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The Order
In General
The alliance of races in the world of Centre responsible for holding back the Unchained.- Achilles' Heel: Physics and high burst-damage traps, due to the Order's higher durability, damage reduction and shields as they lose health or get hit, and their healing and rage effects when allies die or health drops. Trap combos that quickly deal a lot of damage or which toss them into instant-kill level hazards can bypass these defenses. They are conversely more resistant to low-damage traps because of their defensive bonuses.
- The Alliance: The Order is made up of several allies species living on the world of Centre, mostly in the Territories Humaine. While humans make up the majority of their members, they also have a number of other species in their ranks, such as giants, humanoid grizzly and polar bears, satyrs, humanoid lions, dwarves, elves, and gnomes.
- Bears Are Bad News: Bears make up the main Giant Mook of the Order, consisting of shield-bearing bears, regular attack bears, and massive armored battle bears.
- Deflector Shield: The defensive buffs of Order troops take on this appearance. satyrs and gnome bombers get one protecting them the first time they take damage, while Order soldiers get one as their health drops low.
- Gonk: Unlike most of the Order heroes, the Order Red Shirt Mooks are downright goofy looking, probably to make the player feel less guilty about killing so many of them.
- Mad Bomber: Gnomes carry explosive packs and rush barricades, laughing the entire way.
- Our Giants Are Bigger: Giants make up the massive Elite Mooks of the Order, being huge, slow, hulking warriors who can absorb massive damage. They are normally a case of Gentle Giant, until you reduce their health enough, at which point....
- We Have Reserves: Inverted. In stages where the Order are the enemies, they get killed by the player en mass, but compared to the Unchained, Order stages generally have less enemies to kill (but they're stronger to keep things balanced). The general implication is probably that the Order doesn't have as many reserves as the Unchained or the same nonchalant attitude about sending them to their deaths. Grizzly Bear Order minions even get angry if they see their teammates killed near them.
Brass
The Master Engineer
Dobbin's wife and an engineer for the Order, who carries a blunderbuss that fires a shotgun-like blast. She can lay down mines, fire an explosive cannonball and build a turret to damage enemies as well as to draw their attention. She can also use a wrench to strike at enemies as well as to repair and upgrade her turret. Rather than using Mana she uses Scrap that is harvested from fallen foes to use her abilities. Like Dobbin, as a dwarf she is naturally ignored by larger enemies.
- The Engineer: Her abilities are all about using gadgets to devastate her foes.
- Magic Tool: Her wrench can deal damage as well as be used to heal and upgrade her turret.
- The Turret Master: She can build a turret that deals damage from afar.
Maximilian
The War Mage
The same Idiot Hero from the first and second game is back! He uses an arcane crossbow to deliver rapid-fire lightning bolts, stunning targets and chaining some secondary damage around targets he kills. A temporary energy-shield gives him more staying power than most ranged heroes, which makes his role flexible. Additionally, his passive helps him place large numbers of traps.
- Automatic Crossbow: Max's crossbow can fire extremely quickly, though justified as its bolts are magical evocations rather than physical bolts. It practically qualifies as a rapid-fire Lightning Gun.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Max is probably one of the most powerful and skilled War Mages still alive, but he also spends most of his time napping, to the point that his "teaching" method is to sleep in the corner while Zoey does all her experiments herself, and he uses a Decoy trap to distract people coming into his office while he naps under his desk.
- The Casanova: Max spent much of his apprenticeship... and adulthood... and his tenure.... chasing skirts and being damned good at it in the process. Cygnus laments that out of all of the arsenal of weapons he gave Max, he was most proficient in the "weapon" that was compeltely useless against orcs.
- Deflector Shields: His Can't Touch This ability grants him a lightening shield for a few seconds, protecting him from all damage and shocking any enemy that strikes him in melee. This allows him to "hold the breach" for a few seconds where he would otherwise be overwhelmed, a role usually reserved for melee heroes. Alternatively, it functions as a hard counter to Glass Cannon like Gnoll Hunters if he times it just right, damaging them with their own attacks.
- The Fool: His bio indicates that, despite the many, many dumb things he has done over his education with The Order, by some miracle they always seem to work out for the best in the end, no matter how much of a disaster they seemed at the time.
- Idiot Hero: As always, Max is not the most intelligent member of The Order, but he is the most enthusiastic, and it does not seem to actually impede his effectiveness.
- Jack of All Stats: There are other characters that can do more single-target damage than him, do more multi-target damage than him, endure more damage than him, or have more utility than him, but Maximilian can do all of those things respectfully enough while other characters often have more obvious weakness to balance their strengths. He doesn't even specialize in a particular type of damage or support, and instead just builds everything more cheaply.
- Shock and Awe: His magical crossbow is endowed with lightning. Killing an enemy minion with it will cause a chain of small shocks to other nearby enemies, making Max great for quickly whittling down large crowds of weaker foes.
- Static Stun Gun: His crossbow can also fire the Absolutely Stunning Bolt which can temporarily stun all minions within a radius of the impact. This can buy Max a little more time to burn them down or leave them stuck in a killbox a little longer as the traps reset.
- Trap Master: Max's passive ability reduces the cost of traps he places, allowing him to place more of them on average for the same cost than other heroes. His Endorsements upgrade gives him some passive income he can further spend on more traps.
- Troll: One of his quotes for his upgrades has him wondering how he can use it to annoy Gabriella some more.
