Character sheet for Starting A New Life For The Discarded All Rounder. Spoilers may be unmarked.
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Roa and familiars
Roa
The protagonist. He was taken in by Crack of Dawn for the stated purpose of being apprenticed to become a competent adventurer. Instead the party treated him as a slave in all but name, with utter contempt, stole his accomplishments, exploited the hell out of him, and literally kicked him out the instant they thought they didn't need him anymore. If not for also being mentored by Coralde, the local famous and talented trader, who actually recognized his merits, he might have wound up dead in a ditch somewhere.
- All-Loving Hero: Even though Crack of Dawn treated him horribly for 7 years, he still feels guilty that he could have saved them if they hadn't been stupid enough to boot him out.
- Classical Antihero: Thanks to being abused for 7 long and grueling years, and having to just "grin and bear it" thanks to the culture of the kingdom of Perdu, Blaming the Victim and seeing those apprentices who were driven out by their mentors by public abuse as "spineless quitters," his self-esteem is completely shot at the start of the story. Coralde has to ambush him with an official Creator's guild membership as a licensed alchemist, too stunned to react, just to certify him.
- Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: He feels guilty Crack Of Dawn got wiped out in a golem stampede, but even he doesn't give a damn when the thieves and assassins sent after him to steal his recipes and kill him, respectively when they get caught, humiliated, and tortured for intel, or just straight up killed when they can't be safely caught or know too much.
- Extreme Doormat: He was abused by the party, in public and he was forced by the country's horribly flawed apprenticeship system, and the meat-headed guild-master to "grin and bear it" or he'd be seen as "spineless" and have his adventurer credentials revoked.
- Follow in My Footsteps: The primary reason he put up with Crack of Dawn for 7 years, despite their abuse, is that he wanted to emulate his parents who were both adventurers. He's relieved when the party threw him out and he doesn't have to try to suffer in silence any more.
- Ignored Expert: When he's kicked out of Crack of Dawn, he's forced to leave all his potions, reagents, and alchemical tools behind, all clearly labeled with instructions on their use. The party, all being meatheads that can only understand "hit it on the head until it dies" paid no attention to these instructions, just considering him a "talentless loser." As a result, the party greatly overestimates their abilities and winds up triggering a golem stampede.
- Instant Expert: He is pointedly not talentless. If Crack of Dawn had actually bothered to train him, instead of just seeing him as free labor and a punching bag, he'd actually be a scarily competent adventurer. When he engages in some swordsmanship lessons under a different A-ranked party from another country, Nostalgia of Nereus, to be precise, he's at the level of a professional knight in less than a week. And that's just sparring in his off time, not dedicated practice or training.
- Jack of All Trades: The reason his home country, the kingdom of Perdu, loves to see him as "talentless" despite the fact that he's so talented foreign powers would go to war over him, if Kristoff's side-story at the end of volume 3 is accurate, is that he's just so talented in whatever field he tries his hand that he simply can't specialize and Perdu borderline worships Crippling Overspecialization. To wit: he tamed both an ancient gryphon and two fenrir pups, which is so phenomenal a feat that it's considered nigh impossible; he is so skilled in alchemy that he can reverse engineer holy water, which is considered a divine miracle and is exclusive to the church; he can, and does, cook restaurant quality meals for fun; after less than a week of training the sword, in his spare time, he's already at the level of a competent professional knight, and after a month of training magic under his pet gryphon, he's already at the level of a basic wizard. He can't cast holy magic, but again, he can use alchemy to make magic items that duplicate the effects. He also maintained all of Crack of Dawn's equipment, picking up "a bit" of knowledge from an Uncertified Expert who never managed to get certified by his mentor and join the Creator's guild.
- Locked Out of the Loop: He doesn't know assassins are targeting him because Grandpa Gry, Nostalgia, and Coralde just call them "thieves" looking to steal money and intellectual property.
- Mad Scientist: He goes absolutely giddy working on R&D projects or experimenting with alchemical recipes whenever the muse hits him, which is pretty often. He recreates holy water on a whim after Grandpa Gry beat up a mithril golem just by the fact that the golem they faced was radiating "holy light" during its attacks on Nostalgia. He later "gets a bit carried away" and proceeds to makes not one or two but 10 "super potions" in his lab and asks Coralde to have Chuck, the long-crippled carriage driver hired by the company, to try one, just to see if there's any side-effects that he needs to improve on.
- Uncertified Expert: Played with. Coralde ambushes him with an official certification as an alchemist, which he accepts because he's too stunned to react. On the other hand, he is never officially recognized as a monster tamer because Eric stole his accomplishment of having a gryphon and two fenrir pups as familiars, passing himself off as the tamer instead.
Grandpa Gry
Roa's pet gryphon. Roa sees him as a kind of grumpy grandfather figure of sorts.
