Characters / Honkai: Star Rail—Penacony

Honkai: Star Rail (Main Character Index)
Astral Express
Locations: Herta Space Station | Jarilo-VI | Xianzhou Luofu | Penacony
Factions: Stellaron Hunters | Genius Society | Interastral Peace Corporation
Aeons

Penacony

Once a desolate penal colony where prisoners labored under the Interastral Peace Corporation, a Stellaron led to its abandonment until the intervention of Xipe, the Aeon of Harmony. Under The Family, Penacony has thrived and become the Planet of Festivals.

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General Tropes

In General

• Arch-Enemy: The IPC is the original master of Penacony, and they make it obvious that they want it back, hence making them the Family's biggest threat. Since business is business, they still make deals here and there, but the IPC is not welcome directly, while the presence of Aventurine, a high-ranking official, is due to receiving a personal invitation from the Watchmaker. The Family and the Watchmaker are revealed to be opposing each other as well, but the former can't make it public as the latter's reputation is ingrained to the identity of Penacony, so they can't do much about Aventurine.
• Beware the Nice Ones: As the mystery around Penacony continues to unravel, it quickly becomes evident that the Family isn't nearly as benevolent as their message of compassion and unity implies. While they use Bread and Circuses to attract tourists to extract money from, behind the scenes they use their Harmony abilities to control the minds, emotions, or memories of potential troublemakers and/or witnesses who prove inconvenient, visitors and other Family members alike.
• The Complainer Is Always Wrong: The Family tolerates a limited amount of dissent, according to Clockie fiction, they mostly deal with it by ensuring dissenters are never taken seriously.
• Crapsaccharine World: To visitors, Penacony's Dreamscape is like a paradise where they can live out their wildest fantasies. However, many of sidequests reveal a darker side. In particular, Penacony's natives have few prospects besides working for the Reverie to staff the Dreamscape, and living in the Dreamscape for extended periods of time causes them to gradually lose their grip on reality. In addition, the Family watches over people's thoughts and can manipulate emotions or memories of people, ostensibly to prevent potential troublemakers such as "W" and Emmrich.
• Company Cross References:
  • In some ways Penacony is similar to Fontaine from Genshin Impact, though with the details shifted around. Aesthetic-wise, it shares the Court of Fontaine's Art Deco design; its past as a Penal Colony as well as the hard work its inhabitants had to perform brings to mind the Fortress of Meropide; and there is a popular Fantastic Drug that gives euphoria and pleasant hallucinations, not unlike Sinthe. Its leader attempts to divert attention from a Plot-Driving Secret and pretend that disaster isn't on the horizon while opposing factions investigate a series of murders that turn the victims into puddles of water. There's even a prominent celebrity singer with an implied desire to escape from her role, a race of Little People involved with the management of the city's operations, a place of accommodation where Masked Fools gather and two Masked Fools, one who is an Ambiguously Evil Master Actor in red that switches "masks" as she pleases and the other with wind powers, joining the fray.
  • Penacony also bears some similarities to Sumeru from the same game. Both have their governments ruled by different factions with different roles, the Darshans and the Families respectively, with the Big Bads revealed to be those in charge. The plotlines of both places are heavily centred on the concept of dreams, with a further reveal that the antagonists' Evil Plan relies on siphoning dreams from the populace, though Sumeru's plotline uplifts the creativity and passion that comes from dreams while Penacony's condemns the escapism and willingness to run from your problems they inspire. The Big Bad Duumvirate's Evil Plan is also to usurp and supplant the current patron deity with a different one by ascending someone with a Giant Mecha, but whereas the Sages and Dottore were trying to ascend Scaramouche to godhood, Sunday intends to create a paradise free from the Aeons, with him as the sole maintainer of the dream, by hijacking the power of Harmonious Choir to become a robotic construct called "The Great Septimus"
• Den of Iniquity: The World's End Tavern, one of the Masked Fools' headquarters, is located in the Golden Hour Dreamscape. Here, the Masked Fools encourage one another and guests to make fools out of themselves For the Lulz.
• Dream Land: When people sleep in Penacony, they enter one of multiple dreamscapes. Somewhat like a virtual reality, it allows people to change how they present themselves inside the dream. Things such as laws of physics and calories are mind-enabled suggestions at best inside the dream.
• Dream Weaver: There are workers dedicated in building the dreamscapes called exactly Dreamweavers; most of them come from the Nightingale Family, and they also hire finest architects from the outside world to aid them.
• Driving Question: "Why does life slumber?" It's part of the Watchmaker's legacy, and several characters allude to this question in the story.
  • Acheron asks Welt "But if this^note where time has stopped and people never make any real change is indeed the world that people desire — if this is precisely why life chooses to slumber — should we still seek to change it?" This prompts him to share a story about his homeland, where a certain man wove together dreams of the people who slumbered in dreams free of disaster and pain; however, the woven dream - Spiritual Adam - eventually broke because of the people's desire to keep moving forward, and that humanity will always find a way to save themselves.
  • Aventurine claims that "sleep is the rehearsal of death," while Acheron echoes the sentiment and adds that since people aren't ready to welcome death, they'd want to be prepared—even if the end is predetermined, there are many things one can do while they're still living, which will change the meaning of the "end."
  • The sentence "sleep is the rehearsal of death" can be reworded to mean "Dormancy is Something unto Death".
  • In his talk with the Astral Express crew and Firefly, Sunday claims that the answer to "why we sleep" is that "we are afraid to awaken from our dreams". This is part of the philosophy of Order he's espousing to them, tinged with his pessimism about the weakness of humanity, as he plans to keep them slumbering forever in sweet dreams so they'll be free from suffering.
  • During the part of "Then Wake to Weep" (the midpoint of "In Our Time"), the mission's blurb is a letter written by the Watchmaker, where the real answer to the question is eventually revealed: "People slumber so that, eventually, they can awaken from their dreams." The Trailblazer later paraphrases this as they finally defeat Sunday. Said letter, interestingly, also mentions what Acheron said above.
• Emotion Control: The Trailblazer encounters a number of people who have somehow lost the capacity for a given emotion, requiring the Trailblazer to use their new "Clockwork" powers to harvest excess emotions in others and then transfer them to the victim to repair the balance of their mind. This most commonly has the consequence of restoring the victim's motivations, unlocking new quests.
• The Evils of Free Will: One official informs the Trailblazer that most of Penacony's laws are suggestions, and they'll be fine so long as they don't cross a line, and sometimes even then. Serious crimes are rare because the Family has ways to smother the seeds of evil thoughts before anything serious can happen. This isn't a secret, but most tourists still don't know because they didn't ask.
• Evil Versus Evil: The IPC is a MegaCorp known for its "invasive" business practices; however, the current ruler of Penacony, the Family, is cult-like, uses mind control to assert its power, and runs Penacony as a decadent resort for the wealthy. In particular, Penacony used to be the IPC's Penal Colony, and its original inhabitants rebelled against them, eventually leading to Penacony coming under Xipe's aegis.
• Fate Worse than Death: It's revealed that the Family reserves a particularly terrible punishment for one of their own who betrays them. Their minds are forcibly turned into barely-sentient memory zone memes and left to wander the Dreamscape while their real bodies are kept in comas for eternity or until the Dreammaster, the supreme leader of Penacony to whom its five ruling families answer, deems them atoned or has some need for them. The siblings of one man have been left in this state for many years as punishment for selling secrets to the IPC.
• Fantastic Arousal: Touching the small ball of tuft on a Pepeshi's head is considered to be a deeply personal matter. One Pepeshi is even rumored to have gone through a Gender Bender after having theirs touched.
• Found Family via Work: Individual members of the Family may or may not share blood, but for the most part, they are bound as family by their way of life and their common worship of Xipe. The Family is further divided into branches depending on specialty.
• Freudian Excuse: In the Dream's Edge, you can meet Yuan, a Foxian who is visiting Penacony for work-related reasons. The Trailblazer can point out her lack of a tail, which she will claim she removed in the dreamscape for a change of pace. Changing her emotions with Clockwork has her reveal that she was born without a tail, and much of her motivation regarding her current line of work largely revolves around trying to compensate for her shortcomings, citing people like Fu Xuan and Huohuo as inspirations.
• Gambit Pileup: Various factions are invited to Penacony to search for the Watchmaker's Legacy, including but not limited to: the Family themselves, the Annihilation Gang, the Memokeepers, the Masked Fools, the IPC, the Galaxy Rangers, the Stellaron Hunters, and the Astral Express. They oftentimes are opposing one another for their own ends or alternatively teaming up for a perceived mutual benefit. The Trailblazer's uniqueness makes them a highly prized playing piece on the chessboard, making them a most wanted target for either getting on their side or taking out before they become a problem. Then there's the fact that the invite was sent by the Watchmaker, not the Family—and the two are revealed to have been waging a Secret War.
• G.I.R.L.: It has been said that after entering the dreamscape, people can change their avatar away from their default, including race, age, and sex. There are rumors people have abused this to pretend to be people they are not.
  • One person, an "animal lover", takes form of a Snow Plains bear cub. The person's true form is that of a female Intellitron.
  • One Pepeshi is worrying about this to their new friend, and their new friend reassures them that they've known them all week.
  • One Pepeshi supremacist ended up discovering that the handsome, charming Pepeshi man she met was not actually a Pepeshi. She considered going against her beliefs to date him anyways, but ended up annoying him with her antics.
  • One of the Family's rules for the Dreamscape is that visitors should never assume what another person's appearance, identity, race, or gender is while in the dream. Gallagher - or perhaps, the Fictionologist behind "him" - went on to assume the appearance of more than 52 members of the Family as his avatar.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: During the revolt against the IPC, the rebels were able to organize an alliance of multiple factions including the Nameless, the History Fictionologists, the Omen Vanguards, the Mourning Actors, and the Masked Fools to win their independence.
• Government Drug Enforcement: The Family's main method of "fixing" sources of disharmony is to give them mind-altering SoulGlad or other forms of Mind Control. With quite a number of such people, Clockie works with the Trailblazer to undo the Family's brute force "quick fix" and do their best to actually resolve the underlying issues.
• Happiness Is Mandatory:
  • The Family has various forms of Mind Control powers that they use to keep the peace. While some of the mentally damaged people the Trailblazer comes across got harmed by other sources, like hostile memetic entities, a lot of them became that way due to the Family, either voluntarily or by force. Even when it was done voluntarily, one man notes that removing his capacity for sadness only made him even more broken without knowing the reason, and reluctantly thanks the Trailblazer for undoing it. The net result is a Crapsaccharine World, refusing to face reality until the problems they have neglected accumulate to the point of destroying it.
  • Bad news never shows up in Penacony, not even for propaganda purposes, because the Family bases their power on the myth that Penacony is a Dreamland paradise. The local newspapers have taken the hint that printing bad news will make them go out of business and order their reporters not to disturb everyone's happy dreams.
  • This gets exaggerated later with Sunday's vision of using the Order for the future of Penacony, and later in "Ena's Dream": the people trapped within are marked as "Satisfied" instead of any of the Clockwork's usual emotions, complete with the image of bound Clockie with Mind-Control Eyes.
• Head-in-the-Sand Management: Most of the Family refuse to solve problems at their roots or even acknowledge their existence unless forced to, and even then they often resort to quick fixes. Instead of urging caution, they cover up the existence of dangerous memetic entities like Something Unto Death. When a criminal figures out a way to make people disappear, the other Family heads order Sunday, the one head willing to investigate, to ignore it, because they consider keeping up appearances more important than taking the problem head-on. The Dreamscape itself is starting to collapse because of Penacony's hedonism and complacency, but most of the Family refuse to even comprehend this. The Family has turned Penacony into a virtual fortress that even superpowers like the IPC hesitate to take on, but as all of the problems they refuse to solve build up, various parties see an opening to take them down.
• Jekyll & Hyde: One Adventure Mission involves a strange Pepeshi called Mullich and his evil Split Personality called "W" who is tied to Mullich's anger; the first time you see him, you have to use the "Anger Gear" to "awaken" W to start the mission. It's clear from his mannerisms that he's vicious and violent, and harbors a nasty grudge against the Dreamscape Motivator who dealt with him, claiming that she (and the Family by extension) are a bunch of hypocrites who are implied to use Emotion Control to cause him to lose his "anger" in the first place. When you talk to said motivator about this, it's implied that whatever happened between the two of them severely traumatized her (ironic considering her job) and she wishes to not talk about it, and warns you of his danger. After the mission, changing Mullich's emotions shows that he's aware of W and is suffering from not being able to make friends, implied to be because of W.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: Certain individuals in Penacony have had their memories nigh-irretrievable, willingly or otherwise, which appears to the Trailblazer as a complete breakdown of their Emo Dial and prevents them from using Clockwork to heal them. By locating a key item relevant to the subject, the Trailblazer can enter their Emoscape, a manifestation of the subject's lost memories, and complete their memories to repair the Emo Dial and restore the subjects.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: Despite their origins, the Family is not above using the Dreamscape itself as one to effectively imprison people they consider dangerous or troublesome, such as Oksana and Emmrich. Penacony's entire "sweet dream" turns out to be one. In order to forge a dreamscape from memoria, you need the power of an Emanator of Remembrance or Enigmata. The only way outside those options is to cheat via a Stellaron. But Stellarons are dangerously far outside of human understanding, and creating a wish that powerful requires a price. The price a traitor in the Family chose was to feed the minds of dreamchasers to the Stellaron by lulling them into the "sweet dream", hence the high rate of mental illness in Penacony.
  • It gets a lot worse when it's revealed during the finale of 2.2 that the followers of Ena the Order, who infiltrated Penacony, have already partially manifested the Dreamscape into the Asdana system, ever since the beginning of the Penacony storyline. Misha showing up in the "real world Reverie" during 2.0 (after 2.2 established him as a memetic entity based on the Watchmaker) along with Gopher Wood's unusually hostile reaction to Acheron ends up cluing Black Swan and Acheron into what's happening, and together quickly devise a plan to release the members of the Astral Express that entered Penacony proper when they're caught up in a Kaizo Trap by Sunday.
• Little People: The Pepeshi are a race of short people with a small ball of tuft on their heads. They're characterized with having passionate and inventive minds, dedicating themselves in seeking more knowledge or wealth.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Most of the Family are completely unaware that the Dreammaster, Sunday, and the entire Oak Family actually worship Ena the Order instead of Xipe.
• Mechanical Lifeforms: Some of Penacony's inhabitants are Intellitrons, who originated from Emperor Rubert's Mechanical Empire. Their special technology allow them to enter Penacony's dreamscapes like organic beings do, suggesting that their consciousness is as advanced as organic beings' own.
• Memory-Wiping Crew; When there are incidents that the Family needs to cover up, like Something Unto Death, they "process" the memories of the witnesses.
• Mind Manipulation: One of the powers of the Path of Harmony, used by the Family to maintain their society.
• "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: Newcomers are explicitly warned against sleeping in the buff, because their starting appearance in Penacony matches the one they had when sleeping in the bed/tub they used to enter the dreamscape, including clothes.
• Our Angels Are Different: The Halovians, like Robin and Sunday, look like angels, complete with fair faces and voices, Holy Halo, and small wings behind their heads. They're also capable of telepathy through their halos.
• Penal Colony: As mentioned above, Penacony was once a penal colony under the IPC.
• Perspective Magic: With a good chunk of Penacony consisting of the dreamscape, some obstacles are crossed taking advantage of optical illusions via dream logic.
• Pragmatic Villainy: In the Watchmaker's alternate ending for his Clockie anthology, Boss Stone defeats Hanunue by offering to give the former slaves a share of the profits, and then by manipulating public opinion. Workers cost a lot more than slaves, but they are also a lot more loyal. Boss Stone's rule remains tyrannical, but the benefits make it easier for them to rationalize everything.
• Punny Name: "Penacony" is an intentional portmanteau of "Penal Colony."
• Souvenir Land: Penacony is a planet-sized amusement park designed for tourists, divided across the real world and the dreamscapes. It has a hotel district, shopping malls, and mascots. Penacony is marketed as a place you can buy dreams. It's also mentioned that thanks to advanced technology, anything a person buys in the Dreamscape can be fabricated in reality as well, though they don't have the capability to build entire cars yet.
• Take That!: You can come across a visiting guest named Brona who vehemently opposes the Family's use of automated instruments to play music in the Dreamscape, calling them soulless and robbing real people of their jobs. Such opinions are a riff on real-world opposition to the rise of AI-assisted music generation services in 2023.^note In her case, though, it seems like she's referring to Max, an NPC who's playing with said automated instruments; if you change his emotions to anything other than "happy", one of his instruments suddenly talks to you, implying that they're actually infused with his will, and thus, they aren't really an automated orchestra.
• Telepathy: More skilled followers of the Harmony are able to communicate information or perceive the situation revolving around random bystanders. One of them warns the Trailblazer that no matter how loose Penacony's rules may seem on the surface, Big Brother Is Watching.
• Thin Dimensional Barrier: The entire star system is affected by a breach into the Memory Zone, flooding the area with Memoria. This can cause some people to experience strange dreams or memories that aren't their own.
• Town with a Dark Secret:
  • Shortly after arriving, the Nameless are quick to discover that the Family is hiding something about the dreamscape, namely that it's not as safe as advertised and that it's under threat from "sinking" back into the Memory Zone, not to mention that they are well aware of the existence of "Something Unto Death" and its killing spree, which they covered up through the years, as well as their opposition to the Watchmaker, only maintaining a façade of reverence so as not to hurt tourism given his outsized reputation among outsiders. The IPC plans to forcibly bring the Family's dirty secrets in the open so that they can take advantage of the resulting scandals to reclaim Penacony for themselves.
  • And then it's revealed "Death" is actually a Red Herring set up by the Family to misdirect anybody nosy enough from finding about the Land of Exiles and Dreamflux Reef, where the Watchmaker resides. The real secret is that the Family is secretly using a Stellaron to power the Dreamscape, and that the Family secretly worships Ena the Order.
• Trademark Favorite Food: SoulGlad is the most popular drink in Penacony, and in one of the dreamscapes, the fountains and technology even run off of it.
• We ARE Struggling Together: There used to be 7 lineages in Penacony, but 2 of them fell apart due to infighting, even while attempting to put a united front against the IPC. By the time the Family (i.e Xipe's faction) came to their aid, only 5 of them are left.
• We Have Become Complacent: Penacony has a reputation as the Land of Dreams and an impenetrable fortress built by the compassionate members of the Family. Rather than face up to their real life struggles, the Dreamchasers are overly indulging themselves in the Dream to live out a life of decadence and hedonism. Problems in Penacony are papered over, allowing them to build up out of sight, causing their society to rot from the roots and attract ill-intentioned parties anticipating the inevitable chaos.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The existence of the Dreamscape in general as well as many of the available side quests in Penacony have plots that are practically ripped straight out of Inception:
  • The Dreamscape acts as a massive shared dream that doubles as a commercialized Lotus-Eater Machine.
  • The Trailblazer dives through multiple dream layers and even directly into other people's minds to solve their emotional traumas by making minor adjustments to change their cognition.
  • Penacony hires famous architects to design and build the various zones in the Dreamscape.
  • Inhabitants of the Dreamscape can use tricks like Perspective Magic to create shortcuts that normally wouldn't be possible in reality.
  • The major conflict in Penacony is a shadow corporate war between the IPC and the Family over possession of the planet, which can only be resolved in the Dreamscape.
• World Shapes: The Star Rail map shows that Penacony appears to be an artificial planet made up of two Alderson Disks. A smaller one with the Reverie Hotel in the center, and a larger one hovering just below it.
• Written by the Winners: Most of Penacony's true history has turned to myth. While a passing History Fictionologist played a minor role, the vast majority of the damage was caused by the Dreammaster himself. As he consolidated power, he didn't just kill his rivals, but Unpersoned them to the best of his ability. This is referenced in Clockie cartoons, by how Clockie gradually disagrees with Old Man Wood's views and actions. Towards the end of the Penacony arc, the Express manages to uncover some of the lost history, and the Dreammaster's reveal as a treacherous Mole in Charge makes it more palatable for the Family to allow some of it to reach the public, though enough of it is still sufficiently controversial to stay hidden for now.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: Zigzagged. In order to keep everyone safe, the Family uses a large crew of Dreamweavers to maintain an enchantment powered by the Path of Harmony strong enough to stop even Memokeepers from "killing" anyone. Thanks to the enchantment, death in the Dreamscape will normally just force the victim to wake up, albeit more due to the pain-induced shock than the "death" itself. Dying to "Something Unto Death," however, is said to cause a "spiritual death" and splatters the victim's memoria, dissipating it. The exact effects have yet to be explicitly stated, and Himeko herself does not know and is unable to investigate, but since Black Swan treats it as a true death, the consequences are unlikely to be light. However, Dr. Ratio believes that the impossible in the Dreamscape is not "Death," but rather "Dormancy." Acheron points out that Aventurine's agenda is to uncover a secret "more unspeakable than the murder cases," thus he wants to have someone making him experience "dream death" to get to the "true land of exile"—the legacy of the Watchmaker—and he's lucky that she's around. He also makes note of another "mute" who has gone through the "anti-death barrier" and lived, but couldn't tell the tale, heavily implied to be Firefly. Then "In Our Time" reveals that "Something unto Death" is just what the Family would call the memetic entity called "Dormancy", whose true role is to move people's consciousness into the secret Dreamscape, Dreamflux Reef, though the violent-looking way it does its stuff didn't help matters.

