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Marat

Marat as a whole

A race of "barbarian" elf-like humanoids who bond with animals. They are nomadic after their cities were destroyed centuries ago by the Vord. They live in a series of tribes found in the eastern continent of Maratea, linked to Alera by the Calderon Valley.

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• After the End: They once had an advanced Alera-style civilization with large cities, but they were wiped out by the Vord and left with only a handful of "barbarian" survivors.
• Animal Motifs:
  • The Marat tribes are each based around a certain animal, and the animal's nature is typically reflected in the tribals' demeanor. The known tribal animals are horses (fast, deceptively dangerous, hard-working, and stoic), wolves (merciless, cold, savage, and excellent at teamwork), herdbane (treacherous, quick-witted, flighty, impulsive, and stubborn), gargants (honorable, wise, slow to act but absolutely devastating and near-impossible to counter), and lions (though the latter never appear in the series). There was formerly a Fox Tribe, but the Wolf and Herdbane Tribes wiped them out several years prior to the start of the series.
  • In general, the Marat are frequently equated to and described as being akin to cats, being incredibly quick, graceful and feline in their movements; possessing a form of Innate Night Vision that makes their eyes glow in the dark like a cat's; and having viciously sharp fangs & claws, the former of which are often described as giving the Marat an unsettlingly cat-like appearance whenever they smile.
• Badass Normal: In comparison to the other sapient races of Carna, as their connection to their chala is not the exact same game changer as, say, the Telepathy and ice magic of the Icemen, the Blood Magic of the Canim, and the Elemental Powers of the Alerans, but they're still incredibly dangerous and probably the second-most recurring threat to Alera in the present day before the series begins.
• Barbarian Tribe: The Marat, who are divided into tribes based on their animal totems and live in the lands east of Alera, forsaking contact except when they invade the bridging valley.
• The Beastmaster: The Marat are a race of these, split into tribes based on their individual chosen animal.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: Subverted. While a common stereotype of the Marat from the Alerans is that they "lay with their beasts," it quickly becomes pretty clear that this doesn't happen and the relationship between chala and Marat is far more intimate and complex than what can be easily described.
  Isana: (to Kitai) What you have with Tavi... it's like your people's other totems, yes? The way your father is close to his gargant, Walker.
  Kitai: (raises her eyebrows) Doroga was not mating with Walker when last I knew. Walker would not stand for it.
• Best Her to Bed Her: The Marat, as a culture, have this in terms of their courting rituals. The man must win over the woman he wants in some competition, but with the catch that the competition is one of her choosing. So, if a male of the Wolf Tribe seeks to court a lady of the Horse Tribe and she doesn't reciprocate, she can challenge him to a horse race, knowing full well she has the clear advantage and will likely easily win, thus ending his pursuit of her.
• The Bet: Marat are willing to wager high stakes, such as alliances and the life choices of their children on major trials. Kitai bets her father she will win against Tavi and thus be now considered an adult and free to choose her own path in life.
• Bond Creatures: The Marat can do this with any animal and call their Bond Creatures "chala"; they gain not just telepathic communication with their animal, but actually begin to gain some of their physical attributes.
• Brutal Honesty: Apparently the Marat don't even have the concept of lying culturally, so most Marat are incredibly blunt and matter-of-fact. The closest they had was accusing someone of being "mistaken", which is considered a very serious accusation, and it's not until after interacting with the Alerans that they're introduced to the idea of being "intentionally mistaken". Sometimes this is Played for Drama (like with Doroga's cold assessment about the "Field of Fools"^note the Battle of First Calderon when he's talking to an angry Placidus Aria in Princeps' Fury), but more often than not it's Played for Laughs (such as Doroga and Kitai always finding it hilarious to embarrass their Aleran friends/allies with the frankness with which they talk about sex, or Doroga mocking the juris macto he has been called upon to officiate).
• Combat by Champion: There are customs in Marat culture about two clans settling disputes by having two representatives fight each other. Furies of Calderon has two examples:
  • With Doroga's help, Tavi invokes this to claim he and Fade aren't the enemies of the Marat. The combat is Tavi and Kitai's task to sneak into the Vord base^note No one knew at the time it was that and steal a precious cure-all mushroom. Tavi realizes nothing in the rules for this challenge forbid a tie and gets Kitai to partner with him so they can both win if they each hand over the mushroom at the same time.
  • Doroga stops Atsurak's attack for a time on Garrison by challenging him to this, declaring the later's actions are an abomination to the One.
• Cultural Chop Suey: As a whole, the Marat are heavily inspired by the ancient Germanic peoples, particularly in how their recurring wars with the Roman-inspired Alerans are clearly meant to serve as an allusion to the repeated conflicts between the ancient peoples of Central Europe and the Western Roman Empire. However, the Marat's spiritual beliefs are essentially that of animism, and the way they are discussed in the series proper seems to take (admittedly loose) inspiration more from Japanese Shintoism than anything else.
• Cue the Sun: The Marat hordes hold off attacking Aleran positions like Garrison until the sun rises, timing their first charge to right when the sun comes over the eastern horizon of Maratea. Apart from the religious symbolism the Marat ascribe to the sun, they do this because the rising sun will also be shining right in the eyes of the Garrison defenders and hamper their ability to see.
• Due to the Dead: Their tradition of eating the flesh of their enemies to gain their strength may be this for some. When Hashat killed some of Princeps Septimus' singulares in the Battle of First Calderon, she took their possessions and ate their hearts to honor them and take of their strength.
• Duel to the Death: These are often used to settle disputes between the Marat.
• Everyone Has Standards: The Marat might practice cannibalism, but even they find the Aleran practice of slavery to be horrifying.
• Eye Color Change: Bonding with a chala makes their eyes become the eye color of the chala.
• Gender Equals Breed: Well, in a sense. Though background Marat characters are of both genders, all named characters of any tribe are the same gender. All named members of the Gargant, Wolf, and Herdbane tribes are male, while all named members of the Horse tribe are female.
• Gender Is No Object: Generally. Alera and Canea are both varying degrees of No Woman's Land (although strength is still respected regardless of gender) the Marat don't seem to put much stock on gender roles. Men and women can both fight, and strength & honor are seen as the most significant aspects of a person's worth.
• The Ghost: Both the Lion Tribe and a seventh, unnamed tribe are never encountered in the series.
• Horse Archer: Almost all of the members of the Horse Tribe are depicted as specializing in bows, and also have Improbable Aiming Skills.
• Human Aliens:
  • The Marat are almost indistinguishable from humans, with the only physical differences being a higher body temperature, pale skin, silver-white hair, longer canine teeth and canted eyes.
  • The Marat are so human, in fact, that they and Alerans can interbreed and have viable offspring.
• I'm a Humanitarian: The Marat eat their enemies to "partake of their strength," with some clans eating them while they are still alive.
• Innate Night Vision: Like the Canim, they can see in the dark infinitely better than Alerans can.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Due to much higher ambient body temperatures, Marat generally don't need much clothing and barely bother beyond a loincloth and a belt to hold weapons and tools in. When first brought to a Marat camp, the narration notes that Tavi sees a lot of things a young Aleran boy isn't supposed to see — but really wants to. This causes some difficulty when Tavi recruits a host of female Marat riders as cavalry for the First Aleran.
• Irony: The Alerans often deride the Marat for supposedly being savage barbarians who don’t understand the greater workings of the world. However, if Doroga is to be believed in Academ's Fury when he explains the Marat belief system of the One to Amara, the Marat religion is one of animism, the belief that all aspects of the natural world contain spirits. Thing is, in the world of Carna, where furies make up the entire natural world, the Marat's belief in animism is a provable scientific phenomenon, and so the Marat are actually remarkably close to understanding how the world of Carna actually works.
• It Was a Gift: The Marat believe that if given a gift from a friend, it would disrespect that friend if they don't use it. So, Tavi invokes this with the Marat cavalry that comes to help the First Aleran by personally giving each rider armor and clothes, mostly so they will actually cover up to Aleran standards.
• Language Equals Thought: The Marat language does not have a word for "lying", and the closest the Marat can come up with is to say that somebody is making an "intentional mistake." In their culture, when one person accuses another of being mistaken the result is a Duel to the Death between parties to determine who is correct. Thus, they find the concept of somebody deliberately telling a falsehood confusing and pointless.
• Lightning Bruiser: Not only do the Marat have Super-Strength, but they're also superhumanly fast and agile, with Kitai being described as walking across a thin rope in Academ's Fury about as easily as if she was instead walking across a thick crossbeam — and all in a third of the time it took Tavi to crawl across.
• Made of Iron: The Marat in general showcase noticeably greater physical resilience and stamina than Alerans. As an example, Tavi mentions during Cursor's Fury to Max that his Psychic Link with Kitai allows him to go literal days without sleep while still staying mentally & physically sharp.
• Mirroring Factions: Tavi, Kitai, Doroga, and Amara have all made multiple remarks lampshading how similar their peoples really are to one another. The Marat can be just as dishonorable, needlessly cruel, illogical, noble, heroic, and kind as any Aleran can. Both societies also contain very confusing and arcane rules that aren't immediately obvious, and have rather dark traditions that they refuse to give up on (the Aleran practice of slavery — at least until the epilogue of First Lord's Fury — and the Marat practice of cannibalism).
• Noble Savage: With the exception of the more overtly villainous Atsurak, the vast majority of the Marat are depicted as being in this archetype as the series goes on, most obviously evidenced with both Kitai and Doroga.
• Our Elves Are Different: Marat are basically Neolithic Wood Elves, though the term "elf" is never explicitly used for them.
• Polyamory: It's implied that at least some of the Marat practice this, or at the very least are far less concerned with monogamy than their Aleran neighbors. Kitai mentions to Tavi at one point how her father Doroga had bedded multiple women after her own mother's passing, and if the comments from Enna in the introduction to Captain's Fury are anything to go by, it's not seen as that unusual for Marat to "share" their lovers even among their family members.
• The Power of the Sun: The Marat worship the Sun, calling it "the One" and often swear by it when making oaths. Though to be more precise, the Marat worship the entire natural world and believe nature itself consists of aspects of the One, and they simply see the Sun as (quite understandably) the "main source" of the One since the Sun is responsible for keeping the planet of Carna warm and sustaining photosynthesis.
• Proud Warrior Race: They have to be one to survive on Carna, after all.
• Psychic Link: How the link between a Marat and their chala seems to work, with them taking on aspects of their respective Bond Creatures. For instance, Doroga gains Super-Strength even for a Marat from his Gargant Walker, and Kitai eventually gains access to furycrafting from Tavi.
• Pyrrhic Victory:
  • According to Kitai, the Marat previously fought the Vord twice throughout history, and while they survived both times (with the first being implied as having been fought before they somehow ended up on Carna), calling them actual "victories" would be charitable exaggerations. In fact, the Vord so completely devastated the Marat the second time they were fought that the Barbarian Tribes encountered in the series' present day are in reality the descendants of the few refugees who were able to escape from the collapse of their entire civilization.
  • To a lesser extent, there's also the fact that the Marat technically "won" the Battle of First Calderon through utterly savaging the entire Calderon Valley, virtually wiping out the entire Crown Legion and even killing Princeps Gaius Septimus (though granted, Septimus was actually assassinated by Kalarus Brencis Majoris and Rhodus Martinus, with the Marat simply finishing the work for them after they sufficiently weakened him). The reward for their "victory" was the vengeful Legions of Alera returning within a few weeks and almost completely exterminating all Marat still within the Calderon Valley.
• Rock Beats Laser: The fantasy equivalent; Knights Ferrous use their furycrafting abilities to sense the metals of the weapons surrounding so they can slice arrows out of the air before they hit them and cut enemy swords to ribbons. The stone weapons used by the Marat, meanwhile, do not use metal at all, and so Kitai at one point is able to successfully force Phrygiar Navaris to back off from Isana and Araris by having her Horse Clan relatives surround the cutter with stone arrows and threaten to turn her into a glorified pincushion, as Navaris wouldn't be able to sense any metal in the arrows and thus wouldn't be able to cut enough down before she'd be killed.
• Side Bet: In Furies of Calderon, when Doroga and Atsurak are fighting in their Duel to the Death, several other Marat from different tribes were making wagers on the winner. Making bets is another common part of their culture.
• Super-Empowering: A downplayed case is seen with the Marat's chala bond; the Marat is empowered with "aspects" of their Bond Creature, the chala is given human-level intelligence, and both parties gain greater overall resilience.
• Super-Senses: Not only do they have Innate Night Vision, but the Marat are frequently shown to have far more acute senses than Alerans. Tavi, who is Kitai's chala, has gained these as consequence, with him mentioning that it's less that he suddenly has, for instance, excellent hearing, but that he can now more carefully pick out individual sounds and easily figure out their sources.
• Super-Strength: Marat are significantly stronger than most Alerans, even when they don't have a bond with animals that further enhances that strength. Kitai is able to break apart a chair she is tied to with a couple of violent jerks, and Doroga (whose chala is the massive gargant Walker) can lift a massive coffin-sized boulder and easily (and accurately) throw it as a weapon.
• Technicolor Eyes: Marat children, called by the gender-neutral term whelps, have multi-colored eyes until the time of their bonding. When they bond with their chala, their totem, their eye color changes permanently to the eye color of their chala.
• This Is Not My Life to Take: The Marat have strict hunting ethics. The prey of a person is that person's to kill, whether animal or person. If Tavi is after someone, the Marat wouldn't kill the person but would work to contain the person to allow Tavi to kill him. That said, if the person attacks, they will defend themselves.
• Uplifted Animal: The chala animals seen being used by the Marat often showcase near-human levels of intelligence, most obvious with Doroga's chala Walker occasionally serving as a Silent Snarker to the antics of Doroga's Aleran allies.
• We Have Reserves: Even putting aside how dangerous each Marat already is, the main threat they pose to Alera us whenever they attack in massive hordes that devastate the Calderon Valley.

Kitai

Kitai is a woman of the Marat, and Tavi's frequent partner, foil, and love interest. Tough and athletic, like Tavi she has learned to rely on her wits to beat powerful Crafters. Like all Marat, she has bonded telepathically with a being of another species, but is unique in that her chala is sapient (namely, Tavi). As a result, she often feels isolated from both cultures. As Tavi develops his Furycrafting, she becomes able to share it through their bond.

