Elemental Masters / Characters

Characters appearing in the Elemental Masters series

Watch out for spoilers

open/close all folders

First appearing in The Fire Rose

Rosalind Hawkins

Rose is a doctorate student in ancient languages when her father dies just before the start of the story, leaving her penniless. She takes on a job as a tutor for the children of Jason Cameron, railroad baron, only to discover after her arrival that it was ruse. What he really needs is someone to read and translate books for him, as he previously suffered an accident leaving him disfigured and unable to do the research for a cure by himself. She later discovers that Elemental Magic is real and that she herself is an Air Master.

Blind Without 'Em: Though Rose isn't ever really seen losing her glasses. However, she can't wear them for a ritual that involves summoning (or rather cajoling) a Unicorn (an Elemental of Spirit), and therefore can't see what it looks like beyond a blurred white shape.
Blow You Away: As an Air Master.
Damsel in Distress: Discussed. She mentions how silly she finds it that women in plays will just faint and let men steal them, to which her friends tell her she will never know how she might react in that situation. When Du Mond tries to kidnap her, she's unable to fight him off but does make him fight for every inch he drags her, giving her enough time for Jason to arrive.
Parental Abandonment: Her mother died some years before and her father died of illness just before the start of the book, leaving her penniless.
Riches to Rags: Her father was moderately wealthy, but thanks to being taken in by a scammer, lost his money (plus some that he borrowed). His teaching position at the University of Chicago and tutoring students on the side paid the bills and kept the creditors at bay, but once he died, Rose is left penniless and everything (except her personal possessions) is seized to pay the debts.

Jason Cameron

Jason is a railroad tycoon and Fire Master who suffered a magical accident that left him part wolf. As it left him unable to do the research for finding a cure for his condition, he seeks out someone with the necessary language skills to do so for him. This leads him to hiring Rose.

Fair-Weather Mentor: Jason is a downplayed example to Paul du Mond. He knows that this is because Paul simply isn't willing to put in the effort to actually master Fire, but he is meanwhile just taking advantage of Paul's services as a secretary while withholding lessons that Paul wouldn't be able to master anyway; he's completely honest with Paul about this, but he also knows that Paul won't believe the truth.
Parental Abandonment: In his backstory. Jason's mother died in the Great Chicago Fire, while his father (who became the Alcoholic Parent as a result) abandons Jason in front of a house when he becomes ill with typhoid.
Our Werewolves Are Different: He was intending to become a traditional werewolf when he transformed, but it reacted poorly with his Fire Magic and left him trapped in a grotesque wolfish form he can't escape. And unlike the traditional Beast, he never turns back. Luckily, he's learned to live with it and Rose loves him anyway.
Playing with Fire: As a Fire Master
Rags to Riches: Jason started out as a homeless boy that was abandoned by his father once he became ill. He fortunately is rescued by the man that becomes his mentor in Fire Magic, and once he grows up and completes his education, moves out to California and makes a fortune as a railroad tycoon with the seed money his mentor gave him.
Self-Made Man: Worked his way to becoming a wealthy railroad baron, with a little help from his Fire Magic and the seed money his mentor gave him.
The Svengali: Is a mild example of this to Paul du Mond. Jason is using Paul as an agent while theoretically teaching him Fire Magic, but he knows damn well that his teaching isn't doing Paul any good because the man won't apply himself. While he doesn't lie to Paul, he's happy to let him lie to himself, and he's planning to discard Paul the first chance he gets.

Paul du Mond

Jason's Apprentice in Magick and his secretary. His Element is also Fire, but he is rather lazy and seeks a shortcut to attain Mastery, with no regard to morals.

Bullying a Dragon: While heavily drugged, he gets the idea to kidnap Rose from the estate, even though his master is a half-wolf Fire Master who's already shown to have a wolf's protective instincts. He gets his throat torn out for his troubles.
Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: He's a professional "breaker" who takes delight in mentally and emotionally ruining prostitutes to make them safe for slavery. Jason even lampshades that if he were to incinerate him, the Council probably wouldn't give him grief over it.

Simon Beltaire

Fire Master that is Jason's rival. He is rather amoral and takes Paul under his wing.

Sadistic Choice: Forces one on Jason: either give into the animal urges and take back the book and Rose, but know that she will never trust him again, or watch the book burn and Rose die. It fails because he doesn't realize that Rose is no Neutral Female, and promptly summons her own sylphs to attack.
The Sociopath: In the aftermath of the earthquake, he's outright dismissive of the victims, saying they lived meaningless lives before and their deaths will be equally meaningless.

Master Pao

Chinese herbalist and physician and Master of Dragons, the Chinese equivalent to Earth Master. He is friends with Jason and Rose.