Reverie Hotel

Misha

Misha / Mikhail Char Legwork, the Watchmaker

Introduced: February 6, 2024 (v2.0 "If One Dreams At Midnight" [first half])
Voiced By: Liu Zhixiao (Chinese), Eriko Matsui (Japanese), Bak Sin-hee (Korean), Cat Protano (English)

^{Click to see his full Warp artwork.}

Rarity: 4★
Path: The Destruction
Type: Ice

A bellboy employed in the Reverie Hotel. Earnest and slightly clumsy, he idolizes the Nameless and dreams of one day becoming a galactic adventurer just like his grandfather before him.

Misha "serves" his enemies in the most painful way with his Ultimate, G—Gonna Be Late!, where he trips while carrying a cart full of baggage, dropping them down on his target followed by three random hits, each having a small chance to inflict Freeze, which can increase to as high as ten through the following: depending on the number of Skill Points consumed by his allies through his Talent, Horological Escapement, which additionally restores some of his Energy; one at a time through his Skill, R—Room Service, where he sweeps his mop on his target and adjacent foes; or two at the start of battle through his Technique, Wait, You Are So Beautiful!, which generates a Dream Prison that inhibits all enemy movement.^note When fully upgraded, he enjoys a Critical Damage boost against Frozen enemies, while his Ultimate automatically gains up to five extra random hits for each enemy encountered, a chance to inflict a Defense penalty for three turns for each hit, and restore 1 SP.

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• Adorably Precocious Child: Misha is one of the youngest male playable characters in the game, but he's also mature enough to become a bellboy and take care of various guests in the Reverie Hotel, clumsiness aside. He even dreams of growing up faster so he can travel through the stars.
• Ambiguous Situation: As the player progresses through Penacony, it's hinted that Misha is more than just an ordinary bellboy and may be related to strange incidents there. When the Trailblazer first enters the Dreamscape, the Real Dreamscape flashes on the screen before it ends to a shot of Misha seemingly calling out for someone named Mikhail. His talent with gadgetry, his clock motif, and the Express Badge on his tie may be clues that he is related to the Watchmaker or at least one of the Nameless, not to mention he is Invisible to Normals just like Clockie. In Clockie's cartoon, he's shown to have a little doll shaped like Misha. What most likely is his voice can also be heard when the Trailblazer and Firefly got sent into a Child's Dream, where he is begging for Mikhail not to leave him before it devolves to a cacophony of voices of him begging for his life before Something Unto Death appears. Furthermore, the area itself is said to be formed from the distorted fragments of someone's memories and is connected to a profound secret of Penacony, features a room for a child and another for the Watchmaker, and the Origami Birds overseeing the area seem to be familiar with Mikhail. Also something of note: "Misha" in Russian is simply the diminutive version of "Mikhail". The connection becomes more suspicious once it's revealed Mikhail is the current Watchmaker. 2.2 finally reveals he's the Living Memory of the already-deceased Watchmaker, and A Child's Dream is his dream bubble where he originated.
• Amplifier Artifact: By acquiring his Eidolons, you can upgrade his third and fifth Eidolon Resonances, Vestige of Happiness and Genesis of First Love, which will add two levels to his Ultimate and 1 to Basic Attack with the former, and 2 to Skill and Talent with the latter.
• Badass Adorable: Misha is a cute and friendly young boy who can lay the pain on all his foes and severely curtail their movements.
• Boyish Shorts: Misha wears tiny shorts to emphasize his youthful age, and his fighting style revolves around him being The Klutz, putting him in contrast with Yanqing, who is around his age but has a more refined fighting style.
• Broomstick Quarterstaff: Downplayed; while his movements are clumsy and unpracticed, he's nonetheless using a mop to smack around enemies for both his Skill and Basic Attack, E—Excuse Me, Please!
• Company Cross References: Misha shares some similarities with Freminet of Genshin Impact, both androgynous, socially awkward boys with light hair and dark clothing (including a pair of Boyish Shorts), expertise in machinery, association with ice, and a purely offensive fighting styles.
• Critical Hit Class:
  • One of three stats Misha can upgrade via his Trace tree is his Critical Rate, with him getting a 6.7% boost once fully unlocked.
  • Misha's sixth-ascension Bonus Ability, Transmission, boosts his Critical Damage against Frozen enemies by 30%.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: Gender-inverted. Misha is a Pretty Boy with appearance as cute as a button, and his clumsiness only adds to his cuteness factor.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: His androgynous appearances means he can easily be mistaken for a girl.
• Elemental Hair Colors: He has light blue hair, matching his Ice element.
• Evolving Attack: Most of Misha's Eidolon Resonances are dedicated to increasing the power of his Ultimate or otherwise buffing it.
  • His first, Whimsicality of Fancy, adds up to five random hits for each enemy on the field.
  • His second, Yearning of Youth, gives each hit of his Ultimate a 24% base chance to inflict a 16% Defense penalty for three turns.
  • His fourth, Visage of Kinship, adds 6% to the damage multiplier of each hit.
  • His sixth, Estrangement of Dream, boosts his own damage output by 30% lasting until the end of his turn after using his Ultimate, as well as restores 1 SP.
• Exotic Eye Designs: Misha has pale blue pupils shaped like keyholes.
• Gadgeteer Genius: He's very capable of fixing machinery, and it forms a part of his daily duties in the hotel. To Misha's eyes, rusted and broken machinery (especially clocks) is akin to sailors lost in a sea of time, and he is a captain guiding them out of the storm. This is one of the clues that relate him to the Watchmaker.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: It shouldn't be possible to call upon Misha outside of Penacony or any of the end-game modes, as he's a Living Memory and not a real person, which becomes an important plot point in 2.2. But you can.
• Gathering Steam: Whenever he or his allies consume SP, Misha increases the number of the extra random hits of his Ultimate from three to as high as ten—one with his Skill, two with his Technique, and depending on the number of SP the party has consumed before his turn through his Talent.^note With damage worth 36—64.8% of his Attack stat per hit
• A Glitch in the Matrix: Misha seemingly showing up in the Reverie during 2.0 ends up unravelling the Order's "dream" from the Trailblazer's perspective, as he's later revealed to be a memetic entity; therefore, there should have been no way for him to manifest in the real world. It's revealed that remnants of the Order's faction caused memoria leak around Penacony that blurs the line between dreams and reality, allowing Misha to enter the real world.
• Heroic Lineage: Implied. Prior to arriving at Penacony, the Astral Express crew touches upon how prior crew members will occasionally settle down on visited planets for one reason or another, such as starting families. Upon arrival, the Trailblazer meets Misha, who wears a Trailblazer pin, and with the lore behind his associated Light Cone as well as the memories heard in the Child's Dream, it points to Misha's grandfather Mikhail being a former Nameless or descending from one. As it turns out, Misha is in fact the Living Memory of the Watchmaker, who was a former Nameless.
• Invisible to Normals: There are a few hints that no one else can see him during the Penacony arc:
  • He's surprised when the Trailblazer talks to him during their first meeting in the Reverie hotel. Afterwards, March 7th doesn't even talk to him when she approaches the two.
  • In the Reverie Hotel reception area, one NPC mentions that the luggage is moving itself.
  • No one else acknowledges Misha's presence during the confrontation between Acheron and the gang^note In the English Dub, The gang members actually says "punish him, boss!" before the scripted battle, acknowledging him, but the original Chinese text says "punish her, boss!" instead., and when Acheron and Firefly introduce themselves. If the player chooses the dialogue option "How come they are all people I know!?", Firefly will be confused as who else are they referring to and choosing Misha's name will have her asking who he is. Acheron also acknowledges that she can feel a presence afterwards, while she may refer to Clockie, eagle-eyed players will see her staring at Misha instead.
  • This is confirmed in 2.2 when it's revealed only other Nameless can see him.
• Invocation:
  (Ultimate activation) "How much time do I have?"
  (Normal speed) "Not again! I'm running late, ahhh! Sorry..."
  (×2 speed) "Ahhh! Sorry..."
• The Klutz: His official art shows him tripping on a cat and losing control of the baggage he was carrying.
• Leg Focus: Misha's tiny shorts exposes a lot of his legs, which got some focus during his gameplay trailer. It doesn't help that at the end of his Ultimate, his bare legs face the camera after he trips down to the ground.
• Lethal Klutz: His Ultimate shows him pushing a luggage cart and tripping onto the ground as the cart falls and spills heavy luggage onto enemies.
• Living Memory: Misha is a recreation of the childhood self of the Watchmaker, Mikhail, who was meant to relay his wishes and plans to the next generation of the Astral Express crew. To that end, Misha was contained in a dream bubble with Clockie, where he lived for a while, but his desire to see the outside world caused him and Clockie to accidentally escape it.
• Lost in Character: "Misha" is a childhood fantasy of the Watchmaker, and the Living Memory he left behind unintentionally lost himself in that role after leaving his dream bubble ("A Child's Dream"), forgetting his true purpose until Himeko brought him back into the bubble to try awakening his memories.
• Making a Splash: Ironically, despite his Ice element, his mop attacks have water visuals.
• Meaningful Name: "Misha" comes from combining "Mikhail" and "Char" together.
• Purpose-Driven Immortality: As a Living Memory in Mikhail's dream bubble, he was meant to pass on the Watchmaker's Legacy to the future Nameless members. Once he finally does so, he goes on to "rest forever" and draw his last breath. He's then removed from the list of guests that can appear in the Astral Express's passenger car. Additionally, if you’ve failed to read any of his text messages after finishing 2.2’s main quests, you can no longer receive any replies from Misha.
• Randomized Damage Attack: His Ultimate initially strikes his target, followed with three to ten strikes at random enemies. Against a lone enemy, however, all of the extra hits will hit that enemy for big damage and quick Toughness shred if they're weak to Ice.
• Regenerating Mana: In addition to adding hits for his Ultimate, his Talent regenerates 1—2.2 Energy for every SP consumed by his allies.
• Status Infliction Attack: Each of his Ultimate's hits has a base 12—21.6% chance to inflict Freeze. His second-ascension Bonus Ability, Release, increases the main strike's infliction rate by 80%, while that for his fourth, Interlock, boosts his Effect Hit Rate by 60% while using his Ultimate.
• Time Stands Still: Misha's Technique tosses out a pocket watch that creates a localized bubble of stopped time to freeze enemies for fifteen seconds, as well as adds two random hits for his Ultimate at the start of battle.
• Voice of the Legion: He speaks both with his youthful voice and Mikhail's older voice when he meets the Astral Express crew in Mikhail's dream bubble.
• Weapon Specialization: Misha's associated Light Cone is "Indelible Promise" (4★), whose "Inheritance" passive increases its wearer's Break Effect by 28-56%, and Critical Rate by 15-30% for two turns after using their ultimate. Misha's Ultimate, with its high number of potential hits, will shred enemy Toughness to take good advantage of the former and have more opportunities for critical hits with the latter.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: Grandfather, in this case. While it's clear Misha loves his grandfather dearly, his character story shows that a part of him is saddened and resentful of the fact they've been gone for so long despite promising to return for him so they can journey the stars together. Said grandfather was an adopted one, also named Mikhail, who worked as a seafarer in his homeworld Lushaka and inspired young Mikhail to journey to faraway places.

Bloodhound Family

In General

The lineage of the Family charged with security.

Gallagher

Gallagher

Introduced: March 27, 2024 (v2.1 "Into the Yawning Chasm" [first half])
Voiced By: Ma Yufei (Chinese), Satoshi Mikami (Japanese), Park Sang-hoon (Korean), Erik Braa (English)

^{Click to see his full Warp artwork.}

Rarity: 4★
Path: The Abundance
Type: Fire

A security guard affiliated with the Bloodhound Family, who also doubles as a slovenly bartender, who keeps anything and everything about himself under wraps.

