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Nantucket & Allies
Jared Cofflin
The former chief of Nantucket's police force, now elevated to the Chief Executive of the Republic of Nantucket.- Catchphrase: "Ayup."
- Da Chief: Cofflin was the former police chief before the Event. Now he's the closest thing that they have to a President.
Marian Alston
Once a closeted Coast Guard officer commanding a training vessel, Marian Alston found herself thrust into a leadership role after the Event, and now commands the Island's military.- The Captain: Alston starts off the series as the captain of the Eagle. Even after being promoted to Commodore, she still retains the attitude.
- Katanas Are Just Better: Really, what other reason does a captain of the United States Coast Guard have for wielding one?
- The Stoic: After years of being a closeted lesbian, Alston has made a habit out of being hard to read. Swindapa helps to break this down somewhat.
- Twofer Token Minority: Marian is both black and a lesbian.
Swindapa Kurlelo
A young Fiernan warrior, Swindapa was captured by the Iraiina after a failed attempt to avenge her lover, and was enslaved and presented as a gift to the Iraiina's latest prospective allies. Luckily for her, those prospective allies turned out to be Coast Guard officers, and she was soon after given her freedom by Capt. Marian Alston, with whom she fell in love.- Meaningful Name: Her forename translates to "Deer-Dancer", and indeed, she is very graceful.
Ian Arnstein
A history professor from California, Ian Arnstein just happened to be in Nantucket when the Event happened. His knowledge of ancient cultures has proven extremely useful, and thus he serves as the Republic's ambassador.- Nice Jewish Boy: His Love Interest Doreen once refers to him as the most eligible Jewish man in the post-Event era not counting Moses.
Doreen Rosenthal
A former student working in a temporary position at the Nantucket Observatory during the Event, Doreen Rosenthal was the first to realize that Nantucket had been propelled back in time to the Bronze Age, because she was able to see the difference in the positions of the stars.- Jewish and Nerdy: She is Jewish and very nerdy.
Walker's Empire
William Walker
A former Coast Guard officer from Montana, William Walker turned against Nantucket, seeing an opportunity to build his own empire by forming an alliance with the Iraiina.- Ambition Is Evil: The source of his drive to conquer is his lust for power and control.
- Bad Boss: Surprisingly averted. While Walker's not above cruelty, he's smart enough to realize that mistreating underlings for no reason is the fastest way to getting deposed.
- Conqueror from the Future
- Evil Overlord: A fledgling one in Alba, but he only really grows into this trope when he becomes ruler of Mycenae.
- Eyepatch of Power: Walker loses an eye at the Battle of the Downs at the end of the first book.
- Pragmatic Villainy: This is Walker's hallmark, and a major reason why he's able to stay in power for so long.
Dr. Alice Hong
A physician, Dr. Alice Hong had a nasty streak even before the Event that mostly manifested itself through kinky sex. Since hooking up with Walker, she has set herself up as the "Mistress of Pain".- Depraved Bisexual: In sharp contrast to the more wholesome bisexual Swindapa, Hong tortures men and women and derives great pleasure from it.
- The Dragon: Hong serves as Walker's biggest (and most feared) enforcer.
- The Dreaded: Universally feared and loathed by virtually everyone except Walker himself.
- Sadist: A sexually motivated one, reveling in the mutilation and torture of anyone she can get her hands on.
- Torture Technician: She's not called the "Mistress of Pain" for nothing.
Ohotolarix
An Iraiina warrior, Ohotolarix befriended William Walker during the latter's first visit to Alba and became one of his first and most loyal followers.- Honorary Uncle: Walker's kids call Ohotolarix "Uncle Otho."
- Undying Loyalty: Ohotolarix is possibly the one guy whose loyalty Walker never doubts.
Helmut Mittier
A former East German spy who immigrated to the U.S. after the fall of the Iron Curtain- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: The heroes trick him into poisoning Walker, his heir, and Alice, then immediately take Mittier prisoner, rub in how they're definitely not going to let him survive and prosper, and kill him.
- Secret Police: He pursued dissidents for the East German Stasi and is happy to take a similar job for Walker and ensure his totalitarian reign is secure.
Danny Rodriguez
A Coast Guardsman who tries to rape one of the ship's cadets (who ends up beating him up instead) early in the first book. He ends up being non-fatally keelhauled as punishment, and later joins Walker due to vindictive resentment and to rape without being stopped.- Demoted to Extra: He's a villainous Mauve Shirt in the first book but only gets one scene apiece in the sequels (and one is just as a Dead Guy on Display).
- Dirty Coward: He never shows the slightest bit of courage and it's quite disgusting, just like the other aspects of his personality. He only attacks women he thinks are helpless, makes nervous excuses when being tried for rape and wails piteously both when marooning him is recommended and when he gets keelhauled.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: The man is a rapist with almost no other facets to his personality and no remorse for his crimes. He ends up being stabbed by an unwilling harem member.