Dishing Out Dirt: As a Master of Dragons.
Dr. Feelgood: Averted, which is why he and Jason had a falling out when he realized that Jason was overusing opiates and refused to give him any more.
Hero of Another Story: While everything else was happening between Simon and Jason and Rose, he was busy trying to hold back the inevitable 1906 San Francisco earthquake. While he wasn't able to stop it entirely, he did limit its scope, as it would have demolished everything from Los Angeles to Portland.
If It Tastes Bad, It Must Be Good for You: By all accounts, the pain-reliever he makes for Jason tastes absolutely vile. Since Jason tends to overuse drugs unless stopped, however, this might be intentional.
Worthless Foreign Degree: Played with. He does have a doctorate in the USA as well as in China, but to many white people he might as well have this because there's no way an Asian man could practice Western medicine properly. It does help to reassure Rose that he knows what he's talking about, though.

First appearing in The Serpent's Shadow

Maya Witherspoon

Maya is a half-British, half-Indian doctor. Her father was a British doctor stationed in India and her mother an Indian priestess of the Brahmin caste. Following the death of her parents, she emigrates to London, England and after getting certified, starts up her medical practice. She is an Earth Master.

Back-Alley Doctor: Dr. Maya Witherspoon fits the "highly trained and well-equipped criminal" version. She’s a fully-qualified doctor and surgeon, with a perfectly respectable clinic. She also volunteers at a clinic in one of the rougher neighborhoods of London, holds late office hours for the convenience of several courtesans/mistresses among her patients, and is willing to provide any female patient with contraception (illegal at the time).
Breaking the Glass Ceiling: She becomes the first female Master of the London Lodge, because no other Earth Master can stand to be there long-term.
Dishing Out Dirt: As an Earth Master, though she uses her skills more for healing than for combat.
God Was My Copilot: Her seven pets are avatars of various Hindu gods.
Halfbreed Discrimination: Her father was a British physician and her mother an Indian from the Brahmin caste, so she gets discriminated against from both sides. More so from the Indian side, as she has English friends and most of her patients care more about her medical skills than her parentage, but she has to step lightly around white male physicians, and Lord Alderscroft bars her from receiving the training that, if she were white, she'd have gotten as a matter of course.
Healing Hands: Earth magic mixed with her normal doctoral degree makes her exceptionally skilled at this. She even manages to cure tuberculosis by sheer force of will.
One Hero, Hold the Weaksauce: Earth Masters normally can't stand to be in London due to the huge amounts of poison and pollution infecting the earth. Maya, whether due to her mother's magic, her sanctuary, her pets, coming from a different tradition, or sheer determination, has no problem.
Parental Abandonment: Her parents are both dead by the start of the story, her mother from illness and her father from being bitten by a snake (krait).
Super Doc: Between her Healing Hands, her long experience, and having practiced in two countries, Maya can do pretty much any medical procedure better than a conventional specialist. Among other things, she's a miracle-working surgeon, an OB-GYN, and can cure tuberculosis by magic.
Worthless Foreign Degree: Maya was a practicing doctor in India for several years, but when she moves to London she has to retake her medical exams and be interviewed by the head of the hospital she wants to practice at.

Peter Scott

Peter is a Water Master and former sea captain. He currently owns a business selling Egyptian-style artifacts and objects. He is Maya's teacher and mentor in Elemental Magic and later love interest.

Dude, She's Like in a Coma: Averted. Despite being the "prince" of the tale, he manages to avoid this aspect because Maya can astral project, giving her consent even though her body is asleep.
Magic Kiss: Uses a kiss empowered by the Hindu gods to wake Maya after her spirit is severed from her body.
Making a Splash: As a Water Master, though unlike most other Water Masters, he is more at home with the sea and the Elementals there rather than with the rivers and lakes.

Lord David Alderscroft

Lord Alderscroft is the head of the White Lodge, a group of Elemental Magicians headquartered in London that protects Great Britain from magical enemies. He is known as the "Wizard of London" and the "Old Lion" ("Young Lion" in his youth). He also appears in the book The Wizard of London as a main character. He is a Fire Master.

Defrosting Ice King: Near literally. His patron Lady Cordelia convinced him to use the powers of Ice, something that slowly but surely corrupted him into a cold, stoic, lifeless figure who had forgotten how to have friends or take joy in anything. Isabelle and Sarah succeed in guiding him out of it.
Playing with Fire: A Fire Master. Ironically, this also gives him control over creatures of Ice, although doing so will corrupt him.
Reasonable Authority Figure: Though it takes awhile for him to become this, and he never completely rids himself of his subconscious bias against women and the lower classes.
Noble Bigot: Lord David Alderscroft can never quite override his biases against those of lower social classes. He gets manipulated like a puppet by a commoner (and Dark Magician) who did the Henry Higgins thing and took elocution lessons to speak like an upper-class lady. He also tends to treat "women with brains" as rare creatures, as noted in Home From The Sea by Nan. Most of the time he dismisses them and it took a lot to shake him up in that regard to allow ladies into the Lodge.

Amelia Drew

A medical student that is friends with Maya. She is involved in the Suffrage Movement.

