Jade Legacy characters

Also known as Kaul Hilo, the Pillar

Appears from the start

Pillar of the No Peak clan, in the job for years now and no longer the young Horn who took it after his brother's murder. He still governs by instinct, personal loyalty and a willingness to answer violence immediately, in a Kekon that increasingly rewards lawyers, diplomats and foreign capital instead. He is angry with his wife and his sister over the secret they kept from him, unwilling to say so directly, and unable to stop fighting a war he inherited from his grandfather's generation.

Also known as Kaul Shae, the Weather Man

Appears from the start

The Weather Man of No Peak, running the clan's business and political side and, increasingly, its international one. She is the architect of the strategy that tied Kekon to Espenia, and she carries the consequences of it, along with a working relationship with her brother that has gone cold and formal since he learned what she helped his wife do.

Also known as Wen, Kaul Wen

Appears from the start

Hilo's wife, a stone-eye who cannot perceive or wear jade, and the mother of his children. The injuries she took working secretly for the clan have left her with lasting damage to her speech and movement, and much of her energy goes into recovering what she can of both. She is undiminished in judgement and in ambition for the family, and unrepentant about what she did.

Also known as Anden

First appears in chapter 2

The Kauls' half-Espenian cousin, back in Kekon and wearing jade again after years of refusing it. Rather than take a place among the clan's warriors he is studying medicine, on the conviction that what jade does to the human body is a medical problem that Kekon has never seriously examined. He remains the family member most willing to say uncomfortable things to the Pillar, and he has a life in Espenia he has not closed off.

Also known as Ayt Mada

First appears in chapter 3

Pillar of the Mountain clan and Hilo's opposite number for the whole of the war. Older now, still without an obvious successor, and still convinced that Kekon can only protect its jade under one clan rather than two. Her strategy of trading with Kekon's enemies has failed expensively, but her position inside her own clan is unshaken and her patience is longer than anyone else's.

First appears in chapter 2

The surviving Maik brother, Wen's sibling and Hilo's most trusted enforcer, responsible for the clan's killings and for the work it does not put in writing. Absolutely loyal to the Pillar and less and less restrained by anything else.

Also known as Woon Papi

First appears in chapter 3

Shae's Shadow, the senior aide to the Weather Man, and before that Kaul Lan's Pillarman. Quietly capable and completely dependable, he has served three Kauls in turn and has been in love with the current one for years without saying so usefully.

First appears in chapter 10

A senior Fist of No Peak: steady, well-liked among the clan's warriors, and more comfortable with the modern, organized shape the clan's military side has been forced into than with the older tradition of duels and personal grudges. As the war drags on he is given increasing responsibility for it.

Also known as Niko

First appears in chapter 4

Kaul Lan's son, brought back from Espenia as a small child and raised in the Kaul house by Hilo and Wen alongside their own children. As the son of a Pillar he is treated by the whole clan as the heir to No Peak, a role decided for him before he was old enough to have an opinion about it. He is watchful and serious, aware that he is being measured, and aware that he is the only child in the house who is not Hilo's own.

Also known as Ru

First appears in chapter 6

Hilo and Wen's son, a stone-eye like his mother, which means he will never wear jade or be a Green Bone in a family and a country that measure worth in exactly those terms. Sociable, funny and sharply intelligent, he grows up entirely comfortable with the clan and entirely excluded from the thing it is built around, and he has no intention of accepting that as a limit.

Also known as Jaya

First appears in chapter 6

Hilo and Wen's daughter, born with an aptitude for jade and none at all for patience. She is combative from childhood, drawn to the warrior side of the clan, and much more like her father than anyone in the household finds convenient.

Also known as Cory

First appears in chapter 8

Dauk Losun's Espenian-born son, a lawyer, and Anden's partner from their time together in Port Massy. He belongs to Espenia in a way Anden never will and to Kekon in a way Espenia will never quite let him forget, and the distance between the two countries is the standing problem in their relationship.

Appears from the start

A jadeless man from Janloon who has spent his entire adult life failing to steal his way into greenness, and who has survived every disaster he caused. Bitter, unattached and permanently convinced he is owed something, he drifts toward whoever will use him.