The practitioners, Others, and assorted magic related beings of Kennet.

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The Kennet Witches

A trio of teenage girls who were hired by the Kennet Others to solve the mystery of the Carmine Beast's murder.

In General

The Ace: Pointed out by Charles in Finish Off 24.14: they're all incredibly talented and creative, and have come so far beyond what a normal practitioner of that age would be able to do that it beggars belief.
Breaking the Fellowship: Downplayed. Though they don't outright break up, the aftermath of the battle for the Carmine Throne puts a major strain on their relationship, with Avery moving to Thunder Bay, and Lucy and Verona becoming more distant from one another as the latter delves more into the new underbelly of the town. This is further signified by the chapter headers showing the trio by themselves rather than together as they were previously.
Brought Down to Badass: In the latter portion of Finish Off the trio get effectively gainsaid, but still manage to get the upper hand without being able to call upon their magic.
Childhood Friends: Lucy and Verona have been friends since kindergarten. Avery is a more recent addition to the group.
Fighter, Mage, Thief: Though they're all practitioners and by extension have elements of the Mage, they each fall into one archetype more than the others:
- Lucy is the Fighter, specializing heavily in combat magic augmented with glamour and goblin tricks.
- Verona is the Mage, having The Gift when it comes to magic in general and relying most on general magic.
- Avery is the Thief, being an Action Girl like Lucy, but relying a bit more on her boons and trickery in a fight than straight combat magic.
From Nobody to Nightmare: At the beginning of the story the trio are three novice practitioners in a podunk town who don't come from any notable families and only have an edge thanks to the power given by the Kennet Others, but by the end of the story they've become big regional players that the likes of the Mussers, the Hennigars, the Finder corporation Wonderkand, and the Carmine Exile are forced to take seriously as threats.
Gaining the Will to Kill: Following the Carmine tournament, the girls are forced to come to terms with the fact that dethroning the Judges if they don't change their ways will kill them.
Laser-Guided Karma: Not them, but Charles comes to believe that their constant interference and numerous successes are all because Karma wishes to punish him, as a former foresworn, for taking the Carmine Throne, and is using them as its agents for doing so. It's to the point that he refers to them as "not real". The girls, for their part, deeply resent the assertion that all their victories are solely due to Karma guiding them.
Mask of Power: All three wear animal masks^note in their practitioner garb. These masks appear to obscure their identity to some extent, as people who see them describe them as having the faces of the animals they wear.
Morality Chain: Verona mentions to Charles that she feels that were it not for Lucy and Avery, there's a big chance that if she'd awakened in a more usual way and grown up within regular practitioner culture, she'd end up being just as conniving a person as Alexander and see nothing wrong with binding and enslaving Others.
Unreliable Illustrator: Avery is canonically a strawberry blonde, but her artwork depicts her as a golden blonde.
Unskilled, but Strong: They lack the formal training that a practitioner inducted into a large family would get, but they make up for it by having a whole town of Others supplying them with powers and gifts. During her Interlude, Nicolette notes that the runes they draw are crude and unstructured. However, she gets a nasty surprise when Lucy manages to use glamour on her through her scrying ritual, something that requires a "great deal" of power, according to Alexander. As they lean more into their own practice specialties, however, they start gaining the skill to back up their power.

