Character Base

• Character Name: Luca Paguro
• Age: 13
• Canon (Date/Year Released)/Canon Point: Luca (released June 18, 2021)/At the end of the movie while he's pulling away on the train.
• Items Coming Along:
His fish herding staff
Luca's bike
A change of clothes
Seaweed swim trunks
This drawing Alberto drew
Also this drawing Alberto drew
• Content Warnings for Character: Implied deep sea horror when it comes to his uncle. Also, in the vile blood power section, references to ingesting blood and flesh.

Character Background

• History: Canon wiki Character wiki
• Core Relationships:
Alberto – Luca's closest friend. He's the person who showed him the surface, and he's the one who brought him to the human town. Whenever Alberto's around, Luca feels braver and more confident. While he only met Alberto earlier in the same summer as he met Giulia, even after only a short time of knowing Alberto he found himself fantasizing about running away with him and sleeping under the stars together. While they've had rocky moments in their relationship when Alberto has gotten too possessive of Luca, by the end of his story he's willing to risk everything to save Alberto.

Giulia – Another friend of his. He likes Giulia a lot, and she offers him a chance to gain true and accurate knowledge about the surface world. He's excited by all the information she offers him, and wants to learn everything she can teach him. It's easy for him to get caught up in her stories of stars, flying machines, and all sorts of other discoveries humans have made and things humans have invented. While he doesn't seem to desire the same level of physical closeness (when he fantasizes about riding a vespa with Alberto, he pictures them on the same vespa, but when he fantasizes about a flying machine with Giulia, they're each in their own flying machine), but he cares about her deeply and is willing to risk his life to help her when she crashes into Ercole.

Massimo Marcovaldo – Giulia's father. When he and Alberto showed up, despite clearly being suspicious of their cover story for why they were there, he let them stay in Giulia's hide out, cooked for them, and looked out for them. When they were exposed as sea monsters in the end, despite fervently hating sea monsters until this point, Massimo stood up for them and saved their lives. Afterwards, he even takes Alberto in.

Daniela Paguro – Luca's mother. She's overprotective, to the point of being overbearing. When a boat goes by overhead he gets a lecture on how humans are there to kill him. When he and Alberto sneak to an uninhabited island together, she's ready to send him to the deepest part of the ocean to keep him safe. She ends up learning to trust Luca and give up control and let him explore the surface after she sees everything he manages to do on the surface and after Alberto convinces her to let him go to school, which heals the relationship that had been getting strained due to Luca's frustration at his lack of freedom.

Lorenzo Paguro – Luca's father. He's admitted he doesn't pay enough attention to Luca, though he does seem to care about him and will happily show Luca his show crabs. While he thinks Daniela's methods are extreme when she wants to send him to the bottom of the ocean, he also doesn't do anything to stop her.

Grandma Paguro – Luca's maternal grandmother. She's very supportive of Luca, and willing to cover for him when he sneaks out, wanting to encourage him to explore the world for himself.

Uncle Ugo – Luca's paternal uncle. He seems to genuinely like and care for Luca, but is largely oblivious to Luca's terror of the Deep. To Luca, everything his uncle offers is a nightmare to him. Whale carcasses. Darkness. The probability that he'll end up like his uncle if he stays too long in the deep.

Ercole – The town bully and a narcissist. He's obsessed with winning all the prizes, which has brought him up against Luca more than once. Despite being too old to compete, he insists on competing in the Portorosso Cup, and when he hears there's a reward for killing sea monsters, he becomes obsessed with killing sea monsters. Unlike Massimo, even when he realizes that sea monsters can become human and that the sea monsters that had been sighted were children, he's completely fine with killing them. Luca hates Ercole, and sees him as a threat to overcome.

Character Personality Through Key Moments

(2+) Positive Experiences:
Nothing excites Luca more than knowledge. So when he, a young fish shepherd who was curious about the world and all it had to offer was pulled to the surface by a fellow sea monster kid, it was an absolute dream come true. Once he was done panicking at the sudden full body transformation and the realization that he was on land, that is.

Alberto offered him a safe, fun way to explore the surface away from actual humans, someone to ask questions and get (often inaccurate) answers, and someone to teach him how to conquer his fears. While Alberto might have given him a lot of wrong information about land, the one thing he taught Luca was to silence the voice of doubt in his head so that he could do the things he wanted to do. Without Alberto, he'd have never been able to go to land or later go to the human town or generally experience and learn everything he's been able to experience and learn, and Luca will be forever grateful for that.