When not offering immediate healing refreshments on an ally through his Skill, Special Brew, Gallagher gives his foes a terrible hangover through his Talent, Tipsy Tussle, which for two turns inflicts the "Besotted" debuff that increases their Break damage intake and heals their attackers. This is inflicted with swings of phantasmal crimson claws from his right arm that hit all his foes, either through his Technique, Artisan Elixir, or through his Ultimate, Champagne Etiquette, which also upgrades the next use of his Basic Attack, Corkage Fee, into a Nectar Blitz strike that inflicts an Attack debuff for two turns.^note When fully upgraded, his enhanced Basic Attack can now extend his Talent's healing to his allies if his target is Besotted; his Skill can now remove a debuff and increase their resistance against them for two turns; and his Ultimate can now instantly bring forward his turn, as well as extends the Besotted effect it inflicts to three turns

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• Achilles' Heel: Although Gallagher's unique attributes makes him surprisingly potent for a 4★ healer, he does have a handful of noticeable weaknesses. He needs to use his Ultimate consistently to function as an off-turn sustain, meaning any fight where enemies repeatedly delay or limit access to his Ultimate, or when they're fast enough that their turns come so quickly their Besotted status is gone before his Ultimate is ready, will make his job a lot more difficult (though this can be alleviated through his fourth Eidolon Resonance, which extends the debuff's duration). He also cannot cleanse debuffs at all unless he unlocks his second Eidolon Resonance, requiring a minimum amount of investment to compete with 5★ Abundance Pathstriders with inherent cleanse effects.
• Ambiguous Situation: By th end of 2.2, it's uncertain whether Gallagher is still alive or not since he mentions he will "disappear" after having served his purpose helping the Astral Express crew find the Watchmaker's Legacy. It's unclear if this means him discarding his "identity" as Gallagher, or if he is a Living Memory like Misha who will disappear after fulfilling his role.
• Amplifier Artifact: His third and fifth Eidolon Resonances, Corpse Reviver and Death in the Afternoon, add two levels to his Skill and 1 to Basic Attack with the former, and 2 to his Ultimate and Talent with the latter.
• Animal Motif: Dogs, fitting for a member of the Bloodhound Family. Or more specifically, the black jackal, associating him with Anubis, given his true identity and the color scheme linking him to the ominous hound statues scattered throughout Penacony. It also showcases his loyalty to the Watchmaker and his vision of Penacony.
• Anti-Armor: Gallagher's Sixth Eidolon Upgrade, "Blood and Sand", boosts his Break Effect and Weakness Break Efficiency by 20%.
• Anti-Debuff:
  • His first Eidolon Resonance, Salty Dog, increases his Effect Resistance by 50%, in addition to restoring 20 Energy at the start of battle.
  • His second, Lion's Tail, allows his Skill to remove one debuff from his target ally, as well as provides a 30% Effect Resistance boost for two turns.
• The Bartender: While he's officially a security guard, he's also good at making drinks. He also gives a final toast to the Nameless after they inherited the Watchmaker's legacy and left.
• Big Good: Gallagher is the de facto leader of Dreamflux Reef, and was also the deputy and close friend of Mikhail before he died that promised to protect his creation after his death. He was the one who sent out the invitations drawing all of the factions to Penacony on the Watchmaker's behalf, hoping their involvement would be the lynchpin in finally resolving the corruption within the Family that's threatening to destroy the Watchmaker's legacy.
• The Butler Did It: "Bartender," to be precise. Representatives from many factions attend the Charmony Festival, many of whom appear very suspicious. In contrast, Gallagher is an unassuming bartender and a 4★ playable character. In the v2.1 livestream, Shaoji even describes him as "the only villager in a game of werewolf". Gallagher is revealed at the end of that patch's Trailblaze Mission to be the murderer of Robin as well as the true master of Something Unto Death. Played with as of 2.2, where he's revealed to be entirely well-intentioned as the Watchmaker's closest ally.
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • Not counting the Preservation Trailblazer (assuming Caelus), Gallagher is the first and (as of v2.1) only male character with a Fire damage type.
  • Gallagher is the first Abundance Pathstrider whose healing abilities are, on their own, based on flat values instead of scaling off of any of his basic stats (i.e., Max HP, Attack, or Defense), with such a scaling (through Break Effect) unlocked with his second-ascension Bonus Ability.
• Combat Medic: For an Abundance Pathstrider, Gallagher is unique in that his kit revolves around inflicting foes with a Life Drain effect. His mostly stat-agnostic healing numbers and enhanced Basic Attack also incentivizes players to build him offensively, using most of his turns to deal supplementary damage rather than being a pure Stone Wall. He is also the first of his Path to (indirectly) scale off of Break Effect percentage as a healing stat through his second-ascension Bonus Ability, allowing him to pack a mean punch against enemies weak to Fire, and with a full Eidolon, he gains even more power to dish out pain on his foes. His Break Effect-focused nature also grants him excellent synergy with Trailblazer (Harmony), as the high Toughness Reduction on his Ultimate and Enhanced Basic ATK combined with his high Break Effect gives him very large Super Break numbers.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Tingyun. Both are 4★ playable characters with a brown/red/white clothing scheme, have support-oriented playstyles, and acts as a guide to the Nameless amidst the issues surrounding their respective worlds, only to reveal that they are not what they seem and serves as the major antagonistic threat. While the Tingyun the crew met is actually Phantytia, the Emanator of Destruction, Gallagher is an amalgamation of 52 members of The Family and a follower of the Enigmata. The method they use to subtly sow chaos also differs, as Phantylia/"Tingyun" manipulates her enemies into doing her bidding to destroy themselves from within the Xianzhou Luofu, Gallagher controls Something Unto Death to kill any who knew too much or who he deems not innocent, with an ambiguous motive for doing so. Another notable difference between the two is that Tingyun does not send any daily messages to the player if they have her in their roster (as a result of being Phantylia in disguise), whereas Gallagher does (despite being revealed to be the mastermind behind "Death", he is revealed to be benevolent the whole time).
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Shaoji describes him as "the only villager in a game of werewolf", a simple yet brilliant misdirection to hide his identity as the true "werewolf". Who else in Penacony has canine motifs and Wolverine Claws? After the reveal in 2.2 this actually takes another meaning as he's the last remnant of the Watchmaker faction in Penacony, effectively making him the villager to the Family's werewolf.
• Dream Weaver: Thanks to the Path of Enigmata, he can forge Dreamscapes.
• EX Special Attack: Apart from inflicting Besotted, his Ultimate enhances his next Basic Attack into dealing more damage, shredding more of his target's Toughness Gauge, and inflicting an Attack reduction debuff for two turns. ^note Depending on Trace levels, it deals damage equivalent to 125–275% of his Attack stat and reduces his target's Attack by 10–16% 2 of his ascension Bonus Abilities are tied to this:
  • The 4th one, Organic Yeast, allows his Ultimate to immediately bring forward his turn, so he can immediately use his enhanced basic attack.
  • The 6th one, Bottoms Up, allows him to extend Besotted's healing effect to the entire party when he hits the affected enemy with his enhanced basic attack. With all of them combined, they grant him a unique kind of "panic heal button" different from other Abundance characters (such as Natasha or Lynx).
• Fashionable Asymmetry: He wears his left sleeve fully and a white glove on his left hand, while his right sleeve is rolled up and he wears a black fingerless glove on his right hand.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When March 7th asks him about his age, he gives the comically false answer of "Thirteen". The 13th card in the tarot deck is ''Death''.
  • Numerous times throughout the story, it's shown that Bloodhound members don't even know who Gallagher is despite him supposedly being their superior. This hints at the fact that "Gallagher" as a person never existed, and the Gallagher we know is an infiltrator.
  • Partway through the 2.1 story sequence, Gallagher opts to mix a drink for the Astral Express crew out of ingredients you can find in the run-down Dreamjolt Hostelry, the drink names all being references to classic crime and mystery novels, with a strong bent towards allusions towards death.
  • One of Gallagher's voice lines has him claim that it doesn't matter how you look in the Dreamscape because most of the people within don't care if you're actually a real person inside. He does not exempt himself from this.
  • In another line, he says that it's his job as a member of the Bloodhounds to deal with anyone inside the Dream who steps out of line, before noting that it's easier to make people vanish than materialize. Sure enough, his control over Something Unto Death gives him a real gift for making the Family's problems "disappear."
  • His signature light cone, What is Real? is a sinister picture of him holding a lighter under his face in a dark environment, and the flavor text is questions about paradoxical "what if" scenarios, presumably asked by Gallagher himself. He does the same thing with his lighter right before Something Unto Death attacks Sunday.
  • His final character story entry has him telling a tale that alludes to his struggles for freedom when he was under the Watchmaker (as he told the Astral Express crew in the Trailblaze Mission). Then a guest asks him if all that was really something he lived through, and he casually denies it. Then the text outright says "Gallagher is my most genuine lie. Sometimes, I can't even distinguish between him and myself." At the end, it's signed with "Note: Gallagher", like how his previous character stories are from the perspective of some other people. He's later revealed to be a made-up identity from an amalgamation of the traits of more than 52 Family members.
  • The amalgamation is foreshadowed in a report that Acheron picks up in Sunday's office. The report is a list of 52 suspects with physical descriptions and traits, and after reading the report, Acheron may have come to the same conclusion. Several of the suspects on the list are mentioned by name when he confronted Gallagher.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: Gallagher, like much of Penacony, mixes implications of soda and alcohol freely in his animations and kit.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • It shouldn't be possible to call upon Gallagher outside of Penacony or any of the end-game modes, as he's a made-up identity and not a real person. But you can.
  • He's an Abundance character for gameplay purposes, but he actually follows the Path of Enigmata.
• Good All Along: Gallagher is revealed to be a servant and close friend of Mikhail, and his "murders" were actually attempts to reach out to the Nameless and related parties in order to get to the bottom of the imminent downfall of Penacony before it's too late.
• Healing Potion: His Skill has him pop open a canned drink to heal a single ally.^note Depending on Trace levels, his Skill restores 200–1768 HP
• Invocation:
  (Ultimate activation) "Life's like a good brew: full-bodied and sweet."
  (Normal speed and ×2 speed) "My friends, indulge yourselves!"
• Irony: Some of Gallagher's attributes as a playable unit are at odds with the fact that he's behind Something Unto Death as its master. As an Abundance unit, he's supposed to prevent death, but also commands a symbol of Death itself. As a Fire unit, he hits one of its weaknesses reasonably hard, and his one-two punch of Ultimate into enhanced Basic Attack is reasonably efficient at destroying the summons from the second phase onwards. Played efficiently, he may very well be an obstacle towards the death his own pet is supposed to be inflicting. Though given that both him and his "pet" are revealed to be good guys (or at least "not bad guys"), the situation seems to be that his abilities are perfect for looking after his pet whenever the latter misbehaves.
• Life Drain: His Talent allows his Technique and Ultimate to inflict the Besotted effect for two turns (extensible to three for the latter through his fourth Eidolon Resonance, Last Word), which allows the party to heal themselves whenever they attack at least one marked foe, as well as increases their Break damage intake by 6–13.2%.^note With healing worth 80–707.2 HP In addition, his Ultimate inflicts the debuff before the damage is dealt, allowing him to immediately heal himself.
• Manly Facial Hair: He is a security guard and, notably, the first playable male character with stubbles.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: He is unique among Abundance Pathstriders in that his healing is based on flat values as opposed to a percentage or two of some other stat. These are still affected by Healing Boosts, and a Bonus Ability adds a Healing Boost which scales off of his Break Effect.
• Mole in Charge: Gallagher was put in charge by Sunday to track down the murderer behind Robin's death. However, it turns out that Gallagher is the one controlling "Something Unto Death", and was the one responsible for Robin's "death".
• Percent-Based Values: His second-ascension Bonus Ability, Novel Concoction, increases his Outgoing Healing stat equivalent to half his Break Effect stat (to a maximum of a 75% boost).
• The Reveal: The finale of the Trailblaze Mission "A Walk Among the Tombstones" reveals "Gallagher" is a false identity created via a composite of features and personality aspects of 52 dead members (and a few living members) of The Family, is a History Fictionologist and thus a minion of Enigmata, and that he is the true culprit behind Something Unto Death. Plays out a second time when he reveals the entire plan the Watchmaker set out for to fight against Ena's cult inside of the Family before he passed.
• Right-Hand Attack Dog: Something Unto Death is his pet, which he uses to assassinate his targets, and he can even summon it on command as shown with Sunday. In one of his texts with the Trailblazer, he mentions having a difficult pet that broke his phone.
• Roundhouse Kick: His Basic Attack has Gallagher deliver two swift roundhouse kicks in quick succession; when enhanced, the second kick is replaced with a stab of his claw.
• Surrounded by Idiots: You first meet Gallagher when he steps in to stop two rookie subordinates from wrongfully arresting Firefly for being a stowaway they're searching for, berating that the suspect they're looking for is a silver-haired male. Granted, she later admits to actually being a stowaway, but she still didn't match the description that was given. And that's not even going into how some of his subordinates don't even seem to know who he is, though that may be due to him being an impostor who took on the amalgamation of traits from multiple Family members.
• Theme Naming: His Eidolon Resonances are named after cocktails, such as Corpse Reviver.
• Unreliable Expositor: Sunday calls him a "Minion of Enigmata" when confronting him and he indeed later re-introduces himself as a History Fictionologist, calling into question how much of what he says is actually true. March 7th calls him on it, but Himeko does confirm (after fact-checking with Micah, Gallagher's comrade) that he is at least telling the truth about The Watchmaker and his affiliation with him.
• Weak, but Skilled: In gameplay, Gallagher is the first Abundance character to lack additional scaling from his base stats, with the healing from his Skill and Besotted State being by flat amounts. However, he compensates by being able to build up a substantial Outgoing Healing Bonus from his 2nd Ascension passive that boosts it based on his Break Effect, which comes with the added bonus of allowing him to do good damage should he Weakness Break an enemy. Outside of this, the Enhanced Basic Attack he gains from his Ultimate also allows him to inflict an ATK debuff on enemies, with his other two Ascension passives further enhancing it by advancing his action after using his Ultimate and allowing him to heal all allies with it. His Eidolons further emphasize this, doing nothing for his healing and non-Break damage, but otherwise increasing his utility.
• Weapon Specialization: His associated light cone is "What Is Real?", whose "Hypothesis" passive increases its wielder's Break Effect by 24–48% as well as heals them after using their Basic Attack, equivalent to (2–4%)+800 of their Max HP. The former buff helps with his kit that relies on said stat (assuming he has unlocked his second-ascension Bonus Ability), while the latter plays well into his Combat Medic-oriented gameplay.
• A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: With his slovenly appearance and agreeable demeanour, he successfully kept his true agenda under wraps until his confrontation with Sunday reveals that he's the one behind the killings. This is later Subverted as it turns out that he's actually on the Watchmaker's side.
• Wolverine Claws: Gallagher can gather red energy around his right arm and shape them into phantasmal claws, with which he strikes at his foes whenever he uses his Basic Attack, Ultimate, or Technique.^note With the latter two dealing damage worth, respectively, 75–165% and 50% of his Attack stat

Iris Family

In General

The lineage of the Family charged with culture, headed by Maeven Ellis.

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• Media Watchdog: They decide what media is allowed and not allowed. Copyright infringement isn't the only way to get on their bad side. They also ban glorification of criminals and saying anything too negative about the Family. They originally banned the last script of Clockie made by the Watchmaker for depicting the conflict between the Family and the Watchmaker, though they ultimately relent , partially to honor the Watchmaker's wishes, and it probably helps that the Dreammaster, whom the film focuses its criticism on, has been outed as a traitor at that point.

Firefly

Introduced: v2.0 (initial debut), v2.3 (playable)
Voiced By: Song Yuanyuan (Chinese), Tomori Kusunoki (Japanese), Yu Hye-ji (Korean), Analesa Fisher (English)

An area guide affiliated with the Iris Family who also works as a supporting actor for the Dreamscape's shows... At least, that's what she claims when the Trailblazer first encounters her.

To see her character sheet, see Sam's folder in Honkai: Star Rail—Stellaron Hunters.

Siobhan

Voiced by: Laila Berzins (English)

A drinksmith running the Dreamjolt Hostelry, a bar in the dreamscape that exclusively serves members of the Dreamjolt Troupe. Once a singer and rising star for the Iris Family, her compassion for the fallen members of the Sweet Dreams Troupe lead to her abandoning her post and setting up shop inside the dreamscape to alleviate the suffering of the monsters. She gets a focus in the "Vignettes in a Cup" event.

