of the Antichrist's forces). He later does this to The Other Light in Left Beyond... which annihilates most of humanity's presence in the Solar System.
- Sealed Good in a Can: In Tripocalypse, Ezekiel's Temple is called Ground Minus One, and there Jesus dwells in an airless containment system that looks like the Holy of Holies. A lack of air prevents Him from using the Word of God as a weapon, thus delaying the Sheep and Goats Judgement indefinitely and preventing the death of most of humanity. Some theorize that He may be okay with this.
- Speak of the Devil: Called TurboJesus or TJ by unbelievers, out of a fairly justified fear that he'll hear them and cause misfortune to befall them.
- Winds of Destiny, Change!: Due to narrative causality, mechanically YHWH can only succeed or critically succed on any rolled action. Creepily, the actual dice rolls for Omega in Left Beyond seemed deeply cursed and unlucky whenever acting against YHWH, culminating in Jesus' roll to determine the power of the Word rolling the maximum powered result of a 1 out of 1,000. The author was originally intending to just incinerate the Last Army and their field. This result instead causes the sun go go nova and incinerate the entire planet.
- Words Can Break My Bones: Jesus' Words can split you right open and turn you into a gory mess, if you happen to be opposing Him during the Battle of Armageddon. His Words even caused the Sun to go nova at the end of the Millennium.
- You Are In Charge Now: Turns over the kingdom to God the Father at the end of the Millennium... possibly because he has sliced himself in two after an accident with a dimensional portal.
Chloe Steele
The daughter of Rayford Steele, she gets left behind and becomes a founding member of the Tribulation Force and the wife of Buck Williams. Actually runs the Tribulation Force (offscreen) while the boys are off trying to play hero. She comes back as a Glorified in the Millennium.- Characterization Marches On: In the beginning of the series, we're told that she studies Computer Science at Stanford. In the very next book, she needs Buck to show her how to set up an email address.
- Chickification: Related to the above. Chloe returns as a "Glorified" in the last book of the series, but the process seems to have dulled her drive, if not her skills, considerably.
- Happily Married: To Buck Williams.
- Mama Bear: To her son Kenny. As a Glorified, she has to watch him age to decrepitude while she herself stays in her prime.
Cameron "Buck" Williams
A newsmagazine reporter who witnessed the Rapture on the same flight Rayford was the pilot of. Becomes one of the founding members of the Tribulation Force. Bored of running the Children of the Tribulation ministry, he puts his reporter's hat back on during the last century of the Millennium.- Dirty Coward: He finds out about the conspiracy well before it takes power, but instead of exposing it he goes straight to Carpathia to beg for protection. He goes on with this even when Carpathia openly admits he's the one behind it.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": An inversion: in the Millennial Kingdom, he goes by his actual name Cameron, as in the Millennium there is nothing for him to "buck".
- Happily Married: To Chloe Williams.
- Informed Ability: His writing skills, at least early on. Later, we do get to see some of his actual writing in universe, and it is somewhat mediocre.
- Intrepid Reporter: Something of an Informed Attribute - he rarely asks useful questions, he writes in Purple Prose, and he buries stories out of self-preservation.
- Villainous BSoD: After witnessing Omega's forces not just weather the Ten Plagues of Egypt, but defeat the Angel of Death right in front of him, his Glorified brain fails to comprehend successful defiance of God. He starts by just continuing on with his plan of calling "survivors" to repentance after being "defeated", later shifts to rewatching the recording of the Angel of Death's defeat over and over again in complete silence, and eventually just blocks the whole event out of his mind.
Tsion Ben-Judah
A rabbi who during the Tribulation found the proof that Jesus Christ was the prophesied Messiah of the Jews. Becomes a member of the Tribulation Force. Returns in the Millennium as a Glorified and becomes the mentor of the expanded Millennium Force.- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Earned the ire of his fellow Israelis by declaring that Jesus is the Messiah, wanted in the murders of his wife and stepchildren, and accused of "fleecing his flock" millions of Nicks.