- Absurd Phobia: Played with. Grandpa Gry is terrified of normal insects. Sure, he's a mighty gryphon who can lay waste to entire towns if he feels like it, but he has experience with bugs swarming him when he was wounded as a very young chick, crawling into wounds and making them fester even more, painfully. Harmless beetles landing on him now has him hyperventilating and going into near panic attacks.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: As a magical beast, his moral compass is very different from humans, and he never stops reminding Roa of that. For example, he would have no problems at all abandoning his own child to die if said child was an unsalvageable weakling or a liability. To him, you either earn your way in the world, or you're a walking corpse. He loves the former, and loathes the latter.
- Card-Carrying Jerkass: He's got a nasty personality and is proud of it. He still treats Roa and the pups with respect and kindness, but everyone else? Good luck.
- Denied Food as Punishment: The fate Roa always holds over his head to keep him in line.
- I Owe You My Life: He's faithful to Roa as a result of a life-debt. Roa found him mortally wounded and used a valuable healing potion to heal him.
- Miles Gloriosus: He just loves to boast about how great he is. Fortunately, he is indeed as great as he boasts, even if the boasts are insufferable.
- Never My Fault: He loves to play ridiculous mental gymnastics to absolve himself of guilt whenever he goofs up. Case in point, when Roa was kicked out of the party Crack of Dawn, and therefore couldn't groom him or the pups, he tears apart his own bedding in a rage and spends the night on the ground. Then he angrily berates Roa for making him sleep on the ground, even after the pups tell him that it was something he did to himself.
- Nice to the Waiter: He holds the lady running the local grocery store in high regards because she treats him with respect and shows no fear, while the adventurers of the guild run away screaming when he shows up.
- Noodle Incident: He's so powerful, he could easily destroy Roa's home town if he wanted, yet Roa found him so battered and wounded that he would have died without aid. Whatever happened, he's not telling. He also brings Roa two infant fenrir pups to raise, several months after having entered Roa's service, but never tells anyone how that came to be.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Enforced. He has another name from a previous tamer, but he's not telling what it is. Roa nicknames him "Grandpa Gry" and the taming magic took hold, making it his official name, and he hates it. He is, at least, open minded enough to not hold Roa to blame for it, as Roa couldn't have possibly known that would happen at the time.
- Our Nudity Is Different: As a gryphon, he has no problems with actual nudity, and in fact is always nude. He does, however, get terribly embarrassed when people hear him chant magical spells.
- Parental Substitute: He's the closest thing Roa has to a parental figure.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: He's always hated how Roa was abused by Crack of Dawn, but did nothing about it because he knew retaliating directly would only make things worse. When he noticed the golems the party was sent to subjugate were multiplying out of control (not realizing it was due to his musk being abused), he not only happily sat back and let them grow in numbers to the point that a legit a-rank party would have a hard time, he had the two pups assist by blocking off monster escape routes on the other side of the valley so all the monsters being displaced by said golems would go after Crack of Dawn to make the fight even more bitter for them. Then, when Stefan loudly shouts how Roa was kicked out of the party, Grandpa Gry ripped off his collar, right in front of them to show they never had any control over him, gives them a hearty Slasher Smile despite having a beak instead of a mouth and points at them to go face the golems themselves before he and the pups go to search for Roa.
- Really 700 Years Old: He's centuries old, and in fact Roa is not his first familiar/master contract. He knows the true story of the legendary "heroine" who lived over 500 years ago, having actually met her in person.
The fenrir pups.
- Elemental Hair Colors: The pup with red fur specializes in fire magic. The pup with blue fur specializes in ice and water magic.
- Happily Adopted: They consider Roa "dad" and Granpda Gry a grumpy, but loving grandfather, despite knowing full well that they're not blood related.
- No Name Given: As of volume 3, they haven't been named. Roa and Grandpa Gry justify it by telling them that Roa can only name them once and he needs time to come up with a fitting name.
- Polar Opposite Twins: They are twin pups but one uses fire magic while the other uses water and ice.
Crack of Dawn
Common to all
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: According to Grandpa Gry, this party used to be kind to Roa, but once they got the boy to sign on as their nominal apprentice, quickly took to abusing the hell out of the kid, and when Nostalgia tries to recruit Roa too, the gryphon is highly suspicious the adventuring party would be a repeat of the performance, even though they're good people "now." Dietrich takes offense to the implication and nearly gets into a fight with the gryphon over it.
- Circular Reasoning: They drafted Roa as an apprentice to train him as an adventurer. They never, ever bothered to train him in anything, instead using him as basically slave labor and a punching bag. Because he never got the talent to go around killing monsters by osmosis, he's "a talentless loser" that deserves to be kicked around and abused, and is an embarrassment to a "Hero" party like themselves, so he needs to be kicked out.
