Homeland characters

Also known as Drizzt Do'Urden

Appears from the start

The thirdborn son of House Do'Urden, a noble family of the drow city of Menzoberranzan. By his people's custom a third living son is given to the Spider Queen at birth, and he survives only because one of his brothers dies during the raid the house launches on the night he is born. Raised as a household servant and page under the supervision of his sister Vierna, he grows up learning the city's rules of ambition, obedience and treachery. He has extraordinary reflexes and an instinct for weapons, and also an instinct for fairness and pity that nothing in his upbringing accounts for and that he learns early to hide.

First appears in chapter 2

The weapon master of House Do'Urden and the deadliest swordsman in Menzoberranzan, a male who fights with two blades and trains the house's warriors. He is openly contemptuous of the priestesses he serves and takes evident satisfaction in killing the clerics of rival houses. He was for many years Matron Malice's consort, and he takes an interest in the house's youngest son that nobody in the household can account for.

Appears from the start

Matron Mother of House Do'Urden and Drizzt's mother, a high priestess of the Spider Queen whose ambition drives everything the house does. She orders the destruction of a rival house to advance her rank, rules her children by fear and religious authority, and measures every relationship, including motherhood, by what it can be made to yield.

Appears from the start

The eldest daughter of House Do'Urden and its senior priestess after her mother. She is the most orthodox and the most brutal of the sisters, quick with the many-headed snake whip that is a priestess's badge of office, and she takes Drizzt's oddities as insults to the goddess.

Appears from the start

The second daughter of House Do'Urden, a priestess given charge of Drizzt for the first sixteen years of his life. She teaches him the city's laws and his place in them, and is as close to gentle as anyone in the household, though her patience is always in the service of the house and its goddess.

First appears in chapter 2

The youngest of House Do'Urden's daughters, a priestess still low in the family's order and watchful of her sisters. She competes with Briza for their mother's approval and takes no interest in Drizzt beyond his usefulness to the house.

Appears from the start

A son of House Do'Urden who advances to elderboy on the night of the raid, when his older brother dies in circumstances that suit him. Ambitious, capable and entirely practical about murder, he leads the house's patrols into the tunnels around the city and later escorts Drizzt to the warriors' school.

Appears from the start

The secondborn son of House Do'Urden and a wizard, senior in the family's order of males and resented for it by his younger brother. He takes part in the assault on the rival house on the night Drizzt is born.

First appears in chapter 2

The patron of House Do'Urden, Matron Malice's consort of the moment and the male the household treats as Drizzt's father. He holds his position entirely at Malice's pleasure and has neither authority nor security in it.

Appears from the start

A drow of House DeVir studying at the city's school of wizardry, and the only member of his family to survive the night his house is destroyed, because he was not at home. He does not know which house attacked his, and he sets himself to find out and to take revenge, with no expectation of surviving it.

First appears in chapter 2

A young wizard of House Hun'ett who finds the survivor of the ruined house wandering the tunnels and, instead of killing him, brings him to his own matron. Cold and calculating even by the standards of his city, he sees other people almost entirely as instruments.

First appears in chapter 3

Matron Mother of House Hun'ett, a rival family ranked near House Do'Urden. She shelters the surviving DeVir noble not out of mercy but because a living witness with a grievance is a useful weapon to keep in reserve against a house she intends to move against eventually.

First appears in chapter 16

A great black panther summoned from another world by an onyx figurine, bound to serve whoever holds the statuette. Intelligent and self-possessed, the cat obeys commands but is plainly not merely a tool, and it responds to Drizzt with a recognition its owner has never earned.

First appears in chapter 27

A young surface elf, the only survivor of a gathering destroyed by a drow raiding party. Drizzt cannot bring himself to kill her, and hides her under her mother's body, smeared with her mother's blood, so that the other raiders will believe the work already done.