Characters / Skyborn

Claret Spencer

• Action Girl: She's pretty handy with her nail guns.
• Benevolent Boss: She's extremely kind to Corwin, the shop assistant, and defends him against Skyborn warriors.
• The Blacksmith: Judging by her statements when the player uses a forge, Claret's a blacksmith as well.
• Companion Cube: She has a small robot companion which follows her around and makes cute noises.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Claret is the Responsible to Jake's Foolish, starting from the fact that, unlike her brother, Claret can actually fight for the causes she believes in, and she's the main moneymaker for the Spencer workshop by virtue of being their only mechanic. Towards the game's end, he even admits that he's done literally nothing to make their parents proud, unlike Claret.
• Glass Cannon: Claret can do more damage more consistently than any other party member- only Alda can do more damage in a single hit, but Claret's best attacks can be used almost every round, and she's considerably faster than the Skyborn. On the other hand, she's mulch if the enemy decides to tear into her.
• The Gunslinger: She fights using nail guns and what appear to be rivet based gatling guns, eventually upgrading to magnums and flamethrowers.
• The Hero: Is a Supporting Protagonist to Sullivan up until the Calidori Desert, where she decides to join the Rebels full time and repairs the Prometheus Armor her parents left behind. Opposing Sullivan's poor decisions later further cements her as the story's true hero.
• Hot-Blooded: Her response to two fully-armored Skyborn warriors beating up Corwin is to toss stuff at them and yell at them to get out- keep note that Skyborn dominate the city and could, legally, not get into much trouble for killing her. She later fights them and expresses no misgivings when their officer comes and breaks it up, even though she will be losing the fight no matter what the player does... and she immediately steals an airship to leave after being put into an Arranged Marriage she never asked for (though, in an act of kindness, she gives back the money she was apparently worth.)
• Jerkass to One: Claret is tremendously nice and understanding of most people... buuuut Claret starts out seriously disliking Sullivan, mostly due to him being a terrible airship pilot and nearly ruining the one she's working on, at least partly because it's something that he definitely couldn't get away with if were he much poorer. Finding out her brother has unexpectedly sold her into an Arranged Marriage she had no warning about didn't help, either. She lightens up on him throughout the game, though it comes back briefly when Sullivan, in an attempt to cross the Moral Event Horizon, makes a serious effort to kill every single Skyborn in New Skyrook.
• Parental Abandonment: Her parents, according to an early dialogue with Jake, walked out on their children. The truth, which she doesn't know, is that they were killed while aiding rebels against the Skyborn.
• Powered Armor: Straddling the line between this and Mini-Mecha is the Prometheus Armor, which Claret gets access to for the penultimate dungeon. It comes with free self-heals and a massive gun, and also total immunity to magic, making most encounters a joke while using it.
• Supporting Protagonist: For much of the early game, before she decides to really commit to the Rebel cause, which reveals that unlike Sullivan, she's capable of seeing Skyborn as people, making her much better at being a Rebel than he is.
• Too Many Belts: Downplayed and Justified- she's a mechanic. She's only wearing one belt around her waist, and has one more superfluous belt draped on her shoulders which are fastened by six loops to her jacket, though given her weapon of choice, it might be ammunition.
• Tragic Keepsake: Her half-gear necklace turns out to be one from her mother. Unlike the standard for JRPG plots, though, it's not actually plot relevant, beyond providing her motivation to finish her parent's last, ultimate weapon.
• Wrench Wench: A cute energetic mechanic.

Jake Spencer

• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: He might be the manager at the Spencer shop, but it's clear from literally every conversation with him that Jake is effectively superfluous to the running of the store, with his only talent being that he lacks Claret's Brutal Honesty with customers. He can't fight, he offers no services of value at any point in the story, absolutely refuses to tell his sister the truth about literally anything unless he's forced to do so by circumstance, and gets all the rebels killed by getting captured, which put Claret in a position where Dhacian could trace her. Jake's presence literally ruins the cause he's part of. At game's end, he even admits that he has done literally nothing to make his parents proud, unlike Claret.
• The Matchmaker: He sets up an Arranged Marriage for his sister and Sullivan as part of the contract for Sullivan to buy the shop. According to what he tells Claret, he had to negotiate strenuously to convince Sullivan to accept her as part of the deal. Claret, who didn't want to be married to a man she'd met that day, is not happy about any of this.
• The Millstone: Jake's work with the Rebels leads directly to all of them being killed.
• Parental Abandonment: He and his sister lost their parents when they were younger. Jake knows the truth about what happened to them, however.
• Poor Communication Kills: If Jake had told his sister that their parents were killed acting as rebels against the Skyborn or that he was selling the shop because he was planning on joining the rebellion against the Skyborn, the beginning of the game probably would have gone a lot more smoothly.