Of course, once he and Alberto go to Portorosso it gives him a chance to meet humans,who offer him a chance to gain real knowledge and insight into the surface world. When his human friend, Giulia, teaches him what stars really are and lets him look at them through a telescope it opens a whole new world to him as well as a deep fascination with space. She lets him read her textbooks and he realizes there's a whole universe of knowledge out there to explore. Having spent his entire life in a small farming community where his mother discouraged questions about the surface and discouraged exploration of the world around them, the idea of learning about the farthest reaches of the galaxy seemed like complete and utter freedom to him. This is where his dream of going to school began.

Of course, the surface world can't all be learning and newfound freedom. There is real and present danger, particularly for a sea monster when there's a 300,000 lira reward for dead sea monsters. He knows that revealing his identity could mean that he'll never safely be able to go into town again, which could cut him off from all the knowledge and information the surface world has to offer. In the past, he even betrayed his closest friend to keep from giving up his secret as is explained in more detail in the negative experiences section. That's why it shows a lot of positive character growth when Luca, trapped under an awning to stay out of the rain, sees Alberto caught in a net and decides to ride out into the rain, exposing his secret, to save his best friend. He's willing to sacrifice everything, all his dreams, his hopes of going to school, place his life in danger all to save Alberto, and he doesn't hesitate for a second.

And this leads right into his next positive experience, because in the end, Luca didn't have to give up anything. Ercole chased him and Alberto with a harpoon, so they biked away as quickly as they could, ultimately winning the race. Not that they noticed when it happened since at that moment they were just focused on getting away with their lives, desperately trying to get to water so they could swim away. As they were fleeing, Giulia rammed her bike into Ercole's, sending both of them (and the harpoon Ercole was preparing to throw) to the ground. Worried that Giulia was hurt, they rushed over to make sure she was okay and they quickly were surrounded. Luca thought he was going to die, but Massimo intervened, standing up for them and telling the town who they were. No one was going to argue with Massimo (though some clearly wanted to), and so the town just accepted that the sea monsters weren't going to be harmed. Suddenly, they went from needing to hide their identity lest they be killed or forced to flee forever, to being able to walk freely in the surface world (at least in that town) without fear of showing their true nature.

And, of course, they won the Portorosso Cup, which meant they got the prize money. Luca and Alberto initially used that money to buy a vespa, but when Alberto saw how much Luca wanted to go to school and learn, he sold the vespa and convinced Luca's parents to let him go to school, which he paid for with the prize money.

(2+) Negative Experiences:
When Luca met Alberto, they began to spend every day playing on an abandoned island. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before his parents found out where they were going and they panicked. Luca's mother thought the best solution would be to send him as far from the surface as he could, so she sent for his Uncle Ugo, planning to have him live with his uncle for a while. His uncle attempted to make the prospect appealing to Luca...and managed to completely repulse him. He described the Deep as a place where there's nothing to see or do, where bits of whale carcass just float into your mouth and you can't stop it. Of course, while Uncle Ugo thinks of the Deep as a place full of free food that takes no effort to acquire or eat, Luca was as horrified as anyone else might be. To make things worse, Uncle Ugo himself is a terrifying sight to behold, with transparent skin and flesh, leaving his pulsating organs on clear display for anyone to see. His eyes are blank and unfocused, his teeth are sharp. At the back of his mind, Luca knows that he changes to survive the surface, so he likely will change into something much like his uncle if he ever goes to the deep, and this disturbs him. To this day, despite being an ocean creature himself, he's afraid of the concept of going to the deepest parts of the ocean.

Once he and Alberto ran away to land together, it was everything he ever wanted. Access to knowledge about the surface, Giulia's books, telescopes. Staying on land was a dream...and going back into the water meant being sent away to live in the deep. As it was clear that Giulia knew more about the surface, Luca started spending more time with her, learning everything he could, and Alberto began to get jealous. When Luca insisted he wanted to go to school, Alberto decided to prove to Luca that he'd never be accepted by humans by revealing what he is to Giulia. Giulia, who didn't believe sea monsters were even real until that moment, panics, and Luca, fearing rejection...also pretends to panic. He immediately regrets it when he sees the hurt in Alberto's eyes, but it was too late. Ercole and his friends heard Luca and rushed over, throwing harpoons at Alberto. Luca cried out, but other than that, he does nothing to stop it, staring it horror but unwilling to do anything that would reveal what he really is. Luckily Alberto got away, and he would get forgiveness for this later, but Luca still feels guilty to this day knowing that he could have gotten Alberto killed.

