Characters / Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous — Primary Party Members

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Character Index
Primary Party | Optional Companions | DLC Party Members

This is the character sheet for the Player Character and their core companions in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.

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The Commander

Race: Any
Class: Any
Alignment: Any
Deity: Any

The Player Character. In the beginning of the game, they're dragged by a group of Crusaders in the middle of a festival after sustaining a life threatening injury. However, this just puts them in the middle of a series of events that will decide the fate of the Crusades.

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• Achey Scars: One that is part of their mysterious condition at the beginning of the game, and that reopens periodically, usually when an event that is about to increase their mythic rank is about to occur. Can fall on either side of Good Scars, Evil Scars depending on their alignment.
• All-Loving Hero: A Commander that picks mostly Good dialogue options can try to redeem everyone and try to cause as little casualties as possible.
• The Archmage: The Commander is notably powerful no matter what build the player decides on, but it stands out especially if a full-caster build embarks on the Angel or Lich mythic paths. The mythic spellbook granted by those paths stacks with the existing (divine or arcane respectively) spellbook they possess and results in a character who can cast level 10 spells, which are usually just treated as a theoretical and a bit of a running joke; they also add their mythic rank to their caster level, which also means much faster access to high level spells. Even when starting out on the "real" mythic path at the beginning of chapter 3, you can be a 10th-level character with access to spell level seven, which is where a lot of really powerful effects come in, and it just escalates from there. Legend, with its "40 character levels" gimmick and the fact that it inherits any merged spellbook while discarding other mythic elements, can in some ways get even more absurd, and 40 character levels makes mystic theurge builds much more attractive, allowing you to be a far more conventional archmage.
• Ascended Demon: A Commander who starts out on the Demon mythic path can switch to Gold Dragon or Legend at the start of Act 5, which is acknowledged in-game a last-minute act of redemption. For bonus points, if the Commander is romancing Arueshalae, herself a demon on a redemption quest, she will have special dialogue for this specific sequence of events, and can even override the saving throw required to switch to Legend and make it an automatic success.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Basically put in charge of the crusade because they have mythic powers, not because of any previous leadership ability.
• Badass Normal: Can become one in the Legend path, giving up on acquiring Mythic power and just becoming a regular mortal...with all of their potential unlocked, which translates in being able to level up to 40.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Aside from attempting to stay on a good alignment with evil powers, the source of the Commander’s Mythic powers are demonic in nature and come from crystalized demon blood. Despite that they can manifest it in positive ways such as the Angel, Azata and Golden Dragon paths. Some characters even express amazement at a character becoming celestial despite the source of their powers.
• Barrier Maiden: A Gold Dragon commander can become this, being the guardian of the Worldwound. Their influence diminishing its power, and their presence and accompanying army of Dragons keeping any demon at bay.
• The Beastmaster: There's plenty of classes that allows the Commander to have an animal companion, typically a horse. Others, like Druids and Hunters, can range from your typical wolves, tigers, and bears, to more exotic triceratopses and mammoths.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: It's possible for a Commander on the Azata path (which is the Chaotic Good path) to get swayed by a disguised Mephistopheles into becoming a Lawful Evil Devil.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: A Trickster Commander who sacrificed their life at the end of the game can criticize the ending and force the Narrator to rewrite it so that they survive.
  Trickster: What kind of an ending was that? No, no, no, it all went completely differently!
• Brought Down to Badass: At the start of act 5, Iomedae herself shows up and will ask the Commander to give up their mythic powers as they were obtained from demonic experiments and could potentially lead to ruin. If the Commander accepts this, they lose all of their mythic path specific abilities, but they become empowered in a different way and begin to gain experience at a very enhanced rate, beginning the Legend path. Alongside the enhanced EXP gain, their level cap rises 20 levels, allowing them to reach level 40 before capping (split among at least 2 classes).
• But Now I Must Go: The player can choose whether they plan to stay in Drezen after the crusade finishes or leave to go on other adventures. The Ascension ending has them leave no matter what to join the deities of Golarion as a new god.
• Catchphrase: When the Commander is finished with a line of questioning, or about to make an important decision, they often say "Everything is clear." They also often tell companions “they should go” prior to exiting conversations, which leads to some quips depending on the party member.
• Chick Magnet: Or Dude Magnet. It is incredibly easy for the Commander to attract the attention of their companions provided they fit their gender preference. Even if the player doesn't pursue them Daeran, Camellia, Lann, and Sosiel will actively try to court them while dialogue indicates that Arueshalae is attracted but reluctant to pursue due to her past.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: Due to how easily some lines can be taken as flirtation, the Commander can unintentionally start romances with various companions without even realizing it. Sosiel, Lann and Daeran are notorious for this since some friendly dialogue options will trigger their romance route flags without the player even noticing. The Commander can even play this up on Daeran's route, acting increasingly oblivious to Daeran's obvious flirtations.
• The Chosen One:
  • Believed to be Iomedae's chosen. The truth is more complex however.
  • On the Gold Dragon or Azata paths the commander is chosen by a nascent dragon god to be its guardian and caretaker.
• Composite Character: In the original Adventure Path, a PC with the Guardian background would have a scar from demonic contact that would ache and reopen in the presence of certain mythic demons or worshippers, one with the Hierophant background was revealed to be the child of a god or demigod, while one with the Champion background had mythic potential because of being experimented on by demons. The Commander is all three, with their wound also being a product of said experimentation, and is revealed to be (to some extent) the child of Areelu Vorlesh, the closest being to divinity in the Wound this side of demon lords.
• Confusion Fu: The Azata path is characterized by this. Your demonic foes complain that they have no idea how to counter you because they have no idea what you're going to do and have no plan to deal with whatever bizarre insanity you're going to throw at them.
  • The Trickster path is far, far worse for them: the Azata path is bound by the laws of reality, after all. The Trickster is not.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?:
  • In the prologue, the PC can hit the demon lord Deskari with a crossbow bolt in a cutscene. It doesn't do much more than piss him off—but he is INCREDIBLY pissed off that a mere mortal would stand and fight a demon lord right after he subjected a silver dragon to a Curb-Stomp Battle.
  • An Angel path commander can successfully intimidate Deskari enough that he the demon lord actually tries to run away despite being in his realm and at the height of his power. Given that he's already been killed before, and thus is at risk of being Killed Off for Real, Deskari's fear is justified yet satisfying to watch.
• Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: Inverted. The Commander can still pursue a romance with their (relatively) humanoid companions even as they turn into a righteous Angel, a raging Demon, a Devil, a Dragon, an embodiment of cosmic order, or whatever mythic badass the player chose for the Commander. Tragically subverted with the Lich and Swarm-that-Walks paths.
• Dragon Rider: On the Azata path, once your pet dragon Aivu becomes big and strong enough, you get the option to ride her into battle!
• A Father to His Men: The Commander can be played this way. If they keep casualties to a minimum, complete Wilcer Garms' quests, and make sure the supply lines keep going, Garms will report that they are greatly respected among the soldiers and will even get a few gifts from them.
• Fertile Feet: Azata characters exert their mythic power on the land around them, causing plants to sprout and water to flow in formerly infertile places.
• Good Is Not Soft: Most of the time the game doesn't penalize you for outright executing surrendering enemies if they're evil enough. At one point a cultist necromancer pulls an I Surrender, Suckers on a cleric who is bound by his god to show mercy... except the Commander isn't bound by that same prohibition and can execute the cultist on the spot.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Several endings, such as the True Aeon ending, have them sacrifice themselves in one way or another to close the Worldwound.
• In Medias Res: Unlike the intro of Kingmaker, where's there's a plausible plothook that explains why you're there in the Stolen Lands, there's not so much of a story page — you're just dumped in the middle of a festival. This is, however, very, very deliberate.
• I See Dead People: A Lich commander can uniquely see ghosts in certain places around the Worldwound. Some will offer simple flavor lore, others are more useful, like warning you that they died to a boulder trap that's just ahead.
• Jumped at the Call: Regardless of their reasons for arriving in Kenabres, the Commander agrees to lead the Crusade without hesitation once offered it by Queen Galfrey. Dialogue in the intro can even have them claim to be a Crusader who came to fight demons or another sellsword looking for their fortune.
• Karmic Transformation: A Trickster commander can hand these out, such as turning a vain transmutation wizard into a mirror or fusing two feuding demons into a single being.
• Insane Troll Logic: Another part and parcel of the Trickster path tricks. A lot of them sound like a particularly loony interpretation of tabletop game rules that a player managed to convince their DM that they work.
  • Trickery 1 and 2: "Multiple magical effects do not differ much from complex magical traps, and can be disabled together just like any device. " Then comes trickery 3: "Living creatures are also just complex devices and can also be easily disabled."
  • The athletics tricks basically go "I can use Athletics to break out of one specific spell therefore I might as well use it on other spells too if I'm strong enough like it's a saving throw" to "If I can use athletics in place of saves, I can sub athletics checks for any d20 check I want."
• Large and in Charge: If the commander picks the Gold Dragon mythic path, they are a very large dragon and commands the crusade. And yes you can have council meetings while in Dragon Form.
• Leitmotif: The commander gains one tied to each of the possible Mythic paths. Alongside them, Mythic Power often plays when the commander does particularly impressive things.
  • Angel: Light Of Heaven, an ethereal One-Woman Wail that eventually rises above the sweeping, triumphant orchestra and Cherubic Choir.
  • Demon: Succumbing To Rage, with its Ominous Latin Chanting and sinister Rotten Rock & Roll electric guitars and a distortion-heavy pulsing beat, more like boss music in a horror game than the player character's theme in a medieval fantasy setting. Fitting, given what the Demon Commander is turning into. The Boss Battles against demon lords Baphomet and Deskari similarly utilize rock guitars and choral chanting in Face the Abyss.
  • Aeon: The Cosmic Balance, a combined Lonely Piano Piece/Tick Tock Tune which grows to an epic crescendo, suggestive of the Aeon's lonely vigil and the weight of their duty.
  • Azata: Starward Gaze -- Song Of Elysium, beginning with a call and response between strings and a lone Avian Flute, the simple melody shared first between the Commander and the Desnans in Kenabres, then again with Arueshalae at the Lost Chapel. A backing of horns and pounding drums soon joins in as the freedom-loving Azata fights to protect the peaceful places of the world.
  • Trickster: Laughing Till the End, a jaunty, booming Danny Elfman-esque happy/creepy circus march interlaced with Ominous Latin Chanting, emphasizing the Trickster's fun-loving, deceptively dangerous antics.
  • Lich: Lord of the Dead, an inexorable death march, with a harpsichord adding a touch of Baroque sophistication as the piercing ghostly vocals wend through the dread-inducing Deathly Dies Irae motif.
  • Gold Dragon: Wisdom of Millennia, with its rousing, galloping strings and thundering brass and percussion sections, suitably epic for the noble dragon.
  • Legend: Master of My Own Fate: A rousing tune that borrows notes from the aforementioned Mythic Power. Making use of rousing strings to evoke the heroic spirit of a Legendary hero.
  • Devil: Hell's Advance: A rythmic piece opening with Ominous Pipe Organ, filled with Ominous Latin Chanting, and horns and drums evoking the Inception Horn with its strict regular tempo emphasizing the devils' orderly yet evil nature.
  • Swarm-That-Walks: The Hunger Eternal: A galloping menacing tune, combing deep beats and lighter notes, evoking a deeper menace made of smaller things. Its later string arrangements also mimic the sounds of a swarm of insects. And of course healthy dose of Ominous Latin Chanting.
  • In a variation, the cheerful, mouth harp-heavy City Day festival theme from the very beginning of the game is actually titled "Ode to the Armored Armadillo" — an epithet the Commander can optionally claim for themselves when introducing themselves to the innkeeper at the Half Measure Tavern.
• Magic Knight: If the Commander is any melee combat class, they will inevitably become one of these thanks to their Mythic powers, and many racial traits and melee combat classes also give them access to some form of magic. It is actually much harder to have no magic at all than to have some spells or supernatural abilities.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Perhaps. Lann, being a short-lived Mongrelman (average lifespan of 35-40 years), is this for anybody. Aside from that, it's left ambiguous whether their Mythic paths actually turn them into Outsiders or not but if so then any romance besides that of Arueshelae definitely counts given that companions are mentioned as dying of old age in some of their endings.
• Metaphorical Marriage: With Wenduag if they agree to take Savamelekh's poison.
• Morality Chain: Deconstructed. They can try to be this for Camellia but it ends with failure since Camellia will turn against them if her murderous habits aren’t indulged.
• Nature Hero: The Azata path gives the Commander plenty of abilities that reflect the untamed aspects of nature, like summoning squalls or leaves as sharp as knives. They also gradually turn Drezen greener with more vegetation as time goes on.
• Necromancer: The Lich path puts the Commander on the path of being the most powerful controller of the undead on Golarion. You start with simple skeletons and eventually start raising powerful spirits, daemons, and undead mammoths.
• "Not So Different" Remark: An Angel Commander will give one as an Armour Piercing Response to Iomedae if you choose to keep your powers in Act 5.
  Angel: You sacrificed your own humanity to serve the forces of good, goddess. Do not judge me if I choose to do the same.
• One-Man Army:
  • Played Straight dependent on the build but specifically required for Swarm playthroughs where every single party member leaves. The Commander will either have to fight solo or with the help of clones. The Gold Dragon Mythic Path also eschews any kind of party buff mechanics (Like the Angel's halo, the Demon's rage, the Azata's songs, the trickster's Tricks etc...) in favor of a ton of resistances, immunities, and stat buffs applied to the commander (even more so in Dragon form) to turn them into this.
  • Early in Act 5, the commander and their troops will face a battalion of demons. The commander has to pick either their current mythic path option or one of the new ones they might have unlocked. Several of the resulting actions have the commander singlehandedly wiping out the entire demonic force in a single attack, such as by raining fire upon them from heaven if they are an Angel or turning into a gold dragon and incinerating the demons with holy fire.
• Ontological Mystery: You're just dumped into the story unceremoniously, and figuring out what happened to you is one of the main plot threads of the game.
• Protagonist Power-Up Privileges: Guess who among the playable cast actually gets Mythic Ranks (and indeed Mythic Paths at all)?
• Protagonist Without a Past: Seemingly averted in that you build your character's background during character creation, however certain dialogue when you free Targona from Areelu's lab implies that you were her experiment for a long time. One particular line changes depending on whether you are a long lived race like an elf or dwarf or a shortlived one (like basically every other race). If you are a long lived race, Targona mentions about a test subject that was brought in one day whose soul Areelu planned to experiment on, which is implied to be the Commander. However, for Commanders of a short lived race, Targona's dialogue changes to mention that the test subject that was brought in was a child. This seems to imply that shorter lived Commanders may have spent the vast majority of their lives as Areelu's test subject before being dropped off at Kenabres at the start, calling into question much of their background.
• Reality Warper: A commander on the trickster path showcases this ability. As the game says it: "In the commander's hands, reality itself seems to play along with this whimsical joke" and "The further this joke goes, the more absurd reality becomes, and the more real the absurd becomes".
• Refuge in Audacity: Bread and butter of the Trickster path. Several of the abilities are described as such.
  • Mobility 2 and 3: You decide that avoiding attacks of opportunity is boring and it'd be much more fun to be the one doing them when you trigger them. Enemies are so surprised by this they are easier to hit.
  • Religion 2: If you know enough about religion, you're basically close enough to being a cleric you might as well pick domains like one.
  • Religion 3: Really you can just make up your own religion and pick more domains.
  • Knowledge Arcana 3 has your character realize they can just make up additional properties for magical items while identifying them, and the items will have those.
  • This can ultimatley culminate in a Trickster Commander willing themselves back to life if they sacrifice themselves to close the Worldwound.
• Replacement Goldfish: In a rather twisted sense, they were meant to be this to Areelu Vorlesh's child. Or rather she implanted them with traces of her child's soul in the hope that her child would be reborn through them.
• Ret-Gone: In the True Aeon ending, they travel back in time and kill Areelu before she opens the Worldwound, preventing it from ever opening. This causes the Commander to disappear from existence in the new timeline, though they can choose to let their companions remember them.
• Rightly Self-Righteous:
  • An angel Commander can do this a few time to people who doubt their goodness. When The Hand of the Inheritor questions the meaning of the commander's powers being born of the abyss, you can reply to him that despite his doubt you're still going to go close the Worldwound coz someone has to do it. He'll reply that your conviction and righteousness actually does put him to shame. Similarly when Galfrey questions the Commander's decision to partner up with Arueshalae (a succubus) and believing she's capable of redemption, an Angel commander can reply that they as an angelic being see the light in Arueshalae's soul. Galfrey has no choice but to accept this.
  • A Gold Dragon commander can pull this on Iomedae herself, saying that Areelu deserves a chance to redeem herself and that they are willing to fight anyone who would instead sacrifice her, even a god or Demon Lord. Iomedae is forced to concede to the commander's belief in redemption. Notably the commander if they choose this path, is correct. Areelu spends the rest of her days redeeming herself, helping protect the Worldwound. When she dies, Pharasma sends her to Elysium or Nirvana rather than to the Abyss or the Maelstrom.
• Orphan's Plot Trinket: Not made clear until Act 4 but the Engraved Lucky Bracers are one of these, Areelu made them for the Commander as a child and it's revealed the engraving actually says "I promise"
• The Redeemer: A Commander, especially one on a Good-aligned path, can directly or indirectly sway several of the characters they interact towards the side of good. Said characters include but aren't limited to Wenduag, Arueshalae, Daeran, Nocticula, Nahyndri and, in the Azata or Gold Dragon path, even Areelu herself.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: An aeon Commander is given opportunities to travel to the past to attempt this. This allows the Commander to undo Staunton Vhane's fall from grace by making it so that Drezen was never overtaken to begin with. At the end of the Aeon path, they can do the same to remove the Worldwound itself from history, though this will also undo their own existence.
• Spanner in the Works: Areelu chose them to revive their child while Nocticula did so to find a pawn to close the Worldwound. They can do one or the other or screw over both their plans by keeping the Worldwound open (Trickster and Swarm) or destroying what remains of Areelu's child's soul (Legend path).
• Stable Time Loop:
  • A commander on the Aeon Path finds out The Aeon trying to make him into an Aeon is themselves — their own future pure Aeon self.
  • Likewise, a Trickster commander will find out they merged/will merge with Shyka in one of the timelines, and the one who set up their road to becoming a Trickster was/will be said merged Commander themselves.
• Tomato in the Mirror: In "Inevitable Excess", the "Commander" you've been controlling throughout the DLC turns out to in fact be a clone of them created from the original's excess mythic power, and the world they're in is in fact a Lotus-Eater Machine prison created by Valmallo, who feared that the excess mythic power could damage the Material Plane's balance.
• Unique Protagonist Asset: The Commander is the sole character who will actually gain Mythic Ranks in this take of Wrath; in the tabletop version, all the player characters did, but in this version only the Commander becomes "mythic" (the other companions are essentially piggybacking off of your mythic-ness). This has something to do with their strange chest wound and the Commander can pick from a number of available Mythic Paths, dictated by their actions and beliefs. Mechanically, this also gives the Commander a set of unique abilities nobody else can have, meaning that they'll always play differently from other PCs (which was a problem in Kingmaker, since in that game it wasn't too difficult to stumble into a character build that was highly similar to many of the available PC companions, leaving you feeling less unique).
• Unstoppable Rage: The Demon Mythic Path is all about indulging this, to the point that if you committed fully to the Demon path and overthrew Nocticula to claim her domain you can sacrifice yourself to close the Worldwound and still survive because you get so angry at Pharasma judging you that you ascend to true demonhood through sheer anger and defiance.
• Villain Protagonist: Unusual in that you can not only follow the usual video game trend of being called evil but merely up against a bigger evil by being a Lich, Demon, or Devil, but that there’s the incredibly rare option to be that bigger evil by becoming a Swarm-That-Walks, a threat so big that warrants everyone turning against you because even if you stop the Worldwound, you’d be a bigger threat than it could ever be.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: The Commander has a chest wound that can't be healed even with Greater Restoration. The wound tends to open up in moments coinciding with their Mythic powers increasing. The wound is tied to the Worldwound itself due to Areelu's experiments with the Commander's soul. No matter how powerful the Commander becomes, the wound will eventually kill them unless the Worldwound is closed.