Gabriella
The Redeemed Sorceress
The hero-turned-villain-turned-hero-again from the first two games, now firmly back on The Order's side. She wields a wand that does arcane damage with a moderate rate of fire. She specializes in crowd-control with her Devious Allure and can automatically trigger traps in an arc in front of her with her Kinetic Pulse, allowing her to set up devastating combos in tight killboxes. Her low health makes getting close enough to do that a little risky, but taking damage regenerates her mana and her Blink ability lets her get out of trouble quickly.
- The Atoner: Her Red Baron name is now "The Redeemed Sorceress", though this is used ironically, as her dialogue makes it clear that she generally doesn't feel guilty about what she did in the first Orcs Must Die! at all. If anything, the destruction of the old, corrupt Order satisfied her immensely. Her "Evil Ways" costume's flavor text and one of her joke chat command dialogues shows she realizes she's bad, but she still has trouble feeling much guilt over it.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Gabriella betrayed the Order, resulting in her ex-Master Cygnus' apparent death in the first game. Despite this and (possibly jokingly) commenting that she would have left him to die too if she were in Max's shoes, she still refers to him respectfully as "Master" when he turns out to be alive in Orcs Must Die 2. One of her dialogues in Orcs Must Die Unchained is "The Master taught me well."
- Combat Sadomasochist: She gets... excited, killing minions, and getting hurt herself only encourages her by regenerating a portion of her mana so she can bring even more pain.
- Dark and Troubled Past: She used to be an extremely good person who was genuinely caring as shown by how she worried for Smoulder as a child. Thanks to the corruption of the Order (of the mundane and political type, not magical), she eventually left on her own to the Dark World of the orcs for the sake of investigating a potential major orc invasion. It's implied that either the exposure to its darkness or her anger at the Order and Ministry made her evil and caused her initial Face–Heel Turn. Cygnus' letter warns her how the Dark World's atmosphere will twist her personality and make her power hungry, but Gabriella began referring to herself as "The Sorceress" instead of "Order Sorceress" in her letter expressing her anger before she went to the Dark World.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Her Allure ability, where she does a brief sashay, causing nearby minions to stop in their tracks and gape at her in awe. This is implied to be a relic of the time she mentally dominated the orcs. Before her rework, she even had a passive called "Old Habits" that made orcs not attack her unless she hit them first. Attacking them breaks the spell (unless she invested in a certain upgrade) but it does give her the opportunity to let the enemies bunch up a little more before hits them all at once with her Kinetic Pulse.
- Flash Step: She can rapidly teleport a distance backward, allowing her to quickly get out of sticky situations.
- Freudian Excuse: In Orcs Must Die 2, she claims she betrayed the Order because the Order was corrupt and needed to be purged. Her background and Smoulder's background in Orcs Must Die Unchained show she wasn't kidding about the corruption, where she discovered an Order alchemist stabbing an innocent child with a knife and got censored just for trying to mention a potential orc invasion.
- Glass Cannon: Clever use of her Devious Allure and Kinetic Pulse combined with a well-positioned trap killbox gives Gabriella the potential to do unreal damage to a huge number of mooks all at once. However, she has very low hitpoints compared to other heroes, and all of her abilities only really function at close range, so she is almost always at peril of just dropping dead with just a couple seconds' warning.
- Knockback: Her Kinetic Pulse imparts a small amount of physics force away from her. This is usually not enough to cause a Railing Kill unless the platform is very narrow and the railing very low, but it does knock most minions down so they have to spend some time getting back up again.
- Magic Wand: Her Thorn of Arcana, which fires bolts at a moderate rate that do a moderate amount of arcane damage on impact. It was her exclusive weapon in Orcs Must Die! 2.
- Ms. Fanservice: Amazing enough, downplayed- especially, as noted in Stripperific below, in comparison to other female heroes who share the same game as her, and in spite of even invoking Distracted by the Sexy in combat. The straightest she probably plays this trope are with her "Frightfully Delightful", "I Dream Of Gabby" and "Promised Prodigy" costumes.
- Ship Sinking: When Max suggests that they have a Babies Ever After ending in Orcs Must Die! 2, her response is total disgust. One of her joke chat command dialogues in Orcs Must Die Unchained has her say that no matter what your head canon says, she and Max are not an item. She even starts vomiting at the thought to (try to) drive the point home.
- Stripperiffic: It's arguable, especially compared to many other fantasy women examples (including most of the other women in the same game as her!), but the fact that all her outfits have high heels and a corset has her lampshade it and its Double Standard a bit in one of her joke chat command dialogues. She wears such outfits because it's a fantasy, but not her fantasy. As previously stated in Ms. Fanservice above, the closest that one of her costumes gets to this trope is "I Dream Of Gabby", with "Frighfully Delighful" and "Promised Prodigy" not far behind.
- Token Evil Teammate: Personality-wise for the Order (but still definately a good guy compared to the Unchained). Her personality is pretty much the same as when she was a villain, with her gleefully referring to herself as a conqueror of worlds, giving the same taunts to the Unchained that she gave to Max in the first game, and being the only member of the Order who starts angrily insulting her own team once she gets low on health. She no longer actually DOES any evil though (beyond possibly enjoying killing the Unchained a bit too much, but even Max is like that) and a very small part of her knows she did evil in the past and she intends to do right from here on, which plants her firmly on the good side compared to the Unchained.
- Trap Master: Her Kinetic Pulse ability automatically activates all traps in its area of effect, even if those traps were still on Cooldown. This gives her an excellent ability to build combos, which in turn leads to more coin so she can place more traps.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Before she left on her own accord to investigate the orc world and became a villain. Even after being redeemed and rejoining the good guys' side, her personality doesn't seem to have changed back to what it once was.
- Vain Sorceress: As usual, she wears outfits that while not necessarily Stripperiffic will at least make her look good. Given her Allure ability, she is clearly not above indulging in her looks during battle.
