A Darkness at Sethanon characters

Appears from the start

Prince of Krondor and ruler of the Western Realm, brother to King Lyam. Dark, spare and dry-humoured, a fine swordsman and a suspicious administrator, he has spent the time since his marriage preparing the Kingdom for an invasion nobody else quite believes in. He is the man the enemy in the north wants dead above all others, and he does not know why.

Also known as Jimmy the Hand, Squire James

Appears from the start

Senior squire of the Prince's court and formerly the best young thief in Krondor's Mockers. Quick, irreverent and impossible to keep out of anything interesting, he has become one of the few people Arutha genuinely relies on, and he still solves most problems the way a thief would.

Appears from the start

A moredhel chieftain who has united the dark elf clans of the Northlands under a single banner and is hailed among them as the figure of their prophecies. Beyond the raw size of the host he has assembled, almost nothing about him is understood: what he actually wants, why he wants Arutha dead in particular, and how a moredhel warlord commands such loyalty and such magic are all open questions.

First appears in chapter 2

A squire of the Prince's court, son of the Baron of Land's End, and Jimmy's closest friend and rival for trouble. Cheerful, reckless and more interested in women and adventure than in his duties, he is nevertheless brave and quick when it matters.

First appears in chapter 2

The orphan of Crydee who became the Kingdom's greatest magician, trained on the Tsurani world and elevated there as a Great One. He now heads the academy at Stardock. Convinced that the moredhel gathering is being directed by something neither moredhel nor human, he has set himself to find out what is buried beneath Sethanon and who else knows about it.

First appears in chapter 3

Pug's wife, born in the Thuril highlands of the Tsurani world and brought to Midkemia at the end of the Riftwar. She runs the household at Stardock, is entirely unimpressed by magicians as a class, and has made a home in a place full of people who are afraid of one another.

First appears in chapter 3

The boy from Crydee's kitchens who took the white and gold armour of the Valheru and became something between a man and a Dragon Lord. He rules Elvandar beside Queen Aglaranna, holds the two natures in him in balance, and is the only living person with any memory, however borrowed, of the age before men.

First appears in chapter 3

Duke of Crydee and Warden of the West, half-brother to the King and the Prince, once the duchy's huntmaster. Quiet and watchful, raised in part among the elves, he brings the armies of the Far Coast east when the summons comes.

First appears in chapter 4

King of the Isles, eldest of the conDoin brothers, ruling from Rillanon. He has spent the peace reconciling eastern and western nobles who spent the Riftwar distrusting each other, and now has to persuade them all to march.

First appears in chapter 4

A Hadati hillman of Yabon who avenged his destroyed village on the moredhel chieftain who led the raid. Silent, formidable in rough country, and one of the few men in the Kingdom who understands the northern clans from the inside, he travels north again with the Prince's party.

First appears in chapter 5

A young girl living at the Stardock academy, taken in by Pug and Katala. She does not speak aloud; she speaks mind to mind, which is a gift nobody at Stardock can teach her to control and which frightened everyone who knew her before she came there. She is shy of strangers and fiercely attached to the family that took her.

First appears in chapter 6

The young son of Tomas and Queen Aglaranna, born since the end of the Riftwar and the first child anyone knows of with a human father and an elven mother. The elves have no precedent for him and no way of telling what he will become.

First appears in chapter 7

King of the dwarves of the West and chieftain of Caldara in the Grey Towers, a stocky, pipe-smoking veteran of the Riftwar who has known the conDoins since they were boys. He commands the dwarven levies and knows the mountains and the old mine workings better than anyone.

First appears in chapter 11

The sorcerer who kept an island the Kingdom's sailors avoid, thought to have died closing the rift at the end of the Riftwar. He has been involved in Midkemia's history for far longer than any human lifetime, has always known more than he would say, and has always had reasons of his own.

First appears in chapter 11

Once Duke of Bas-Tyra and the King's Viceroy in Krondor, the conDoins' great rival, condemned and exiled after the Riftwar. He has spent the years since in the far north, and what he has been doing there is not what anyone in the Kingdom assumed. He remains cold, calculating and extremely good at his work.

First appears in chapter 11

A former pirate and sea captain who helped Arutha and Anita escape Krondor during the Riftwar, loud, cheerfully disreputable and dangerous in a brawl. He has attached himself to Guy du Bas-Tyra's fortunes in the north and is thoroughly at home there.