The Commander

The Commander

Information
Full name	The Commander
Affiliation	Griffin & Kryuger
Voice actor	-TBA-
Artist	Unknown
Chibi animation
Variant: Default Lycan Sanctuary - Watermelon Splitting minigame Click the marked area to switch between animations

"I can't sleep yet, I still have work to do..."

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The Commander (指挥官 (zhǐhuīguān) in Chinese and 指揮官 (shikikan) in Japanese) is the identity of the player character in Girls' Frontline. Because they represent the player, their gender, personality and past are loosely defined in the games.

As a tactical commander, the Commander is tasked with assessing the strategic situation and to remotely give orders to their Tactical Dolls squads in the field. They are helped in their duties by a logistic officer: Kalina at Griffin and Kryuger (G&K), and later Mayling. Early in their career at G&K in 2062, the Commander was involved with the elite T-Doll squad AR Team and demonstrated high commanding capabilities, gaining the trust of their superiors. This led them to assume increasingly important missions against Sangvis Ferri and eventually to become an asset to the Bureau of State Security against KCCO and Paradeus.

Irrefutable evidence is still lacking to identify the Commander as the same character posing as the Professor in Project Neural Cloud. The Commander is the protagonist of Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium, taking place in 2074. In Girls' Frontline: Doll's Song and the anime, they are represented by Gentiane.

Character Info

Girls' Frontline

The Commander's default appearance.

The appearance and gender of the Commander can be customized by players in the game in the Wardrobe screen. The default genderless appearance of a Commander in-game is a mud-stained G&K uniform, crude headlamp and gas mask. After the player chooses a gender for their Commander, they have access to a clean, complete uniform with beret and a Shoshinsha badge (🔰), and the character will have blue eyes with light skin and dark brown hair, short for men and shoulder-length for women. The male version is used for the generic Commander sprite during gameplay, albeit with its face and hair obscured. After the Great Retreat, the Commander was physically tortured by Nytos after telling false accounts of the battle and noted that their face would look even uglier than after having been caught in the fallout of the Collapse bomb, though they retain no facial scars in 2074.

Glimpses of the Commander's personality can be deduced from their recruitment into G&K. Because of the particularity of G&K troops being T-Dolls, the main factor of recruitment for human commanders isn't professional training or experience, but being able to pass a psychological evaluation dedicated to measuring interpersonal compatibility with T-Dolls, and general traits of character like patience, courage and loyalty. ^AR M4A1M4A1M4A1 said she admired the Commander's pride and honor in combat, but they have also been described as utterly merciless. ^RF M82A1M82A1M82A1 called the Commander “one who is trusted by all dolls.” They are also a skilled deceiver and a good liar when the situation calls for it.

Prior to Continuum Turbulence, the Commander had dialogues in costume stories, showing their care for the T-Dolls under their command, but was with very few exceptions a silent character in the main story. In Continuum Turbulence, the player was sometimes prompted to choose among several dialogue choices. In later story chapters, the Commander has direct dialogues with other characters.

The Commander's gender is meant to remain ambiguous in the game: in all but a few instances, they are referred to by their rank or neutral pronouns, and some costume stories, such as ^MG M1919A4M1919A4M1919A4's Carmilla, ^MG MG3MG3MG3's Full Moon's Gaze or ^RF Gepard M1Gepard M1Gepard M1's Looking Forward to Tomorrow, let the player choose between male- or female-appropriate dialogue choices. In a few instances, a male pronoun is erroneously used in the translation: in 9-3E ; Spoiled Staccato in Freaky Pandemic ; ^HG Mk23Mk23Mk23's Impish Sweetheart costume story ; the description of the Theatre Performance base background ; ^HG Five-seveNFive-seveNFive-seveN's bar scene in Valhalla ; Pollinosis I in Dual Randomness ; ^HG PPKPPKPPK's last Neural Upgrade story ; Hunter's Patrol and Twilight Labyrinth I in Lycan Sanctuary. In the watermelon splitting minigame of Hunter's Patrol in Lycan Sanctuary, the Commander is depicted as female, and they are referred to as a woman in the translation of the 2020 April's Fool.

Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium

In Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium, the player can still choose the Commander's gender, but not customize their appearance to facilitate their use in pre-rendered cutscenes.