Lucy Ellingson

Practice: Duelist

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All of the Other Reindeer:
- Her class in high school take part in a ranking app where everyone picks someone they're into. Lucy is the only girl who gets no picks whatsoever.
- Lucy also mentions suffering from racism for being Black in the past.
Animal Motifs: Foxes. Lucy Awakens while wearing a fox mask, representing herself to the spirits as such. Yadira asks if it had to do with her magic, but Lucy states it's just because she liked foxes. Later on, however, one of her signature moves becomes turning into three foxes using glamour and she can also make her fox mask bite like the real animal.
Aura Vision: Her Sight is keyed to violence, with swords representing wounds, daggers representing a person's association with violence, and watercolor staining representing negative emotions. The more daggers, the more associated with violence they are.
Calling the Old Man Out: She flips her shit at Paul, her mother's ex-boyfriend, who abandoned them because his family didn't approve of his relationship with a Black woman and he didn't have the nerve to stand up to them.
Curb Stomp Cushion: Lucy is almost completely outclassed in her duel with Anthem, but she gives a good enough showing that he admits he's impressed and that America could learn from her.
Disappeared Dad: Her father died when she was young. Paul, the closest thing she had to a stepdad, abandoned them years later. Lucy's got some issues, suffice to say.
Duel Boss: She can invoke this by using her duelist circle, as it'll trap her opponent until either she or they are defeated.
Elemental Powers: Lucy favors smoke, as it warns of fire yet lingers afterwards, is harsh and abrasive, yet also cleansing. Her arena barrier is derived with a ring of smoke, and she uses it a lot in her general practice.
Genre Savvy: Lucy knows enough about detective stories to know that any possible suspect who tries to get involved with the investigation is very suspicious.
Hot-Blooded: Lucy tends to be the most aggressive and prone to anger of the trio.
Kid Detective: Although all three of the protagonists are acting as this while investigating the Carmine Beast's disappearance, Lucy seems to be the most eager of the three to act as a detective.
Lady of War: Lucy carefully constructs her persona and her appearance, in all cases seeking to be "bulletproof," drawing strength from her composure and flawless appearance, while being a dangerous combatant. Her training from Guilherme accentuates these already present traits.
The Leader: Seems to be setting herself as the leader of the trio, driving a lot of the investigation.
Mage Marksman: Miss gives her a magic ring that can turn harmless objects into weapons. She occasionally uses it on soda cans, turning them into handguns.
Magical Accessory: Lucy is the first of the trio to acquire an Implement, an earring made with the help of Verona and Avery that has the effect of allowing her to sharpen her hearing and listen in on conversations.
Me's a Crowd: Lucy's mastery of glamour allows her to split herself into multiple fully functional copies of herself, and to deceive the universe such that each copy is able to act as her full practitioner self, yet be revealed as Actually a Doombot so long as there's at least one copy left, with the surviving copy retroactively becoming her true self.
My God, What Have I Done?: After John kills Alexander, Lucy is horrified and says that she can't help but feel that she bears some responsibility by bringing him to the BHI, even after she's told that he always intended to do it.
Power Dyes Your Hair: Lucy's hair becomes bright pink when viewed with the Sight, as well as when she uses her Arena.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: Invoked. Lucy's fox mask is enchanted to have red eyes in order to make her seem more intimidating.
Super-Hearing: Later on, her earring Implement grants this, allowing her to hear things at extremely long range and particularly helping with eavesdropping.
Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Invokes this in Cutting Class 6.1- as part of the lesson, Ms. Durocher intends to let an Other loose in the class and the students have to do what they can against it. Lucy just asks Durocher if shooting her would prevent her from letting the Other loose. (It doesn't work, but Durocher commends her for trying.)
Within Arm's Reach: Invoked by her combat training under Guilherme, grabbing the daggers visible with her Sight and bringing them into reality via glamour.
Yin-Yang Bomb: Following the Battle for the Carmine Throne, she starts mixing together both fae and goblin magic when she fights.
You Are Not Alone: Acknowledges this during the Implement ritual—as much it affirms for her the various awful things that people say about her (and a great deal of the casual racism she's struggled with suspecting but never being able to confirm) it also provides her insight into the good aspects of her life, and she reaffirms that she loves her friends and family and they love her back.
You Will Not Evade Me: One of her signature moves is to create a circle that can't be broken until either she or her opponent is beaten. Any attempts to leave the arena will just lead her opponent back to her.