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• Almighty Janitor: She's currently a Drinksmith who operates a bar in a small corner of the Dreamscape, but she's also the adopted daughter of the head of the Iris Family and described as having authority second only to Maeven. It's part of why she can get away with ripping off a certain guy's invite from the Iris Family (because he had been an unreasonable jerk to the Sweet Dreams Troupe and her).
• The Bartender: She serves members of the Dreamjolt Troupe drinks that help alleviate their trauma.
• Bifauxnen: She's definitely more handsome than pretty, with her short hair and masculine-looking attire.
• Exact Words: Near the end of her mission, she's forced to get Amiky's help to save the Dreamjolt Holstery, promising that "the owner" of the bar will return to the stage. However, she eventually lists the monsters she's serving as the performers instead of herself since she considers them all to be owners of the bar, thus avoiding Amiky's wish for her to perform again.
• Nonstandard Character Design: She's considered an NPC but she also looks unique enough to avert the nigh-uniformity among other NPCs.
• Parental Abandonment: Her birth parents originally came to Penacony a long time ago to strike it rich, but failed. As they were about to go bankrupt, they left Siobhan in the Dreampool before escaping the planet, never to be heard from again. She was subsequently found by hotel staff, upon which she was adopted into the Iris Family and raised as their own.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: March 7th notes that she's rather similar to Serval in both appearance and personality, with Siobhan expressing an interest in actually meeting her one day.
• Team Mom: She acts as something of a mother figure to the regulars of the Dreamjolt Hostelry, whom she refers to as children. In return, they are very fond of her and genuinely fear the idea of her one day leaving them.
• What Measure Is A Nonhuman: She defies this, unlike most other people in Penacony. Siobhan does not see the machines of the Sweet Dreams and Dreamjolt Troupe as mindless servants, and considers them fully sapient beings suffering under the yoke of the Family.

Nightingale Family

In General

The lineage of the Family charged with construction of the Dreamscapes

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• All for Nothing: Their core members refused to submit to the Family with their lives. In the end, one of them surrendered and the Family got everything they wanted.
• The Purge: The Nightingale Family was originally independent of the greater Family. The Dreammaster repeatedly murdered their core members until one of them surrendered to his rule.

Orla

A former member of the Nightingale Family, living in exile.

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• Death of Personality: If the Trailblazer chooses to let him reunite with his friends inside a dreamscape delusion, Orla's personality dissipates, and Dr. Blues becomes no different from the other Origami Bird managers, as Lost in Character as the rest of them.
• Living Memory: His physical body died long ago. Under Gallagher's offer, he agreed to continue persisting as a memetic entity, an origami bird named Dr. Blues, to be precise.
• Unperson: The Family outright erased him from history.
• You Remind Me of X: If the Trailblazer threatens to mistell the true story of the Nightingale Family that the Dreammaster erased from history, he says that the Trailblazer reminds him of the Watchmaker.

Oak Family

In General

The lineage of the Family charged with political organization.

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• Cult: While the Family in general has some unconventional customs, it is the Oak Family that takes it the farthest. It turns out many of them are actually remnants of Ena's Sky Choir, and their leader, the Dreammaster has some particularly radical goals, for which he has been grooming his followers.
• The Remnant: Ena's remaining followers took shelter in the Oak Family after Xipe ate their Aeon.

Robin

Robin

Introduced: May 8, 2024 (v2.2 "Then Wake to Weep" [first half])
Voiced By: Qian Chen (Chinese), Kaori Nazuka (Japanese), Shin Onyu (Korean), Alice Himora (English), Chevy (All Languages [Singing])

^{Click to see her full Warp artwork.}

Rarity: 5★
Path: The Harmony
Type: Physical

A halovian songstress famed throughout the Galaxy and younger sister of Sunday, whose voice is said to resonate with the minds of every living being who hears it. She is slated to perform at the opening ceremony for Penacony's upcoming Charmony Festival.

Robin rouses strength in her allies through her song, epitomized by the "Concerto" state bestowed onto the party by her Ultimate, Vox Harmonique, Opus Cosmique, temporarily immobilizing her in exchange for complete immunity to damage-control debuffs and enhancing her allies' Attack stats and automatically augmenting their attacks with hers. In addition, her Talent, Tonal Resonance, enhances the party's Critical Damage and restores energy for her whenever they attack; her Skill, Pinion's Aura, boosts the party's damage output for as long as Robin's three turns, and her Technique, Overture of Inebriation, generates a force field that lures enemies onto her but also prevents them from attacking her, as well as restores her Energy at the start of each battle wave.^note When fully upgraded, triggering her Ultimate can now dispel all the party's crowd-control debuffs, while the Concerto state can now increase the party's Type and Effect Resistances, Speed, and Critical Damage of their follow-up attacks.

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• Action Initiative: Her second-ascension Bonus Ability, Coloratura Cadenza, automatically advances her first turn by 25% upon entering combat.
• Amplifier Artifact: Her third and fifth Eidolon Resonances, Inverted Tuning and Lonestar's Lament, add two levels to her Skill and Ultimate with the former, and Talent and Basic Attack (by one) with the latter.
• Anti-Debuff: Her fourth Eidolon Resonance, Raindrop Key, removes all the party's crowd-control debuffs as well as adds a 50% Effect Resistance buff to the Concerto effect.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Her first Eidolon Resonance, Land of Smiles, adds a 24% buff to all the party's Resistance Penetration stats while the Concerto effect is active.
• Background Music Override: When she activates her Ultimate, she overwrites the battle music with her own song, "Sway to My Beat in Cosmos," for the duration of her buff. In the final battle of Penacony, she also overrides the Harmonious Choir's Ominous Latin Chanting with her own "Hope Is The Thing With Feathers," turning the tides in favor of the heroes.
• Badass Adorable: Robin is a gorgeous and beautiful young lady who performs lovely songs as part of her music career. She can also use her Magic Music to bestow powerful buffs to strengthen her allies and fight her enemies too.
• Bifauxnen: In the "If We Had Wings" trailer, she gets mistaken for an unknown man visiting herself when she sneaks out wearing a high-collared trenchcoat and tucking her hair (and head-wings) down the back thereof.
• Caged Bird Metaphor: Implied. Her theme song, If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking, is about someone wanting to metaphorically spread their wings and be free as a bird, her art depicts her singing out of a broken birdcage, and Gallagher's voice line about her has him note that it's rare for Penaconians to want to leave the planet (her career apparently brought her to other planets before she was invited for the Charmony Festival). Even one of her core childhood memories is grappling with the idea of caging a wounded bird to protect it.
• Celebrity Is Overrated: The overall theme of her personal trailer, which portrays Robin having to deal with the paparazzi and social media dogging her every step and causing her no end of grief when all she wanted to do was share her singing.
• Character Signature Song: She sings three songs heard in-game which are part of the soundtrack album "INSIDE":
  • "Sway to My Beat in Cosmos", the song that her Ultimate sings a part of.
  • "If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking", which is also closely associated with Firefly, playing the first time she and the Trailblazer reach her secret spot.
  • "Hope Is the Thing With Feathers", another song that features in version 2.2, specifically the final battle with Sunday, interrupting his theme to empower the Astral Express crew.
• Charm Person: Her Technique creates a force field around her which pulls along enemies while also making them non-aggressive, as well as provides a Regenerating Mana effect (see below).
• Chekhov's Gunman: She was first mentioned at the start of version 1.5's special program.
• Clark Kenting: One of Robin's hobbies is going out in public in disguise so that she doesn't get accosted by paparazzi and fans. She does this just by changing her hairstyle and folding back her head wings, and sometimes putting on glasses. That said, the two times we've seen her incognito in promotional material, she at least adds a trenchcoat to the ensemble, and occasionally the classic "idol" disguise of a hat and medical mask on top.
• Critical Hit Class:
  • Her Talent provides a 5–23% boost to the party's Critical Damage in addition to a Regenerating Mana effect (see below).
  • While in the Concerto state, she will perform coordinated attacks (not to be confused with Follow-up Attacks) alongside her allies, with a fixed Critical Rate and Damage of 100% and 150%, respectively. Her sixth Eidolon Resonance, Moonless Midnight, provides a further 450% damage boost to as many as eight such strikes, which are then reset whenever she triggers her Ultimate anew.
  • Her fourth-ascension Bonus Ability, Impromptu Flourish, allows the Concerto effect to provide a 25% Critical Damage boost to her allies' Follow-up Attacks.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Before being adopted by the Family, she and Sunday's hometown suffered a Stellaron disaster ravaging the Dreamscape, with their mother being melted into the Memory Zone. Robin's own desire to sing and spread joy to everyone was specifically inspired by her biological mother singing to her and Sunday to soothe them during the chaos.
• Disney Death: Believed dead early in the Penacony Trailblaze Mission, its later parts reveal that Robin was alive all this time, having been transported to Dreamflux Reef by Gallagher to help her further her investigations away from the Family's reach.
• Dub Pronunciation Change: In Chinese her name is the actual word for robin "知更鸟" (pinyin "Zhīgēngniǎo") while the other dubs transliterate the English name.
• Famed In-Story: Her singing career made her popular in multiple planets, and in Penacony she has a lot of posters; Acheron's "Your Color" trailer also shows a cosmetic ad that stars her (though, due to Sparkle's illusion effects, Robin appears as Acheron in the ad).
• Foreshadowing: Sunday suggests that Robin and Firefly were both killed by Something Unto Death; however, Firefly's body dissipated almost immediately, while Robin's didn't fade away until after the Trailblazer discovered it, so something about her "death" isn't adding up. The middle part of the Penacony Trailblaze Mission further muddies the waters with the revelation that her "body" was but a memoria hologram, while its end shows Sunday being attacked by Something Unto Death and dissolving into "goo" not unlike Firefly, who by then revealed herself to be still alive and, more importantly, the identity behind Sam. In addition, the Myriad Celestia Trailer "A Revisiting of Past Dreams", set before the events of the Trailblaze Mission, shows Black Swan performing a tarot reading that has Duke Inferno's card burning up, representing the Annihilation Gang's destruction, but Robin's doesn't follow suit. The final parts of the Penacony arc clarify that Robin (and Sunday) were still alive, only transported to Dreamflux Reef.
• Glamorous Wartime Singer: Deconstructed. Robin's commitment to the Harmony included doing war-time relief tours, hoping to ease the suffering of the people and inspire faith in Xipe. Gopher Wood later revealed to Sunday that Robin had been hit by a stray bullet while on tour, and barely avoided a Career-Ending Injury that left her with a scar on her neck.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Underneath Robin's neckpiece is a barely-visible scar across the side of her neck, which is visible if you look hard enough on her sixth Eidolon Resonance image. It's a remnant of a bullet wound she acquired while touring for charity off-planet.
• Invocation:
  (Ultimate activation) "Tonight, souls shall embrace."
  (Normal speed) "Tonight, the stars echo because of me!"
  (×2 speed) "Stars echo!"
• Jack of All Trades: Robin's niche as a Harmony Pathstrider is that her abilities are tailored to be generically splashable in most team archetypes (except DoT or Break Effect).
• Literary Allusion Title: Her songs "If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking" and "Hope Is the Thing With Feathers" are both titled after Emily Dickinson's poems of the same name (the former and latter poems are linked here). The former poem notably mentions a robin, the writer saying they're fulfilled even if they help only one person, and the latter talks about a bird that "That kept so many warm" despite hardship and yet never "asked a crumb - of me"; both poems refer to Robin's wish to help those in need and Sunday's self-sacrificing plan to maintain his dream utopia, especially in regards to the latter poem.
• Lost Voice Plot: Sometime before her "death," Robin realized that upon arriving in Penacony her voice began to sound out of tune, and as time progressed it escalated into moments where she would completely lose her voice. A letter to Sunday explains that she did some investigative work and discovered that this could only be possible if the power of the Path of Harmony was somehow tampered with, which is only possible for someone as powerful as one of the five heads of The Family. Later, that "someone" is revealed to be none other than Sunday and the Dreammaster, who strayed from Harmony in favor of Order.
• Magic Music: Her singing is imbued with the power of Harmony to resonate with the minds of every living beings that hear it. In battle, she buffs the party through her singing.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter:
  • While her Ultimate is activate, she stand out as being the only character who has a Hyperactive sprite that replaces her hurt animation.
  • The Concerto effect is the only Ultimate buff without a predetermined turn limit, instead having its own turn order with a fixed 90 Speed; once it reaches its turn, the state ends and Robin will be able to act again.
• Ms. Fanservice: Downplayed. While she doesn't show as much skin as other female characters, being an Idol Singer naturally compels Robin to be as attractive as possible, wearing a strapless, low-cut dress whose asymmetrical design still draws attention to her otherwise mostly covered cleavage, shows off a good amount of her legs, and exposes a lot of her upper back (though her hair tends to cover this). Played up somewhat in the "Sway to My Beat" trailer, where she pulls a textbook Marilyn Maneuver for the pseudo splash art image (and reused for the Gift of Odyssey in v2.2).
• No-Sell: While the Concerto state is active, Robin gains complete immunity from crowd-control debuffs.
• Regenerating Mana:
  • Her Technique regenerates 5 Energy at the start of each enemy wave.
  • Her Talent regenerates 2 Energy for herself whenever her allies attack enemies, which can be extended to 3 points through her second Eidolon Resonance, Afternoon Tea For Two (in addition to bestowing the Concerto effect a 16% Speed buff).
  • Her sixth-ascension Bonus Ability, Sequential Passage, increases her Skill's Energy regeneration from 30 to 35 points.
• The Red Mage: While Robin is primarily an offensive support unit, while the Concerto effect is active she can augment her allies' attacks with her own,^note with damage worth 72–129.6% of her Attack stat triggered once per ally attack (thus not counting hits) and will hit random foes if the attack hits multiple targets. As it has a fixed Critical Rate and Damage of respectively 100% and 150%, this makes even units otherwise not meant for damage-dealing dish out decent values, putting the "Harm" in "Harmony." Her kit also incentivizes building up her Attack stat, to which both the Concerto effect's buff and augmented strikes scale off of.
• Scars Are Forever: Sunday implies that she has a scar on her neck from being hit by a stray bullet while doing a relief aid tour on a world in the midst of a turbulent war, which she covers up with her ribbon. It's slightly visible in the artwork for her sixth Eidolon Resonance on the left of her neck.
• Sexy Backless Outfit: Though her hair mostly obstructs it from view, Robin's dress exposes her back.
• Shaping Your Attacks: Both her field attack and her Basic Attack, Wingflip White Noise, takes the form of her sending a phantasmal bird to rush onto her target.
• She Knows Too Much: Subverted. A letter from her addressed to Sunday reveals that she discovered the presence of a traitor within the Family, and planned to investigate for herself, leading to the assumption that this led to her apparent death. In truth, she was transported to Dreamflux Reef by Gallagher to help further her investigations.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With Sunday. Robin is outgoing, while Sunday is reserved; she's The Idealist, while he's The Pessimist; Robin champions free will, while Sunday believes in The Evils of Free Will. This is best exemplified by their response when they found an injured baby bird in their youth and nursed it back to health: Robin wants to set it free, believing that a bird deserves to fly freely in the sky, while Sunday wants to cage it indefinitely because he wants it to live, no matter what. During the final battle for Penacony, Sunday becomes a vessel for the Path of Order to impose his vision upon the universe, while Robin uses her singing as a conduit to unleash the power of the Path of Trailblaze to help the Nameless fight for freedom.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Robin is everything one would expect of an idol—beautiful, charming, and a true representative of the ideals of Harmony. But she is every bit the match for her more politically powerful brother, demonstrating an unbreakable will and courage to face hardship without faltering. She investigates the possibility of a "traitor" within the Family, venturing into Dreamflux Reef and helping the Nameless and Gallagher confront whoever is responsible for the disharmony plaguing the Dream. When Sunday reveals himself to be the mastermind and traps everyone within the Order's beautiful dream, Robin is one of the few people to recognize that it's too perfect^note in her case, she experiences a dream of her past where Sunday went along with her idea of releasing the little bird instead of deciding to cage it to take care of it and reject it. And when the Nameless are about to be defeated and all hope seems lost, Robin's song rouses the power of the Path of Trailblaze and aids them in the final phase of the battle.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Robin's hair is a shade of blue similar to that of her brother's, and the two also share halos and wings on the back of their head.
• Support Party Member: Robin is an all-rounder Harmony Pathstrider who augments allies with diverse effects. Her Skill provides a 25–55% damage boost for the party for as long as three of her turns, while while her Ultimate temporarily removes her from combat entirely (but can still get hit by enemy attacks) to immediately advance her allies' turn, provide them an Attack buff (worth (15.2–24.32%)+(50–230) of hers), and automatically augment their attacks with hers.
• Tareme Eyes: To accentuate her kind and gentle nature.
• Unusual Halo: Her halo takes the form of a circlet. It is more modest than her brother's in that it could pass as normal headgear if it weren't floating above her head.
• Vapor Wear: The way her dress reveals much of her skin makes it impossible for her to be wearing a bra.
• Weapon Specialization: Her associated light cone is "Flowing Nightglow" (5★), whose "Pacify" passive grants the wearer up to five stacks of Cantillation upon ally attack to increase Energy Regeneration by 3-5% per stack, and loses them in favor of Cadenza upon Ultimate use to boost the wearer's Attack by 48-96% and the team's damage dealt by 24-40% for one turn. On top of accelerating her Energy to reach Concerto faster, Robin's Ultimate completely gives up her turn for Concerto's duration, extending the one turn of Cadenza far longer than is advertised.