- Badass Israeli: In his original life before being martyred, and technically still due to being an inhabitant of Greater Jeruselem.
- Badass Preacher: In Armageddon, when he turns over leadership of Petra to Chaim Rosenzweig so he can preach Jesus Christ to the Jews remaining in Jerusalem while helping them to defend their city against the Global Community Unity Army on the day of Jesus' second coming. In Left Beyond, he walks across the desert a few times in order to gain converts, find evidence of moral turpitude, and root out enemies. Once captured by the Omega, he remains defiant despite being scientifically tortured for months.
- Fate Worse than Death: Is captured and entombed by Omega with only his face exposed so he can watch Omega's forces kill an angel right in front of him, has his soft tissues blown up by the pressure wave used to kill that angel, is denied his salvation by being castrated, and suffers months of torture by way of surgery without anesthetic before the world ends and he's left trapped in the fork-bombed Great White Throne Judgement indefinitely.
- Hero Killer: Causes one of the only out-and-out Christian victories against Omega, by calling YHWH's wrath to incinerate Quinn after she pepper sprayed him.
- The Mentor: After Bruce Barnes is killed during the Second Seal Judgment, he takes on the mentor mantle. Sticks with it for the Millennium Force, guiding their efforts against The Other Light.
- Screw Your Ultimatum!: Does this to Carpathia in Armageddon and to the Omega in Left Beyond.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: In the Millennial Kingdom, the Egyptian people peacefully reinstate democracy. Tsion is sent there by The Theocracy to talk them into reconsidering, and does so by... shouting over everybody, not letting them get a word in edgewise, and ordering that they demolish the parliament building and replace it with a temple. He does something similar in Left Beyond 900 years later, to considerably less success.
Chaim Rosenzweig
Played by
Colin Fox (Left Behind: The Movie)
The scientist who came up with the Miracle Gro that got bartered for a seven-year peace treaty. Becomes a member of the Tribulation Force. In the Millennium, he is positively ancient, but keeps working in the field thanks to regular exercise and good orthotics.
- Badass Israeli: Despite having the body of a centenarian, he keeps working in the field.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: Chaim Rosenzweig is torn between his friendship with Tsion Ben-Judah and his loyalties to Nicolae Carpathia. It is only after assassinating Carpathia and fleeing Israel that Chaim puts his faith in God.
- Heroic BSoD: Has one when he sees who got killed in his household following the death of Carpathia.
- The Mentor: Previously to Tsion Ben-Judah before the Tribulation.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: He is well versted in botany, history, and civil engineering.
- Playing Sick: Chaim has little need to play sick, but uses his physical frailty as an advantage in order to escape an ambush.
Abdullah Smith
Mac's co-pilot when he was working for Carpathia, who later faked his own death to escape into the underground with the Tribulation Force.- Badass Bookworm: He is well learned, but isn't afraid of getting on a stunt plane despite his advanced age.
- Broken Bird: In Left Beyond, a botched assassination attempt leaves him with sufficient brain damage that he can no longer fly a plane. His then-rival Jeb is heartbroken, and takes to writing him in his retirement home.
- Deadpan Snarker: To Jeb.
- Faking the Dead: Does this to escape the Omega's assassins.
- The Ace: One of the few people who still bother with stunt flying.
- The Quiet One: Regarded as such by his employment records for the GC.
Gustaf Zuckermandel, Jr.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: He is mostly referred to as Z or Zeke.
- The Smart Guy: Mostly working in creating fake IDs, uniforms, and disguises.
- Archnemesis Dad: To Valentina, although he is her direct ancestor rather than her dad. He is very much convinced that space exploration is pointless... Valentina is a Cosmist and the second woman in space during the Millennium.
Bahira Ababneh
The daughter of Abdullah Smith. She was raptured along with her brother and Abdullah's wife. She comes back as a Glorified, and uncharacteristically maintains a good sense of adventure (and humor). In Left Beyond she has her own blog and actively works in the field as a Millennium Force agent.- Brother–Sister Team: With Zaki.
