Characters





This is the avatar. It can be either a man or a woman, or somewhere in between, depending on the player's responses in the initial dream sequence at the start of the game.

Eleuia is the head doctor, very ambitious and hard working, but sometimes confused about what is best for the common good. Personality is very guilt driven but also very acquiescent. This leads to always planning to do it better the next time, to resolve the guilt by doing something right to make up for it, but instead feeling more guilty because of bowing to another's will. Eleuia becomes a person wracked by guilt and always feeling less and less strong enough to oppose the will of another. When the problems arise on the colony, Eleuia finally sees a way out of the mess, maybe to erase the guilt but also to erase the weakness, all of theirs.



This is Ida, the ecologist for the colony. She is interested in systems and how everything fits together - she is very philosophical; she always is able to clearly see the bigger picture, but has trouble understanding details. She is interested in social interaction itself as a system; she sees life as a game, and is always taking chances and examing everything with curiosity. . She is younger than most of her colleagues, and it is in fact the reason she was chosen for this assignment. Not because of her age, but because of her ambition. She was a student of Stanovene's at the school where Leo was also a prominent professor. She was the most talked about student in school, with the most astounding grades as well as the drive to do something truly great. Ida would go on to develop closed loop eco-systems, which would become vital for feeding off world cities. Fully aware of her own practical value to major corporations and projects, she bargains for employment that guarantees expensive and autonomous research. She is aware that the corporation has been strip mining planets, irrevocably damaging natural systems and that these events are suppressed from reaching the scientific community. Ida is complicit to these events until they stumble upon this planet. It has an extensive ‘forest’ covering the surface and consequently, an extensive reserve of rare materials. Under her new contract she assembles a team to undertake a comprehensive study of the planet. She specifically advocates for Stanovene to be hired on to the project. Ida is aware that new compounds exist in and under the surface. Of all the characters, she was the first and most aware of the possibly dangerous properties in the planet. However, if/when she is implicated for such awareness, she is unapologetic. She is meticulous, she always makes note of everything she might need to reference later on. She speaks in short sentences, always direct and to the point. She has a good grasp on long term thinking, but she does not hold "what could happen" as important - instead she will look ahead to be able to focus more on the present. For example, she is always dressed practically, knowing that being hampered by her clothing would be a nuisance, and so is prepared for any occasion with all-weather clothing with many pockets to hold her notes and samples and tools.




Stanovene is the biologist for the colony. She is, in a way, the opposite of Ida: she is obsessed with the details, but not great at seeing the larger picture. Stanovene is very blunt about everything, and has trouble trusting almost everyone. She is married to Leo; they fell in love with each other's ambitions and lofty ideals. It was always their idea to go off and start a new life on a new planet where they would control and discover everything together. She is very analytical but her decisions always lack a sense of balance; she minimizes facts that don't support her arguments and so is always looking at life from a very skewed position. Stanovene is very much trapped in her head; she always wants to personally make things right and perfect, but fails to consider the future and is thus constantly running into problems of her own making. Having to deal with so many setbacks and ultimate failures, that she refuses to see that she created, she lives with the bitterness of looking back on what she feels has been a disappointing life. Because she has learned to take matters into her own hands, she has no patience or reason to expect that conversing with someone will affect their course of action. She will subvert someone she feels is doing the wrong thing in order to make things right.




The colony's architect is Leo, Stanovene's husband. He loves being in control but doesn't really have the personality to hold onto that control very well. He wants things his way all the time, his vision is of utmost importance, and he draws people in with debate only to drive them off again. He doesn't feel quite comfortable with having people on his side, so even though he is constantly trying to prove that his way of thinking is right, if someone completely agrees with him he will still find a way to show them that they are wrong somehow. He likes being alone with his ideals because it makes him feel superior. He has no capacity for criticism, he doesn't even hear it. His work was always rushed through without much careful consideration, which is a similarity that made his marriage with Stanovene work for so long. When he meets Amin, he feel re-engergized by the younger man's ability to debate with such wit and charisma about topics that he loves.

