Below are the default stories for each playable character in Hope Without A Cause.
These are the stories that the character will play out if their goals are followed without any alteration. Doing actions that aren't within the characters goals can completely change their story and outcome.
Ema Maple[]
Upon arrival at Morlano Prison, Ema is quick to be harrassed by the other inmates and labelled the newbie. On her first day she looks around for friends but ends up sitting by herself. Ema finally ends up finding a friend in Belfast, who seems like the only other rational person in the prison. They both sit off in the corner watching all the zany things going on. Belfast doesn't really talk much and the two don't really do much in their time. Ema asks if Belfast can teach her the ways around the prison, which he just shakes his head to.
It doesn't take long however for Ema to realise Belfast isn't as normal as she thinks, and Ema ends up ditching Belfast and joining in on the white clique, which she really doesn't want to do as she hates to be apart of this racist setting.
She befriends the people of the white clique, continues her sentence being their friends, and in return they teach her the ropes around the prison which Belfast didn't do. The white clique eventually build a hatred for Belfast which escalates into a bet to kill him.
Ema uses her persuasion to get the others to stop the bet but they don't seem to listen, so Ema takes matters into her own hands and keeps Belfast safe from the white clique until things have rolled over, or unless she fails and Belfast ends up dead.
After Ema saves Belfast, the guards seem to be relunctant towards Ema and nicer then they are to the rest of the inmates, which infuriates everyone else. The other inmates begin making up rumours and spreading stories about Ema, which she tries to prove false but everyone continues on these stories.
Ripper August[]
Ripper has been at the prison the longest out of all the inmates currently. Sentenced for life, Ripper menacingly wanders the halls of Morlano by herself without any friends. She is feared by everyone in the prison, but at the same time everyone downright hates her.
Recently a bet to kill Ripper has resurfaced within the prison and has become quite the talk of Morlano. Ripper keeps a keen eye on everyone during these times, however eventually Yolanda Moretza succeeds in killing Ripper.
Momma C[]
Momma C is the oldest inmate at Morlano and acts as the mother of the prison, with almost everyone going to her for care and affection. Tristan Galahgez uses this to his advantage and plans to use Momma C for extortion and tell all the secrets she has heard from other inmates.
The guys gang led by Tristan try to hunt down Momma but she does all she can to protect herself. It doesn't last too long and Tristan wraps her round her finger and she reveals many of the inmates secrets to Tristan.
This entire kidnapping saga was kept under wraps until a rumour spread around about it and Momma C later confirmed it true. She then loses her status as the mother of the prison and becomes part of the black clique, with everyone else not retaining much relationship with her.
Mariana Moretza[]
Mariana Moretza has a theme of crime running in her family, being locked up with her daughter and having other family members across other correctional facilities. In prison, family comes first, and Mariana is always by her daughter's side, at least almost always.
Mariana and Yolanda are polar opposites, Mariana be outspoken and wild, whilst Yolanda is quiet and shy. Mariana decides to help Yolanda break from her shy ways by setting up many different situations that force Yolanda to act and be a leader.
The first situation is with a small fight at the Dining Hall, which doesn't cause Yolanda to react. Mariana tries to go bigger by causing a full-blown situation within their therapy session. Yolanda still doesn't react much, other then expressing embarassment for her mother.
Mariana decides to instead pull out the big guns by hosting a bathroom brawl, which doesn't end up very well. Hoping Yolanda will act against the people attacking her mother, instead the brawl gets out of hand and Yolanda becomes concussed and is sent to the hospital.
Once Yolanda returns, she learns the bathroom brawl was a setup by her mother, which infuriates Yolanda and she begins to yell and carry on for the first time in her life. The two have a falling out and whilst Mariana tries to rekindle their relationship, Yolanda doesn't seem to have much interest in her mother anymore.
After a while, Mariana begins to drive Yolanda crazy. Yolanda eventually breaks and goes on a rampage throughout the prison, which only makes Mariana feel terrible. Mariana decides to leave Yolanda alone and let her be who she is from now on.