Sunday

Voiced By: Xu Xiang (Chinese), Takeo Ōtsuka (Japanese), Griffin Puatu (English)

^{Click to see him as "Harmonious Choir" The Great Septimus.}

The Head of the Oak Family, and the representative of The Family of Penacony. He is also the organizer of the Charmony Festival, where his younger sister, Robin, will be performing.

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• Affably Evil: After his true colors are revealed, he's actually quite polite to the Trailblazer and co., as he genuinely believes he's doing the right thing and wishes to convince them of the same. You can even lampshade this, with one possible dialogue option regarding Sunday being, "If evil, why so nice?"
• Animal Espionage: All over the course of the Penacony storyline, Sunday's ravens can be seen spying on other characters.
• Anti-Villain: He really does think he's doing what's best for the Galaxy by imprisoning it under the rule of the Order. When summoning the Astral Express against him during his boss fight, Dan Heng outright tells Sunday he has a "noble soul" but is allowing his past tragedies to control him.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Sunday claims that becoming a god isn't his goal, but it almost happens to him anyway. The final phase of his boss fight has him transform into something called the "Embryo of Philosophy" with a description explaining that it's the beginning stages of a brand new Aeon. Fortunately, the Nameless and Robin are able to stop the transformation before the ascension could be completed.
• Asshole Victim: The most recent victim of Something Unto Death, but considering Sunday is a manipulative Control Freak, he is not as widely mourned among the audience like Firefly and Robin were. Then it's revealed that he, like Something Unto Death's other "victims", never actually died, and he becomes the Final Boss of the Penacony storyline, though not before revealing the tragic origins behind his current personality.
• "Back to Camera" Pose: At the end of the 2.0 quest, there is a shot of Sunday with his back turned to the audience, one hand behind his back, as he monologues about serving revenge in the name of the Harmony. At the start of the 2.1 quest, he greets Ratio and Aventurine as they enter his office with the same pose. It is also how his confrontation with Gallagher starts.
• Big Brother Instinct: He is deeply upset by Robin's death, but keeps it hidden under a veil of Tranquil Fury. He claims that in due time, he will have his vengeance on those responsible. Examining his office reveals that he has been prioritizing investigating Robin's death to the disapproval of other Family heads. Also in the past, he noticeably became more emotional when Gopher Wood informed him that Robin got hit by a stray bullet when she went singing in a war-torn planet, which is also one of the reasons he chose to believe in the Order, i.e to protect her.
• Cartoon Conductor: As The Great Septimus, he attacks by "conducting" both his minions and magical notes into striking you in various manners.
• Cephalothorax: Behind The Great Septimus' back, there's a big face that is revealed in full in his third phase of the battle.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: Downplayed with the third phase of his boss fight. The first two phases can be rather difficult to fight, but the third phase involves damaging as many as his toughness bars as possible to put up a shield against his AOE attack which ignores defense. The attack itself comes after 7 of your party's turns, so you have plenty of time to prepare against it, as he does nothing else during the attack's charging. Said toughness bars are weak to all elements, and can be pretty easy to break. And if the shield is strong enough, then the party will not take any damage from the attack. If he becomes Weakness Broken, his next turn is delayed significantly more than normal.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: The Geas that he implanted on Aventurine also simulates the trial spell that the Families use to test potential newcomers to join the Harmony, which is stated in the lore to be a heavily unpleasant experience. It's later revealed that his trial is actually one of the Order, not the Harmony.
• Combination Attack: In the first 2 phases of his boss battle, he has an attack (single target in the 1st, AOE in the 2nd) where he'll command all his flunkies to attack his target simultaneously, somewhat like True Sting's own attack. Like most "strong boss attack", he charges for 1 turn before the attack comes out; depending on how many of his flunkies are Weakness Broken before said attack, the attack's damage will be reduced up to 0, where he'll look at his flunkies in confusion.
• Condescending Compassion: He sees people as either strong enough to achieve their dreams or weaklings who fight in vain for survival, and after too many failed attempts at supporting those he deemed weak in their endeavors, Sunday believes people are better off being cared for in safety than allowed to roam free. Seeing himself as one of the "strong", Sunday gives himself the duty to protect everyone by entrapping them in a blissful dream only he controls, intending to sever them from reality forever.
• Confessional: Prior to becoming the head of the Oak Family, he once held this for the people who sinned in Penacony.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
  • To Cocolia. Both hold a leadership role in their respective governments and wear the mask of a Reasonable Authority Figure, using their positions and the power of a Stellaron plaguing their planet as part of a Utopia Justifies the Means scheme that pits them against the Astral Express, leading them becoming their respective planets' Final Boss. Both also have playable loved ones of the Harmony path who they nonetheless target in spite of, or even because, of their care of them. However, whereas Cocolia was manipulated and driven mad by the Stellaron, deluding her into enacting what's actually a Dystopia Justifies the Means plot, Sunday is acting of his own agency based on the disillusionment he has in what he sees as a world built on the strong exploiting the weak, genuinely believing his attempts to use the Path of Order and trap all of Penacony and eventually the galaxy at large in a Lotus-Eater Machine will create a better world. And while Cocolia is Killed Off for Real after being caught in the Stellaron's explosion, Implied to have come back to her senses in her last moments, Sunday's defeat leads to him suffering a Disney Villain Death, with no certainty on his final fate.
  • To Kevin Kaslana, another Anti-Villain driven to extreme ends. Kevin attempted to usurp the authority of the Herrscher of Finality, while Sunday attempted to usurp the power of Harmony through Order, and with those powers, both create a giant collective dream that traps everyone within it to save them from suffering. When approached by the question "why do birds fly?" they both come to a similar conclusion that "some fly just to fall," but take different messages away from it. Sunday is shaken by tragedy, thinking it a senseless loss of life, and that the bird must be sheltered for preservation, while Kevin believed the bird must soar, then fall, for the sake of letting other birds surpass it and trample upon its ideals, comparing the situation to Icarus's supposed hubris, who Welt also uses in his conversation with Acheron to refer to him without saying his name. Both were afraid of "tomorrow," the advent of Finality that threatened to erase human history in Kevin's case, and the inevitability of suffering in Sunday's. While Sunday is driven by Condescending Compassion to enact his Lotus-Eater Machine, Kevin was fully aware of his own arrogance, and resorted to his own plan, Project Stigma, as an absolute last resort if he could not be shown that humanity could surpass him and seize a future that his civilization could not. Ultimately, both plots are undone by a collection of strong wills that convinced those in the unending dream to reclaim the desire to pursue tomorrow of their own volition.
• Control Freak: Described as such by Aventurine, or rather the spiritual manifestation of his "future", who he states is so meticulous that you need to be careful of how much truth you tell and how much you keep to yourself when bluffing him. Considering how he forwent actually making a deal with Aventurine in favour of placing a fatal Geas on him to force his cooperation, it's hard to disagree. He's eventually revealed to be a follower of the Path of Order and he plans to impose order in the universe by trapping everyone in an ideal dream whether they want it or not.
• Cooldown Manipulation: In his boss battle, the attack performed by his flunkies will delay the turn of your character that takes the hit.
• Deflector Shield: In his boss battle's 2nd phase, he gains a move that apply a shield to himself, like Gepard (Complete) before him. While the shield is active, his Toughness Gauge cannot be broken, he deals more damage, and he gains Damage Reduction.
• Deity of Human Origin: Or rather in the process of becoming one before it’s stopped by the Nameless. During Sunday’s boss fight, it’s implied he is currently in the embyro stage of becoming an Aeon, either being reborn as Ena or an entirely new one.
• Disney Villain Death: Possibly. After his defeat, he falls from the arena down into Penacony and is embraced by Robin midfall. Robin survives and ends up in the hospital, while there is no trace left of Sunday except for his journal in the aftermath. Subverted, as a line in a later quest confirms the Bloodhound Family had managed to find and capture him.
• Dub Pronunciation Change: In Chinese his name is the actual word for Sunday "星期日" (pinyin Xīngqírì) while the other dubs transliterate the English name.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He first shows up in the Version 1.6 Special Program, showing an early sneak peek of Penacony and the events about to be held there, along with other characters that will make an appearance, including those from other factions that were invited to the festival.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: As much of a controlling jerk that he is, he genuinely loves his sister Robin and her "death" hurt him deeply. He also refuses to force her to carry out Gopher Wood's plan, taking on the burden himself instead.
• Everyone Has Standards: Though he is perfectly willing to get involved in unsavory business, he is absolutely disgusted by Sparkle's decision to impersonate his dead sister around him, and even more so when she offers to act as a body double for Robin.
• Evil All Along: Though a pretty big Jerkass from the start, it seemed like he was actually concerned with the instability of the Dreamscape and was working to avert disaster. Then it's revealed that the only reason he wanted to maintain the Dreamscape was so that he could subjugate the entire galaxy under the rule of Order.
• The Evils of Free Will: This is part of his justification for wanting to enforce the power of The Order on Penacony.
• Fatal Flaw: Overconfidence. He explains to Aventurine that he meticulously plans everything out well ahead of time, likening it to never having to adjust his clothes in public because he makes sure everything is in place before he leaves the house. Though he is a genuinely intelligent strategist, his intense confidence in his plans means he has no contingencies for when people act outside of his predictions and can be blindsided when they do. This allows Aventurine to outsmart him by pretending to have been thwarted by Sunday's plans, and later gets the halovian attacked when he approaches Gallagher about the "murders", despite knowing the latter is the culprit. If Gallagher actually did have the power to kill in the dreamscape, this would have ended Sunday's plans to revive the Path of Order right there.
• Foreshadowing: Robin's trailer shows Sunday's childhood drawing of an angelic-looking conductor. That conductor, Dominicus, ends up being hijacked by Sunday using the power of Order.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Sunday gives Aventurine 17 hours to solve Robin's murder. If he succeeds, he will be assimilated by the Harmony, and if he loses, he will be punished by Them. While the latter is obviously a bad outcome, the former seems to be only "good" from the perspective of the Harmony as a philosophy - and in Aventurine's case, he's already following a different path (Preservation), so for him, that outcome could've been a negative one.
• The Heavy: He's technically the Dreammaster's Dragon, but he is also the main agent of the Dreammaster's plan while the latter plays more of a background role.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Sunday somehow believed that meager Stellaron research would be enough to tempt Dr. Ratio, an accomplished scholar whose entire philosophy is to encourage others to think critically rather than to rely on geniuses' results, into betraying Aventurine.
• Hypocrite: For the head of the family leading the Harmony's sole faction, he proves to be a bit of a ruthless Jerkass behind closed doors. Case in point, before his meeting with Aventurine, he goaded Dr. Ratio into backstabbing the IPC official for research materials on Stellarons by revealing how he hid his Cornerstone from him. Then when the actual meeting occurs, he goes out of his way to humiliate Aventurine by calling his bluff, forcing him into a game of "Yes or No" that starts out relevant to the bluff before devolving into deeply personal questions meant to hurt him, rubs the fact that Ratio betrayed him in his face, and then reveals to have placed a Geas on him that will kill him in 17 hours unless he solves Robin's murder. All that while he preaches about the Harmony's virtues. Of course, it's then revealed that he never actually worshipped Harmony in the first place but rather Order, whose tenants line up much more with his actions, making his actions not an example of pure hypocrisy but rather Foreshadowing to his true allegiance.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The end of his meeting with Gallagher seems to end with him getting ambushed from behind by Something Unto Death, which impales him like it did its other victims. And like everyone else, this actually doesn't kill him but rather transports him to the Land of the Exiles.
• Kaizo Trap: Sunday pulls this on the Astral Express crew when they first fight him, tricking them into thinking that Dan Heng and Jing Yuan took him out. In truth, they had already been trapped in Ena's Dream ever since the Charmony Festival "begins" (i.e when he becomes The Great Septimus), and it took the combined efforts of Acheron and Black Swan to break them out of the illusion.
• Kick the Dog: Suspecting Aventurine is up to something during their meeting, Sunday subjects him to an interrogation in which he must answer all questions truthfully or suffer serious consequences. Though Sunday starts by asking questions important to the matter at hand, he quickly pivots to forcing the gambler to answer irrelevant and needlessly invasive inquiries about his past, then finishes by revealing that Aventurine must either solve the murders in seventeen hours and be assimilated into the Family, or die.
• Kick the Morality Pet: Despite genuinely loving his sister, he doesn't exempt her from the Order's Lotus-Eater Machine, implying he views her as one of the "weak" that needs protecting.
• Knew It All Along: When he's listing the victims of "Death", he mentions "a stowaway" as one of them, implying that he already knew Firefly's status.
• Knight Templar: He will defend the weak, even if it means locking them in a Gilded Cage where nothing can harm them but they have nothing to aspire for.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: Robin is not exempt from his designs for the galaxy.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Sunday puts a Geas on Aventurine that would kill him in 17 hours unless he solves Robin's murder and is smug about it...but ends up becoming the one that dies by the actual killer's hand at the end of the Trailblaze Mission instead. Also, even if it's Acheron who "killed" Aventurine, the fact that he can "die" at all goes against the Family's promise that nobody can die in the Dreamscape - and thus, IPC now has an excuse to act in Penacony since Aventurine was their representative.
• Light Is Not Good: He is dressed in all white and has an angelic motif, but is actually an authoritarian Control Freak.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Sunday is no good guy by any measure, but compared to the other Family heads of Penacony he's also the only one that actually bothers to investigate the reason behind the encroaching collapse of the Dreamscape. Ultimately, it's later revealed to be a Zigzagged Trope, as he has actually been working with the Dreammaster to subjugate the galaxy under the rule of Order, which was why he needed the Dreamscape intact, though his plans to create a Gilded Cage paradise are put in a tragic and sympathetic light by the end.
• Meaningful Name: He describes his Lotus-Eater Machine plot as an endless succession of rest days — an infinite procession of Sundays. He also makes reference to the "7 days of creation" from the Book of Genesis in the "3-act play" before the final battle and in his battle's third phase.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: He is the first boss in the game with multi-layered Toughness Gauge. Depleting one gauge will make him take Break DMG, but he's only considered Weakness Broken after you deplete all of his gauges. As a bonus, he takes longer than usual to recover from Weakness Break, and each time you break his gauge, your party will gain a party-wide shield. Also in the first 2 phases, he and his flunkies share a health bar, so AOE attacks will quickly damage him. In the first 2 phases, he has 3 toughness gauges, while in the 3rd phase he has 9.
• Morton's Fork: In Scorchsand Audition Venue, Sunday presents several of these during his talks with the Express crew in an attempt to prove that his philosophy is correct. They don't fall for it.
• Mythology Gag: His true ideal/view of Order is similar to Aponia's "Discipline" in Honkai Impact 3rd. She believes that, for the weak, freedom will only bring danger and suffering, and her power of Discipline is intended to prevent the weak from bringing harm to themselves or others and keep them safe, just like how Sunday intends to care for the weak by reliving them of their freedom, though with the method of Lotus-Eater Machine.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Once, a man came to Sunday, confessing he was a stowaway who had sold everything to arrive at Penacony, including his two otherwise starving children into slavery, in the hopes of striking it rich and eventually going back for his children. Sunday agreed to persuade the Bloodhounds to cease pursuing the man, only for the man to become successful, become a Corrupt Corporate Executive, and forget about his children entirely. This incident ends up as one of the reasons Sunday began to believe in the Order.
• No Place for Me There: Sunday's plan to create a paradise in the dreamscape where nobody has to suffer requires that someone stays awake in reality. Gopher Wood was planning to make Robin take that role but Sunday insists on him taking the place of the one who has to stay awake in order for everybody else to be happy.
• One-Winged Angel: Transforms into his True Final Boss form for the final fight of 2.2, Harmonious Choir: The Great Septimus. As part of the Charmony Festival, one of the Harmonious Choir (i.e Emanators of Harmony) would descend and perform, but Sunday uses the power of Order to hijack and control it for the purpose of activating Ena's Dream.
• Order Is Not Good: Sunday serves the deceased Ena the Order and seeks to subjugate the galaxy in the name of Order by immersing them in a Lotus-Eater Machine where they will be free from the pain and suffering of reality. This makes him ideologically opposed to his sister Robin, who believes that all, even the weak, should have the choice to fight for their own future, and the Nameless, for which the inherent philosophy of the Path of Trailblaze is diametrically opposed to his concept of Order.
• Outgambitted:
  • Sunday's plan to thwart Aventurine's relied on Dr. Ratio betraying Aventurine so that he could end up in control of the two Cornerstones he brought (his and Topaz's) and thus force him to work for him. This however played into Aventurine's favour because he predicted that he would do such a thing due to his Control Freak personality, as such, he prepared to have Dr. Ratio intentionally "betray" him and shattered his Aventurine Cornerstone so that he could smuggle Jade's instead. Sunday does, at least, anticipate what Aventurine is trying to do afterward through his ravens, and intentionally have the Clock Studios Theme Park emptied to "make way" for Aventurine's "show", as it creates a good distraction so Sunday can work to figure out the mastermind behind Something Unto Death.
  • Sunday predicted that the Cornerstones could only be useful so long as their owners had them on their possession, not realizing that the Ten Stonehearts can actually use them at a distance (as shown by Jade), and thus he inadvertently opened a way for Jade and Topaz to act within Penacony and with Aventurine's "death" the excuse to do so - the one thing the Family had been trying to avoid.
  • He was certain that he had fooled everybody into believing he was defeated when in fact they were all still trapped in Ena's Dream. However, he underestimated Firefly due to her condition (as she pointed out earlier) and thus has no idea that she has strong enough will to resist the dream's temptation and then break out of the dream with her "second death" to warn the Astral Express and their allies.
• The Philosopher: The climax of the 2.2 Trailblaze Mission has Sunday asking various characters, from the Nameless to his sister, numerous questions regarding the nature of free will and living in a Gilded Cage vs the dangerous outside world, hoping to convince them of his own worldview and prevent a violent conflict with them.
• Revenge Before Reason: Despite the Dreammaster (the supreme leader above the family heads) giving direct orders to him to cease investigating Something Unto Death and focus on organizing the Charmony Festival, Sunday continues his pursuit due to his desire to avenge Robin's supposed death.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With Robin. Sunday is reserved, while Robin is outgoing; he's The Pessimist, while she's The Idealist; Sunday believes in The Evils of Free Will, while Robin champions free will. This is best exemplified by their response when they found an injured baby bird in their youth: Robin wants to set it free, believing that a bird deserves to fly freely in the sky, while Sunday wants to cage it because he wants it to live, no matter what. During the final battle for Penacony, Sunday becomes a vessel for the Path of Order to impose his vision upon the universe, while Robin uses her singing as a conduit to unleash the power of the Path of Trailblaze to help the Nameless fight for freedom.
• Sistine Steal: As a boss, his most powerful attack in the third phase is to summon a hand from the sky, reach out to it with his fingertip, and touch it, which causes an explosion that does a massive DEF-ignoring damage.
• The Social Darwinist: Deconstructed. Sunday believes that it's a fundamental fact of life that the strong thrive while the weak merely survive, and that any of these "weak" individuals that try to rise above their station will come crashing to their deaths like a bird not meant to fly. The deconstruction sets in when Sunday reveals that while he earnestly believes this to be the case, he doesn't want it to be. He truly does care about those he considers weak, but his idea of protecting them is trapping them in an ideal dream so they can't risk life-and-limb to be anything more, since he thinks it's better to be safe than to be free.
• Start of Darkness: Sunday was as idealistic as Robin, once upon a time. However, it all started to change when they decided to take care of an injured baby bird together. When Robin left for Penacony, Sunday set the bird free, only for it almost immediately die trying to fly away. Then during his administrative years on Penacony, he decided to get the Bloodhound Family off the backs of a stowaway trying to find his fortune in Penacony for his family's sake. That stowaway proceeded to become a Corrupt Corporate Executive that abandoned the children he once promised to save to slavery. The straw that broke the camel's back was Robin suffering an injury during a relief aid tour that left her with a permanent scar, which finally convinced him that free will is too dangerous and should be stripped away for the people of the Galaxy's own safety.
• Status Infliction Attack: In his boss fight, one of his attacks inflict the unique "Alien Dream" status on one of your characters. The affected character will be put to sleep and regenerate a few HP each turn they passed, but the next attack that hits them will be amplified, which will then "wake" the character up.
• Stupid Evil: Sunday putting a deadly Geas on Aventurine, a high-ranking IPC representative, is not only an act of needless cruelty, but also one of severe idiocy as this basically means he's violating diplomatic immunity, an action that would entail retaliation from the IPC.
• Tempting Fate: Tells the primary suspect for the memetic murders that he does not care how he did it, just before said suspect summons the memetic entity to attack him next.
• Theme Naming: In his boss battle's 1st and 2nd phase, all of his attacks are named with Italian musical terms.
• Too Clever by Half: Sunday is by no means unintelligent, but over the course of the Penacony chapter he consistently allows initial "successes" to get to his head, constantly assuming he's seen his opposition's full hand when he has actually failed to notice the aces still kept in the hole. The result is that his "masterstrokes" not only fail to deliver him any real results, they don't even seem to interfere with the plans of Aventurine or Gallagher other than speed up the timetable for things already planned out before he stepped in.
• Tragic Villain: Though he at first comes off as a colossal Jerkass, it's later revealed he only became the way he is because his and Robin's attempts to earnestly reach out to help the less fortunate only resulted in what he perceived as misery in the long run. He still genuinely wants to help people, but his past experiences and the Dreammaster's grooming have led him to believe he's the only one who has all the answers.
• Tranquil Fury: He maintains a calm, yet undoubtedly furious tone with Sparkle for impersonating his sister and offering to pose as her so that the festival won't be cancelled on account of her death. He only once drops the facade when he confronts Gallagher regarding his motive behind the murder of his sister.
• Uncertain Doom: After the events of 2.2 Trailblaze Mission, it's unclear what became of him after Robin embraced him in the sky. If you go back to the Grand Theatre, Robin will message the Trailblazer, asking to help her locate her brother; turns out that Robin passed out after she and Sunday hit the ground, and when she wakes up, she was surrounded by nurses with Sunday nowhere to be found. Investigating the Grand Theatre will net the Trailblazer his journal, and if given to Robin, her reaction implies that he died, though there's no concrete evidence for it either way.
• Underestimating Badassery: Sunday's Fatal Flaw. Due to his Control Freak tendencies and his position as head of the Oak Family, he can be blindsided by people who can play to his expectations of being on the ropes while actually having a trump card on reserve. This is how Aventurine managed to both smuggle his own Cornerstone under his nose while also providing a way for Topaz and Jade to act on Penacony. Likewise, he underestimates Gallagher's own lethal capabilities to his detriment after he summons Something Unto Death to deal with him. Finally, he underestimates Firefly's sheer will, which allows her to warn the Astral Express crew when he tricks them into thinking they'd defeated him when he'd actually trapped them in Ena's Dream.
• Unusual Halo: Sunday has a golden, pronged halo floating behind his head.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: He was once just as kind and idealistic as Robin, only to have his optimism shattered by a stowaway he helped turning into a Corrupt Corporate Executive and his sister getting hit with a stray bullet while on a relief aid tour. Combined with being mentored by the Dreammaster into accepting Order's influence, he became the controlling and manipulative man he is today.
• Walking Spoiler: He's a lot more than Robin's overprotective older brother. A lot more.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: His ultimate plan is to make a Lotus-Eater Machine where people will be free from pain and suffering.