Avery Kelly

Practice: Finder (Path Runner)

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Action Girl: Out of the three, she's the best in a physical fight starting out, though Lucy starts to eclipse her as a combat mage.
Alternate Self: In a simulated alternate reality where Avery never met Lucy and Verona or awakened with them, she becomes a Ruins practitioner.
Animal Motifs: Deer. Avery Awakens while wearing a deer mask, representing herself to the spirits as such. Various Others (and Daniel) often refer to her as a deer, or 'deerfaced'.
Annoying Younger Sibling: Avery has lots of siblings and doesn't seem to get along well with any of them, meaning she both has this and is seen as this.
Damsel in Distress: In Out On A Limb 3.1, she's left stranded on the Forest Ribbon Trail without a way out, but is rescued in 3.2.
Dimensional Traveler: As a Path Runner Avery's practice deals with traveling the Paths and gaining their boons, and by the time of the final epilogue three years later, she's started traveling to Realms on the regular.
The Face: Out of the three Avery is noted to be the most personable and is their point woman for dealing with outsiders.
Faking the Dead: Avery gets shot at the end of Arc 21's Cliffhanger, and spends all of Arc 22 on the Paths in a gambit to convince the Judges that she's dead.
Famed In-Story: Avery becomes well known amongst the Finder community for solving the Promenade, to the point that a Punjabi Finder she briefly encounters while traveling a Path treats her as a major celebrity.
Gayngst: Avery's a lesbian and is fine with her sexuality, but she hasn't come out to her family and is also (as far as she knows) the only queer girl in her age group in Kennet, which doesn't help. It gets worse when Maricica flat out tells her that although there're three other queer girls in Kennet, one has already found true love and neither of the other two would be a good match for her.
Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She's more precisely strawberry blonde than the traditional golden blonde, but Avery is the nicest and most empathetic of the Kennet trio.
Has a Type: She has a noticeable preference for full-figured women.
Hoist by Her Own Petard: She tries to make the Forest Ribbon Trail easier by describing the Wolf as 'addled' and 'old'; unfortunately, after actually encountering the Wolf and being stuck around it, she's left with a lingering fear of the elderly and mentally unwell.
I Am Not Left-Handed: When she wears the deer mask, Avery is a support player, striking from the sidelines in support of her friends. When she dons the wolf mask, Avery signals a switch in tactics-becoming a direct antagonistic force and taking up some of Lucy's usual role.
Lesbian Jock: Avery is gay and happens to play hockey and soccer, with her main melee weapons being hockey and lacrosse sticks enchanted to hit extra hard.
Magnetic Hero: Avery's job is getting allies for Kennet, and it's one she excels at.
Middle Child Syndrome: She suffers from this to an extent, with her parents not paying as much attention to her as they do to her older or younger siblings.
Oblivious to Love: Avery tends to be oblivious to other girls being attracted to her until it's all but spelled out to her.
Official Couple: Ends up dating Nora after moving to Thunder Bay.
Parents as People: Avery's parents have a big family (themselves, five kids of varying ages and the kids' grandfather) and they try their best, but having such a big family makes it hard to give everyone their full attention. An Other on the Forest Ribbon Trail tells Avery that she was an unwanted pregnancy that they kept, and that while they love her, they still feel the stress that came from her birth and regret having her.
Portal Door: After Avery gains the boon of the Promenade, she can go through Paths that appear through doors as a method of quick travel, which she uses to get between Thunder Bay and Kennet in no time. They're also capable of instantly reaching places that normally take a long time to reach, such as the domain of a Judge, which otherwise takes a day's travel away from civilization on top of whatever other requirements are involved.
The Quiet One: She's less talkative compared to Verona and Lucy.
Teleportation with Drawbacks: After going through the Forest Ribbon Trail, Miss gives her a rope that lets her teleport over short distances as long as she's out of everyone's sight, with the rope's texture changing to inform her of whether or not she's being watched.
Three-Point Landing: Avery lands on her feet and one hand after completing the Stuck-In Place Path, giving her the ability to safely fall from any height and ejecting her miles over Kennet.
Tricked-Out Shoes: Avery wears a pair of shoes she enchanted with runes to make her jump farther while wearing them.
Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Following her encounter with the Wolf, Avery has a mild phobia towards the elderly.
You Fight Like a Cow: Avery is the only one of the trio who actually tries for battle one-liners.
''Mess with my friends, and you get the prongs!"