Core Companions

In General

• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The justification that can be used for taking evil party members such as Regill, Wenduag and Camellia. Even if the Commander thinks they deserve execution or jail for their crimes they can justify keeping them around due to their skillsets and contributions.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Some of them appear in the intro before becoming party members later. Seelah, Camellia and Daeran have speaking roles while Ember is sitting elsewhere asking for donations.
• Empowered Badass Normal: With the exception of Arueshalae, they're all regular adventurer-types who, while strong in their own right, would normally be no match for mythic creatures. Fortunately, the Player Character acts as a source of minor mythic power for them, letting them catch up with the challenge level of the story.
• Establishing Character Moment: Each companion gets a scene that shows what they're about.
  • Seelah first shows up in the intro offering to help get Terendelev despite not being asked. When the player finds her in the underground caverns she's trying to help Anevia and cheerfully greets a Commander who says they came to fight the Crusade. Seelah is friendly, selfless and prioritizes good and helping others.
  • Camellia tries to excuse away finding Terendelev despite Hulrun's orders on the basis that there are other people (i.e non-nobles) betters suited for it while ingratiating herself to the party by mentioning her skill with a rapier. She's also found in front of a dead body which, as shown later, she personally killed. Camellia is a snobby, poised and murderous noblewoman who looks down on others and thinks highly of herself.
  • Lann makes jokes immediately after encountering the party and offers to lead them back to the village despite them being strangers in exchange for mutual aid. Lann is friendly and open but also prioritizes his tribe and their goals over that of unknowns.
  • Wenduag is immediately suspicious of the group, gets annoyed at Lann's jokes and, at the end of the Shield Maze, is revealed as a Social Darwinist who will do anything if she thinks it will make her more powerful and doesn't care who she has to kill or betray to get there.
  • Woljif is in a cell bored out of his mind and tricks the guards with a fake shadow. He then talks the Commander into letting him out and helping prove his innocence in a theft which he's actually responsible for against his Thiefling 'family'. Woljif is a thief with a bit of magic who doesn't trust anyone and prioritizes his own needs above others.
  • Ember is about to be sacrificed by a group of desperate Crusaders who think they'll get power from innocent blood. Rather than panicking or trying to run away she tries to comfort them and even pleads for the Commander to not hurt them, much to the disbelief of various companions. Ember is a Nice Girl who easily forgives people who try to do her harm so long as they have even a hint of remorse (and a lot of the times even when they don't).
  • Daeran comments that Hulrun should put the Commander in either an infirmary or a ditch during the introduction. When he's encountered in his mansion he's having a hedonistic party despite the demonic invasion and regards the interruption with more amusement than anything else before jumping into the fray. Daeran is a selfish hedonist who enjoys watching chaos unfold around him but is surprisingly brave and doesn't hesitate to risk his life.
  • Nenio is shown testing a group of Baphomet cultists on religious questions, completely uncaring of the devastation around her or the possible danger to herself. She then subesquently tests the Commander while simultaneously commenting on their intelligence. Nenio is an Insufferable Genius who only cares about expanding her knowledge above all else.
  • Sosiel performs last rites for the people who died in Kenabres before they rise from the dead and attack the attendants. When he finds out the man responsible was someone who attended the temple his temper flares and he beats him down, stopping only when he remembers Shelyn's teachings. Sosiel is a good man but has an innate anger that comes out when he finds something unforgiveable.
  • Regill kills the wounded of his own squad to prevent them from being taken by the gargoyles. When called out on it he justifies himself with cold logic that's eventually proven right and makes no attempt to sugarcoat his actions. Regill is a cruel and merciless killer who believes in Pragmatic Villainy above all else.
  • Greybor is shown scouting a group of demons and states that if the player attacks he'll kill one he was contracted to but no more. If Seelah calls him out on it he'll just shrug her off. He later does the same against a demon general he was again contracted to assassinate. Greybor is a Professional Killer who's Only in It for the Money. He doesn't care about causes and he'll do anything if he's paid enough.
  • Arueshelae is confined in a cell in Drezen because she's an Ascended Demon who was caught spying and trying to warn the Crusaders of the Demons' plans. An Azata Commander can further connect to her by singing a song of Desna, showcasing her connection to the Goddess. Arueshelae is an Ascended Demon trying to leave her nature behind and fights for the Mortal races of Golarion to atone for her numerous crimes.
• Evil vs. Evil: Evil characters such as Regill, Daeran, Wenduag and Camellia are also against the demon hordes. While they have varying reasons, the most common one is that demons are against everyone in general and they're not any safer, alignment or no.
  • In a smaller sense, none of the Evil companions get along either with Wenduag and Camellia being particularly nasty to one another. Daeran and Camellia seem to get along but it becomes clear later that Daeran knows about her habits and even subtly digs at her for it.
• Heartbroken Badass: If the Commander dies, either from a Heroic Sacrifice or inducing a Ret-Gone scenario, then the romancable companions are clearly hurt. It's stated that they never moved on or married and even in the fixed Aeon timeline (if the Commander lets them remember) they stay loyal to their memory.
• It's Personal: While in the Kingmaker game most companions' stories were only tangentially related to the main plot, all of the companions in this game (sans Grebor) have their very personal reasons for taking the fight to the Worldwound. To elaborate:
  • Arueshalae is attempting to aid the crusaders to redeem herself from her very own demonic nature.
  • Camellia justifies her atrocities with the alleged promise of a weapon against the demons by Mireya. She actually joins the front so she has an easier time hiding her kills amidst the casualties of battle..
  • Daeran had his unfortunate encounter with the Other as a consequence of a demonic attack that murdered his entire family.
  • Ember is personally convinced she can talk down the demon lords themselves from causing any more suffering. And in a couple of cases, she can.
  • Greybor has been contracted to kill the balor Darrazand and other demons.
  • Lann knows the mongrelmen's deformities are derived from demonic corruption and wants to make the most of his life fighting for the cause.
  • Nenio is morbidly intrigued by demons and their magic and technology, to the point she isn't afraid to approach Vorlesh herself hoping for an interview.
  • Regill is on a mission from his Hellknight Order, and opposes the forces of chaos, which demons also embody, on principle.
  • Seelah is a paladin of Iomedae and is already engaged in the crusade on principle.
  • Wenduag chafed under the vrolikai Savamelekh and seeks to kill him once she shifts side to the Commander, because she always sides with the strongest out of self-preservation.
  • Finally, Woljif is being hunted by agents of Hepzamirah, as his grandfather, Ygefeles son of Baphomet was killed by one of her agents.
• Even Evil Has Standards: There's no doubt that several of your companions range from morally questionable to downright evil, but going down the Swarm mythic path is the quickest way to have them abandon you — even companions who care little about the lives of others, like Camellia and Wenduag, want nothing to do with you if you take this route.
• Overrated and Underleveled: Most of the party are implied to be veterans of some kind, or at least skilled in their craft, but they start with low levels and horrible equipment. The only one to avert this are Arueshelae and Greybor who come later and thus have higher levels and equipment. Ember and Woljif are also as skilled as you'd expect a Street Urchin and a small time thief would be. And Trevor has many levels with an effective build, appearing very late in the game, but he has horrible equipment because he was an enslaved gladiator.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: In the true Aeon ending the Worldwound never opened and thus their lives improved significantly such as Daeran never losing his mother and not bonding to the other, Wenduag and Lann being born as humans rather than Mongrels, and Ember's father not dragging her to Mendev and being burned at the stake. This does mean, however, that Arueshelae remains trapped in the Abyss and never received her redemption.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: If the player chooses the Swarm mythic path then everyone will leave them due to how monstrous they've become.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: While some of them get along, at least one person dislikes or outright hates somebody else on the team and they're only kept together due to mutual goals. They'll even kill each other if needed such as if Wenduag betrays the team at Chapter 4 or if the Commander decides to arrest/kill Camellia for her crimes.

Arueshalae

"Because if I don't kill my past, it will always be reaching for me."

Race: Ascended Succubus
Class: Ranger (Espionage Expert)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral Chaotic Good / Chaotic Evil
Deity: Desna

Voiced by: Nikki Thomas

A succubus formerly of the demon armies of the Worldwound, Divine Intervention by Desna gave Arueshalae her conscience back. Now she fights in secret for the Crusade.

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• Adaptational Attractiveness: Her art in the tabletop portrays her with full red eyes, harsher features and a tattoo on the left side of her face. By contrast her game art makes her look conventionally softer and gentler.
• Ascended Demon: She seeks to fully abandon her former evil and destructive ways and dedicate herself to making up for the evil she did as a servant of the Abyss. She's not quite there yet, but she's successfully changed her alignment from Chaotic Evil to Chaotic Neutral, and is trying to seal the deal with a full transition to Chaotic Good.
• The Atoner: As a succubus who just got her conscience back, she has a lot of work to do. The depths of her past evil are also fully shown, including her having openly discuss that she ate souls, that every sexual act was sexual violence, slavery, and far more. Arueshalae admits to once having been far worse than even Camellia.
• Babies Make Everything Better: She expresses an interest in having children with the Commander, though she's unsure if succubi can even have children.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • More sweet than bitter, but even if she fully changes her nature she's forced to live in seclusion away from people due to being an Ascended Demon. The sweet part comes from the fact that the people from a nearby village come to her for help and due to her kindness treat her with a sort of reverence, meaning she does find acceptance of a sort. Even moreso if she romances the Commander since they frequently visit her.
  • Played straight if she changes her nature, romances the commander, but the commander sacrifices themselves to close the Worldwound (Such as in the True Azata ending). The same as above happens, but she starts spending more and more time in her dream world where she can dream that she's with her beloved commander. Overtime the villagers find her house to be deserted for longer and longer as she becomes absorbed in her dream.
• Blood Knight: She used to be a formidable gladiator of some renown in the Battlebliss Arena with all evidence indicating she once had a taste for combat before her encounter with Desna.
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma: As a succubus who is just beginning to understand mortal customs, she has a particularly hard time with proverbs. Whenever she tries to use one, she mixes up the words, before realizing it and awkwardly correcting herself.
• Cannot Spit It Out: She's clearly holding a torch for the Commander but she only ever indirectly refers to it and she'll deflect or change the subject when the Commander tries to bring it up. In Areelu Vorlesh's lab when the party is shown illusions of their desires, hers is a fantasy of her 'owning' the Commander, which she fervently denies due to the implications of her past evil. Hearing the Commander declare they love her is a major step in her romance for this reason, making her realize she can be loved in return, and working up the courage to do the same.
• Can't Have Sex, Ever: Because she's a succubus, any form of intimacy, even a kiss, is lethal to her partner. Notably she cannot turn this off, which causes her a lot of anxiety as she's very curious about the various ways mortal express affection, from romantic love to casual sex. If romanced, she's overjoyed when her personal questline is completed and she can finally make love to the Commander without killing them.
• Chaotic Neutral: Her In-Universe alignment, though she acts more Chaotic Good or even Neutral Good in practice, and can change to Chaotic Good or fall back to Chaotic Evil depending how her character arc plays out. This is due to her inherently evil nature clashing with her desire to do good, meaning she isn't fully sure what she should do at times, and can fall back to habits she is trying to resist. Generally speaking she prefers kindness, helping people and looking out for the little guy.
• Downer Ending:
  • In the True Aeon path, she remains a demon and never begins her redemption, although if her memories of the Commander are left, she has a strange aversion to bloodshed.
  • Should you make her fall and have her ascend, she'll become so drunk on her newfound power that she attempts to kill the Commander and take their place. This predictably doesn't end well for her.
• Eternal Love: Assuming the Commander's Mythic path gives them an Outsider's lifespan, then any romance with Arueshelae means that their relationship can last so long as neither are killed by outside forces.
• Face–Heel Turn: If pushed by the Commander, she can fall and become Chaotic Evil again.
• Fights Like a Normal: Despite being a succubus she fights like a ranger with a preference for bows and starknives (Desna's favored weapon) rather than claws or domination. Gameplay wise, her Ranger archetype (Espionage Expert) forgoes a lot of the stronger Ranger abilities, making her weaker on paper, but still strong because of her stat total. Justified due to her desire to be an Ascended Demon, leaving her demonic powers behind. A few times it's shown she still has some of her old powers, but actively suppresses them.
• Foil: To Daeran. She's an (almost) Ascended Demon who tries to do good while he's a celestial-blooded aasimar who revels in being a selfish hedonist. Likewise while Daeran will aggressively court a Commander who gained his interest, Arue is reluctant and will shy away from any overt attempts at romance from her end or theirs.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: A dhampyr PC should be immune to her energy drain effect, and the death ward spell is available as protection for others, but this is never brought up as a possibility in her romance.
• Hates Being Touched: Inverted. She very much would like to make physical contact with people but her demonic nature means that even fleeting touches can be dangerous. She's practically driven to tears when she fully leaves her demonic nature behind and can now touch the Commander.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: If the Commander tells her that she's no better than the instincts she tries to repress, she goes back to her old ways and falls.
• Heel–Face Turn: She is in the middle of one when the Adventure Path begins, and the events of the later half of the adventure will determine how this will go for her. The player can even make her fall again.
• Holding Hands: Her romance with the Commander features a lot of this, which is significant for succubi considering even their most incidental touch can drain a creature's life force (in part or in full, depending on the strength of the mortal in question).
• Horned Humanoid: Like other succubi, she has small horns growing from her forehead.
• Horror Hunger:
  Daeran: "What do you see when you look at people, I wonder? A succulent piece of meat? Or, perhaps, a decadent dessert?"
  Arueshalae: "I see them like... like a person dying of thirst sees a creek running with clear water. But I would rather die than drink a single drop."
• I Hate Past Me: She is deeply regretful of her past actions.
• Immortal Immaturity: Discussed with Sosiel. Arueshelae states that she feels so immature compared to the far younger man. Sosiel counters that immortals have different timelines of maturity compared to the mortal races and brings up that it took Shelyn a millennia to change her views on beauty.
• Invisible to Normals: Mostly. She generally turns herself invisible when in Drezen, likely to avoid scaring people who don't believe she's an Ascended Demon. The Storyteller and Anevia still acknowledge her presence (Anevia will tell her she's being shy) and the tavernkeeper in the Half-Measure can at least hear her.
• Love Redeems: Falling in love with someone, and having that love honestly reciprocated, is one possible step on her road to redemption. In the game, of course, this is one of the cruxes of her romantic route — with the additional wrinkle that you two need to figure out a way to reciprocate your affection, and even express physical intimacy, that doesn't make Arue's inner succubus instincts go out of control and make her do something that'll cause her to fall again. Of course, you also have the option of not caring...
• Lust Object: The Commander is this for her, much as she tries to deny it. Her attraction to them is tainted by the fact that as a succubus she innately desires to own them entirely and thus she refuses to actually act on it for fear of losing herself again.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Similar to Tristian from Kingmaker, her origin as a succubus means she'll outlive the Commander unless the pick a similarly long lived Mythic path. If the Commander picks the Legend path to embrace their mortality then she'll outlive them by a large margin.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Desna's Divine Intervention essentially boiled down to making Arue realize just how utterly vile her existence as a Succubus was by forcing her to experience the collective hopes, dreams, and suffering of every soul used to create her. Simply trying to describe the feeling is enough to bring tears to her eyes.
• My Greatest Failure: While Arueshelae has a long list of sins to atone for, her gradual corruption of an Azata she had as a past lover is a particular sore spot for her. Second only to the priestess of Desna she desecrated before her Heel–Face Turn.
• My Instincts Are Showing:
  • If taken to see Nocticula or Baphomet (both demon lords) in Act IV she'll reflexively drop to her knees before them. In the former case she says she has no idea why she did it, and in the latter it takes her a great deal of effort just to force herself to her feet again.
  • A major part of her romance arc with the Knight Commander deals with this issue, as her succubus instincts are something she struggles to control due to the Knight Commander being a Lust Object for her. To successfully romance her, the player has to support her and confess their feelings for Arueshelae without once trying to be intimate with her until she sheds her demon nature entirely.
• Nerf: Arue's stats are significantly reduced compared to her tabletop incarnation to bring her into line with the Commander and the other companions. On top of that, she lacks the equipment or unique class setup she had in the original AP, starting off as a Espionage Expert. However, even with her being significantly nerfed, her starting stats are still much higher than your other mortal companions, and she has enough levels to make her stand out.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Seduced and killed a Priestess of Desna, the goddess of Dreams, then decided to enter her dying victim's dreams. This ended up giving her a personal audience with the goddess herself, who reached into Arueshalae and basically made her experience the dreams of every mortal soul that were used to make her and setting her on the path to redemption.
• Nice Girl: Easily matches the good-aligned party members in how kind she is. The main thing that holds her from helping people more openly is everyone's (justified) distrust of demons and her own fears that she might lose control.
• Odd Friendship: She becomes very close friends with Seelah, a paladin who very vocally enjoys killing demons (though Seelah does state that it's because she genuinely believes in Arueshelae's atonement). Camellia also tries to get close to her but it's very clear that she just wants to get off on Arueshelae's stories about her past sins.
• The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: According to one of her Stop Poking Me! quotes, the one thing about being a succubus that she hopes she can keep after shifting alignments is "my lovely, irresistibly beautiful wings".
• Optional Sexual Encounter: Corrupting her completely cuts off her romance and reduces her to this, seeing as she’d much rather sleep with everything she can and live as a hedonist. The cost is that it causes level drain after each encounter, seeing as she’s, well, a succubus.
• Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality: Arueshalae dreams of being able to have a healthy, mutualistic romantic-sexual relationship with someone, but given that her experiences of sex with other demons have been at best transactional and at worst exploitative, and her experiences with mortals have mostly been shortcuts forger to eat them, she has no idea what a relationship like that looks like, let alone how to be in one. She is also terrified that she might inadvertently kill someone if she indulges too freely. If the player pursues a romance with her, being too overly affectionate freaks her out because it risks causing her succubus instincts to take over, and it takes her slowly growing comfortable with the Commander, and shedding her demonic nature, for her to get over it.
• The Peeping Tom: As part of learning about mortals, she takes to spying on their romantic encounters and candidly admits so. If the Commander confronts her about it, she reassures them that she made sure she wasn't caught. Her goodbye line is also a very calm 'I'll be watching you', indicating that the Commander isn't safe from this either.
• Purposefully Overpowered: Arueshalae is not exactly balanced compared to the rest of the party, even after being heavily nerfed from her tabletop incarnation. Her stats are the equivalent of a ninety-three point build when the default is 25 and most party members live in 20 to 30. She has (minor) innate energy and spell resistance and damage reduction 5/good and cold iron which is more-or-less equivalent to 5/- given the lack of good-aligned enemies, and most importantly her wings make her immune to ground effects so she ignores things like Web and Grease and pits. She is held back by a relatively weak class but that can be built around, especially if you get her as early as possible.
• Plot Armor: Until Chapter 4, Desna will teleport her to Drezen and revive her if she would be killed in battle.
• Rape as Backstory: If pressed on the topic of what sex between demons is like, Arueshalae will reluctanly admit to having been both a victim of rape at the hands of her demonic kin and a perpetrator in her own right by virtue of her nature as a Succubus.
  Arueshalae: Demon sex doesn't differ from any other type of violence. In my former life... It was something I did to others, or others did to me. Only one person ever received pleasure, not the other.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: While she desperately wishes she were "tamed", for most of the game she's not quite there yet. Several events have her reverting to demonic mannerisms when threatened or angered (usually by an evil mortal). She's usually mortified afterwards.
  Arueshalae "Who are you, girl, to lecture me about the Abyss! You are nothing more than a slab of meat yourself, a half-mortal perversion of your father! You're not even a real demon, so don't you dare... Oh no....what am I saying?"
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In the original adventure path, it was subverted, since she had the solid red eyes of her kind but was genuinely committed to becoming a good person. As you'll note in her art, though, in the Owlcat take she either always had, or has developed by the time you meet her, comparatively normal-looking eyes. Weirdly, though, the promotional splash art does feature her with red eyes. The game also describes her as having red eyes in dialogue and her character model features them. The red comes back in her portrait if she falls.
• Retractable Appendages: Her fingernails lengthen at will. She seems to keep them short on purpose to be nonthreatening, but they come out when she's being threatened.
• Romance Sidequest: She can be romanced by both male and female PCs.
• Sexual Karma: If Arueshalae successfully sheds her demonic nature and makes love with the Commander for the first time, they end up leaving quite the lasting impression on her, to say the least.
  Arueshalae: I thought I knew everything there was to know about carnal pleasures. Turns out, I'm only just starting to learn...
• Shrinking Violet: She tends to be shy or withdrawn due to constantly trying to go against her nature. If she's in a relationship with the Commander in the ending then she also adamantly keeps their romance a secret from everyone due to this.
• Shy Blue-Haired Girl: Ticks off all the boxes.
• Solitary Sorceress: In her good ending she lives in a cottage away from a village. The people there come to her for aid and gradually look at her as a sort of guardian or benevolent spirit—and if she romanced the Commander, they visit her frequently.
• Stripperiffic: Defied initially: despite being a succubus, she doesn't show any skin below the chin, seemingly part of her attempts to defy her demonic nature. It also provides practical protection against her ability to kill with an intimate touch. If the player makes her fall again, her portrait's outfit becomes sexier and shows off more skin (her top becomes a sleeveless tank top with sideboob and she loses the tights and gloves). Fitting for a full-fledged succubus. As for the whole game, Stripperific is Played With regarding the succubi; some are completely nude, some go for Stripperific, and some are clothed richly.
• Succubi and Incubi: She is a succubus. Ever since her meeting with Desna, though, she has set out to put this image behind her; her full-body art, displayed to the right, shows that she now favors outfits that don't show so much as a patch of skin below the chin. Pathfinder succubi can be somewhat less vamp-ish than other examples in media, but Arue goes way beyond even that and is making an obvious effort to be as chaste as possible. If you help her fall again, she changes into something a bit more in line with the classic trope.
• Token Evil Teammate: While there are plenty of evil companions in your party, if you make her fall she becomes just as bad, if not worse, than Camellia, once again becoming a child-eating (in the beta at least, the full release is toned down) succubus who only cares about sex and murder.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: While she glamours herself to appear Invisible to Normals it seems like most people are at least aware of her existence, enough so that there are rumors of the Commander and her being a couple if they spend time together. Despite this she goes without comment for the most part aside from a few instances of people casting doubt on her allegiance. Played straight if she's recruited early during the siege of Drezen. If so no one on the hero's side bats an eyelash at the succubus suddenly following them around helping to fight against the demons, though enough people talk about it with you that it can be assumed that — like the rest of the party — she's just famous at this point.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: She is trying, but her only frame of reference for such feelings is the horrible things she did before.
• Winged Humanoid: Being a succubus, she has large, bat-like wings growing from her shoulders. Thankfully they don't stop her from wearing capes. They also happen to be the one thing that she actually likes about her succubus nature.

Camellia Gwerm

"I am helpful, am I not?"

Race: Half-Elf
Class: Shaman (Spirit Hunter)
Alignment: Undetectable actually Chaotic Evil
Deity: Green Faith

Voiced by: Sarah Smithton

The illegitimate daughter of Horgus Gwerm and a half-elf maid, her parentage was kept secret to avoid tarnishing the family name. She developed shamanic powers in her youth, allowing her to contact spirits.

