Let be a p-regular element. Its eigenvalues on are roots of unity of order prime to . If are their Teichmuller lifts to characteristic-zero roots of unity, the Brauer character is
It depends only on the conjugacy class of , is additive in short exact sequences, and equals the restriction of an ordinary character whenever the representation lifts.
For linear independence, choose a splitting p-modular system and let be the projective cover of the simple module . A projective lattice lifting has an ordinary character that vanishes on p-singular elements. Reduction and ordinary character orthogonality give
because is the head of . Pairing a relation with every yields for every . Hence
This is the linear-independence part of the Brauer–Nesbitt theorem.