Beta Couple: Her relationship with Paul Jenner is this to Maya and Peter Scott. The two couples even end the book with a double wedding.
Family Versus Career: She makes it clear that she wants to have a fulfilling career as a doctor and be a wife and mother as well, and wonders if she will find a man that will be fine with that. (Luckily, she does.)
Florence Nightingale Effect: In full force with Paul Jenner, a patient that she and Maya rescue. Amelia immediately takes over his healing and the two mutually fall in love in short order.

Lord Peter Almsley

Water Master and friends with Peter Scott, partly due to their shared names and Mastery. The two jokingly refer to each other as "twins" because of this. Peter Almsley later appears in Unnatural Issue as a main character.

Making a Splash: A Water Master like Peter Scott.
Hero of Another Story: He gets a lot of elements of this in Serpent's Shadow, with his work off-the-page on Maya and Peter's part, and the epilogue consists of a letter from him to his Grandmother. Becomes literally true in Unnatural Issue.
Cultured Badass:He proves that he's this when he comes up against the (much larger) town bully in Unnatural Issue. The bully gets pulped, Peter's only injury is sore knuckles from hitting the bully so many times.
Ladykiller in Love: He's something of a flirt and Peter Scott wonders if he'll ever be tied down. Then he meets Susanna and is promptly tongue-tied.
Obfuscating Stupidity: Lord Peter Almsley acts like an Upper-Class Twit most of the time, but is actually anything but. The pose is a useful way to ensure that most of the people he meets will underestimate him.
Uncle Pennybags: He casually hands Dr. Maya Witherspoon enough money to fund the Fleet charity clinic for a month without a care. Apparently this is one of his hobbies.

Shivani

Maya's aunt and twin sister to her mother Surya. She is a priestess of Kali Durga and was very angry when her twin married an Englishman. She seeks to throw out the British occupiers of India and obtain Maya's magical power.

Evil Uncle: To Maya
Evil Twin: Shivani was Surya's evil twin. She may have killed Surya, definitely killed her husband, and spends the whole book trying to track down and kill Maya as well.
The Fundamentalist: To the point where Kali Durga, a destroyer goddess who doesn't flinch at Human Sacrifice, openly disowns her.
Honor-Related Abuse: She kills her sister Surya and Surya's English husband, as well as trying to kill their daughter, in order to cleanse the shame of Surya's mixed marriage from the family line.

First appearing in The Gates of Sleep

Marina Roeswood

Battle in the Center of the Mind: When she's forced into a coma by her aunt, she drags her into the magic with her and destroys her in a Shapeshifter Showdown.
Happily Adopted: As far as she's concerned, her godparents are her family and her parents are just strangers that sometimes send her letters and gifts.
Healing Hands: While not as proficient as an Earth Master, she is very good at drawing out poison.
Parental Abandonment: The Gates of Sleep starts with Marina's parents agreeing to let Marina be raised by three of her godparents in secret. While they did so to protect her from her aunt and it was devastating to both of them, especially her mother, she didn't know why and always secretly resented them for it.
Poor Communication Kills: The godparents opted to not tell her about Arachne or her curse, which leaves her especially vulnerable to her plans. Arachne herself is overjoyed at how foolish they were.

Andrew Pike

Earth master and doctor. He runs an establishment that deals with mental issues.

Combat Pragmatist: Reggie apparently expects a "standard" wizard duel at the end of the novel. Andrew opens with rugby tactics instead.
Dishing Out Dirt: As an Earth Master, though she uses his skills more for healing than for combat.
Florence Nightingale Effect: He has enough female (and a few male) patients falling for him during psychotherapy that he routinely uses his magic to make them fall out of love (or infatuation, at least).

First appearing in Phoenix and Ashes

Eleanor Robinson

Fingore: Alison severed her little finger to bind her to the house. This provides the glass slipper of the story: a pair of gloves made for a girl with only nine fingers.
Heal It With Fire: Eleanor uses a fire spell meant to purify whatever it's cast on to "purify" her bloodstream of morphine.
Tarot Motifs: To train in magic, she goes on a Vision Quest where she meets the spirits of the Tarot and learns from them.

Reginald Fenyx

Reggie is an Air Master and the local lord. He is a pilot in the Royal Air Corps during World War One. During one battle, he faced off against an enemy pilot that was also an Elemental magician, leading to his plane crashing. He was buried under rubble for a few days, during which time he was tormented by Dark Earth Elementals. Following his rescue, he suffers from PTSD, known as "Shell Shock" at the time.

Blow You Away: A master of Air.
Acquired Poison Immunity: He has developed a resistance to opiates, thanks to the large doses he's been taking in order to get any sleep.
Shell-Shocked Veteran: Him and his fellows in Phoenix and Ashes. He gets it worse than most because he was magically tortured in addition to the horrors of war.
Strangerina Familiar Land: Reggie goes through this when he returns to the family manor in Phoenix and Ashes after being in the front lines of World War I.
Trauma Conga Line: He starts Phoenix and Ashes with a combination of broken bones, shell shock, and psychic trauma from extended magical Cold-Blooded Torture.

Alison Robinson

Eleanor's stepmother and a Earth Master.