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• Acquired Poison Immunity: After her and Tavi's struggle against the Wax Forest in Furies of Calderon, she's shown to have quickly recovered from the Wax Spiders' poison in Academ's Fury.
• Action Girl: She fights side-by side with Tavi, and is actually the more capable of the two at most physical activities.
• Action Girlfriend: Frankly, Kitai's even more comfortable with the prospects of a fight than the trained spy, soldier and military officer she's in a romantic relationship with.
• Ambadassador: Becomes the Marat Ambassador to Alera after Academ's Fury.
• Badass Normal: Like Tavi, she has no superhuman abilities to speak of for the first three books, but still manages to hold her own against Vord and Canim without much difficulty.
• Battle Couple: With Tavi.
• Bifauxnen: To the point that Tavi actually mistakes her for a man a couple of times before getting to know her better. By Cursor's Fury, she's developed a more feminine figure, but still favors masculine clothes and stylings.
• Cerebus Callback: Surprisingly inverted. Her breaking down crying in Academ's Fury and bitterly noting that she wanted a horse instead of Tavi as her chala followed by him comforting her is one of the most emotional moments out of the entire series. However, as the series goes on and she becomes more comfortable with Tavi and accepts him as essentially her soulmate, her wanting a horse becomes a comedic Running Gag culminating in a particularly hilarious Brick Joke in Princeps' Fury.
• Cute Little Fangs: Part of being a Marat.
• Deadpan Snarker: Kitai has very little respect for... well, much of anything, really.
• Defeat Equals Friendship: Part of her initial admiration for Tavi stems from him besting her in the Trial of Wits in the Wax Forest.
• Did Not See That Coming: She was completely stunned by how Tavi actually came back to save her life from the Keepers in the Wax Forest, to the point where he sacrificed the Blessing of Night mushroom he needed to safeguard his family for her sake without thinking.
• Don't Think, Feel: It's implied that her ability to grasp furycrafting just as quickly as Tavi despite her lack of Academy training is due to this trope. Kitai chides him for letting his wishes and emotions blind him from just letting his powers develop naturally.
• Dual Wielding: Her fighting style of choice.
• Empowered Badass Normal: As Tavi is her chala, just as he becomes capable of First Lord-tier fury-crafting, so does she.
• Fate Worse than Death: To her, losing Tavi but living herself would be this. For this reason, she wants to be with Tavi, in life or death. He feels the same way in regards to her.
• Foil: For Tavi. Both lost a parent when they were young because of another clan or noble attacking them. Both sought to be "normal" for their own culture, Tavi wants furycrafting and Kitai wants a horse for a chala. She is basically a princess, as her father is headman of one tribe and representative of many others to the Alerans, and Tavi is, unknown to him, also a prince. They differ in that while both sport a dry wit, Kitai is relatively level-headed and Tavi is often treated like a lunatic for his very outside-the-box ideas. Additionally, while Tavi is often incredibly polite & respectful towards others while trying to constantly plan for the future, Kitai has little to no respect for anything and is one to argue more for living in the moment & enjoying life while it lasts.
• Humanity Is Insane: Routinely points out the irrationality of human society. Tavi generally agrees.
• Good Is Not Soft: While she's a very friendly and honorable person, she's still at the end of the day a "barbarian" who practices cannibalism and lives with an almost sexual desire for combat and bloodshed. See, for instance, in Academ's Fury where after she brutally kills the bloodcrow Turk while she and Tavi are escaping — with Ehren's aid — from a riverfront warehouse, Tavi has to desperately convince her not to immediately cut upon Turk's chest and devour his heart while his body's still warm since they need to escape. Oh, and all of this is after she had already bitten the nose off of another bloodcrow (Cardis), who she had knocked unconscious with a single swipe of her arm during said scuffle in the warehouse.
• Greater Need Than Mine: A variation. After the attack by the Awakened Vord Queen to kill their medics, Kitai awakens enough to see a dead Foss, and both Tavi and Crassus dying. Dorotea is also down from her collar. Does she save Tavi first, with her limited energy? No, she instead uses it to save Dorotea, knowing that the High Lady would have the power to save both Tavi and Crassus and others later in combat.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: She's often and vocally resentful of the complicated mess she got pulled into when she bonded with Tavi. She wanted a horse.
• In Harm's Way: She joins Tavi in leading from the front many times. She even refuses to sit in the back when he finds out she is pregnant.
• Interspecies Friendship: Besides Tavi, she develops several close relationships with several other Alerans. Outside of Max and Ehren, she is closest to Mistress, and later Tribune, Cymnea. Cymnea first ran the brothel and bathhouse among the camp followers and looked after Kitai when the later was in her "Gerta" disguise. She is also the one Kitai goes to to learn about Aleran Nobles' view on legitimate children and probably that she was pregnant with Tavi's child.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Kitai spends most of her time as a snarky Troll with little to no respect for anyone she meets, but has also shown herself to be a surprisingly selfless and thoughtful person with strong moral standards (such as her unmitigated disgust towards slavery).
• The Lancer: Again, to Tavi. She will support his crazy plans, but also call him out on both his stupidity/arrogance and when his pride is blinding him.
• Le Parkour: Uses this a lot under her guise as "the Black Cat" in Academ's Fury.
• Lightning Bruiser: Kitai not only has the natural Super-Strength of being a Marat, but is incredibly agile and showcases incredible reflexes in battle, to the point where she essentially dances around enemy Canim during the Battle of the Elinarch.
• Like Mother Like Daughter: According to Doroga, her Tsundere actions towards a terrified Tavi is exactly how he and her mother first started out.
• Locked into Strangeness: Her bonding with Tavi gave her matching green eyes. It was seeing her eyes matching Tavi's that told her father and aunt what had happened between them.
• Meaningful Name: "Kitai" is a Japanese word meaning "expectation, anticipation, or hope". The character arc of both her and her soulmate Tavi is basically about both being unable to live up to their societies' expectations and instead finding solace in one another. Furthermore, Kitai also helps keep Tavi's spirits up whenever he's at his bleakest (in effect giving him hope).
  • Additionally, Kitai is a traditionally masculine name in the United States, which can be seen as another Red Herring explaining why Tavi would mistake her for a boy for so long when they first meet.
  • And on a more mundane level, her name sounds similar to "cat" in English. The Marat are frequently given Animal Motifs related to felines, such as them having Innate Night Vision that makes their eyes glow in the dark like a cat's
• Mindlink Mates: With Tavi thanks to her bonding with him. They can sense the other one's presence and general moods. And when he gains furycrafting, she gains it too, while Tavi gains enhanced senses and endurance from her.
• Missing Mom: Her mother was a member of the Fox Clan, and was killed by the Wolf & Herdbane Clans many years ago.
• My Girl Is a Slut: Kitai is very proud of her sexual prowess and seems to be almost always game for her and Tavi to ravish each other. For his part, Tavi is far more bashful and easily embarrassed than she is, but is ultimately just as enthusiastic as she is regarding their "activities."
• Non P.O.V. Protagonist: She shows up in every book, usually fights side-by-side with Tavi and gets tons of characterization, but we never see her thoughts aside from part of the introduction to Academ's Fury.
• Obfuscating Disability: For much of Cursor's Fury she follows Tavi as a camp follower but pretends to be blind and kind of dumb, just playing her flute outside the brothel. The blindness is to cover her matching green eyes and dirty hair to cover her white Marat hair.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: See the Obfuscating Disability entry above. It's also implied that she intentionally exaggerates the stereotypes typically associated with the Marat just to Troll those around her along with encouraging people to underestimate her (and, of course, there is the fact than more than half the time, Kitai simply does not care at all for what anyone else thinks).
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Easily her most vulnerable moment in the whole series is when Tavi finally realizes that he is her chala during Academ's Fury. In this scene, Kitai actually bursts into tears, sobbing about how confused she feels (partly due to her being newly bonded to Tavi, and implicitly due in part to her being confused about the increasingly romantic feelings she's gaining for him) and about how miserably alone she feels since she's the first Marat to ever have a sapient entity - much less an Aleran - be her chala.
  • After she discovers the chains used for transporting slaves on The Slive, she's atypically serious and visibly bitter/disgusted, even calling out Tavi when he awkwardly tries to excuse Demos trafficking in slavery. Similarly, her realizing that she's pregnant in the final book causes her to become furious with Tavi for having been carrying on an informal relationship with her, as she doesn't want their child to have to deal with the major social stigmas that Alerans place on illegitimacy.
• Only Sane Man: Despite (or, perhaps in part because of) being a "barbarian princess," she's actually one of the sanest and most level-headed people in the series.
• Phantom Thief: In Academ's Fury. It's good practice for assisting with a jailbreak, and comes in handy again when they need to smuggle Varg out.
• Precision F-Strike: Played for Laughs in Captain's Fury, where Kitai mutters under her breath that Navaris is a "crazy bitch" just after getting her to back off from killing Isana and Araris.
• Pregnant Badass: Through all of the last book.
• Pretend Prejudice: Half her lines are about how much Alerans suck. She still seems to get along with them pretty well.
• Proud Warrior Race Girl: Like her father. She's not afraid to kick people's asses if they're a threat to her or her chala.
• Rescue Romance: Tavi and Kitai first bonded when he saved her from the Keepers of Silence in the Wax Forest, and it's all but stated that Kitai fully fell in love with him (and he with her) after he saved her from the Vord during the climax of Academ's Fury.
• Samus Is a Girl:
  • Tavi takes an embarrassingly long time to figure out that Kitai's a girl when he first meets her.
  • He does it again upon first encountering her "Black Cat" persona in Academ's Fury.
• Sarcastic Devotee: Kitai is unflinchingly loyal to Tavi at all times, after they grow closer. This in no way prevents her from snarking at his insecurities and failings, or questioning the sanity of some of his ideas.
• Saying Too Much: When talking with Isana about their bond, Kitai corrects Isana's thought the bond is like watercraft-based empathy as it is much deeper and intimate. Isana quickly realizes the only way Kitai could know what watercraft-based empathy felt like was if she experienced it personally. This leads Isana to realize Kitai, and by extension Tavi, can furycraft.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Aside from a joking comment concerning her appreciating the competence of High Lord Phrygia's heir Cyricus in First Lord's Fury, she and Tavi only have eyes for each other. There's even a simultaneously amusing, adorable, and heartwarming moment in the prologue to the final book where when Kitai is calling out Tavi for her having inadvertently been acting as his "mistress" in their relationship together, Tavi inadvertently leads her to briefly believe (much to her horror) that he doesn't want to marry her before he hastily explains that what he meant is that after meeting her, it was never even a question for him that he would ever consider marrying someone else.
• Strong and Skilled: She's much quicker and more coordinated in a fight than Tavi, and physically stronger than him too thanks to her Marat physiology. Gaining access to furycrafting enhances these attributes further, though Tavi still has the edge on her in intelligence and utter craziness.
• Super-Strength: When tied to a chair in Academ's Fury, she breaks the chair on her own with barely any effort. She's also one of the few characters in the series that is accomplished in Dual Wielding, and repeatedly shows off incredible strength whenever pressed into a fight.
• Technicolor Eyes: In the first book, Kitai's eyes are described as "iridescent" – this is apparently a trait of all Marat "whelps" (i.e. those who haven't bonded to a totem yet). They change permanently to green once she bonds to Tavi.
• Took a Level in Badass: As the series goes on, she becomes a more intelligent and skilled opponent even without gaining access to Tavi's potent furycrafting.
• The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: Doroga is a bit fugly, but still pretty cool. Kitai is often described in the later books as being exotically beautiful.
• Tsundere: Towards Tavi at first. Most notably, when she thanks him for having saved her life near the end of Furies of Calderon and how she won't forget it, the narration phrases it like she's giving him a threat. Tavi, on his part, is utterly terrified and (more or less) cowering in his bed at the moment of her "thanking him."
• Troll: As alluded to above, she often exaggerates the stereotypes associated with the Marat just because she thinks everyone else's reaction to her is hilarious.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Tavi is very put-off and embarassed when he discovers that she's a girl during their trial in the Wax Forest, while she's only first confused and then irritated by his awkwardness.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Max and Ehren.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Does this to Tavi whenever he does something stupid or immoral.
  • In Captain's Fury his quiet acceptance of slavery in defending Demos having slave chains gets some ire from her until he destroys the chains.
  • His realizing his just having sex with her and not properly courting her in either of their cultures, could be used against them politically and her personally, being called the Prince's Whore by Citizens (Tavi is genuinely horrified when he realizes this, having been rather oblivious to what others were saying).

Doroga

Doroga is Kitai's father and one of the most important Marat chieftains. He is blunt and earthy, but anyone who speaks with him for long realizes that he is far more intelligent and canny than he appears (as his own daughter notes, he only looks stupid). Doroga is the first to recognize the menace the Vord pose to the world, remembering them from old Marat legends, and also sends Kitai to learn about the Alerans, bringing her into contact with Tavi again.

