Roach is a major protagonist featured in the Roach Chronicles. He is one of the main playable characters in Earth-92116 and Earth-61017, and the leader of Umbra Ops, a private military company comprised of his closest friends and various universal allies.
Roach was a member of Division One, a subdivision of a joint scientific and military program based out at a research facility in Northern California. In his work, Roach became fascinated by the myth of the Summoning Key, a mysterious artifact rumored to have crash-landed on Earth years ago, but was unable to be recovered. Having studied runes recovered from the Summoning Key's believed impact site, Roach conceived the idea of Temporal-Soul Travel, a conceptual method of time travel that could allow the user to use their present-day soul to venture to a future version of it.
By 2016, Roach had created a specialized teleportation device that drew out a piece of the user's soul to remain in the present time while the user and the rest of their soul would be sent through time, ensuring a lifelink remained back in the present day. With the support of the other Division One members Chris Bennett, O'Ryan Bennett and Tyler Jackson, Roach presented the device to the rest of the facility, though his explanation would be interrupted by the sudden attack of an unknown private military company, who was informed of the facility's location by a mole. In an effort to save themselves, Division One sealed themselves in the device for refuge, though it would accidentally be activated when a body was shot by a soldier and fell onto the control panel. Before they could do anything, the four were wisped away to an unknown point in time.
Emerging from the device in a ship's cargo hold, the four questioned their current whereabouts; while rummaging through the cargo to find a reference point, Roach was shocked to uncover the Summoning Key, the very artifact he based his research on. However, the four would be soon apprehended by Unit 14 guards, who brought them to the upper deck for interrogation. Upon realizing the guards intended to kill them, the four made use of the ship's impact with a wave to attack their aggressors amidst the off-balance. In the struggle, a grenade was dropped right above the central engine room, forcing the four to abandon ship as it exploded, leaving them adrift in the ocean until they washed up on a nearby island. On the island, Division One came face to face with the undead for the first time, forcing them to fend them off for their lives.
As they fought, Division One discovered that they were at Station 11, the primary base of operations for Unit 14, where their experiments with the mysterious Element X led to the zombie outbreak at the facility. Upon investigating a secret underground cell block, Roach would meet his imprisoned future self, who told Roach in private of what was going on; they had time-traveled fifteen years into the future, having arrived at the year 2031. When asked by his future self why they didn't go back to their original time when they emerged from the device after seeing the Summoning Key's glow, Roach explained that due to the fractured state of their souls as a result of a piece being plucked by the device, though couldn't use it without further damaging them. To amend their mistake and return to their time, Future Roach reveals there was still a way back.
To his horror, Young Roach learned that he and the others must preserve their future self's souls within the Summoning Key, allowing them to use the backup plan at the facility to return to their original time and avert the grave future they were in. Reluctantly agreeing to the plan, Roach kills his future self, much to everyone else's horror upon making the discovery. Having preserved his soul with the Summoning Key, Roach led the others out of the building, still stiffed by what he had done. Nevertheless, Roach explained there was still hope to return to their time before leading them to a helicopter for them to take off the island. Over the course of the following day, Roach had to regain his allies' trust as they tracked down the whereabouts of their future selves, where they would kill them and preserve their souls. Upon amassing them all, the group returned to their old lab, where they used their future souls to power the backup device, allowing the four to return to the exact moment their original selves departed for the future.
Having seemingly averted the horrible future they would've gone to, Roach soon learned that their method of time travel created a paradoxical timeline bound to the future. To resolve the paradox, Roach made contact with four former mobsters caught in the madness of the paradox, convincing them to use the Summoning Key that arrived there after Division One used the backup plan to seal off the timeline. Using the soul of their former Mob Boss, the mobsters sealed off the timeline after supercharging the Summoning Key with the Morbid Pillar, creating the Fractured Realm, a realm that no longer was affected by outside temporal changes.
By 2019, Roach and his allies were now affiliated with the United States Army, where they were tasked with hunting down Unit 14 members before they could use their newfound Element X samples to begin horrific experiments. After recovering the samples for the United States Army, the four soon were horrified to discover that the military performed their own experiments in secret, leading to a zombie outbreak that soon swept across the country and soon the world. Having gone AWOL due to the military's betrayal to their trust, Roach and the others began helping survivors fend off from the zombies; while at a survivor camp in Los Angeles, Roach met a young boy named Mackenzie Davis, who he entrusted with a sidearm for the future. While evacuating at the Los Angeles International Airport, Roach and the others stayed behind to ensure the other survivors escaped to a safer place via plane.
Seven years later in 2026, Roach and the others were residing at a private camp on Lake Granby in Colorado when they were suddenly ambushed by Unit 14 soldiers, who managed to uncover their location. Despite their efforts, Roach and his allies were ultimately captured by Unit 14 and interrogated of what they saw when they ventured into the future back in 2016. To his horror, Roach discovered that Unit 14 intended for history to repeat itself, meaning they would now be their future selves when they eventually encounter their time-traveling past selves.
To ensure their newfound cycle in time remained on track, Unit 14 made use of Element X to strip the four of many of their memories, leading Roach and O'Ryan to become prisoners of war, Chris to become a leader of Unit 14, and TJ to be abandoned and eventually form the Raiders survivor group in Los Angeles. As planned, Roach and the others would eventually be killed by their time-traveling selves by 2031, their souls being preserved within the Summoning Key. After their souls would be deposited into the backup device, the future souls would join with their past ones when they returned back to 2016, effectively trapping the four in a never-ending cycle in time while Unit 14 would come to rule the future, now unimpeded by Roach and his allies.
Breaking the Cycle[]
After going through the cycle countless times, it would ultimately be derailed when the time-traveling versions of Roach and the others eventually come across an audio log created by Mac at the junkyard where they killed TJ's future self. Through the audio log, Division One discover exactly what would happen should they return back to their time, meaning they were forced to remain in the future to ensure the cycle never continued, as they risked restarting it if they returned back to 2016.
In order to further deviate from the cycle's intended path, Division One interrogated a wounded Unit 14 soldier recovered from outside the junkyard walls, where they learned about an excavation site in Northern California that uncovered a mysterious chamber believed to house a great power. After killing the soldier for his involvement with Unit 14, Division One make their way to the dig site, where they are successful in locating the chamber. Using the Summoning Key and the future souls within it, Roach uses it to break the chamber's seal, allowing them access to the Harbinger's chamber.
While examining the weapon, Roach would be drawn by its dark power into obtaining it, where he would be remotely influenced by Echthroi and the Prophets of the Soulless, who manipulated Roach into being consumed by the darkness. After fusing the Summoning Key into the Harbinger's hilt, Roach forcefully removed the souls of the other three using the blade, preserving them inside the weapon. Soon after, Roach turned the weapon on himself, repeating the process as all four of their bodies faded out into darkness after collapsing onto the ground. Materializing in Limbo, the four were turned into Soulless, with Roach's hollow body giving itself the name Xarcoh; with that, the cycle in time was permanently derailed.
Moving Forward(Repeated History) • Hidden Treasure(Day at the Museum) • The Frozen Caverns(Cold Feet) • Paradoxical Showdown(Palace of Secrets) • The Ultimate Endgame(Deadline)
A Dark Past(Forgotten Past) • The Package(Frozen Pride) • The Rift to Limbo(Gateway) • A Prophecy Fulfilled(Darkness Rises) • The Last Stand(The Dark Soldier)
Science Be Damned!(Museum of the Dead) • Going Coastal(Safe Harbor) • Island of Darkness(Darkest Shores) • The Trial of the Sentinels(The Ultimate Trial)