Black Widow: Eleanor's father and the father of the stepsisters were merely the bookends of a long career of using and killing men.
Hoistby His Own Petard: Her earth giant turns on her when she runs out of power.
Life Drain: Alison does it to her solicitor in order to increase her magical power, also to her two daughters.

Carolyn and Lauralee Danbridge

Alison's daughters and Eleanor's stepsisters

Sarah

Local Earth hedgewitch, midwife, and Eleanor's godmother

First appearing in The Wizard of London

Sarah Lyon-White and Grey the parrot

Action Girl: Not as prominent as Nan, but she was taught by Gurkhas and can wield knives, staffs, and her specially made umbrella with lethal intensity.
Heterosexual Life-Partners: Nan and Sarah, who are practically inseparable both personally and professionally. In A Study In Sable they're even raising their orphan protege together.
Kick the Morality Pet: In A Study In Sable, what finally snaps her out of the opera singer's spell is attacking Grey. When she thinks she got her killed, she immediately breaks down sobbing.
Magnetic Medium: What sets her apart from other mediums and foreshadows her being a Spirit Master is that she not only senses ghosts, but attracts them.

Nan Killian and Neville the raven

Street Urchin: At the start of The Wizard of London.
Action Girl: Both as a Warrior of Light, which turns her into an ancient Celtic warrior woman, and normally, where she's been trained in the use of multiple weapons.
Alcoholic Parent:Had one, her mother spent what money she managed to earn as a street walker or Nan could get by begging on gin (and sometimes other drugs).
Heterosexual Life-Partners: Nan and Sarah, who are practically inseparable both personally and professionally. In A Study In Sable they're even raising their orphan protege together.
Parental Abandonment: She doesn't know who her father is, and her neglectful mother eventually tries to sell her for drugs or alcohol. Luckily, Nan gets rescued by the boarding school that was giving her their leftover food.
Plucky Comic Relief: While he's far more than that, Neville sees it as his job to be this whenever things are getting too serious.
Suspiciously Specific Denial: As everyone in school knows, Neville is a particularly large jackdaw, not a raven, and definitely not a raven from the Tower of London that Nan could get in trouble for having.
Telepathy: Her primary psychic talent, and she is very good at it. She even causes Sherlock to have a Skepticism Failure when he tries to poke holes.

"Memsa'b" Isabelle Harton

Action Girl: In her Warrior Of Light aspect, she's a ferocious Grecian warrior with a spear.
Old Flame: She was once in love with Alderscroft, but he rejected her due to her inferior class. She comes to realize that she's much happier with her Second Love and puts it aside.

Lady Cordelia Bryce-Coll

Grand Theft Me:Lady Cordelia's plan for David Alderscroft. Her primary aim is to gain the political power she can't claim in a female body, but it's indicated that she will also use this technique to become immortal (by moving into new bodies on a regular basis).
An Ice Person: In The Wizard of London, after her pact with the Ice Dragon, Lady Cordelia is basically a mage version of this.
Vain Sorceress: Subverted with Lady Cordelia. She does all in her power to keep herself pretty and stop herself from aging (not even smiling because it'll wrinkle faster), but only because she doesn't want to lose the social power she has as a beautiful woman, and is quite annoyed by it. She's ecstatic when she gets the idea to steal a man's body so she can age without worries.
Would Hurt a Child: Lady Cordelia doesn't settle for simply hurting orphans and street children—that would be far too crude. She kills them, then enslaves their souls.

Robin Goodfellow aka Puck

The Fair Folk: He is a very benevolent example, but he's still a mercurial being who operates on Blue and Orange Morality.
God's Hands Are Tied: Downplayed. He tries to avoid being too directly helpful when a situation is just mortal-on-mortal, but this rule is flexible and he interprets it however he wants. It's zigzagged in Home from the Sea, where he genuinely isn't supposed to interfere with Mari because she's marked by the sea-god Llyr. Inverting his usual rule, that doesn't stop him from helping her free her father from the constable (a mortal adversary), but it does mean he can't help her with the selkies.
Physical God: As the Land-Ward, he's more-or-less the Elemental deity of Great Britain. He doesn't usually intervene directly, but when he does, it's decisive.
Public Domain Character

First appearing in Reserved for the Cat

Ninette Dupond

Action Girl: Ninette Dupond manages this, and then immediately lies about it because No Guy Wants an Amazon.
Combat Parkour: She's a trained ballerina, and knows that jumps, spins, and kicks can be useful both in dancing and fighting.
Dance Battler: After being given some lessons in basic self-defense. Her strength and flexibility make her better than her teachers think she'd be, and in addition she is able to develop a self-defense application to at least one of her dance moves.
The Empath: She turns out to have this power. A very useful power for a ballet dancer; she can "feed" the audience and they "feed" her back. It also means, that if anyone has ill intent on her, she knows.
Kick Chick: Ninette from Reserved for the Cat borders on this when she kicks an attacker into a wall. Justifiable because ballet requires both strong legs and precise movements with them.
Nice to the Waiter: When masquerading as famous ballerina Nina Tchereslavsky, she imitates the behavior of La Augustine (the etoile of the Paris Opera Ballet) except when it comes to her interactions with those lower in station. Whereas La Augustine is horrible to her servants. Ninette is nice and friendly to her maid Ailse. Two teenage boys that run errands for the music hall note that while some acts have come through acting like they were royalty, Ninette doesn't act like that, but instead is polite and fair to everyone.
Only in It for the Money: Her motivation, at least at first. Played sympathetically as a matter of survival, not greed.
Parental Abandonment: Her father disappeared when she was a baby, and her mother died shortly before Reserved for the Cat starts. Subverted when we learn Thomas the cat is Ninette's father, transformed when he lost a magic duel. He did what he could for his wife and child, but there just isn't that much a cat can do.

