Vandel

Lore & Background

The Trench narrative, as fans have pieced together across the Vessel, Blurryface, and Trench albums plus their music videos, presents Dema as a city under a kind of psychological and literal siege. The Nine Nics are the ruling antagonists, a hierarchy of figures who enforce the status quo and prevent the band's characters from breaking free. Nico sits at the top as the most prominent and vocal of the group, but the power of the Nics comes from their number and their collective grip. Vandel is one of those nine, a figure in the ranks who contributes to the suffocating architecture of control that defines life in Dema.

The narrative draws heavily on themes of mental-health struggle, creative block, and the feeling of being trapped by one's own mind or by external pressures. The Nics, including Vandel, function as externalized manifestations of those pressures—fears, self-doubt, and the voices that say you cannot leave. The Trench itself, the barrier surrounding Dema, is both a wall of stone and a wall of thought. Every Nic, from Nico down through the ranks, reinforces a different facet of that enclosure.

In the music videos of the Trench cycle, the Nics appear as stylized, often masked or symbolically costumed figures, reinforcing their role as archetypal rather than purely individual characters. Vandel, like the others, is part of a visual and narrative language in which the band's struggle is framed as a siege that must be broken through collective will, creative expression, and the refusal to accept the walls as permanent.

In Their Own Story

The streets of Dema run in tight spirals, and the light that filters through the upper walls has the color of old amber. Vandel walks the perimeter again, as they do every cycle, hands clasped behind their back, the symbol on their chest catching the dim glow. Somewhere below, in the lower wards, someone is trying to climb. The Trench hums. Vandel does not look down. They never look down. That is the job. To walk. To be present. To make the walls feel like the only architecture that has ever existed. Above, Nico's shadow stretches long across the rooftops, and the other eight Nics hold their stations in the dark between buildings. The city breathes. The city does not leave. Not yet. But Vandel feels, in the small hours, a faint vibration in the stone—something being scratched from the other side, patient and relentless, like a name being spelled out in the dark until the letters finally catch fire.

Reader's Guide

The Nine Nics are best understood as a collective antagonist rather than nine fully individualized characters. Nico is the clear leader and the most frequently named figure across the Trench-cycle content; he is the face of the siege, the voice that issues commands and embodies the loudest, most confrontational form of the band's internal struggle. The remaining eight Nics, including Vandel, function as the supporting architecture of that siege—each reinforcing a different facet of the trap.

In the broader narrative, the Nics anchor the Trench album (2018) and its video cycle, which includes songs and visuals that depict the siege of Dema from multiple angles. They are the "villains" in a story where the protagonists are the band's characters, and the central conflict is the attempt to break through the Trench and escape.

As metaphor, the Nics represent the externalized pressures the band has described in interviews and lyrics: anxiety, creative paralysis, the feeling of being watched or judged, the internal critic that insists the walls are permanent. Nico is the loudest voice of that critic; the other Nics, including Vandel, are the quieter, more persistent pressures—the routines of dread, the slow erosion of confidence, the sense that leaving would mean losing everything you've built inside the walls.

Each Nic carries a symbol and a number within the nine-member hierarchy, and together they form a visual and narrative system that fans have mapped across album art, music videos, and live-show imagery. Their collective presence is what makes Dema feel inescapable: not one wall, but nine pairs of hands pressing the same barrier inward.

Did You Know?

• The Trench narrative is not a single linear story but a layered mythos that fans have assembled across multiple albums, music videos, and live performances, with the Nics appearing as recurring visual and lyrical motifs.
• Nico, the leader of the Nine Nics, is the most prominently named antagonist in the cycle and is directly referenced in the title track of the 2018 album.
• The city of Dema and its enclosing Trench function as extended metaphors for the band's documented struggles with mental health, creative pressure, and the feeling of being trapped by their own success.
• The Nics are depicted in the Trench-era music videos as stylized, symbol-bearing figures rather than photorealistic characters, reinforcing their role as archetypes of internal struggle rather than simple villains.