Verona Hayward

Practice: Dabbler in Shadow, Halflight, and Shape

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/verona_3.PNG

Abusive Parents: Her dad treats her like shit.
Animal Motifs: Cats. Verona Awakens while wearing a cat mask, representing herself to the spirits as such, and likes glamouring herself into a cat to get around.
Anti-Hero: Admits that she's probably the least properly heroic of the trio between Lucy's strong sense of justice and Avery's strong empathy for others, and is the least bothered by the more unsavory aspects of the local Others, though she still insists on being somewhat moral.
Awesomeness by Analysis: One of her defining strengths is that she's very observant.
Being Human Sucks: She does not like her life as a human, and initially considers turning into an Other or otherwise forsaking her humanity to escape it.
Calling the Old Man Out: She finally loses her shit with her father in Out On A Limb 3.1. She calls him out a couple more times throughout the story, though less explosively.
Domain Holder: Verona claims the House on Half Street as her demesne in Left in the Dust 16.10.
Duality Motif: Verona starts getting into Halflight practices, which blur the line between human and Other.
The Gift: Out of the three, Verona takes the quickest to magic in general and quickly intuits its uses, being the best at general magic within the trio. It's for this reason that she's started to become a Sorcerer.
Good Counterpart: With Charles' observations in mind about their similarities, Verona can be interpreted as what Alexander Belanger might've been like had he not grown up within traditional practitioner society and had more moral influences to temper his darker impulses.
Heterosexual Life-Partners: With McCauleigh in the epilogue, who lives in Verona's demesne full-time after Verona secures her freedom from her family and who calls Verona her "lifemate."
Incompatible Orientation: With Jeremy. Verona's heterosexual aromantic, and Jeremy wants a romantic relationship with her, which she isn't willing to try.
Innate Night Vision: Verona's Sight lets her see in the dark.
My God, What Have I Done?: Though she doesn't show it at first, she's more than a little horrified at how she's partially responsible for Bristow's fate at the hands of the brownies.
Nerves of Steel:
- We know from her POV narration that she's scared when John holds a knife to her face, but Lucy's subsequent chapter makes it clear that she doesn't show it.
- In Back Away 5.3 Verona keeps her wits about her even while dealing with numerous hostile Others at the start, and Sharon threatening her life with a loaded gun towards the end.
Not So Stoic: She makes a dark joke about Bristow's fate in Vanishing Points 8.2, but later throws up after being reminded of what she did.
Scars Are Forever: Verona suffers a serious injury from Guilherme's glamour glass in Summer Break, and her left hand is permanently damaged as a result, with her suffering chronic pain and hand cramps even in the epilogue. She refers to it as her "claw."
Shadow Archetype: Verona can be best described as a female Alexander who never became as predatory. Charles even says she reminds him of the parts of Alexander he actually liked and wanted to be friends with.
The Smart Guy: Out of the Trio, she's the most interested in studying and learning practice—which isn't to say the others aren't; she's just that much more into it, and at one point she says she might be the student at BHI who most wants to learn.
Statuesque Stunner: By the final epilogue Verona is stated to have taken after her father in terms of height enough to be a few inches taller than her mother, and is now the tallest of the trio. She's also got a few admirers.
Take a Third Option: After being shown a vision of the worst sides of the Kennet Others and being asked by the Alabaster Doe what form the new Kennet would take, she says that she has no desire to either embrace the darkness like the Family Man or Charles creating the Choir, or dedicate herself to fighting it like Cleo and the other Witch Hunters since she's seen how terrible both paths can go. Instead she'll use both as necessary in order to make a better world.
The Unfavorite: Verona mentions feeling left out that compared to Miss and Avery, and John (plus his Dog Pack) and Lucy, none of the other Kennet Others have taken a special shine to her.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: She likes using glamour to turn into a cat.
You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Verona believes she's an amoral person whose darker impulses are only held in check by her more moral friends, but when Verona sees a simulation of her life in which she never met Lucy or Avery nor Awakened together with them, the Verona we see still has a moral compass, still thinks of Others as people, and hasn't delved into the worst of practitioner amorality like she thinks she would.