There's also the harpoon thing. There are plenty of times Luca's had harpoons thrown at him, in his direction, or at Alberto, each time sending him into a panic. The most terrifying instance of this was when he saw harpoons being thrown at Alberto after he betrayed him, as he realized he put the person he cares about most in the world in a position where he could really die, but the second most terrifying instance was when he and Alberto were fleeing Ercole during the Portorosso cup. While saving Alberto had been a great moment and it gave him a chance to redeem himself, he still was in fear for his and Alberto's life the entire time. While he's never not been afraid of harpoons, that experience has cemented his fear.

The final negative moment is another that was a mix of positive and negative. While he was elated at the thought of going to school, in his mind he'd always pictured Alberto coming with him. Leaving Alberto was incredibly difficult for him to do, especially with so little warning that he'd have to.

Deer Country Attributes

• Canon Powers: Luca is a sea monster, which means he takes on the form of a sea monster when he's wet and becomes human when dry. His sea monster form comes with a host of advantages that allow him to survive underwater, including a long, powerful finned tail and webbed fingers and toes that allow him to swim incredibly fast. While his exact speed is unknown, he's able to swim fast enough to throw himself out of the water at a speed that throws the water off his body, allowing him to turn human for a second before returning to the water.

In his sea monster form, he also has slit pupils, which likely enhance his ability to see in low light as well as improving depth perception, while decreasing his peripheral vision. His sea monster form also has longer, domed teeth which tend to be useful for cracking open the exoskeletons of shellfish, so this is also likely something he can do.

Also, he has been seen drinking a glass of tap water, but presumably drank saltwater for most of his life, so it's safe to say he can safely drink both fresh and saltwater.

It should also be noted that he can presumably survive at incredible depths in the ocean as well. His mother wanted to send him to live in 'the deep', which is presumably referencing an underwater trench within the Mediterranean Sea. Since she would know what her own species can survive and she's trying to keep Luca safe, it's safe to assume that Luca can survive the extreme pressure of a deep sea environment. However, considering his uncle's appearance as an anglerfish sea monster, complete with an illicium, sharp teeth, and see through skin and flesh, it's possible that over time if Luca stayed in the deep sea he would begin to change to survive in that environment. However, it's unlikely that he'd be in the deep sea for long enough in game to see such changes.

• Blood Type: Vileblood
• Omen: A cute little hermit crab that becomes a giant crab monster when threatened. Her name is Camilla.
• Blessed Day: September 7th – The day he won the Portorosso Cup
• Patron Pthumerian: Never Mind
• Blood Power Manifestation: Luca is a vile blood, but his particular manifestation of the vile blood traits will be an extension of his existing powers, rather than an additional power. His particular vile blood traits have a distinctly aquatic theme, pulling their properties from various sea creatures. Of course, he has the same base characteristics as any other vile blood. Spilling too much of it will distort the senses of those around him, he can resist poison, and ingesting blood will heal him and give him energy.

However, rather than the desire for blood demonstrating itself through behaviors that are vampiric in nature, in Luca they seem to demonstrate themselves in more shark-like behavior. It should be noted that will blood has healing and energizing qualities for him, he will not need blood to survive. He can sustain himself just fine on a regular diet. However, the smell of blood will spark his appetite and be incredibly appealing to him. He will be able to resist the urge to ingest it, but this will become more difficult the further into corruption he goes. It should be noted that if he does lose control at any point, his urge will not be to drink the blood, but to bite and tear and ingest the target's flesh, blood and all in a shark-like feeding frenzy.

There's also the matter of his poison. He can now produce the venom of the fanged tooth blenny, though instead of needing to bite a subject to inject his venom, his own version of the venom seems to be able to be absorbed through the skin. Rather than administering this venom through fangs, he is able to produce a mucus coating over his skin in either his human or sea monster form. It's very much like the mucus coating on fish scales, except his is infused with the modified blenny venom. Initially the mucus coating will come and go depending on his level of fear and panic, but over time he'll learn to control it. Blenny venom causes a sudden drop in blood pressure, resulting in dizziness, nausea and disorientation. Exposure to his blood will have a similar effect, though rubbing it on a wound might cause some numbness in addition to the rest of these side effects.