- Villainous Breakdown: She somehow manages to retain this personality trait from the first Orcs Must Die, despite being a good guy now. Probably because her villainous personality remains mostly unchanged. Just like the first game, she starts out Affably Evil, being smug, composed, and sophisticated while constantly mocking her foes (and Max) in her various dialogues (with at least one of her taunts where she says she'll bathe in her enemy's blood being unchanged from when she was a villain), but at low health, she breaks down in an enraged panic and starts throwing tantrums, much more than possibly all of the other heroes in the game. Other heroes cringe in pain or give themselves a graceful self eulogy. Gabriella starts screaming and shouting at everyone while demanding heals and rescues and calling her own teammates morons.
- Villain Has a Point: Her anger at the corruption of the Order definitely appears to be justified when you start reading into the bios. The Order Weavers and Order Ministry apparently censored and redacted her reports on the abuse that an unspecified mage (likely Oziel) did to Smolder when she was a child, as well as censoring or covering up other abuses that were directly connected to Oziel's immortality experiments. On top of this, the Ministry was censoring research into the rifts and blacklisting professors who were doing said research, which was what drove her to go the dark world of the orcs in search of evidence of the danger she believed was coming.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: She claims in Orcs Must Die Unchained 2 that she started the orc invasion because the Order was corrupt and needed to be purged. This is an interesting example considering that she actually achieved that goal to a point (as a villain!), although she fortunately didn't achieve her more selfish goal of absolute power. Now she's the co-leader of a reformed Order in Orcs Must Die Unchained.
Cygnus
The Master of the Order
The Old War Mage from the first game, thought dead before his return in the second. He wields a magic staff with which can launch slow but powerful bolts of ball-lightning or arcs of chain lightning. He can create small pylons and rift shards which buff nearby traps and heroes, respectively, and he gains additional buffs to himself when standing near rifts, making him ideal for defending the final exit or careful choke points.
- Achilles' Heel: Cygnus' basic attacks cost mana and his reliance on proximity to rifts for damage boosts and manage regeneration means that he is tied to a single location. If a wave pushes him off that location, he's much weaker.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Cygnus' profile is his living will, and he leaves all his belongings to his students, Gabriella and Max (even after Gabriella betrayed him before and Max was... well, Max). He clearly put a lot of thought into making sure each student would get his belongings that they'd like, the most. Comically subverted a bit in Max's case where Cygnus then goes on a tirade about how Max's share would be null and void if Cygnus' death was due to battle instead of natural causes, because that meant that Max must have screwed things up somewhere.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Sometimes when critically injured he'll directly address the player and ask if they have any healing items or anything to help him.
- Hold the Line: His preferred playstyle. His movespeed is rather low, and unlike every other hero, his regular attack costs mana to use, leaving him nearly helpless should he run out. As a result, he's ill suited to running around attacking with impunity. On the other hand, his ability to create temporary Rifts on command (and the extra benefits he gets standing near one) combined with his Pylons strengthening traps means that with a good kill box set up he can wall out almost any approach completely by himself.
- Magic Staff: His staff, from which he may summon lightning.
- Old Master: As the eldest living War Mage in The Order, Cygnus is the one with the power to open rifts and magic the fortresses that guard them. He is also the instructor of both Maximilian and Gabriella, though he admits to being a lousy teacher, for different reasons.
- Shock and Awe: His staff can launch a slow-moving Energy Ball of lightning which fires slowly but does large damage in a small radius on hit. If Cygnus needs to rapidly whittle-down a crowd, he can also fire an arc of Chain Lightning which will bounce from minion to minion, as long as they are all lined up.
- Trap Master: His Phylactery Pylon ability can buff the damage of traps within a certain radius of itself. This makes Cygnus ideal for holding a tight kill-box full of high-damage traps.
- Wizard Classic: The closest to it of all the characters, with his Badass Long Robe, Magic Staff, long-white beard, and experience.
- You Shall Not Pass!: He gains bonuses (beyond the usual rapid regeneration) for standing near rifts, making him ideal for holding the final line.
Dobbin
Claim Jumper
A Dwarven miner inspired by the grenadiers of the previous games. He wields a shovel that he can swing in a wide arc as well as use to create dust storms that slow his enemies. He can toss dynamite as well as dig tunnels that lets his allies travel quickly between points. Due to his size, large enemies cannot see him and will ignore him.
- Dishing Out Dirt: He can create sandstorms to slow his enemies as well as strip their armor.
- Fast Tunnelling: He can create tunnels that lets him and allies warp from point A to point B.
- Money Multiplier: Enemies killed by or under the effect of his abilities drop additional small coin pouches. Since money is split between characters, this gives Dobbin a significant support boost to his team.
- Prospector: His profession. He uses his Fast Tunnelling to get to claims before his competition.
- Remember the New Guy?: Though he does not make an appearance or is even mentioned at the time, Dobbin was Maximilian's boss when he was working in the dwarven mines at the beginning of Orcs Must Die 2.
- Shovel Strike: He uses a shovel as his primary weapon.
- Throw Down the Bomblet: He can toss out sticks of dynamite to do a large amount of physical damage in a small area of effect.
Hogarth
Frozen Shield of Deg Itan
A barbarian allied with the Order. He uses an axe that he can both swing and toss to deal ice damage. He can shield himself with ice and perform a pounce that does AoE damage. His passive ability grants him a stacking damage buff the more he deals damage.
- Barbarian Hero: He's a barbarian who also happens to be on the good guys' side. Barbaric even compared to the rest of his tribe given his grammar and his lack of table manners, but he's still a hero defending them from monsters and looked up to by them.