Mr. McCoy

The Oak Family's head butler.

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• Cain and Abel: He forcibly turned his own siblings into memes as punishment for betraying the Family.
• I Did What I Had to Do: He stresses that betraying his own siblings was necessary since it was a task personally assigned to him by the Dreammaster, and was basically a loyalty test.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He deeply regrets the fact that he turned both of his siblings into memes as punishment for their supposed betrayal of the Family, to the point where he tries to have all memory of it erased in an attempt to escape the guilt. It doesn't work.
• Rank Up: He has ambitions to be promoted to be a Family head.

The Dreammaster / Gopher Wood

The cult-like leader of the Penaconian Family, Penacony's current ruler, and the man who raised Sunday and Robin.

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• Arc Villain: After we were led to believe that the mastermind behind Something Unto Death was this, it turns out he was the true immediate threat to Penacony the entire time, using Sunday as a proxy to submit the entire galaxy under Order's influence.
• Broken Angel: How he describes the destruction of his original body.
• The Corruptor: He is the one who encouraged Sunday's Control Freak tendencies with the intention of having him carry on his mission of subjugating the galaxy under Order.
• Cynicism Catalyst: The Clockie cartoon implies the Watchmaker's belief that Wood had genuinely good intentions in the beginning, but became more ruthless after a radical faction of "cowboys" (presumably a metaphor for interstellar refugees) crippled him.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He's first seen in one of the Planet of the Festivities Collectible Cards.
• The Evils of Free Will: What he believes and encourages in Sunday is that freedom is inherently linked to suffering, and the only way to bring about true peace is to subjugate everyone under the will of Order.
• Exact Words: When Robin, Welt, and Sunday meet with the Dreammaster, at the Dreammaster's request, Sunday questions the Dreammaster if he is truly loyal to his god and has never turned against THEM, using the same truth-compelling powers he did on Aventurine earlier. Unfortunately, later in the conversation, the Dreammaster and Sunday reveal that the god they follow isn't Xipe the Harmony, but Ena the Order.
• Hive Mind: His original body is long dead, but he continues to persist in the telepathic link between Oak Family members. He can also possess Sunday's ravens.
• Knight Templar: He genuinely believes in his Aeon and his cult, too bad he doesn't care about what the rest of the universe has to say.
• Meaningful Name: Gopher wood is a transliteration of the name of the material used to construct Noah's ark, relating to the Dreammaster and Sunday's goal to save everyone from suffering.
• Mole in Charge: He's the leader of the Penaconian Family, but worships Ena, disapproves of Xipe, and has plans those outside the Oak Family are not privy to. When his true agenda comes out, the rest of the lineages declare him and most of the rest of the Oak Family to be traitors.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: In-universe, he is the inspiration for the Clockie cartoon character "Old Man Wood", a supposedly benevolent leader who helps Clockie build up Dreamville following its liberation from Boss Stone.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Seems prone to these while going into his monologues. He even tries to give a lengthy one to Acheron after she’s left an indelible mark of Nihility on the dreamscape, at which she gives the verbal response of rolling her eyes and points out he’s Not So Above It All.
• Tom the Dark Lord: The Dreammaster is the leader of the Family on Penacony and an intimidating presence who speaks through a Hive Mind and has designs to make all of Penacony succumb to the Order. His name is Gopher Wood, which sounds pretty silly even if one is aware of the Biblical reference.
• Voice of the Legion: When he speaks, the audio overlays his voice over the voice(s) of the Oak Family members he is speaking through.

Dreamflux Reef (Unmarked Spoilers)

In General

Also known as the "Land of Exiles", Dreamflux Reef is a hidden thirteenth Dreamscape that serves as a haven for those wishing to escape the Family's rule, and is the home of the mythical Watchmaker. In Clockie's cartoons, this place is also called "Rouseville".

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• A World Half Full: While Dreamflux Reef lacks all of the luxuries, presentation, and wealth of the Family's Dreamscapes, it isn't ruled under the Family's strict supervision and everything isn't hidden behind a facade of happiness. As a result, most of the population are genuinely happy or calm, as seen through Clockwork. This is in contrast to the people they meet in other Dreamscapes who are hiding very deep seated issues due to having to suppress their emotions all the time.
• Fantastic Ghetto: Compared to the more opulent Dreamscapes managed by the Family, Dreamflux Reef is far more urban and rundown looking like an actual ghetto.
• Hidden Elf Village: Dreamflux Reef was the original Dreamscape settlement built on Penacony after they won independence. However, after the Watchmaker was exiled from the Family, he cut off Dreamflux Reef from the other Dreamscapes to protect its populace.
• The Hidden Hour: The Penacony Dreamscape is divided into twelve different "hours" with different symbolism for each. Dreamflux Reef is the thirteenth, and actually the oldest, created by the Watchmaker. It has become a secret to most of Penacony, kept out of the reach of the Family. Most residents are outcasts who originally arrived by accident.
• Mega Maelstrom: There's a whirlpool of memoria in the background of the land. A surveying expert claims that it's a sign that Dreamflux Reef is slowly "sinking".
• Walking Spoiler: The fact that Dreamflux Reef even exists is already a very large spoiler due to its hidden nature.

The Watchmaker

The mythical, alleged founder of Penacony whose true identity is Mikhail Char Legwork, a past Nameless of the Astral Express.

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• Chekhov's Gunman: The name "Legwork" first appeared in the special item "Trailblaze Timer" that you get from Equilibrium Trials to permanently increase Technique Points' maximum capacity. Then in "The Sound and the Fury" (the first Penacony mission), Pom-Pom mentions him as one of the old Nameless members they wish to know about their current situations, alongside Razalina and Tiernan, as the three chose to stay in Penacony in the past. Then it's revealed that Legwork is none other than the Watchmaker himself.
• Fling a Light into the Future: He leaves a dream bubble and his hat with his corpse, as well as arranges Gallagher to send out an invitation to the Astral Express, all in the hopes that the future Nameless can succeed where he failed in saving Penacony.
• Foreshadowing: It's revealed in the early part of Penacony's story that the one who sent the invite to various out-world factions to join Penacony's Charmony Festival wasn't the Family, but supposedly the Watchmaker himself. Among other things, this makes Himeko and Welt suspect that there's more than meets the eye in this event. As of "In Our Time", it's revealed that the one who sent the invites was Gallagher, on the Watchmaker's behalf. While the latter only told the former to send the invite to the Astral Express, he decided to also send it to various other factions as well; this not only helps "masking" the intent as "the Family invites various factions to join the festival" (as the invite's real aim is to pass on the legacy to the Nameless so they can save Penacony on his behalf), but also gave the Nameless various potential allies to aid them.
• The Ghost: While famous in Penacony, the Watchmaker hasn't been seen in public for a very long time and so far has not physically appeared in the first half of the Penacony story arc. He eventually appears in the third part... Dead All Along.
• Go Out with a Smile: He passes away peacefully due to his old age, confident that a future generation of Nameless will succeed where he had failed.
• Internal Deconstruction: Or "Inter-verse Deconstruction" in this case. The "Clockie Credits" are Penacony's local currency, but you don't use them to purchase stuff in specific shops like in previous planets - instead you only use them to upgrade the Clockie Statue. In Genshin Impact which featured something similar, you can't use Electro, Dendro or Hydro Sigils to purchase things in the respective region's souvenir shop because the shops are "conveniently closed" until you have offered enough of them to their respective landmarks. Here? Clockie Credits are actually an illegal currency and are prohibited for use in any of Penacony's shops; according to a note about the investigation of Watchmaker, he apparently had introduced said currency (the text described it as a "speculative token") specifically to disrupt local economy, and it took the Alfalfa Family decades to recover the economic situation.
• Legacy Character: According to Gallagher, the original Watchmaker is likely long dead, with the title passing on to his descendants. The last person known to be the Watchmaker was Mikhail. However, this turns out to be a lie on his part, as Mikhail was always the original Watchmaker.
• Mr. Alt Disney: As the creator of a massive amusement park as well as the cartoon character Clockie, he's the setting's version of Walt Disney.
• Parental Substitute: He adopted many orphans over the course of his life, and even as adults, many of them still affectionately refer to him as their father.
• Really 700 Years Old: It turns out that the Watchmaker is actually Mikhail Char Legwork, one of the Nameless who disembarked the Astral Express and fought in Penacony's war for independence over 500 years ago. He managed to continue living on in the Dreamscape until fairly recently in the current time.
• Secret War: Gallagher reveals that the Watchmaker and the Family have long been locked in a secret contest over the direction of Penacony's future. While the Family currently has the upper hand, the Watchmaker's influence is still pervasive throughout Penacony in the form of the many cartoons and products he created, which the Family can't get rid of without exposing The Masquerade and hurting their tourism business. The Watchmaker sending the invitations out to various groups that can potentially cause trouble on Penacony (including to IPC, the Penaconians' Arch-Enemy) appears to be the latest step in his plans to fight back against the Family.
• Shadow Dictator: Supposedly the founder of Penacony, a legendary tycoon, and the one to send out the invites to so many factions during the Reverie. And yet there is no direct evidence that he has ever physically existed. Some people even think that he's just a myth to add to Penacony's historical appeal. This is partly because the Family is actively trying to hide his existence.
• Shrouded in Myth: According to a note found in Dewlight Pavilion, the Family had investigated The Watchmaker's possible identity and whereabouts from time to time; one striking thing they found is that they have never been described the same way twice (including taking on the appearance of non-humanoid figures such as Sweet Dreams Troupe or Clockie cartoon characters), and that the memories of the witnesses to the Watchmaker show sign of tampering, which made the Family suspect that he is connected to the Enigmata and may have had outside help. It's later revealed that yes, the Watchmaker's deputy is a History Fictionologist.
• Unperson: As their mostly defeated Arch-Enemy in the battle for Penacony's future, the Family did everything in their power to bury all memory of him, hence why he is Shrouded in Myth.