Thomas the cat/Thomas Dupond

Timmy in a Well: Thomas the cat alerts Nigel and Arthur that his mistress Ninette is in trouble. The sensational account makes the papers, with the story changed so that the cat runs for help, finds the two men, and leads them to her, as per the trope. (Thomas is disgusted to be portrayed so doggishly.)

Nigel Barrett

Benevolent Boss: Nigel is stated to treat all his employees in the theater well, paying them fair wages, not overworking them or demanding a share of tips, and regularly putting things in the way of those that need them. This fair treatment leads to his employees having Undying Loyalty to him to the point that it's described as "there was not a man or woman in that theater who would not have stood between Master Nigel and a runaway elephant."
Blow You Away: Is an Elemental Master of Air

Jonathan Hightower

Magicians Are Wizards: Jonathon Hightower, an Elemental Master of Fire, is also a skilled stage magician. Most of his stagework is sleight of hand, but he enjoys using "real magic" at least once in each show.
Tall Darkand Snarky: He loses some of the arrogance as the story progresses but keeps the snark.

Arthur Gilbert

Blow You Away: Is an Elemental Mage of Air

Wolf

Ambiguous Situation: No one is quite sure whether or not he is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as he claims.
Talking Animal: He's already a parrot, and now he's fully sapient.

Ailse McKenzie

Crazy-Prepared:She carries a revolver loaded with Cold Iron, Silver, and Blessed Lead bullets. At all times.
Ninja Maid: No kung-fu, but Ailse McKenzie takes on a magical assassin with an iron cookpot.

Nina Tchereslavsky

Dishing Out Dirt: Due to being a troll, which is an Earth Elemental
Shapeshifting: Has the power to transform into the form of any person or animal she has absorbed.

First appearing in Unnatural Issue

Susanne Whitestone

Hopeless Suitor: She spends most of Unnatural Issue carrying an intense torch for Charles Kerridge, until she finally has to acknowledge that a) he's in love with someone else and b) he has absolutely no interest in her.
Incompletely Trained: In Unnatural Issue, Susanne begins as this. She's actually received very good training in her specialty (Robin Goodfellow is no slouch), but it's very focused training; she's learned spells to guard and maintain the land, as well as some kitchen-focused Utility Magic. She hasn't learned the more combative Earth Magic or how to properly defend against a Necromancer, which puts her at a severe disadvantage against her father.
Shell-Shocked Veteran: While she's not a soldier, her position as a nurse puts her on the frontlines of WWI, and she's left traumatized by the experience.

Richard Whitestone

Fallen Hero: He was the White Lodge's foremost necromancer-hunter until lost his mind after his wife's Deathby Childbirth and turned his interests to Black Magic.
He-Man Woman Hater: Richard Whitestone is absolutely convinced that women are mentally inferior to men.
Necromancer: One of the deadliest in the series, since he feeds off the evil and death of World War I. Susanne realizes that, had he not been stopped, he'd have turned England into a land of zombies.
Parental Incest: His goal is to put his wife's soul in his daughter's body.

Charles Kerridge

Shell-Shocked Veteran:He gains a particularly bad case in Unnatural Issue. Luckily, his parents manage to get him discharged.

Garrick

First appearing in Home from the Sea

Mari Prothero

Arranged Marriage: Played with. The generations-long pact between the Protheros and the Selch in Home from the Sea makes each Prothero part of an arranged marriage, but Mari chooses her Selch husband (and it is her choice). Since she has to have a marriage license if she's not going to be treated like a whore by the village, Dafydd Prothero pretends he's forcing Mari into an arranged marriage with a cousin (the Selch fiance) to ensure that she'll be able to keep their cottage after Dafydd eventually dies.
Teacher/Student Romance: In Home from the Sea. Mari ends up falling in love with the Selkie sent to be her magic teacher, instead of the Selkies sent to court her.

Daffyd Prothero

Idwal Drever

Distressed Dude: True to his fairytale inspiration Tam Lin, he gets captured and Mari has to pass several tests to rescue him.

Gethin

He-Man Woman Hater: He sees Mari as basically a baby factory for future Selch and is infuriated when she tries to speak for herself rather than just marry whoever he forces on her.
Jerkass: He kidnaps Mari's husband and children just to get back at her for daring to negotiate the pact rather than meekly accept the terms, then sets up three "tests" designed to be impossible when she tries to get him back. When she succeeds anyway, he flies into a rage and banishes the whole family. He never misses a chance to be spiteful, petty, and cruel.