- The Berserker: The more he takes damage, the more damage he can deal. Recently changed to him going berserk as he deals damage instead (because having a character based around freezing foes AND taking damage from them was rather counter-intuitive).
- Deadly Lunge: Ambush!, which has him jump towards the enemy to do a decent chunk of damage.
- An Ice Person: Not only do all of his attacks deal ice damage, but he can use ice to give himself a defensive boost.
- Instant Armor: His Shield! ability ability allows him to cover his shield in a layer of ice that absorbs additional damage.
- Throwing Your Axe Always Works: His Throw! ability allows him to hurl his axe at a distant target. The further the target is from him, the more damage it does.
Ivy
Warden of the First Grove
An elven archer, Ivy is a support damage dealer. She uses a longbow to deal damage and can fire a penetrating shot that pierces through enemies. She can heal allies around her and summon vines to entangle enemies, stopping them in their tracks and strip their armor. When damaged enough, she gains a speed buff that lets her quickly escape.
- An Adventurer Is You: She fulfills a Healer/DPS-Archer/Status-Mezzer combination role.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Her dialogue shows she cares for her teammates, but her backstory shows she has anger issues over the orcs killing her parents. Unlike Temper, she isn't reluctant to kill her enemies by the hundreds, though she is at least not as bloodthirsty about it as most other heros. Lampshaded with one of her /joke dialogues where she sarcastically says she's supposed to love and care for everyone before saying "That's the joke".
- Critical Status Buff: She gains a speed buff at low health.
- Hidden Buxom: The bra in her default costume actually does a pretty good job in hiding how sizable her rack is; it takes certain costumes to reveal that she's quite busty.
- Combat Medic: She's the main healer of the playable characters but can deal decent damage by herself.
- Knockback: Her Penetrating Arrow ability moves through targets and knocks them all back about a unit.
- Ms. Fanservice: Of the same caliber as Gabriella and Smolder, although it's undercut in Ivy a little by a top that restrains rather than accentuates her bust and Modesty Shorts, respectively, at least in her default costume. Nonetheless, she still fits the trope by at least having a well-built, healthy physique and a pretty face.
- Nice Girl: Most of her match starting dialogue is about worrying or caring for her teammates.
- Status Effects: Her Reach of Roots ability is the Paralyzed/Stun variety, stopping the movement of every enemy minion within a radius of her for a few seconds by entangling their feet with roots.
- Stripperific: Actually downplayed regarding her default costume; while it accentuates her lean, athletic build, her loincloth is wider and covers more than Smolder's, she seems to be wearing Modesty Shorts underneath, and her bra minimises her chest. Some of her costumes emphasise her bust and legs more, particularly her Ivy Flower Friend and Ivy Grovewatch costumes- the former having her wearing a tight, tye-dye crop top with a low neckline that cuts off just below her breasts and short shorts, and the latter a form-fitting one-piece.
Temper
Rage of the Forge
A Minotaur blacksmith, Temper is an aggressive bruiser who uses Rage in place of Mana. His basic attack is a three-hit combo with his hammers that builds his Rage while his secondary attack has him throw a hammer to deal knockback damage to an area. He can restore his health by expending his rage, slam his hammers down to create an impact of fire and charge forward to damage and knock back any enemies in his way. When he reaches maximum Rage, he will explode in an area around him, expending all of his resource.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Probably the nicest character in the game. In his own words, he just wants to make friends! And then when he gets angry...
- The Blacksmith: His vocation is happily working the dwarven forge. Unfortunately, seeing the wounded that would come back from the font lines drove him crazy with frustrated rage.
- Dual Wielding: He uses a smithing hammer and an anvil tied to his fist as his weapons.
- Foe-Tossing Charge: "Bull Rush", which has him quickly charge through any enemies in his way and scattering them.
- Gentle Giant: At least, when he isn't angry. He's actually extremely embarassed by his anger and is trying to fix it. Many of his quotes show that he'd rather just be blacksmithing and dislikes killing. In fact, he's the only member of the Order that actually expresses a dislike for killing the Unchained.
- Happily Adopted: A minotaur by birth, but raised by dwarves, and quite content with that.
- Happy Place: The name of his healing move, in which he prances around surrounded by rainbows and calms himself.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: What caused him to seek therapy in the first place is that he could go from calm and happy to smash-everything-around-me angry whenever the Berserk Button of seeing people he cares about hurt is pushed.
- Limit Break: His Rage of the Forge passive, which causes his anger to explode from him, damaging all enemies in a radius of him, but at the cost of resetting his rage gauge to zero.
- Meaningful Name: A twofer. He's a blacksmith, so he tempers weapons and armour, and he has one heck of a temper.
- Mechanically Unusual Class: Rather than using Mana, Temper uses Rage as his main resource, which is built by using his basic attack and decays if he stays out of combat (though an upgrade can prevent decay). It buffs his attack as he builds it and if he fills his bar will cause him to explode and reset it back to 0.
- Our Minotaurs Are Different: He's a giant minotaur who was raised by dwarves.
- Playing with Fire: He can slam his hammers down to create a fiery explosion that leaves a flaming crater in it's wake.
- Raised by Orcs: Inverted, being a "monstrous" creature raised by dwarves.
- There Are No Therapists: Averted, seeing a therapist is what let him get his rage under control, and in fact motivated him to volunteer to fight for The Order on the frontline.
Tundra
Oathkeeper of Arctos
The prince of the Grizzlies of Arctos, Tundra is a tank who specializes in freezing his enemies. His passive gives him bonus damage to frozen enemies as well as making them stay frozen longer, which is helped by the fact that all of his attacks do ice damage. He can swing his mace as his default attack, fire off three icicles, create an ice wall, let out a blast of ice in front of him and turn into a giant snowball to bowl through enemies.