- To convince themselves that Roa is "easily" replaceable, they buy a larger, and therefore more expensive, magical bag to carry their supplies, thus proving to themselves that they don't need a porter, Bonne's father brings in a maid to tend to the mansion, Stefan goes to the market to buy replacement potions and consumables, having long ago forgotten their price, Olun has to get his new wife to cook the party their meals, and the team has to go search for someone to look after "Eric's" beasts because Eric himself doesn't have a clue, having left all that stuff to Roa, and Eric himself just doesn't care.
- Dumb Muscle: The only thing that seems "useful" in their minds is the natural born talent to go around killing monsters, or an immediately visible boost to their stats that does the same. All the logistics Roa provided were "useless" even though they loved to exploit the hell out of Roa by making him provide all their healing and mana potions, monster repellent, grooming the magic beasts, serving as a porter, tidying up the common mansion they rented, you name it, and if he was ever found working on his own projects, they would immediately presume he was slacking on his chores and beat him.
- Entitled Bastard: And Entitled Bitch for Bonne, the priestess. If Roa ever had any time for himself, the party would immediately presume he was slacking and beat him, demanding he do more of their chores, which is why he has to sneak out and go to Coralde in secret, and he had to hide whatever money he earned or goods he bought, because the party would just go and confiscate them the instant they became aware, and they insisted until they literally kicked him out (by kicking him in the stomach and sent him flying) that he was "useless." The very next day after he's gone, it takes them at least four people to replace the work he was doing and the quality plummeted to boot, and even then nobody bothered to take care of the magic beasts Eric nominally tamed.
- Fake Ultimate Hero: They honestly believe differently, but they only rose to A-rank and got the coveted "Hero" party title by riding on Roa's achievements, especially the magic beasts tamed by Roa, one gryphon and two fenrir pups, that he formed familiar contracts with. In less than a week after literally booting him out, they trigger a national disaster by overestimating their abilities and going after a silver golem quest only to trigger a mithril golem stampede because they couldn't be bothered to read the label of the potions and reagents Roa was forced to leave behind and used pure gryphon musk extract where they should have used a properly diluted version, making the golems think their territory was being stolen by force, prompting a violent response.
- A Hero to His Hometown: They were lauded as "heroes" at the start of the story purely because of their perceived strength and competence, but their character left much to be desired.
- Laser-Guided Karma: All the abuse, theft, and violence they inflicted on Roa over seven years came back to them, in force, in a matter of minutes as the gryphon and two pups tore off their beast-control collars and went looking for Roa, leaving them to the golem stampede they initiated. They were beaten down, bones broken, left battered and bloody, with all that's precious to them utterly destroyed, including their fame, glory, and reputation. The only reason they still have their lives is that the golems decided they're Not Worth Killing. Which is an added insult to their bloated egos.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": When they see Grandpa Gry remove his taming collar and then points them at the very golems he's holding back with magic, they pale. They blanch with abject horror when the pups follow suit. Then they realize they had no control over the beasts at all, and to top it off, there's an entire valley of angry golems coming for them, and the very beasts that might have helped are, at the very best, completely uninterested in helping them in any way.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The very first quest after getting the "Hero" title, they greatly overestimate their strength, competence, and preparedness, after having literally kicked Roa out of their party, and go challenge a silver golem quest. Because they never could be bothered to pay attention to their "talentless loser," they use pure musk as a monster repellent where they're supposed to use a diluted spray. The local golems go from "gryphon's just passing through, let them" to "gryphon's trying to muscle in! UNFORGIVABLE" and rally their forces into a stampede that threatens the entire kingdom. It's only because Roa, with another A-rank party, was nearby that the damage was minimal.
- Removing the Crucial Teammate: The phrase "you don't know what you've got till it's gone" really applies to them. The very next day after literally booting Roa out...
- Olun, the Party Tank, has to get his wife to cook all their meals.
- Bonne, the priestess, has to have her father bring in a maid to tend to their common mansion.
- Eric, the party's nominal tamer, has to have someone brought in to tend to the magic beasts, both because he's too lazy, and doesn't have a clue how to tend to them, even trying to feed them rejected animal feed because he never bothered to check with Roa what the beasts liked to eat, and paid no attention, at all, to when Roa was tending them.
- Stefan, the swordsman and party leader, has to go and buy potions, monster repellents, etc. because Roa is no longer making them for the party, and according to Coralde, the potions Roa used to make are, on average, 20% more effective than what's on the market. Not to mention there are some things only Roa ever made, and the party soon starts to realize that when he's been gone a day or two.
- The Svengali: They took Roa on with the stated purpose of training him to be an effective adventurer. They did not train him, at all. They made a very public show of beating, berating, and humiliating him, as well as using him as slave labor for 7 years, starting at age 10.