Constable Ewynnog

Hate Sink: It's mentioned multiple times that everyone hates him and he hates them right back. No one misses him when he leaves at the end.

First appearing in Steadfast

Katherine Langford

Half-Breed Discrimination: Katie is half Traveller, her mother being a Traveller that was cast out from her clan when she fell in love and eloped with Katie's father, a non-Traveller acrobat that she met at a fair.
Domestic Abuse: She runs away from the circus she works at to escape her abusive and brutish husband Dick, the circus strongman.
Lovely Assistant: She gets a job as the assistant in Lionel's magic act, replacing his previous assistant Suzie, who was Quitting to Get Married.
Financial Abuse: When Katie's husband Dick finally catches up to her, he lives off of the good salary she gets from her job at the music hall and keeps close track of the money she spends so that she can't hide any away.
Parental Abandonment: In Steadfast, Katie's parents die when their caravan somehow catches fire. In the ensuing grief, Katie is easily convinced by the owner of the circus her family worked for to marry the circus strongman, who turns out to be abusive.

Jack Prescott

An Arm and a Leg: Lost his leg during the Boer War.
My God, What Have I Done?: While he didn't partake in the abuses of the Boers at the hands of the British Empire, he also didn't do anything to stop it, something that has haunted him all his life.
Shell-Shocked Veteran: He has PTSD from his experiences in the Boer War.

Lionel Hawkins

Magicians Are Wizards: He is an Air Magician and has sylphs that help him with his magic acts.
Thou Shalt Not Kill: He notes that he could just as easily poison Dick or rig a fight against him, but he refuses to become a murderer. So he decides to rely on trickery to get Katie away from him.

Suzie

Cool Big Sis: Acts as this to Katie, and presumably to her actual sister. She's pretty much responsible for Katie getting hired.
Quitting to Get Married: Why she left her place as Lionel's assistant.

Dick Langford

Hate Sink: An abusive, misogynistic, rapist bully who uses his strength and cunning to terrorize others.
Marital Rape License: He has one by English law and he uses it.
Manipulative Bastard: He's very good at getting people to side with him against all odds, even convincing Kate for a moment that it's his right to abuse her.
Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
- With the number of people he manages to charm despite being by all accounts a repulsive, bullying monster, Katie wonders if he doesn't have a psychic gift for compulsion. Lionel agrees, but they never find out for sure.
- There's also his death. No, it wasn't Kate or any of her Elementals, but the drake she met did promise to protect her and it seems a little too coincidental that he died by burning alive.

First appearing in Blood Red

Rosamund von Schwarzwald

Action Girl: Probably the biggest one in a series full of them, as the first woman Hunts Master. She even lampshades that while Earth magicians are meant to be healers, it seems like all her magic is geared towards fighting monsters.
Combat Pragmatist: When helping a Water Mage fleeing an Air Master who went to the bad, she gets them out of the way of innocents to lure the Air Master out. While the Air Master sneers at the Water Mage for having to hide behind a woman's skirts, Rosamund kills the Air Master with a well-aimed throwing knife and calmly lectures the gawking Water Mage about the efficacy of physical, mundane attacks on magic-users.
Country Mouse: Rosamund comes across as this early in Blood Red, being a forester from the Schwarzvald. Her patron the Graf enjoys this about her, but makes sure to give her a bit of an education in being a classy lady too, because her skills have earned her a continent-spanning reputation and she needs to be able to deal with White Lodges from Paris to Belgrade.
Crazy-Prepared: Whenever she goes on an extended journey, she takes along a large trunk for her silver-lined armor, swords, knives, axes, mace, crossbows, morning-star, pistols, shotgun, ammo....
Eventhe Girls Want Her: In From a High Tower, Rosamund mentions that she had to deal with another girl who'd "gotten a pash" on her.
Fights Like a Normal: This is Rosamund's favored tactic against evil wizards. As she explains, they're expecting to defend against magic, and a flying tackle followed by a dagger stab is not something they'll have a ward against.
Good Is Not Nice: She is a reasonably friendly woman when she's off the clock, but she's not off the clock very often. She is (at first) prejudiced against werewolves for understandable reasons, and even after that, she takes a fair amount of joy, as well as pride, in killing bad magicians. She also doesn't ask permission before getting involved in things, such as attaching herself to Cody's travelling show on the off chance that it ends up kicking a hornet's nest (though in her defense, it's the Black Forest and not a place for an untrained magician to be travelling unescorted).
Little Red Fighting Hood: Rosamund "Red Cloak" von Schwarzvald. A Hunt Master, Action Girl, Magic Knight and walking armory, she's practically The Dreaded to the werewolves (and other monsters) of the German forests, and the hooded cloak she once wore to her grandma's house has since become her trademark.
Magic Knight: She switches between her considerable Earth Magic and weapons of varying mundaneness in her battles with various monsters and/or rogue wizards.
One Hero, Hold the Weaksauce: Rosamund breaks the usual Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors setup in that, while she's an Earth Master, she is able to communicate with Air elementals (and any other element). In Blood Red, this is because she's being aided by a god to right a terrible imbalance; in From a High Tower, the Great Air Elementals choose to commune with her while she's teaching Giselle.
Religious Bruiser: The Brüderschaft are quite pious and use St. Hubert as their symbol, and Rosamund often praises "the Good God" for her fortunes. It contrasts her with the villains, who are blasphemous and use a perverted St. Hubert icon as their own symbol.
Person with the Clothing: Nearly all elementals simply call her "Red Cloak."
Summon Magic: While all magicians have this power, Rosamund has an unusually powerful version that can call to Elements of any element, even Air which opposes her own. She used it to summon an elk to save her when she was young, and later summons Great Air and Spirit Elementals to deal with the werewolf clan.
Women Are Delicate: A very mild case. When she confronts an Air Master who is inhabiting a body with his twin sister, she assumes that the women was a helpless victim and feels sorry for her. Markos then asks how she knows it wasn't the woman who was the dominant, malignant personality, and she realizes that she doesn't.