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• Action Dad: While he rarely fights alongside his daughter (who can more than look after herself), he is a significant badass in his own right.
• Big Damn Heroes: On a regular basis.
• Big Good: After Atsurak's death, he's the most prominent leader seen among the Marat, and is a good friend of both Bernard and Tavi while being fervently dedicated to preventing the Vord from destroying the world.
• The Big Guy: His chala is a giant ground sloth. It goes with the territory.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Doroga is always happy when finding a good fight.
• Bond Creatures: His is with the gargant Walker.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: As Kitai puts it in the first book, the problem with Doroga is that he does not seem wise.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Not Doroga himself, but he's fond of mocking Alerans (primarily Amara and Bernard) about their inability to talk candidly about sexual topics.
  Doroga: [smirking while Amara is flushing in embarrassment] Everything in the world mates and likes it. You Alerans are the only ones to pretend they don't.
• Carry a Big Stick: His weapon of choice is a cudgel nearly too big for a High Lady with powerful earthcrafting to even lift.
• Cool Old Guy: Hell yeah. Doroga might be getting up there in years (particularly by the last book), but he can also kick ass with the best of them.
• Deadpan Snarker: Kitai had to get it from somewhere, after all. Particularly memorable is his editorializing when asked to mediate a juris macto, to the point where Placidus Garius (Antillus Raucus' second) outright notes that he doesn't think it's exactly proper for the Master of Arms regarding a juris macto to spend most of his time snarkily calling out its participants for being a bunch of dolts too moronically stubborn to just talk out their problems instead of relying on bloodshed.
• Fire-Forged Friends: With Bernard. So much so that Bernard is willing to challenge a Senator who had insulted Doroga.
  Bernard: Senator. If you call my friend a liar one more time, I will take it badly.
  Arnos: Excuse me?
  Bernard: I suggest you find an alternate shortsighted, egomaniacally ridiculous reason to blatantly, recklessly ignore an obvious threat to the Realm simply because you don't wish it to exist. If you cannot restrain yourself from base slander, I will be pleased to meet you in a juris macto and personally rip your forked tongue from your head.
• Genius Bruiser: No one ever expects a huge and craggy Cool Old Guy to be quite as canny as Doroga is. He's a decent tactician, learned to read and write surprisingly quickly, has pulled off at least one pretty good Batman Gambit, and has a tendency to function as all-purpose wisdom dispenser whenever Jim Butcher needs to give a character some advice.
• It's Personal: Part of his duel against Atsurak is motivated by him still feeling hatred over him having wiped out his wife's tribe (Clan Fox) several years ago.
• It Was a Gift: He is regularly seen wearing the tunic Gaius Sextus gave him at the end of the first book. That said, the sleeves were too small for his arms, so he had to remove them.
• The Lost Lenore: Downplayed; The loss of his "wife" (Kitai's mother) is still shown to clearly pain him many years later, but both he and Kitai have mostly been able to move on from her passing. Killing Atsurak (the man who was at the very least indirectly responsible for her death) probably helped.
• Mr. Exposition: He helps provide some (admittedly obfuscated) information regarding the Vord in Academ's Fury.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Amara is understandably disturbed in Academ's Fury when the incredibly brave and heroic Doroga actually shows legitimate fear when recalling his people's legends concerning the Vord.
• Papa Wolf: When he sees some alien bug attacking his daughter, he immediately grabs the nearest coffin-sized boulder and chucks it at it.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Oh yes. Doesn't mean he's not a realist, though, and he is willing to prevent war when he considers it to be dishonorable or avoidable.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: For Clan Gargant and the rest of the Marat in general. He might be an honorable Proud Warrior Race Guy, but he seems to recognize that the most important part of being a warrior is making sure war is prevented as much as possible while also being a fair and considerate leader to the people both directly under his command and those he is allied to.
• Shipper on Deck: His closing remarks in Furies of Calderon has him cheerily noting that Tavi is "doomed", and he and his wife started out just like Kitai and Tavi (with the immediate prior scene involving the two of them featuring clear disagreeing). He is also very quick to notice Amara and Bernard's relationship in Academ's Fury, with him encouraging her to be honest about her feelings & try to pursue them forward as much as she is available since life is far too short to get hung up on societal improprieties.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: A rare heroic case; When he is meeting with Isana's coterie in Princeps' Fury, High Lady Placidus Aria — who is, unbeknownst to everyone, being affected by the Hate Plague inadvertently created by Aleran firecrafting mixing with Icemen watercrafting — briefly marches right up to him and growls about how her elder brother died at the Battle of First Calderon defending Gaius Septimus "from your [Doroga's] kind". Below is how Doroga ripostes and forces Aria to re-focus on the importance of the Alerans establishing an armistice with the Icemen:
  Doroga: [coldly glares at Aria before grunting, raising a hand to cut off Isana's startled apology to him/admonishment of Aria, and then immediately starts counting off from his fingers] My father, three brothers, half a dozen cousins, my mother, her two sisters, and my closest friend died there as well. All of us lost the battle at the Field of Fools, lady of the cold voice.
  Placidus Aria: So all is forgotten? Is that what you mean?
  Doroga: There is no use in chewing at old wounds. That battle ended more than twenty years ago. Today's battle is fought far to the south, where many good Alerans, your own husband among them, now fight the Vord. In case you have forgotten, our purpose here is to make peace. [Doroga's eyes flash in restrained anger and Walker lets out a warning rumble] Let it be, Aleran.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: He's so heavily muscled that he had to tear the legionare's tunic he wears to make it a vest; otherwise he couldn't get it on.
• Super-Strength: As a result of his chala being a Gargant. Most clearly demonstrated in the first book, where he picks up a coffin-sized boulder and throws it. And even manages to hit his target. Without hitting either Tavi or Kitai, who were very close to it. In the dark.

Atsurak

Marat headman of the Herdbane Clan, and also a hordemaster (warleader of several tribes). Serves as one of the primary villains in Furies of Calderon.

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• Bad Boss: He was aware on at least some level that he was being manipulated by the Aquitaines to savage the Calderon Valley for their political benefit, but didn't care and still led his people into the immensely bloody Battle of Second Calderon just for the sake of his own revenge.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Forms one with Fidelias for Furies of Calderon, though he's ultimately just the puppet of the Aquitaines.
• Blood Knight: He's described as being a maniacal berserker in combat.
• Combat Pragmatist: A villainous and definitely unsympathetic example, with him trying to arrange for Doroga to be assassinated by one of his allies (Skagara, Headman of Clan Wolf) during his Duel to the Death with Doroga over the fate of the Calderon Valley just so he can proclaim that he "won" the duel and he can resume his slaughter.
• Cycle of Revenge: According to Doroga in the second book, Atsurak lost his father during the Field of Fools (the Battle of First Calderon), and Fidelias was able to easily manipulate him into fighting the Alerans since he still wants revenge.
• Dirty Coward: A downplayed case; While he still has plenty of Villainous Valor, he's also someone willing to arrange for the person he's engaged in a Duel to the Death to be assassinated just so he can continue the fight against the Alerans, and also sent his chala out on its lonesome to scout out steadholts in the Calderon Valley instead of going there with it (which in turn resulted in its death).
• Disc-One Final Boss: The Aquitaines were pulling his strings the entire time he's on page, and he's ultimately nothing more than an "initial obstacle" faced by Tavi, Amara, and Isana in their struggles to save Alera.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Standard for the Marat. Unlike Doroga, though, he's an arrogant and cruel war-leader willing to lead his people into a bloody meatgrinder for no other purpose than to ensure his own revenge.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Fidelias kills him quickly, to get crucial evidence back, as soon as he is no longer useful.
• Smug Snake: He's a bit smarter than he initially appears, getting the signet knife as an assurance against the Aquitaines stabbing him in the back. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't think any further than that and sorely underestimates Fidelias, who cuts his throat at the first opportunity when the tide turns against them.
• Starter Villain: Introduced in the first book to both show how skilled the Marat are in combat and how skilled the Aquitaines and Fidelias are at manipulating people.
• Unwitting Pawn: See Disc-One Final Boss above. The Aquitaines wanted to arrange a Marat invasion of the Calderon Valley as an excuse to swoop in to the rescue and get Gaius Sextus deposed for incompetence. Doroga saw through them, but Atsurak was dumb enough to fall for it.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Like all Marat, he has white hair. He also attempts to sacrifice and eat an Aleran.
• Worf Had the Flu: As dangerous as he is, he's also at a continuous disadvantage throughout Furies of Calderon thanks to Tavi & Bernard killing his herdbane chala near the start of the book.
• Would Hurt a Child: Doroga at one point calls him a "whelp-killer," meaning that he has killed Marat children.

Canim

Canim as a whole

A race of gigantic (seven feet tall is short for them) humanoid wolves. They have access to Blood Magic and live in a series of advanced nation-states called "ranges" from the far-off western continent of Canea, though the range of Narash is the only one to have open diplomatic relations with Alera. The range of Shuar is also encountered in Princeps' Fury.

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• Blood Magic: The Ritualists can create powerful magical effects with rituals that use blood as their chief component. Incidentally, it only works with the blood of sapient beings — moral Ritualists use their own, while less moral ones sacrifice other beings.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Being a race of Wolfmen, the Canim have a fundamentally more "predatory" and "animalistic" bent than the Alerans (and even the Marat & Icemen) to their psychology. This is most obviously reflected in both their body language and how it's often mentioned that a Cane leader needs to made sure to always appear courageous and capable in case the predatory instincts of his subordinates inspires them to engage in a Klingon Promotion. However, this gets slightly downplayed as the series goes on, with multiple asides and even a brief POV section from Varg highlighting that, at the end of the day, the Alerans and Canim ultimately don't think that differently from one another as they might often so otherwise claim.
• Boring Yet Practical:
  • Being that they don't have access to Aleran witchmen (specialized watercrafters that allow Aleran ships to traverse through the dangerous stretches of sea inhabited by leviathans), the Canim just have very good nautical charts of the oceans pointing out where the leviathans' ranges are so they can stay far away.
  • This is how Canim technology in general seems to work, as the Blood Magic practiced by the Ritualists does not have the same flexibility as Aleran furycrafting. Most of what they build is intended to be used by someone without any magic, and most often they're all the more useful for it (ranging from terrifyingly dangerous weapons like their massive "balest" crossbows to the simple pulley system used to water the rooftop gardens found in their steadholt-analogues along with the portable enclosures the Canim use to help fence off their beasts of burden from one another).
• Canis Major: Canim are, on average, very large. As mentioned above, growing to seven feet tall is considered short for them.
• Conlang: "Canish," the Canim language. It is often described as sounding like something barely above a wolf's growl, to the point where Isana briefly thinks Tavi has lost his mind when talking to Varg at one point in Captain's Fury. Admittedly, we don't see enough of it being used at once to see how it functions as an actual language, but from what can be inferred, body language plays a significantly more important role in it than it does with Aleran (English). Additionally, a good indicator of how much of a Proud Warrior Race the Canim are is that they have eleven different words to mean "enemy" (gadara is the only term we learn among them).
• Ditto Aliens: Subverted. The Narashan Canim are the only Canim to have diplomatic relations with the Alerans and look like seven-foot-tall Wolfmen with midnight-black fur, leading to most Alerans assuming that all Canim look like them. Later on, however, Tavi and company are introduced to the Shuaran Canim, another Canim subspecies who have tawny golden fur and less stocky bodies than that of the Narashans, along with comparatively slender snouts.
• Due to the Dead: The Canim sing a "Blood Song" for fallen warriors. Notably, Warriors who become Hunters have their Blood Songs sung when they make the transition, as it is meant to represent that their old life is over and their only duty now is to serve their Warmaster.
• Everyone Has Standards: The Canim are a brutal and downright ruthless Proud Warrior Race that see most other races on Carna as inferior, but they abhor the slaughter of non-combatants in wartime and view the Aleran practice of slavery as utterly abominable.
• Endangered Species: The Canim are utterly massacred by the Vord's conquest of Canea during the midpoint of the series, to the point where only around sixty thousand civilians of both Narash and Shuar were able to be evacuated to Alera (where they settle first around Antillus before having Tavi give over the Vord-conquered city of Parcia to them to help acknowledge them as an extant state under Aleran control).
• Enemy Civil War: In a sense. As Tavi and Maestro Magnus later realize in Princeps' Fury, one of the only reasons why the Alerans have been able to survive on Carna is because the many ranges of the Canim have been constantly bickering amongst themselves for most of history, and the Alerans would've been stomped into mulch if the Canim had ever banded together and tried to wipe out the "demons."
• Enemies Equals Greatness: Inherent in the concept of gadara. Having a strong and cunning opponent declare you gadara is a powerful testament to your own strength and cunning.
• Expressive Ears: Canim primarily show emotion with their ears, and one of the tells that a Canim has been Taken is that their ears "don't look right."
• Fantastic Caste System: Canim society is divided into a number of different castes, of which four are known:
  • Warriors, who are Exactly What It Says on the Tin. They're the leaders of the Canim, and as such are the most commonly encountered in the series. Varg and Nasuag are Warriors.
  • Ritualists (also called Bloodspeakers), who use Blood Magic to cast a wide variety of spells. For most of Canim history, they used their own blood. Recently, they've made a breakthrough by utilizing the blood of others. This has left them with more power, time for politics, and an itch to usurp the warriors as the leaders of the Canim. Sarl, Khral, and Marok are Ritualists.
  • Makers, the "civilian" caste, composed of anyone who's not a Warrior, Ritualist, or Hunter. In theory, the other Castes exist to serve them, but power corrupts with Canim as much as it does with humans.
  • Hunters, the Canim's spies and assassins. Sha, Nef, and Koh are Hunters.
• Fantastic Slur: The Canim often refer to the Alerans as "demons" for their deadly Elemental Powers. Relatedly, if the young Canim rear guard Sarsh in Captain's Fury is anything to go by, calling an Aleran "monkey-boy" is also an appropriate insult.
• Friendly Enemy: Combine it with Worthy Opponent and you get a gadara. To the Canim, a gadara is more trustworthy than an ally, as while an ally can betray you, a gadara is still an enemy and thus one can expect violence from them. Generally, to be acknowledged as a gadara, the two who declare themselves as such exchange swords in front of witnesses. Prior to the events of Captain's Fury, no Canim had ever had an Aleran gadara, until Tavi became one of these with both Nasaug and Varg.
• Gang of Hats: A cultural example. Aside from the common Fantastic Caste System, it's frequently mentioned that the various ranges of the Canim had certain trades that they liked to "specialize" in. For instance, the Narashan Canim are incredible sailors and expert engineers (according to Tavi, the Narashan Canim have forgotten more about sailing than the Alerans have ever learned), while the Shuaran Canim are masters at both siege warfare and mining.
• Genuine Human Hide: When facing opponents not of Canim make, the Ritualists seem to like wearing clothing made from the skins of their enemies. A good indicator of how Stupid Evil a particular Ritualist is can be seen if they're still wearing the "pale leather cloaks" made of human skin around the Alerans even after an Enemy Mine is formed between the two races. Meanwhile, the more heroic Ritualists, like Master Marok, wear makeshift armor formed out of scavenged Vord chitin.
• Human Sacrifice: Though it's not necessarily just Alerans, with Varg describing their Blood Magic with "The ritualists are not choosy about which blood they take, so long as it is from a reasoning being." Technically, they don't need to necessarily kill someone to use their blood in the spell, but part of the problem with Canim Blood Magic is that they essentially need to kill a sentient being to perform the really massive spells, especially if the spellcaster in question isn't that experienced. For reference, it's mentioned that the massive armada the Narashan Canim used to escape to Alera cost millions of Ritualists their lives.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: Both the narration and Alerans regularly refer to them as "it," as Alerans often view Canim as little more than beasts. It's not until the ending of Cursor's Fury, when Tavi is among the first Alerans to see a female Cane, that the narration starts using "he" and "she."
• Innate Night Vision: Like the Marat, the Canim can see in the dark far better than any human can.
• Killer Rabbit: Their young cubs look like adorable puppies with opposable thumbs. They can also tear someone's hand off with their fangs with sufficient force to dislocate their shoulder at just five years old.
• Language Barrier: An interesting example runs between them and the Alerans. Sure, they're capable of learning each others' verbal languages, but among Canim, body language speaks just as loudly, if not moreso. Most Alerans don't realize they have to ensure their posture and body language send the right messages when dealing with Canim. For instance, while to an Aleran a nod is a polite, civil greeting, to a Canim, lowering your chin means you're covering your throat and ready for a fight. Tavi manages to even earn the respect and acknowledgement of Varg at one point by biting his throat - the fact that he couldn't do anything because of his comparatively weak teeth and jaw muscles being irrelevant, as the physical gesture was all it took.
• Lightning Bruiser: Canim are as strong as earthcrafters, have incredibly high pain tolerance, and can move deceptively fast for their enormous size. Even their untrained civilian conscripts can be as dangerous as an Aleran legionnaire or three as a result, and Cane Warriors can tear through entire squads of opponents like a scythe through grain if a Knight isn't present to counter them.
• Logical Weakness:
  • As powerful as their Blood Magic can be, it's limited by the available quantity of blood to be used in their spells. That being said, sufficiently skilled Ritualists like Marok minimize this issue to the point where it's virtually irrelevant.
  • The Canim's sheer size and the reach of their arms and weapons also makes them surprisingly vulnerable to the Alerans when they can get close. A tactic that the First Aleran develops is "shields high, swords low," in which the legionares raise their shields over their heads, advance in very close, and strike at the Canim's legs with the gladius.
• Mundane Utility: Downplayed. Unlike furycrafting, Canim Blood Magic seems to be primarily designed for use in combat. However, according to Varg, it also has its uses elsewhere, such as blessing bloodlines, improving fertility in Canim women, increasing the bounty of crops, and lessening the ravages of storms, droughts, and plagues. The last aspect in particular is implied to be the reason why, despite furies existing in Canea, no furystorms or wild furies are observed there by Tavi and other Alerans in Princeps' Fury.
• National Weapon: The Narashan Canim seem to be associated with swords while the Shuarans use axes.
• Natural Weapon: While they're not stupid enough to go into battle without being armed, even an unarmed Cane is a formidable challenge thanks to their sharp claws and fangs, superior senses, and Super-Strength.
• No Woman's Land: Implied, with it not being until the Narashan Canim Invasion of the Amaranth Vale in Cursor's Fury that the first female Cane is ever seen.
• The Nose Knows: The Canim's sense of smell is incredibly sensitive, to the point where one of the tells of their kind being Taken by the Vord or not is their scent. Varg was also able to figure out that Tavi was related to both Gaius Sextus and Isana simply based on how his scent was similar to both of theirs.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Both Tavi and Varg have made repeated musings on how similar their two peoples are to one another. Though the Canim often remark on the strangeness and complexity of Aleran culture, Canim culture itself has numerous faux pas and convoluted loopholes to navigate, which is acknowledged as the books progress.
• Odd Friendship: Thanks to their Enemy Mine against the Aleran government, the invading Narashan Canim and Free Aleran Legion form a remarkable camraderie with each other. It continues into the following books even as everyone unites against the Vord, to the point where it's considered an open question in Princeps' Fury over which side the Free Aleran would choose to side with if the Canim and Alerans come to blows during Tavi's expedition to Canea.
• Our Orcs Are Different: Aside from a lack of green skin (what with them being a race of Wolfmen), the Canim fulfill virtually every other trait seen in Blizzard Orcs, being large, powerful, warlike, having a culture predicated on honor, and a longstanding enmity with humanity.
• Proud Warrior Race: Though their philosophy is that the Warriors exist to serve the Makers, not the other way around. The view of the Warriors that everyone else is an enemy results in bizarre interactions, such as Varg being forced to use his Hunters as an intermediary to pass a warning to the Alerans, simply because as a Warrior he can't directly help his enemies, even if they are gadara. In Academ's Fury, Varg frames helping Tavi find out about the Vord plot as an attempt to ensure that the Canim's eventual victory over Alera will be an honorable one on the field of battle rather than a victory through duplicity.
• Really 700 Years Old: Canim live for hundreds of years. At one point Tavi gets to know a Cane who's nine hundred years old, who is elderly but certainly not decrepit.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Downplayed. One of their policies is to assign overly aggressive young warriors to low-priority rear-area duties, in the hopes of them getting tempered and loosing their Hot-Blooded natures. Its success is pretty variable, since most young Canim are smart enough to realize that it's a humiliating punishment, but are still too boneheaded to realize why they're being punished in the first place.
• The Stoic: Downplayed in that due to them have a very different facial structure from Alerans, it can be quite difficult for Alerans to tell the emotional state of a Cane in comparison to, say, a Marat or even one of the Icemen.
• Super-Strength: An average Cane's strength is many magnitudes greater than that of both the average Aleran and even Marat, to the point where only the Knights Terra when calling upon their earthcrafting for strength are shown to be able to match them. Perhaps the most notable example of this is in Captain's Fury, where after Tavi is only able to make a tiny bend in a heavy iron gate that has been furycrafted into the surrounding stone after calling upon all of his earthcrafting, Varg tears the gate out like the stone around it is made of wet clay and then tosses the gate overhead with only some effort.
• War Refugees: Are reduced to this after the events of Princeps' Fury, with the surviving Narashan and Shuaran Canim settling in the Aleran city of Parica (which had been previously taken over by the Vord).
• Weird Weather: Lots of their spells seem to revolve around clouds and the weather, being able to cause vicious storms and summon a gale-force wind mighty enough to propel an entire armada of ships.
• Wolfman: An entire species of them.
• Worthy Opponent: The concept of gadara. The Canim view it with more significance than that of "friends" and even "allies" - A friend can disappoint you, and an ally can betray you. But a gadara? Not only can they be counted on to always try and kill you, but they also have damn well earned being your enemy in the first place.