The male Commander has blue eyes and black hair with greying temples, worn in a mop-top and a rattail. The female Commander has light red eyes and pink hair with bangs of a deeper shade, worn in a chin-length bob and parted fringe. Her design is reminiscent of Gentiane. Both genders wear the same outfit, consisting of a red and black bomber jacket with sleeve pouches and communicator on the right clavicle, worn over an undersuit with a high padded collar, gloves, tight-fitting grey pants with a pistol holster and straps, knee pads and high black boots.

• 
  In-game portraits (look different from 3D renders).
• 
• 
  Beta appearance.
• 
  Concepts.

Story Involvement

Very little is known of the Commander before they got hired by Griffin and Kryuger in 2062. They were considered to be rather young for their job, and received a formal education though they likely lived in Yellow Zones most of their life since they had never seen a Green Zone ID before being offered one. At G&K, they were assigned to a forward base in Sector 09, in a relatively calm area near the frontline of the hostile Sangvis Ferri territory. At the time, G&K had accepted the contract for six months and had urgent need of more personnel to contain the menace.

Recovery of AR Team

At Sector 09's control center, the Commander met their logistics officer, Kalina, and expressed some concern about their qualification for the job. Kalina assured them G&K's selection process was tough enough to ensure they were ready. The Commander was tasked by Helian with an assault mission on their second day after only one drill of experience. Helian tasked the new commander because she was stringed for manpower but had confidence in the recruit's capacity and was ultimately impressed by how swiftly they carried the mission. Helian later tasked the Commander with new missions to have them gather field experience, helping in recovering ^SMG SkorpionSkorpionSkorpion and capturing Scarecrow as part of G&K's search for the whereabouts of AR Team. Helian later enrolled the Commander in G&K's advanced testing program as a candidate for G&K's tactical reserve, which they passed with flying colors.

Using Scarecrow's intel, Helian sent the Commander to a potential site to collect new intel, but seeing that Sangvis Ferri was consistently beating G&K to intel sites, such operations were temporarily halted and, much to their chagrin, the Commander returned to defending the frontline in Sector 09 instead of leading investigative missions. This proved temporary as G&K's leader Berezovich Kryuger, on Helian's recommendations, assigned the Commander to help 16LAB's director Persica in her search for information about AR Team. The Commander's successes led them to gain the trust of Persica, and Helian tasked them with the recovery of ^AR M4A1M4A1M4A1. The Commander's independence in leading the mission was a great advantage in defeating Executioner, who expected G&K's HQ to handle the mission and monitored their transmissions instead of local channels. Persica later tasked the Commander with retrieving Sangvis Ferri parts for her ongoing study of their manufacturing process and shared some of her background with AR Team with the Commander, stating the importance of M4.

After the successful recovery of M4, Helian kept dispatching the Commander to retrieve the other members of AR Team, pushing back Hunter's troops and recovering ^AR M4 SOPMOD IIM4 SOPMOD IIM4 SOPMOD II and ^AR ST AR-15ST AR-15ST AR-15 with their own T-Dolls since HQ could provide intel but no reinforcements. While ^AR M16A1M16A1M16A1 was still missing, Helian redeployed the Commander to support a local intel recovery team, in reality Squad 404, fighting Intruder deeper in Sector 09, before being tasked to destroy the ringleader to clear Sector 09 of Sangvis Ferri occupation after 404's mission concluded, retrieving the last member of AR Team in the process. After the battle, M16A1 relayed to the Commander a clue ^SMG UMP45UMP45UMP45 had asked her to pass on to Persica: “It's raining on the plain”. As a mark of respect for the Commander's efforts and skill, M4A1 decided to reveal the content of the mission during which her team was separated and they recovered intel about Plan Parapluie in Sector 09's Safe House 3.

Plan Parapluie

Along with other tactical commanders, the Commander was called to G&K's secret base near Sector 09 by Kryuger to discuss Plan Parapluie. There, the Commander met with Helian in person for the first time, along with Kryuger. Sangvis Ferri launched an assault against the base before any planning could start and the Commander was knocked out during the initial explosion. They were awakened by Kryuger, who entrusted them with his personal semiautomatic pistol and tasked them with using the local terminal to mount a counterattack and establish a temporary command center while he went his own way with his revolver. Having organized the troops and dispersed the first assault wave, the Commander linked up with AR Team and Kryuger, who tasked them with organizing counterattacks while he and Helian would look into the leak that permitted Sangvis Ferri to find the secret base and stage the assault.