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• Accidental Truth: Daeran's camp dialogue sees him tell Camellia that if he were in her position he'd happily do something outrageous then claim the spirits told him to, which is exactly what she's doing, with the exception that despite what he'd have everyone believe, Daeran would stop short of torture and murder. Though, given Daeran's nature and the implications that he knows more about her than he lets on, it's ambiguous whether this is actually accidential or just another manifestation of his powerless prophecy.
• Affably Evil: When she's not out to sacrifice you, she can be perfectly civil, and she's a loyal friend to a Player Character who allows her her extracurricular activities.
• Alas, Poor Villain: If the Commander has her put to death after her true nature is revealed, Horgus can later be found mourning her, as while while she was a terrible person who probably deserved to die (which Horgus outright admits to be the case), she was still his daughter.
• Aloof Ally: She spends the first two acts without any extensive dialogue or quests and it isn't until the player gets into the later acts that she'll actually open up.
• Ambiguous Situation: Her childhood behavior indicates that she was already a budding psychopath but there are hints given by her father and herself that it's due to being able to hear spirits rather than any sort of innate mental issues. It's left up to the player to decide which interpretation is true.
• Anti-True Sight: Her amulet seems to hide her alignment. The amulet itself foils any attempt to discern its magical properties.
• Asshole Victim: Inverted. She specifically needs to sacrifice Crusaders to her spirit rather than anyone else less likely to incur the Commander's wrath. When pressed she states that it's because the blood of the innocent is what her spirit needs rather than the tainted blood of the Baphomet cultists or demons. As revealed in Act 5, she simply likes killing innocent people for no reason.
• Ax-Crazy: She hides it very well most of the time, but she's seriously unhinged.
• Bad Liar:
  • Apart from her psychotic battle lines, she has a habit of licking her lips and looking interested whenever the party runs into horrible aftermaths of demonic influence. She often claims to feel sick or disgusted but chances are no player will buy it.
  • If you have her in the party when you meet Daeran's servant, you can ask her what she knows about Count Arendae. She'll claim she has only ever seen him from far away. This is despite the fact that the two were standing less than 5 feet away during the intro, and she's saying this to the commander, one of the only people who was there who is bound to recognize the count when they meet and realize she lied.
• Bait the Dog: A game-long one. The player catches her in the middle of a Human Sacrifice routine and is given the choice to spare her due to her claims of being a Well-Intentioned Extremist. If told to not kill Crusaders she'll comply and even treat the Commander like a friend. In the Abyss she also shows hesitation when a polymorphed slave/homunculus appears as her father, hinting that she can be redeemed. And then Act 5 happens where she murders her father, grabs 10 servants to mass murder then admits there is no Mireya. And if the Commander refuses to indulge her she'll try to murder them.
• Bastard Bastard: She's Horgus Gwerm's illegitimate daughter, and a Serial Killer.
• Beyond Redemption: If the player decides to keep her around after learning she's a serial killer, a good aligned character can essentially try to convince her to stop doing so. Despite seemingly doing so, by Act 5 it becomes clear she's not going to change at all, and will even kill her father, and try to kill the player character if they do not do anything about it. At that point, the player can decide she's well beyond any hope of redemption, and kill her for what she's done.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Acts the part of a poised noblewoman while secretly being a psychotic Serial Killer. She also tries to befriend Arueshelae and offers to be her confidant so she can 'confess her sins' when it's blatantly clear she just wants to hear about the reformed demon's escapades for her own entertainment.
• Brains and Bondage: She's a quite educated noblewoman, and her room in the manor is full of kinky torture devices. As you find out later, she goes beyond just that.
• Bloodlust:
  • Most of her combat lines tend to have a noticeably excited quiver in her voice when she talks about how she's going to slice apart her enemies.
  • She sounds practically euphoric when she talks about her past victims and how they bled. This is foreshadowed pretty early on when she can barely stop licking her lips when she sees the Crusaders the Gargoyles kidnapped and sacrificed.
• Canon Foreigner:
  • She is completely original to the PC game, and does not appear in the printed Adventure Path at all. This is of substantial consequence, as her presence is one of the elements that alters the course of the story compared to the print version, since — among other things — she kills the Riftwarden Aravashnial right at the adventure's start.
  • Her shaman archetype is original to the game, borrowing the weapon enhancement feature from the Magus hybrid class in exchange for having no spirit animal or Wandering Spirit class feature.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: If spared after he true nature is revealed, a good-aligned Commander can say outright that the only reason they're not having her imprisoned or executed is because the Crusade needs her skills.
• Character Tic: Has a habit of licking her lips whenever the party runs into horrific, gory sights.
• Chaotic Evil: Her true In-Universe alignment. She's a Bastard Bastard Serial Killer who murders innocents and made up the excuse of satisfying her spirit to justify her bloodlust.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Much of her dialogue in combat implies that she really enjoys fighting, specifically the killing and the maiming. Her near-death quotes also have her sound more curious and even excited than distressed at the pain she's feeling.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character:
  • Octavia in Kingmaker was also a female half-elf built as a magic-user and Dex fighter (Wizard/Rogue multiclass versus Spirit Shaman variant), and like Camellia was an illegitimate daughter of nobility. However, despite having been sold into slavery as a child, Octavia was a free-spirited sweetheart, whereas despite a sheltered upbringing, Camellia is a total psycho. Both also possess BDSM equipment, but Octavia was just into kinky sex whereas Camellia is using hers for far more nefarious purposes.
  • Also with Jaethal as the game's Token Evil Teammate. Jaethal did horrible things like sacrificing her own family members in hedonistic rituals, all of which happened a long time ago and conveniently offscreen; in-game she's just kind of an arrogant jerk, and can be redeemed. Camellia starts out murdering random Crusaders, and ends with her father and potentially tries for the Commander themself if left alive.
• Crazy in the Head, Crazy in the Bed: She's an unhinged Ax-Crazy Serial Killer, but is still considered extremely attractive and is a total freak in the sheets, with some of her romantic encounters being full-on Interplay of Sex and Violence. The player can even express in dialogue about how her wild side is what makes her so appealing.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Skill-wise she has an incredibly high Trickery score, but with her limited skill points per level it's difficult for her to branch out, at least if she sticks with her starting class of Spirit Hunter to any extent.
• Crutch Character:
  • The versatility of her shaman class and Spirit Hunter archetype allows her to fit a variety of roles, serving the early party as a stopgap off-tank (Dexterity-based), healer, offensive caster, and trap- and locksmith, with a dedicated party-wide buff like a bard (her Battle Spirit ability). She'll likely have to specialize eventually, though she is very likely to remain many points ahead of anyone else in terms of Trickery well into the game.
  • She's a particular example in the Blackwater dungeon, since the Shaman spell list (a variation of the Druid list) gives her access to a number of electric-type spells for stripping the enemies' regeneration.
• Cute and Psycho: She's easy on the eyes, but as the spoilers might alert you, also completely nuts.
• Downer Ending: Camellia does not make it out of the story on a good note. If you haven't already killed or imprisoned her, she either makes an assassination attempt on an unromanced PC before vanishing, abandons a romanced PC because she's scared of him becoming her next victim, or loses all the joy in her new life as a semidivine being that she abandons the Commander and explores the multiverse alone. The only way to avert this is to take the True Aeon ending and keep her around until she abandons you, as that changes the past so she gets the mental help she needs before it's too late.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Her father Horgus Gwerm is one of the very few people she legitimately cares about. When a polymorphed slave she hired for the express purpose of sacrificing shifts into his form she's genuinely disturbed and the Commander can talk her out of continuing even if they hired a soulless Homunculus instead. If she's in the party when you meet Daeran she'll get offended when Daeran insults her father, though she bites her tongue. It's because she loves her father so much, that he becomes such an appealing victim for murder.
  • The player can also be this to her. The ending narration if romanced says that she ends up leaving the commander because she does not want her murderous urges to become directed towards him.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: She's very beautiful, as she and others point out, and she's a Serial Killer who very clearly enjoys the murder of innocents.
• Faux Affably Evil:
  • She spins a story about spirits telling her to make blood offerings to provide a secret way of healing the Worldwound. In reality she is completely unhinged.
  • If the commander refuses to indulge her "hobby", she'll retain the calm polite manner of speaking but it's now tinged with barely repressed hostility. At Threshold she'll make it clear she looks forward to never seeing the commander again once this is done. In the epilogue, she will actually try unsuccessfully to murder the commander before going on the run, under a new identity, and resume killing.
• Foil:
  • With her father Horgus. He's a fat, gruff, overweight middle-aged jerk who never helps in a fight because he's so out of shape but is actually a Jerk with a Heart of Gold trying to atone for a past decision and she's a cheerful young good-looking aristocrat who is one of your main party members and is also a Chaotic Evil Serial Killer posing as a Well-Intentioned Extremist. He also worked his way up from the bottom (relatively speaking) while she started with every advantage. He's exceptionally good at keeping secrets, since the player's party are the only people who know he's not Horgus Gwerm and that's only because he told them, while Camellia's insanity approaches an Open Secret at times — Both Horgus and Anevia are aware of it at a minimum and the player would practically have to be blind to not notice it themselves. Additionally, Horgus doesn't dote on his daughter but genuinely loves her while Camellia openly professes affection for her father but that just makes her want to kill him more. Finally, Horgus is saddened if you kill Camellia but understands it had to be done while Camellia will eventually add Horgus to the list of her victims because she wanted to.
  • To Daeran. They're both nobles of evil alignment but this is where most of the similarities end. Camellia is a Bastard Bastard Serial Killer who hides behind the veneer of being a Well-Intentioned Extremist while Daeran believes in owning how terrible he is while simultaneously being far kinder than even he himself thinks. Camellia Jumped at the Call to join the Crusades to indulge her in her habits of killing people while Daeran is forced to join due to being Kickedupstairs but still puts everything he has into it despite his complaints. Camellia treats the Commander like a friend and with open affection but her loyalty is contingent on them indulging her murderous habits while Daeran will often snark at them while demonstrating Undying Loyalty regardless of path or alignment. Camellia insults and looks down on anyone she considers beneath her while Daeran Hates Everyone Equally and thus is able to befriend the mongrel Lann, tiefling Woljif and beggar Ember. Camellia claims to love her father but secretly wants to murder him while Daeran downplays his love for his deceased mother but obviously still loves her even ten years after her death.
• For Want Of A Nail: Her entry into the story is one, since she's killed Aravashnial, who is a massively important NPC in the original print Adventure Path, before you even meet either of them. To new players, this won't seem important at first, but Pathfinder veterans are likely to sit bolt upright when they see what's happened, and her seemingly innocuous entry into the story is one of the elements that helps make it very different from the printed AP.
• Freudian Excuse: Her father raised her in a Gilded Cage where she was given luxuries but her father had to publicly disown her and she was only allowed affection and freedom in private. She also heard spirits from a young age and was locked in the basement by a fearful teacher who then became her first kill when she escaped.
• Gilded Cage: Examining her room shows that, despite the rosy terms she described her childhood, this was ultimately how she was raised. She was allowed to live in luxury at a noble's house but her windows her barred, her door was locked and she only allowed outside for rare strolls or fencing lessons. The Commander can even call it this to her face though she shrugs it off.
• He Knows Too Much: Inverted. She only opens up and becomes friendly to the Commander after they learn more about her.
• Heroic Bastard: Sort of, it's complicated. First of all, her father isn't really a nobleman. Secondly, how heroic she is, is up for interpretation..
• Human Sacrifice: She conducts them allegedly to appease Mireya. Revealed later that there is no Mireya and it's just her own quirk.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Claims that this is the reason for her sacrifices. The player can also agree to let her continue her rituals or at least allow her to stay in the party with a promise to find another method to soothe her spirit. The latter isn't even considered an evil action despite her going unpunished. Ultimately subverted in Act 5 where it's revealed to just be an excuse to indulge her murderous impulses.
• I'm a Humanitarian: She's taken to eating her victims together with Mireya during the sacrifices.
• Interface Spoiler: While her alignment is listed as Undetectable, it is pretty easy to figure out when leveling her up. She can't take any class that requires a Neutral or Lawful alignment, which locked her into Chaotic, and she can take Assassin as a prestige class, which requires the character to be Evil.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: Her romance is all about this, starting off with the Commander having sex with her right next to the corpse of a Crusader whom Camellia just killed. Combat, violence, death, and pain all seem to get her excited, and she doesn't particularly care if it is her or the enemy who are suffering. As her romance progresses the bizarre and violent sexual antics she and the Commander get up to get more extreme, including having sex on the altar of a temple while invisible, and then Camellia stabbing the Commander to dispel the illusion in front of an entire crowd.
• Irony: It's heavily suggested (and borderline confirmed) that Camellia seduces her victims, has her way with them, then kills them when she's done. When the player learns what she's really doing, you can chose to sleep with her, and then either kill her yourself, or have Anevia go in and kill her, inflicting the same fate onto her.
• It's All About Me: She's more concerned that the demonic horde attacked her home of all places rather than all the death and misery they caused. Various characters point out how she acts as if the demons attacked just to spite her personally. When caught killing a crusader, she spins a lie about doing it to appease the spirits, but later makes it clear she's lying, and she's doing all of her killing for her own sake.
• Jack of All Stats: Not in terms of attributes — she is heavily specialized in Dexterity followed by Wisdom, and needs both for her build — but the shaman class, like the bard, is designed to serve multiple roles. In Camellia's case she is a high-Dex off-tank/frontliner who can become deadly with a rapier or other light blade while gaining massive bonuses to AC, her spellcasting includes a mix of damage, control, healing, and support, her Battle Spirit lets her buff the party and gives her further bonuses to attack, her Spirit Hunter archetype lets her buff herself, and her background and Skill Focus feat give give her one of the highest Trickery scores (trapsmithing and lockpicking, a necessity in this kind of game) well into the game even if you distribute her points elsewhere when she levels up.
• Jerkass: She looks down on the party members she considers beneath her such as Lann or Wenduag and is particularly vicious against Ember. Not that the latter notices. Unlike other partymembers, she doesn't have a hidden side that makes her more noble.
• Karma Houdini:
  • If the player indulges her habits then she gets away with everything. She especially counts among companions due to the fact that she can't be redeemed or have her alignment shifted like Wenduag and her epilogue mentions her leaving after getting bored and killing people again.
  • Even if the commander stops her from further killing, doesn't kill her and doesn't romance her, she gets away scots free with her previous murders, then tries to murder the commander (and fails) in the epilogue, then leaves under another identity to begin murdering anew somewhere else.
  • Essentially this trope is in effect unless the commander decides to immediately have her punished when they learn the truth.
• Kick the Dog: She continuously mocks and bullies Ember. Other evil or morally ambiguous companions either tentatively respect (Regill) or show a degree of care for her (Daeran, Greybor and Wenduag).
• Lady of War: She's a noble lady who fights gracefully with a rapier is often described as holding herself in an elegant manner, even when covered in the blood of her foes. Although many of the things she says during combat are a hint that she's not actually as poised as she might appear.
• Laser-Guided Karma: A male Commander can inflict this on her: right after she used a crusader for sexual relief before murdering him the Commander can accept her offer to have sex, then take two steps out of the building and have Anevia execute her on the spot.
• Love Cannot Overcome: At least it can't overcome her serial killer tendencies. If you romance her, in the epilogue she one day disappears as she does love you and she's worried that one day she will want to kill you. So rather than risk having that happen, she chooses to leave you forever.
• Magic Knight: Has an arsenal of spells and has good proficiency with weapons and armor.
• Mask of Sanity: Her aristocratic poise is a carefully constructed disguise.
• Nature Versus Nurture: Camellia is evil by nature and cannot be redeemed no matter what the player does.
• The Needs of the Many: Her justification for her actions. The Worldwound's very presence harms and kills thousands if not millions so what's the cost of a few Crusaders lives in exchange for a possible solution? Turned around later when it's revealed to be Blatant Lies. She just liked killing people.
• Nightmare Fetishist: There are multiple occasions where the player can encounter some horrifying spectacle which Camellia is a little bit too interested in, such as her reaction to seeing a mind-controlled man in the Grey Garrison tear out his own eyes so a succubus can eat them. While every other Companion reacts with shock and disgust, Camellia stares directly at it while licking her lips. She's also very clearly interested in Arueshelae's past and gets her to divulge details under the guise of 'confessing her sins'.
• No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: In her Ascended Ending she no longer finds wanton murder fun. It's just too easy for her now that she's a demigod. She takes to wandering the multiverse instead.
• Not Me This Time: You can confront her about the severed heads you keep finding in your stash, and she will offhandedly deny it being her handiwork. For once she isn't lying, as those are victims killed by the Other via Daeran's body.
• Obviously Evil: While she tries to present herself as a prim and proper lady, it doesn't take much for her to drop the act and reveal a far more bloodthirsty side. As a result, most of your party and several other characters are deeply suspicious of her, to the point where even Ember is able to pick up that something is wrong with her. It really isn't all that surprising when she is later revealed to be a Serial Killer that often commits Human Sacrifice.
• Pet the Dog:
  • She does care for her father, despite her callous nature. Eventually subverted when she decides to kill him to satisfy her cravings.
  • A small example but she compliments Jhoran Vhane's craftmanship and says his loss will be a tragedy when he decides to fight the party.
  • In her Ascended Ending, if she is given her father's will confirming she is his daughter, she donates the Gwerm estate to charity on the condition that the Gwerm name is honored for it. In doing so she fulfills her late father's lifelong wish to honor the name of the real Horgus Gwerm.
• Pragmatic Villainy: She suggests going to help Daeran and the Hellknights. It's not because she wants to save their lives but because she sees the benefit of endearing themselves to a powerful noble and adding the Hellknights to their army.
• Proud Beauty: She's well aware of her looks and brings it up in party banter. She also uses it to seduce people as part of her Human Sacrifice rituals.
• Rich Bitch: She's proud of her noble lineage, looks down on Ember, Wenduag and Lann due to their origins, and complains about having to make camp or do chores. She even asks why they can't just take a few soldiers as servants.
• Romance Sidequest: She can be romanced by male PCs.
• Royal Rapier: She's a Blue Blooded Lady of War with a rapier-and-buckler dueling style.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: While most non-Swarm paths can keep her around, Camellia will immediately leave if the Commander chooses to take the Aeon path in Drezen, knowing they now have the means to out her as a murderer and the zeal to root her out on the spot.
• Serial Killer: She takes a bit too much joy in her Human Sacrifice routine. Talking with her father reveals that she was already a budding one as a child via killing cats and dogs and it caused her mother to almost kill her.
• Sex Goddess: She considers herself something of an expert when it comes to carnal pleasures and some of the dialogue in her Romance Sidequest suggests she's not just bragging.
• Ship Tease: Some of her dialogue with Daeran can take on a flirtatious bend with one ending in him asking her to a date to the opera to which she coyly responds with a maybe. It never actually goes anywhere, though especially since it's hinted that he knows her secret and even subtly digs at her with it in camp banter.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: She screams at Ember when the latter says that Staunton is still a good man. Camellia points out that Staunton has killed dozens of the Crusaders Ember claims to care about and that she's naive or insane to consider him good after what he's done.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • The first two times you see her victims are right after demon attacks when she's still in active danger herself. Might be justified since she uses said attacks as an excuse when the Commander asks what happened to the victims.
  • On a less spoilery note, her main complaint about the demonic invasion is that they ruined Kenabres' sights and the places she liked. When Seelah points out all the dead people she just adds a half-hearted comment about them.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Some other party members accuse her of this. Despite her being a bastard she acts as if she's a full-blown noble and looks down on everyone save the equally affluent Daeran.
• The Sociopath: Horgus reveals later that Camellia began killing animals such as dogs and cats at a young age and it was what caused her mother to leave (actually attempt to kill her), indicating an inherent lack of empathy. This is reminiscent of other serial killers who killed animals in their childhood.
• Square Race, Round Class: Not as a half-elf, but as an urban-dwelling Mendevian noblewoman, shaman is seemingly a strange choice, and she quite noticeably dislikes camping or venturing through wilderness areas. Lampshaded somewhat ironically, when she offhandedly mentions she doesn't even understand why most druids and shamans seem to prefer the dirt and hardship of the great outdoors. City life and the cutthroat world of the aristocracy provide her with all the hunting ground she needs.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: She doesn't get along mutually with any of the companions in party interactions. She alienates the nicer ones by openly insulting them, and she tries to cozy up to the evil ones (or the ones she sees as evil, such as Arue) but they mostly see through her. Only Ember is friendly to Camellia, and the feeling isn't mutual.
• Thicker Than Water: Her father is one of the only people she actually likes, and she's both quick to defend him and willing to put up with him more than most others. There's a warped element to this — She gets more enjoyment out of murdering people the closer they are to her, and that makes Horgus an extremely appealing victim. She'll eventually kill him specifically because she's attached to him. The Commander needs to be careful of this if they romance her.
• Token Evil Teammate: While she's not the only evil-aligned party member, her Human Sacrifice Serial Killer habits, not to mention the sheer enjoyment she finds in killing people and lying about why she's doing it, makes her appear far more deranged than Daeran or Regill and puts her on par with Wenduag. And even Wenduag can (under the right circumstances) be redeemed from her evil. Camilla is an unrepentant sociopath through and through with no chance for redemption outside of very specific choices in the True Aeon path that completely rewrite her past so she gets mental help before she goes insane. In a game where a lot of characters can have their morals swayed, Camellia is not only the most outright evil when you meet her, but she's unable to be swayed from her choices, and can only get worse if you let her live.
• The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: Horgus Gwerm isn't much to look at, but a great deal is made of Camellia's beauty.
• Villainous Breakdown: If the Commander orders her to be arrested and/or executed after her true nature and crimes are revealed, she freaks out and wildly attacks everyone present in a mad attempt to escape.
• Walking Spoiler: As the number of spoilered tropes tells you, there's much more to her than meets the eye.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Is hellbent on coaxing an answer to fix the Worldwound out of Mireya, and doesn't care how many innocents she has to slaughter to calm the spirit down. It's revealed to be complete bullshit in Act 5. She just wants to kill people.
• You Monster!: A good-aligned Commander can call her one when she gleefully talks about how she opened one victim's chest and watched his heart beat. She shrugs it off and says that she's the Commander's monster.

Daeran Arendae

"You wouldn't believe how delighted I am to be so vain and self-absorbed. These sins protect me against demonic temptation better than any virtue."

"Smile, the world's not ending just yet."

Race: Aasimar (Musetouched)
Class: Oracle
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Deity: Atheism

Voiced by: Matt Merritt

To Count Daeran Arendae, life and death are nothing but a big game, where before everything else, he seeks to amuse himself.