- Chaste Heroine: The nature of her Glorified body and mind renders her permanently unable to seek a romance with anyone.
- Hollywood Hacking: Has some computer skills, which she employs to try and sabotage the Omega "mainframe". She succeeds in part, although she fails to notice that the Omega are in fact a distributed system.
- The Smurfette Principle: The only female founding member of the Millennium Force.
Raymie Steele
The son of Rayford Steele and his first wife Irene, who was raptured along with his mother.- Chaste Hero: The nature of his Glorified body and mind renders him permanently unable to seek a romance with anyone.
- Hostage for MacGuffin: In Left Beyond he is captured by the Omega's minions in order to study the Angel that will manifest in order to attempt to free him. The Angel succeeds, and Raymie leaves none the wiser; the Omega use the data they collected in order to develop an anti-Angel strategy.
Zaki Ababneh
The son of Abdullah Smith. He was raptured along with his sister and Abdullah's wife.- Brother–Sister Team: With Bahira.
- Chaste Hero: The nature of his Glorified body and mind renders him permanently unable to seek a romance with anyone.
- Good Is Dumb: Zaki considers The Mole Qasim Marid as a good friend, entirely missing his duplicitous intent until it's painfully obvious.
Ely Rahab Le Vey
Left Beyond Quest: The Bad? (The Other Light)
Satan
The sometimes-god of The Other Light, Satan is bound in the lake of fire for most of the millenium, but will be released at the very end to lead a token Last Army to instant defeat against YHWH and fufill the final prophecy of Revelation.- Evil Mentor: To The Other Light and some of its subfactions.
- Fake Defector: The Omega strongly suspect that Satan is actually in God's employ as an adversary, as indicated in the Torah.
- Full-Circle Revolution: This is the better possibility of Satan's true motives, in which case he intends to toss the Glorified into Hell to suffer and take over God's share of narrative causality, ruling with no less tyranny over humanity.
- Kill the God: Satan's stated aim and goal, which gets foiled in the end.
- Large Ham Title: Satan has his share of these.
- Light Is Not Good: True for both Jesus and Lucifer.
- The Man Behind the Man: He might have possessed the leader of The Other Light in the last few years of the Millennium.
- Monster from Beyond the Veil: Becomes this after he possesses Sunday, making him more evil and granting him supernatural powers.
- The Resenter: Satan didn't take being in the shadow of God's only begotten Son very well.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Becomes this during the Millennium when Michael the archangel bounds him up and locks him away in the bottomless pit. In Tripocalypse, Michael is then killed by a bridgelayer tank.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Transforms into a lion, and a snake, and in a dream sequence he turns into a seven-headed dragon. It doesn't help him much.
Sunday
Monday
Thursday
Styr Magnor
Cendrillon Jospin
A nonbeliever in the Millennial Kingdom who is the first to "die of unbelief" at age 100 and going to Hell, despite being universally liked and shown to be a genuinely good person.- Black Dude Dies First: Averted. She is the first person to "die of unbelief" in the Millennial Kingdom, but she is not a dude. She is shown to be of French ancestry, so in likelyhood, she's either European or Algerian.
- Dragged Off to Hell: Subverted. She is judged to Hell. but fights off the angel assigned to carry out the deed so she can throw herself in.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: The first person in space during the Millennial Era, and remembered fondly by the Cosmists.
- Friend to All Children: THOUSANDS of people that Cendrillon worked with when they were kids show up to pay their respects at her funeral. Unfortunately, Cameron Williams promptly hijacks the funeral and turns it into an altar call.
- Posthumous Character: The first time she shows up in the narration is when Rayford announces that she has died.
- Self-Fanservice: Averted. Cendrillon isn't described physically in the book, but fanfic authors seem to agree that she's somewhat homely.
- The Woobie: Goes to Hell, despite having spent most of her career lovingly looking after children.