Memetic Entities

In General

Within the Dreamscape, and to a lesser degree, in Reality, exist entities made of pure memoria, the essence of memory.

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• Animate Inanimate Object: The dreamscape is literally made of memories. Some objects, like the walking talking billboards, are intentionally animated; sometimes, objects come to life from absorbing the surrounding emotions.
• The Heartless: While the Family reassures everyone that they have their protection in the dreamscape, nightmares still manage to come to life and spread chaos and destruction.
• Tulpa: Some of them were born from collective thoughts and feelings.

Clockie

Voiced By: Qin Qiege (Chinese), Kōhei Yanagi (Japanese), Lee Ju-seung (Korean), Niko Gerentes (English)

The main mascot of Penacony, a walking, talking, anthropomorphic clock. Believed by most to be a fictional character, Clockie is real, and passes his Emotion Control powers to the Trailblazer to help various people around Penacony.

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• Bad Powers, Good People: Clockie has the ability to manipulate emotions via a gear system, which he teaches to the Trailblazer. While such a power is usually akin to Mind Control, and it could be easy to just force everyone to be happy all the time, Clockie has only shown genuine concern for the emotional and mental health of the people in Penacony and wants them to have their full spectrum of emotions, even negative ones that The Family doesn't approve of. It turns out that his powers are more inherently benevolent than originally thought, as his true ability under the Path of Trailblaze is (as the Watchmaker puts it) to give people the emotional nudge they need to make a difference in their lives.
• Company Cross References: The Clockie Statue accepting your Clockie Credits is akin to Genshin Impact's Elemental Sigils, both being region-exclusive collectibles acquired through opening chests and completing quests, especially their history. Early in their games' life cycle, the Anemo (Mondstadt) and Geo (Liyue) Sigils can be immediately spent on rare items from local specialty shops, much like Hertareum (Herta Space Station), Shields (Jarilo-VI), and Strale (Xianzhou Luofu); it wasn't until later regions that such collectibles must first be "offered" to upgrade structures tied to the region's lore before the specialty shop can be opened (in Genshin, the Sacred Sakura in Inazuma, the Tree of Dreams in Sumeru, and the Fountain of Lucine in Fontaine).
• Deprogram: Every time his alarm chimes when interacting with an NPC, he is letting the Trailblazer know that the person is missing a key piece of their emotional cognition and he wants them to repair it.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Clockie first shows up in the image for "Penacony, Land of the Dreams" Link Rope from v1.5, though his name was never mentioned.
• Expy: Gallagher alludes that the character of Clockie is a direct parallel to the Watchmaker himself.
• Emotion Control: Clockie teaches the Trailblazer how to do this in order to resolve people's issues that are locked in their emotions. While sometimes this power gets abused just to get out of tough situations (such as with Amiky in "Vignettes in a Cup" or with the contest judge in Scorchsand Audition Venue), for the most part the Trailblazer uses the power on Clockie's urging in its intended way.
• Invisible to Adults: He can only be perceived by children or people with a pure, innocent heart. So far the only people that confirmed to able to see and talk to him are the Trailblazer and Misha. His sidequest involves gathering enough gold certificates so he can gain the power to be seen by everyone. It is later revealed that he is actually only visible to members of the Astral Express, as Mikhail was a Nameless and Clockie was his way of contacting the Astral Express after death. Misha can see him because Misha is a memory version of Mikhail who created the "real" version of Clockie from Mikhail's Dream Bubble.
• Mascot: His cartoon is used to promote Penacony to tourists.
• Mocky Mouse: He has the same style as the old-fashioned Mickey Mouse, both in terms of his voice, the art style of his cartoon, and even his mannerisms.
• Nice Guy: In contrast to the soulless hedonism that's begun to overtake Penacony, Clockie is every bit the cheerful and helpful cartoon hero his cartoons portray him as. He considers the staff of the Reverie his friends even if none of them can actually see him and just wants to make sure all the visitors to the Dreamscape have a good time. He is, after all, a manifestation of Mikhail's desire to help and guide people to reach their full potential.
• Non-Indicative Name: He is obviously named Clockie because he's a clock, except that The Watchmaker based him off of a compass that he only assumed was a pocketwatch. That's why the true Clockie's power's are based on guiding people, whereas only the derivative versions based on the original mistake sometimes have time powers. As his creator notes, he should have been called Compassie. Later, after the main story of Penacony ends, you get one last mission with him, where says that he will keep protecting the "Dreamville" (Penacony) for now, but whenever they (the Trailblazer) need him, they can always call "Compassie" to help them.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: Not everyone seems convinced when the Trailblazer explains that they've run into a certain memetic entity most people cannot see. He would later appear as part of the Harmony Trailblazer's image and animations.
• Rubber-Hose Limbs: As a classic cartoon parody, his limbs do not have single hinge joints. Instead his limbs bend like, well, rubber hoses.
• Time Master: It's unknown if the version of him in Penacony's Dreamscape can do this, but in his cartoon he can reverse and pause a target in time.
• Tulpa: While his exact origins are unknown, he appears to be a memoria entity based on his own cartoon.
• Verbal Tic: He often says "Tick-Tock!".

Hanu

One of Clockie's colleagues in his cartoon show. While Hanu is not known to have a corresponding memoria entity like Clockie, games based on him can be found throughout Penacony.

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• And Now for Someone Completely Different: When an in-universe player plays Hanu's Adventure games, they will take the form of a shrunken down Hanu to steal back the treasures Boss Stone stole. In gameplay, this makes you (the player) control Hanu.
• Can't Use Stairs: He's too small to climb stairs, meaning that you'll have to switch between playing him and being regular sized to solve certain puzzles.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: In the Hanu's Adventure games, he has been shrunken down to the size of a housecat by Boss Stone. In some puzzles involving him, you'll need to use him to get past passages too narrow for your normal-sized characters to pass through, even though that passage may sometimes be merely a stack of books no taller than your characters' shins with a convenient small gap.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: An In-Universe, the cartoon Hanu is based on Hanunue, leader of Penacony's revolt against the IPC. The Watchmaker created the cartoon to immortalize him. He ended up Hoist by His Own Petard when the Family managed to use it to confuse and redirect all memory of him instead.
• Pocket Rocket Launcher: In his cartoon, he is armed with a rocket launching gun. In later areas of Penacony, you can acquire Hanu's Launcher while playing as him in certain sections, allowing him to take out foes he'd otherwise have to sneak past and detonate fireworks that block access to new areas.
• Sharing a Body: How his "multiplayer" mode works, with the Trailblazer and Firefly sharing control over him during one session.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: He's dressed in a sharp three-piece suit, fedora, and Cool Shades.
• Shrouded in Myth: Hanunue is known far and wide as the man who led the revolution against the IPC, but there's few exact facts about him. Theories abound about whether he was a heroic Lovable Rogue, a ruthless criminal who happened to be in the right place at the right time, or even just a regular wolf that sparked the riots by mauling one of the guards and got mythologized over the decades. This causes a few issues at Clockie Studios, who aren't quite sure what to use as the character's backstory. According to a collectible card readable you can get, Hanunue was a werewolf.
• The Speechless: All he can speak with is a "grunt that sounds really cool".
• Stealth-Based Mission: During gameplay, Hanu can't normally attack, so you have to avoid being found by "Boss Stone's Lackeys" (represented by Dreamjolt Troupe) when he's looking for Boss Stone's treasure. He can hide behind pieces of furniture or boxes to avoid the lackey's gaze, or drop objects onto them to knock them out. Subverted in the 2.1 update, where he can pick up a rocket launcher to directly knock out the lackeys.
• Unperson: The Family did everything they could to erase his inspiration, Hanunue, out of history, because they didn't want to compete with him for glory in the narrative of Penacony's past. They largely succeeded, and the cartoon, Hanu, is pretty much all that's left of him.

Origami Birds

The origami birds of Penacony, lead by Owl. They feature inside of Clockie fiction and have a presence as memetic entities in the dreamscape. One of them even exists in reality at the Hotel. They claim to be responsible for designing much of the Dreamscape. In actuality, they are Tulpas that were manifested by the Watchmaker's History Fictionologist ally.

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• Art Evolution: In-Universe, the Trailblazer will note that Sunday's artwork of the Origami birds has a much different style (looking like birds made from actual paper folding) than the origami birds that the Trailblazer has actually seen (who look more like cartoon birds made of paper), and assumes that this is a result of Penacony's art evolving.
• Hidden Object Game: Most of them are scattered throughout the dreamscape. Some of them are attempting to complement an existing object with their feathers, some of them have gotten stuck, and some are hiding on purpose. Regardless, their manager in each zone of the dreamscape wants them found and will reward the Trailblazer for doing so. They are most easily noticed by their constant chirping and one of their head feathers will always be sticking out.
• Invisible to Adults: Like Clockie, it is implied that they can only be seen by children, the pure of heart, or those with high memoria sensitivity. However, when playing the game from Aventurine or Acheron's perspective, even though they cannot see them, they can still touch them and can hear them chirping on a subconscious level, even if they confusedly dismiss them as hallucinations.
• Lost in Character: With the exception of Dr. Blues, they seem to genuinely believe that they are living inside of the Dreamville of Clockie fiction and that they are the Dream Weavers who built all of the Dreamscapes. It might not help that these memetic entities were created by the lying power of the Enigmata as a Tulpa of everyone's perception of the fictional birds.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: They were directly based upon the original Dream Weavers that built the Dreamscape, hence why these birds keep claiming credit for it. One of them, Dr. Blue, is not just inspired by them, but the direct Living Memory of the original, choosing to hide in this form after his colleagues were murdered and the Nightingale Family conquered by the Dreammaster.

The Dreamjolt Troupe

Formerly a part of the Sweet Dreams Troupe, the cast of objects animated by the Dreamscape, certain members became moved by permeating negative emotions, becoming the violent Dreamjolt Troupe. They can be found both as wandering monsters in the Dreamscape, and employed by the Family as security troops.

Their ranks consist of: Birdskull, Spring Loader, Fortune Seller, Mr. Domescreen, Winder Goon, Bubble Hound, Sweet Gorilla (elite), and Beyond Overcooked (elite).

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• Action Bomb: When Bubble Hounds are defeated, they'll release an explosion that deals Physical damage and inflicts Bleed on adjacent enemies, but will also buff their Speed.
• Helpful Mook:
  • When Mr. Domescreen is in his Surprise Channel mode, he'll use his "Surprise Variety Show" move, which refills 50% of the target's Energy. Careful target selection can ensure that he'll spend the entire encounter using only this move.
  • Fortune Seller, on death, spits out a capsule prize that restores SP, Energy for the party, or both depending on how it's killed.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Sweet Gorilla has 2 cases of this:
  • Its thrown Soulglad bottles can be reflected towards it with shields; if this happens, the Gorilla will also suffer from lowered defense.
  • It can summon Bubble Hounds to aid it; the Bubble Hounds' explosion when they're defeated can hurt the Gorilla as well as damage its Toughness Gauge.
• Lethal Chef: Beyond Overcooked is a T-rex robot that originally works as a chef, but has a tendency to, well, overcook the dishes it made with its fire powers.
• Mana Burn: Mr. Domescreen can use "Startling Broadcast" to sap 20% of the energy from the entire party.
• Mecha-Mooks: They're robotic dream-creations originally meant to serve the guests. As they're dream constructs, they can be affected by negative emotions, becoming hostile in the process.
• Pain & Gain:
  • The Bubble Hound can buff itself whenever it's attacked or it takes Damage Over Time, up to 4 times.
  • Beyond Overcooked can build up "Stove Heating" whenever it gets attacked or whenever it takes Damage Over Time. If it reaches 6, it'll enter "Ignite Stove" state and use a powerful AOE attack on its next turn. However, if you can build Stove Heating up to 6 again in its Ignite Stove state, it'll instead explode and deal damage to itself and surrounding enemies. Its "bug" version in Simulated Universe makes it enter Ignite Stove with only 4 Stove Heating, but to make it overheat and explode, you have to build up 12 Stove Heating instead of 6.
• Robot Dog: The Bubble Hounds are worker robots who are supposed to deliver Soulglad bottles to the clients.
• Soda Can Shakeup: Sweet Gorilla's strongest attack involves it shaking the Soulglad container it carries before the bottles rocket towards your characters at random, using the soda as propulsion.
• Stance System: Mr. Domescreen has 2 "faces", an angry face (which it always starts the battle with) and a happy face, and will switch between the two if they take a hit from attacks^note taking DOT damage on their turn does not count for this. When its turn comes up and it has the angry face, it'll perform an AOE attack that will also burn your characters' energy; if it has a happy face, however, it will instead recover energy for one of your characters.
• Status Infliction Attack:
  • Spring Loader's attack inflicts Effect RES penalty on its target, making the target more likely to suffer from other debuffs.
  • Birdskull's attack inflicts Bleed on its target.
• Support Party Member: The Winder Goon's primary purpose is to "set their alarm"; once their next turn comes up, their alarm will ring, advancing forward all of its allies' next turn. Weakness Breaking them will prevent their alarm from ringing.
• Turned Against Their Masters: They are artificial memoria constructs that were intended to serve guests or provide security. Due to absorbing negative emotions, many of them have glitched and become hostile. However, the ones that manage to retain their sanity decide to leave the Family anyways (such as Starlet), since they're basically treated as slaves.
• Vocal Dissonance: Beyond Overcooked may be a t-rex, but its roar when attacking is a shrill, high-pitched trumpeting sound.

The Dreamjolt Hostelry Gang

These particular Dreamjolt Troupe robots were effectively adopted by Siobhan out of sympathy, and she tries her best to tend to their issues by making drinks for them in the Dreamjolt Hostelry. They're featured in the event "Vignettes in a Cup".

They consist of: Spade the Spring Loader, Mr. Bigwig the Bubble Hound, Tin Man the Winder Goon, Lady the Mr. Domescreen, Melancholy the Birdskull, and Starlet the Sweet Gorilla.

Past, Present, and Eternal Show

Special members of the Dreamjolt Troupe that have fallen under the Order's influence, and endlessly perform Odes chronicling Penacony's past, present, and intended future.

The show's three sections are "Past Confined and Caged", "Present Inebriated in Revelry", and "Tomorrow in Harmonious Chords" (all elite).

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• Chain Pain: The "Past" can use their chained shackle as their right arm as its strongest attack. Its unique property is that it deals massive damage to a single target, but if other characters attack it, they'll also be targeted, and its damage will be distributed evenly among them.
• Early-Bird Cameo: They were first seen in Sparkle's trailer released during 2.0's time before they're released as enemies in 2.2.
• Musical Assassin: "Tomorrow" attacks your characters by playing music with its violin bow and strings of light generated from its fingers.
• Pipe Pain: The "Past" is armed with a pipe as one of its weapons.
• Status Infliction Attack:
  • The "Present" uses its goblet to pour toxic liquor that inflicts Damage Over Time (Shock or Wind Shear) onto your characters. It also has a special attack where, after a turn, it will activate all DOT's damage on your characters (like Kafka's Ultimate) before they're all dispelled.
  • One of the "Tomorrow's" attacks inflicts the "Alien Dream" status onto a single target. The affected character will be put to sleep and regenerate a few HP each turn they passed, but the next attack that hits them will be amplified, which will then "wake" the character up. Its strongest attack is to attempt to inflict Alien Dream onto all of your characters after a turn.
• Wolfpack Boss: When you fight 3 of them together, they're classified as a single boss, and they have Shared Life Meters. When all of them become Weakness Broken, their turns will be further delayed. They also have a Combination Attack in their second phase, which deals AOE damage, inflicts Shock and Wind Shear, and Alien Dream simultaneously.

Memory Zone Memes

Memes floating through the Memory Zone, they have matured into monsters of thought and concepts, and roam the distorted Dreamscape.

They consist of: Allseer, Heartbreaker, Something in the Mirror, Insatiable Vanity, and Shell of Faded Rage (elite).

