CAST
Warning: Character profiles may mildly spoil parts of the story related to thier introduction
Picture	TERRA BRADFORD (#255) Terra is a newly-created "Cetra", a half-Human, half-Esper hybrid. Her mother was human, but her father was a powerful esper called Maudin. Shinra found out about thier relationship (and, thus, the secret gateway between the Human and Esper worlds), and killed Terra's mother (Madonna). They also captured Maudin and Terra. Hojo, the shinra head scientist, wants to create a master race, and thinks Terra holds the key. She was raised in prison in Vector, the Shinra's main garrison town. When she was 10, she was fitted with a slave crown, to keep her quiet. The slave crown is run by a small nuclear battery, which normally kills it's victims. But as Terra is half-Esper, she is immune to radition. Though it did make her hair green. Failing to work out how to turn ready-born humans into Cetra, Hojo just dumped Terra into the pool of slaves. In late 2000, she was sent to Narshe with two Magitek soldiers, to retrieve a frozen Esper found in a cave. Hojo wanted to see how she would react to an Esper - but didn't get the chance to find out! It killed the two Magitek soldiers and deactivated the slave crown. Terra was then found by Locke, who got her to join the Returners As a Character, Terra is pretty crazy, and has a wierd sense of humour. She can be pretty prone to overkill in battle situations, though that's not saying much when you're taking about the Returners. She's one of the worst characters for rushing into things, rather than thinking them out... but, usually, her crazy lack of planning and use of over-the-top firepower ends up succeeding, anyway! Apart from the guns they all use, Terra's favoured weapon is the sword. She's also a powerful magic user, being half-Esper. In time, her kind can master level 4 magic - when typical materia-magic users can only get up to level 3. Thanks to slave crown programming, she can also drive and operate a surprising range of machines. Unlike the other Cetra, who have simply interbred with each other down the generations (but have still become necessarily "diluted"), Terra can turn into her Esper form, which is able to fly, shoot powerful magical blasts, and is resistant to most weapons.
Picture	LOCKE COLE Locke is a "treasure hunter", though sometimes the treasure is inside other people's houses. Rebel movements always attract his sort - he was not originally in the Returners, though knew his friend Edgar, a "king", was "high up" in them. As high up as you can get in an anarchist organisation, anyway. Meeting Terra, and seeing how she'd been treated, forced his hand. His hand was further forced when Shinra, seeing that somebody from Narshe was helping her, "punished" the whole town by shutting down several coal mines. They also killed lots of protesting miners. Locke likes to use knives and daggers. When it comes to shootin', he prefers laser and plasma weapons. He's not much of a magic user, but holds his own. He's also worked as miner before, so is slightly better with earth magic. He can also turn numerous tools to weapons in a pinch, and operate heavy machinery. He is fairly 'mature', as far as the Insanity Please characters go. He's been seen to criticise his friend Edgar's constant refrences to sex - when they aren't appropriate!
Picture	EDGAR FIGARO Edgar is the "King" of Figaro castle, capital of the Kingdom of Figaro. Of course it, and all other kingdoms, are really ruled by Shinra. Shinra originally paid Edgar lots of money to keep order in his kingdom - though actually he allowed his people a lot of freedom, more so than under many other local Shinra governments (where less-savvy rulers had been exiled, in favour of Shinra's own appointments), and didn't tax them very much. Never one to resist a pretty face - especially not one framed by green hair and on top of a body dressed only in a tight one-piece - Edgar gave Terra sanctury, not realising just how much Shinra wanted to recapture her. He found out when Kefka came calling, and so set himself up as a firm enemy of Shinra. Shinra later installed a puppet ruler in Figaro City, but his people are confident liberty will return, and the garrison of Figaro castle remains an independent, and effective, guerrila force. Edgar is a brilliant engineer, and Figaro Castle is actually a huge machine, able to bury itself and move around. This means Shinra can't establish their puppet ruler in the legitimate seat of Figaro's government - much to the annoyance of Rufus and Kefka! Edgars first great love is sex, and porn. He originally wormed his way into the position of Shinra's "anti porn tsar", his organisations work always hampered by mysterious tipoffs allowing underground pornography producers to escape Shinra raids just in time. He could never discover the leak in his organisation, probably because it was him! The pornographers all, eventually, escaped to Figaro castle, giving Edgar a virtual monopoly in this lucrative underground trade.
