Signalis Characters: Every Replika and Human Explained

Signalis has a small cast, and most of it is dead, dying or not quite who it seems by the time Elster arrives. There are two kinds of people in the game: humans, which the Eusan Nation calls Gestalts, and Replikas, biomechanical copies of a chosen human's mind. Every Replika model is named after a bird and shares one face and personality. This guide covers each important character and model, what the game states about them and which points are fan theory. It has full spoilers. (Signalis)

Elster (LSTR-512)#

Elster is the player character, an LSTR unit. The letters stand for the German Land Survey/Ship Technician Replika, and Elster means magpie. Her model's overview calls LSTRs Generation 5 combat engineers for orbital service, "tough and stoic loners" in white and blue armour. Their template was a Vinetan soldier, and the Penrose Program's classified notes tell officers not to talk to the unit about the war, show it photos of soldiers, or try to befriend it. (Signalis)

The Elster the game opens with is looking for a missing crew member. For half the game she believes it is Alina Seo. The false ending reveals it is Ariane Yeong, the pilot she lived with and loved aboard the Penrose-512, and that she promised to end Ariane's suffering when the ship began to fail. (Signalis)

What is stated. The original Penrose Elster died before she could keep that promise; examining her body brings up her thought that she fell ill too. The LSTR overview says the original neural pattern was lost when the archive on Vineta was destroyed, and that new LSTRs were built from a decommissioned Penrose unit. Elster also finds dozens of dead Elsters at Sierpinski. (Signalis)

What is theory. Most players think the Elster we play is not the Penrose original but a later copy carrying her memories, and that every dead Elster is an earlier attempt at the same search. Which soldier her template was is also argued over. The Unit 12 photo lists names such as Anna Huang and Lilith Itou, and fans split between them; the game never says. (Signalis)

Ariane Yeong#

Ariane Yeong is the Gestalt pilot of the Penrose-512 and the person the whole story revolves around. Her medical record says she was born on Leng and lived on Rotfront, working as a radio officer, with insomnia, bruising and premature greying. Her teacher called her "remarkably odd" and blamed her love of painting and music on her childhood at a remote radio outpost with her mother. (Signalis)

At school in Rotfront Sektor C she was bullied, and became friends with the Itou twins when Erika stepped in to stop it. She worked at her family's photo store, read banned Imperial books and once tried to buy The King in Yellow from the Itou bookstore before the Protektors took it. After military service she applied to the Penrose Program. If she had not been accepted, she would have been sent to S-23 Sierpinski. (Signalis)

On the Penrose her notes go from relief at being free, to talking to her Elster unit, to teaching her to dance and falling in love. After the programme's final phase began at cycle 3000, the ship failed and Ariane slowly died: hair loss, lost teeth, sleeplessness and pain. She ended up in the ship's cryo pod, where every ending finds her. (Signalis)

What is theory. The most popular reading of the game is that Ariane is bioresonant, able to bend minds and the world, and that Sierpinski, the loop and Rotfront are her dying dream. Adler's dream of testing a white-haired woman with planet cards points that way. The game never says outright that she is bioresonant. (Signalis)

Falke (FKLR)#

Falke, falcon, is the Generation 6 bioresonant command model that leads the Protektor force at every AEON facility. Her overview describes her as a near god-like figure, built to look like the Nation's leaders, the Great Revolutionary and her Daughter, whose bioresonance can bend weaker minds and move objects at a distance. (Signalis)

S-23 Sierpinski's Falke went beyond the red gate below the mines. Her diary says the red eye there poisoned her with another person's memory, of a crashed ship, a hole in the ground and a promise, until she could not tell where Falke ended and Elster began. She fell ill, and the sickness spread through the facility. Near the end Elster finds her floating above her bed, insisting that they are both incomplete and should become whole again. Elster kills her with her own spears. (Signalis)

What is theory. Some players think Falke, not Ariane, is the dreamer behind the loop, since a note about the dreamer sits in a corrupted room resembling her quarters. Others see her as a second, rival copy of Elster's love for Ariane. (Signalis)

Adler (ADLR)#

Adler, eagle, is the facility administrator, a Generation 5 model built as the Falke unit's adjutant, and one whose known issues warn it usually becomes very emotionally dependent on its commander. He kept a diary, and several versions of it survive. Together they show the same week at Sierpinski repeating: each time he finds the same puzzle box, the same blank notebook and the same memory of an Elster engineer no one else remembers. By his last entries every page is dated 84-21-D, and he feels something calling him from the mine. (Signalis)

In the game he pushes Elster down a lift shaft, hunts Isa through the mines until she stabs his eye, and waits at the red gate. At the end he tries to stop Elster crossing again, calling her a selfish monster and warning that the world cannot take much more. He stabs her eye; she shoots him. (Signalis)