Unfortunately the next time Mariana sees her daughter, Yolanda has completely changed into an outspoken and wild soul, just like herself. When asking why she has completely changed, Yolanda reveals to Mariana that she murdered Ripper August and won the prison bet. Hoping that this action would make her mother happy, Mariana decides to sweep it under the rug, and act just as an ordinary perfect family.
Yolanda Moretza[]
Yolanda Moretza has a theme of crime running in her family, being locked up with her mother and having other family members across other correctional facilities. In prison, family comes first, and Yolanda is always by her mother's side, at least almost always.
Yolanda and Mariana are polar opposites, Yolanda is quiet and shy, whilst Mariana is outspoken and wild. Mariana decides to help Yolanda break from her shy ways. Unknown to Yolanda, her mother has set up numerous different situations where she will have to stand up and be confident.
The first situation is with a small fight at the Dining Hall, which doesn't cause Yolanda to react. Mariana tries to go bigger by causing a full-blown situation within their therapy session. Yolanda still doesn't react much, other then expressing embarassment for her mother.
The next day, Yolanda walks into the bathroom to see a brawl going on between her mother and Justice Felippe. Instead of saving her mother, Yolanda accidentally gets knocked out and sent to hospital.
Once Yolanda returns, she learns the bathroom brawl was a setup by her mother, which infuriates Yolanda and she begins to yell and carry on for the first time in her life. The two have a falling out and whilst Mariana tries to rekindle their relationship, Yolanda doesn't seem to have much interest in her mother anymore.
After a while, Mariana begins to drive Yolanda crazy. Yolanda eventually breaks and goes on a rampage throughout the prison, which only makes Mariana feel terrible. Mariana decides to leave Yolanda alone and let her be who she is from now on.
Yolanda goes to talk to Momma C about her problems and misinterprets her words, making Yolanda feel terrible for everything she has done to her mother. Yolanda decides to make her mother happy by being courageous and kill Ripper August.
She then goes to visit Mariana and be just what her mother wants her to be, wild and outspoken hoping that this action would make her mother happy. Yolanda tells Mariana that she killed Ripper August, but instead of being happy Mariana is noticeable distraught. Mariana decides to sweep it under the rug, and act just as an ordinary perfect family.
Tahilla Herd[]
Unknown to any one else in the prison, Tahilla is actually an undercover agent sent by the International Correctional Task Force to investigate living conditions of prisons across the state as well as the state of the prisons guards and warden and whether they are following rules or not.
In Tahilla's first days of being locked up, she forms a personality and find friends to settle into the prison and get information from other inmates.
Afterwards Tahilla heads straight to snooping through areas for secret information. Using the resources given to her by the task force, Tahilla snoops through the basement of Morlano, unfortunately turning up nothing but almost getting caught by a guard.
She later investigates into the guard tower, which proves to be a struggle and she is accidentally caught by Ripley Monash after dropping her guard to view a classified file. Tahilla and Ripley accidentally befriend each other after Ripley discusses his mental state when hearing about Tahilla's mission.
Tahilla uses Ripley to do her bidding for a little bit, but the warden becomes wary of Ripley's snooping, and as such he pushes out from the snooping, and Tahilla returns to investigating herself.
The two discovered that the warden, Perry, has been taking funding from the prison for her own gain, and been having intimate relationships with inmates who get suspicious to keep them quiet.
Tahilla unfortuntately doesn't have enough evidence. So she sneaks into the warden's office to take documents showing the money stolen, but is caught by Perry who holds a gun to her head.
In that moment, Ripley appears to stop Perry from killing Tahilla, and the International Prison Task Force intervene to apprehend Perry and take her away from her job of warden for Morlano Prison.
Tristan Galahgez[]
Tristan is the leader of the guys half of the prison, after he formed a way to smuggle contraband in. He has many followers and many purchasers.
