Mike Aracter
Protagonist
A former gig-delivery courier who never left when the gates went up, because Halcyon Shores is the only home there is. Deadpan, sharp-tongued, allergic to sincerity even when he means it — and fully aware he's the one this keeps happening to, which reads as exhaustion more than heroism.
The sarcasm isn't covering for anything, it's the whole personality: Cleanline reads to him as a sellout corp playing dress-up rather than a real threat, and he's got a couple of lines he reaches for in almost any situation, neither of which answers the actual question. Somewhere under it he'd also like the city to treat him like the hero he's quietly convinced he already is — a real vanity, not modesty in disguise.
Genuinely, comedically afraid of heights, for a character who spends most of the game running along wires several storeys up. Can't leave loot behind. Video games, beer, a fairly committed pop-punk habit. Reads in red against the city's neon, and is the one person the game trusts to know it's a game — his name is not an accident, and nobody around him is going to let it go.
Twenty-four now, seventeen when it started. His tag is a crosshair, the same one that was printed on the shirt he wore most days back then. How he got through the first seven years is in the books.
Node
The Static — founder & leader
Founder of The Static. Before the outbreak she was a product researcher at Superboom, a beverages company, and a self-taught coder; now she runs the pirate broadcast and the hub. Forty-one, permanently sleep-deprived, wears the same three layers regardless of weather because the hub's power rig eats every spare hour that would otherwise go to laundry.
Talks in short, clipped sentences over comms and never repeats herself — Mike's learned that means listening the first time. The one person in the group who never makes a joke about the situation.
Socket
The Static — scavenger-inventor
Builds every weapon mod and traversal upgrade out of whatever's lying around. Twenties, permanently covered in solder burns, kitted out in old-school mining goggles and a spray-paint-tagged blacksmith's apron.
Comic relief, disproportionately proud of the acronym on one particular joke weapon, and narrates their own workbench out loud to nobody in particular. Treats every piece of Cleanline hardware Mike brings back as a personal insult worth reverse-engineering out of spite as much as necessity.
Vance
The Static — founding member
At the hub since day one. The crew's go-between for salvage trades and outside contacts — the one Static member even the skeptics warm to. Funny, easy company, and good at getting people to agree to things.
Lug
The Static — infrastructure mechanic
Keeps the hub's power, water and defences running. Late fifties, heavyset, grey-bearded, and never out of his plumber's overalls. A maintenance man in Node's apartment block before the outbreak, and still keeps an eye on her like a father would.
Cheerful, speaks in broken English with a Polish accent, calls every younger member "my child" and has a soft spot for anything small and furry. Laughs at Mike's jokes without getting them. The name is Node's: she calls him a big loveable lug.
Graf
The Static — muralist, leader of the taggers
Small, quick and hard to pin down, in an oversized paint-splattered hoodie and a full-face graffiti mask with red hair sticking out the sides. Leads the taggers, The Static's graffiti crew.
Born mute, she talks in spray paint instead, and her tag is a cartoon dinosaur. Mischievous, turns up and vanishes again without warning, and is the one person everyone at The Static agrees on.
Stick
The Static — recruit trainer
Real name Pietrov. Tall, alarmingly thin, lime-green mohawk, leather jacket a size too big, spiked combat boots. The crew call him Stick because he looks like a stick insect.
Loud, proud and military to the bone, barking orders at recruits all day and first to throw a punch when it kicks off. Before the outbreak he was an actor playing a guerrilla fighter, and he never quite stopped. He and Mike do not get on.
Hash
The Static — head of recon
A small, soft-faced man in a black hoodie, hood always up, with a lower-half hannya mask and a face full of scratches from the three cats that share his corner of the hub. Ex-British special forces, here because he got sick of the weather.
Speaks only in whispers that everyone else understands perfectly and Mike cannot make out a word of, which Mike takes personally. Has opinions about the Americans and the French.
Grabber
The Static — supply chain
Byorn, sixty-five, fit as anything, still in his old Pattagios Pizza delivery uniform and cap. Runs The Static's supply lines.
Talks entirely in a customer-service voice and thinks in logistics. He is who sends Mike out to find the parts Socket needs to build new weapons.
The Delios twins
The Static — research division
Identical twins who share one callsign, Faceoff, and work alongside Socket on new weapons and upgrades. Cut-off lab coats, paint splatters, glasses, and a lab that has never once been tidy.
Classic mad scientists: nothing excites them like more destructive power. Mike cannot tell them apart, so they have painted a 1 and a 2 on their heads.
Cordell
Rival crew boss, Marina Commons
Big, scarred, and certain Mike is trouble waiting to happen. Talks in short, blunt sentences and keeps a literal ledger of every favour owed and paid. He thinks about resistance in debts and margins, not principles.
The Hound
Warlord of the Junkyard Dogs
Never seen out of a battered dog mascot costume. He was a Buzzworks intern left with nothing when the company collapsed, stole the high school's Halcyon Shores Hounds costume on his way out, spent his trust fund on mercenaries and never took it off. He fights for territory, not a cause.