Picture	SETZER GABBIANI Setzer is a gambler who worships "lady luck". He also has a large and fast airship, which was built to his own design. He's been a member of The Returners since they were founded, and uses the airship to ferry them all over the world. It is equipped with powerful radar jammers, stealth technology and defensive weapons, though this doesn't stop Shinra forcing it down on one occasion (but they didn't know for sure that Terra was aboard, or that Setzer was a Returner, then!) Setzer doesn't really like violence, and hasn't been seen in many battles, preferring to just take people to and from them. When it comes down to it, he uses darts and razor-sharp 'throwing cards' (let's hope they're more effective that Miss Dynamite's, eh? - now there's a throwback reference for ya). He's also half-decent at magic, though prefers luck-based "slot magic", which is like Tarot but with an enchanted slot machine. He does own a BFG9000, which he captured from a Shinra officer, once (apparently in a card game!).
Picture	Celes Cherie Celes was once a general in the Shinra army, but defected after the Doma war of 1998. In the Shinra army, women were usually restricted to such jobs as nurses, filing clerks, cooks etc. Celes came from a well-off, military family, and both her parents were officers in the army. A rebel attack on their base almost succeeded in killing the commanding officer, but Celes stepped in and used cure magic to save him. She was given a "field commission", and, after the battle, went to officer training school. She turned out to be a brilliant tactician, and was promoted rapidly. Though sometimes she was able to pass other, more senior officers by "physical means". It's just the culture they have at Shinra. Making general rank at the astonishingly young age of 28, Celes was at the side of Grand Admiral Kefka, then commander of the Shinra navy, when they invaded Doma, the last non-Shinra-ruled kingdom. Celes, despite her rank, was still told that Doma was "supplying the rebels". She witnessed numerous atrocities, such as the poisoning of Doma castle's water supply, and the murders of civilians. She later helped a Doman officer escape, and arranged for him to ship out the nation's unused, advanced military equipment (starved of fuel before the war by Doma's "allies", Shinra) to the Returners. Celes was captured after this, and put in prison. Suspecting she knew where the Returner's secret base was, Shinra tortured her, and later fired a missile at her home town, in an effort to get her to speak. She still didn't, then Locke. Terra and Edgar rescued her. Celes, like Terra, loves firepower - only she's possibly even more into overkill. Her favourite weapon, also like Terra, is still a sword, though. As a brilliant military tactician, and well-versed in Shinra's ways (plus the favoured tactics of the specific Shinra officers opposing them), Celes is a vital addition to the Returners, though a number of them are suspicious of her true motives - she could be a spy! Unlike the game (apart from the fact she was somehow a general at 18 in it!), Celes is muscular and physically strong, even stronger than some of the guys, like Edgar. She's also less crazy and more logical than many of the others - no wonder she's into Locke.
Picture	Relm Arrowny Relm is a 10 year old girl from the town of Mobliz, which is on the northern tip of the western continent, above Wutai. Mobliz was destroyed by the missile that Shinra fired to persuade Celes to talk, and the chemicals released caused a zombie plague. Relm hid in the ruins of the town, stealing canned food and fighting zombies, until eventually she was left as the only survivor of the city. Terra and Edgar, investigating the ruins, found her in a video rental shop, and took her with them. Relm is like a young version of Terra, she thinks huge, powerful weapons are toadally ossum. She can hold her own in battles, having survived a zombie apocalypse, though Celes doesn't like the idea of bringing her along. Her favoured weapons are knives, and she can also use "pictomancy", which involves creating a painting of somebody that comes to life and attacks them. She's also good at sneaking and hiding, having had to survive a zombie apoclaypse, and also from being very small.
Picture	Cloud Strife Cloud is an ex-Shinra soldier who quit after the Doma war, because he also witnessed atrocities. He joined an anti-Shinra group in Midgar, called Avalanche. This group was primarily into saving the environment, and performed terrorist attacks on the Mako reactors dotted around the city. They beleived that Mako reactors sapped the "lifestream" or "force" surrounding the planet and, as they produce materia as a side-effect, were really a means to produce more weaponary for Shinra. After attacks on several reactors, Shinra set ambushes at the next likely target, killing the Avalanche members Biggs, Wedge and Jesse. Tifa and Cloud, rightly suspecting that Shinra's secret police would be onto them in short order, got out of the capital and linked up with the Returners. This was despite Cloud's initial misgivings that The Returners were pacifists... yyyyeah... Cloud's traditional weapon is the gigantic Buster Sword, which, unlike most character's traditonal weapons, he has actually used in the strip.
Picture	Tifa Lockheart Tifa is Cloud's childhood friend, she left thier hometown of Nibelheim to start up a bar in Midgar. When Cloud joined Avalanche and re-met her, this bar became an Avalanche safe house. Like Celes, Tifa likes big weapons such as rocket and grenade launchers, though she's not as good with them. She's also more sensible than Celes... usually, but does like to pretend she's in an action movie. She also packs knuckle dusters with materia in them. Unlike FF7, there's no false-memory, personality-stealing nonsense in the backstory of Insanity Please, they just actually were friends in Nibelheim and Cloud did actually join the army, then quit later.