At first, Tristan's business runs suprisingly easy and well, but Harris Gorne, one of the inmates, spots Ferris Birch, another inmate with some contraband and he is transferred to a maximum security prison. From this incident, the guards become highly aware of someone smuggling in contraband, and Tristan becomes worried he's going to be found out.
Soon enough, Tristan can't handle having to hide his business all by himself, so he approaches Momma C and extorts all the secrets other inmates have told her.
Using this information as blackmail, Tristan makes numerous inmates hold on to contraband so he won't be so easily caught.
This plan backfires however and all the inmates decide to band together to rat out Tristan to the warden. Tristan is then arrested and transferred to a maximum security prison.
Ezra Hemph[]
Ezra was put into Morlano Prison after being found guilty of murdering his ex-girlfriend. He however did not kill his ex-girlfriend, and his entire time in Morlano is spent trying to get out. He is more of a followerer within the prison, never making any outright decisions are taking part in anything that would extend his sentence.
Ezra appeals his sentence to the court, and formulates a case to help find himself innocent. After his appeal, Ezra is found to still be guilty, so he waits out his time to appeal his case again.
During this time, Ezra gets in contact with a reporter to share his story to the outside world. He works with the reporter, Joan Porters, to help get himself out of the prison and collect information that he can use for his appeal. Ezra does this by talking to people who testified against him at the Visitor's Centre among other techniques.
The time for his next appeal comes and Ezra now has a lot more information available to help prove his innocence after what he and Joan did over the past few months. His appeal is successful and Ezra is finally declared innocent and gets to leave the prison.
Jai Apalo[]
Jai is a transgendered inmate who is forced to stay in the males quarters of Morlano Prison, even though she feels she should be in the womens quarters.
Jai's spends her time in the prison sneaking around into the womens quarters and mingling with the women where she feels she belongs. Jai does this for a while, being a part of the white girls clique before she is unfortunately caught by one of the guards, Ripley Monash. Ripley is nice on Jai, only letting her off with a warning but vowing to not be nice if he catches her once again.
She then spends her time plotting a way to be moved into the womens quarters, by presenting her idea to the warden, who initially refuses, and talking to the guards about getting a possible transferal.
Jai gets sick of the culture on the guys side and starts sneaking back into the girls side and being apart of the white girls clique again. During this time, Jai joins in on the bet going around between the white girls to kill Belfast, and very nearly succeeds in killing him but is halted by Ema.
Afterwards, Ezra approaches Jai after hearing about her attempt to get transfered to the womens quarters, and Ezra tells Jai about his ties with a reporter. Jai tells Ezra her story and a newspaper article published about Jai starts an uproar in society.
Perry is hit with intense backlash for keeping Jai in the wrong quarters of the prison. Jai tries to reason with Perry and Perry agrees to transfer Jai against her will. Jai thanks Ezra for the help and she gets moved to the womens quarters of the prison where she feels she belongs.
Fenti Nuuta[]
One day, Fenti randomly appeared at Morlano Prison having next to none recollection of what happened to him in the past 2 years. Upon arrival, Fenti is almost immediately called to the warden's office, and has a meeting with Perry Monaco. Perry tells Fenti that he was transferred from a prison in Japan.
Fenti is a fish out of water in Morlano, having known no one and nothing, even the prison system is wildly different from the Japanese ones he is used to.
Fenti goes around the prison not really knowing the rules, and so he unknowningly breaks majority of them trying to find a friendship group. Fenti joins the white girls clique, in a part of the prison he is not allowed to go in and doesn't retain a job but instead switches between them every day.
After a while Fenti has another meeting with Perry about his behavior at the prison and all the rules he's been breaking. Perry says she knows what he's doing, and proposes having romantic relations, which Fenti goes along with. Afterwards, Fenti tries to buckle down and not break any more rules.
This time he tries to truly find friends he can hang out with rather than being just another social outcast at the prison. Fenti then gets Tristan Galahgez's attention, with Tristan trying very hard to get him to join his contraband business. Fenti initially declines and looks for another less dangerous group.