Ambassador Varg

Varg is the Canim Ambassador to Alera. He's a lot smarter than most Alerans give him and his kind credit for, and recognizes Tavi's capabilities fairly quickly. After getting double-crossed by his advisor, he spends some time in Aleran prison until Tavi eventually breaks him out to get his aid.

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• Ambadassador: Naturally, with him having taken on a Taken Canim Warrior offscreen in Academ's Fury while unarmed and still won in an utter Curb-Stomp Battle.
• Ascended Extra: Downplayed; A brief segment of the introduction to First Lord's Fury is told from his perspective.
• Badass Boast: He gives one to one of the two surviving Canea Vord Queens in Princeps' Fury when he's the only one standing in the mouth of a Vord hive and preventing her escape right after Tavi's been wounded and two of his own Hunters were just killed facing off against her. Made all the more impressive when one remembers that at this point, Varg thinks that the Vord had wiped out his entire family except for his son Nasaug.
  Varg: Come, creature. Come through me if you can.
• Big Good: The most prominent leader shown among the Canim of Narash (and eventually, all of the surviving Canim) and a close gadara of Tavi's. Even Nasaug defers to his leadership.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: Seeing Varg drop the Warmaster act and be "grandpa" to his grandchildren in Princeps' Fury is adorable beyond belief.
• The Chessmaster: Both metaphorically and literally (in terms of him being quite skilled at ludus, the Aleran equivalent to chess). He teaches some of these skills to Tavi (again, both in terms of how to be a more skilled manipulator and in terms of how to play ludus well).
• Cutting the Knot: He knows Sarl is working with some unknown power to take down Gaius Sextus and the Alerans. He cannot abide by such underhanded and deceitful methods being done, especially since it isn't Sarl's place to act against code and ethics of their kind. So, he does the one thing he can do: Try to talk with Gaius about this matter, warning him of the attack. When Tavi gets in the way, so Varg won't see an incapacitated Gaius, Varg later just kidnaps Kitai to make Tavi follow him to the Vord's base.
• Deadpan Snarker: Has a rather dry sense of humor. For instance, he jokingly describes The Slive as "smelling like wet human" (which makes Tavi burst into laughter) in Captain's Fury, and his reaction to eating one of the biscuits used as rations by Aleran sailors earlier in the same book is to give the Canim equivalent of a wince and tell Tavi that "Alerans must be hardier than I thought."
• Everybody Knew Already: invoked Apparently, Canim have a sense of smell strong enough to identify family relations. This means that he doesn't need to be told who Tavi's mother and grandfather are. In fact, Varg knew two books before Tavi did. This also creates some Fridge Brilliance when one thinks about the scene where they met – Tavi was bluffing only from his own perspective and not Varg's, pretending to be what he actually was.
• Genius Bruiser: He's both one of the smartest and physically most powerful characters in the books – and considering this series, that's saying something.
• Large Ham: When given a reason, he can be quite the melodramatic guy. What's his response to a Breaking Speech by the Vord Queen stating people should just give up and surrender?
  "I AM STILL THIRSTY! WHO WILL DRINK WITH ME?!"
• Meaningful Name: "Varg" is an old Scandinavian word for "wolf". In fact, the word helped inspire the Wargs featured in The Lord of the Rings.
• The Nicknamer: Gives Tavi the Meaningful Nickname of "Tavar".
• Old Soldier: He is several centuries old by the Aleran calendar and only a hundred by the Cane calendar, but is one of the strongest and deadliest fighters in the series.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: He lapses into a Heroic BSoD upon learning that Shuar is the last surviving range left in Canea in Princeps' Fury, meaning that his family is almost certainly dead. Tavi even describes how Varg is taking on body language that he has never seen before in a Cane - specifically, loosely flopping ears and a listless tongue that only speaks of utter tragedy, sorrow, and despair. It takes Tavi literally smacking him off of his saddle with a taurga prod to get him back into the proper mindset and refocus on the future.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Always seen wearing his armor and he enjoys a good fight. He also hates backstabbing and the trickery Sarl used with the Vord.
• Really 700 Years Old: His exact age is never mentioned, but admits to having played ludus for at least 600 years.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Many times over.
  • As the ambassador for the Canim, his job is to assess and watch the Alerans, to know when it is right and time to make war against them. When he suspects Sarl is doing something to his people and needs allies, he moves to bring the Alerans into it. First he tries directly seeing Gaius, which was stopped by Tavi, and later sends a message about a routine changing of his guards which shouldn't merit any notice to the First Lord to bring attention to some problem, and lastly he just kidnaps Kitai to make Tavi follow him.
  • After he failed to stop Sarl's taking of his guards to become Taken by the Vord, he took responsibility for Sarl's actions and surrendered himself to Gaius's authority. He only left jail when it was advantageous to reclaiming power and reuniting swiftly with his people.
  • As the Alerans are his enemies, he cannot as a rule, give them information outright. Instead, he passes on the information via his own network of spies both to help Tavi and to test the man. Will his warning of possible danger make Tavi honor just the letter of their agreement to return them to their homeland and turn around, or will Tavi stay and aide as he can.
  • As violence is sometimes required on younger Canim, he holds nothing against Marcus needing to use some violence when the soldier learning the Aleran language attacks Marcus for correcting his grammar.
  • He agrees with Tavi's idea to pass time on the journey from Alera to his homeland educating humans in the Canim language and Canim in the human language.
• Smart People Play Chess: He helps teach Tavi how to play ludus.
• Spanner in the Works: Topples the Vord plan to assassinate Gaius Sextus in Academ's Fury by Cutting the Knot and physically dragging Tavi over to their nest. The Vord knew that he suspected them, but didn't think he'd be listened to because he was widely distrusted in the Capital.
• The Spock: Varg loves combat and will engage in it easily but he, like many wiser Cane, can subvert his own violent tendencies with cold logical reasoning. He will take an insult or jibe from Tavi, his respected enemy, when Tavi has a point. This is best seen when Tavi deliberately kept from him the fact about 10,000 of his countrymen are being held by Shuaran Cane to be bled for the war against the Vord. Tavi needs Varg for the mission on hand to save Alerans, Shuaran Cane and his own countrymen, not running off to help his people in the short-run. Despite this, Varg is able to work through his rage and understand Tavi's manipulations and reasons. However, it is pointed out to Tavi, had any of his people been hurt or failed to be saved because of this subterfuge, Varg would have embraced his violent tendencies and killed his Aleran gadara.
• Worthy Opponent: To Tavi, and the Alerans in general. The word is gadara, which Varg starts using for Tavi after hearing that his son has recognized Tavi as such. The Canim actually prefer having Worthy Opponents to friends: they're people you can respect and even like, yet will always keep you on your toes. However, Tavi knows this only goes so far. If Varg senses he could get more out of withdrawing his support for Tavi, he will do it. Note that Nausag, Varg's son and protege, addresses him as gadara-sar, meaning "Worthy Opponent-Father."
• You Didn't Ask: When Tavi goes to explain that Isana is actually his mother, Varg's response is basically, "Yes, I know. I can smell it." He then goes on to mention that he knew Tavi was the First Lord's grandson since he'd first met him; he just figured he shouldn't say anything, because who knew what those crazy Alerans were thinking and maybe it was normal.

Warmaster Nasaug

Leader of the Canim warriors who arrive in Alera with Sarl, Nasaug is honorable yet ruthless and above all a highly competent military commander. He is one of Tavi's primary antagonists (albeit a respected one) throughout the middle part of the series.