As the Commander was leading operations against Destroyer, G&K identified the origin of the leak to be AR-15, who escaped from quarantine, prompting G&K to issue a general order to intercept or destroy her. Having located Destroyer's command center but not shared the information with HQ yet, the Commander offered AR Team the opportunity to get on site before any other G&K troops so they might reach AR-15 themselves should she be there. However, artillery support from Dreamer led to Helian cancelling all operations in order to regroup, and the Commander guided AR Team back to HQ through artillery fire. AR Team was redeployed to search for AR-15 in the following days, alone due to heavy losses on G&K's side, and Helian approached the Commander with new orders: recovering the neural cloud backups left behind by AR-15. AR Team was assigned to the mission but not informed of the nature of the intel, though they quickly recognized it by themselves. This intel, along with the one recovered by Squad 404 in Sector 09, brought the last details about Plan Parapluie, making Kryuger worry about the Commander's willingness to destroy AR-15 if it proved necessary.

The Commander and their troops relocated to Sector 08 to follow their leads, where they received the help of Squad ^MG NegevNegevNegev and ran into Alchemist. After capturing the area, M16 reported that M4 and SOPMOD had disappeared into a radar and transmissions jamming zone while pursuing AR-15. When the jamming (actually generated by the Parapluie virus carried by AR-15) moved back and revealed SOPMOD's IFF tag, the Commander deployed M16 and troops to recover her before receiving orders from Helian to urgently call of the search and leave Sector 08, where all local Sangvis Forces were converging. With M16 and SOPMOD assuring the Commander they could handle the search alone, the Commander dispatched troops to assist the retreat of Squad Negev, relying on the elite dolls to point the troops lost in the jamming back to G&K's command center and eliminating Sangvis forces trying to cut their escape routes. After Alchemist was killed by AR-15 and SOPMOD, local Sangvis forces temporarily lost their combat capabilities and the jamming moved further back, enabling the lost G&K dolls to regroup and exfiltrate, three hours after the retreat order.

Against Dreamer

After the retreat from Sector 08 and the loss of AR-15, all dolls suspected to be a Parapluie carrier were sent to a detention facility in Sector 05. The Commander submitted a transfer demand to G&K's HQ as to remain close to AR Team, which was granted by Kryuger, and the Commander's authority shifted from Sector 09 to Sector 05, though they did not relocate physically. At Sector 05, far removed from the frontline, the Commander was tasked with usual security contractor work such as daily patrols, reports and assistance to HQ operations, a far cry from the previous active battles. Moreover, Helian explained that no contact could be established with AR Team while any doubt about a Parapluie infection had not been ruled out due to the dire consequences for G&K's reputation of losing Sector 08, though she accepted to pass audio records back and forth between the Commander and AR Team.

A few days later, the detention center was targeted by a Sangvis Ferri assault and Helian ordered the Commander to support the defenders inside the building by breaking the encirclement, providing a morale boost in the process. She also ordered not to break into the building due to the transmission jamming that appeared inside. As the logistics lines were stretched thin as the battle dragged on, Persica deployed the new elite doll ^SMG RO635RO635RO635, who tracked down the ringleader in command of the assault, Dreamer. Surprised that G&K had the ability to find her so quickly, Dreamer hailed the Commander on a public channel to announce she would soon deploy more troops and send one of her dummies to the field, intending to force the Commander to choose between supporting the dolls inside the building or diverting their troops to confront her dummy.

However, the Commander was able to dispatch RO635 alone in the building and focus on Dreamer's dummy thanks to RO635's command module and enhanced capacities against Sangvis Ferri tactics. When the dolls inside the detention center managed to retreat inside the local bunker, Dreamer could not help Elisa open it and Sangvis Ferri had to call off their assault. Helian gave the Commander special authorization to enter the building to assess the situation, where they met with RO635 in person for the first time. She asked the Commander to keep her involvement in the operation a secret from HQ and informed them that she would assume command of AR Team due to M4A1's catatonic state after her encounter with Elisa. The Commander later assisted AR Team in their mission to eliminate Dreamer's dummy after she took residence in Sector 05, deploying their troops to thin out Sangvis Ferri and enabling AR Team and Squad Palette to focus on their target.

Arctic Warfare

After the successful operation against Dreamer's dummy, AR Team's aircraft was downed by a Jupiter canon and crashed in Sector 03. With help from HQ, Squad 404 and lost T-Dolls, AR Team managed to reach the border of the sector despite Sangvis Ferri troops and bad weather, only to be stopped by Architect and Gager. With their reinforcements being hours away, RO635, reflecting on how M4 would handle the fight, decided to put trust in the Commander and made last-minute change to her objectives to reach a communication center and call the Commander for help. The Commander managed to mobilize and deploy several squads quick enough to assist the stranded dolls, and ^SMG ThompsonThompsonThompson and ^RF WA2000WA2000WA2000 captured Architect, who revealed the military origins of the Jupiter cannons.