---

• Ambiguously Evil:
  • With the reveal of The Other and its influence on his life it’s left ambiguous how evil Daeran actually is. When asked about the severed heads in the party he states he has no idea if The Other killed people or just beheaded corpses. It’s possible his story of faking his kidnapping and getting his guards killed is fake as well and deliberately designed to make the player distance themselves from him.
  • His ending is also framed as this. The narration states that killing Liotr to save his own life awakened a darkness in him and that his enjoyment became more imperious. It never goes into detail into what this means, however, and he's apparently well-liked enough that if Queen Galfrey survives people actually prefer him to inherit the throne, which would be unlikely if he kept up his previous habits given the culture of Mendev.
• Affably Evil: Is either this or Faux Affably Evil depending on his mood. He can be charming when romancing the Commander and treats Ember with seemingly genuine fondness.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: He combines the Rich Boredom and Lack of Empathy typical for this trope. He also seems to see every other noble as this, though not without reason, as seen in some of the council meetings.
• At Least I Admit It: If you ask him whether he enjoys being mean to everyone he meets, he will happily answer in the affirmative. He then states that he believes that those who say they are just "telling it how it is" are simply assholes who wish to hide their cruelty behind a facade of justification, while he freely admits he's just being a prick.
• Big Brother Instinct: His Pet the Dog moments with Ember come across as this. At one point he even warns her not to make friends with an Affably Evil demon with no hint of sarcasm or mocking. He's also surprisingly kind and protective of her in camp banter. At one point he even expresses regret for attempting to mock her, saying she doesn't deserve that. Something he never really does to anyone else.
  Daeran: *in a surprisingly soft tone* "If you're so good at healing people, why can't you heal yourself?"
• Big "SHUT UP!": If you bring him and Nenio to meet Nocticula, Nenio will ask Nocticula how many sexual partners she's had. The commander can spot Daeran silently mouthing at Nenio to shut up and stop talking. Only reason he's not shouting it is because he doesn't want to draw Nocticula's attention to himself.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: His entire family, save for Daeran himself, got wiped out when a lilitu demoness crashed his fifteenth birtday party and infected everyone present with a deadly abyssal plague.
• Blue Blood: He holds a county title in Kenabres and is a relative of Mendev's royal family (which currently consists only of the immortal Queen Galfrey).
• Break His Heart to Save Him: In order to successfully save him from The Other the player needs to tell him, truthfully or not, that they never cared about him and only ever used him due to his position and powers. He puts on a strong front but it’s clear this hurts him. Slightly averted if, during that conversation, the player decides at the last minute to dispense with the charade and tell Daeran the truth. The fight and what comes after will play out the same way.
• Brought Down to Normal: Subverted, which is something that makes Inquisitor Liotr rather concerned. As an Oracle, Daeran's powers were given to him by the Other and the plane it came from. Yet even after the Other's demise, Daeran still has full access to his powers which means he is still a potential doorway to the plane the Other came from.
• Brutal Honesty: He dislikes sugarcoating and lying and this includes the player. More often than not he'll approve if they call him out on his behavior rather than trying to excuse it away. Case in point, he's the only one who calls out Staunton's brother for calling himself a 'good man' after he followed his brother to the side of demons.
• Byronic Hero: He's an attractive male with limited integrity, intelligent and perceptive, self-centered, cynical, and disrespectful towards rank and privilege despite holding them himself. His passionate and emotionally sensitive side are more subtle (since he tries to drive people away), but as you get to know him it's clear he feels strongly about personal freedom and has been much more deeply affected by his tragic life than he lets on.
• Canon Foreigner: He is completely original to the PC game, and no character like him appears in the tabletop adventure path.
• Chaotic Neutral: There are heavy hints in his interactions that this would be his In-Universe alignment without the Other's influence making him act in a cruel and hostile manner to others. Apart from Nurah, who he might've been mocking due to her being a traitor, he frowns on slavery, offers to buy two Aasimar slaves to free them, sneers at a Druid who enslaved a bear spirit for the greater good, always approves of a player who takes Chaotic dialogue options, and is practically giddy if they pick the Trickster path. This makes sense given that he's a Musetouched Aaasimar who lean towards the Chaotic Good alignment of the Azatas. Because Pathfinder's alignment system is defined by actions determining your alignment, even if Daeran wanted to act in a more Chaotic Neutral manner, his actions under the Other's threats likely pushed him into a Neutral Evil alignment.
  Daeran: It turns my stomach whenever I see smug "masters of fate" such as you. Do you think you have the right to do whatever you want to other people? Do you think it's funny to take a living creature and stuff some disembodied spawn of the Abyss inside it? I hope you burn with every tree in this precious forest you were supposedly trying to protect!
• The Charmer: Despite his behavior he can be extremely charming. His romance even starts with him actively 'not courting' the Commander rather than the other way around.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Some of this behavior might be more explainable by knowing that his mother was killed by a demonic illness, and she and his guardian refused to risk seeking treatment to avoid endangering others.
• Deadpan Snarker: Of the haughty, "I'm better than you" variety, often at some length — he tends to monologue when given the chance:
  Daeran: Imagine being someone like me. Someone who has everything they can possibly desire: youth, beauty, wealth, an honest wish to live and enjoy living — but vanishingly few ways to put it all to any use. The fact that the word 'fun' itself is not yet outlawed in Mendev must be due to some bureaucratic oversight.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Trying to empathize or claim he's a good man despite everything will have him react with either annoyance or incredulity. He'd much prefer if you told him exactly how he seems. This is even multi-fold; one, if you're just trying to butter him up, he won't appreciate that because he prefer honesty, but if you insist honestly he's a good man, he'll start to panic a bit because you're seeing through the facade.
• Dude, Not Funny!: He does this to himself, when he tries to make a joke after Ember was nearly sacrificed by Baphomet cultists and she broke their altar with her tears somehow. He quickly realizes that was a bit far, even for him, and says some people don't deserve apologies no matter how much she (unintentionally) hurt them.
  Daeran: Of course you will have to apologize to Baphomet for the broken altar... damn it, no, not even I can joke about this. Ember, honestly, not everyone deserves an apology — no matter how much you've hurt them.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: He was very close to his mother when he was younger, and her death hit him hard.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Due to his At Least I Admit It nature and Brutal Honesty he despises hypocrites or anyone who claims they're doing something awful for the greater good. In his view if you're being evil then you should at least be honest about it.
  • He seems to find the people's treatment of Ember appalling given how he's quick to disagree when she recounts how people called her a scarecrow and has a Dude, Not Funny! reaction when he tries to make a joke about her nearly being sacrificed to Baphomet. He sincerely tells her that she shouldn't apologize to people who've hurt her.
  • Zig-zagged with slavery. When he finds out about Nurah's reason for betrayal he makes a quip about how slavery is cruel but follows up that people should use more humane methods such as religious dogma to try and inspire obedience, treating her history as a joke. However, when he sees a pair of aasimar slaves in Act 4 he offers to buy them from the trader and set them free with no prompting. His own quest shows why he takes personal freedom so dearly
  • In Act 4, the reveal in the quest involving the aasimar who pretends to host a shelter for aasimar women who have been kidnapped by demonic slavers only to torture them horribly leaves Daeran completely disgusted. He quips that there can only be room for one evil aasimar and he wants to be it, but it's clear he is outright horrified by what he is seeing.
  • He feels bad having to kill Inquisitor Liotr when the latter tries to either kill him or put him in an asylum for being a dimensional gateway. As he states, the man was a true believer and not a murderous hypocrite like Hulrun.
  • Similar to Regill he despises traitors, especially those who side with demons. He has nothing but cruel words for Jhoran Vane, Staunton and Nurah, pointing out their excuses don't justify siding with the Always Chaotic Evil monsters.
  • He is easily the most loyal of the available companions and never abandons the Commander if they take an evil Mythic Path...except for the Swarm-that-Walks path, as in that route the Commander has become too monstrous for even him to stomach.
  • When the party goes to the Midnight Isles the Commander can state he might feel right at home among the demons. He responds in a serious tone that he really wouldn't and their excesses and hedonism is far above what even he considers enjoyable. If taken to the brothel he also sincerely tells the Commander to not be tempted by their offerings since he knows full well how depraved they can be.
• Evil Is Petty: Apart from his backstory of accidentally getting two of his guards killed in a fake kidnapping, this is how his In-Universe Neutral Evil alignment manifests in the present day. He's hardly the type to actively do evil on the scale of Wenduag or Camellia and restrains himself to mostly petty insults or annoying everyone around him.
• Excellent Judge of Character: His party banter and other interactions make it clear that he's got all other party members and most NPCs he encounters very much figured out from the start. The only one who can stump him is the Commander, which is a major factor in his attraction towards them. Notably, he isn't even slightly fooled by Camellia.
• The Face: If he ascends to godhood along with the Commander, he ends up rather popular with artists of the realm who tend to always draw him at the Commander's right hand due to his good looks compared to anyone else who was ascended.
• Faux Affably Evil: He remains unfailingly polite at all times, but it's clear he doesn't care about anything or anyone very much. Except for perhaps the Commander and Ember. Downplayed, in that he has genuine standards, and tacitly avoids being a hypocrite — he's the first to admit that yes, his niceness is a facade, and he looks down on people determined to fall for it anyway.
• Foil:
  • To Arueshelae. He's a Celestial Blooded Aasimar who revels in being a selfish hedonist while she's an Ascended Demon who fights against her nature and desires to be good. They're both also attracted to the Commander but express it in different ways. Daeran is an aggressive charmer who actively courts them while Arueshelae tries to keep her feelings hidden due to her innate desire to dominate.
  • To Camellia. They're both nobles of evil alignment but this is where most of the similarities end. Camellia is a Bastard Bastard Serial Killer who hides behind the veneer of being a Well-Intentioned Extremist while Daeran believes in owning how terrible he is, even as he is simultaneously far kinder than he allows himself to admit. Camellia Jumped at the Call to join the Crusades to indulge her in her habits of killing people, while Daeran is forced to join due to being Kicked Upstairs but still puts everything he has into it despite his complaints. Camellia treats the Commander like a friend and with open affection but her loyalty is contingent on their indulging her murderous habits, while Daeran will often snark at them while demonstrating Undying Loyalty regardless of path or alignment. Camellia insults and looks down on anyone she considers beneath her while Daeran Hates Everyone Equally and thus is able to befriend the mongrel Lann, tiefling Woljif and beggar Ember. Camellia claims to love her father but secretly wants to murder him, while Daeran downplays his love for his deceased mother but obviously still mourns her even ten years after her death.
  • To Queen Galfrey. Daeran presents himself as a shamelessly evil Jerkass noble who indulges in all manner of vices and doesn't care about anything except himself while Galfrey presents as a wise, studious, compassionate noble who does everything she can to help people and win the war. Daeran has many Pet the Dog moments making one question how evil he really is while Galfrey's actions often give cause to doubt her righteousness. Daeran is an Excellent Judge of Character while Galfrey isn't. Daeran serves the Crusade only because Galfrey made him but still gives it his all and tries his best to be a good Crusader. Galfrey is exhausted of crusading but is unwilling to turn over command, with her jealousy of the Commander causing her later actions to resemble those of the worst Crusaders. While Daeran will be upset if Galfrey dies later in the campaign and glad if she survives, Galfrey's first reaction to his surviving the stint to the Abyss she indirectly sent him on is mild annoyance. Finally, their fates in most endings where both survive are opposite, as while the previously Universally Beloved Leader Galfrey starts rapidly losing popularity with the Mendev's nobility the previous Black Sheep Daeran becomes more popular to the point some feel he should be in charge instead of her.
• Freudian Excuse: His mother was killed by a demonic plague and both she and his cleric mentor refused to let her go to the city to find a cure for fear of spreading the infection. And then he had to make a deal with something even worse than a devil to survive. However, the player only finds this out if they investigate behind his back. He never actually tells them or uses it as an excuse for his behavior.
• The Gadfly: He enjoys making people uncomfortable or getting a rise out of them. At the very least he claims the reason he never insults Ember is because she's too kind and/or naive to respond to his needling.
• Gentleman Snarker: The Count's wit is as sharp as Cyrano's and he delights in taking virtually everyone he meets down a peg or three (Ember notably excepted). And for the Commander, engaging in Snark-to-Snark Combat with him is their way of flirting.
• The Gods Must Be Lazy: He certainly thinks so. He doesn't outright despise them as Ember does, but he certainly has no respect or reverence for them either. If he ascends to godhood in the ending, although he is very popular with artists due to his good looks, he makes a vow to never answer a single prayer one way or another for any potential worshippers, a vow he so far as kept.
• Good Powers, Bad People: He's a Life Oracle, and of evil alignment; this is even discussed in-universe when some characters express disbelief that one of the most talented healers alive is such an awful person. Twisted around later where it's indicated that his true alignment is far more on the Neutral end of the scale.
• Hates Everyone Equally: When Lann wonders if he treats Mongrels worse than nobles Daeran cheerfully tells him that he treats everyone with equal disdain from the lowliest beggar to the Queen herself. It's one reason they surprisingly get along.
• The Hedonist: His Establishing Character Moment is having his lavish party rudely interrupted by the invading demons. He admits to the Commander later that it was a reaction to the Other possibly killing him at any moment, thus causing him to cherish every second he had.
• Heel–Face Turn: If the Commander romances him then sacrifices themselves to seal the Worldwound then Daeran becomes a wandering healer and philanthropist. By the time he dies he becomes known as a selfless and giving man with his previous reputation all but forgotten.
• Hidden Depths:
  • For all that he's officially Neutral Evil, he responds especially well to a Chaotic Commander, regardless of the Good/Evil axis, and develops quite an interest in such a Commander. A particular early example is bringing him along to the Blackwing Library to help kick off the Trickster Mythic Path; the Commander's theatrics in commanding the false crusaders there results in some of the first genuine hilarity he's felt in years and years, and it even includes an option that helps kick off his romantic route. This makes twofold sense when you realize that, one, he is a Musetouched Aasimar, meaning he's related to the Chaotic Good Azatas of Elysium, and two, that Chaotic Good is much more his natural tendency and his official Neutral Evil alignment simply comes from having been worn down by a decade of living with the Other and feeling he has to be as vile as possible in order to make sure nobody gets too close or asks questions.
  • He shows surprising kindness at times, particularly where it concerns Ember. He'll also disparage people who claim they act for the greater good or that they're torn about their actions by pointing out their hypocrisies.
  • He's surprisingly brave and loyal. While he's forced to remain in the Crusade due to being Kicked Upstairs he never makes anything more than token complaints or attempts to stay behind safe in camp while the rest of the party does all the work. He even follows the Commander into the Abyss despite them technically being stripped of their rank by Queen Galfrey shortly beforehand.
  • While he hides behind a veneer of not caring all that much, it becomes obvious as time goes on that he hates demons just as much as the many good aligned companions. He takes special glee in making them suffer and sneers at anyone who turns over to their side. Taking his Freudian Excuse into account, he has very good reason to personally despise them.
  • He's remarkably patriotic, in his own way. Asking him about the current state of Mendev gets an unusually acerbic reaction as he complains that the Crusades have become the only thing anyone knows about Mendev. He worries that the country's history and cultural identity (things his family members were a big part of for generations) are being overwhelmed and erased by the Crusades.
  • He surprisingly rarely complains about camping and being forced to rough it. Apart from complaints about mosquitos^note and in the Worldwound, not only is being concerned about pests and disease just pretty good best practice in general, but Deskari's realm, the Rasping Rifts, is outright described as having fiendish mosquitos the size of buildings that can completely exsanguinate a human-size creature in just a couple combat rounds; so on the whole, this is a pretty reasonable fear to have in his position! and Seelah's snoring he follows the Commander through the Worldwound without fail. Compare to Camellia who complains about being forced to do chores and asks why they can't take soldiers as servants.
  • He seems to have a strong kinship and standards for his fellow Aasimar. He genuinely warmly greets the aasimar priest of Desna from Act 1 when they meet again in Act 5, in Act 4 he'll personally pay for the freedom of some Aasimar slaves out of his own pockets, and in regards to the Aasimar man who asks for help in regards to the aforementioned slaves, when it's revealed that he is a sadist who tortures and rapes any aasimar women he can get his hands on, Daeran is probably the most outwardly disgusted and angry member of the party at the revelation.
  • For someone who has a reputation for being a hedonist and a party animal, he has a somewhat studious side to him. One of his favorite hangouts in Kenabres was a museum, and at various points, he will reference certain topics that he has read about in books. Tellingly, he starts out with skill points in Knowledge (World) and Knowledge (Arcana). Not that much of a surprise coming from a very well-educated noble. It's even a point of Gameplay and Story Integration as one of his stated issues with modern Mendev is that its history is being rapidly forgotten in favor of the events of the Crusades.
  • He states that he has had two attempts by cultists to overtly convert him to demon worship. His first line of reasoning for rejecting them? He already lives such a life of luxury that he has no clue what someone like Baphomet could offer him that he doesn't already have. His second? That it logically follows that service to demons is a scam, comparing it to a baker that announces that every 100th roll contains a silver coin and has a hired actor 'find' the coin in public view. Considering how fickle the demon lords are with even their most devoted followers, he's actually not going far enough with his reasoning. And his belief that the patronage of a powerful extradimensional entity is a monkey's paw foreshadows his relationship with the Other.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: With his Hidden Depths and Pet the Dog moments, it becomes clear that Daeran does have some fundamental decency in him but living with The Other and knowing he could die at any moment when he’s used as a gateway has turned him into an apathetic hedonist who only cares about his next thrill, and is combined with a certain level of carefully cultivated, planned repulsiveness intended to keep anyone of actual importance or good morals at arm's length for their own safety. His treatment of Ember, Lann and the Commander showcase a more friendly side to him.
• Hope Is Scary: With the destruction of the Other at the end of his questline, for the first time in 10 years, Daeran doesn't have an axe hanging over his head that could come down at any moment. And that in of itself is terrifying to him. Now that he doesn't have to live like any day could be his last, he is terrified and the prospect of the freedom he'll have for the rest of his life.
• I'm Standing Right Here: Has this reaction if you talk to the house bard immediately after repelling the demon attack, since the bard (and several party members) will talk about how much of a creepy Jerkass he is. He'll then dismiss it with a delighted bit of I'll Pretend I Didn't Hear That.
• Informed Attribute: Similar to Regongar before him, his Neutral Evil alignment can be hard to spot at a glance. Apart from his backstory of getting two of his guards killed, which is mentioned only once and might count as Offscreen Villainy, he never does anything that might put him on the same scale as Wenduag or Camellia. At most he seems content with annoying people and his most vicious insults tend to be reserved for those he regards as hypocrites and demon worshippers. This is, in fact, a significant part of the point and his Neutral Evil comes more from being careworn and feeling he has to act like an asshole to people to keep them at arm's length for their safety. Since one's alignment is determined by actions rather than motivations in Pathfinder, and cruel and insulting treatment of others is considered evil, this would shift him toward an Evil alignment regardless of why he's doing it.
• Insistent Terminology: Lampshaded when he takes a romanced Commander out to a private dinner, with them winding up in bed together afterwards, which he insists is a "not-a-date", all one word.
• Irony: On multiple fronts.
  • He's a Celestial-blooded Aasimar with an In-Universe Neutral Evil alignment.
  • He's selfish to a fault but he's a healing Oracle that's best served buffing and healing the party.
  • He's continuously touted as untrustworthy and compared unfavorably to his cousin Queen Galfrey. Galfrey sends the Commander and their team in an extremely dangerous mission to the Abyss at least partially out of petty jealousy while Daeran actually joins the Commander and is never anything but reliable.
• It's Personal: While he already dislikes demons and cultists he has a special loathing for Lilitu. It was a Lilitu that started the plague that destroyed his life and forced him to bond with the Other.
• Jerkass Façade: While at least some of it must be genuine, a large part of his personality is due to being bound to the Other and having to keep his distance from people to avoid them being killed by his unwanted patron.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Invite him to Defender's Heart and he declines, saying it's sometimes better to be surrounded by demons than by Iomedae's followers. Considering Prelate Hulrun, he's not wrong.
  • In one council meeting he argues against Regill's idea of hanging traitors because it will just scare people and make them think they're next. He's not wrong. Later he does the same by pointing out that Regill's suggestion to hang complaining soldiers is just making the Demons job easier.
  • He tends to be very nasty to the various Tragic Villain and Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds characters. He's also correct that, regardless of their excuses, their actions speak for themselves.
  • His mocking of Galfrey and insinuations that she's not as perfect as she seems turns out to have a lot of merit once her actions in Act 5 come around.
• Kick the Dog: He enjoys teasing Arueshelae and pushing her buttons to the point that she almost enters into a demonic rage against an enemy at one point at this prodding. Granted, he has more reasons than most to distrust all demons, and he probably finds her quest for redemption hopelessly twee and naive, Other influence or no, but still.
  • Disturbingly, his introduction has him gleefully telling the Commander of how he had drunkenly ordered two of his guards into drinking a love potion for a lark. While the nature of the encounter is never fully explored, considering that the spectrum of harm a love potion could cause ranges from having the guards gushing embarrassing, lovey-dovey banter to each other, to engaging in full-on intercourse whilst under the influence of what may be a magical emotion roofie has left a few players with a bad taste in their mouth due to unfortunate implications.
• Kissing Cousins: In Areelu Vorlesh's lab the party is shown illusions of what they enjoy. Daeran's illusion? Him sleeping with Queen Galfrey, a distant relative. When the Commander points this out, he disgustedly says it was a childhood crush that he grew out of when she saw how she really was.
• Light Is Not Good: He's an aasimar Oracle of the Light Mystery and is associated with light and pale colors, but he's quite happy to let others die or suffer for his own amusement. This gets a bit more complicated later on, of course.
• Naytheism: He does not pay even lip service to the gods, despite his celestial heritage and divine powers. Where his powers come from is something of an open question — the Other may have first opened him up to his abilities as an oracle, but does not seem to be their source.
  Camellia: How does one who believes in no gods or spirits come to possess healing powers?
  Daeran: I suppose I must draw strength from my utter disinclination to be in debt to any god or spirit.
• Neutral Evil: His In-Universe alignment. He's selfish to a fault and doesn't much care about the suffering of others. However, his brand of evil is more petty than anything and he has numerous standards. Later revelations in his quest show that he might be True Neutral or Chaotic Neutral without the influence of The Other.
• Noble Demon: He is proudly without remorse and enjoys being mean without pretense, but you can't fault him for his honesty about both, and he's a loyal friend — in fact, chewing him out will win his approval in some cases, because he really doesn't think more people should be like him or see him as someone to admire or sympathize with. (It's harping on him from a specifically crusader perspective that absolutely deflates him.)
• Odd Friendship: He gets along with Ember and Lann, being protective of the former and liking the latter for his insults towards the nobility, which includes himself. He also gets along with Woljif with the two often joking back and forth.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • When Queen Galfrey is criticizing the Commander's handling of the crusade, several party members (and even the Hand of the Inheritor) protest that she's being overly harsh. Daeran however, usually the first to make snide comments toward Galfrey, in this instance seems to be in Tranquil Fury mode.
  Throughout the Queen's entire speech, Dearan is silent, but his silence is more expressive than an entire crowd yelling profanities.
  • The normally unflappable/make a joke out of everything Daeran is outright skittish during your journey into the Abyss in Act 4. He'll freely admit that he's terrified being there and if you are in a relationship with him and ask to spend time alone together, despite generally being a total flirt, he'll decline, painfully admitting that he just can't get into a romantic mood.
  • Relatedly: he calls himself out for seeming 'out-of-character' on this, but he's adamant that you really shouldn't indulge in the Ten Thousand Delights while in Alushinyrra; he's especially strident when you're in a relationship with him, mentioning that the thought of any of the denizens of the place getting their claws on you, in any way, terrifies him. Indulging anyway doesn't have a "mechanical" effect on the romance, per se (this is more tied to whether the Hand of the Inheritor trusts you by the end) but it is good flavor.
  • And finally, you do get to go on a "date" he arranges in the Abyss as he sets up a soiree of sorts with... rocks. Since he wants as little to do with Alushinyrra as possible, he has to try and make his own arrangements, and does ultimately call it out as not being his most inspired idea. You can also comment on how out of sorts he's been since arriving in the Abyss, and letting him know that you do care deeply about him here is a key moment to unlocking his "true love" route. This ends up being the one time he can get physically intimate with you in this leg of the adventure, because of how much this genuinely touches him.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: While he enjoys insulting everyone his most vicious remarks are said to people he considers to be morally repugnant and demons. While everyone sympathizes with Staunton's brother he calls him a self-pitying hypocrite and wishes that they killed Staunton first so he'll die in agony. Cruel, but he was a traitor who supplied demons with weaponry. Also, as much as he initially complains about joining the Crusade, he very clearly enjoys tormenting demons and those who turn to their side. He sounds practically giddy when the party has finally taken down Minagho and tells her he'll enjoy her death. Which makes sense given that the one who infected his house and murdered his mother was a Lilitu.
  Daeran: Lilitu demons have a special place in my heart. I enjoy watching them die. And the memories of this creature's demise will keep me warm even on my deathbed. Farewell, Minagho!
• Pet the Dog: Daeran is a self-admitted bastard but he's not without his moments of empathy.
  • He's surprisingly kind to Ember and often either tries to help her appear less haggard or disagrees when she puts herself down. While it's likely he's doing it for his own amusement it's still somewhat notable given his usual behavior. He's also surprisingly empathic when she's nearly sacrificed by Baphomet cultists when his usual response would be either amusement or apathy. Lann even points this out, though Daeran tries to play it off:
    Lann: It's amazing the way everyone feels the sharp edge of your tongue, but you almost never turn your poison on Ember. Is there a tiny flicker of a conscience in the Count's soul?
    Daeran: You're missing the main point of needling anyone — to enrage them. And to force them to respond with your jokes.
  • In the Midnight Isles when the group comes upon a pair of enslaved Aasimar women he says that they should be 'enjoying life and delighting others with their loveliness' rather than being trapped in a slave market. He then offers to buy them in the Commander's stead without any prompting.
  • When in the brothel in The Abyss he grimly and seriously warns the PC to keep their mouth shut, their hands in their pockets, and their pants on. He then offers to treat them to his favorite, and much safer, dens of vice and sin when they get back.
  • In Act 5 if the player reunites with a Desna worshipper from Act 1 he warmly greets him and regards him as an old friend. You can also get a whiff of this in Act 1 if you bring Daeran to meet the priest in question.
  • If Queen Galfrey dies then he's genuinely heartbroken with the game mentioning that he has to stop himself from having an emotional outburst. By contrast when Galfrey sees that he's alive after being sent to the Abyss she's neutral at best and annoyed at worst.
• Polyamory: He suggests this as a solution if the Commander pursued multiple romances in Chapter 5, but Arueshalae is the only other party member who seems interested. Subverted though in that in reality he's too jealous to share you with someone else and will make you choose just as everyone else will.
• Pretty Boy: He has delicate features and he's mentioned as taking most of his looks from his mother who's described as being an extremely beautiful woman.
• Rescue Romance: Three times. Though these events are not exclusive to a PC who romances him, it does play that way if they do.
  • When you first recruit him, demons attack his mansion, requiring the PC's intervention.
  • Later in Act II, he gets kidnapped by gargoyles along with most of your other party members.
  • Also saving him from the Other. This time you do get romance-specific content afterwards.
• Romance Sidequest: He can be romanced by both male and female PCs.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: He's cousin to Queen Galfrey and a high ranking noble in his own right. While he's forced to be part of the Crusade he joined willingly in Drezen and never complains about being forced to risk his life.
• Sarcastic Confession: Many of his snipes and barbs have a lot of truth to them, they're just veiled in sarcasm and contempt to throw people off.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Part and parcel to his Gentleman Snarker demeanor.
  Daeran: Greetings, valiant stranger who has just burst into my life! I am the master of this house, Count Daeran Kael Myriad-Mellifluous-Monikers Arendae.
• Ship Tease: Some of his dialogue with Camelia can take on a flirtatious bend with one ending in him asking her to a date to the opera to which she coyly responds with a maybe. It never actually goes anywhere, though. Especially since it's hinted that he knows her secret and even subtly digs at her with it in camp banter.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: If he is in the party at your first meeting with Hal, Daeran verbally eviscerates Hal's philosophy of providing free healing for cultists, accusing him of being Stupid Good. It's a bit surprising considering how much he likes Ember, but he clearly sees a key difference in their similar mindsets. He gives an even longer one if Nenio is also present.
  Daeran: Nenio, here is an idea for your scientific research. Estimate the approximate number of cultists saved from death by this worthy gentleman. Calculate the approximate number of murders that each cultist has committed since they were saved. Multiply the two numbers, and then compare the total with, say, the total number of victims of an average balor. When it comes to causing the death of ordinary people, I simply wonder who actually has a higher body count — this kind healer, or an evil demon.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis:
  • He is one to Prelate Hulrun, at least at the start of the game. He loves to do anything he can to thumb his nose at Hulrun, happily relates tales of grand stunts he's done just to piss Hulrun off, and his response to learning that he's unknowingly harboring a fugitive Hulrun accuses of treason is to laugh and remark that makes his day. He also seems to enjoy needling Irabeth, who makes it very clear she wants to toss him into the river.
  • He and his cousin Queen Galfrey enjoy sniping at each other. Daeran goes out of his way to try and offend her while she assigns him to the Crusade at least party to mess with him. If Galfrey dies, however, Daeran is clearly upset and has to hold himself back from reacting or breaking down.
• The Sociopath: Between his superficial charm, pathological need for stimulation and total lack of empathy for others (he feels exactly zero remorse for one of his games getting two of his bodyguards killed), Daeran is a pretty clear cut example of a high-functioning sociopath. May be subverted, however, if his Pet the Dog and Even Evil Has Standards moments are taken into account. Doing his quest shows that his uncaring nature is a front he puts up due to his harsh circumstances.
• Stereotype Flip: In a game about fighting a demon invasion, he's an evil Aasimar (celestial-blooded).
• Support Party Member: Similarly to Tristan from the last game, Daeran has low strength (meaning he's not very good at wearing armour) and few useful weapon proficiencies and feats to make use of his dexterity, but his spontaneous casting, the multiple rings available in the game that can expand his spell repretoire and starting Extra Channel lets him buff or heal the party for days. While he can be given other classes to compensate, keeping him an Oracle will make him best at defensive spells.
• Try to Fit That on a Business Card: He tries to bail on the party after the end of the battle for Kenabres. To keep him in the party, Queen Galfrey appoints him "Commander's Field Attache and Advisor Plenipotentiary Without Portfolio".
• Tsundere: Bizarrely enough, yes. He courts the Commander pretty aggressively in Act 3 but whenever they make any insinuation that he fancies them he’s quick to deny or claim otherwise. His romance scene even starts with him asking them to a ‘not date’ and he’s clearly disappointed and angry if he’s refused.
• Undying Loyalty: Surprisingly for someone so self-interested, he definitely counts. He'll never leave the Commander regardless of their Mythic Path or alignment and will literally follow them to the Abyss and back with barely any complaint. His personal quest even relies on him following the Commander into a trap for the Other because he won't ask questions and the only way to successfully complete it is to bluff or truthfully break him down into thinking this wasn't reciprocated.
• Uneven Hybrid: He's an aasimar, or in other words a humanoid with a distant celestial ancestor. The base creature in his case appears to be an elf rather than the usual human (a possibility explained in the Blood of Angels rulebook: nonhuman aasimars differ from human aasimars only in looks and creature size). Or possibly a half-elf, given he's related to Queen Galfrey.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: According to the followers of Desna, the mystery around what happened to Daeran's family and his own seemingly miraculous survival would eventually drive Inquisitor Liotr Hawkblade to abandon everything to crack it. Thing is until then Liotr was Prelate Hulrun's second in command, and Liotr's more virtuous qualities had a moderating effect on Hulrun's zeal, paranoia and prejudice. With Liotr gone from Kenabres there was no one to calm down Hulrun whom he'd listen to, and Hulrun embraced all his worst impulses.
• Urban Legend Love Life: While he is certainly a hedonist and party animal, stories about him tend to be somewhat...exaggerated. Of course, he isn't at all opposed to having that kind of reputation...
  Nenio: Hey, aasimar boy. I calculated the number of sexual encounters you've had in your life, considering the young age at which you presumably became sexually active, and your lack of general moral principles. The total was 2184.
  Daeran: Let's look at your workings. Hmm, so, three times a week, twice on each occasion, for seven years. Ah, there's your error - I go three rounds on Sundays. If we recalculate, that gives us...2548!
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Lann. At first glance the two are polar opposites but they get along remarkably well. It helps that Daeran appreciates Lann’s insults and comments while Daeran never attacks Lann for being a Mongrel like many other Mendevians, especially nobles, would.
• Why Am I Ticking?: He made a pact with some unknown otherworldly "Entity". He gains powers from that pact, but in return he now acts as a living gateway from which that Entity can eventually enter Golarion.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: He hates mosquitos. One camp banter even has him reassuring himself that they wouldn't dare bite him with a hint of fear. (Given that the sixth book of the original AP discusses Deskari's realm having fiendish mosquitos the size of houses, this isn't an entirely irrational fear to have in his circumstances.)