- Underestimating Badassery: They, and the guild, presumed "Grandpa Gry" was a young and therefore magically incapable gryphon, since they stole control of him from Roa, a child. The gryphon let them all believe it, at Roa's request. Granpda Gry actually is centuries old, so when he gave the party Crack of Dawn his resignation papers, he blasted the ground in front of Eric with lightning magic when the lout tried to boss him around, after the gryphon heard Roa was gone.
- Would Hurt a Child: Considering they started beating on Roa when he was 10, and he just had to take it, or he'd be labelled "spineless" by the Kingdom of Perdu's apprenticeship system, you bet they'd hurt kids, just for laughs.
Stefan
A swordsman and the leader of the party.
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: In addition to his arrogance and cultural bias against Roa, he had spent the entire night after his party was awarded a "Hero" title, riding on Roa's accomplishments, boozing himself into a stupor. This leads him to think it's a fantastic idea to boot from the party someone who does so much, it took at least four people and a lot of extra expenses, just to even try and fill the hole his expulsion left behind.
- Bad Boss: He loved to beat Roa around, both to enforce his will and for kicks, of course, but after booting Roa from the party, began to turn his rage on the other members whenever things went awry.
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: One of two fighters, to Serge's thief, and Bonne's mage. Eric was an archer until he got himself certified as a tamer by taking credit for Roa's familiars.
- I Control My Minions Through...: Violence and their worst flaws. He beats up his party members, both to enforce his will and for kicks, and keeps them obedient by exploiting their personal flaws, like Bonne's fervent need to keep herself Obliviously Evil by diving head-first into any situation that she can pass off as "charity" or "piety."
- Master Swordsman: What he thinks he is. He's actually total chump that would have gotten killed long ago if Eric hadn't taken ownership of Roa's familiars by force and used them in the party's name.
- Open Mouth, Insert Foot: When he's woken in the middle of the night, only to catch Serge sleeping instead of standing guard as ordered, he loudly and angrily decries that he will kick Serge out like he kicked Roa out of the party, right where Grandpa Gry can hear him. Naturally, the gryphon is pointedly not pleased, spreads the word to the two fenrir pups, and all three of them abandon Crack of Dawn to go search for Roa, previously only obeying Eric's orders for fear of what the party might do to Roa, as they've seen Roa beaten bloody the last time they so much as peeked outside their stables.
- Saying Too Much: If he had stopped at threatening to kick Serge out for sleeping on guard duty, everything would probably have been fine as Serge did put the party at risk by sleeping on the job. However, he just had to use Roa's expulsion as an example, right in front of the beasts Roa tamed, failing to realize that all the beasts could understand human speech just fine. Oops.
Serge
The second member introduced and the party's [Thief]. Upon learning Roa's been kicked out of the party, he makes the "kicked" part literal by kicking Roa in the stomach, sending Roa flying, as Bonne watched, sarcastically condemning the "fighting."
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: The thief of the party to Stefan and Olun's fighter and Bonne's mage.
- Kick the Dog: Literally. When Roa is collecting his things, especially the alchemy tools he purchased and the party would pointedly never use, he comes into the lab, angrily accuses Roa of stealing from the party, and then kicks Roa in the stomach for daring to protest innocence.
Bonne
The party's priest. She used to be a saintess, but was demoted to priest in her backstory due to unstated criminal activity.
- Accomplice by Inaction: She is the member of the party who hated Roa the most, but she kept herself "pious" in her own mind by doing absolutely nothing while the rest abused him. The most she ever did was complain about how unsightly it was for "party members to fight."
- Achievements in Ignorance: She never realized it, but she's a primary reason why Roa's potions are so much more effective than the market norm. The "Barrier of Purity" magic tool her father provided her to help maintain her beauty also detoxified the potions Roa made, boosting their effectiveness. Roa discovered this after several experiments in brewing potions both at Coralde's lab and back in the mansion when Crack of Dawn was dissolved and disgraced.
- Believing Their Own Lies: She genuinely believes her father's cover story that she was framed by an enemy of her family for crimes she didn't commit, just to tarnish her name. When the church collects her body after the golem fiasco, they point to hard evidence that she was, in fact, a criminal who deserved her punishment, and worse but was protected by her father's clout.
- It's All About Me: In the end, the only person she really cares about is herself. She's always got this little calculator going in her head asking "how can this person or that person benefit me!" In the aftermath of the golem stampede, as she's on the ground, battered and bloody, she sees the rest of her party in an even worse state and her first thoughts are "some 'hero' party, they're all completely useless." Even joining the party in the first place as all about the chance that she could get back her "saint" title, after which she planned to dump them and return to the temple to be waited on hand and foot.