George McAndrews
A Coast Guard cadet who feels that Alston should use her resources to help the early African tribes form an empire and joins Walker to get the power to do this himself.- Anti-Villain: He aids Walker with some horrible actions but he hates doing so, has a endgame more noble than his leader, and at one point has to be knocked unconscious and dragged away from a lost battlefront when he won’t abandon his pregnant lover.
Iphigenia
The daughter of the Greek King Agamemnon. She becomes one of Walker's concubines upon learning that in the old timeline, her father sacrificed her to the gods at the outset of the Trojan War.
- Uncertain Doom: She's last mentioned well before the downfall of Walker's empire, and it's never mentioned what happens to her and the child they have. Althea is referred to as "The last scion of the House of Wolf" shortly after other members of the family are killed, but that may just refer to her own knowledge.
Harold and Althea Walker
Walker's two eldest children.
- Daddy's Little Villain: Althea is a young adolescent who is just as ruthless as her father, abuses slaves, makes casual comments about a princess being made a Sex Slave, and is excited about commando raids, which she wants to participate in when she's old enough.
- Overlord Jr.: Harold is groomed to succeed his father and takes in his lessons with eager interest.
- The Remnant: Althea leads many of her father's followers in fleeing to set up a new empire after Walker dies.
Other
Isketerol
A shifty merchant from Tartessos (located in modern-day Spain), Isketerol's life was changed after the Eagle hired him to help them learn the local languages of the Bronze Age. He cast his lot with Walker, but after the Battle of the Downs, decided to return to Tartessos, where he used what he learned in Nantucket to become the new king.- Anti-Villain: After becoming the new King of Tartessos, Isketerol does not turn it into a totalitarian hellhole as Walker has done with his empire. Quite the contrary: while he stays a greedy, arrogant man, he turns out to be about as good a king as you could reasonably expect for his time and culture.
- Genre Savvy: During a parlay, an angry Marian makes a foreboding reference to her timeline's military strategy that Isketerol lacks the knowledge to get. However, he does correctly sense that "what you just asked me was like one of those oracles that only make sense after the disaster has happened."
- Never My Fault: Before surrendering in the third book, Isketerol causes a lot of death and damage to his empire by refusing to make peace at an earlier date. When Marian points this out, Isketerol makes a rather hollow rebuttal and then changes the subject without seeming affected or contemplative at all.
Pamela Lisketter
A devout environmentalist and all-around flaming liberal, Pamela Lisketter quickly found most of her pet causes rendered irrelevant after the Event. Seeing her influence wane in the emerging Republic of Nantucket, she decided to cast her lot with William Walker, aiding his betrayal and kidnapping Martha Cofflin before she and her followers went on an ill-fated quest to "help" the proto-Olmec people.- Doomed Contrarian: Lisketter disagrees with just about everything that Cofflin and Marion Alston want to do in order for the Nantucketers to survive. When no one takes her demands seriously, she tries to take more direct action, and fails so catastrophically that no one involved survives it - not her, not her followers, not even the people she was trying to help.
- Granola Girl: Lisketter is a thorough and careful deconstruction. She just can't adjust to the fact that she's now three thousand years in the past, and most of the ideals she brought with her simply don't apply to this time. When the Nantucketers reject her ideas on how they should live in this new world, she makes an inept attempt to take over violently, then flees with the intention of bringing technology to the ancient Olmec people of Mesoamerica. She wants to turn them into a force that can resist the "imperialist" ways of the Nantucketers, but never stops to consider how they might react to her appearance. Her stupidity not only gets her entire party killed in various horrific ways, it also results in the likely extinction of the Olmec civilization due to an epidemic of the mumps, a disease that often renders males sterile when it doesn't outright kill them.
- Strawman Political: Lisketter pretty much embodies every negative stereotype of American liberals - she complains about everything the Republic does, tries to force others to follow her agenda, and resorts to violence when she realizes that she's not going to get her way.
- Too Dumb to Live: Her big plan was to take her followers to Mesoamerica and teach the People of the Jaguar God how to use modern technology. She failed to account for how those people would react to having a bunch of white people show up out of nowhere.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: She knew just enough history to know that explorers going to the New World caused a genocide. Unfortunately, she seems to have not learned, or simply forgot, the main cause of that genocide. It wasn't simply invasion, it was diseases that were endemic to the Old World, but not the New World, and thus the natives having no resistance to them.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: It could be argued that Pamela had good intentions - she honestly believed that kidnapping Martha Cofflin (and shooting Marian Alston) would hinder the Republic enough that they would be unable to enter the war between the Fiernan and the Iraiina, while Walker's betrayal would remove from the Republic some of the more vicious, less sociable types (because those folks would presumably join Walker), and her own crusade to lift up the Native Americans would save them from genocide. Unfortunately, she greatly underestimated Walker's ambition and greatly overestimated her talents as a communicator (not to mention her aim with a gun.)