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• Armored But Frail: Heartbreakers and Shells of Faded Rage have a variant - so long as their Toughness gauge is up, they gain the buff "Safeguard" which decreases the damage they take. Inflict a Break, and they will not only lose the buff, but take even more damage than usual and suffer much more pushback on the Action Initiative than other enemies.
• Equippable Ally: Insatiable Vanity will sacrifice itself on its first turn to grant "Deception's Crown" to a random enemy, which heals said enemy whenever they're attacked but confers up to two new weaknesses (Physical and Fire) and causes them to take increased Break damage. The "buff" is dispelled upon the enemy suffering a Weakness Break.
• Gathering Steam: The Shell of Faded Rage builds stacks of Obscure Blaze as it takes action, dealing additional hits with its Bonepiercing Odium attack for each stack. It can have up to five stacks, and loses all of them upon suffering Break; getting rid of the full five stacks at once gets you an achievement.
• Transformation Sequence: Something in the Mirror will do this at the very start of combat far ahead of anything else, shattering to reassemble as a random Mook from anywhere else in the game. This can lead to them becoming an Elite Mook as well, though they only inherit the respective moveset and not the HP or Toughness values to go with them, making them something of a Paper Tiger.

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Something Unto Death, Dormancy

The most dangerous entity that roams the dreamscape, granting a "spiritual death" to those unfortunate enough to meet it.

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• Eldritch Abomination: A memetic monster symbolizing "death" with a grotesque form with its head and neck consisting half of its body, multiple eyes on its body, unnatural body posture, and huge Razor Wings.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Misha and the residents of the Dreamflux Reef refer to it by the far more benign moniker of "Sleepie."
• Foreshadowing: Dr. Ratio's parting message to Aventurine read: "The impossible in the Dreamscape is not 'Death,' but rather 'Dormancy.'" Gallagher would later reveal this to be the true name of the meme.
• The Heartless: It's said to embody humans' fear of death and murder.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Its favorite method of attack is to impale its tail through its target, as can be attested by Firefly and Robin (if the state of her corpse is of any indication).
• Knight of Cerebus: Its appearance marked a darker turn of the story, with its murder of Firefly and Robin raising the stakes and making it clear that nobody is safe from it.
• Lightning Bruiser: It's durable enough that it could take a beating from both the Trailblazer and Black Swan without trouble, fast enough that nobody in the room could react when it ambushed Firefly, and its abilities allow it to practically One-Hit Kill its targets.
• Lost Pet Grievance: A species-inverted example. The "Scorchsand Vacation" quest available after the 2.2 Trailblaze Mission features the monster in a boss battle. Before and after said battle, its dialogue consists of it weakly calling out for Gallagher repeatedly. Considering that Gallagher is all but stated to be dead at that point and referred to Dormancy as his pet over text messages, the implication is that the latter is upset about Gallagher's absence and may not even be aware of his situation.
• The Man Behind the Monsters: At the start of "Cat Among the Pigeons", Aventurine suggests that someone is connected to the monster's appearance, though he believed that someone is Acheron, whose power as an Emanator could possibly break through the "thought barrier" that Penacony's Dreamweavers built to prevent the idea of death from occurring in the Dreamscape. Later, Sunday's notes suggest that there might be some hidden connection between the past murders done by the memory zone meme, so that someone might be behind it. In the end, it's revealed that "the man" in question is Gallagher.
• Non-Malicious Monster: According to Misha anyway, it's actually fairly well-behaved, if sometimes aggressive and mistake-prone. Its "murders" are actually just a means to ferry Dreamflux Reef residents back home after finishing work in Penacony's other dreamscapes.
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Dormancy is actually a guardian of the Dreamflux Reef who ferries dreamers from other Dreamscapes to the isolated 13th Dreamscape. However, the violent method with which it does its job has accidentally caused it to be perceived as malicious by the general public, a fact that Gallagher and Misha acknowledge.
• Only Mostly Dead: The boss's gimmick is that certain actions, such as "Fading Radiance" and "Toward Moonrise", "kill" characters and entrap their souls in Sombrous Sepulchers. They can be attacked by surviving party members; if they take damage from 5 separate actions (taking damage on a turn or a Damage Over Time effect) or their HP is reduced to 0, the Sepulchers will burst and free the trapped character, reviving them with half HP and immediately maxing their Energy. However, if all available party members are captured, this results in a Game Over. For the "Complete" version of the boss in Simulated Universe, the Sombrous Sepulchers will have increasingly more health.
• Status Buff: Its "Biting Obituary" move buffs its damage output for 1 turn, or until it gets Weakness Broken.
• Super-Persistent Predator: Despite Black Swan fending it off and giving some precious time for the Trailblazer and Firefly to escape, it keeps chasing after Firefly until it could ambush her and finish the job.
• Wrong Context Magic: It can seemingly cause lasting harm in a place where even the Memokeepers cannot due to the Harmony's blessings. This turns out to be a misunderstanding, but its true nature still fits the spirit of the trope: it is the memetic incarnation of the concept of sleep, something utterly alien to a dream world (hence Dr. Ratio's message to Aventurine; Gallagher outright says he's exploiting a loophole), which allows it to break its "victims" out of the Family's Dreamscape.

Lordly Trashcan

Entities in Penacony presumably born out of the Trailblazer's fantasies, said to be bearing the important mission of eliminating all waste that pollute the world.

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• Badass Armfold: Their default stance in battle.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: They can be easily summed up as "Malefic Ape, but stronger and more unpredictable". They have thick Toughness Gauge akin to an Elite or a Boss, they only attack one target at a time but can continuously buff their damage output, and unlike Malefic Ape, the buff raises exponentially, will never expire, and cannot be dispelled - if you take long enough to defeat them, their attack can even shred through your toughest shielded ally. However, you can apply up to 2 kinds of weakness onto them just by attacking them, and they'll be immediately defeated if they get Weakness Broken.
• Graceful Loser: Once they get Weakness Broken, they will gracefully bow to salute you, then walk away from the battlefield.
• Metal Slime: Just like Warp Trotters, they are part of the "treasures" of the given map. Uniquely, you have to talk to them first; depending on the individual trashcan in question and your dialogue choices, you can get your reward from them without fighting them, or you have no choice but to fight them.
• No-Sell: Lordly Trashcans are notably immune to attacks or Techniques from your allied characters in the overworld, preventing you from initiating combat with them directly.
• Roundhouse Kick: Their only method of attacking, including to ambush your character.

Others

Cocona

A luxury clothing store owner working in Penacony. The subject of the Adventure Mission "Envision a Rose Forthcoming".

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• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Cocona becomes playable in her emoscape.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: At one point, you fight Cocona's own ego - her "innocence, kindness, honesty and principles" - represented as Dreamjolt Troupe monsters.
• Beautiful Singing Voice: In the past, her teacher mentioned she had a natural talent for singing. In the present, if the Trailblazer saves her life, Cocona decides to commit to becoming a singer and becomes an instant success.
• But Thou Must!: As Cocona, you can repeatedly say to her parents that you want to become a musician, but eventually this option disappears from the dialogue entirely, and your only choice is to agree to their career idea.
• Dark and Troubled Past: To say Cocona had a rough life is a huge understatement. She had to live under Control Freak parents who trampled over her childhood dream to become a singer and instead forced to take a job she hated and was bullied in. Later, she attempted to leave Penacony for good with her fiance, but he tried to fund their trip with a massive bet he subsequently lost. Since he borrowed a huge sum of money from the Family, he subsequently disappeared (heavily implied to have been killed), leaving Cocona in despair and accepting her lot in life.
• Driven to Suicide: At the climax of her quest, Cocona considers jumping off the roof in her own emoscape. The Trailblazer can choose to intervene or let her jump. If you choose the former and keep going till the end, you'll succesfully prevent her suicide, and the next day, you can accompany her to sing in the crowd, where the people around her give their praises. If the latter is chosen, when the Trailblazer returns to reality, Cocona is missing, her shop is under new management, and the Family only vaguely mentions she won't be working any more, heavily implying she committed suicide in reality, as well.
• Empty Shell: When the Trailblazer first meets her, they can already tell that Cocona is emotionally dead and her chipper attitude is merely a front. This is due to the Family keeping her drugged with memory altering SoulGlad to suppress her negative emotions. If the Trailblazer intervenes, she becomes more open with her singing hobby, and while she continues to work in a career that she hates, she is more stable now and has reduced the amount of SoulGlad she needs to keep herself calm.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Cocona's parents hated her passion for music and forced her to enlist in a retail job because it paid well, causing her to give up her dreams of becoming a singer.
• Four Is Death: Inverted - when you try to prevent Cocona's suicide in the climax, you are prompted four times if you want to hold her hand.
• Soul-Sucking Retail Job: She hates her job due to the harassment she dealt with from coworkers on top of having her dreams as a singer crushed.

Tizocic II

A woman known in Penacony for her charity and kindness and for calling herself "Emperor." The subject of the Adventure Mission "Goodness is Rare."

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• Amnesiac Dissonance: Tizocic II is first introduced as a kind citizen of Penacony beloved by many. When her memories return, she learns that she was the mass-murdering tyrant of an empire. She decides to allow herself to be taken away to be judged for her crimes.
• The Atoner: She did a lot of good things in the Penacony Dreamscape to atone for the atrocities she committed in the past. When she's arrested in the end, the Trailblazer can tell her whether she can still atone or if she's Beyond Redemption.
• But Now I Must Go: In the end, she chooses to leave her life at Penacony and be judged by her world's people.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: When one of her ministers vocally opposes her carpet-bombing a city with a 4-million civilian population, she orders to throw him together with the bombs on that city.
• Disproportionate Retribution: She put her own chef to death for merely suggesting she eat ice cream before her meal, fearing that he was trying to poison her. She then later has on of her ministers executed because he was trying to help people suffering from a famine, and she feared this would make her look bad in comparison to him.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Once she rose to power, Tizocic II became a ruthless tyrant, killing anybody she even vaguely perceived as a threat to her rule. When she is finally arrested, it is revealed that she is personally responsible for the deaths of over 13 million people.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Once her memories are restored, she is utterly crushed by the horror of her past actions, especially killing the Gray Knight who had protected her since her childhood in a fit of paranoia, and sobs for several minutes before composing herself.
• Never My Fault: During her reign, she never takes responsibility for any of the atrocities she committed, either blaming her subordinates who were only following her orders, or gaslighting her opposition.
• Noble Top Enforcer: She had one of these back when she was the emperor of the Pupsha Empire, whom she called the "Gray Knight." The Gray Knight had Undying Loyalty to their emperor, but was still considered even by the rebels against Tizocic II as someone who could be reasoned with. Unfortunately, as her paranoia grew, Tizocic II had them killed.
• Taking Up the Mantle: After her arrest, an Intellitron lady takes up the title of Tizocic III to continue her legacy of good works on Penacony, even knowing she was a tyrant in her homeworld.
• Tragic Monster: She initially wanted to be a benevolent ruler, but witnessing her older brother being killed in a coup organized by her own sister, and getting into a power struggle with her regents who intended to use her as a puppet ruler badly traumatized her and she went through incredible lengths to ensure that nobody could betray her ever again.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: When she was a young girl, she wanted nothing more than to help the common people. But years of dealing with life-threatening politics and wars turned her into a cruel tyrant who killed anyone she feared threatened her life.
• Walking Spoiler: For her own Adventure Mission, due to Amnesiac Dissonance.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Pulls that on basically everyone who helps her at some point or other.
• You Remind Me of X: She gives the Trailblazer the title of "Gray Knight" after giving her some assistance. It turns out she subconsciously chose the title of her personal bodyguard from childhood. She continues calling the Trailblazer by Gray Knight after her memories are restored.

Lesley Dean

A superstar actor who passed at a young age and suddenly reappeared in the Dreamscape. The subject of the Adventure Mission "Cosmic Star".

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• Dead All Along: The real Lesley Dean is really dead, and the Dean that the Trailblazer meets is a synesthesia construct put together by his former personal assistant and some of his ardent fans.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Due to the Trailblazer using their Emotion Control powers to imbue him with the capacity for sadness, he starts realizing that something is wrong and starts becoming independent of his collective creators' intentions.
• Heroic Sacrifice: He decides to help cure the emotional traumas of the fans keeping his consciousness alive, otherwise they will destroy their own lives just to recreate a pale shadow of the real Lesley Dean. Dean succeeds with the Trailblazer's help, knowing very well that he will eventually disappear as a result of his own actions.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: He's likely based on Leslie Howard, an actor who died in an air crash, and James Dean, an actor who was famous for dying young.
• Oblivious to Love: The real Lesley Dean did not pick up any hints that his personal assistant was in love with him.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Upon finding out that he's only a simulacra of the real Lesley Dean, Dean enters the emoscapes of the fans supporting his consciousness to resolve the lingering traumas and regrets they suffered in the past that caused them to latch on to him, giving them a sense of closure so that they can live on without him.
• Tomato in the Mirror: While he initially is certain he is the real Lesley Dean, Dean suddenly begins to harbor doubts about his true nature after realizing he can't wake up from the dream, and asks the Trailblazer to check his hotel room in reality. He then finds out to his dismay that he is not the real Dean, but instead a memory construct created by his most ardent fans. He is horrified his fans would go to such lengths to create a pale copy of Dean and decides to put a stop to their plot. He is also disturbed to realize that he isn't "real", though towards the end, he decides to see himself as an extension of the original Lesley Dean.
• Tulpa: He is an artificially created one, generated by the pooled imaginations and Synthesia Beacons of his obsessed fans.
• Wetware CPU: Dean's existence is supported by several of his fans joining their consciousnesses together so that their collective memories of him can fill in his memoria bubble's lack of personality and sense of self. Gradually cutting them off from the network causes Dean's existence to fade away in the Dreamscape.

Lew Archer

A world-weary detective who used to work for the IPC.

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• Accidental Child-Killer Backstory: While working as an IPC detective, Lew accidently shot and killed a child who had been taken hostage by a fleeing criminal. This incident not only ended her career but is also the source of her present despair and self-hatred.
• Drowning My Sorrows: She spends most of her time at the bar, downing SoulGlad to forget her past mistakes.
• Gender-Blender Name: "Lew" is a male given name, and her namesake is a male character.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: Lew has tried to end her life several times before in the Dreamscape, but only succeeds in shocking herself back to reality. Once she’s returned to reality, she finds that she’s lost her nerve and returns to the Dreamscape to begin the cycle anew.
• Interrupted Suicide: The Trailblazer first encounters Lew when she’s on a bridge, about to jump off into incoming traffic.
• My Greatest Failure: Noka’s death is this for her.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Noka’s appearance in the Dreamscape is subject to this. The Trailblazer can choose to interpret her presence as either a therapy tactic employed by the Family or as a genuine case of ghostly intervention.
• Private Detective: After the Trailblazer helps resolve her emotional problems, Lew resolves to return to work as a private eye.
• Shout-Out: Named after Lew Archer, a popular fictional Hard Boiled Detective.

Emmrich

An ambitious and especially greedy Pepeshi inventor.

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• Ambulance Chaser: He is not only a patent troll, but actively looks for legal excuses to shut things down to squeeze out money. For example, posting his device to a telescope will not find any patent violations, but it will still shut the telescope down for discriminating against the Pepeshi because it wasn't designed with their height in mind.
• Industrialized Evil: He invents a special piece of paper that can be stuck onto any object in the Dreamscape. The paper analyzes the object for any patent or legal issues. If it finds any, it then disables the object until the owner disputes with him in court. The catch is, the paper will twist anything into benefitting him, so the poor objects are almost guaranteed to be disabled. He gloats that his invention will enable him to economically conquer Penacony. The Trailblazer worries that he stands a dangerously high chance of succeeding.
• Necessarily Evil: One doesn't need to go deep into his mission to figure out why the Family deemed it necessary to sabotage his mind. After his mission is over, the Trailblazer can conclude that as pitiful as he looks while sad, all of Penacony will probably be much safer if the Trailblazer uses their Emotion Control powers to leave him stuck in a depressed state.
• Pragmatic Villainy: If he is in a calm state, he will realize that shutting down public utilities to harass money out of the Family will probably be biting off more trouble than he can chew... So he decides to target dreamchasers (i.e visitors) instead.

Oksana

A woman claiming to be a philanthropist offering her aid to war-torn worlds.

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• Arms Dealer: This is her true job, which you find out after talking to 2 of her "clients".
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: At first she claims to be a philanthropist. Then she lets you carry out one of her deals, where she turns out to be smuggling arms to a group of rebels on another world. Then it turns out she's also been providing arms to the tyrannical government putting down the rebellion, Playing Both Sides in the name of profit. She tries to justify herself by saying that with her help the rebellion is holding out for longer than they would have otherwise, but in the end, it's clear that she only cares about making a profit and doesn't care how many lives she destroys in the process.
• Buy Them Off: After her true dealings are revealed and the Trailblazer confronts her about it, and her rationalizations failed, she resorts to bribe them with credits to let everything between them be water under the bridge. Interestingly, you can choose to deny (which prompts Woolsey the Bloodhound to appear and help you apprehend her), or accept the money and let your conscience move you to report her to Woolsey, or leave the place; you can get one of the 3 separate achievements for it.

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