What is theory. Adler is often read as the one character who knows the world is repeating and tries, badly, to hold it together. When he finally gives in he quotes The King in Yellow ("I wear no mask"), which many players take as a sign the book's influence has got him. (Signalis)

Kolibri (KLBR)#

Kolibri, hummingbird, are small Generation 6 bioresonance units that serve the Falke as a cadre, sharing thoughts like a hive mind. Their known issues warn that if most of a cadre degrades, it drags the rest down. At Sierpinski that is exactly what happened. Corrupted Kolibris attack Elster's mind with flashing text and fake copies of themselves, and the radio is the way to beat them. One Kolibri probed Adler's mind and found memories of an Elster unit the facility had no record of. The last sane Kolibri hides in the library, alone, unable to bear her sisters' song. (Signalis)

Storch (STCR) and Sieben#

Storch, stork, is the tall Controller model that oversees each cadre of Star guards. Their notes call them short-tempered and sometimes cruel. Corrupted Storches are among the toughest enemies. The one sane Storch, Sieben (STCR-S2307), was the Protektor Controller who tried to hold the facility together with double shifts and a warning to watch Adler. Elster finds her sitting in the rationing office waiting for orders that will never come. (Signalis)

Mynah (MNHR) and Beo#

Mynah are Generation 3 heavy workers in diving-suit armour, built for mines, radiation and vacuum, and described as calm and motherly. A corrupted Mynah with a mining laser is the first boss, in the old medical ward. In the mines, Elster meets Beo, an uncorrupted Mynah with a failed hydraulic who asks her not to waste parts repairing her: when she dies, they will just make another. (Signalis)

The other Replikas#

• Star (STAR): Starling. Generation 4 guards. A wounded Star in the first hall warns Elster that the facility is lost. Another lies dying in the mines beside an Eule who cries over her.
• Eule (EULR): Owl. The cheap general-purpose model, used as cooks, nurses and cleaners. Most are now corrupted. One sane Eule in the hospital is afraid of getting sick.
• Ara (ARAR): Macaw. Generation 2 construction and repair workers who dig service tunnels only they can use. Corrupted Aras come up through the floor.
• Kranich (KNCR): Crane. Mentioned once, sending a warning about an Imperial spy to the Kolibri block warden in Rotfront.
• The Sierpinski Elster (LSTR-S2301): An Elster ordered for survey work in the mine and listed in Excavation Team C. Adler and Alina remember her; in later versions of the loop she was never delivered.

(Signalis)

Isa Itou#

Isolde "Isa" Itou is a Gestalt born on Vineta who grew up on Rotfront, where her family ran a bookstore. She was Ariane's school friend. In a flashback she watches Ariane being beaten and does nothing, while her twin Erika steps in. At Sierpinski she is searching for Erika, leaving notes for her along the way. She fights Adler in the mines, saves Elster from a monster in Nowhere and gives her a rifle. In Rotfront, worn out and sick, she gives up on finding her sister and melts into the floor of the family bookstore. (Signalis)

What is theory. A shrine to both twins in Rotfront suggests Erika was dead before Isa started looking, and possibly Isa too. Whether Isa was ever really at Sierpinski, or only exists in the dream, the game leaves open. (Signalis)

Erika Itou#

Erika is Isa's twin, a university student according to the medical database. She is the one who stopped the bullies and became Ariane's friend. She never appears in person, and what happened to her is never stated. (Signalis)

Alina Seo#

Alina Seo is a Gestalt soldier who fought in People's Army, 5th Vinetan Infantry Division, Unit 12. Ariane's mother remarked on how much Alina looked like Ariane. At Sierpinski, Alina was a prisoner who knew the Sierpinski Elster and went looking for her when she vanished. Her four diary entries follow the facility's fall, ending somewhere below with her hair turning white and memories of "a different name, and a different life". Elster carries her photo, and her face, for the first half of the game. (Signalis)

What is theory. The usual reading is that Alina was the template soldier's comrade, that Elster's memories confused the two women because they look alike, and that Alina is being overwritten by Ariane, the way Falke was by Elster. (Signalis)

The rulers#

• The Grand Empress: Founder of the Empire. A banned book claims her bioresonant power made the first Replikas. A shrine in Nowhere hints she took her own life, though the figure is never named.
• The Great Revolutionary and her Daughter: The leaders of the Eusan Nation. They are seen only on portraits, and Falke units are built in their image.

(Signalis)

For how these lives fit together in order, see the Signalis timeline, and for the plot itself, Signalis story explained. (Signalis)