- Achilles' Heel: His emphasis on ice and crowd-controlling freeze effects means he is hard-pressed against enemies who are either resistant to ice or can ignore Status Effects such as Earth Elementals.
- Ambadassador: He mostly serves as an ambassador from the Throne of Arctos and its polar bear people to the other races and kingdoms of the Territories Humaine... but he has no qualms with unleashing icy destruction as needed, to the point that he even shut down Temper's first rampage with a quick burst of ice magic to stop him in place.
- An Ice Person: All of his attacks deal ice damage and he deals extra damage to frozen enemies. In addition, all ice-based traps deal extra damage to enemies.
- Bears Are Bad News: He's a giant talking polar bear who specializes in beating up enemies with a giant frozen scepter and freezing them in place.
- Carry a Big Stick: He carries around a scepter made of ice and bone.
- Combat Pragmatist: He despises using traps, saying that he prefers feeling his enemies last breaths on his cheeks. That doesn't mean he won't use them to his advantage, since as much as he dislikes traps, he hates his enemies far more.
- Deadly Disc: The Saw of Arctos trap does bonus damage when placed by him.
- Genius Bruiser: For all his brawn and strength in close combat, he's an erudite warrior who waxes poetic as he slaughters his enemies.
- Magic Knight: He's a melee-focused warrior who casts magical spells using ice.
- Not So Above It All: As stoic and philosophical as he is, Tundra enjoys mixing it up in melee, and when he activates Unchained Mode, he gleefully slides into an animal rage.
- Warrior Poet: He has shades of this, saying things about a sharp mind being more important than any weapon, and contemplating that as little as he likes traps he loves the enemy less. His backstory also mentions his attempts to negotiate with the Unchained, and his regret at the inevitable and violent outcome.
Yi-Lin
Jade Sentinel
An ancient warrior of the Cloud Tiger Empire, Yi-Lin specializes in sustained damage. Her basic attack has her swing her hook swords while her secondary attack is a swipe that deals more damage the lower the enemy's health is. She can wound enemies to increase damage towards those targeted, temporarily increase her speed and defenses at the cost of being unable to attack and perform a whirling strike that draws enemies towards her. Her passive lets her regenerate health and mana whenever she mixes up her attacks.
- Dual Wielding: She uses two hook swords made of jade for her attacks.
- Stone Wall: Her "Jade Sentinel" ability lets her take more hits as well as giving her a speed boost, but she won't regenerate mana and she can't attack while it's activated.
- Wutai: She hails from the setting's equivalent of Ancient China.
Zoey
The Chaotic Apprentice
Maximillian's new apprentice, who is accompanied by a firebat named Feebee that attacks nearby enemies. She casts spells from her spellbook which she can also use to smack them with. She can perform a radial blast of magic, grant herself a buff with a chance of backfiring (leaving her temporarily stunned) and even jump into her book to let Feebee go nuts temporarily. Her Book Club and Chaos blast change her current school of magic whenever casted, thus changing her elemental damage type.
- Achilles' Heel: Zoey has massive burst damage potential, but her basic attacks cost mana and have a slow rate of fire when she's not buffed by using one of her abilities. If part of a wave survives her burst damage, Zoey can be in trouble.
- Bond Creature: Feebee the Firebat, Zoey's pet who hovers around her head. Feebee will periodically spit damaging attacks at random nearby enemies, though always in the same elemental type as Feebee's current school of magic.
- Confusion Fu: Most of her abilities change the properties of her attacks when used and her buff has a chance to backfire.
- Girlish Pigtails: To emphasize her youth.
- Glass Cannon: She can deal an absurd amount of damage, but has very low health and can easily die if you're not careful.
- The Klutz: Jumping into her book is implied to be an accident ("Whoa, how long was I gone?"), and she's constantly making things explode unintentionally in her profile. She lacks control over her magic too as shown by how her elements and buffs are random. Sometimes she even accidentally stuns herself instead of buffs herself.
- Throw the Book at Them: She can smack enemies with her spellbook for a bit of knockback crowd control.
The Unchained
In General
The orcs and their allies.- Achilles' Heel: Damage over time traps and spread-out, continuous damage combos. Since Unchained units have low health and rely on numbers and regeneration, they are vulnerable to long corridors of traps that apply continuous low-damage, burning, and area-of-effect attacks to quickly kill the lower-health Orc units while whittling down the higher-health units and preventing health regeneration. In turn, their raw numbers and regeneration means that often they can just overwhelm a small, high-damage killbox with sheer numbers and the trolls can heal up after pushing through.
- Always Chaotic Evil: According to Bionka, the lack of magic in their world forced them to be this, constantly fighting each other over the scant few resources available. Bionka hopes that conquering the magic-filled human world will change this. They certainly seem used to death, both their's and their enemies'.
- Feel No Pain: According to some cross-section information released by Robot, Orcs have substantially smaller brains than their head size suggests, and their nerves tend to be danger-insensitive. It is said an Orc would be more likely to notice it was on fire by the smell of its own flesh burning than by the tactile sensation of the burning itself.
- Made of Plasticine: While Orc bones are almost unbreakably tough (so they can absorb a lot of damage there) their connecting ligaments are weak and easily shorn through. This leads to Orcs being particularly vulnerable to dismemberment.