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Leo and Stanovene have quietly dismantled their marriage. Once they were in love with each other and shared an idealism. They knew each other for years before finally admitting to be in love with one another. As soon as they did, their lives fell into place and their careers took off. Stanovene accomplished ground breaking research. while Leo’s firm succeeded in implementing theoretical ideas into large scale projects. The momentum seemed to grow exponentially. Then their careers suddenly slowed considerably, taking a back seat to the emerging younger generation. They accepted it, and took up professorships at a prestigious university.

Stanovene had moved on from biological research to activism, in order to reinvigorate herself. With no shortage of causes to get behind she used her status to put a spotlight on pressing issues. But the opposing interests continued to prevail despite her best efforts. It feeds her growing pessimism. Leo phased himself out of his own firm. His partners, who viewed him as visionary in the beginning, had come to see him as a liability. Leo’s patience for practical concerns had diminished, and he could no longer persuade clients of his ideas in their ‘pure’ form. He concentrates on producing literature and models. His reasoning becomes more and more abstracted by his internal logic, disinterested in making the effort to explain himself to others.

Teaching is something he enjoys on a confrontational level. His work is considered sanctimonious and irrelevant to the new students, and he frequently challenges them, arousing heated debates. His students are typically young, still forming their positions and ideas. Debates flare out frequently, whereby Leo belittles the skepticism of his students. His classes are considered a spectacle.

For nearly 3 decades their passions have slowly died. They witnessed their ideas and work transform into textbooks of the likes they used to ignore. Their marriage begins to suffer, being so closely entangled with their professional lives. By the time they’re approached with a unique opportunity off world, their marriage has all but fallen apart.

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Amin, the engineer for the mining operation, is very direct and no-nonsense. He is very funny and quite likable, making him a fairly popular boss while highly recommended by his superiors, which is why he made it so far up the ladder in the corporation. Organization is what has gotten him ahead; he knows how to keep a schedule and how to get everything done on time. He stays perfectly on top of every aspect, demanding the same of the managers below him. Unlike most of the other four, he is constantly thinking about the future and planning ahead, analyzing every possibility until he has quite a good grasp on what the probability of certain events are. In this way he can separate complex ideas into logical conclusions, and everything becomes black and white once he has thoroughly analyzed it. His personality was formed this way because of a tumultuous past that he refuses to think about. He has chosen work and being great at his job over leading any sort of personal life, and he gotten very far because of this. Stability and predictability he holds as the most important aspects of life; he has never learned anything positive from failure and does not take risks. He once did more engineering work, full of discovery and what could be, and was excited to look at new planets because they hold so much possibility. He quickly learned that new planets held nothing more than minerals to be mined, and his hopes died out. He accepted promotion into higher and higher roles away from innovation and towards enforcement and project management, and when he gets to this planet his sense of stagnation is as high as Stanovene and Leo's.

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Leo and Amin fall in love for many reasons. Leo sees Amin as a direct and honest person, with an uncluttered perspective on life. His previous hardships make Amin more attractive to Leo. Amin is intelligent enough to learn and then debate big ideas with Leo, but with a tone that has no academic flavor. This makes Leo feel as though his work has an unpretentious relevance, and his ego flies. Amin is living vicariously through Leo’s work. He marvels at how his rational systems are contorted into rationalized sculptures. To Amin, Leo is a filter, whom he freely uses just to see the creativity. After years of corporate life and trivializing personal relationships, he is finally having an interaction he cares about. Amin sets the stage for Leo to design and implement every new structure on the planet. Though the two are clearly in love with one another it never consummates. From the outside it would appear that Leo is too cynical to pursue anyone. Amin is more in love with what Leo does and it blinds him to a degree of who Leo really is.

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Credit for design to Statue Sculptures


Jian is the handler sent by the corporation to resolve the issues between the five and to report back to the company on what was really going on. He is a simple man, more down to earth than any of the others left on the planet, and much better at getting to the bottom of conflict. He also happens to have been an engineer at one point, so the corporation trusts him to go down and look at how exactly the mining operation was going at the time when all of this happened, as well as look around for information on all of the people left on the planet before he consults with them.

Soundtrack