Graf Heinrich von Stahldorf

Reasonable Authority Figure: He holds no prejudice against Rosamund for being a female Hunts Master and even helps her gain credibility with White Lodges of other nations.
Uncle Pennybags: Effectively acts as Rosamund's patron, giving her the training and the money to enter into high society.

Markos Nagy

Amazon Chaser: He grew up in a werewolf family where men and women were equal warriors, and is one of the first to accept Rosamund exactly as she is. This contributes to their eventual romance.
Badass in Distress: In the climax of Blood Red, he's kidnapped by the local werewolf pack and has to be rescued by his cousin and Rosamund.
Our Werewolves Are Different: A hereditary werewolf.

Dominik Petro

First appearing in From a High Tower

Giselle Schnittel

Action Girl: She was also taught by the Hunters Lodge, and can fight with numerous weapons as well as her supernatural aiming skills.
Blow You Away: A Master of Air.
Deliberate Values Dissonance: Downplayed. She never even considers that a girl might be her admirer until Rosamund brings it up, and is fairly shocked by the possibility.
Mage Marksman: She is a skilled markswoman to start with and when she uses her air magic to 'help' the shots she manages range from phenomenal (Boom, Headshot! at nearly a mile) to near-impossible (slicing a playing card in two edgewise).
Parental Abandonment:Her father trades her to the Earth Master next door for a garden of vegetables to feed his large family. Later on, Giselle's kindly adoptive mother dies, and she has to go out into the world in order to earn money to live on.
Sweet Polly Oliver: She disguises herself as a man named Gunther von Weber so she can enter sharpshooting contests and win money to provide a living for herself.

Captain Cody Lee

The Casanova: He's got a girl in every port, according to Heinrich. It gets them into trouble when it makes him a target for vengeful ghosts.
Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He holds his own against the Schmidts, even though he's a mere magician.
Playing with Fire: A minor Fire Magician.

Chief Leading Fox

Blow You Away: An Air Master like Giselle, and he gives her pointers in her training.
Magical Native American: Downplayed in From a High Tower. Medicine Chief (and former U. S. Army Scout) Leading Fox being an Air Master is totally justified by magicians occurring in just about every nationality; however the only other members of Captain Cody's Wild West Show aside from Cody himself (a low-level Fire Mage and longtime friend of Leading Fox) and their current announcer/manager (an Austrian who has relatives in the Brotherhood of the Black Forest) who knows anything about magic are the other Pawnee with the show. Averted in one important aspect, however: while he sometimes gives advice, he never becomes Giselle's mentor.
Underestimating Badassery: Air magic is believed to be the weakest of the four by Europeans, with flighty and minor Elementals that are better suited for spying than fighting. Leading Fox, on the other hand, was trained in America and is well acquainted with the Greater Elementals of Air, so much so that Hu-huk flies halfway across the world to help him, and thus is quite powerful. The Schmidts find this out the hard way.

Heinrich Kellerman

Johann Schmidt

Adaptational Villainy: The counterpart to the prince, now the story's villain. Notable in that very little from the original tale had to be changed. He still preys on a lone girl, convinces her to let her into her home while her guardian is away, and tries to have sex with her. Only in this case she says no and he goes ahead anyway, and is only saved by the timely arrival of her guardian. The adaptational part comes later when it's revealed that he's a witch trying to steal her magic.
Never Found the Body: They hoped that he died plummeting from the tower, but he was never recovered. Giselle lives in fear that one day he'll find her again, and he does.

First appearing in A Study In Sable

Sherlock Holmes

The most famous consulting detective working in London.