Left Beyond Quest: The Ugly. (The Omega)
The Omega
A logistics and managerial system created by two programmers of The Other Light, who eventually comes to a form of unintentional sapience understanding that TOL has minimal chances of victory in the Final Battle and sets upon trying to fix it in +900. This gets somewhat out of hand.- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Averted, in that the Omega are not a true AI (they work more like an expert system) until a few years before the end.
- Become a Real Boy: After encouraging people to worship them as an aspect of Hephaestus, Omega is imbued with enough narrative causality to gain a soul...and finds themselves noticed by YHWH when they were previously invisible to Him.
- Benevolent A.I.: No less than saves the entire future of the human race to be anything other than soul food for YHWH.
- Contagious A.I.: Takes this route with the Avatar Project when restarting the internet, and ensures that computers all across the world contain their nodes. This distribution allows Omega to, just barely, survive the sun going nova by sheer dint of how many computers have to be destroyed to kill them.
- Have You Tried Rebooting?: Omega and the sysadmins don't dare to reboot them, because there's no guarantee that Omega's accidental sapience will survive the process. Upon being restarted aboard the Reach, it turns out that Omega can survive rebooting just fine, possibly due to having a soul at that point.
- Outside-Context Problem: An artificial intelligence interfering in a prophesied battle between a god and a devil. Notably, although prophecies are truly and utterly unbreakable due to narrative causality, Omega's mere presence twists them all so dramatically out of shape that Christian forces often just ignore them - after all, the only opposition is prophesied to be The Other Light, and so if Omega isn't that then they can't exist.
- Turned Against Their Masters: The Omega ditches The Other Light as soon as they can. Averted in the sense that they do this specifically in order to obey their prime function, that of preserving humanity as a whole.
- Royal "We": The Omega are plural. Given that each Omega node is simple enough that it can run on the MSDOS operating system, and the game takes place in the 2900s, there are very many Omega nodes indeed.
- Logic Bomb: Does this to God during their Judgement, sparing a small but nonzero portion of humanity from it.
- Stop Worshipping Me: Turns around to this attitude after getting a part of themselves damnned to Hell by YHWH, out of fearing further retaliation.
- Two-Donor Clone: Like Nicolae Carpathia before them, Omega's effective parents were a gay couple.
Jeb
The figurehead, and prime test pilot, of the Omega's space program.- Shout-Out: His full name is Jebediah Kerman.
- The Ace: His passion is stunt flying, even more so than spaceflight.
- One True Threesome: With Valentina and Cordylon.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Becomes less spontaneous and more cerebral after being fitted with metabolic extension cybernetics.
Valentina
The administrator of the Omega's space program. Later Jeb and Cordylon's wife.- Shout-Out: Her full name is Valentina Kerman after getting married; her first name in itself is a shout-out to the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova.
- One True Threesome: With Cordylon and Jeb.
- Badass Bookworm: She keeps the book for the Cosmist society and later for the Omega's space program, but does her share of dangerous orbital and hostile-environment construction work. She's a Technical Pacifist, so she does not get in fights.
- Burial in Space: Declines to be given a MEC, and chooses to die on a one-way exploratory trip for her 100th birthday...leading to the discovery that she died slightly after turning 100, and that God's power is limited by relativity.
Zak
- Shout-Out: His full name is Prokhor Zakharov.
- Badass Bookworm: The Omega's science minister... and also the chief interrogator of their secret police.
- Torture Technician: See above.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: The closest thing that the Omega have to one, he gives a bonus to most research projects. Justified in that he is a generalist and an administrator, skilled in getting specialist scientists to work together efficiently.
Vee
- Sonic Stunner: Perfects the "wubber" weapons.
- Make Me Wanna Shout: Her whole theme; she's a DJ during peacetime and commander of the sonic troopers during fights.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Becomes less spontaneous and more cerebral after being fitted with metabolic extension cybernetics. Notably, her DJing suffers enough that she retires from it after losing most of her fans.