Ember

"I like you."

Race: Elf
Class: Witch (Stigmatized Witch)
Alignment: Neutral Good
Deity: Atheism

Voiced by: Suzy Myers Jackson

A mysterious girl who came to the Worldwound with her parents, who were accused of treason and burned at the pyre. She was spared from the fire by a compassionate soldier, but ended up disfigured from the flames.

---

• All-Loving Hero: She is forgiving and compassionate towards everyone, including the very man who burned her whole family at the stake.
• Appropriated Appelation: As her quote indicates, "Ember" was an insult she received because of her burn scars. She creatively reinterpreted it and adopted it as her name, having forgotten her birth name.
• The Anti-Nihilist: Despite her optimism, she's not naive at all. She believes that the Gods won't help, or can't, during this time of crisis, so she resolves to be the one to lead the change.
• Apologetic Attacker: Tends to apologize when she gets a critical hit.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Regardless of her actual age, the party treat her as the youngest due to her appearance and All-Loving Hero personality. Many Crusaders even come to talk to her because she reminds them of their children/grandchildren.
• Beware the Nice Ones: The Commander can end her personal quest by convincing her that some people cannot be swayed by words and are wholly unrepentant with their evil. While she won't give up on trying to redeem most people, she will gain a harsher outlook and a unique fire spell with it.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Seems to invoke this in a lot of NPCs the players meet. Greybor treats her with surprising care during their first meeting and acts very protectively towards her at one point when demons threaten her; Daeran curbs his Brutal Honesty around her and treats her nicely in his own way; and even NPCs like Staunton and his brother can see her kindness and apologize to her for having to fight.
  • She manages to trigger this among cultists and demons who kidnapped her.
  • Nocticula of all people will show up to help her when she's kidnapped, if you've allowed the two to meet and Ember to talk to her. Of course Nocticula will deny she was there to help but no one buys it.
• Break the Cutie: In one possible outcome for her story, she is not able to convice some people/demons to change, and she has a complete mental break, going so far as to forget her own name and who you are. She also gains a permanent -2 debuff to Intelligence.
  • In another potential ending, she experiences a lesser version of this. If the Commander convinces her that some people don't deserve to be saved, she will eventually lash out violently at some cultists who just refuse to stop attempting to sacrifice people to Baphomet. Even though the vast majority of the world still believe her to be an absolute saint, she becomes scared of her own powers and their potential for violence and begins Walking the Earth endlessly, never wanting to stay in one place for long.
• Burn the Witch!: She and her father were falsely accused of consorting with demons and burned at the stake by Prelate Hulrun. An unnamed knight couldn't bear Ember's screams and rescued her from the pyre and set her free.
• Burn Scars, Burning Powers: Ember, along with her father, was burned at the stake as a witch by Prelate Hulrun as a child, but she was rescued from her pyre by a compassionate knight. Her body is heavily burn-scarred and missing three fingers, and she can cast a number of fire spells that aren't normally on the Witch spell list. Mechanically, her subclass was developed by Owlcat Games as a hybrid of the Witch and Oracle classes: she has the Blackened curse from the latter class.
• But Now I Must Go: If she's taught that some people can't be convinced with words then she fears her own power and begins to wander the world trying to help people both with kindness and, if needed, her magic. People call her a saint while she continuously replies that 'she's just a girl'.
• Canon Foreigner: She's a wholly original character, and her character class archetype was created specially for her, converting the Witch base class from a prepared caster to a spontaneous caster and adding the curse feature from the Oracle base class. Enforced: originally, Owlcat wanted her to be an Oracle, but they already had one in Daeran and knew that the party options were getting heavy on divine magic as it was and lacking in arcane casters, so they asked Paizo if they could build a Witch archetype that would create a kind of Witch-Oracle hybrid. Paizo loved it and gave their approval, leading to the version of Ember that went to print.
• Cheerful Child: Not actually a child, but she acts like one. In elven terms she's more of a teenager.
  • Take her to Areelu's lab and the illusion she gets is innocently playing with other children.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Tristian in Kingmaker was also an All-Loving Hero, but willing to do what he had to if somebody proved themselves irredeemable. Ember believes the best of everyone, even thinking that the demons are just lashing out from fear. She's also a Nay-Theist, whereas he was a cleric of Sarenrae and originally a movanic deva serving Sarenrae personally.
• Creepy Good: She has pure black eyes, has burn wounds over most of her body, is missing fingers, has a crow for a Familiar and is classed as a Witch. She's also bar none the kindest party member and always advocates for mercy even against the most evil.
• The Cuckoo Lander Was Right: Her spiel about even demons being capable of redemption is potentially proven right not once but twice: once when the party meets the redeemed succubus Arueshalae, latter when she actually does cause several demons to turn on the abyss because of what she said, and once again when Nocticula, a demon lord at that, is teetering on the edge of an epiphany which would eventually lead her to renounce evil and ascend as a full-fledged goddess and can be given a push in that direction.
• Cute Witch: A sweet adolescent girl who knows magic. She is also technically a witch.
• Dramatic Irony: She is a pretty staunch Naytheist who believes that the gods are useless and cannot be relied on for any help. But a Commander with enough knowledge of religion can realize that the "grandmother" who sent her her crow and that whispers to Ember and taught her how to use magic is almost certainly the demi-goddess Andoletta, "Grandmother Crow", something Ember apparently doesn't realize.
• Easily Forgiven: She's very quick to forgive and see the good in people, even those who personally harmed her such as Hulrun who burned her and her father at the stake or the Baphomet cultists who killed her congregation and tried to sacrifice her. The other companions look at her with confusion, worry, and, in the case of Camellia, annoyance because of this.
• The Empath: She's capable of seeing emotions and regrets which even the people she's looking at deny.
• Expy: Except for being elven and a heavily burned witch, she shares a lot of traits with the titular protagonist of Michael Ende's Momo. Both are Morality Pet, barefoot homeless girls who have a magical animal companion, are The Empath and help those around them with surprisingly wise council.
• Familiar: A crow named Soot. A perceptive Commander can recognize it as a gift from Andoletta, one of the Empyreal Lords.
• Fingore: She's missing the middle finger of her right hand and the two smaller fingers of her left hand. She lost them when she was burned at the stake when she first arrived in Kenabres. Some townsfolk called her "lucky seven" because of it.
• Forced Sleep: She comes premade with the Slumber hex, one of the most useful witch hexes available in Pathfinder.
• Handicapped Badass: She has burned scars on most of her body and she's missing fingers from both hands. She's still a proficient spellcaster regardless.
• The Heart: Fulfills the role of little sister surrogate and The Conscience for the party.
• Heroic BSoD: Has a brief one in Areelu's lab when the old mongrel recounts his own burning at the stake.
• Humble Hero: She always denies that she's really influencing people even as they bow down to her and proclaim her as a saint. At most she says that the things she talks about are just things people already know. Even in the ending where she's regarded as a saint she continuously insists she's just an ordinary girl.
• The Idealist: She believes that no one is beyond redemption, even demons. She's right.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: The cultists try to turn her to the demons' side but it backfires since Ember ends up converting every single recruiter sent her way.
• Innocently Insensitive: She's often prone to this. When she does realize what she's saying is hurting others she's genuinely sorry, though.
• Irony: In the Ascension ending, she, a Naytheist, can become a demigod herself. She is forced to reckon with the fact that divinity is a heavier burden than she believed it to be. She does go to meet her "grandmother" Andoletta for advice.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Downplayed due to her general Nice Girl nature, but her dismissive attitude to religion rubs the religious characters the wrong way. However, being that Pathfinder hews to Classical Mythology rules, the story shows she isn't wrong that the gods can be just as fallible as mortals. Of the four you primarily interact with (directly or indirectly), Desna once nearly started an interplanar war in a blind rage after a demon lord murdered and possessed one of her priests, Pharasma's single-minded hatred of the undead verges on Blue-and-Orange Morality (granted, undead tend to be either mindless monsters or total psychos, but she appears to take their very existence as a personal affront), Iomedae is a hypocrite about the Commander's powers to the point where even her own paladin Seelah gives her a What the Hell, Hero? reaction, and Asmodeus is a literal archdevil whose only marginally redeeming feature compared to the demons is a preference for an orderly world (and he means to eliminate free will to create one).
• Kick the Dog: Her response to Seelah trying to explain why Ember's Naytheist tendencies are vexing (comparing Iomedae and faith^note This being what helped Seelah overcome her Dark and Troubled Past after her Interrupted Suicide to the knight who saved Ember from the pyre) is to promptly state that not only are the gods incapable of being friends, but that they save nobody and only lie.
• Mercy Kill: Ember agrees with Kaylessa's request for the Commander to kill her before the Always Chaotic Evil nature of her drow transformation overtakes the last of her surface elf morality, seeing it as a last act of kindness.
• Messianic Archetype:
  • She's an innocent young girl who was (almost) burned at the stake but still finds it in her heart to forgive her tormentors and anyone who shows signs of guilt and remorse. In Act 5 this gets to the point where she can successfully redeem demons who are touched by her words and agree that their cruel nature brings them nothing but misery.
  • It's mentioned that while the crusade gravitates around the commander, Ember has built quite a following in its midst. Many of the crusaders seeing in her a proxy of the children they left behind and for whom they fight. And her sermons drawing small crowds and causing the aforementioned redemptions.
• Missing Mom: While her dad took her to Mendev to join the crusades her mom stayed behind in their home. It's left ambiguous whether her mom was aware of this and willingly let them leave or her father snuck her out of Kyonin — what is established is that Ember's mother thought the crusades were no place to raise a child. Whatever the case, Ember seems to have no interest in finding her mother again.
• Morality Pet: For Daeran, Wenduag, Greybor, and optionally an evil Commander. Most impressively, she manages to be this to Nocticula, who, despite her protests, did personally teleport into a battle to protect her. Meeting Ember is also crucial for Nocticula to turn into the Redeemer Queen
• Mystical Waif: She's a pure-hearted but innocently weird young girl with magical powers of mysterious origin.
• Naytheist: She doesn't put much faith in the gods, believing that people can ultimately only trust in themselves. Ironically, the PC can work out with a Lore (Religion) check while talking to her that the "Grandmother" she keeps referring to who taught her magic and gave her her familiar is probably Andoletta, one of the Empyreal Lords — i.e. a good-aligned demigoddess.
  • She can also be surprisingly insulting when people think she should worship a god. When Sosiel brings it up in a party banter she asks him if she'd be less tired if she carried a horse, indicating that she considers the gods to weigh people down. This is the main reason she and Seelah don't get along.
• Neutral Good: Her In-Universe alignment. She doesn't care much about codes or personal freedom, she's just a sweet-natured little girl who wishes fervently that people would be nicer to each other.
• Nice Girl: Almost too nice, actually. Various companions find it odd how she's so quick to forgive or see the good in people who've actively harmed others or even herself.
• The Nicknamer: She only ever calls Kenabres "the River City"; Kyonin is "the Flower Country". She also coins the title "The Redeemer Queen" for Nocticula. Fans of Pathfinder will find that this is actually the title Nocticula becomes known as when she becomes a goddess.
• No-Sell: Her nature as an elf makes her immune to being paralyzed, as a Ghoul finds out at the Lost Chapel.
• Not Afraid to Die: She's very casual when describing how she was almost burned at the stake and when you find her she's more concerned about the people who are about to sacrifice her getting hurt than she is about being sacrificed. Later on she comforts Arueshalae about the possibility of them fighting Areelu Vorlesh. If they beat her it means they won and if they lose it means they're dead and therefore they have nothing else to worry about.
• Older Than They Look: Played with. Despite looking like a young girl she's old enough to have known Woljif (who is now an adult) as a kid. She's an elf, however, and in elven terms she's still basically a teenager. This puts her in the range of 100-120 years old and she mentions being born the same year the Worldwound opened.^note By the book the youngest possible age she can be is 116, but that would make her an adult and the game explicitly calls her an adolescent.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: She has had many nicknames over the decades, most of them insults making light of her scars. "Ember" is simply the one she liked best. She can remember her parents calling her dove, cricket, and kitten, but after losing her father when she was very young, she can no longer remember her original name.
  Ember: Then, when I came to live in the River City, the good people called me different funny names, like ember, or torch, or smokie... I don't know why. They called me bird brain because I have a crow. They called me 'lucky seven' because of my fingers. They sometimes called me grilled meat, and said I was stupid... but I didn't feel hurt. I mean, they're right, I really am silly! They didn't mean to hurt me!
• Playing with Fire: Her curse gives her mastery over fire element magic.
• The Pollyanna: Both her and her father were burned at the stake by religious zealots, yet even that didn't kill her optimism: rather it appears to have killed her capacity for pessimism.
• Rage Breaking Point: If you convince her that some people truly are beyond being redeemed, she will utterly lose it against some templars who simply refuse to change their ways and repeatedly attempt to make sacrifices at a certain alter of Baphomet. The power that rises up in her makes even the Commander nervous.
• The Redeemer: Would be this to the entire world if she could. In-game, she becomes a street preacher of sorts in Chapter 3 who gives sermons that consist almost entirely of asking people to be nice to each other. She ends up converting cultists of Baphomet who wanted to kidnap her as a (non-)Human Sacrifice, who if left alive by the Commander return to Drezen with her as her self-appointed bodyguards. If the commander is nothing but supportive of this view, she will end up preaching peace and understanding to demons and mortals alike, and gain a powerful spell that pacifies anyone affected by it.
• Replacement Goldfish: Many in the army treat her as a surrogate for their own daughters and granddaughters that they left behind to fight. More specifically Greybor seems to regard her as a replacement for his daughter and is immediately friendly and protective to her from the first meeting.
• Somebody Doesn't Love Raymond: Zigzagged. The most surprising people can't seem to help themselves when it comes to Ember, wanting to protect her and go along with her simple, goodhearted worldview — those who don't, such as demons and cultists, seem all the more determined to kill her on the spot. There are a few exceptions: Seelah, who is offended by her Naytheism, and Wenduag, who is immediately suspicious that such meekness combined with obvious power must be some kind of act (as it is for Wenduag). Both can eventually start to come around — Seelah breathes a sigh of relief knowing Ember is safe after the latter's abduction in Act 3, while Wenduag becomes somewhat baffled (but eventually intrigued) by the idea that kindness and forgiveness are actually signs of great strength in their own right. Camellia, however, never changes her opinion on the dirty street urchin, seeming to find her naivete offensively saccharine.
• Unwanted False Faith: By Act 5 people have begun to revere her as a saint and worship her. While she's too nice to be angry at them she's definitely bemused and thinks they're silly for worshipping a 'normal girl'.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: And it works. Although her idealism is out of place in the setting, she somehow makes it work. She can successfully appeal to the goodness in nearly anyone.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: She's effectively a teenager by Elven standard, but she's deceptively wise (especially as one might underestimate from her seeming innocence). In fact her appearance of naivety or boundless innocence hides a sharp wit, where she describes how people often use titles to shield their own misdeed. Or that worshipping a god wouldn't make her able to help more people than she already does, only behold her to another's standards. Many of her remarks show surprising insight to them.
• The Woobie: Both in-universe and out.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: It's how Ember describes how she redeems people, by reminding them of who they are and what they can do. It's also what she does to Nocticula.

Greybor

"Sweet dreams."

Race: Dwarf
Class: Slayer
Alignment: True Neutral
Deity: Norgorber

Voiced by: Scottie Ray

A dwarven mercenary that The Commander encounters a few times, before he can be hired to join you in your crusade.

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• Action Dad: In Areelu's lab he's shown a vision of himself teaching his daughter how to kill a (fake) gargoyle. He refuses to comment on any of it to the Commander, including whether or not he even has children.
• Asshole Victim: Discussed. While he admits he's probably killed at least a few innocent people (he recounts killing a cheating spouse back when he was still 'green') the vast majority of his targets decidedly deserve it. After all, it's the most dangerous and violent that get high bounties on their heads rather than the farmer just trying to make a living. When the player meets him he's specifically targetting a demon and later a high-ranking demon general.
  Greybor: Killing good people doesn't tend to pay very well. It's the dangerous, twisted, bloody sons of bitches who fetch the highest bounty. That's why they're my specialty.
• Badass Normal: He's a Slayer, which is a Ranger/Rogue hybrid without the spells.
• Berserk Button: Do not make comments about him leaving his family. Woljif does it once in party banter and he sounds like he's a hair-trigger away from stabbing him right then and there.
• Blood Knight: Discussed and averted. When Camellia asks him if he enjoys killing people he says that he only cares about the money he receives. The combat is just a job to him.
• Canon Foreigner: He's an original character with no direct counterpart in the Wrath of the Righteous adventure path.
• Catchphrase: He wishes his victims "Sweet Dreams" when he kills them. He notes in a conversation that this might be a bit Freudian on his part If you put in his head the idea to retire.
• Consummate Professional: He takes his job very seriously. He approves if the Commander follows similar trains of thought.
• Disappeared Dad: He had a wife and daughter but left them behind due to being unable to settle down. It's clear he still holds some regret over it.
• Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe: While not exactly high-class, Greybor is courteous and professional, and is shown smoking a pipe in his portrait and frequently said to be lighting it up in narration.
• Dual Wielding: A twin pair of axes.
• Early-Bird Cameo: You can meet him well before you can hire him in the Tower of Estrod. He'll also show up during the siege of the Defender's Heart to assassinate a demon he was hired to kill, by disguising himself as said demon's companion and stabbing him the back the moment he shows himself.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: If you convince him to retire and reunite with his family then he'll go to meet them at the ending. It takes him years to earn back their trust but he manages to do it and even begins to train his daughter as a warrior, which is the first time he feels true happiness in a long while.
• Informed Attribute: His In-Universe True Neutral alignment doesn't always seem to fit perfectly. His obsession with contracts, negotiations and his reputation place him on a far more Lawful bend. Likewise his occupation as a Professional Killer who never refuses any contract regardless of the innocence or guilt of the target (barring children) would be considered evil in most other individuals. While the game positions his having killed many truly evil individuals as being enough to tip the scales, Pathfinder generally places intent above action with regard to alignment, with characters such as the previous game's Regongar or this game's Daeran identifying as evil while having committed crimes far short of murder for hire, under substantial duress.
• Late Character Syndrome: He can be hit by this. He is the last standard companion the Commander can recruit (Areushalae can be recruited at the end of the previous act if you complete the right steps) and has no emotional connection to the crusade, literally only being in it for the money (you have to pay him to join.)
• Not in This for Your Revolution: Most of the other companions have some kind of personal reason to take part in the crusade, but Greybor doesn't care one way or the other.
• Only in It for the Money: Literally. You need to hire him for a pretty hefty sum, both initially and if you want him to stick around. He'll especially approve if the player pays him double or gives him 30 percent of another contract later.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Played with. He's a bearded warrior who fights with a pair of axes, and is Only in It for the Money. On the other hand, he doesn't have a Scottish accent, and is The Stoic and a Consummate Professional Killer without any loyalties beyond his current employer.
• Papa Wolf: Snarls at a couple of demons who threaten Ember in Chapter 4 that he'll kill them very painfully if they touch her. Other dialogue with Ember shows that he looks out for her and asks her outright why a child is in a battlefield.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He generally prefers going after Asshole Victim types rather than innocents. It has less to do with morals and more that innocent people generally haven't done anything to garner a huge bounty. One banter has him state that he murdered a cheating spouse in the past due to not having enough of a reputation back then for more lucrative contracts.
• Professional Killer: His occupation. He is a freelance assassin and proud of it.
• Relationship Values: How you speak to him (don't preach) determines whether he betrays you, in addition to how well he is paid.
• Slave to PR: He places a lot of importance in his reputation. After all, it's how you separate professions from the armed thugs. While he's happy to join the Demon Assassin's Guild he's also perfectly happy killing them because they tricked him into attacking a demon under false pretenses and making a fool of him.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: With Arueshelae. While she's perfectly cordial to him he's quick to judge her Redemption Quest as impossible. Either she's lying and thus their enemy or she's genuine but can't actually succeed since mortal races will never want to live side by side with a demon. Seelah also dislikes him though there's more hostility on her end than his.
• True Neutral: His In-Universe alignment, apparently of the "equal tension in multiple directions variety''. Greybor doesn't care about causes, morality or anything else. He joins the Crusade because he's paid to and generally goes after Asshole Victim types because they're the ones with high bounties rather than any sort of moral standard. As an assassin who places a heavy value on keeping his word, however, he would seem to lean toward both law and evil — lampshaded by his in-game acknowledgment that killing the nastiest lawbreakers tends to bring in the best bounties, while the value he places on his word goes hand in hand with the importance of his reputation. Which is to say he has no problem breaking a contract he dislikes if he thinks he can get away with it in secret, without damaging his prospects with future employers down the line.
• The Stoic: No matter what kind of crap the crusade throws at your team, it never seems to affect Greybor that much.
• Undying Loyalty: He considers his professional reputation to be everything. If he joins the Assassins' Guild in Alushinyrra in Act 4 then in Act 5 they hire him to kill you for an insane amount of gold. He sets up an ambush for you and they easily defeat you. When the leaders of the guild show up personally to finish you off, he stabs them in the back, kills everyone except the two leaders, and you reveal yourself to be basically unharmed and ready to fight them. He arranged the whole thing ahead of time specifically knowing they would show up and he wanted to kill them for merely thinking he would betray his current employer. That is how important his reputation is to him.
• Would Not Hurt A Child: When he thinks Ember is looking at him with fear he quickly reassures her that he won't hurt her. Also, for all his past stories of his kills he never mentions ever killing a child.