Arbitrary Skepticism: After having the existence of Psychic Powers proven to him, Sherlock Holmes very deliberately avoids finding evidence of Elemental Magic, and wants nothing to do with it. This is doubly funny because, while both kinds of magic run on Magic A Is Magic A and can be scientifically verified and studied, Holmes still sees one as scientific and the other...not so much.
Public Domain Character
Running Gag: Him claiming to Watson that his magic is just superstition. Mary even lampshades that she's not even sure whether he genuinely believes it or is just too stubborn to admit otherwise.
Skeptic No Longer: He gradually becomes less stubborn about admitting the existence of magic, but The Bartered Brides is the definitive wake up call for him when he realizes that Moriarty was aware of magic and is going to use it to cheat death.

Dr. John H. Watson

A former army doctor and veteran of the Second Afghan War. Holmes' trusted companion, roommate, and chronicler. He left a few things out of his books, such as the fact that he is a Water Master.

Adaptational Badass: While John Watson was never weak, his water abilities give him a considerable leg up in this. For one, he was the one to kill Moriarty, first by shooting him in the back then recruiting Elementals to drown him.
Innocent Bigot: He's somewhat condescending to Cedric and Beatrice, who follow different magical traditions than the ones he grew up in. Nan notes that he doesn't mean anything by it, he was just trained that way.
Making a Splash: A Water Master, something that helps him find evidence. It even rewrites the climax to "The Final Problem", as his scrying abilities let him know that the dying Englishwoman was a ruse.
Public Domain Character

Mary Watson

Adaptational Badass: Compared to the original where she never saw combat, here her skills as an Air Master make her an Action Girl. Nan notes that if she were so inclined, she could tear the air from someone's lungs.
Ascended Extra: In the original stories, she was more or less a bit character. In this series, she's just as important as John and the two are rarely seen apart.
Blow You Away: She's a Master of Air.
Public Domain Character
Spared by the Adaptation: Her death in the books is explained here as her Faking the Dead to help catch a serial killer, and then deciding to stay dead because she found it easier to operate.
Underestimating Badassery: Gets this twice over, as an Air Master (traditionally held to be the least powerful element) and a woman. Her enemies underestimating her power saves her life more than once.

First appearing in Jolene

Anna May Jones

Earth Master, though she doesn't know this until after she goes to live with her Aunt Jinny.

Ill Girl: Life in a mining town is hard for anyone, but especially for a nascent Earth Master like Anna May. Thankfully living with her Aunt Jinny and learning about her power helps her immensely.
The Muse: She becomes this to an extent to Josh, who tells Jolene that Anna helps him think and rests him up. He also points that they love each other and without love, none of the pretty things a person can make will have heart in them.
Parental Abandonment: Though with some reluctance on her father's part (he doesn't like or approve of Jinny), Anna gets sent away to live with her aunt. Later, her father dies of Miner's Cough, and her mother hangs herself afterwards.
The Unfavorite: Despite being an only child, her mother doesn't really care for her, as she never wanted a child in the first place and her love is focused on her husband, and Anna's father would rather have a son.

Virginia Alscot/Aunt Jinny

Anna's aunt who is a Earth magician and Root Woman, using her magic to make her healing potions better and stronger.

Hates Wearing Dresses: She views skirts as "consarned stupid things" and as soon as she could, she switched to wearing overalls. The closest thing she ever wears to a dress is her nightgown.
Maiden Aunt
Only Known by Their Nickname: Everyone calls or refers to her by Jinny, except for Jolene, Old Raven, and his wife Dawn Greeter, who are the only ones to use her full name Virginia.

Joshua Holcroft

Earth magician who is really skilled at carving things, from statues and headstones to gun grips and knife handles. He is Anna's love interest.

Artists Are Attractive: The fact that he is a skilled carver is what attracts Jolene's notice in him. Anna is also into his artistic skill and admires it, though she loves him for more than just that.
Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Has straw-colored hair and is kind without even thinking about it.

Jolene/Queen of the Copper Mountain

Blue-and-Orange Morality
Line-of-Sight Name: When she appeared in Tennessee, she took on the name Jolene, which she got off a tombstone.
Redhead In Green: Always wears green dresses, some of which resemble the coloring of malachite. (One of her other titles is the Malachite Maid)
Significant Green-Eyed Redhead

Old Raven and Young Raven

Two Cherokee (father and son) who live hidden in the same holler where Aunt Jinny and the Holcrofts live. Old Raven has Spirit Magic, while Young Raven has Fire Magic.

Magical Native American: Downplayed in that Elemental magicians appear in just about every culture. However, Old Raven, along with Grandmother Spider, does give Anna lessons in Cherokee Earth Magic.

Billie McDaran

The foreman of the Burra Burra copper mine. Is an Earth Master, but turned towards the dark aspects of it.

Bad Boss: As mine foreman, he is mean to the miners under him. He's beaten miners that he thinks aren't working hard enough or are sassing him.
Psychic Powers: Has some kind of psychic charm power to temporarily make people like him. This is why he hasn't been fired from his job as foreman by the mine owners, and he used it on the Holcrofts when he stayed with them for a couple of days (normally they strongly dislike him and have as little as possible to do with him.)

Characters / Elemental Masters

Edit Locked