- Villain Protagonist: They're playable and most of them have sympathetic backstories and goals. The main thing morally differentiating them from the Order is most of the Order display a moral compass in their profiles and quotes when it comes to killing and death (primarily for their own side, but in Temper's case, also for the Unchained) while the Unchained don't (including their own side). Possibly a lesser case of Blue-and-Orange Morality. When an orc mook named Zeke reports to Bionka that Bloodspike is eating his own men (mooks like Zeke), nothing Zeke says implies he thinks there's anything morally wrong with that. Even he's just worried they'll lose the war because of Bloodspike eating all the men.
Blackpaw
Vindicator of the Dead
A Gnoll assassin. Blackpaw is a melee hero who emphasizes mobility. His ability to self-heal, summon spirit wolves, and wound foes rounds him out into a flexible interceptor.
- Breakout Mook Character: He is essentially a playable hero version of the classic Gnoll Hunter from the prior games.
- Damage-Increasing Debuff: His Wound The Prey ability not only does immediate damage to enemies in a short narrow arc directly in front of him, but they also take additional damage while wounded.
- Eating the Enemy: He can take a mighty Chomp! to everything in a small arc in front of him, taking off a big chunk of their heath and regenerating Blackpaw's health by an amount proportional to the damage done.
- In a Single Bound: Blackpaw is capable of a Double Jump that sends him rapidly leaping forward. This gives him excellent mobility and allows him to rapidly position himself to intercept enemies or get to unstable rifts before slower heroes would be able to.
- Lightning Bruiser: He's got a good health pool and can cheaply heal himself while doing damage, and on top of that his Leap ability allows him to quickly dart around the battlefield as needed.
- Summon Magic: He is capable of summoning a pair of spirit wolves, who seek out an eliminate enemies, giving priority to those Blackpaw has wounded.
- The Atoner: He fights to honor his lost pack, which was killed by a Death Cult trying to harness the gnolls' alleged power over death.
- Wolverine Claws: Wears a set of metal claws on each of his bracers, often hitting multiple enemies at once with broad sweeping motions of his arms.
Bionka
Queen Momma
The queen of the Unchained, Bionka is a front-line tank who focuses on taking and dealing a ton of damage. Her default attack is her swinging her mace in a sweeping motion. Her special attacks has her slam the mace down, slam herself in a butt pound that bounces enemies upwards and swing her flail forward to deal heavy knockback damage. Her passive lets her boost her Unchained meter simply by killing large minions.
- A Mother to Her Men: She's the military leader of the Unchained and talks like a mother to them, even to non-Orc allies like Midnight. She doesn't get morally outraged at their deaths, though, but she at least acknowledges their sacrifice to the cause.
- Affably Evil: To the Unchained, at least. She can still be intimidating to them apparently as one of her quotes to her teammates is "GET OVER HERE!" but overall she's very sweet and nice to them. Of course, she's still evil in terms of how nonchalant she is about the deaths on both sides.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Subtlely averted. One would think that a brutish society like the orcs would run on this. However, Bionka says "I ain't the leader of the Unchained for nothing!" when she's placing a trap, which is a strategic action. That implies she's the leader because she's smart, not because she's strong.
- Big Bad: In terms of plot, she's this as the leader of the Unchained.
- Epic Flail: She uses a giant flail as her weapon.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Bionka is outraged when she discovers that Bloodspike is eating his minions, declaring that's going too far. It ends up being subverted when it becomes clear she's outraged simply because of the impracticality of it all.
- Fan Disservice: Hooboy. Probably Fanservice to orcs though, considering that her "I Loves My (bikini) Armour!" upgrade makes her receive less damage from orcs.
- Genius Bruiser: She might not be able to write properly unlike Bloodspike, but she seems to display some tactical military acumen in her profile as she issues orders to her men. She's a playable character that strategically places traps and creates kill zones just like everyone else, and this is likely not a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation since she acknowledges that placing traps is "Smart, smart." in one of her trap-placing quotes.
- Ground Pound: Her Bionka Bounce is a butt-stop that knocks every minion around her off their feet.
- Large and in Charge: She's the Unchained's queen and larger than any other Orc.
- The Juggernaut: She can be nigh-unstoppable once she gets going, especially with her bonuses to being in Unchained Mode.
- Mama Bear: She considers herself "mamma" to The Horde, and is aggressive about ensuring they get the future she feels they are due. Played with though, in that she is clearly willing to send them to certain death by the thousands to achieve that. Orc culture apparently doesn't find anything morally wrong with that, though.
- Mighty Glacier: She boasts high damage and health, but very low mobility.
- The Unfavorite: She loves her babies, but Tubifore (a two-headed orc that's a boss minion) and Bloodspike make it hard for even a mother to love them. Tubifore is "the son Bionka never talks about" and per one of her joke chat dialogues, Bloodspike is "special".
- Uriah Gambit: She sends Bloodspike on a suicide mission when she discovers he's eating all the men she keeps giving him. Other official story materials show he was only captured by the Order and eventually escaped, though.
- Utopia Justifies the Means: She's willing to send tons of her men to their deaths for the sake of earning a better life by conquering the human world. Downplayed because the Unchained don't seem to really morally care that much about the deaths of their comrades or even themselves unlike the Order (with the exception of Blackpaw in regards to his deceased pack), so it's possible that from their perspective, there isn't much that needs justifying in the first place when it comes to sending people to their deaths.
- When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Almost all of her attacks simply have her swing her flail really hard. This is not including her ability to place traps that all heros have, of course.
- Villain Protagonist: She might be leader of the Unchained, a force of Always Chaotic Evil beings out to conquer the good guys, but she's a playable hero and has a lot of sympathetic traits and goals. Too bad the latter entails conquering the good guys.