Sullivan Chesterford

• Arranged Marriage: One of the bizarre parts of the early story is that Sullivan is technically Claret's fiance, an element that is rarely brought up after the opening. Sullivan expresses few views on the matter after the game's start.
• Drives Like Crazy: The damage he caused to his own ship pretty much disgusts Claret. Since the ending shows he managed to not notice a mountain while piloting, the previously-mentioned damage probably isn't explained due to being from rebellion actions...
• Dual Wielding: Unusually, he wields both a rapier and a dagger of some kind, the latter literally listed as a "shield" in game terms. This is accurate for several styles of fencing, but is a surprising choice for a Mighty Glacier brick wall fighter type in a video game.
• Fantastic Racism: He hates the Skyborn for their oppression and kidnapping of the half-breed, leading him to be apprehensive to Alda in spite of how she jumped in to save the party's lives. He even momentarily considers having New Stormrook be destroyed in a magical explosion (which would definitely also kill himself, his friends and probably many other humans or half-breeds as well) to be worthwhile, an event Claret must stop him from going through with.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Multiple examples, but the most prominent would be that things could have turned out very differently if he didn't immediately kill the Empress when he dropped in while she was casting her spell.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: He's a horrible pilot and even his dad thinks he spends too much time practicing his swordplay rather than using his head, but he actually runs a rebellion and explains to Claret that his jailbreak in the beginning of the game was meticulously planned.
• Overly Long Name: The credits say more for his name that doesn't get otherwise said in the game... it's Sullivan W.B.H. Chesterford IV, which is thankfully never written out in full.
• Secret Identity: Seems like an pampered fop that just loves swordplay, is actually a rebel trying to bring down the Skyborn.
• Stone Wall: Sullivan's biggest contribution in battle is his almost unkillable nature.

Jillie

• Protectorate: It becomes pretty obvious that the main reason Sullivan fights for the rebellion is for his younger half-sister. As it turns out, their father is developing magic-suppressing technology for a similar reason.

Chaska

• Cute Monster Girl: Looks like a little elf girl aside from a few spikes coming out of her shoulders and her right arm being a large gnarled one with claws.
• The Fair Folk: Chaska is the last Earthenfey in existence- well, at least in the material world. See Qua'Lon below.
• Genki Girl: She qualifies with her amazement at the new places she sees, especially when visiting the Skyborns' domain.
• I Am Not Pretty: Downplayed; she never says this exactly, but it's clear shocked looks and remarks from seeing her arm get to her and she's overjoyed when Claret first sees her and describes her as just a little girl instead of something more derogatory.
• The Last of His Kind: With the death of Qua'lon, she is the last of the Fey, though she guess perhaps one day another Fey will be born out of the earth's magic.
• Purple Prose: Downplayed; she occasionally gets a bit grandiloquent in her excitement (to which Corwin asks if she spent all of her time in the mines reading romance novels and huffing fumes) but she's not exactly Polonius. She says if she can't look pretty, she can at least talk it.

Corwin Elenthir

• An Arm and a Leg: Corwin's done this. He doesn't have wings because he cut them off in order to hide the fact that he's a half-breed. It didn't work for very long, though.
• Black Mage: One path for his classes.
• In Harm's Way: Downplayed, he's let himself get beat up by Skyborn and risks going with Alda to the Celestial Palace because his healing magic lets him survive it.
• Half-Human Hybrid: He's a halfbreed, and protecting him is what kickstarts the plot.
• Healing Magic Is the Hardest: Is one of only two known healers, with the Empress of the Skyborn being the other. Corwin's presence is a major reason for the group's eventual success.
• White Mage: The other path for his classes.