Picture	Jessie, Biggs and Wedge Other members of the Midgar-based Avalanche group. They were all killed in an attack on a Shinra mako reactor, after being ambushed by a magitek armour.
Picture	Vincent Valentine Vincent was a Shinra employee in the 1970's, he wasn't paid much, so volunteered for a perfectly safe and harmless biological experiment... which turned him into a vampire / transforming beast. Hojo covered this up by shooting his girlfriend and cryogenically freezing Vincent in a secret lab in Nibelheim. The cryogenic unit failed in the late 90's, and Vincent haunted the lab, going out at night to drink the blood of animals. He was letting the world pass him by, and gathering the courage to kill himself, when the Returners came calling. He then decided to fight for a worthy cause, and hopefully take down Hojo into the bargain Vincent likes pistols, just like in the game. He can also transform, though only into one creature, which is a sort of distorted giant bat thing. The experiment was actually an attempt to inject him with treated Esper cells, which would hopefully give him the same transforming abilities as a Cetra.
Picture	Maudin Maudin is Terra's father. He was guarding the gateway to the Esper World when Madonna, a human woman, stumbled on it. They became lovers and Madonna had Terra. Unfortunately Shinra found out about the Esper World, and Hojo was commissoned to harness the amazing magical powers of espers for Shinra's use. Several Espers were captured, including Maudin, and kept sedated inside magically-sealed chambers. Madonna was unceremoniously shot, and the gateway blown up to prevent the other Espers attempting a rescue. Maudin was held inside the Magitek facility in Junon, until the Returners attempted a botched rescue. Celes did manage to damage the chamber containing Maudin just enough for him to revive and escape. Unfortunately the Esper World gateway was no longer present, so Espers automatically vanish back to their world after a few minutes. He wasn't able to explain this to Terra until much later... which was not at all a hasty retcon of a previously unplanned, nonsense story.
Picture	Shiva One of the Espers from Final Fantasy 6, and a summon from Final Fantasy 7, Shiva is actually named after a character from Hindu mythology, and so is likely to be "corrected" to something neutral by western translators, before long. Anyway, though the Hindu character is a man, the Final Fantasy Shiva is the blue-skinned goddess of ice, who appears in pretty much all of the games as an ice-based summon magic. In Insanity Please, Shiva is one of the Espers who is still living in Esper World, she contacts Terra in her dreams, and also brings a vision of Maudin (held prisoner in Junon) into the dream. As in the games, Shiva is an ice goddess, and uses an attack similar to her FF7 ability, Diamond Dust.
Picture	Sabin Figaro Sabin is Edgar's twin brother, though apart from that, they aren't really alike. Edgar was born only minutes before Sabin, so was the eldest son and thus the next in line for the throne. Sabin was resentful of this when he was younger, but after getting super-angry one night decided to run away and join a monastery, to calm himself. He later joined a martial arts dojo in Cosmo Canyon, Doma. He later joined the Doman army when Shinra invaded, and got captured. He was held in prison in Vector for two years, until the returners rescued him, pretty much by accident. Physically speaking, Sabin is easily the strongest human character. His favoured traditional weapon is clawed gloves, though he hasn't even been seen wearing them in the strip (so far). He also has a grenade launcher called the "Boom-O-Matic", and is strong enough to dual wield Shinra's usually-mounted MFG3000 guns.
Picture	Yuffie Kisragi Yuffie is from Wutai, which was Shinra's second major conquest. Wutai was a sealed kingdom for centuries, until the middle of the 19th century, when it opened up to the world and rapidly modernised and "easternised" (this world's version of "westernised"). Seeing how the fledgling Midgar Empire was already eyeing up foreign conquests, Wutai developed a powerful military, and later decided to bring it's southern neighbour Zozo into it's own Empire as part of a "Western Mutual Protection Sphere". The alleged cruelty of this empire (alleged by the no-less-cruel Midgar/Shinra Empire) led to World War 2, and the defeat of Wutai, helped by the discovery and use of the powerful spell Ultima. Since then, Wutai has become a dumbed-down protectorate of Shinra, as has the "liberated" Zozo. Anyway, Yuffie is also a "treasure hunter", with a predeliction for Materia. She stowed away on a VTOL plane that the Returners were using at the time, and was captured along with them. Still in hiding, she took advantage of her position inside a secure Shinra base to slip out and swipe Materia from all over. When the Returners attempted an escape, she chopped off Kefka's arm and rescued them.