- Villain Respect: Even after Gabriella's Heel–Face Turn, Bionka still refers to her as Mistress Gabriella in her profile. The orcs in general are implied to still revere Gabriella.
Bloodspike
The Brutal
An Orc commander of the Unchained, Bloodspike is an offensive hero who gets stronger as he damages enemies. He wields two axes that he can swing in downward chops or a single sideways swing that buffs his damage by a maximum stack of 50 depending on how many enemies he hits. He can instantly execute a minion in order to turn them into a roast pig and stun nearby enemies, slam his axes down to cause a shockwave and release a battlecry that give him and nearby allies a boost to attack, health and speed. His passive causes enemies killed to occasionally drop a health pick-up in the form of a "delicious meal".
- Ax-Crazy: With actual axes. He really gets into killing things. He also has voices in his head.
- Bad Boss: Being an Orc general, he sends his men to die en-masse without any remorse. This was particularly evident in his original kit back when the game was a MOBA, where he did friendly fire damage to nearby allied minions. In Bionka's profile, he's eating them.
- The Berserker: He focuses on getting into the middle of combat and dealing as much damage as possible.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: When he was taken prisoner by the grizzlies after his defeat at Eventide Fortress, the grizzlies made him suffer such indignities as forcing him to sing the Arctos national anthem and ride around on a unicycle while wearing a tutu.
- Genius Bruiser: He is the smartest of the Orcs, as shown by the fact that he's the only one who can write in perfect grammar and spelling.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: He can create roast pigs that restore health just by killing enemies. Judging by all the orcs he needs to eat, he's apparently extremely hungry all the time, too.
- Uriah Gambit: Done to him by Bionka when she discovers he's eating all the men she keeps giving him, so she sends him on a suicide mission without telling him. Other official story materials show he was only captured by the Order and eventually escaped, though.
Deadeye
The Eight Groves Most Wanted
A half-elf half-Orc bandit who uses two crossbows. Her basic attack has her fire her crossbows while her secondary attack has her toss an explosive grenade. She can summon a wall of brambles that slows and damages enemies that cross it, perform a dodge-roll that temporarily buffs her attack and take a knee to rapidly fire off a flurry of arrows. Her passive gives her stacks of "Infamy" whenever she kills enemies, making her basic attack explosive at twelve stacks.
- Automatic Crossbow: Her crossbows are rather fast, especially when she activates "Ready, Steady, Fire"
- Eyepatch of Power: She wears an eyepatch over the eye she lost to Ivy.
- Glass Cannon: She can deal a lot of damage at range and is highly mobile, but obviously can't take a hit.
- More Dakka: When she activates "Ready, Steady, Fire," her crossbows become virtual machineguns. On top of that, her upgrades include options to speed up the rate of fire on her primary attack.
- Nonhuman Humanoid Hybrid: She's half-elf and half-orc, which makes her look more like a tall goblin than anything else.
- Orc Raised by Elves: Literally, being the offspring of an elf and an orc. This is reflected in her abiliies, which include both elf-like powers (Elven Razorweed) and orc-like abilities (her explosives) and a fusion of both (rapid-fire crossbows).
- Unnecessary Combat Roll: She has a dodge-roll maneuver that lets her move around while also temporarily buffing her attack power.
- The Wild West: Deadeye invokes the image of the outlaw gunslinger from the Wild west, complete with the accent, the twin shooters, and dialogue right out of a classic spaghetti Western.
Midnight
Twilight's Razor
A Cat Girl assassin for the Unchained, Midnight specializes in burst damage to take down particularly strong enemies. Her basic attack is a knife swing that deals bonus damage to enemies who are immobilized, stunned or slowed and her secondary attack deals heavy damage to a single target while also causing a Damage-Over-Time effect. She has a forward dash that damages any enemy she passes by and the ability to turn invisible. While invisible, she loses all aggro and any attack she performs on an enemy drops her cloak but also stuns enemies. Her passive gives her a damage buff against stunned enemies.
- The Atoner: She left her Path of the Nine Lives dojo and her master Snowy because she couldn't stand the strict rules. By the time she decided to return, her master already killed by the dojo's rivals. Midnight decided to take up her master's title, the Twilight Razor, to honor her sensei.
- Cat Girl: She comes from a race of feline-like ninjas. In her pirate costume quote, she remarks how she loves fish but hates water. And she literally licks her own wounds in her losing art.
- Fragile Speedster: Besides her single-target damage potential, she also moves very fast, and her stealth lets her pass through enemy lines unmolested to target high priority targets like Archers, Trolls, and bosses. But as noted below, her health sucks, and the nature of how she operates requires that she expose herself to a lot of risk.
- Glass Cannon: She has a lot of damage potential as well as being incredibly agile, but lacks survivability in a sustained fight. This can be fixed a little with weaver upgrades that give her regeneration and upgraded armor. Alternatively, you can take a weaver upgrade that removes her respawn timer, meaning that she can just die over and over again with no downtime (maybe a take on a cat's nine lives?).
- Hoist by His Own Petard: When she first left her dojo and tried to make it as a solo assassin, she ran into a lot of failures, brought about chiefly by her own hubris, impatience, or inexperience. One time she accidentally got caught in a snare she had set HERSELF because she got tired of waiting for her target to fall prey to it.
- Hurricane of Puns: Frequently quips out cat puns while fighting and laying traps. So many cat puns.
- Pride Before a Fall: After leaving her dojo, Midnight goes through a lot of growing pains struggling to make a living off her skills. For a good while she stubbornly refuses to return home despite the hardship and the pleading of her sensei. It takes a series of failures knocking her down a peg (or several) before she finally relents... but by then, it's far too late. Has nothing to do with the fact that she is a cat.