Lann

"I'm asking you — believe me when I say I won't let you down. I have nothing to lose down here apart from my chief's distrust and my friendship with the giant roaches."

Race: Mongrelman
Class: Monk (Zen Archer)
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Deity: Iomedae

Voiced by: Tom Wayland

One of the "mongrels" living below Kenabres, one of the descendants of the original Crusaders. Lann is equally quick to joke or complain, but is a steadfast companion who wants to help his people.

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• Ascended Extra: Lann was an extremely minor character in the AP, only really serving as a guide to the mongrel town before essentially vanishing from the story. Here he's one of the first party members you get, and is a prominent character.
• But Now I Must Go: In his good ending he decides to enjoy his life to the fullest and sets off to be a sailor/pirate.
• Broken Pedestal: While his relationship with Wendaug is icy when you first encounter the pair, he still clearly respects her for her abilities and contributions to the tribe. He quickly loses this respect when he finds out she was an agent for the cultists in the Shield Maze, and has been luring Mongrels in to be killed or forcibly converted to their ranks. Should he be recruited instead of her in Act 1, then this devolves in to outright loathing should they encounter her again in Act 3.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: He's most similar to Ekundayo from Kingmaker, a disciplined hunter and protector of his people. Unlike Ekun, he's a jokester, whereas Ekun was a laconic stoic.
• Deadpan Snarker: He's quick to crack jokes about more or less anything.
  Lann: C'mon, a living legend? A walking folktale, maybe. I just need to make sure I don't turn into a running joke.
• Death Seeker: He joins the Crusade at least partially hoping he'll die so his death can be worthwhile. The Commander can help him move past this.
• Dogged Nice Guy: It’s really easy for the game to assume he and the female Commander are in a relationship. Even if the player goes out of their way to just call him a friend he'll invite them to a spar and, should the Commander not refuse, he acts as if they’re dating.
• Friends with Benefits: By all accounts this was his main relationship with Wenduag.
• Heroic Sacrifice: If you haven't completed every event in Lann's storyline before his Act 5 quest and then choose to let him handle the confrontation with Savamelekh his way, he will be mortally wounded by the demon and die shortly after you kill it, but his defiance will convince the other mongrelmen that they were wrong to submit to Savamelekh and will commit themselves fully to the crusade.
• Hypocrite: A mild case, but he'll (attempt to) prevent a Mongrel woman and an Elven man from marrying via the tribe's customs by citing Mayfly–December Romance. This doesn't stop him from getting into a relationship with a possibly Long-Lived Commander. It's mild given that it takes little prodding to get him to allow it and he indicates he was just using it as an excuse to not be the Chief.
• Irony: Lann's primary motivations are to make something of meaningful of his "stupidly short" life and protect his people from demonic infuences, but in attempting to achieve the latter he's inadvertently ensuring he and any Mongrels who heed to him won't make it out of their 30s, as unbeknowest to Lann the rituals he opposes are the key to Mongrel longevity.
• Lawful Neutral: His In-Universe alignment. Lann prioritizes taking care of his group — both the Mongrels and the Crusade — and encourages the Commander to not try to take responsibility for everyone. His suggestions over council meetings also include hanging thieves or using the law to get what they need, and he tends to make suggestions that aim for helping the average person.
• Magikarp Power: A downplayed case, since he starts off helpful right away, but his Strength and Dex being about equal means he doesn't start off hitting as hard as your other starting characters, who tend to focus more on one stat damage wise. Get him a Composite bow however, and Lann gains a big increase to his damage due to his balance of the two stats allowing him to add his Strength to the damage of his attacks as well, letting him hit harder than he would with a normal bow.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Threefold.
  • Any romance with him will be this since Mongrels only live to their 30's and he's already an adult. This especially applies if the Commander is of a Long-Lived race such as Dwarves or Elves.
  • He also deals with it when he's promoted to chief. One of the issues he has is a Mongrel woman and an Elf man falling in love and needing his permission to marry, which he refuses to give since the disparity in their lifespan will just lead to pain down the road. The Commander can sway him to accept or refuse them.
  • His mother and father were also this since he was a mongrel and she was a half-elf. It was one reason — along with the numerous stillborns and defective births — that they separated.
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members: If you recruit Wenduag he won't join the party until late into chapter 3 (or never if you let her kill him).
• Not Afraid to Die: Zig-zagged. He clearly has a complex about dying young and joins the Crusades in order to make his life have meaning. On the other hand he utterly refuses to extend his lifespan if it means using immoral methods. Nocticula outright says she can give him immortality if he wants but he states that he'd rather die free than live with a chain around his neck.
• N-Word Privileges: He conspicuously insists on calling his tribe mongrels, despite the fact that this is just as insulting as it sounds, instead of 'Underground Crusaders' like most prefer.
• Odd Friendship: Friendship may be too strong a term, but he's the only companion who shows respect to Regille for his willingness to Shoot the Dog and make hard decisions. Every other companion is either neutral or despises him for it. He's also friends with Daeran despite first impressions.
• Parental Abandonment: His dad died, and his mom ran off years ago. Their reunion makes for a very sweet moment in Chapter 3.
• Romance Sidequest: He can be romanced by female PCs.
• Sad Clown: He cracks jokes at every opportunity, often at his own expense, and always to make light of very serious things.
• Shoot the Dog: Much like Regill, he favors these decisions, though he will follow orders regardless. Ironically the conflict between him and Wenduag in Act 1 starts because she wants to do this (leave the Mongrel teens to avoid putting the rest of the village in danger, or so she claims) while he wants to save them despite the risk.
• Survivor's Guilt: He admits later on after reuniting with his mother that he feels partially responsible for his parent's separation for being the only one of his siblings who survived his birth and giving hope to his parents that they could be a normal family.
• We Are as Mayflies: Mongrels only live to be about 35 on average and he's already an adult nearing 25 years old. One reason he joins the Crusade is because he wants to do something with his life before he dies young.
• What the Hell, Hero?: He has this reaction when hearing about Wenduag's betrayal.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Lann is well aware that as a Mongrelman, he's going to die young, and is unlikely to make it past 35. It causes him many issues. He refuses to seek out or meet his half-elven mother because he knows she will outlive him, and doesn't want to break her heart like her many miscarriages before have. It also gives him numerous hangups about romantic pairings between Mongrelmen and other races, as seen under Mayfly–December Romance. If he ascends he no longer has this problem. Instead, he struggles with finding something to do with his now eternal life.

Nenio

"That information is irrelevant. I have decided to forget it."

^{Click here to see her Kitsune form}

"You require my unbiased opinion?"

Race: Kitsune
Class: Wizard (Scroll Savant)
Alignment: True Neutral
Deity: Nethys

Voiced by: Sara Rahman

A kitsune wizard who approaches life as a scientific experiment.

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• Absent-Minded Professor: Constantly. To the point where she forgets she's a Kitsune in the first place, always remaining in human Form.
• Achievements in Ignorance: A very unusual example. She is able to simply forget about things, on the spot. This somehow also applies to being drunk. Just by willing the "memory" of getting drunk away, she instantly becomes stone-cold sober. The Commander can express total shock at this.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: Played for Laughs. Because she chooses to forget anything she does not find personally interesting, she occasionally uncovers surprising facts about herself — some of which have only just happened. She has no idea she's a kitsune rather than an ordinary human, for example, until the player takes her to the Nameless Ruins. Or the fact that she had already been to the Nameless Ruins and previously knew The Reveal at the end of the Enigma, rendering the whole quest something of a shaggy kitsune story.
• Canon Foreigner: She is completely original to the PC game, and mostly exists to give the new Kickstarter backer-chosen playable race, Kitsune, a pre-built representative.
• Catchphrase: "That information is irrelevant. I have decided to forget it."
• Character Tics: She has a tendency to rub her nose or scratch it with the back of her pencil while mulling over new discoveries.
• Cloudcuckoolander: She doesn't seem to realize what's going on around her half the time. The other half, she tends to be focusing on random details.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Like Jubilost, she's a long-winded Insufferable Genius who joins the player to further her career as an author and scholar. Like the alchemist, she specializes in crafting magical items, though it's scrolls in her case rather than mutagens and bombs. Unlike the world-famous Jubilost, however, Nenio is only famous in her own mind, and while Jubilost enjoyed winding people up with Brutal Honesty and stirring the pot with incisive observations, Nenio simply doesn't care about anything other than the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.
• Cunning Like a Fox: Not so much trickster behavior, but endless curiosity. Of course, she's not above tricks if they serve some immediate research purpose, such as casually mentioning telling a scholar the solution to his studies was at the end of a hall so he would set off the traps.
• Ditzy Genius: She knows a great deal in terms of raw facts, but understands very little about reality, especially when it comes to social niceties or morality.
• Empty Shell: Her true identity is that of a pawn for the demon lord Areshkagal. The reason she doesn't remember most things is because she doesn't have an actual history to recall. The Commander can snap her out of it by mentioning her desire to complete her Encyclopedia and bringing up their friendship.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • When Camellia asks why she never asks her for her knowledge Nenio says her intelligence is below average and what she knows has little value. While it might just be her being insulting, it could be she knows Camellia is a Serial Killer and has no interest in it.
  • During the party's encounter with a demon who uses her son for experiments Nenio protests that experimenting on someone can only be done with their consent and using children is against the unspoken rules of science.
• Expy: She resembles a cross between Kang the Mad from Jade Empire (including being an amnesiac non-human with a murky past) and Sherlock Holmes.
  • On a meta level, Nenio is basically what happens if you put into a videogame the average RPG player. No backstory that the DM can use against you, cares only about their goal in the game and nothing else, "lolsorandum" humor, etc.
• First-Episode Twist: She's a kitsune but opted to forget it as "irrelevant", as revealed during the first stage of her personal quest, which can be completed within the first few minutes outside of Kenabres.
• Flat Character: Unusually for a companion, she is completely one-note and has almost nothing in the way of backstory, plot arc, interparty conflicts, major decision points, or Character Development of any kind, being almost pure Plucky Comic Relief. In keeping with this, she only has a single personal quest, albeit one that is spread out across the entire game and cannot be completed until Act V. Her quest mostly serves to point the player at the Bonus Dungeon of the Enigma, where the truth of Nenio's past is finally revealed... to both of you.
• For Science!: Before all else, willingly sending others into danger if it furthers her research, to the point she considers Areelu Vorlesh to be something like a personal hero because Vorlesh opened the Worldwound, calling it 'the experiment of the century' and wishing she'd done it herself. She practically squees if she meets Areelu personally and gushes about how amazing she is, even asking for her autograph. Areelu, like most people, just finds Nenio annoying.
• Fox Folk: As a kitsune, in her true form she is a humanoid fox. This does not particularly interest her or change anything about how she acts apart from noting that the party seems much more interested in her due to her new appearance.
• Insufferable Genius: Largely out of lack of tact than self importance, but she believes herself smarter than everyone around her and will cheerfully let them know it. In many cases she's right, but she still has zero tact about it. She refuses to even bother learning your name because she considers it unimportant information.
• Interface Spoiler: Though she is marked as a Human until she accidentally reveals her actual race, digging around her character sheet shows she doesn't have the extra feat or skill points humans usually have, plus her racial ability score modifiers being two bonuses and a penalty (in opposition to a human's being a single bonus to an ability of their choice)
• Jerkass: While she doesn't really go out of her way to be mean her comments are extremely rude, lack tact and often insult the person.
• Loony Fan: Of magical science, to the point where she jumps at the chance to join forces with various villains if they'll just share their research with her. This never goes anywhere, as they either can't believe she's serious or just find her too annoying to bother.
• Magikarp Power: Her archetype specializes in casting from scrolls, which initially just means she gives up on several class features and feats she would otherwise have as a regular wizard. Once you can build up a sizeable collection of otherwise underpowered scrolls, though, she can freely spam high-powered spells without worrying about spell slots.
• Meaningful Name: Nenio means "nothing" in Esperanto. This refers both to her tattoo of a zero and to the fact she is actually a former cultist of Areshkagal, brainwashed into renouncing her individuality and considering herself "nothing".
• Mood Whiplash: A walking version of it. No matter what dangerous and nightmarish scenarios the party gets into she'll often deflate the tension by asking really inane questions or spouting odd theories. This includes managing to freak out the demoness Jerribeth and leave Baphomet himself in Stunned Silence.
• Mysterious Past: On account of the fact that she doesn't remember said past due to considering it unimportant and thus purging it from her mind. She didn't even know she was a kitsune till her Act 1 quest.
• No Need for Names: Only narrowly averted. She doesn't bother remembering anyone's name unless they're a significant historical figure and admits the only reason she remembers her own name is because she's planning on writing an encyclopedia and wants to get the author's name right. If you snap her back to her old self at the end of her questline, she will call you by your name. If you ask her about that later, she'll loudly deny that she ever did so before quietly asking that you keep it to yourself, she has a reputation to uphold after all.
• Paper Master: She starts with the Scroll Savant wizard archetype, which gives her abilities in this line, in particular allowing her to craft spell scrolls and empowering her when she casts from them.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Golarion's self-declared greatest scientific mind that no one has ever heard of. Zigzagged — she is quite intelligent and knowledgeable, but also deeply naive — because she only recently popped back into existence and has very limited life experiences.
• Spiky Hair: In her human form, in both her portrait and in-game model, she wears her hair in a bun in the back, with long gravity-defying Anime Hair spikes sticking up in the front. It's an option for player/custom female characters as well, but very few NPCs have it.
• The Teetotaler: Zig-zagged. She's never been drunk before Act 3 — at which point she bids the commander to watch over while she drinks so she can see what it's like for her Encyclopedia. While she does engage in some minor Alcohol-Induced Idiocy, she quickly gets over it because she found what she needed and thus decides to forget that she was drunk, sobering up instantly. The Commander can express their amazement at this.
• That Man Is Dead: In the good ending of her quest, she begins to regain her memories of when she was a follower of Areshkagal who sacrificed her sense of self. However, she states that that person feels like a foreign entity to her, though she finds she feels oddly attached to her old name and is unable to make herself forget it like she's forgotten so many other things (though she keeps that name to herself).
• Through a Face Full of Fur: The circle tattoo on her shoulder in human form shows up as dyed(?) black fur in her kitsune form. As a mark of her creation by Areshkagal, it's something of a Power Tattoo.
• Tomato Surprise: Not a huge surprise thanks to the Interface Spoilers, but she turns out to be a kitsune. She also turns out to be one of the Strangers, cultists of the demon lord Areskhagal who have given up their identities and souls, allowing them to be called into existence as their master wills. In forgetting she served Areshkagal, however, Nenio freed herself to recreate a new identity. Her Small Name, Big Ego habits are her way of overcompensating, at least in part, against the belief that she is nothing innate to her old persona's servitude to Areshkagal.
• Too Dumb to Live: While she hasn't died (yet) the various companions point out how utterly insane her experiments are and express wonder just how she hasn't died or been killed by someone else yet. Banter with Woljif indicates that she knows how to run very fast when needed; an exasperated Sosiel scolds her after she jumps off a cliff to test a Potion of Feather Fall she bought from an urchin in an alley.
• True Neutral: Her In-Universe alignment, of the Blue-and-Orange Morality variety. She doesn't really care about anything but expanding her knowledge. She even admires Areelu Vorlesh for opening the Worldwound, despite all the lives lost due to it, calling it a scientific breakthrough.
• Would Not Hurt A Child: Zig-zagged. While she argues that children should not be experimented on due to lack of consent she has no problems gushing over Areelu creating the Worldwound despite the numerous lives, many of them children, lost in its creation.

Regill Derenge

"War is both science and art. To master both aspects, you need a disciplined mind. Until you acquire that discipline, you will understand nothing of war."

"Speak with your actions, not your words."

Race: Gnome
Class: Fighter (Armiger) / Hellknight
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Deity: Godclaw

Voiced by: Marc Thompson

The Paralictor of a detail of Hellknights of the order of the Godclaw, sent to establish an outpost in the Wounded Lands. The Commander can join forces with him and his knights to attack Drezen and contribute to the crusade.

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• Affably Evil: As a companion he's entirely tolerant of the Commander as long as they don't directly question or impede his operations, and even becomes respectful of them if they accept his advice and make sound, pragmatic decisions, regardless of their overall alignment.
• Baritone of Strength: Has a very deep voice, especially for a gnome, suiting his role as a badass Hellknight officer.
• Battle Cry: The loudest he gets is when giving orders: expect to hear him command "Close ranks" at the beginning of many a battle.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: A common trait among Golarian gnomes (and other fey/fey-descended species, including the occasional elf), Regill's eyebrows are slender but extend well past the sides of his face, tapering to long antenna-like points.
• Brutal Honesty: Regill points out that friendships aren't as strong a bond as people think and most of your companions will turn away from you if you stop meeting their expectations. Depending on story events and your choices over half of them can potentially abandon you.
• Canon Foreigner: He is completely original to the PC game; being a hellknight in the printed adventure path would have been difficult.
• Celibate Hero:
  • When Daeran suggests he go to a brothel he practically sneers:
    Regill: Naked people are of no interest to me. People faking desire for me even less so.
  • Arueshelae states that she actually finds being around him comforting because of this. Despite his distrust of her he also shows absolutely no lust as well, allowing her to feel less worried about tempting him. He thinks it counts as a failing on his part that he doesn't feel fear from her instead.
• Colonel Badass: In essence. The rank of paralictor is two ranks below the lictor, the leader of a Hellknight order, and Regill is an experienced battlefield commander who's always in the thick of it. Lann commends him for this and states that he expected most people in Regill's position to be fat old men who lead from the back.
• Cool Old Guy: He’s already in the later stages of his bleaching, which indicates an advanced age. It doesn’t step him from being a deadly combatant and leader. Woljif even calls him Grandpa Reggie.
• Consummate Professional: To the degree that he hardly has a life outside his career, and takes an extremely dim view of anyone who brings their personal issues into the crusade — which, in the Commander's party, is practically everyone else.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Jubilost Narthropple in Kingmaker mostly shared Regill's no-nonsense nature, but where he was a researcher trying to cure the Bleaching, Regill doesn't give a damn about putting it off and concentrates all his energies on demolishing the armies of the Abyss. Like Valerie, he also believes strongly in his sworn word and in military discipline, but he's far more ruthless than either Jubilost or Valerie.
• Didn't See That Coming: In the Trickster Path ending, Regill is so shocked by the Commander turning the Worldwound into a hub of interdimensional travel that it undoes the Bleaching, giving him at least another hundred years of life. Regill vows to clean up the mess.
• Double Weapon: Fights with a Gnome hooked hammer, half-warhammer, half-pick.
• Deadly Distant Finale: His non-ascended/non-Trickster ending takes place months if not years later when he's finally died of his Bleaching. He writes multiple books on fighting against Demons and a final letter to the Commander that no one but them knows the contents of.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Admits that he nearly threw up at the Lost Chapel when he saw the gargoyles torturing prisoners to turn them into undead, even with all his experience fighting demons.
  • He hates if the Commander chooses to be a Demon just like most Good-aligned NPCs, though this is less on moral standards and more on demons being pure chaos. He also dislikes if they choose Trickster or Azata (though far less so for the latter) for the same reason.
  • As mentioned in Pragmatic Villainy below, he dislikes people who commit evil for the sake of it, especially if it's counterintuitive to their goals.
  • Given his focus on law he absolutely despises traitors and cowards. Any time someone tries to claim their actions are justified he always shouts them down and states that every turncoat has an excuse as to why they're different from all the others.
• Excellent Judge of Character: Regill knows how people work and it makes him a masterful judge of them and their motives. He demonstrates this a few times, such as entrusting tasks that require bending the rules to Yaker, whom he knows will do them, and immediately calling Galfrey out on her jealousy of the Commander in the Midnight Fane on a Good path. He's also willing to trust and stick by the Commander on almost every path as long as they're getting the job done. The one exception is Arueshalae, whom he distrusts on principle for being a demon, but even she admits that the other 99% of the time he'd be completely right — pretending to be sincerely repentant is exactly the kind of trick a succubus would pull.
• Klingon Promotion: Subverted. He killed his superior officer and mentor and was offered her position after the fact, but he didn't do it for the rank, but rather because he discovered she was planning to desert.
• Lawful Evil: His In-Universe alignment. Regill is cold and merciless to a fault and he'll do anything from killing his own men to avoid them being taken prisoner or giving the wounded strangers who warned his group about the Gargoyles barely anything to treat their wounds. However, he always justifies his actions with pragmatism and will never do anything unless it accomplishes a goal. He also doesn't care about personal power in the least. He doesn't hesitate to throw away his position if it means strengthening the Commander's chances of closing the Worldwound. If he ascends, he'll make regular visits to the Hells. He thinks the Devils — Lawful Evil incarnate — are lacking in discipline.
• Lightning Bruiser: His class choices allow him to wear bulky full plate while mitigating its weight and encumbrance, making him a mobile, high-AC melee fighter who still packs a punch thanks to his Finesse Training with his specialized gnome hooked hammer weapon.
• Magikarp Power: Regill joins you at a level where his Armour Training and fighter levels still haven't fully kicked in, making his armour class and damage somewhat suboptimal due to his strange stat distribution. With some more levels in Armiger and Mythic Weapon Finesse, however, he becomes a one-gnome blender in melee and levelling him as a Hellknight can make him Frighten people using Dazzling Display or Cornugon Smash.
• Manipulative Bastard: Though usually content to offer advice and let others decide to take it or leave it, Regill has an amazing talent for manipulating people if he feels it serves his goals. The incident at the Hellknight outpost and his eventual Zero-Approval Gambit show him at the top of his game.
• Misery Builds Character: A big proponent of this trope, with practically all his suggestions in council and when treating with potential allies involving harming or degrading them in some way in order to 'toughen them up'. He applies this to himself as well, living an extremely ascetic and regimented lifestyle and actively denies himself stimuli that could arrest his Bleaching.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Gnomes are naturally inclined to be Cloudcuckoolanders, but he is not; he's coldly pragmatic and not particularly interested in new experiences, and considers gnomes' tendency to seek them to avoid the Bleaching to be stupid.
• No Love for the Wicked: Love, sex and even friendship just get in the way of doing his job, and he's not interested in any of them.
• No-Sell: In Areelu Vorlesh's lab each companion is shown an illusion of their secret desires. Except Regill who stands in an empty room and immediately sees through the trick. As he says, he has no 'secret' desires or wants to take advantage of — he is exactly where he wants to be.
• Not Afraid to Die: He doesn't fear the Bleaching, even though it will mean his death if he doesn't take action to hold it at bay.
• Old Soldier: While he doesn't make a deal of it to the degree of characters like Galfrey or Berenguer, Regill is implied to be well over a hundred and has spent most of it being a Hellknight. He also considers the Bleaching to be equivalent to aging, which means that he figures that this is his probably his last campaign.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Mechanically, gnomes usually make poor melee fighters due to being Small creatures, but Regill has a highly specialized build that easily lets his damage output keep up with more typical frontliners like Seelah.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Though merciless and utterly dispassionate, everything he does has a sound reasoning to it and ends up being the most convenient, if not moral, option in the long run. He also dislikes being evil for the sake of it. If you must be brutal then it must have a goal, which is why he despises demons — they perform evil for its own sake, for no purpose but their own amusement.

