Secret History characters

Also known as The Survivor of Hathsin

Appears from the start

The half-skaa crewleader who raised Luthadel against the Final Empire and was struck down in public by the Lord Ruler to make himself a martyr. The book opens at that death, and continues past it. Refusing to let go of the world he spent his life trying to change, he finds that dying has not ended him and immediately begins looking for an angle, a lever, or a con that will let him keep working. He is still charming, still arrogant, and still convinced that impossible is a description of a job rather than a verdict on it.

Appears from the start

The immortal emperor of the Final Empire, who kills Kelsier personally in the square before his palace. A thousand years of absolute rule stand behind him, and his authority is the thing Kelsier has spent his life attacking.

Appears from the start

The Mistborn street thief Kelsier recruited, trained, and pushed toward a fight he did not expect her to have to finish alone. Kelsier watches her from a place she cannot see or reach, unable to warn her, help her, or take anything back, and much of what he subsequently does is aimed at her situation.

Also known as Leras, Preservation

First appears in chapter 2

A shabby, distracted figure who is waiting for Kelsier when he refuses to move on, and who turns out to be a god: the power the Terris once called Preservation, worn thin and coming apart. He is forgetful, evasive, and less impressive than any account of a deity would suggest, and he knows a great deal that Kelsier is not supposed to be told about how the world actually works.

Also known as Ruin

First appears in chapter 6

The other god: mild-mannered, apologetic, and pleasant in conversation, and the will behind decay, entropy, and the ending of all things. He has spent a very long time confined and expects that to change. He is candid with Kelsier in a way that is worse than threats would be.

First appears in chapter 11

A scholar from somewhere other than this world, who travels between them and studies the powers behind them. She is precise, well-informed, and unimpressed by Kelsier, and she treats the whole catastrophe unfolding around him as a subject of research.

First appears in chapter 11

Khriss's assistant and companion, a dry, put-upon traveller carrying a distinctive sword and a low opinion of the errands he is sent on. He is the more approachable of the pair, which Kelsier immediately exploits.

First appears in chapter 14

A secretive society of travellers between worlds who have established themselves beyond the reach of this one's gods, and who have quietly gathered a store of divine power for purposes of their own. They regard the people of the ashen world as raw material, and they do not expect to be robbed.

First appears in chapter 24

The Terris Keeper who served Kelsier's crew, seen here from the far side of events. What becomes of him at the end of the war for the world is the last thing that happens to Kelsier as well.