This information prompted G&K to deploy reinforcements as planned, Helian handing command over to the Commander to repel Agent's troops while G&K was dismantling and transporting a Jupiter to study it.

Raid on Base 0

To make up for G&K's lack of results in destroying the Sangvis Ferri rebel T-Dolls, Kryuger ordered a mission to SF's Base 0 in order to recover File No. 7, which would be used to decipher Lycoris' research data recovered by AR Team during the raid on Safe House 3. Kryuger put Persica in charge of the mission, and she selected the Commander to lead a diversionary assault on the edge of the area and create an infiltration opportunity for AR Team, while also targeting local command posts to cripple SF's drone coverage in the area. After M16 secretly used a low-yield Parapluie virus on herself to gain access to the database as per Persica's plans, SF troops located the team and the Commander moved to fight Destroyer and Dreamer to cover AR Team's retreat, but M16 was unable to evacuate and left behind. The Commander was put in charge of locating her, exploiting the counter-jamming zones left behind by RO and engaging the SF ringleader in combat again, but M16 and Persica had secretly planned the situation to conduct a high-risk data retrieval mission and the rescue mission failed.

Joint assault

After obtaining Helian's authorization to deploy the now two-man AR Team in search of M16, the Commander accompanied Kryuger to meet with KCCO's General Carter and discuss their joint assault to destroy Sangvis' main base. Due to their stellar successes against SF, Kryuger selected the Commander to lead the assault, while Kryuger himself would handle high-level command synchronization with KCCO. After meeting Havier Witkin for the first time, the Commander was immediately deployed to the field, traveling with Captain Yegor's troops to regroup with the Griffin T-Dolls on-site. En route, the Commander also deployed reinforcements to AR Team's position after they were pinned by Judge so they could join the assault. After receiving an anonymous tip, the Commander diverted ^RF XM3XM3XM3's echelon from their logistics mission to recover M4A1, stranded in the Military's camp after trying to regroup with G&K from Persica's lab. The Commander also diverted some computational power from their dolls to Squad 404 to assist their electronic warfare capabilities as they also infiltrated Base 0 to recover the drone containing the data from M16's mission after it was shot down by SF.

As the assault began and Parapluie coverage was detected, the Commander tasked AR Team, who was lagging behind the main force after M4 had to retrieve SOP-II and RO from Base 0 territory, to use RO's electronic warfare to reactivate paralyzed military units. After reactivating the units to protect the Military's counter-jamming stations, the Commander ordered AR Team to regroup with the Military's main force and watch their flank as they got closer to SF's main base. But as the Military armored troops proved too fast for G&K forces and Captain Yegor refused to slow the advance, the Commander ordered to cover their allies by deploying the T-Dolls against the SF targets left in their wake. The Commander then diverted their troops again after AR was encircled by SF forces when Elisa tried to connect with M4A1 for the second time, but they were unable to break the encirclement before Yegor's own forces got through. The KCCO troops destroyed the T-Dolls, sparing only M4A1 still under Elisa's electronic assaults. At the same time, Elisa ordered the deployment of an advanced Parapluie virus that overwhelmed G&K's and the Military's command networks, prompting Helian to order a general retreat of all G&K troops. At the same time, the Commander received another anonymous transmission from an alleged ally of Persica asking for M4A1's coordinates. They complied, allowing Task Force DEFY to rescue her.

Retreat

Singularity scene, Agent seizing the Commander (bottom-right hand).

Staging the withdrawal from a temporary command base inside Parapluie jamming territory, the Commander dispatched ^SMG MP7MP7MP7 to serve as a messenger with Helian from outside the jamming field. After transmitting the sitrep to Griffin HQ, MP7 then went back to assist the evacuation instead of sending HQ's new orders by drone and escaping by herself. Despite assaults from SF and KCCO forces, the Commander held their position long enough to recover several echelons left behind by other commanders during the retreat.