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• Anti-Villain: He's only on Alera because he has to be, but since he's here, he's going to do the best job he can.
• Ask a Stupid Question...: Played for Drama; Him looking at Tavi like he's an utter moron for honestly asking why Alerans aren't seen as trustworthy is meant to show how much of a cynical and bitter view that Nasaug has gained regarding humanity.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Oh, yes. During the nightime attack on the First Aleran in Cursor's Fury, he's described as killing three legionaries with one stroke of his sword.
• Badass Family: Varg is his father.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Technically forms one with both Kalarus and Senator Arnos for Captain's Fury, but he's such an Anti-Villain that he's only really a Big Bad-type character in the sense that he's opposing the Aleran Legions.
• The Chessmaster: Carefully manipulates events so that Sarl gets killed and his ritualist cronies are disgraced, leaving him free to pursue his own objectives.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Gains a newfound respect for Tavi after he surrenders to the Aleran in Captain's Fury.
• Dragon Ascendant: Takes over complete command of the Canim forces in the Amaranth Vale after Sarl dies.
• Dragon with an Agenda: To Sarl at first. Lampshaded later by Varg, who describes his actions at the beginning of the war as having "fed Sarl to the Tavar." When it's put like that, you almost feel sorry for the poor bastard.
• Everyone Has Standards: He's absolutely horrified by the slaughter of innocent Aleran steadholts by the Senatorial Guard's mercenary cavalry, to the point where he vows that he will avenge the fallen civilians by competely wiping out all of the remaining Aleran Legions in the Vale to make sure that Senator Arnos gets his just desserts. His talk with Tavi earlier in Captain's Fury also shows that he regards slavery as utterly abominable and is disgusted with how the Alerans continue to practice it.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Gains this viewpoint after being exposed to the Aleran practice of slavery in the Amaranth Vale.
• Hypocrite: While he shows nothing but utter disgust for the Aleran practice of slavery, his ostensible ally of Kalarus is the most notorious practitioner of slavery in the entire Realm. Downplayed in that it was more Sarl and Kalarus that seem to have been in an actual alliance, with Nasaug's association with Kalarus seeming to be informal at best (i.e., as long as the other exists, they secure the other's flank from the Alerans' counter-attacks).
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: His invasion of Alera, status as a strategic genius, and matching wits with Tavi under the guise of "Rufus Scipio" paints him as being the Canim equivalent of Hannibal Barca.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Downplayed since his pragmatism is also in part motivated by the fact that Nasaug still has actual moral standards.
  • As noted by Tavi during the military meeting at the Elinarch, his strategy of leaving columns of Aleran refugees alone as they flee from the warzone is actually brilliant since it means that the Alerans have to use more resources caring for the refugees that they could instead use to crush Nasaug's forces, giving him more time to consolidate and ready for battle. The other reason, of course, is that Nasaug is not one to attack fleeing civilians, be they his own people or otherwise.
  • Additionally, Nasaug helps in the Slave Liberation taking place in the Amaranth Vale, directly aiding in the formation of the Free Aleran Legion and helping the liberating slaves form their own dedicated and formidable fighting force. While Nasaug's main reason for supplying and supporting them is pretty clearly to help conserve his own waning number of soldiers against the Alerans (along with helping potentially inspire other slave revolts across Alera to further tie down any forces that could be sent to stop his invasion), his own revulsion against the Aleran practice of slavery makes him aiding the Free Alerans also one of good moral character.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Like his father.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives a vicious one to Tavi in Captain's Fury when the latter is trying to arrange a peace between the Canim and Alerans near the beginning of the novel. Notably, Tavi is briefly taken aback and even silently admits that Nasaug isn't exactly wrong From a Certain Point of View.
  Nasaug: Captain. You are gadara. But not all Alerans are.
  Tavi: "Gadara"? Enemy?
  Nasaug: (dismissively) Not the same. You have my respect. But you do not lead them. You do not speak in the voice of Gaius Sextus. And your people have proven to us, many times, that they are not worthy of respect.
  Tavi: (confused) How so?
  Nasaug: (stares at Tavi like he's an idiot) Because you are monsters. You are worse than starving beasts. You slaughter one another by the thousands over matters of leadership. Your people crush those without power and take whatsoever they wish from them for the simple reason that they can. (leans back and glares at Tavi with utter contempt) You betray, enslave, and brutalize your own kind, Aleran. Your own. If you treat your own folk this way, what fool could possibly believe you would act any differently toward mine?
• Smart People Play Chess: Including with the enemy commander in the middle of a bloody battle. According to Tavi, he won because Nasaug's game on the skyboard isn't as strong as it could be, and he also initially underestimated Tavi.
• The Starscream: Actively works against Sarl to betray him and seize power. This is good for the Canim, because Nasaug is exponentially more competent than Sarl. This is bad for the Alerans for the exact same reason, although it's somewhat negated since Nasuag is also a Reasonable Authority Figure and can be negotiated with.
• The Strategist: A very gifted one who matches Tavi for two years. His first gambit in Cursor's Fury not only aims to allow his warriors reclaim the fallen on the battlefield while playing ludus with Tavi, but show Tavi a means of defeating Sarl and delays the next engagement between the two sides long enough for night to come which would help his forces, who can see far better in low-light situations than the Alerans can.
• Villain Has a Point: Tavi himself admits that Nasaug's criticisms of Aleran society — most notably slavery — are completely valid and legitimate, and are very good reasons for why his people wouldn't be trusted by the Canim.
• Worthy Opponent: To Tavi, and also to Varg, his mentor and father.
• Xanatos Gambit: As Tavi observes, his strategies never serve just a single purpose. He sees to it that he has many paths to a victory.
  • A good example of this is seen during the Battle of the Elinarch, where (as mentioned above) he willingly plays ludus with Tavi to both allow his forces to recover their fallen comrades and stalk for enough time that his forces can attack the Alerans after the sun sets (which, given the Canim have Innate Night Vision and the Alerans do not, puts his own forces at a clear advantage).
• You Are a Credit to Your Race: Played completely straight and for drama; Nasaug is eventually shown to have developed an incredibly cynical and bitter view of Alera, but as Tavi is his gadara, he gives him respect and treats him as an equal.

Pack Leader Tarsh

The Canim leader in charge of Molvar, the Shuaran harbor that the Aleran and Canim fleet is blown into near the beginning of Princeps' Fury.

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• Bad Boss: After Tarsh tells his soldiers to kill Tavi during Tavi & Varg's attempted parley with him in Molvar, Tavi internally notes that him knocking Anag to the ground just after defeating the young warrior actually saved his life since Tarsh's follow-up stab at Tavi would have gone right through Anag's left lung.
• Bastard Bastard: It's mentioned that he's a Child by Rape from a corrupt Ritualist and a young female Cane who was barely older than a pup. He's also a complete and utter asshole.
• Dirty Coward: Not only does Tarsh have his subordinates fight his own battles for him whenever possible, but he quickly balks and acquiesces to Tavi's demands for safe harbor after Tavi taunts him over potentially arranging a Duel to the Death (which Tarsh quickly realizes wouldn’t go his way at all).
• Fantastic Racism: Towards both Alerans and the Narashan Canim. Not only does he initially refer to the Aleran Tavi as "it", but he repeatedly insults Varg to his face & seems to be openly relishing the idea of letting Varg & Tavi's people all drown.
• Jerkass: He repeatedly shows himself to be an arrogant, cruel and selfish coward who treats his own subordinates abysmally and was perfectly happy to let several thousand Canim & Alerans drown at sea thanks to his Fantastic Racism.
• Kicked Upstairs: Was reassigned to Molvar in hopes of him gaining more maturity and competence while keeping him far away from the more important front lines against the Vord in Shuar proper.
• Punched Across the Room: Played for Laughs during First Lord's Fury, where it's mentioned in passing that during the Alerans and Canim's attempts to build diplomatic bridges between the two peoples, Max got so fed up with Tarsh's asshattery that he threw Tarsh into a building... and this gets taken as a sign of things improving, since at least Max threw Tarsh into a wooden building "this time" instead of a stone building.

Hunter Sha

The leader of the Narashan Canim's Hunters (basically the Canim equivalent to Cursors), having come over to assist Sarl and Nasaug in their attempted conquest of Alera. Has Undying Loyalty towards both Varg and Nasaug, but also recognizes the weaknesses behind the Canim's Proud Warrior Race code of honor and works with Fidelias behind the scenes to help account for this as the Alerans and Canim form an Enemy Mine against the Vord.

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• Didn't See That Coming: He looks over at Tavi in visible shock after he sincerely thanks him and his fellow Hunters for saving his life in the Canea Vord Queen's hive. Keep in mind how most Canim regard Alerans as murder-happy "demons" who enslave their own people For the Evulz.
• Foil: To Fidelias, to the point where Fidelias himself thinks of Sha as his opposite number among the Canim. Both are dangerously clever spies who have Undying Loyalty to their home nations and peoples, and are willing to work outside of their peoples' codes of honor (informal or otherwise) for what they see as the common good. However, Fidelias is a Wild Card who temporarily joined the rebellious Aquitaines before he turned back to serving the Crown while Sha has maintained his loyalty to Nasaug (and, by extension, Narash as a whole) for the entirety of the series.
• Friendly Enemy: With the Alerans, most clearly shown in the Odd Friendship he develops with Fidelias.
• Last of His Kind: He is seemingly the only surviving Hunter remaining among the Canim as of First Lord's Fury.
• Master of Disguise: He and his fellow Hunters are able to get the drop on the second Canea Vord Queen by dressing themselves up in makeshift suits made of scavenged Vord chitin. The disguises are skilled enough to fool her and her guards for just long enough that they can kill her Praetorian Guard and leave her open for Varg and Tavi to finish her off.
• Not Afraid to Die: He had his blood song already sung for him when he became a Hunter countless years ago.
• Odd Friendship: "Friendship" is admittedly pushing it a bit, but he and Fidelias form a remarkable camaraderie together as they work behind the scenes to help preserve the Canim-Aleran alliance (most notably in how they sneakily kill Khral and hide his body so that the more reasonable Master Marok can take control of the surviving Canim Ritualists).
• Old Master: invoked Word of God has all but stated that he will be helping train a new generation of Hunters and Cursors alongside Ehren and Fidelias at the new Academy.
• Shoot the Dog: The literal purpose of the Hunters is to perform the necessary duties that a Warmaster or other Canim Warleader cannot bring themselves to actually do.
• Stealth Expert: Despite being a Wolfman several feet taller than the average Aleran, he's still one to the level that impresses even Kitai.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: One of his specialties as a Hunter. Most impressively, Sha and his compatriots Nef and Koh are able to get on top of Lararl's fortress in the dark during a torrential rainstorm without being noticed by Kitai.
• Those Two Guys: Or, "Those Three Guys," to be more accurate; initially, he's only seen in the company of his other two Hunters, Nef and Koh. After they're both killed in the battle against one of the Canean Vord Queens, he's mostly seen either on his own or in the company of Fidelias.
• Undying Loyalty: To his masters Varg and Nasaug. He literally tells Tavi at one point that his job is to die in the most efficient way possible for his leaders.

Bloodspeaker Sarl

A Canim ritualist, who is both Varg's political rival and (initially, at least) his office aid. Undermines Varg by seeking alliances behind his back including with the Vord.

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• Big Bad Duumvirate: Forms one with the Vord Queens (both the Awakened and Calderon specimens) for Academ's Fury, and one with Kalarus in both Academ's Fury and Cursor's Fury.
• Big Bad Wannabe: He wanted to be the Big Bad Of Another Story for the Canim. His plan was the Ritualists to take over the Canim lands and overthrow the Warrior caste. A solid Evil Plan overall... and then he just had to accept help from the Vord Queen, who got him what he wanted and then quickly turned on him, driving him out of the Canim continent. By the time he becomes the main story's Big Bad in Cursor's Fury, he's desperately fleeing from her with what amounts to a refugee fleet. He's also no match for the Warrior Canim leader Nasuag or Tavi, and dies after getting Out-Gambitted.
• Blood Magic: Like all ritualists. And like more corrupted ones, he uses the blood of sacrificed people and not his own stock.
• Burning the Ships: The first thing he does upon landing in Alera is burn the ships they arrived in. This way, Nasaug's forces would be commited to the fight, and would have no means of retreat or escape.
• Dirty Coward: Tavi knows it, and uses it to make him look like an idiot.
• Evil Sorcerer: An evil Smug Snake who uses Blood Magic.
• I Have Your Wife: Sarl manages to force Nasaug and the warrior caste into following him over to Alera by semi-kidnapping several warrior & maker families and holding them hostage. Interestingly, Nasaug himself claims that what Sarl did was not technically kidnapping from a Canim perspective, and the word for what Sarl did does not actually have an equivalent word in Aleran.
• General Failure: A downplayed example, but still evident. Strategically, Sarl is relatively solid. His overall plan to defeat the First Aleran in Cursor's Fury failed solely because one of his agents got pickpocketed by pure happenstance for reasons totally unrelated to suspicion or being discovered, and even then he almost totally crippled the army's chain of leadership in a single attack. Tactically, he's a complete mess. Misunderstanding his own race's basic advantages in combat and holding back a brilliant planner like Nasaug are just two examples.
• Gone Horribly Right: He sought power to destroy Varg and the Alerans. He allied himself with the Vord and even helped the Queen escape to his lands in order to re-cultivate their power. The Vord helped him take over — and then started doing what the Vord do.
• The Nose Knows: Like all Cane, Sarl has an exceptional sense of smell. He was even capable of recalling the scent of a messenger boy he only met once two years prior, now standing before him in the guise of someone else. It almost gets Tavi killed, had he not lucked into the one item that could've possibly saved him from Sarl's magic.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Subverted. Sarl's a Cane and therefore you'd expect him to be one of these, but he's really a coward who only fights after Tavi goads him into it because not going after Tavi when called a coward would make him lose major support.
• Smug Snake: Treats the Makers like trash, insults Nasaug and Tavi and generally believes himself to be far more powerful and intelligent than he really is.
• The Starscream: To Varg.
• Treacherous Advisor: Though Varg saw through him pretty well except for that bit with the Vord.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Using other people's blood for his casting means that he has access to a lot of power but he tends to be sloppy in his application. While the attacks work (except for the fact that Tavi usually has a way of surviving the ones directed at him), Marok gets similar results using much less power. Sarl tends to favor big flashy attacks that use a lot more power than is required so as to make himself look more intimidating that he really is.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Thanks to his idiocy, the War Refugees of the Shuaran and Narashan Canim are literally all that remains of their entire species after the Vord obliterated the entire continent of Canea.
• Unwitting Pawn: The Vord played him for a fool, using him to get into a position where they could easily conquer the continent of Canea after initially appearing to be his ally. He also had his death easily arranged for him by Nasaug.
• Villain Teamup: Him and High Lord Kalarus Brencis Majoris. Together, their combined power and ingenuity almost brought Alera itself to its knees. High Lord Kalarus stationed his armies at key positions scattered around the country, and arranged for them to strike multiple fronts at the exact same time. Their signal? Sarl using his ritual magic to turn the entire country's skies red, filling them with acidic tentacle monsters to stop aerial communication, transport, and preventing Gaius from observing anything that happens in the realm. On Sarl's end, Kalarus' sister is stationed within the one Legion standing between him and the country. He calls a lightning strike down upon all the officers of the Legion while they're having a meeting, planning to leave the sister alive using a gem given to her that makes her immune to his magics. She would take command of the Legion as the sole surviving officer and retreat from the area, allowing Sarl's forces a solid defensible foothold in Alera. Presumably, Kalarus would then take most of Alera for himself while leaving Sarl to have his colony in the Amaranth Vale. The scope of this team-up takes the entire cast by surprise.