He believes he finds that in the Moretza family, deciding to join the two males from the family that are locked up. After a short time, he gets sick of the two's rowdy nature and leaves the for someone different. Fenti sits off to the side with Belfast and Ema, but is very quickly bored with them, even though Ema was very nice to him. Fenti gets sick of the cursed nature of everyone in the prison, and decides to sit with the social outcasts who do nothing but sit and watch the chaos around them.
Fenti finds them to be not a good fit for him, and Fenti's last call is Tristan's contraband business. He is welcomed with open arms and Fenti fits in as one of the boys right away. However, it doesn't take long before Tristan's contraband business is snitched out, yet Fenti gets of with a small punishment. Thinking he was the one who snitched, the other boys in the business show hatred towards Fenti and want him killed, although they can't really do much.
Fenti ends up with the social outcast group, but decides to take charge and lead them into doing something other than watching. Fenti sets up numerous game nights and activities for the group to do, and the outcasts end up being all great friends with each other.
Belfast[]
Belfast's time in prison is spent off in the corner waiting for the day he gets to leave the prison. His plan works for the most part, he has been sitting off watching all sorts of people get in fights and transferred to maximum security prisons, for the most part he bets on what he reckons will happen that day.
No one really interacts much with Belfast, until a new inmate turns up to Morlano, Ema Maple. In her new days, Belfast is shocked to see Ema join Belfast as if it were a group. Belfast doesn't ever really think they are friends, but Ema doesn't really know what she's doing at prison so she thinks the two are great friends.
Soon however, Ema gets bored and develops a hatred for Belfast, leaving him to join the white girls clique. Belfast goes back to his ordinary way of living until Ema returns and urgently runs him too a hidden spot in the prison.
Belfast constantly complains throughout the fiasco, and Ema tells him that the white girls clique is out to kill him. Belfast and Ema's relationship gets further strained from this, but Ema promises to protect him until the white girls stop.
Ema eventually convinces the white girls to stop attempting to kill Belfast, which he shows little emotion for.
Not long after Belfast thinks he is done with Ema, rumours about her go around the prison of sucking up to guards for special treatment. Belfast initially blows the rumours over, but they escalate and he decides to take action. Belfast goes around disproving all the rumours and making sure no on ever speaks of them again, using his brute force to convince people. The rumours then go away and Ema asks Belfast if he knows anything about why they went away, but he politely refuses as to knowing what happened.
Ripley Monash[]
Ripley as a guard is supposed to watch the inmates from afar, but he often breaks this rule by interacting and hanging out with the inmates. He was a former war soldier who is currently suffering from PTSD
Ripley goes about his days as a usual guard doing the daily grind and jumping in a bit on the inmate games. One night Ripley catches Jai Apalo in the woman's quarters instead of the men's and has to get tough on Jai, although he still is relatively soft.
The next day Ripley catches Tahilla Herd in his office snooping around in a filing cabinet, however instead of immediately sending her to solitary confinement, the two become friends and work together. Tahilla is investigating corruption in the prison system, and Ripley uses Tahilla as his therapist.
Due to her limited access, Tahilla asks Ripley to snoop around areas she can't get too, and he agrees and begins to snoop around a bit. However the warden, Perry, becomes quickly wary of a snitch being amongst her, and Ripley's snooping days are immediately over.
The two remain close though, eventually discovering that Perry has been taking prison funding for herself, and having romantic relations with anyone who is suspicious.
Ripley and Tahilla get ripped from each other however, when the warden begins a crackdown after learning that a drug trade is going on within the prison, and all guards must be on high alert. They begin searching the prison for how drugs are getting in and who's distributing the drugs, eventually coming down to Tristan Galahgez and his gang. Everyone in the gang is transferred to a maximum security prison, except for one, Fenti Nuuta since Perry is having intimate relations with him.
After the crackdown, Ripley heads to Perry's office to interrogate her about the information he and Tahilla found out about, and he walks in on Tahilla with a gun to her head. Ripley tells Perry to put the gun down. She does and Tahilla alerts the International Prison Task Force to take Perry away.