- Lack of Empathy: She's always seen it as a mystery why she can't bring a maid with her adventuring to tend to her petty wants and needs, especially maintaining her physical beauty, even knowing maids are clearly not trained for combat. When the rest of the party points out that it will be harder for them to fight if they have to protect non-combatants too, her response is "so what, if a maid dies, we can just hire a new one."
- Light Is Not Good: She is the party's priest and in charge of the healing magic, but she's deluded herself into being Obliviously Evil by ignoring her criminal acts, focusing on doing anything she can pass of as "charity" or "piety."
- Noodle Incident: Kristoff, the intel specialist and scout of Nostalgia, investigated Perdu before the party came in person and discovered proof that Bonne is indeed guilty of some crime(s), but he refuses to share specifics, aside from scowling and stating her actions are indeed quite foul.
- Obliviously Evil: She genuinely believes she's a devout and pious priestess, but she pointedly ignores how her party abuses their apprentice Roa and are actively antagonistic to the population at large.
- Principles Zealot: She holds Roa with unbridled contempt because she fervently believes "talentless people are not blessed by god" and therefore should be treated as sub-human, despite her church's faith having no such tenet. She also pointedly ignores all the things Roa is glaringly talented in, like his alchemy, cooking, tending to the party's tamed beasts, and making the medicine balls she uses to maintain her physical beauty in lieu of the magic potions she's addicted to, so she can minimize the toxic drawback of overconsumption.
- The Smurfette Principle: She's the only female in the party.
- Sugary Malice: She makes her first appearance in chapter 1 sporting a gentle tone and warm expression as she asks Serge and Roa "to stop fighting" but as Roa attests, behind her words and actions is nothing more than unadulterated malice and she does absolutely nothing to rebuke Serge or stop him from literally kicking him around.
- Too Dumb to Live: Granted, she was suffering from many open wounds and broken bones as a result of the golem stampede, but already having overdosed on mana potions and suffering the toxic backlash, she goes and dives head-first into a puddle of all the party's potions, reagents, etc, that was caused by the same stampede trashing their supplies as they chased the gryphon from whom the musk they used incorrectly came. When the church comes along to pick up her barely living body, they can only face-palm at how badly she's screwed herself over, and there's no magical or mundane remedy. She's going to be in excruciating agony, crippled, for the many months it takes for her body to cleanse itself, presuming she survives the ordeal, and healing magics would only worsen her condition.
- Ungrateful Bitch: Roa develops medicine balls for her to use to mitigate the possibly lethal side-effect of her addiction to mana potions that she uses to maintain her physical beauty, yet she hates him the most of all the members of the party and does absolutely nothing to stop the rest from abusing him in any and every way, actively celebrating the moment he's literally kicked out and she can't see him anymore.
- Vanity Is Feminine: She is obsessed with her physical beauty to the point she abuses mana potions to maintain said beauty, even knowing that overuse can possibly be fatal.
- Wrong Assumption: Since she can only see Roa as "a talentless loser" and he provided her with medicine balls to combat her addiction to mana potions, she presumed said pills could easily be found in the market when Roa was booted from the party. Wrong. Only Roa can make them as they're entirely his invention and the alchemist's guild wouldn't accept the recipe since he hadn't been certified yet. Oh well, back to chugging those potions like there's no tomorrow then...
Eric
The party's nominal tamer. He was previously an archer until the party compelled Roa to let him take command of the poor kid's familiars with the use of violence.
- Stealing the Credit: He takes custody of Roa's gryphon and two fenrir pup familiars and passes himself off as a monster tamer as a result. This comes back to bite the entire party when Roa is kicked out and the beasts in question learn of it, having previously obeyed orders only for Roa's sake.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He is the one who sets off the golem stampede via an act of extreme carelessness. Accustomed to using properly diluted monster repellent, based on gryphon musk, he takes the pure extract his party packed up for the expedition from their supplies. Without thinking, he just sprays it around in the same way as he has always done, never bothering to check if it was properly diluted. Instead of keeping monsters at bay while the party rested as he intended, the golems in the area see it as a wild gryphon trying to claim their territory for itself and react violently, with extreme prejudice, seeking to end the gryphon responsible.
Olun
The last of the party members. As a result of the party rising to the coveted "Hero" rank and title, he gets married, and he tasks his newlywed wife to cook for the party after they unanimously and literally boot Roa.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When the golem stampede is bearing down on the party and Grandpa Gry is forcing them to fight, he runs up to Grandpa Gry and begs for assistance. The gryphon just yawns out of boredom and then goes on to think of other things and then just flies away, leaving them to their fate.
- Party Tank: His official job as recognized by the country Perdu and his role in the party.