Master Marok

One of the few decent and prominent Canim ritualists, who believes in the following the Old Way of using only one's own blood for magic instead of another being's.

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• Authority Equals Asskicking: Shows the difference between a master ritualist and a novice when he beats a younger ritualist in a quick draw of spells and makes the Cane literally vomit up his guts. He doesn't even bother to turn around.
• Badass Boast: "Clouds of acid are for amateurs!" Clouds of acid are a common Ritualist combat spell, which is previously put to use throughout the series. Marok, on the other hand, creates clouds of Eldritch Abominations.
• Blood Magic: Like all Canim Ritualists. Marok, however, only uses his own blood.
• Deadpan Snarker: Has his moments of dry wit, such as below when he's using an acid spell to help give the Free Aleran and First Aleran Legions time to strengthen their defenses.
  Fidelias: (mildly) I thought you said 'clouds of acid were for amateurs'?
  Marok: That was not a cloud. It was a wall. (closes his eyes in irritation) Whining demon. You are welcome.
• Good Old Ways: He uses his own blood to fuel his spells, not the blood of others like Sarl does. This is the original way the Bloodspeakers worked, before they discovered that they could use others' blood.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: His arms are covered with self-inflicted scars. For him (and other ritualists) his are a good thing, as it shows that they use their own blood instead of others' for their magic.
• Grumpy Old Man: He generally gives off this vibe. Most notably, his reaction to having to deal with an upstart adversarial Ritualist (who is trying to arrange a Wizard Duel between the two), is not one of fear or surprise, but resigned annoyance and impatience.
• Klingon Promotion: A variation. He didn't kill Khral, the leader of the Ritualists just left on a sacred pilgrimage before Tavi's trial^note In truth, Sha and Fidelias killed him and hid his remains, making it look like he just went off on the journey. As none of of his lieutenants wanted to step up in fear of Khral's return and displeasure at them taking his spot, the job fell to Marok.
• Self-Harm: Believes in harming only himself for his magic and incidentally carries around a lot of bandages as a consequence of that.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: He was willing to listen to Tavi's side of the story involving the deaths of the makers and his solution to the problem, and killed the Canim trying to use their deaths as an excuse to attack the Alerans.
• Weak, but Skilled: He only uses his own blood for his casting, so he has a very low pool of energy. However, he's very efficient at using what he has compared to, say, Sarl, who just throws around power wildly. At one point, he's capable of causing another Cane to puke up his guts (entirely literallY) using only a couple drops of blood.
• We Have Reserves: A variation. He is more than willing to give the Alerans some aide as it puts their forces more on the front line while protecting his fellow Canim. To his Aleran allies, this is considered a good thing.
• Worthy Opponent: To Varg. They are each other's gadara.

The Icemen

The Icemen as a whole

Called the "Gadrim-ha" by the Marat, the Icemen are a race of "savage" and mysterious Bigfoot-esque humanoids organized into a series of wandering tribes. They live in the lands of the frozen north far beyond the rest of the Realm, but regularly travel south and attack the Alerans. As such, the Alerans have built the massive defensive construct known as the "Shieldwall" to protect the rest of the Realm from their raids, and have had the two Shield Cities of Antillus and Phrygia warring with the Icemen for the length of recorded history.

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• invoked Alternative Character Interpretation: Discussed in Princeps' Fury. When Isana is looking at the great Shieldwall while on the northern side of the wall (the direction that the Icemen would regularly see), she muses how to the Icemen, it looks more like a prison wall cutting them off from the rest of the outside world than the immense defensive construct that the Alerans see it as.
• An Ice Person: Doroga specifically comments on the incorrect Aleran theory that the Icemen follow the winter storms south when attacking the Shield Cities — in reality, the storms follow the Icemen.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: The descriptions given of the Icemen in first Furies of Calderon and later Princeps’ Fury shows that they strongly resemble the archetypal Bigfoot.
• A Day in the Limelight: Isana's subplot in Princeps' Fury finally shines a light on the Icemen as she tries to arrange a lasting peace between Alerans and Icemen so that the Shield Legions can be sent south to help defend the Realm from the Vord.
• The Empath: Their watercrafting is so powerful that they can communicate among themselves with no speech at all, using their empathy-based telepathy instead. Their intense enmity for the Alerans comes largely from the mix of their water-based empathy with the minor firecrafting that Alerans use to stay warm in the cold northern regions. When fire and water are mixed it creates feelings of anxiety and anger, so just by being next to each other the two sides feed each other's hatred.
• Enemy Mine: They sign an armistice with the Alerans so that the Shield Legions can go south and fight their mutual enemy of the Vord. Additionally, the Icemen also help Tavi rapidly transport his forces along the Shieldwall.
• Expy: In many ways, they're one for the Forest People from The Dresden Files. Both are an enigmatic race of Bigfoot-inspired humanoids with a long-lasting tradition of magic, and live far from human civilization while still operating under a more or less human psychology.
• Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence: Basically the root of the war between them and the Alerans. The Alerans won't retreat because they're sure the Icemen will take advantage of them leaving their lands unguarded, while the Icemen won't back down because they feel that they'll be invaded if they don't drive the Alerans far enough back from the Shieldwall. The reason this happens is because the interaction between the Icemen's natural water-based empathic magic and Aleran cold-resisting firecrafting encourages feelings of agression, anxiety, and anger, poisoning all relationships until Isana (a non-firecrafter) came along and figured out what was going on.
• Forever War: They've been fighting with the Alerans for at least three centuries.
• Hate Plague: The use of both Aleran firecrafting (which legionares constantly use to stay warm) and the watercrafting-based telepathy of the Icemen in close proximity to each other sets up a mutually inimical resonance that makes both parties grouchy and uncomfortable. Since this happens every time Alerans and Icemen are in proximity, a tense first meeting where the Alerans were already scared of the Icemen helped spark a multi-century Forever War.
• Hive Mind/Mind Hive: They exist somewhere between the two. Their empath powers are on such a level that they can freely express their emotions to each other, countless individual minds networked together into one united semblance of will.
• Hufflepuff House: While the Icemen have been at war with Alera more continually than any of the other nonhuman factions (for about 300 years solid), their attacks are confined to a particular region in the far north where the POV characters almost never go, meaning they get comparatively little pagetime and development.
• Master of One Magic: They're an entire species of "only" watercrafters. This means that their empath abilities are so advanced that they're effectively all telepaths, and their military movements are heralded by devastating blizzards.
• Mirroring Factions: The entire plotline involving the Icemen and Alerans in Princeps' Fury is mostly about Isana and her coterie realizing that their peoples are far more similar than either would like to admit. Both appear to be barbaric animals to the other but are far less villainous than they initially appear, and have fought each other for so long that most have long-since given up any sense of hope for a lasting peace being achieved between the two peoples.
• The Nicknamer: Given that none of then speak Aleran as their native language, they have a wide variety of terms they use to describe certain characters or locations. As an example, High Lord Antillus Raucus is called "Fire Sword".
• Not Always Evil: After being built up for almost the entire series as vicious, savage barbarians that only desire to kill any innocent Aleran in sight, they turn out to be a very thoughtful, calm, and naturally peaceful people who are just as sickened and weary of the Forever War they've been waging as the Alerans are.
• Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious: They're basically an entire race of telepathic Yetis.
• Out of Focus: It's not until the fifth book in this six-book series that a single Iceman appears on page, though they're very important to the overall story.
• Quantity vs. Quality: A weird case where the Icemen follow both. As a whole, the Icemen rely on the latter since they cannot hope to match the united might of an Aleran Legion except when in sufficient numbers. However, individually the Icemen fall into the former by far, being that any single Iceman can easily kill any single legionare without much effort thanks to their An Ice Person powers, Super-Strength, Telepathy, and stamina.
• The Quiet One: The Icemen very rarely communicate verbally with others, since their immense empath powers basically makes verbal communication moot.
• Super-Strength: They all showcase immense strength. When Isana first meets a group of Icemen in Princeps' Fury, she notices that as crude as their weapons look, they're all designed to be so thick and heavy that an Aleran could only equip and use them by calling upon earthcrafting.
• Telepathy: In a sense. The Icemen are such master watercrafters that they can easily project and receive their emotions to one another, to the point where they only seem to speak when talking to someone who can't access their "mental network". Below is a good example of how it is shown to work when Isana and her coterie are meeting with the Icemen to arrange a peace treaty after their "war-chief" Red Waters cuts Isana's cheek with his spear and the "peace-chief" Sunset gets angry at him:
  [Sunset] turned his gaze on Red Waters, and Isana felt a sudden, uncomfortably sharp spike of disapproval. Red Waters evidently felt it even more intensely than Isana had. He swayed slightly under the force of it and took a step back to stand beside Big Shoulders again, radiating a mild sense of chagrin. Amusement flowed around the circle of Icemen.
  The Icemen, Isana realized, had just had their own version of the scene that had played out between her and Aria. Sunset had slapped Red Waters down — and the entire time, they never spoke. They hardly moved.

The Vord

The Vord as a whole

A Horde of Alien Locusts accidentally awakened from the Wax Forest at the beginning of the series.