  Regill: I approve of rational conduct. Brutality guided by reason. But his vaunted mass slaughters are a sign of degradation, not greatness.

• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: More prone to coldly delivered, matter-of-fact declarations than battlecries.
  Regill: I am your judge, and soon your executioner.
• Properly Paranoid: Regill is distrusting to a fault but many of his observations hold merit.
  • Upon noticing the gargoyles are capturing live victims rather than killing them, he finishes off his own wounded men himself suspecting what they plan to do with their prisoners is much worse. He ends up being right, as the gargoyles are feeding the prisoners to Nulkineth and his ghouls to turn into more undead.
  • He notices how adept Camellia is with a sword despite being a noble and asks her what she's hiding. He's right to be suspicious.
  • When an aasimar in the Midnight Isles claims to be freeing Aasimar women from slavery he points out how unlikely it is to find someone wholly good in a place like the Abyss. He's ultimately proven correct since said aasimar is a brutal torturer and rapist.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: By Hellknight standards, anyway. While he's strict and demanding it's only ever as much as he thinks he needs to be.
  • While his ruthlessness initially shocks an order of Sarenite crusaders whom he joins forces with when they're both attacked by gargoyles, their subsequent battles together earn enough mutual respect that he offers to take the survivors under his command permanently, to which they agree if the Commander doesn't object.
  • At one point when he considers punishing Yaker for ordering a dishonorable command (that he ordered, though Hellknight protocol dictated that Yaker should have reported him to another superior) the Commander can intervene, in which case he agrees to postpone judgement for later review. Most other Hellknights wouldn't even consider this.
  • In Sosiel’s quest if the Commander gives two Hellknight deserters enough money to cross the border he doesn’t stop them. He simply notes that the two aren’t worth getting worked up over and he’ll just file a report on it later. Also, if the player attempts to invite a Trickster Path Nurah to join their party she refuses on the basis that people know she’s a traitor. Regill adds that she’d likely be killed via vigilante lynching and he wouldn’t actually punish anyone who does that too harshly given what she’s done.
• The Scapegoat: His final character mission has him doing this to himself. When the revelation of the nature of the Commander's Powers come out, he preemptively puts the Comamnder on trial with himself as the accuser. He then sets it up so he loses quite soundly and is demoted. His explanation is that witnessing such a concise trial with a definite winner and loser will cement the Hellknights to supporting the Commander.
• Secret Test of Character: Puts the Commander through one by telling them of a 'missing' squad and then judging on how they respond when offered a deal by a succubus and a demon offering loot in exchange escaping. His assessment depends on how the Commander responds.
• Shoot the Dog: Does this to his own men in his Establishing Character Moment, culling the wounded both to avoid them slowing the whole unit down and to prevent the gargoyles from capturing them alive for torture or worse. It turns out he was right to do so given what the Gargoyles do to their prisoners.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Inverted. He's the only companion who explicitly approves of slavery and even commends one slave trader for managing to keep his 'stock' under control. Note that even Daeran disapproves of the same slave trader and offers to buy the women to set them free.
• Spikes of Villainy: The actual villainy of Hellknights tends to vary, but they sure love the aesthetic, and Regill's portrait sports some particularly impressive ones (especially since he's so short).
• The Spock: Prides himself on remaining logical and rational, pragmatic and detached in all things. A particularly ruthless example, and self-consciously breaking the stereotypes of the cheerful, silly gnome.
• Square Race, Round Class: Gnomes are stereotyped as whimsical Cloud Cuckoo Landers, with the Golarion setting justifying it with the fact that seeking out new experiences staves off the Bleaching. Even the comparatively serious-minded Jubilost Narthropple from Kingmaker had a little of it. This guy is anything but whimsical, being a consummate Hellknight, a hard-nosed and pragmatic killer. Mechanically, gnomes normally make poor melee fighters, but Regill has a specialized build: Finesse Training for his chosen weapon allows him to use his Dexterity score in combat and get around his racial penalty to Strength, while as a member of the Traveler gnome subrace he avoids the usual penalty to movement speed for being Small.
• Stealth Mentor: His second personal quest is a secret test for the Commander, purposefully pitting them against demons who attempt to deceive or blackmail them.
• The Stoic: Through long practice he has slowly killed his own emotions and passions, becoming, in his opinion, the best, most ruthless soldier he can be.
• Terror Hero: Regill starts out with maxed ranks in Persuasion and decent Charisma, making him decent at demoralizing opponents in combat. Part of his Hellknight class also lets him Frighten anyone who would otherwise be Shaken by his demoralization, which with the right feats lets Regill scare anyone he hits in melee combat so badly they turn around and flee from the three-foot terror in front of them.
• Villain Respect:
  • Among party members (aside from the Commander), he gives respect to Lann and Greybor, offering both a chance to join the Hellknights. He’s also surprisingly respectful of Ember, acknowledging her strong willpower, and comments that if Kenabres had more of her perhaps the city wouldn’t have fallen.
  • He salutes the siabrae for guarding their knowledge for centuries even as he says they must be destroyed for being undead. He does the same for Forn Autumn Gaze for siding with his enemy and trying to kill you to in service of the Winter Council.
• Vomiting Cop: Not exactly a cop, but in a similar spirit as a veteran Hellknight. He admitted he nearly threw up when he saw what exactly was happening at the Lost Chapel. He's seen the aftermath of demons before, but this one was inventive.
• Your Days Are Numbered: As a gnome, he's subject to the Bleaching, meaning he's in the last leg of his lifespan. This doesn't faze him much as long as it doesn't impact his performance. He even refuses to try and extend his lifespan if it means having to act chaotic or whimsical. It also means that he has no issues sacrificing his position as a Paralictor to help the Commander.
• Zero-Approval Gambit: During the Commander's trial in Act 5, after the Hellknights doubt their allegiance due to the source of their powers, Regill plans a tribunal and subtly leads the judges to side with the Commander despite their doubts. That done he publicly disagrees then challenges the Commander to a duel which he fully intends to lose. As he puts it, taking down someone who disagreed with the verdict only made the Commander's position stronger. The cost was that he's stripped of his rank, which he brushes off as an acceptable sacrifice since his Bleaching means he considers this to be his last campaign anyway.

Seelah

"No glory without risk!"

Race: Human (Garundi)
Class: Paladin
Alignment: Lawful Good
Deity: Iomedae

Voiced by: Jennie Harney

A paladin of Iomedae, Seelah fled Geb in east-central Garund as a child, only to have her family killed by gnolls. Living on the streets, she stole a paladin's helmet to pay for food, and then looked on as the paladin died from a head wound while defending the city. To atone, she joined the order herself, and has come to the far north of Avistan to join the Crusade.

See also the Pathfinder Iconics page for more about her.

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• Ascended Extra: She's the iconic paladin of Iomedae from the Core Rulebook and previously only appeared in blog posts, and in volume 4 issue 2 of the Pathfinder comic as a supporting character in comic party cleric Kyra's Origins Episode(granted, she's also all over the original Wot R AP books too). According to Kyra, Seelah left to join the Crusades shortly after they adventured together, hence why she's here.
• The Atoner: She became a paladin out of guilt over Acemi's death from a head wound that the helmet she stole might have protected her from.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: She finds Ember annoying in camp banter and more or less tells her to shut up at times. Despite that she's very relieved that Ember is okay after she ended up being kidnapped by Baphomet cultists.
• Badass Creed: The oath of the paladins of Iomedae: "If I lose my sword, I have lost a tool. If I betray my heart, I have died."
• Berserk Button: As a deeply devout follower of Iomedae, questioning or denying faith in the gods really sets her off. This is the main cause of the friction between her and Ember, as Ember's prodding and statements about faith and gods offends Seelah due to her backstory.
• Book Dumb: By her own admission. With 10 Int and 13 Wis to begin with, she's not exactly a big thinker, and laughs it off when the Commander asks for her input on tactical matters early in the game.
• Continuity Nod: If you ask her about her past, she actually recounts the above-mentioned story, even name-dropping Kyra.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Where Valerie in Kingmaker (that party's tank) was a child of privilege who became frustrated with her paladin training and disillusioned with religion and quit to become a sellsword, Seelah grew up on the mean streets of Katapesh and became a paladin to atone for the death of another after she stole the woman's helmet so she could eat.
• Cool Big Sis: Acts as one to Arueshelae (ironic considering she's likely centuries older than Seelah), often encouraging her to open up and inviting her for drinks. Seelah even calls her 'sister', which Arueshelae clearly appreciates. She's also the first to cheer and approve whenever Arueshelae reaffirms her conviction.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Fled to Katapesh from Geb, orphaned in a gnoll raid, stole a paladin's helmet to buy food, and then tried to climb onto the paladin's funeral pyre out of guilt, only to be stopped by her comrades.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: She sincerely believes that being Lawful, disciplined, and devoted is not in conflict with finding joy in your life and your friends. Which, yes, includes the drinking and the partying when off duty.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Iomedae is basically the goddess of paladinhood, and her worshipers traditionally prefer longswords given they're the goddess's weapon. Seelah is no exception. In particular it's possible to find a secret Cool Sword, Radiance, in the first dungeon, and if the PC is not a sword-swinging paladin themself it's a perfect weapon for Seelah. Especially when upgraded.
• Irony: The end of Act 4 sees a big one on the Angel and Azata paths. Iomedae wants the Commander to get rid of their power since it originated in the Abyss. If you ask your companions then Seelah, a paladin of Iomedae, will disagree with her own goddess citing the good work the Commander does and the fact she can't detect any evil in the Commander, an ability Iomedae grants her. Surprisingly, no attention gets called to this by either of them.
• Jerkass to One: While she can act catty to Evil companions in general, she's pretty noticeable in how she treats the Neutral Goodinvoked Ember. A few banters end with her essentially telling Ember to shut up and at one point while the latter talks about fire Seelah accuses her of fishing for sympathy. Nevermind the fact that Ember was almost burned at the stake and would have good reason to be touchy about fire. Certain other interactions between the two, however, make it clear the problem is Ember's strident denial of godhood, which really rubs (the very devout and saved by faith) Seelah entirely the wrong way: she's still relieved when Ember is safely rescued from the Cult of Baphomet.
• Kick the Dog: Her treatment of Ember can verge on this. At one point she accuses her for fishing for sympathy because she was burned at the stake and also warns her that at another instance that her naytheist speeches will get her a beating (though Ember also believes Seelah would protect her if it came to that).
• Knight Errant: Was one before the story begins and in at least one of her endings she returns to doing this.
• The Lad-ette: She's a large, fairly masculine-behaving woman who likes to drink and party when not on a mission.
• Lawful Good: Her In-Universe alignment (a class requirement of standard paladins). She notably puts significantly more emphasis on the "Good" part: she happily takes significant risks to protect people and will forgive and offer redemption to anyone she possibly can. The Lawful part comes in from her religious devotion to Iomedae's credo. If the protagonist takes to doing more Lawful Stupid decisions, she'll usually be the first to call them out on it.
• Mighty Glacier: She is a very solid attacker and a decent tank, but her movement speed, especially in turn-based mode, is among the worst of all companions. Her focus on longswords due to her paladin class means she's generally designed to use a sword and shield over anything else, and relies a lot on her Smite Evil feature to boost her damage. The game leans into this a bit as well, as she benefits heavily from the Fighting Defensively action, and later feats can help make her bulkier while reducing the penalty to hit from it. Her access to Charge at least means she can potentially close the gap at the start of a fight if given the chance. Giving her mounted combat feats and skills can help fix this as well.
• Nice Girl: As expected of a paladin. She's very friendly, helpful and trusting, sometimes too much according her friend and (possibly) the Commander. She's also one of the party members fully supportive of Arueshelae's atonement.
• Religious Bruiser: She's a paladin and an extremely devout follower of the goddess Iomedae. Moreover, she's a pretty hefty and strong woman (base Str 18, Con 14) who makes a hell of a frontline fighter and tank.
• Special Guest: Much like Amiri before her, she's one of the Pathfinder Iconics, rather than a character made for a game or the original adventure path.
• Stereotype Flip: Paladins of Iomedae are not generally known for being hard-drinking party girls.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Besides the Evil companions, she can be surprisingly short with Ember due to the latter's Naytheist tendencies. That said both share a desire to help people find the good in themselves and this comes up a few times.
• Tragic Keepsake: Still wears Acemi's helmet.
• Overrated and Underleveled: Suffers from this the worst among the companions. She's an Iconic character who's already been through at least one adventure and yet she starts off at level 1 with gear to match^note The gear is somewhat justified, as you encounter her at a festival that requires anyone who isn't a guard to disarm, and she never really gets a chance to get her equipment before the city is invaded.
• Walking the Earth: Did this before the game started. If she survives with her faith intact then she does so again, wandering to find people who need help while keeping contact with her friends.

Sosiel Vaenic

"I wish you warm welcome in Shelyn's realm. We will win this war, I swear to you. We'll banish this ugliness and evil, make the world richer, and let peace blossom in it."

Race: Human
Class: Cleric
Alignment: Neutral Good
Deity: Shelyn

Voiced by: James Brown Jr

A cleric of Shelyn originally from Andoran, Sosiel Vaenic is the Sole Survivor of the goddess's Kenabres temple following the demon attack. While fleeing with a column of refugees, he met up with Queen Galfrey's reaction force, and joins the party at the start of Chapter 2.

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• Adaptational Attractiveness: He's younger- and more boyish-looking in Owlcat's art, and is clean-shaven with a softer face. In the AP art he had a gaunter face with a Lantern Jaw of Justice and a thin mustache and Perma-Stubble.
• Ambiguously Brown: He's easily the darkest-skinned human member of the main cast aside from Seelah. His intended In-Universe ethnicity is unclear: he's from an inland city of Andoran, which was formerly part of Cheliax (and Taldor before that), but is across the Inner Sea from Garund (where Seelah is from) and canonically has a black head of state at the time the game is set.
• Ascended Extra: He was one of the supporting characters in the original AP; here he's promoted to party member. His canon relationship with Aron Kir is mostly Adapted Out to make him a romance option, though they get together in some of his endings.
• Berserk Button: Besmirching the name of his brother, and especially alluding to the fact he joined the Hellknights, is the one thing that gets a genuinely violent reaction out of him.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Though outwardly he is a very kind and sensitive man, he can turn to anger driven violence rather fast if provoked. After his fellow clerics bodies were desecrated by a man that they had taken in and taken care of, he proceeds to beat the shit out of that man with his bare hands. The man even notes that Sosiel was one of his primary targets, he saw a hidden anger deep within Sosiel that he felt would have been a great asset to his true allegiance Baphomet.
• Bondage Is Bad: If romanced by an evil commander, their relationship grows to resemble a rather toxic and unhealthy BDSM relationship, with Sosiel as the submissive.
• Break the Cutie: If his brother heroically gives his life to spare Sosiel in the Battlebliss Arena, Sosiel returns home discouraged, his idealism battered by the war. He remains a cleric of Shelyn and returns to Andoran, but serves as a retiring, undistinguished career as a cleric, smiling rarely, refusing to talk about the war.
• Combat Medic: He has the advantages of a long-reach weapon combined with all the healing and support potential of his class. His healing skills are put on display several times during the story, such as being one of the best options for handling the massive swarm of vescavors while on route to Drezen due to essentially out healing the damage the insects inflict on the army.
• Commonality Connection: A Shelynite PC can commiserate with him over the fish-out-of-water nature of being a follower of the goddess of beauty amidst an all-out war against the Abyss.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character:
  • Valerie in Kingmaker was a Lawful Neutralinvoked sellsword who had trained as a paladin of Shelyn, but Rage Quit the church over a combination of believing that most art was crap and frustration with her many Abhorrent Admirers. Sosiel is a Neutral Good cleric of Shelyn who believes that searching for the beauty and love in the world and creating whatever art you can is an inherently useful pursuit: if nothing else, it can keep morale up.
  • Sosiel losing his temper and killing the necromancer who helped kill his friends in his companion quest is treated as If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!. Tristian in Kingmaker was also a Neutral Goodinvoked cleric and their churches are closely allied (their respective goddesses are canonically lovers), but as a Sarenite, his faith included the provision that some people are not redeemable and need to be put down for the greater good. Also, Sosiel is a conventional cleric and wears medium armor, whereas Tristian was an ecclesitheurge and couldn't wear any.
  • Harrim in Kingmaker was a Doomed Defeatist who saw the whole world as pointless (his views evolved through Character Development but never fully dropped the pessimism). Sosiel actively looks for the beauty in all things: in his art, he depicts the lands of the Worldwound as they once were and might one day be again, to give hope to others.
• Corrupt the Cutie: He's a friendly and somewhat naive virgin who Thinks Like a Romance Novel, but if he's romanced by an evil commander he can be made a lot less innocent, though he's still a mostly nice person.
• Horrible Judge of Character: He disparages Daeran and continuously laments his lack of inner beauty while simultaneously thinking that Camellia is a good person despite her harsh tongue. She's a Bastard Bastard Serial Killer and he is actually a better person deep down than even he thinks.
• I Didn't Mean to Turn You On: Being a Cleric of Shelyn, Sosiel believes in finding beauty in all things when possible. This includes other people, and he tends to comment on people's appearances when around them if the topic comes up, such as lamenting someone who has suffered scars and how it has hurt their natural beauty. This also means he tends to accidentally come across as flirty with people when he doesn't mean to, especially women.
• Incompatible Orientation: His Romance Sidequest with male PCs can be started by the Commander offering to model for him. If they're female, he's still open to the offer, but cautions her against thinking it might go any further.
• Leeroy Jenkins: During his first companion quest he briefly becomes uncontrollable and impulsively charges into a ruined cathedral. He rescues several hostages but also gets surrounded by a number of zombies, which the rest of the party is forced to fight through to relieve him and pull out the remaining hostage.
• My Greatest Failure: Downplayed but he very clearly regrets not having done more for Ember. When she says she remembers him for being kind and giving her food he counters that he did nothing else for her and just let her stay out in the streets before asking for her forgiveness.
• Neutral Good: His In-Universe alignment. He's a kindhearted young man who fights to make sure the Worldwound is extinguished and no one else will fall victim to it. Despite his temper he also emphasizes forgiveness and redemption.
• Nice Guy: He always has a kind word for everyone, though he's definitely not a fool. This kindness also doesn't extend to people he considers morally abhorrent such as Daeran, Wenduag or Regill. Unlike Seelah he also doesn’t judge Ember, Woljif or Greybor for traits he personally disagrees with. He sympathizes with Ember without bringing up her atheist beliefs, and while he does try to coax Greybor to confession, he never forces it and is accepting of him regardless.
• Promoted to Playable: A variant. While he's obviously controllable once he joins the party he takes the role of the player character, complete with choosing dialogue options, when he's trying to convince his brother to leave the Midnight Isles arena.
• Retired Badass: One a few of his possible endings he goes back home and takes a humble post in his temple with a stated refusal to even pick up a weapon again. If anyone asks him about the war he either refuses to speak of it or gives an unfiltered recounting of the experience to discourage anyone who thinks of going into battle for the sake of glory, depending on the exact ending.
• Romance Sidequest: He can be romanced by male PCs.
• Saving the World With Art: Downplayed, he does know beauty and art themselves cannot win the crusade, but hopes that his work can keep morale high and remind the crusaders of their humanity.
• Sole Survivor: He was ordered by his faith leaders to retreat from the Temple of Shelyn with the noncombatants. None who stayed behind survived the demon attack. His first companion quest is all about the resulting Survivor's Guilt.
• Straight Gay: Tall, well-built and with a definite manly feel to him, and only romanceable for male characters.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: With Regill. While he doesn't like the Evil companions in general he really dislikes the Hellknight, especially after he finds out that his brother may have been one. Taking the two together on Sosiel's quest leads to a lot of arguments and sniping.
• Thinks Like a Romance Novel: If romanced, quite a few of his romantic interactions include flowery declarations of love and grand gestures. Whether the commander plays along with it or not, he ends up growing out of it eventually, and is actually a bit embarrassed of his old grand gestures.
• Warrior Poet: Warrior Painter, actually. It's a devotional requirement of Shelynite adventurers. He's a divine caster with a spear who spends his off hours painting and sketching.

Wenduag

"Unlike you, I had no intention of just lying down and politely accepting death! I will rise above all this, while you'll still be stuck with your pride, chewing on rats!"

Race: Mongrelman
Class: Fighter
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Deity: Lamashtu
Voiced by: Amelia Tyler

The daughter of the previous chief of Neathholm, Sull's predecessor, a fierce hunter who is constantly seeking to become stronger, or at least secure a place by the side of the strongest.