- Stay in the Kitchen: Literally. He gets married so he can get a free chef to cook for the party.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He buys a larger magic bag to hold more stuff, to further justify Roa as "useless" in his own head, and then packs all of the potions and reagents Roa was forced to leave behind, including pure gryphon musk extract, that he and Serge planned to dilute later, but he never got the chance. Eric would later take this pure extract as the party was setting up camp to spray around without thinking, going purely by habit in spraying around the diluted form as monster repellent. This triggers a stampede of dangerous golems that tramples the party to the ground, literally, and adds insult to injury by seeing them as Not Worth Killing.
Nostalgia
Common to all
- Anger Born of Worry: When Roa throws himself into danger during the golem stampede so they can escape, they come back when it's all over and chew him out for it, because he's their client and it would stain their name if they abandoned their charge, even under orders. Roa, having spent at least 7 years being treated the exact opposite way by Crack of Dawn and the adventurer's guild as a whole, breaks down in tears.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: They're all goof-balls in some way or another, but their competence as an A-rank party is the real deal, so Coralde and many other clients are happy to trust their work
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: When Roa is sent on a suicidal Uriah Gambit, their leader, Dietrich, volunteers the party to go with him, and the rest, save Kristoff, agree wholeheartedly.
- Good Counterpart: They are also an A-rank party, like Crack of Dawn, but don't bring with them the meat-headed biases of Perdu, so they treat Roa as an equal, with respect, and are actually willing to teach him how to be a competent adventurer.
Dietrich
The party leader.
- The Alcoholic: He loves booze of all types, but bar-hopping has caused him to enter into many scuffles. In fact, one such scuffle got the party heavily fined, so when Coralde put forward a request to escort Roa into an A-ranked monster-filled forest, they jumped at the chance to be hired.
- Dumb Is Good: He's a card-carrying idiot and he's kind, gentle, and unflinchingly upright.
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: He's one of the two fighters to Kristoff's thief and Bernard's mage.
- Hero Ball: When he hears of Roa being sent on an obvious Uriah Gambit to investigate a dangerous monster-filled forest that might be about ready to stampede, thanks to the dungeon at its center, he agrees without a second thought, despite having no obligation and the fact that, by international treaty, the party can't possibly escort Roa to that dungeon, having to take a different path. Kristoff punches him in the face for this act of idiocy.
- I Owe You My Life: Dealing with a dungeon stampede, he was mortally wounded until Roa showed up and healed him with potions. He's been a huge fan of the boy ever since. For his part, Roa forgot about the incident in question because he was too busy being abused by Crack of Dawn.
- Manchild: The same things that make him good and kind also make him a total idiot. He has the mentality of a toddler most of the time, so gets angry with injustice and hypocrisy very, very quickly, with a tendency to lose control of himself, especially when he hits the bottle, but he never learns.
- They Just Dont Get It: He is utterly unable to learn from his mistakes. He gets lectured by the rest of the party and even total strangers, but after looking contrite for a while to get out of being lectured, perks right up again and just goes right back to his old ways.
Cornelia
The party's tank and the only woman in the party.
- Dishing Out Dirt: In addition to body enhancing magic, she also knows earth magic.
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: One of the two fighters.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: She sports a powerful shield.
- Mentor Archetype: In exchange for Roa fixing her armor's balance, making it fit better and feel lighter, she teaches him how to use body enhancing magic and how to wield a sword. In less than a week, he gets proficient enough to rival a professional knight.
- The Smurfette Principle: She's the only woman in the party.
- Super-Strength: By using body enhancing magic, she can temporarily sport super-human strength.
- Wrecked Weapon: Her sword broke while adventuring and she had to get a new one in Perdu. This messed up her fighting because her armor was no longer properly balanced. Roa impressed her when he noticed and fixed the armor's balance for her.
Kristoff
The thief and scout of the party.
- Conflicting Loyalty: He's torn between his party and his country as he tries, and fails to report on Roa while downplaying just how insanely talented the 17-year-old is.
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: The thief of the party.
- The Mole: In addition to being the party's thief, he's also a spy tasked by his country's queen to report back what the party finds in Perdu.
Bernard
The party mage.
- Combo Platter Powers: He knows magic of all elements and has been known to mix and match them on the fly.
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: The mage.
- Not So Stoic: He usually speaks and emotes very little, but when the prospect of magic comes up, he goes full-tilt Otaku.
Kingdom of Perdu
Coralde
The town's, if not kingdom's most influential and well-known trader. He took an immediate shine to Roa when he first met the boy years ago, soon after the kid joined Crack of Dawn and began peddling his wares to try and get some pocket change, realizing the kid's true value at a glance. He has repeatedly tried to coax Roa away from the ingrates who were mistreating him and bring him into the trading company, to no avail, until the so-called "Hero" party literally booted Roa out and left him nowhere to go. He pays all his employees their worth and welcomes new products and ideas, because he's not an idiot, and whatever resources he spends on his employees, especially on Roa, always nets him far more profit in the long run.