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• Adaptive Ability: The Vord Queens will design new types of Vord to adjust to and counter whatever their enemies are currently throwing at them, as noted below under Evil Evolves.
• Aliens Are Bastards: They're extraterrestrial in origin according to the author, and have a literal genetic imperative to wipe out all life that isn't fellow Vord.
• Alien Blood: The Vord bleed a greenish mucus in lieu of actual blood.
• Alien Invasion: invoked As per Word of God, they're actually aliens and the Alerans & Marat just don't have the proper words for "impact crater" in their vocabulary to describe the Wax Forest when referring to it as their origin.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Inverted. They are a very lawful evil, especially the current Queen who would honor deals struck with her. The others under her rule are also lawful, justified by being part of a Hive Mind.
• Animalistic Abomination: The Vord types that aren't designed to specifically resemble their foes (like the vordknights resembling the Knights Aeris of Alera and the various Cane-forms resembling the Canim) will typically take forms that resemble a nightmarish parody of the local wildlife. To wit, Tavi spots huge frog-like Vord leaping at the fortifications of Shuar in Princeps' Fury, while a plurality of Vord forces in Alera are described as resembling garim (basically Komodo Dragons), gorillas, and praying mantises.
• Arch-Enemy: The Marat hold a special level of hatred towards them since the Vord originally caused the collapse of the Marat's ancient Alera-esque advanced civilization (the Barbarian Tribes encountered in the present are The Remnant of that civilization's few survivors).
• Big Bad: Of the whole series.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Vord not controlling an Aleran, Canim, Marat, etc. are usually gigantic bugs. Queens, of course, excepted.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: As evidenced below with their Queens, the Vord simply do not get basic psychology and operate on a fundamentally different wavelength. To the Vord, the only importance is the propagation of their species - Anything else, like art, individuality, or basic morality are considered to be deluded lunancies shared by non-Vord.
• Bug War: The Vord conquered virtually all of Canea between the second and fifth novels, and their invasion of Alera proper is the primary focus of the last two novels in the series.
• Captain Ersatz: They are directly inspired by the Zerg of StarCraft fame.
• Civilization Destroyer: Basically the Vord's entire hat as a species. They destroyed the original Marat civilization prior to the series, reducing the survivors to a barbarian existence. They also wipe out all but two of the Canim's ranges - namely, Shuar and the few surviving refugees of Narash - and would've done the same to the Alerans if not for the protagonists.
• Dark Is Evil: No matter whatever form they take, the Vord are almost always coverd in the same midnight-black chitin.
• Death of Personality: There is no coming back for someone once they've been Taken by the Vord. After being Taken, the individual in question will display even less humanity than one of Kalarus' Immortals.
• Evil Evolves: The queens constantly breeds new forms to adapt to changing conditions and correct any weaknesses. Face them with Knights Aeris? You get flying vordknights. Face them with a legion shieldwall? You get mantis warriors that attack over the top of it. Need to take down nine foot tall wolfmen? You get bigger and bulkier soldiers. Face them with defensive fortifications? You get giant vordbulks that can plow through them.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: As the rebellious Canim ritualists learned to the detriment of their whole continent and nearly everyone on it, the Vord are single-mindedly focused on being the only living things alive. The Queens are smart enough to play nice in order to establish a power base, but the instant they judge themselves capable of reliably taking you out, they will.
• Hive Mind: Vord are only intelligent around a Vord Queen. Otherwise, they act just like any other animal.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: A very downplayed case, but their Adaptive Ability bites them in the rear in both Princeps' Fury and First Lord's Fury. For the former, the fact that the Vord made themselves look like the Canim they were fighting made it so that the croach had to grow in a thicker variation to support their weight without breaking... making it remarkably easy for the lighter Alerans to sneak across it when they go to assassinate one of the Canea Queens near the end of the novel. And for the latter, the Aleran Vord who have specialized themselves to fight against Aleran shieldwalls find themselves completely out of their depth and subjected to multiple Curb Stomp Battles when they're forced to face Canim cavalry charges.
• Horde of Alien Locusts: It's even implied that they came from space (unlike the other residents of Carna, who are "lost travelers" that came through wormholes by accident and were deposited here).
• Hostile Terraforming: The Vord spread the alien croach with them wherever they go. It chokes out and "digests" anything organic placed inside of it, and turns it into a nutrient-rich slurry that other Vord feed on between battles. As a result, it kills off all other life around it. Notably, it's subtly implied that the Vord themselves are ultimately "just" a bioweapon created by a more advanced hostile species for the purpose of xenoforming a planet into a state more suitable to colonize themselves.
• Insectoid Aliens: They're a Horde of Alien Locusts whose Hive Mind is governed by powerful Queens (who are also Explosive Breeders), and practice both We Have Reserves and Zerg Rush in their battle tactics (albeit with more thought given to strategy than what is typically seen elsewhere). Additionally, the majority of the Vord strongly resemble a certain insect/anthropod/crustacean species from Earth/Carna, as evidenced with the Takers (scorpions), wax spiders (spiders, natch), vordknights (dragonflies), "basic" warriors (lobsters/crabs), hornets (hornets/wasps), and mantis warriors (praying mantises).
• Keystone Army: Get rid of the Queen and you get rid of their threat. This normally wouldn't be too much of a problem since the Queens can reproduce quickly, but of the three non-sterile Queens, the Maratea and Calderon Queens are dealt with in Academ's Fury and the Awakened Queen can't produce children whenever she wishes because they inevitably try to kill her, and she eventually dies in the last book without any more heirs. Both Canea Queens are sterile, and one gets killed off in Princeps' Fury, meaning that the Vord are now permanently this.
• Knight of Cerebus: Virtually nothing is funny about them, and the story always takes a darker turn whenever the Vord appear.
• Light Is Not Good: The wax spiders (also known as the "Keepers") are a subspecies of Vord specifically tasked with tending to and spreading the croach, and are covered in bone-white chitin.
• Malignant Plot Tumor: They're introduced in a Side Quest in the first book and appear to be dealt with as a threat in the second – only to come back with a vengeance later on, now on the verge of world domination.
• Meat Moss: The croach is the equivalent to the Zerg's creep. It serves as a security measure (if you break its surface, the Vord come running), sustenance (digesting organic matter into a nutrient soup for the Vord to feed on), and reproduction (almost all new Vord are spawned from it).
• Monstrous Cannibalism: When the Awakened Queen's store of croach in the ruins of Riva is destroyed by Tavi's forces, she suddenly finds her remaining forces in the Calderon Valley severely malnourished and at threat of starvation. Her solution? Have her surviving forces devour the weakest and most severely injured tenth of her remaining forces. Both Isana and even Invidia are visibly disturbed by this display of the Queen's sheer callousness towards her own kind.
• Omnicidal Maniac: All Vord have a genetic directive to wipe out all life on whatever planet they land on that isn't fellow Vord for the purposes of Hostile Terraforming.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Those Taken by the Vord become Parasite Zombies. Most disturbingly, No Kill like Overkill typically has to be applied to them since despite ostensibly being Technically Living Zombies, Taken will always fight their way through injuries that would otherwise completely cripple or kill the original host.
• Outside-Genre Foe: The Vord would come straight out of science fiction — almost literally, as the Wax Forest is an impact crater from the spaceship that they crash-landed on Carna according to Word of God — but find themselves overrunning the very high fantasy Carna.
• Panacea: Quite possibly the only benefit the Vord provide is that in their lairs, the legendary mushroom "the Blessing of the Night" naturally grows, which can be used to cure someone of virtually any disease or ailment. It's been used to cure multiple people of the otherwise almost always fatal poison of the wax spiders many times, and just one mushroom was capable of curing Amara of the infertility she gained from a blight decades ago.
• Puppeteer Parasite: Their Takers crawl into your mouth and take control of your body.
• Raising the Steaks: As evidenced by a Taken grass lion Amara is forced to kill in Princeps' Fury, the Vord aren't just limited to sentient life in terms of Taken infection.
• Rogue Drone: An interesting variant. Because Tavi and Kitai first "awoke" the Awakened Vord Queen in Furies of Calderon, the non-Queen Vord treat the two of them as other members of The Horde and ignore them unless they directly attack them. Additionally, the Awakened Queen becoming Intrigued by Humanity causes her to be viewed as a Rogue Drone by her own Daughter Queens, all of whom try to kill her.
• Sickly Green Glow: The croach is often described as glowing with an unsettling greenish light.
• Slaying Mantis: After being stymied by Aleran shieldwalls in the previous book, the Awakened Queen comes up with "mantis warriors," which basically resemble praying mantises but the size of a man. With their scythe-like claws, mantis warriors can reach right over a shieldwall and strike at the unprotected soldiers behind it.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death:
  • Once the Queen dies, most of the horde simply starves to death in about six months.
  • Averted with the Vord the Awakened Queen gave to the Alerans who surrendered to her and asked for amnesty. They are mentioned as continuing to follow her commands to protect the holders even after her death, to the point where they're seen defending the surrendered Alerans from "wild" Vord.
• The Virus: Vord Takers basically turn their victims into zombies.
• Worf Had the Flu: The Awakened Vord Queen offhandedly mentions in First Lord's Fury to Invidia that Carna should've been completely consumed by the Vord in less than five years after she was accidentally awakened by Tavi and Kitai in the Wax Forest. However, her being Intrigued by Humanity has caused each of her Daughter Queens to try and kill her, with her being seen as "defective." This severely crippled the Vord's strategic abilities since the Awakened Queen couldn't rapidly create multiple Daughter Queens to properly manage their forces, ultimately giving Alera and her newfound allies a fighting chance.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Big on this. It actually bites them in the rear with Brencis Minoris, since he keeps the secret of making powerful slave collars for the Vord because he knows that he's dead if he's not indispensable. Thus, when Amara kills him, the Vord are out a powerful asset that they can't possibly replace.
• Zerg Rush: Although, oddly enough, without Hollywood Tactics.

Vord Queen

The leader(s) of the Vord. There are a few distinct Queens: The Awakened Queen is the one woken up by Tavi and Kitai; she absorbed some of their blood, mutating her and making her into a nonstandard Queen. The Calderon Queen tries to attack Calderon Valley in Academ's Fury, with a previous Queen in Maratea having been already wiped out by an alliance of Marat tribes just prior to the novel's events. The three Canea Queens are the ones born in Canea, with one previously killed by the Canim before the events of Princeps' Fury. The Junior Queen is born in Alera during the events of First Lord's Fury. Every single one of them is absolutely terrifying.

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• Absurdly Sharp Claws: Their claws are sharp enough to carve cleanly through Legion steel and Canim hide alike.
• Alas, Poor Villain: The death of the Awakened Vord Queen is surprisingly tragic, with her bitterly admitting that the emotional bonds humanity forms with each other makes them superior to the Vord before she quietly tries to Face Death with Dignity.
• Alien Blood: It's greenish.
• Anti-Villain: The Awakened Queen only attacks Alera because that is the only way she believes she will be able to survive the inevitable war with her daughters. She spends most of her time trying to understand Aleran customs. Tavi actually feels sorry for killing her and assures her that he will make it as quick as possible.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: She is the leader of the Vord and the most powerful of them. The Awakened Queen is also far more powerful than the Junior Queens.
• Bare-Handed Blade Block: Fast and durable enough to pull this off, though they tend to favor deflecting metalcrafter swords rather than blocking them outright. At one point in Princeps' Fury, the Awakened Queen blocks a knife thrust from Amara this way, then proceeds to stab the Cursor with her own dagger a moment later.
• Batman Gambit:
  • The Queen that attacks the Calderon Valley in Academ's Fury anticipates where the sick and wounded after battle will be put so she could send in her body-snatching Takers and claim more of them.
  • The Awakened Queen is fully aware Invidia will betray her. It is simply a part of her nature, like a slive has poison, and so allows her to plot behind her back to bring in most of the remaining High Lords and Ladies to kill her knowing she would turn on them to secure herself a better defense against the remaining Citizenry. She just set a trap to benefit her in the end.
• Big Bad: Of the series as a whole, though they're only really that prominent in the second half of the series. The Awakened Queen herself is the direct Big Bad for all of First Lord's Fury.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: It varies depending on the book. The Awakened and Calderon Queens are the ultimate antagonists of Academ's Fury, but both Kalarus and Sarl are the main instigators of that novel's events. Meanwhile, the two surviving Canea Queens and the Awakened Queens share the role of Big Bad for Princeps' Fury.
• Bishōnen Line: When we first see the Awakened Queen, she's buggy and "unfinished" looking. When we meet the Calderon Queen, she looks like an Aleran girl with fangs, chitinous skin, and glowing eyes. The Canea Queen looks like a green version of Kitai with some of Tavi's features. The final form of the Awakened Queen looks almost human - except for her Black Eyes of Evil.
• Black Eyes of Evil: One of the things that gives away the Awakened Queen as nonhuman.
• Creepy Child: The Awakened Queen has extremely creepy childlike aspects to her. As Invidia notes, she's only nine years old, and her "doll house" is a steadholt deep in Vord territory she created to try and comprehend humanity. It's just as scary as it sounds.
• Cute Monster Girl: She tries, but...
• Death by Irony: The Vord Queens believe that individuality is a weakness. The second Canea Queen is killed by a gambit that only works because of individuality (namely, using Tavi as a stalking horse).
• Dying Race: The prime Vord Queen creates sterile "daughters" deliberately because they inevitably rise up and attempt to destroy her. With her death in the final book, the only queen left, in Canea, does not have the ability to produce more.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • The first Queen does care about Invidia, the Junior Queens, and her horde, even if the other Queens would kill her for having such affections.
  • The Canea Queen loves and is loyal the first Queen as a mother, even if she will attempt to kill her.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: All the Vord Queens, to greater or lesser degrees.
  • The Calderon Queen dies because while she can technically understand the concept of sacrifice, she can't understand why anyone would actually do it. This means she leaves herself completely open to a suicide attack from Amara (who has decided that her death would be worth it to save Alera from the Queen's threat).
  • The Awakened Queen is pretty self-aware about her troubles with comprehending good, and tries to understand it (like by observing human daily life and performing social rituals like a communal dinner), but she doesn't succeed too much.
  • The Junior Queen from First Lord's Fury fits this to a T. When she's told that the dinner they're participating in is for the purpose of creating bonds between them, she wonders why they need restraints.
• Expy: invoked The Awakened Vord Queen in particular is one of Mewtwo, being an immensely powerful Humanoid Abomination Omnicidal Maniac granted with Psychic Powers that has been artificially engineered to be the best and strongest fighter in history (per Word of God, the Vord are ultimately an engineered bioweapon meant for Hostile Terraforming).
• Explosive Breeder: A single Queen can apparently produce hundreds of thousands of offspring in a matter of months—and not just generic "worker" creatures, but whole strains of specialized minions that incorporate different physical traits and tactics to battle specific threats.
• Face Death with Dignity: The Awakened Vord Queen has this surprisingly poignant statement - "I know how a Vord Queen dies. I am ready."
• Fan Disservice: The Vord Queens go naked except for cloaks, but their Humanoid Abomination nature means that their nakedness just serves to make them seem even more alien.
• Flying Brick: The Awakened Queen takes all the inherent physical power of the other queens and adds in the ability to fly via windcrafting. Her first fight scene sees her completely annihilate High Lord Rhodus Martinus in a midair battle (though admittedly she might've also had some help from Invidia).
• Genius Bruiser: One of the scariest things about the Vord Queens in general is how incredibly smart they are.
  • Prior to gaining an almost absurd numbers advantage, the Vord Queens fight a vicious guerilla war in the lands they're trying to conquer — with the Calderon Queen specifically using a series of devastating ambushes to whittle down the defenders of Garrison — and even after getting said numbers advantage, the Vord Queens will still use unorthodox tactics to get the drop on their enemy, such as the Canean Vord Queens temporarily working with the ambitious "New Path" Canim Ritualists so they can Divide and Conquer the Canim at their leisure along with using a group of Taken Shuaran Canim Warriors to target the centurions among the First Aleran Legion so they can get more control over the battlefield as Tavi's allies try to evacuate the surviving Canim from Molvar.
  • Meanwhile, the Awakened Vord Queen is so intelligent she's almost like a Zerg version of Grand Admiral Thrawn, using methods like underground croach nurseries, promising the protection of any turncoat/deserting Alerans, kidnapping Isana & Araris to hold them hostage, infesting the very crows of Alera's skies with Takers to surprise attack Alera Imperia, utilizing discipline collars fitted with the special methods of the House of Kalarus to enslave Aleran Citizens and use them as her singulares, et cetera.
• The Ghost: The Maratea Queen and both the first and third Canea Queens are never seen.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: The Calderon Queen is described as featuring these.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: Both the Awakened and Canea Queens look like a green-skinned, black-eyed cross between Kitai and Tavi's aunt. Unsurprising since Kitai and Tavi's blood is what awoke the former. However, it's deconstructed in that their physical attractiveness is completely lost due to their fundamentally alien psychology.
• Hive Queen: Well, duh. Doroga even specifically notes this, claiming that part of the reason for why the Marat consider the Vord "the Abomination before the One" is that they are simultaneously "one" enemy and "many" enemies.
• Humanity Is Infectious: The primary/Awakened Vord Queen. This makes her defective in the eyes of her daughters, who are genetically programmed to kill her for deviating from the Vord standard.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: invoked Subverted - The fact that the Awakened Queen and her Daughter Queens tend to go around totally nude except for cloaks just highlights how unsettling they really are.
• Intrigued by Humanity: The Awakened Queen is quite interested in the bonds humans form between each other and spends most of First Lord's Fury trying to study them.
• Last of Her Kind: By the end of First Lord's Fury, the only Vord Queen left in Carna is the second Canea Queen. She's sterile, so there will never be any more.
• Jabba Table Manners: The Junior Queen. This is meant to emphasize how different the Awakened Queen is from standard Queens — while the Awakened Queen eats daintily, the Junior Queen just grabs portions of food and stuffs them in her mouth.
• Lethal Chef: The Awakened Queen doesn't really get cooking. It doesn't help that she's trying to cook croach, which is only technically edible.
  Invidia: On a scale of one to ten, ten being the most revolting and one being almost edible, I believe that rating this recipe would require the use of exponents.
• Lightning Bruiser: Each of the Queens are this. Swords barely scratch them. They are as fast as a decent Windcrafter, and as strong as an Earthcrafter. And that's before the Awakened Queen learns how to furycraft.
• Literal-Minded: The Junior Queen, partially because she Really Was Born Yesterday, and partially because Evil Cannot Comprehend Good.
• Made of Iron: Balest bolts bounce off the Awakened Queen's skin. Balest bolts can, for reference, go all the way through two heavily armored legionares. It ultimately takes the raging furystorm of two Great Furies - Garados and Thana - to wear her down to the point where Tavi can kill her.
• Mama Bear: Pretty much everything the Awakened Queen does in the entire series is purely because she has an overwhelming need to make sure her "children" are safe.
• Offing the Offspring: The Awakened Queen kills the Junior Queen. Of course, the Junior Queen attacked first. And according to the Awakened Queen, this has happened with every single one of her daughters unless she's gotten out of Dodge fast enough to avoid them.
• Pet the Dog: When the Awakened Queen is in a position to completely exterminate humanity, she sets aside areas where they can live freely, safely and under their own government, the only condition being they let her sterilise them. Considering her Vord instincts are continuously screaming at her to immediately wipe out every non-Vord, the fact that she's willing to slowly establish Vord dominance by preventing new human life rather than immediately causing death and suffering to those who are already alive says a lot about her. Note that while this does indeed weaken the resistance against her she has the numbers to crush them completely if she wanted to, and this offer is not a trick; she fully keeps her word to them to the point that even after she's killed, the Vord she assigned to protect the surrendered humans continue to do so, even from other Vord.
• Pragmatic Villainy: The Awakened Queen spares many cities and settlements in Alera rather than destroy them outright, but only because she knows she'll waste time and resources fighting those people. Instead she allows them to live, with the only price being that they are not allowed to bear children.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: The Awakened Vord Queen calmly muses aloud that "Individuality is counter-productive" before tearing open Rook's throat once it becomes clear that the former bloodcrow is of no more use to the Vord.
• Psychic Powers: All Vord Queens have them, with mind reading and illusion crafting as specialties.
• Psychopathic Manchild: The Awakened Vord Queen is shown to be this in First Lord's Fury. Not only is Tavi utterly sickened when he realizes that she's taking an active delight in savaging the First Aleran's camp, but she frequently goes into fits of childish rage whenever she's arguing with either Isana or Invidia.
• Quizzical Tilt: Whenever the Queens encounter examples of heroism in the face of their alien ruthlessness, they're often described as tilting their heads in confusion "like a hawk fascinated with the lunacy of their prey."
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Who gets unsealed accidentally by Tavi and Kitai towards the end of the first book, thus setting the stage for the rest of the series.
• Spock Speak: Part of what makes the Vord Queens so creepy is the chillingly clinical and Literal-Minded tone they use when talking to not-Vord, as if it's meant to serve as yet another reminder of what an Outside-Genre Foe they are. For instance, the Awakened Queen seems to be only able to refer to her nightly meals with Isana and Invidia as "the dinner ritual," she calls parents "progenitors," and love is "emotional non-material bonds."
• Self-Made Orphan: All of the Daughter Vord Queens will try to kill the original, their mother, because she isn't pure Vord.
• Villain Ball: While she's otherwise brilliant, the Awakened Queen holds it briefly by not searching Araris carefully enough, which led to him being able to ward off the numbing effect of her prison: because of his hidden dagger, he could use metalcrafting and stay alert while stuck in the croach.
• Waif-Fu: The Awakened Queen is able to tear through nine-foot tall Canim warriors, shred a Legion shieldwall, and take on the mightiest crafters in Alera with casual ease. She's also only about as tall as Tavi and Kitai were when they were about fourteen years old.
• We Have Reserves: The Queens will throw hundreds if not thousands of forces against a foe because they can create more so quickly. It is even weaponized in Canea when the horde constantly attacking the last surviving Canim range of Shuar for so long was "just" a distraction by one of the Canean Vord Queens while the other Canean Vord Queen had another group slowly dig a tunnel into the settlement so they could assault Shuar from the inside and crush the defenders between them.
• Xanatos Gambit: The Vord Queens are dangerously good at setting up plans that will always serve to benefit them, one way or the others.
  • A good example of this (combined with Batman Gambit) is described in the prologue to First Lord's Fury, when the Alerans are all reeling over the Vord sacking the city of Parcia. The High Lords are all initially confused about this, since from their perspective they've been regularly burning down veritable fields of croach covering the surface of the Vord-occupied Realm, and so they don't understand where the Vord could've possibly gotten so many warriors to storm Parcia. As Ehren explains, it turns out the Awakened Vord Queen — most likely inspired by how some Aleran smugglers would grow the special "hollybell" plant in secret furycrafted caverns underground so as to sell the Fantastic Drug aphrodin on the black market — has create underground nurseries where new Vord are being born and sent forth from to fight against the Alerans. As such, she was able to lull the Alerans into thinking they were making more progress against the Vord than they really were through burning down croach on the surface while leaving the underground nurseries unharmed. And even if the Alerans had figured out the underground nurseries prior to the fall of Parcia and prioritized those, destroying the croach on the surface would've then been lowered in priority, instead allowing it to serve as a source of new Vord warriors.