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• Adaptational Attractiveness: Her original illustration was rather unflattering to say the least, with most of her body covered in chitinous plates and multiple pairs of insectile eyes. Her incarnation in the game kept her general shape but toned down much of the monstrous features on her humanoid body parts.
• Adaptational Heroism: In the tabletop campaign, she's a secondary villain of minimal importance and mostly just acts as a thug for the heroes to fight. In the videogame, while she starts out as that, she also becomes a companion for your character.
• Animal Motif: Cats and spiders. Not just because she has Spider Limbs, but because her whole purpose in Neathholm was to lure in promising mongrelmen and turn them into a demon's thralls while keeping the others ignorant with a web of stories and lies.
• Ascended Extra: She's a named enemy in the tabletop game, with little significance besides being the nominal leader of a group of mongrelmen cultists. She is a full-fledged character in the game.
• Beast Man: As a mongrel her shape is mostly humanoid, but incorporates parts of a cat and spider in her anatomy.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: In the scenarios where she doesn't betray the Commander, one of the reasons she'll give for remaining loyal is the Commander's benevolent treatment of her and how she was respected as an equal instead of an underling. This is inverted if you recruit her in Act 3, as the only way to keep her loyal is to act extremely harsh and cruel to her so she knows her place and becomes too submissive to consider betraying the party.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: A downplayed example. She doesn't hide her social darwinism or her disdain for her people's strength, but she does hide the fact that she's an agent for the cult that occupies the Shield Maze and want to keep the Mongrels out of it because they would discover her allegiance.
• Blood Knight: Relishes violence, whether perpetuated by her or her allies.
• Broken Bird: Wenduag was very much shaped by the environment she grew up in. In many ways, her need to appear strong and her submissiveness are survival mechanisms.
• Cannibalism Superpower: She reveals that mongrelmen who eat the flesh of righteous crusaders become mindless berserkers. She managed to keep (at least part of) her wits to her when forced to do that, while also gaining greater strength. If you side with her, she promises to lead the rest of the mongrelmen under the same path to turn into warriors for your army.
• Character Development: Wenduag has two different character arcs, and the person she ultimately becomes depends on whether or not you choose to take her over Lann after the Shield Maze.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: She admits outright that she only fights those she deems the strongest and will turn against her current master if the enemy proves stronger. If recruited in Chapter 3 then she will always betray the Commander due to this.
• Cute Monster Girl: Unlike her original AP appearance, she looks like a rather attractive woman with some added monstrous limbs.
• Daddy's Girl: She idolized her father, the tribe's former chief, as a child, and nearly died from grief when he died. Unexpectedly facing him again as a mindless beast serving Savamelekh and having to not only lose him again but have it be by her own hand leaves her uncharacteristically broken up about it.
• Death Seeker: If the commander romances her and then dies to close the worldwound, the ending mentions her recklessly throwing herself into more and more dangerous fights until eventually she doesn't make it out of one.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: If romanced.
• Dirty Coward: She's quick to switch sides to those she considers the strongest and begs when defeated to join the Commander as their slave. Lann sneers at her for this behavior.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Some of her banter with other party members has her assume that they are being ruthless or selfish even when they clearly are not. For example, if Sosiel asks her to stop eavesdropping on the soldiers' confessions of sin because it's supposed to be a private sacrament, she assumes that he just wants to keep all of their secrets to himself.
• False Friend: To Lann. When she reveals it she relishes rubbing his face in it.
• Foil: To Lann. They're Mutually Exclusive Party Members who are both skilled archers, but they're very different personality-wise, with Lann being a high-minded and honest-to-a-fault idealist and Wenduag being a deceitful social darwinist, and each and starts out with different archery styles and builds. Lann cannot wear armor or use most weapons, and uses his monk build to fire multiple mid-accuracy arrows per turn, while Wenduag's armor training lets her become a heavily armored archer who fires single, highly accurate, shots while having enough armor to tank.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: She gets along with absolutely no one in the party due to being a Social Darwinist who fights for the strongest side. Many of them think she'll betray them at the first moment and don't trust her. The only one who treats her with kindness is Ember who's nice to pretty much everyone. There's no love lost if she betrays the party in Chapter 3.
• Heel–Face Turn: Wenduag's In-Universe alignment can potentially change from Neutral Evil to True Neutral.
• Hidden Depths: Her character arc will be different if the Commander chooses her over Lann during the prologue.
• I Did What I Had to Do: At best, she does a lot of morally questionable things in the name of survival. Both for her and for the mongrels.
• I Fight for the Strongest Side!: Nearly word for word if she switches sides to join the Player Character in the Maze.
  Wenduag: [to Hosilla] I no longer serve you, you bitch! Not you, or your flying monkey! I always fight with the strongest side.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Has a surprising number of these, especially if the Commander recruits her instead of Lann.
  • At the beginning of the game, she argues that sending a bunch of people into the Shield Maze like Lann wants will end up in needless deaths.
  • She's one of the only party members who picks up that Ember's nowhere as ditzy and childish as she appears to be when first encountered.
  • She similarly is one of the party members who realizes the Crusaders having a camp on the way to Drezen are setting the party up. She's correct, they are drow demon worshippers.
  • On the march towards Drezen, she criticizes the Crusade guards for not keeping an eye out for aerial attacks and is proven correct during the gargoyle ambush.
  • During her personal quest, she points out that unless the mongrels can stand on their own, the surfacers will throw them aside just like they did before, and that Lann is too short-sighted to both understand and plan for that.
• Love Redeems: A potential outcome of her romance is that, with the Commander's encouragement, she will make an effort to become a better person. Her in-game alignment doesn't actually change, but the epilogue mentions that, over time, she gradually softened and became less cruel. She will lampshade this trope in the moment.
• Metaphorical Marriage: If the Commander agrees to take Savamelekh's poison at the end of her romance arc, the epilogue will mention that they considered that to be their wedding.
• Might Makes Right: She's a firm believer in this. She doesn't as much join you more than she practically heels at your superiority.
• The Mole: Mole people comparisons aside, she's been encouraging other mongrelmen to explore the Shield Maze so that they could be captured by Hosilla and Savamelekh.
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members: For about half the game you can only have either her or Lann in your party. This is ultimately the case if Lann is recruited first and you recruit her in Lann's quest during Act 3. If so she'll always betray the party and has to be killed. Averted, however, if you defeat her there, thoroughly mock/sneer at her (even if you're a Good-aligned Commander), then tell her to piss off. She will then assist you in Lann's final quest in act 5, then ask to join your party for good this time.
• Nature Versus Nurture: Ultimately, Wenduag is a product of her environment. Taking her out of the caves during Act I gives her the potential of becoming a better person.
• Neutral Evil: Her In-Universe alignment. She wants power at any cost and will kill or betray anyone if she thinks it'll get her closer to that goal.
• Patricide: She ends up having to kill her father when it turns out that he did not in fact die when she was a child but rather was brainwashed by Savamelekh and made into one of his personal guard. She's unexpectedly affected by this, though she tries to downplay it.
• Pet the Dog: She will not hesitate to defend Ember.
• Properly Paranoid: When you first tour the crusaders' camp at the start of Chapter 2 you'll find her nervously looking at the sky and complaining that the camp is far too open to attack. A nearby crusader mocks her for "expecting winged demons to drop out of the sky". Guess what happens near the chapter's end?
• Romance Sidequest: She can be romanced by both male and female PCs.
• Sanity Slippage: If you don't side with her at the start of the game, when you meet her again later in Act 3, she has clearly cracked. You find her eating the corpse of a mongrel trader she kidnapped, and she is essentially raving by that point. It's even worse if you choose to recruit her, she acts almost like a pet dog rather than a person while trying to convince you you've made the right choice.
• Schmuck Bait: Despite her having clearly gone way over the deep end by Act 3 if the player had not already recruited her, you can still accept her offer to join the party, which Lann warns against since he believes she'll simply swap sides the minute she finds an opponent she deems stronger than you. Sure enough, she will do exactly this in the Midnight Iles, making the subsequent fight particularly difficult if the player decked her out with powerful gear beforehand.
• Sky Pirate: Can become the queen of them in one of her endings.
• The Social Darwinist: Firmly believes the weak dying out and leaving the strong to thrive is a positive thing, and is surprised at how uplanders care so much to keep aged or unfit people alive.
• Stupid Evil: Can devolve in to this should the player not recruit her in Act 1. In this case, she will try to intimidate the Mongrels in to not getting involved in the crusade by kidnapping their merchant and holding her hostage. When the party finds her in her childhood hiding spot (an area Lann already knows about and is his first suggestion to look for her), she's already murdered the merchant and is in the process of eating her corpse, giving her no leverage over the party and leaving them with little reason to not beat her in to a bloody paste. And if she is recruited after this and isn't thoroughly put in her place by the Commander, she'll betray the party down the line.
• Too Dumb to Live: Gameplay and Story Segregation notwithstanding, her betrayal to Savamelekh has elements of this, especially if it comes in Act 5, by which point the Commander will have been the bane (and potentially have the blessing) of far mightier demons.
• Too Kinky to Torture:
  • Though she gets the meaning, and doesn't necessarily care for the pain in itself, if you order her lashed for her misdeeds, she comments that she will at least try to enjoy the punishment anyway. Mental torture, on the other hand, is much more effective at keeping her loyal.
  • Implied to be deliberately invoked: There seems to be a link between her masochistic side, her obsession with power and control, and her background of extreme poverty and having to fight for survival. As shown in the above example, being able to fetishize and enjoy one's suffering helps dull the pain and obfuscates the helplessness of victimization, especially in a creature as proud of her strength and self-reliance as Wenduag.
• True Love's Kiss: If romanced, she panics when the Commander is dying from Savamelekh's poison and tries to invoke this due to what she heard surfacers say. It's only after the Commander is out of danger that she realizes those were just stories and immediately curses herself for a fool.
• Ungrateful Bitch: Even if you side with her over Lann and get her installed as the mongrel chief, a non-romanced Wenduag can still very readily betray you to Savamelekh in Act 5. The flags to avert this are quite specific and flubbing even one of them guarantees her betrayal, if not her death: recruiting her in Act 1 at least nets you the option to spare her after the fact.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: According to Sull.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: She wants her people to become stronger, even if that means turning them into an army of cannibals.
• Villainous Breakdown: She has an offscreen one during Act 2 if you side with Lann. By the time you find her again in Act 3 she behaves more like a wild animal than a sentient being and spends most of her time raving like a lunatic.
  • In said event, she has yet another if you cruelly refuse her offer to join you after beating her, making her realize after everything she did for the demons they didn't even make her strong enough to be a slave. In a pretty Violation of Common Sense, said option (which is an Evil choice) is the only way to make her join your party in earnest if you originally went with Lann.
• Welcome Back, Traitor: If she betrays you in Act 5, you're given the choice between executing her for it or letting her off.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: She ultimately wants to ensure her people's survival despite the horrific methods she employs.
• Working with the Ex: She and Lann used to be together. They butt heads on practically everything.

Woljif Jefto

"Some people get tons of money, a celestial bloodline, and a title, and others get horns and a slap in the face."

Race: Tiefling (Demonspawn)
Class: Rogue (Eldritch Scoundrel)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Deity: Calistria
Voiced by: Tom Agilo

A member of a local gang of "thieflings", tieflings who band together to both survive and escape prejudice. Was added as part of the Stretch Goals the game's crowdfunding reached.

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• Abusive Parents: And grandparent. His normal human parents giving birth to a Tiefling caused his dad to attack his mom and storm out with her leaving soon after. His caretaker afterwards was his grandmother who, as he describes it, was an abusive and neglectful drunk who was only ever nice to him whenever she was deep in the bottle.
• Ambiguously Bi: He's not a romancable companion but he does have unique dialogue dependent on the players gender such as calling a male character 'dreamboat' while simultaneously expressing attraction to female characters in dialogue. He also asks a corrupted Arueshalae if she can turn into a man and rattles of specific details about what he’d like said man to look like rather meticulously.
• Accidental Truth: An early talk with Woljif has him claim he's secretly a prince from a far-off land. This turns out to be entirely correct, as his great-grandfather turns out to be Baphomet and his grandfather Ygefeles was as close as you get to demon royalty.
  Wojif: I mean, I thought I was lyin', but it turns out I tripped over the truth without even knowin' it.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Pulls one on a group of cultists in his personal quest. You can choose to play along with it. Is also quick to play along with you yourself if you attempt to trick cultists the same way.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: His demonic ancestor urges him to take his demon powers for revenge against Baphomet. If the player treated him kindly then he'll refuse at their urging and say that the Commander has treated them like an actual friend so his ancestor can shove it.
  Woljif: "Hey, no, gramps! I've been watchin' the chief for a long time. After all the stuff S/he's done and said, S/he's never once lied to me. Not ever. S/he's was on my side when nobody else was. And you? You sat in a medallion and waited for your prophecy to be fulfilled, so you could put me on and wear me around like a little meat vest? Think on it good and hard, grandpa, of the two of you, who do you think I'd trust?"
• Calling the Old Man Out: If treated kindly, he will not take well to his grandfather Ygefeles' claim to use his body for himself. He will also do the same regardless to Baphomet, his great-grandfather.
• Chaotic Neutral: His In-Universe alignment. He's generally self-interested and kinda cowardly, and a thief besides, but he has enough standards to not sink into evil, and being treated as a friend earns his loyalty. Also prone to self-serving options such as focusing on treasure or looting even when soldiers are at risk of dying if the party delays.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: His Thiefling 'family' mention that he has a habit of leaving gangs shortly before or after they get into trouble. They're somewhat justified in thinking this since he did steal the amulet for himself. While he does run away at the Gargoyle attack he does so out of justified fear, pointing out he wasn't used to such mass death. After he rejoins the party he never actually makes any attempts to turn away and even follows the Commander into the Abyss when they're sent there by Queen Galfrey.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Octavia in Kingmaker had a similar Wizard/Rogue build (both can easily be made into Arcane Tricksters), and like Woljif was a reject of a formerly well-to-do family. Where Octavia was flirty and kind-hearted, Woljif is more than a little misanthropic and rather selfish.
• Cowardly Lion: His voice lines tend to be more timid and emphasize retreating even as he gains levels and can go toe-to-toe with higher demons.
• Deadpan Snarker: One of the most snark-prone companions, constantly cracking wise.
  Woljif: I don't steal! I just encourage people to help all the poor, helpless tieflings around the world. Starting with me.
• Devious Daggers: He is a magical rogue who dual-wields daggers and has a habit of looking out for himself through subterfuge.
• Dual Wield: Comes with two daggers and is very effective with them.
• Formerly Fit: In the ending where he rejects his demonic grandfather it's mentioned he gains a bit of a gut after retiring and becoming a rich investor.
• Gangbanger: The Thieflings are a tiefling street gang, though Woljif is more of a burglar than a thug.
• Glass Cannon: A properly kitted Woljif can take out the opposition quickly and easily since his spells can have the sneak attack trait, on top of him being a dual-wielding dagger user. Unfortunately he can't take hits that well since he's a rogue—and one with no armor proficiencies at that, since his character archetype ported the Wizard class's spellcasting feature.
• Gut Feeling: In banter Camellia asks him why he cozies up to every noble (to steal from them) but never tries with her. He just says that he has standards but gives no reason why. Considering her Serial Killer habits, he's either very intuitive or very lucky.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: As his demonic grandfather shows, what Woljif wanted more than anything was for someone to care about him. He was abandoned by his parents, raised by an abusive grandparent and had to steal from a young age just to survive while dealing with Fantastic Racism on top of it. Meanwhile the gangs he joined never trusted him and only cared for his thieving skills. The Commander showing that they do honestly care for him genuinely touches him and he'll reject his grandfather's offers of demonic power if the Commander simply asks.
• Impossible Thief: Does this in the secret ending due to being a demigod, stealing things and stashing them across planes for his amusement.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Not seen in the game, but Ember recounts how as a child he and his friends mocked and threw stones at her. Ember doesn't hold a grudge while Woljif just finds it embarrassing.
  • If taken along on the Leper’s Smile he’ll suggest looting the dead caravaneers even after being told any delay risks the soldier’s lives to the Vesactor swarm.
• Living Shadow: Pretends to have one as an act to swindle others. Is reasonably freaked out when it does start to animate by itself.
• Lovable Coward: Despite constantly attempting to weasel out of danger, he still acts supportive and tries to face danger when it's not overwhelming. He does run away during the gargoyle attack when even Daeran stays to support, but he does join up again back in Chapter 3 and justifies himself by the fact that a former street urchin really wasn't built to fight those kinds of things.
• Magic Knight: Or Magic Thief, actually. The Eldritch Scoundrel is a Rogue archetype (originally from the Arcane Anthology rulebook) that adds the Wizard's Vancian Magic (with a reduced number of spell slots) in exchange for (primarily) the base class's armor and weapon proficiencies. This makes Woljif both a very effective knife-fighter and a pretty good arcane spellcaster, and enables him to take the Arcane Trickster Prestige Class without the normal requirement to multiclass.
• Odd Friendship: With Daeran. Despite being the type of noble Woljif would generally dislike and/or steal from the two get along remarkably well. If both survive to their good endings it’s even mentioned that Daeran frequently spends time with him and people wonder whether Daeran sees him as a younger brother or a court jester.
• Parental Abandonment: When he was born, his father attacked his mother over his obvious fiendish traits, then ran out on them. Mom left shortly after, leaving him to be raised by his abusive, alcoholic grandmother (the one who had originally screwed a demon).
• Pet the Dog: In his good ending, one of his business investments is a charity for street urchins like him who had no one to turn to.
• Rags to Riches: In his good ending he becomes an investor in multiple businesses (and an charity for troubled street urchins). It's even stated he took to wearing a top hat and cane.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons:
  • In Chapter 1, his former gang assumes he sold the Thieflings out to Irabeth to steal a unique amulet he was fascinated with. They're half-right. The actual traitor, a secret cultist of Baphomet, was also there to steal the amulet and had tipped off Irabeth so that he could grab it and escape in the chaos. Unfortunately for the traitor, Woljif had gone ahead of the group and stolen it already. This ends up working out incredibly well for Woljif if the Commander plays their cards right because nobody believes the traitor when he claims it wasn't there when he got to it since he had already been caught lying about his betrayal and had plenty of time to hand it off, meaning nobody suspects Woljif anymore.
  • Woljif at some point tries to con Seelah by claiming he's a foreign prince. In Act 4, he learns he's Baphomet's great grandson, meaning that technically he was sort of correct about being a prince, much to his and Seelah's amusement.
• A Shared Suffering: He'll bond instinctively with a tiefling Commander over (assumed) shared experiences of the widespread Fantastic Racism against tieflings. He's also somewhat baffled if a Good-aligned tiefling Commander tells him they're fighting in the Crusade because it's the right thing to do, assuming that it's a quest for acceptance in society (and that such a quest is doomed from the get-go).
• Stepford Smiler: Always quick to smile and joke but, as his personal quest shows, he's hiding a lot of pain.
• Uneven Hybrid: His maternal grandmother had a demon lover. Unusually for such cases, his mother apparently didn't show any obvious half-fiend traits, which made his birth as a tiefling a nasty surprise for his parents.

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Enchanted Items

Finnean the Talking Weapon

Finnean Dismar

"I mean, sure, the clerics keep going on about every crusader being a weapon of Iomedae, but I don't speak of myself in fancy words like that. I'm just a lad with two arms, two legs, and more freckles than I'd like."

A strange Talking Weapon the Commander finds under a pile of rubble in the ruins of the Ancientries and Wonders Shop. Finnean claims to have once been a Pathfinder, but seems to have no awareness of his current state or how he came to be that way.

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• Fish out of Temporal Water: He was a Pathfinder back during the Second Crusade whilst the game takes place during the Fifth. Soon after he was transformed into a weapon the cult that did the deed was destroyed and Finnean was left in a backroom undiscovered for what is implied to be a very long time but he assumes was only a few days. He has a hard time with this before his Selective Obliviousness causes him to shrug it off. He also has trouble realising how much time has passed between events because he lacks bodily needs. Among other things, his previous commander Lady Auery had just been appointed to her position when he disappeared; when he asks after her he finds out she died during the Third Crusade.
• Morph Weapon: He is able to transform into any weapon with which his wielder is proficient. Initially he's a +1 cold iron ghost touch weapon, but he grows stronger over the course of the game. Once upon a time he was a 'Phantom Blade', able to commune with spirits of bloodshed that would transform into whatever weapon he needed. This is also why The Bladesmith wanted to capture him.
• Nice Guy: With anyone who isn't evil, Finnean is friendly and polite. This goes especially for the Storyteller, which he treats with the utmost respect even endearingly calling him "grandpa elf".
• Selective Obliviousness: It becomes increasingly obvious as the Commander talks to him that he just does not realize he is a weapon. He can remember plenty from his life and recounts an eerie story about being captured by a cult led by 'The Bladesmith' and subjected to torturous rituals (most likely what made him into what he is) but still perceives himself as he once was. He rationalises you finding him in a magic shop as him having purchased lodging there and still thinks of the establishment of the wardstones as having been a year or two ago rather than decades. When informed of this he is mildly taken aback but quickly dismisses it as a joke as he would be an old man by now if that were the case.
  • Later conservations reveal that he's missing a part of his soul and most likely is unable on a metaphysical level to realize what happened to him.
• Suddenly Voiced: He has plenty of lines in his introduction, none of which are voiced, and he is a weapon rather than a 'true' party member so one could be forgiven for assuming he is simply an unvoiced role. The player might then be surprised that he speaks loud and clear when the party are giving their initial opinions of Daeran at his party house.
• Talking Weapon: As his name attests. He mostly talks to the Commander but others can hear him, evidenced by his conversation with Hilor about what happened to previous pathfinder commander Lady Auery.
• Tomato in the Mirror: After finally catching up with the Bladesmith in Act V, Finnean has a Heroic BSoD at the realization that he is no longer human, and asks the Commander to destroy his bound skull, freeing his soul to be reincarnated. The player can do as he asks — or convince him that the good fight is still worth fighting and there's still much more of the world to see, more paths to be found, regardless of what shape he takes.
• Touch the Intangible: His ghost touch property allows him to do full damage to ethereal opponents (untouchable by normal weapons and receiving only half damage from other magical weapons), which is extremely useful with one particular Optional Boss in the Market Square.
• Weirdness Censor: Nothing about his physical state seems to register to him. He still perceives himself as a man with "Two arms, two Legs, and more freckles than [he] would like" and rationalises away his inability to move under his own power. However he is aware of and upset by his inability to commune with spirits anymore, which he chalks up to The Bladesmith's rituals breaking some part of him.
• You Are Number 6: Demons and cultists trying to steal him back refer to him only as Subject 367. Crosses over with "It" Is Dehumanizing.

Bismuth the Triceratops

Bismuth

Race: Triceratops
Alignment: True Neutral

A green triceratops who can be summoned once a day using the Triceratops Statuette found during the assault on Drezen at the end of Act II, Bismuth allows any party member to gain an animal companion, and eventually a mount.

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• Beast of Battle: With its horns, Pounce ability, and bonus trip attacks, Bismuth can be fearsome in a fight, whether alone or as a mount.
• Faster Than They Look: Gains Evasion and eventually Improved Evasion despite being a dinosaur presumably weighing several tons.
• Flat Character: As flat as most animal companions, but with the ability to be transferred between characters.
• Horn Attack: Three horns, though they only count as a single gore attack.
• Horse of a Different Color: A green dinosaur instead of a horse. Ridable by Small characters off the bat, Bismuth is eventually big enough for even Large characters to use as a mount.
• Just Whistle: The Triceratops Statuette can be activated to summon forth Bismuth once a day.
• Loyal Animal Companion: Essentially grants a character the Animal Companion class feature for free, right down to allowing the character to make use of the related feats and equipment.
• Meaningful Name: Zigzagged, possibly a joke or intentionally ironic. The alchemical symbol for the element bismuth looks like a broken figure-eight, or a head with horns, somewhat like a bull. Appropriate, perhaps, for a servant of Baphomet, Lord of the Minotaurs... but while Bismuth has the horns, the ceratopsian is not a bull and is entirely loyal to its statue's bearer.
• Temper-Ceratops: Strong and tough with dense natural armour and a gore attack, Bismuth is designed to charge in head-first. This pairs well with various crusader gear such as longspears/cavalry lances that likewise grant bonuses on charge attacks.
• Shout-Out: to The character Bismuth in Steven Universe. Much like the Lapis and Peridot Wyverns in Pathfinder Kingmaker.
• Stronger with Age: As with many animal companions, Bismuth gets larger as their master levels up, starting on the bigger side of Medium before growing to Large and eventually Huge.
• True Neutral: In-Universe. While magical, Bismuth is still an animal, loyal to its master, unencumbered by any questions of morality.

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