- Punch-Clock Villain: She's hired by the Unchained instead of sharing their goals or working with them for personal reasons. This shows up in one of her weaver upgrades where she gets paid some coin each time she hits an enemy minion.
Oziel
The Soul Thief
An undead sorcerer whose attacks drain health. His primary attack is a ranged attack that steals health from enemies. He can toss a jar of desecrated souls at the ground that slows and damages enemies, drain his health to refill his mana and summon spirits to haunt his enemies, causing them to explode when killed. Whenever an enemy dies near him, Oziel absorbs their souls, which increases his max mana and the effectiveness of his abilities.
- A Fate Worse Than Death: The story teller narrating his bio states that at least Death brings oblivion. Having your soul stolen by Oziel, meanwhile, means an eternity of torment.
- Cast From Hitpoints: He can sacrifice his own health to refill his mana.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: His first act of soul theft was trapping and stealing a ton of souls from Death itself before Death could escape.
- Evolving Attack: His Wraith Surge ability does damage to a single target and has a small cooldown. Consecutive hits from Wraith Surge to the same target increase both its damage and its mana cost.
- Immortality Seeker: Why he became the Soul Thief in the first place.
- Life Drain: His basic attack has innate life steal.
- Power Floats: Uses his powers as a sorcerer to levitate inches off the ground instead of doing anything pedestrian like walking.
- Situational Damage Attack: Most of Oziel's attacks scale their damage directly with his current mana, so he has incentive to keep his mana levels high. Since he has both Life Drain and Cast From Hitpoints, he frequently trades off between the two to keep his damage optimum.
- Start of Darkness: His desire to become immortal led to his downfall. Furthermore, he may have been connected with both Smolder and Gabriella's descent into villany; while he's not outright named (since the bio is heavily redacted) it is strongly implied that he is the mage who was responsible for torturing and repeatedly killing Smolder as a child, and that Gabriella may have been briefly apprenticed to Oziel, since the apprentice in the bio used mind-control magic.
- Status Effects: His Desecrated Ground ability slows down and damages enemies that pass over a patch of terrain.
- Token Evil Teammate: Most of the Unchained have sympathetic goals, a Freudian Excuse, or a more primal drive (Bloodspike's hunger, for example). Oziel meanwhile gives people a fate worse than death so he can live forever and become more powerful. He was originally an Order Mage, but not being the best wasn't good enough for him so he sought more power no matter what the cost, and it only gets worse from there. About the only nice thing about him is that he's sort of Affably Evil, and even then not as much as the rest of the Unchained.
- Your Soul Is Mine!: Anytime he kills enemies nearby, he absorbs their souls to make himself more powerful.
Smolder
The Fireborn
A fire mage who specializes in burning her enemies alive. Her basic attack has her tossing fireballs while her secondary has her breathe fire upon her enemies in a cone in front of her. She can surround herself in fire to burn enemies around her and summon a flaming tornado that deals a percentage based on max health to any burning enemies. Her passive lets her revive in a flaming explosion if killed.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Her egg was found by an alchemist of the Order. In an attempt to get her to display her true Phoenix form (without any proof that she actually had a true phoenix form or that she was actually a phoenix), he killed her over and over again. She eventually killed him in return and then dissappeared. Many years later, she's aligned with the Unchained.
- Evil Redhead: She's a villainous redheaded sorceress aligned with the villain faction of the game.
- Ms. Fanservice: Busty? Check. Curvy, slender legs? Check. Sultry Russian accent? Check. Clothing (or lack thereof) that further flatters her already shapely figure? Check. Idle animation involves swaying her hips? Check. Victory dance at the end of a match involves fluid, seductive movements that emphasise her arms, legs and hips? Check. Yeah, even in comparison to other female heroes like Gabriella and Ivy, Smolder is practically walking, talking sex appeal.
- Playing with Fire: If you can't tell, she's all about fire damage.
- Sensual Slav: While she isn't a Femme Fatale like most examples, she's got the accent down... as well as everything else.
- Stripperific: Her default outfit. In addition, one of her costumes is a bikini that hides even less skin. The rest of her costumes either downplay or avert this, though.
- Taking You with Me: If killed, she reincarnates in a fiery explosion that will likely take out the one who killed her.
- The Phoenix: She has the powers of one, including coming back from ashes upon death. However, despite being born with a beak, there's no proof she actually is one. The lengths that her adoptive father (a term that's really giving him too much credit) went through to prove she was a phoenix were so horrific that they were her Start of Darkness.
- The Dog Bites Back: When she was a child, she eventually killed her abusive adoptive father.
Stinkeye
Shaman of Oasis
A Cyclops mage who utilizes totems to do his bidding. His basic attack fires off a blast from his staff while his secondary attack creates a magical bomb that explodes after a few seconds. His Wrath of Oasis totem shoots nearby enemies and fires five homing projectiles when shot at while his Zephyr of Oasis speeds up allies while slowing down enemies and lets off a stunning blast when shot. His passive causes a Shaman's Blessing totem to appear whenever a totem expires, creating a mana orb in place of it.
- Freudian Excuse: His race was ostracized by the other races in the normal world because they refused to bathe (they dislike the feel of water on their skin) and were ugly. Now, with their god Oasis' guidance and the realization that they were once a glorious race, they're fighting back.
- Mighty Glacier: He's an offensive powerhouse, but also quite sluggish.
- The Chosen One: Played with. Oasis chose him to be the Shaman of Oasis just because he was there and didn't have enough power to continue searching for anyone else. "I guess you'll have to do."
- The Turret Master: His totems are functionally turrets that can attack or debuff enemies.