Others

The Great Furies as a whole

Powerful Nature Spirits embodying the six elements of the natural world, furies are found all across Carna, but are particularly noteworthy across the continent of Alera for the presence of the Great Furies. These mysterious and immensely powerful furies are linked to the land itself, embodying certain landmarks of the region. Unlike their lesser brothers and sisters, though, they can only be barely manipulated by a mortal's mind, but can grant one the ability to unleash devastation on an otherwise unimaginable scale. The only Great Furies encountered (and mostly in passing, at that) are Garados (the fury of the highest, fiercest, and largest mountain/volcano of the Calderon Valley), Thana Livia (the fury of the cold northern wind that comes over the Calderon Valley from the Sea of Ice), Kalus (the fury of the volcano where the city and province of Kalare lie in its shadow), the unnamed Great Fury of the caldera deep below Alera Imperia, and Alera herself, though far more are assured to exist.

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• Almighty Idiot: What they effectively are, as only Garados, Thana, and Alera show anything even remotely resembling human self-awareness. Ultimately, most of the Great Furies observed in the narrative seem to operatre with the intellect of a wild animal more than anything else.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Most Great Furies typically take on some mocking parody of the human form whenever they manifest, though their resemblance to human psychology is shaky at best.
• Bishōnen Line: Of the Great Furies seen, Kalus is a giant volcano, Garados is a hideous mountain beast, and Thana is a vast, gaunt shape composed of countless windmanes. Meanwhile, Alera, the only Great Fury to be technically "formed" by Aleran hands, is very humanlike until you get to her eyes.
• Body of Bodies: In First Lord's Fury, Thana Livia is described as being basically made up of thousands of different windmanes (incredibly dangerous and violent wild wind furies).
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Deliberately provoking/soothing their anger is something that can be achieved by only the most skilled of Aleran furycrafters. Notably, High Lord Kalarus Brencis Majoris was able to tie the Great Fury Kalus to his lifeforce so that it would erupt and drown his city in molten flame if he ever died, and the Awakened Vord Queen almost succeeded in taking control of both Garados and Thana before Tavi was able to stop her (allowing Kitai to calm down the Great Furies before they leveled the entire continent for the sake of stress relief).
• Disproportionate Retribution: If anyone dares to set foot on his mountain without shielding themselves from his perception with earthcrafting, Garados will unleash an entire avalanche to crush them underfoot. Most of the other Great Furies are also implied to be similarly fickle and harsh in doling out punishment.
• Eldritch Abomination: They're barely sapient Genius Locis embodying the primeval elements of nature that cannot even be fully comprehended or understood by normal humans. Just a glimpse of Garados' true form is so mind-bogglingly vast and hideous that Tavi can feel his sanity started to break until he turns away.
• Genius Loci: They're effective sapient landmarks and weather patterns, ranging from mountains to the very wind coming down from the far north.
• Grumpy Old Man: Garados, one of the Great Furies of the Calderon Valley, is generally personified and described this way, being incredibly surly and resentful of anyone daring to step foot on his mountain.
• Humanoid Abomination: When properly manifesting, Garados is described as taking on something vaguely resembling a human form... albeit one so massive that pine trees are as small on his hide as the hairs on a human's arm. Additionally, Thana Livia is described as taking the form of a windmane "miles and miles across" during the Battle of Third Calderon^note For sake of reference, windmanes are described as looking like basically rotting human corpses shaped from clouds, lightning and wind, albeit ones with sharp claws and fangs.
• Jerkass Gods: They're incredibly surly and harsh entities of nature that can be very easily provoked and will often violently overreact to anyone trying to meddle in their affairs.
• Nature Is Not Nice: Most of the Great Furies are shown to be surly, insane, ruthless, and violent, and even the friendliest (Alera) is clearly shown to have a Might Makes Right code of ethics.
• Our Gods Are Greater: They're effectively the gods of Carna through their immense physical and elemental power over the natural world. Notably, the Alerans don't actually worship them, most likely because the Great Furies are (predominantly) too mindless to even notice.
• Physical God: There's a reason why the Alerans use them to swear oaths by, that's for sure.
• Real After All: While they're used as a curse in most oaths, most modern Alerans (particularly those in the urban centers far away from the frontier regions like the Calderon Valley) understandably don't believe them to be real (as most of them are hibernating due to humanity's colonization of the continent), but they're still very much alive and dangerous.
• Time Abyss: They're as old as the landforms they embody, making at least some of them (such as Thana Livia) potentially millions of years old.
• Unholy Matrimony: Garados and Thana Livia are the two prominent Great Furies of the Calderon Valley, and are seen as being "married."
• Women Are Wiser: A Black Comedy case is described in First Lord's Fury by Alera regarding Garados and Thana Livia:
  Alera: (to Tavi) Poor Garados. He's quite mad, you know. Thana does all that she can for him, trying to keep your folk away, but she's scarcely less psychotic than he is, the past few centuries.

Alera

Probably the greatest and most powerful fury in existence, and effectively the incarnation of the entire continent. She's taken a fondness to the House of Gaius, acting as a Spirit Advisor to them and causing effects on a massive scale when they ask and it suits her. However, she will not directly aid one side over another; using her power effectively relies on setting up situations where some outside influence helps your side more than the other.

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• Actually Pretty Funny: She's clearly trying not to laugh when she learns of an angry Kitai's Lysistrata Gambit towards Tavi in the prologue of First Lord's Fury.
• Alas, Poor Villain: A variant. While they were never actually "villains," she expresses sorrow to Tavi for his ancestors having wiped out the other sapient races on the continent before the present day, referring to them as having been just "lost travellers" like the Romans/Alerans/humans, Marat, Canim, Icemen, and Vord all are.
• All-Powerful Bystander: The most powerful fury to have ever existed, but she never gets directly involved or favors one side over the other in the many conflicts of her world. Though she does favor the House of Gaius, she only helps them when they politely ask her and doing so suits her.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Technically all furies are this for the elements of nature, but Alera's the most human and comprehensible of them, having interacted with the House of Gaius for centuries and is essentially the embodiment of the entire continent of Alera.
• Bishōnen Line: Of the Great Furies we see, Kalus is a giant volcano, Garados is a hideous mountain beast, and Thana is a vast, gaunt shape composed of countless windmanes. Alera, on the other hand, is very humanlike until you get to her eyes.
• Death of Personality: As noted below, the destruction of her mosaic in Alera Imperia causes her personality that was formed by the ancient Alerans to slowly disintegrate over the course of the last novel.
• Kaleidoscope Eyes: They cycle through just about every color imaginable, including the whiteness of summer clouds to the veins of minerals found far below the earth.
• Lack of Empathy: She's amiable enough, but the combined factors of being an impossibly old Physical God, and not even a human one at that, mean she does not process thoughts and emotions the same way others do. She understands them well enough, though.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In a particularly twisted sense. As she muses below, her Death of Personality is partly justified since she (in the form of furystorms and the like) had killed more of humanity than anything else in the history of Carna before the Vord came.
• The Mentor: Her Training from Hell is all that gets Tavi anywhere near normal skill levels at crafting. She also grimly notifies of him of the terrifyingly high stakes and dangerous situations he will have to deal with along with trying to best educate him on how to deal with them (to the point where she outright asks him if he's ready to do whatever it takes to finally wipe out the Vord and save his people).
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Sextus' destruction of Alera Imperia destroyed the mosaic that called her into being as a discrete existence, and she's already fading away when she first meets Tavi. Despite this, she continues helping Tavi and Kitai throughout the book and she doesn't die until after the epilogue.
• Might Makes Right: While she can put on a facade of empathy and kindness, being a Nature Spirit means that she has this mindset as a fundamental part of her psychology. See below when she and Tavi are describing how the original Gaius Primus bloodily conquered the other Alerans after a millennia of strife and suffering to bring about the Realm:
  Alera: Laws. Justice. Art. The pursuit of knowledge. It all came from a single source.
  Tavi: (sickened) The ability to kill.
  Alera: (grimly nods) Strength is the first virtue. This is not a pleasant fact. Its distastefulness does not alter the truth that without strength to protect them, all other virtues are ephemeral, ultimately meaningless.
• Mr. Exposition: A variant, with her helping inform Tavi of some details related to the Romans who would go on to eventually found Alera along with various facets of furycrafting.
• Physical God: Her power is effectively unlimited. However, actually using them can have continent-wide and potentially worldwide repercussions. For example, requesting moderate weather in one part of the realm spins off violent storms elsewhere. Tavi's stunt with the ice-sledding ships will cause a global ice age a few thousand years in the future.
  Until the Vord came, I and my kin had killed more Alerans than any foe your folk had ever faced.
• Spirit Advisor: To the House of Gaius. She usually limits herself to just the ruling First Lord, but because of Tavi's bond with Kitai and him telling Kitai before being told not to, she extends her advice to Kitai.
• Technicolor Eyes: Her eyes are described as resembling constantly-changing mineral veins rather than anything else.
• Time Abyss: She is billions of years old, although she's only existed as herself for as long as the mosaic in Gaius Sextus' meditation chamber has. Really, she might be one of the foremost examples of this trope: "Entire species come and go, like the sparks rising from a campfire."

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