Picture	Aeris Gainsborough Aeris is an "Ancient", the other name for the Cetra. A very few of them survived the ancient war and subsequent purges against them, and were able to keep themselves hidden. They generally had children with each other, though some human blood inevitably crept in, and so they lost the ability to transform down the ages. Aeris was hiding in plain sight, working at a Shinra Air Force base, when aliens visited the Insanity Please world. Aeris saw their ship, and Shinra Men in Black kept trying to incompetently assasinate her. Eventually they just kidnapped her, but she was able to un-tie herself and strangle the driver of the van she was in with a coat hanger. This caused him to crash into the back of Terra's car (on a desert road, with no other cars around for miles), and so Aeris met the Returners. Being a Cetra, aeris has powerful magic ability. Her traditional weapon is a staff, which also functions as a big wand and directs her spells
Picture	Me I had "depression" when I was originally making this comic. That is, the "depression" first-world teenagers get over trivial shit (see: the politics of this comic!). I imagined a magical portal appearing in my bedroom, and jumping into it, to end up in the world of Insanity Please. Then, having no better story ideas, actually put myself into the comic! My hair was short at the time, so the trip through the magical portal grew it. Anyway, In the strip, I'm still a teenager, and me and Minny show up on occasion to mock the storyline
Picture	Aetha Aetha is a fire / "volcanic" elemental Esper, who is otherwise like a red Shiva. There probably is a "volcano god" in the religion of somewhere like Hawaii or western South America, but I didn't think to go and look one up. Please don't think I was trying to be respectful of traditional and indigenous minority religions by making up my own volcano goddess, I really wasn't. Her main spell is Pyroclastic Flow... which is esentially just a real-world pyroclastic flow that erupts from her hands. She was killed in the Esper War by Shinra's Omnitank.
Picture	Bahamut Bahamut is the king of the Espers. His name sounds like it's also something from an Indian religion, so no doubt will be "corrected" to something neutral (or Japanese) by western translators before long. Anyway he is a dragon who appears as a summon in various Final Fantasy games, often as one of the most powerful ones in the game. In Final Fantasy 7, he actually has multiple forms of increasing power (the final one being the most powerful summon in the game, if you don't grind to get the super-secret (and somewhat game-breaking) Knights of the Round). In Insanity Please, Bahamut is also able to transform into various forms, which can cast various types of mega-powerful spell. Many of these are non-elemental, which is the rarest and most deadly form of attack magic.
Picture	Banon Banon is the leader of the Returners. He has a beardy-wierdy leftist street corner orator apperance.
Picture	RPG Geek I was once reading a guide to Final Fantasy 8 (a game I dropped because of it's alleged "pro-government stance", as FF7 didn't actually replace the destroyed Shinra with anything in the plot, I just decided it was an "Anarchist" game by default, and FF8 was "selling out".) and, by the sounds of things, you spend most of the latter part of FF8 casting attack spells on yourself. because the enemies all use the Reflect spell, so you have to also use reflect and bounce spells off it. I put this guy in to ridicule that a bit.
Picture	Ifrit Ifrit is a fire-elemental summon, who is one of the earliest ones you get in Final Fantasy 7. He looks like a giant devil, who creates a huge fireball around himself and then charges the enemy.
Picture	Odin Odin is the father of the gods in the Nordic pantheon (his Anglo-Saxon equivalent was Woden), and the god of wisdom and knowledge. Localisers will likely not be correcting his name, as northwestern Europeans who revere thier own indigenous gods are not "empowered" or "traditional", but just weird, backwards idiots. White people are just brainless, emotionless blank slates, anyway. You can insult and ridicule them as much as you like, and they'll never do anything about it ;). In FF7 he appears as a black-clad knight in an awesome summon sequence, which causes instant death to weak enemies... though he is mainly used against bosses, so his less-impressive alternate summon plays instead. In Insanity Please, he is also a black-clad knight who uses his lance or glowing sword to inflict non-elemental magical, and powerful physical, damage.
Picture	Kintaro I have an old Japanese story paper, which has the story of Kintaro in it. But I didn't know he was a ubiquitous character of Japanese folklore at the time, and assumed he was a "little girl with super powers" (oh, I also can't read Japanese and was just going off the pictures). I put him in as an Esper, thinking it would be an amusing reference to this character who appeared in one Japanese magazine in 1917, only to confuse a Japanese friend greatly. Anyway, in Insanity Please, Kintaro remains a little girl with super powers. Those powers being the ability to chop stuff up with a fucking gigantic axe
Picture	Ramuh Ramuh is another Hindu character, the god Rama, who is very different to the cowled old man of his Final Fantasy summon apperance (he looks more like Old Father Time, which is what modern western localisers will probably start "correcting" his name to, to avoid cultural appropriation / misappropration on alternate thursdays). Anyway, in Final Fantasy 7 and Insanity Please he is a thunder god who creates powerful lightning attacks.
Picture	Titan Titan is an Earth elemental summon from FF7, who lifts up a great slab of ground and flips it, with the victim still standing on it. He is much the same in Insanity Please, only he looks like a truck-sized skin'ead. He got his head blown off in the Esper Wars.

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