As the Commander's forces started withdrawing, they ran into a blockade organized by Gager. While they managed to penetrate the blockade, the rear echelons suddenly came under fire by Gager's main forces. The ringleader proposed to spare them in exchange for the liberation of Architect. As Kalina tried to contact HQ, all transmissions on the battlefield were cut due to Elisa's OGAS unleashing a powerful counterattack against KCCO. As the SF troops fell into disarray, Kalina used a megaphone to give orders to the retreating troops, successfully guiding them through the blockade. Elisa then ordered Agent to personally destroy all remaining Griffin forces, and Agent herself broke into the command base and pinned down the Commander, starting to crush their body under her foot. Angelia then contacted Agent, asking her to spare the Commander's life in exchange for organizing an encounter between Elisa and M4A1. Impressed by the Commander's mettle in delaying their retreat this long, Angelia also tasked them to help her slow the KCCO tanks in order for the meeting to take place and capture Elisa. This put the Commander and the T-Dolls still in the base at risk against KCCO's firepower, forcing Kalina to take remote command of the base's defenses while the Commander supervised the battle. This new delay caused the Commander to be within the contamination radius of the Collapse bomb used by M4A1 as the encounter with Elisa broke into renewed combat.

Rescuing Angelia

Knocked out by the radiations, the Commander was recovered from the command base and brought to a safe house by ^SG M870M870M870 and ^RF M82A1M82A1M82A1. After being awakened with an adrenaline shot, the Commander refused to leave until Angelia's own escape route was secured and assumed command again from the safe house. Though Kalina had ordered the two T-Dolls to knock the Commander out and bring them to the evacuation airfield if they refused to come willingly, both respected the Commander's courage and took position outside the safe house to intercept attacking enemies. From there, the Commander was contacted by Angelia, who properly introduced herself, offered them the Heavy Ordnance Corps meant to help her and asked them to evacuate before coming to her help. She also transferred all the data from her current investigations to them, and pledged the members of DEFY to their service in the event of her death (though ^AR AK-12AK-12AK-12 and ^AR AN-94AN-94AN-94 refused to acknowledge this wish). The Commander overviewed the defense of the new temporary base established by Kalina on safe coordinates provided earlier by Angelia against Paradeus forces as well as the rescue of M4 SOPMOD II and RO635. They then assembled a team of volunteers to retrieve Angelia while the rest of the troops evacuated, though most volunteers participated for the sake of evacuating the Commander.

Using flares to steer Angelia and DEFY toward the lower-contamination yellow zone and regroup with the Griffin team, Angelia evaded Yegor's pursuit for a time before being forced to stop and treat her radiation poisoning. In order to mislead KCCO's attention, the Commander came up with a plan to use a captured KCCO doctor found by the Griffin team while securing an escape route, disguising her as Angelia and tasking one half of the team to transport her under HOC protection while the other half went the other way to feign a distraction. Meanwhile, also on the Commander's idea and with Angelia's approval, DEFY started preparing improvised explosive devices from HOC shells to rig the building they were in and keep KCCO forces from entering. Yegor discovered the feint and refocused his attention on the building before the IEDs were set, but the time bought enabled the Commander to establish a HOC interdiction perimeter and the Griffin dolls to come back for a defensive battle. Though Yegor's forces managed to break into the building, Angelia staged her own gambit and convinced Yegor to retreat under the fake threat of a new Collapse bomb detonation. The group then moved to help the Commander and their two escorts, under attack by Nytos. Though they managed to kill the enemy commanders, they were too late to prevent Paradeus from capturing the Commander.

Nine weeks later and cured of radiation poisoning, the Commander woke up inside a Paradeus base to be interrogated by Nytos. As the interrogation was starting, UMP45 briefly hacked the Nytos to speak undetected with the Commander, informing them that help was inbound if they could make the interrogation drag on by lying. Hoping to track down Squad 404 and Angelia by corroborating their own information with the Commander's testimony, the Nytos tortured and injected them with truth serum, which the Commander knew how to resist. At the end of the testimony, the Nytos reported the to their “Father”, who ordered to behead the Commander contrary to their initial promise. Using the weapon concealed at the start of the interrogation by UMP45, the Commander killed three of the Nytos, leaving alive the last one under 45's control to open the room. They were then evacuated by ^SMG UMP45UMP45UMP45 and ^AR HK416HK416HK416 as Griffin troops led an assault on the facility.

The Commander later met with Havier Witkin and the head of the Bureau of State Security Zielinski in their new command base, where Zielinsky menaced to have them executed for treason due to Angelia entrusting them with confidential secret services information. While promising to repair G&K's reputation and clear Kryuger's name, Zielinsky forced the Commander to take clandestine missions from Statesec, starting with the capture of Angelia, now considered a rogue agent.

Bounty Hunter

In 2074, they had left the restructured Griffin & Kryuger and commanded a group of T-Dolls from the Elmo mobile base as bounty hunters.