Alda

• Action Girl: She's introduced stepping in to save the party from a bunch of monsters ambushing them, and was one of the top scorers in her military academy for fighters.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: Is declared the Empress of the Skyborn by the game's end after she tells her people of their past and the reality of the half-breed kidnappings.
• Easily Forgiven: For momentarily betraying the party when Dhacian attacks... though it's at least implied it was a panicked reaction, and she's apologetic afterwards.
• Fighting Your Friend: She fights alongside Dhacian the first time you face him, finding herself unable to kill him again. Conversely, she ends up doing this later when she stays with the party to fight Dhacian for the last time.
• Lady And A Scholar: While being a proud military officer, she was also a gifted historian- in fact, since history is quietly banned among the Skyborn, she defaults to being her people's greatest historian.
• Magic Knight: As Skyborn tend to be. She leans physical as compared to magic, her spells mostly useful for the status effects they inflict; she has the game's most powerful physical attack, and will generally do the single biggest hits (though very slowly.)
• My Greatest Failure: Killing her best friend, Ryler, because she was ordered to do so. An act that comes back to bite everyone in the ass when Ryler turns out to be the first name of Dhacian.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Subverted. While most Skyborn are militaristic jingoists, Alda is defined by the fact that she isn't; she was interested in history, and had stumbled upon rare mentions of a "third race" that caused her more knowledgeable superiors to panic. She's out hunting the truth in the Nordenwald when the party finds her, and stays with them despite Sullivan's open prejudice and her own prejudice against halfbreeds because she's already learned more in a few days of travel with them than she had in what's implied to be years on her own.
• Overrated and Underleveled: Averted; when she joins your party, she's a higher level than any of the members already there. Her equipment's crap, but then again, she's been out in the woods a while.
• Winged Humanoid: As Skyborn always are.

Dhacian

• Ambition Is Evil: At game's start, Dhacian is a subordinate of a prison warden, but sees an opportunity to get ahead using Claret. He's totally correct; by the time the game is beginning to reach its end, the stunts he pulls have let him rise so high in the ranks that he's hobnobbing with the Empress herself.
• Big Bad: Dhacian is the game's main villain. While he works for the Empress of the Skyborn, at day's end, it is Dhacian who has it out for the protagonists the most.
• Disney Death: After defeating him in the Celestial Nexus, he implicitly refuses to be healed by Corwin and drops off a ledge... though the mysterious hooded man in the ending admiring a statue of Alda is heavily implied to be Dhacian.
• Faux Affably Evil: He keeps his word and lets Jake go once he kills the Rebels. Then he immediately sics his subordinate Shynn on the party.
• Interrupted Declaration of Love: Implied. Ryler wants to say something to Alda before their final examinations, but neither she nor the player ever find out what it is.
• Magic Knight: In Skyborn fashion. Dhacian leans a bit more magical than Alda does.
• Magnificent Bastard: Manages one impressive act. He captures Jake, and tells Claret he will set him free... if she tells him where the Rebels are. Claret decides she can't do that, and has a different plan to save Jake... and it's totally meaningless, because Dhacian knew Claret would never betray the rebels. Instead, he just follows her, knowing she'll lead him where he wants to go- and she does, letting Dhacian kill the rebels and murder the peaceful folk of the Hidden Elf Village, getting him that promotion he wanted!
• Never Found the Body: Chaska says she can't sense him in the Celestial Nexus, but a cloaked man saying he knew the Empress when he was young and loved her is seen in the ending...
• Start of Darkness: Alda nearly killing him at the end of their trial run. Dhacian actually specifically thanks her for doing this when they meet again, since it freed him from the "delusion" that other people mattered, and let him realize that the only thing that was real was using people as tools.
• Villains Never Lie: Actually does free Jake despite how Claret never actually reported anything to him about the rebellion... since, after all, following Claret led him to the Rebels anyway. Then tells Shynn to kill the party.
• We Used to Be Friends: With Alda...until she tried to kill him, which she never learned she was unsuccessful in doing until years after.
• Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Averted Trope; he has his Skyborn accompaniment slaughter an outlying village that left Granminister declaring them to be rebels when the player knows they're just people trying to be left alone from Granminister's politics.
• Winged Humanoid: Like all Skyborn.

Qua' Lon

• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: He's pretty unexpected considering you've been told Chaska's the last of the fey beforehand, which turns out to be untrue.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: Says he's been kept here for too long to just be freed from the Celestial Nexus, he'll probably attack the party soon, and only asks for peace by the sword.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: Is kept alive from how he automatically slowly siphons magic from beings in the Celestial Nexus.
• Tragic Monster: Qua'Lon doesn't want to devour the halfbreed souls he's fed, but his nature requires him to do so. Anyone tossed into his dimension will get eaten. Doing this sickens him, but he's helpless to stop it, which is why he's begging you to kill him.
• Walking Spoiler: Nothing about him can be mentioned without talking about other major reveals prior in the game.