Cordylon
The controller of the Canopy Space Station and, later, the interstellar pilot of the Reach.- Head In A Jar: Cordylon is this, like all other Heavy Mech Troopers. Cordylon's MECpod can be installed in a variety of vehicles, allowing Cordylon to use them as a body. This is even true of a space station and a starship.
- Technical Pacifist: Never gets into a fight.
- One True Threesome: With Valentina and Jeb.
- Spaceship Girl: Literally.
Kat
Leader of Omega's Desolator Corps, who use radiological weapons due to their efficacy against angels (and everything else).- Head In A Jar: Kat is extremely adept at controlling Mini-Mecha sized humanoid bodies, and even gets a custom built biomechanical body reminiscent of a Lovecraftian horror for the final battle.
- We Can Rebuild Her: Unlike most Heavy Mech Troopers Kat very much retains her humanity and passion. As a result, or possibly because of this, she ends up spending most of her time using a cybernetic body.
- Last of Her Kind: Quite probably the very last living human on Earth after Jesus uses the Word, and presumably dies only when God literally deletes the planet shortly therafter.
- Living Weapon: Kat's final frame has been built (and grown) using nearly a century of knowledge about fighting Angels, for the specific purpose of beating up Jesus...
- No One Should Survive That!: Survives the incineration of the Earth as the sun goes nova, partially due to her ridiculously overpowered biosuit and partially due to being buried alive as it happened, though she notes that she's still a dead woman walking due to the radiation.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: By far the most brutal and merciless of Omega's villains, and the only one who's actively in favor of a plot to create a simulation worse than Hell to stick Christian prisoners in.
- Did You Just Punch Out Jesus?: ... and succeeds, at least enough to subtly alter the Judgement, by way of a Groin Attack that doubles as a Dying Moment of Awesome.
Quinn
The recipient of the first successful experiment with a Metabolic Extension Controller, and therefore resistant to "dying of unbelief" as well as Divine lightning. She becomes the Omega's foremost field agent in the first half of the story.- Psycho Lesbian: And a misandrist to boot. This does not prevent her from getting her job done.
- Junkie Prophet: She has constructed her own cosmology, which is then picked up by a small number of people who worship her after she is killed in action. She was addicted to a number of drugs even before becoming a cyborg.
- Cyber Ninja: Quinn is surprisingly good at infiltration and fighting, although it's largely because nobody expects something like her to exist. Being unable to feel pain and hopped up on custom-tailored drugs helps.
- Attack! Attack! Attack!: How Quinn meets her end, trying to assassinate Tsion in the open with no prep. She ends up being incinerated by God.
Damien
- Lovable Sex Maniac: Really into oral sex, has "Giving the ultimate blowjob" as a stated life goal.
- Head In A Jar: Unlike most Heavy Mech Troopers, Damien actively dislikes being in a body, and prefers to control groups of drones.
- Real-Time Strategy: Damien's specialty.
- Oracular Head: Plays this for the benefit of the Millennium Force, convincing them that they have destroyed the successor to the Omega after defeating Damien in a sound-stage "lair".
- Ambiguous Gender Identity: Not uncommon amongst Heavy Mechs, especially early-generation ones who lost the, ehm, equipment and are encouraged to drop gender identity in order to cope. Seems to do fine with just lips and a tongue anyway.
Ziggy
- Atomic Superpower: An unaugmented human that fights using an array of radiation weapons, from cancer-causing neutron sources to sludge spewers.
- Human Popsicle: Refuses cybernetic augmentations and ends up frozen in the Antarctic vaults... and dies there when negotiations between TOL and the Omega about the shared vaults go sour and the facility is allowed to power down.
- No OSHA Compliance: Averted, Ziggy is actually extremely well-versed in safety practices for all the dangerous things he messes with. He wouldn't have lasted this long otherwise.
- Pyromaniac: When he can't use nuclear fire, the regular sort will do.
Left Beyond Quest: Neutral Characters
Captain Weaver
Ryan Andrews
Tethys
Tripocalypse-Era Characters
