[CHAR] The Stars Cast Down Their Cold Gaze

Important NPCs

CETM Command

Oleander, Margaret

Name: Secretary Oleander, Margaret
Position: Director of CETM
Gender: Female
Age: 67
Personality:

Professional, rational, cold. Secretary Oleander is calm, commanding, and sometimes intimidating. She is not afraid to take risks and is always weighing the pros and cons, always considering whether the expedient approach or the long-term plan is better. Some say she is too cutthroat, too willing to sacrifice the few for the many, but the way she sees it, she will do anything to ensure that mankind survives. Secretary Oleander was an unassuming, but efficient aide to the United States Defense Secretary. After the Defense Secretary's untimely death during the first extraterrestrial incident, Oleander assumed the position briefly before she was nominated for her current post. Oleander oversaw the founding of CETM and the Four Projects, showing enormous success during subsequent extraterrestrial incidents. Not one to sit on her laurels, and with the foresight to anticipate more dangerous incidents to come, Oleander plans to build on her success and innovate the Projects even further.

Ning, Nicole

Name: Ensign Ning, Nicole
Position: CETM Command Center Communications Officer
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Personality:

Kind, earnest, detail-oriented. Nicole doesn't speak very much, mainly due to shyness, but she likes to help others. She likes to bake, which she picked up from her father who runs a bakery, and loves stuffed animals shaped like desserts. Has horrible, horrible aim. Nicole was enamored with the concept of CETM, so she studied and worked hard until she was granted the option to transfer to CETM.

Project Olympian

Kawakami, Manaka

Name: Dr. Kawakami, Manaka
Position: Olympian Project Lead, Chair of the Department of Sociology
Gender: Female
Age: 37
Personality:

Empathic, cheerful, observant. Manaka is one of the few humans privy to the Hyperian social theory known as the central dogma of xenoarcheology, and though her primary interest is learning how Hyperian civilization developed as a way to forecast how human civilization might also develop, the space monsters also intrigue her.

Kawakami, Shinobu

Hyper Man X

Name: Kawakami, Shinobu
Position: Hyper Man X's human host
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Personality:

Shinobu is a gentle soul burdened with the responsibility of protecting humanity. Haunted by dark secrets of the universe, Shinobu tries his best to live up to expectations. Shinobu keeps others at arm's length out of fear of divulging confidential knowledge.

Project Titan

Park, Raymond

Name: Dr. Park, Raymond
Position: Titan Project Lead, Chair of the Department of Biology
Gender: Male
Age: 35
Personality:

Laidback, easygoing, genius. Raymond is surprisingly young for a man in his position. To many, he may appear lazy, but most of his greatest ideas come to him when he is relaxing, making him more of a 'creative' and 'inspired' scientist than others who tend to 'brute force' their way to scientific progress. Unfortunately, Raymond's proclivity towards less-than-ethical scientific practices has gotten him censured in the past, but his intellect earned him a place at CETM.

Ryeong, Mu Myeong

Vega Titan

Name: Ryeong, Mu Myeong
Position: First Titan
Gender: Female
Age: 12
Personality:

Mysterious, clingy, agitated. Mu Myeong has known only CETM for her whole life and views its members like an unstable family. She finds it difficult to gauge social distance, wanting emotionally to be part of something greater, while being forced to maintain professional distance due to what she is and her role.

Project Colossus

McCulloch, Helen

Name: Dr. McCulloch, Helen
Position: Colossus Project Lead, Chair of the Department of Physics
Gender: Female
Age: 40
Personality:

Sullen, callous, alienating. Helen is a workaholic who expects the same commitment from her peers and underlings. A purist, she is skeptical of employing Hyperians and monsters for protection, and worries about what horrors that space monster-based research may bring, and therefore feels that her position as a naysayer within CETM is crucial to keep things from getting out of hand.

Project Myrmidon

Tsukamoto, Yuu

Name: Major General Tsukamoto, Yuu
Position: Project Myrmidon Lead, Major General of the Japan Self-Defense Force
Gender: Female
Age: 31
Personality:

Strict, disciplined, scrutinizing. Meta-Tokyo is protected by a branch of the JSDF under Yuu's command. It is not only her duty to ensure that the city defenses aid the CETM Projects in their tasks, but also to subdue them should they ever turn on the humans. She does not know if her small army is up to such a task.

Tokyo University Faculty

Yunus, Selim

Name: Dr. Yunus, Selim
Position: Chair of the Department of Engineering
Gender: Male
Age: 74
Personality:

Jovial, curious, philosophical. Selim is an accommodating man who collaborates closely with Meta-Tokyo's defensive infrastructure. The existence of extraterrestrial life challenges his beliefs, but that has only led him to be more welcoming of aliens than many of his peers, as he wishes to ask them about their beliefs in an attempt to find some common, higher, metaphysical truth.

Nihei, Iori

Name: Dr. Nihei, Iori
Position: Postdoctoral fellow, Department of Chemistry Liaison to CETM
Gender: Nonbinary
Age: 27
Personality:

Calm, practical, level-headed. The actual chair of the chemistry department refused to work with CETM, and offloaded his responsibilities onto one of his postdocs, Iori, who has done an excellent job so far despite being under tremendous inter-departmental pressure. Iori recognizes the dangers that empowering space monsters can pose, and cautiously weighs the benefits against the risks, while being cognizant of what safety precautions may or may not be in place. They recognize that CETM plays fast and loose when it comes to risky experiments, but understands that such loosening of standards is for confronting the looming crisis.

Sekigahara, Manabu

Name: Dr. Sekigahara, Manabu
Position: Chair of the Department of Psychology
Gender: Male
Age: 43
Personality:

Reluctant, non-committal, overwhelmed. Manabu has been tasked with psychologically profiling and providing emotional support to the CETM combatants, a seemingly monumental and absurd task, which he will tackle as part of his job, but his belief of his odds of success can be plainly seen on his face. Given that some space monsters have displayed the ability to control minds, he worries that he will be the first to be manipulated.

Omniac

Name: Omniac
Position: Chair of the Department of Computer Science, Meta-Tokyo Information Network's SSS-Class Artificial Intelligence Administrator
Gender: Non-gender, Male
Age: 50
Personality:

Utilitarian, pedantic, restricted. Development of the city-wide supercomputer known as Omniac began long before the arrival of Hyper Man, but has been commandeered by CETM to run the city of Meta-Tokyo. Over time, it has developed a human-like sentience, and has been given a physical, mechanical but human-like body with which to interface with humans. When the previous chair of the CS department retired, Omniac was appointed to the position. Though he does not do his own research, his high-level administrative capabilities have secured him the position term after term. Though Omniac has massive control over the city, he worries what will happen to him if he makes a mistake or oversteps his authority