- Bald of Authority: Many a time the shininess of his bald head is noted to draw people's attention, and spelled out to the audience, and he's a man so influential, the entire adventurer's guild dares not offend him.
- Benevolent Boss: He is extremely doting and patient with his employees, to the point they happily work overtime, and the treatment is so good, Roa is often left speechless, too stunned to react, when he gets treated with the respect he deserves.
- Enlightened Self-Interest: He treasures and dotes on his employees, even staffing a kitchen with dedicated chefs for his trading house, because he knows that whatever goods they provide him are going to provide far, far more profit than the employees take away with their salaries, materials, R&D, and even hiring an A-rank party, from another country-no less, for Roa to go find materials on instinct still proves itself an amazingly profitable endeavor.
- Famed In-Story: He is so influential in the world setting that everyone knows the name of the Coralde trading firm.
- Rags to Riches: In his backstory, he rose from Barefoot Poverty to owning the most influential trading company in the kingdom.
- Self-Made Man: He built his entire trading company from scratch, all by himself.
Guildmaster Steed
The guild-master of Almond county, the town where Roa lives. He used to be a powerful adventurer himself before retiring and taking the reigns of the guild.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Deconstructed. He got to become guildmaster by being the meanest and toughest adventurer of his time, but he's a total muscle-head who can't understand anything above "go find my problems and beat them to death" which repeatedly turns around to bite him somewhere sensitive.
- Dumb Muscle: He's a total meat-head, which even his secretary and top receptionist Viviana repeatedly points out. He just can't understand anything at all unless it involves going around bashing things to death.
- It's All About Me: He pointedly doesn't care about the adventurers in his branch, at all. All he cares about is how their actions might reflect on his public image. He always does his best to delude himself that "the adventurer's guild is a meritocracy" to justify his complete disinterest, but when the adventurers he champions completely screw the pooch, he goes out of his way to Leave No Witnesses showcasing proof of his incompetence.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: And in record time. He initially schemes to have the carriages carrying Crack of Dawn and carrying the recently expelled from the party Roa, being escorted by the foreign party Nostalgia, "accidentally" meet despite undertaking entirely independent requests so he can verify the authenticity of reports he's been getting that Roa was the source of all the potions and logistics of Crack of Dawn and whether or not Eric really is a legit beast tamer. When this goes off the rails because Coralde is not an idiot and hired his own carriage and then, Coralde's company comes back with reports that the monsters in the area around where Crack of Dawn is operating are being unusually aggressive, less than a day later, he publicly sends scouts to determine what's really going on while secretly scheming to Leave No Witnesses, by killing Roa, Nostalgia, and Crack of Dawn, just so he can avoid embarrassment.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: He's always been suspicious of Eric being the beast-tamer of Crack of Dawn, not just because he was certified as an archer and then just showed up with a gryphon and two magic wolf-pups out of nowhere one day, but because Guildmaster Steed doesn't trust beast-tamers, at all, since he can't, for the life of him, figure out how beast taming works. It doesn't help that different legit tamers all have different methods that work for them but not necessarily anyone else.
- When he's ordered to send Roa on an Uriah Gambit by the town lord, he's aghast at doing it, not because he actually cares about Roa, but because it's unprecedented to send an apprentice "all rounder" on any mission independently, and the guild might be embarrassed much later down the line regardless of Roa's success or failure.
- Sarcasm-Blind: Viviana is a legit Servile Snarker and loves to sass him with snark when he's being unusually stupid, even for him, but he never quite gets it and takes her statements at face value. It doesn't help that she's monotone and has an excellent poker face.
Secretary Viviana
The top receptionist at the guild and Steed's secretary.
- Condescending Compassion: Her biggest motivation for "helping" Roa is that she wants to assert her self-perceived superiority over him, and she loves to look down on him both literally and figuratively every chance she gets.
- Good Is Dumb: She means well, she really does, but by trying to toe the line with the country's ridiculous "apprentices are parasites until they prove otherwise" mentality, she makes things worse for Roa every time she tries to "help." She even tries to magically confiscate Roa's gryphon, Grandpa Gry, deluding herself that people just won't be envious of Roa anymore if he doesn't have a pet gryphon with him. The biggest problem with that line of thinking is that she tries this after the guild master has not only sent numerous assassins at Roa but has successfully press-ganged him into a nifty Uriah Gambit. Had she succeeded, this would have reduced Roa's chances of survival even more!
- Servile Snarker: She may be loyal to her job, but she won't hesitate to call out the guildmaster with sarcasm whenever she thinks he's being especially stupid. Her response to Steed's plan to have Roa's and Crack of Dawn's carriages "accidentally" come into a collision course is "how about you just eliminate Roa and Crack of Dawn before there's any issues, just in case?" and when Steed balks that she's "testing" him, replies "Oh, no! I would never do that."
Mr. Bruno
A dwarven blacksmith Roa knows, and one of the boy's actual mentors.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Despite his many eccentricities, his work is the real deal. So much so that even though he's not a member of the Creator's Guild, official knights literally beat down his door for his services.
- Card-Carrying Jerkass: He's every bit as obnoxious as Grandpa Gry. Even Roa acknowledges that. And he's just as proud of it.
- Running Gag: He's fond of humiliating people who cause trouble in his shop by beating them up, stripping them naked, and then throwing out the door. And then banning them.
- Stern Teacher: He's a great mentor, but he won't accept any backtalk, and resents Coralde for snatching Roa up when Crack of Dawn foolishly kicked him out.
- Uncertified Expert: By choice. Despite being such an expert craftsman, he refuses to join the Creator's Guild, as he hates having to play by their rules.
Count Amadan
The lord of the town where Roa lives.
- The Ghost: He's often mentioned but never actually makes an onscreen appearance, at least not one where he's openly identified. He does attend a meeting with the adventurer's guild officials and local nobles trying to deal with the aftermath of Crack of Dawn's self-destruction, but none of the participants are named.
- Uriah Gambit: When he gets tired of his pet assassins that he sent after Roa coming back utterly humiliated, or not at all, he comes up with the "brilliant" idea to send Roa, alone, with the knights of a Tomboy Princess to investigate a dangerous dungeon in the heart of a dangerous forest that requires multiple nations to keep an eye on it because it's so deadly, after receiving multiple reports that the monsters in the forest were behaving strangely. He also sends his daughter and her female "knights" along because he's tired of being embarrassed by her well-meaning but very problematic "heroic" antics, the vast majority of which caused far many more problems than they solved and only made her feel good rather than actually did good.
Knight Princess Eline
The fourth daughter of Count Amadan. She is the titular leader of the expedition that is Roa's Uriah Gambit. Her "knight order" is founded entirely around her attempts to emulate a legendary hero who lived centuries ago and whose name she shares. Unfortunately for her, she's the Spiritual Successor for said hero, but that's the problem.
- The Ditz: She's a good and noble child, but she's a total airhead.
- Dramatic Irony: She spent her childhood trying to emulate a legendary heroine from fairy tales her father loved to read her at night, said heroine even sharing her name. Problem is, she succeeded, and never learned that this "heroine" wasn't anywhere near as heroic as the stories say, having had her exploits extremely whitewashed. Some key examples:
- The fairy tales state that she challenged a monster stampede to save a city. In truth, she challenged a monster nest near a city, but quickly found herself over her head and kited the monsters back to the city as she was fleeing in a panic.
- The fairy tales state she went around crushing criminal gangs For Great Justice. Again, she challenged the gangs without thinking and had to be rescued, and the gangs were crushed by the rescuers.
- The fairy tales state she was very charitable, spending her time not doing heroics building orphanages with her own funds. In truth, she wrecked orphanages while doing her "heroic" deeds (fleeing from monsters and criminals) and had to spend her time and money building new ones to make up for what she did...
- Follow in My Footsteps: She spent all her childhood dreaming of emulating the heroine after whom she's named. She succeeded, and that's why the count, her own father, has so many headaches, he's willing to send her on a mission of near certain death.
- Good Is Dumb: She's a sweetheart and means well, but her so-called "heroics" often do far more harm than good, just like the "heroine" she's emulating.
- Heroic Wannabe: She seeks to make a name for herself by emulating the "heroics" of the legendary heroine after whom she's named. She's completely clueless that said "heroics" have been heavily whitewashed and emulating them isn't a good idea.
- Made Out to Be a Jerkass: Completely by accident. She and her handful of retainer "knights" took the assertions that Roa is a "talentless leech" in their expedition as fact, due to their country's culture, and abjectly refused to let him share the meals he prepared from the meat his servant beasts hunted, and then went and ate their own meals in a tent, never informing the rest of the army with them. Thus whenever Roa took to cooking, the soldiers would resent him because they were downwind and smelled how good the food is, but could have none of it, and of course, Eline and her "knights" were in a tent, not getting a whiff of said aroma. It's only when the camp came under attack, the soldiers got their supplies stolen, and Roa came to the rescue, while Eline and her "knights" were paralyzed with fear in their tent, that the soldiers realized Roa wasn't trying to troll them. And when the soldiers learned that the reason he wasn't sharing his meals was because Eline and her self-proclaimed knights refused his offer, the resentment went to Eline herself where it belongs.
- Miles Gloriosus: She and her "knight" attendants all love to proclaim how "heroic" they are, and genuinely believe it, but whenever they face a legit threat, they are completely paralyzed with fear, unable to do anything, just like the "heroine" Eline is trying to emulate!