Companions

Snowdrop

The companion Avery has on the Forest Ribbon Trail. She's the viewpoint character of 4.x.

Type: Boon Companion (opossum)

Amplified Animal Aptitude: Justified, as Snowdrop is a magical creature and retains her human-level intelligence in animal form.
Combat Pragmatist: While fighting brownies she remembers the first rule Toadswallow taught her about goblin fighting, which is to go first for anything that jiggles, and she's taken to using a goblin-tainted fork (actually a transformed Cherrypop) as a weapon. Nicolette implies that hanging around the goblins so often has made her nature somewhat goblin as well, which makes the fairy-adjacent brownies particularly thrown off by her.
Compulsive Liar: She is unable to tell the truth, even when she wants to. On the other hand, this means she can lie in a setting where most supernatural creatures can only tell the truth. Interlude 4.x reveals that from her perspective, she's speaking the truth, but it gets twisted into the opposite and she doesn't know what the people around her hear. Even writing will get reversed from what she actually meant.
Familiar: In One After Another 10.1, she and Avery perform the ritual to make Snowdrop Avery's official familiar.
Fun T-Shirt: Snowdrop always wears one, usually pertaining to opossum memes, which changes whenever she changes form, though Interlude 4.x reveals she can keep the logos between transformations if she concentrates enough.
Furry Reminder: Snowdrop will do things like hang upside down or crouch on all fours while in human form. Then there're her eating habits and opinions on trash and things like birds. While fighting she'll even hiss as opossums often do to intimidate predators. She's noted as being able to "scamper" even while in human form.
Humanlike Animal Aging: She's still aging like a normal opossum and isn't expected to live more than three years. Even in the first few weeks she's around she visibly ages, getting closer to being a young teenager like the trio. One of the benefits of the familiar bond is a concomitant lifespan to Avery, her partner, so she'll live as long as Avery does. Her aging slows down to the rate of a human's after the bond is established.
Instant Expert: Being made Avery's boon companion gave her a 'download' of everything she needed to know to be a good companion to Avery, which included things like speaking and some of Avery's knowledge about playing soccer.
The Nose Knows: She's capable of smelling practice, and can transfer the ability to Avery via their familiar bond. For instance, Ruins-based practice smells like rain and tears.
Outside-Context Problem: Boon companions all have some kind of trait depending on what kind of animal they started out as. Snowdrop was an opossum, which are known for deceiving people by playing dead, so her trait is that everything she says is the opposite of what she means. Practitioners are used to Others who can't lie, so an Other who can only lie- and there's no way of telling this without talking to her for some time- tends to blindside people.
Parental Neglect: Snowdrop was abandoned by her mother and was barely surviving when Verona found her for the Forest Ribbon Trail ritual.
Platonic Life-Partners: She considers Avery to be her partner for life, and gets offended when Seth Belanger refers to Avery as Snowdrop's "Master".
Playing Possum: She does this, not always intentionally. A human child suddenly keeling over, with or without screaming, is very alarming and the Kennet trio know how to take advantage of the confusion.
Super-Senses: Though her eyesight is normally as poor as any other opossum's, as a result of the Paths turning her into a boon companion it's particularly keen when it comes to finding hidden things, allowing her to perceive entrances that others can't see such as Warren holes, or the paths the brownies use to get around the Blue Heron Institute. It's implied that this is probably how Snowdrop can perceive Miss fully whereas others can't.
Trademark Favourite Food: Milk, as it's a "giving" food instead of a "taking" one like meat.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: She has two forms: a regular opossum, and a kid aged about nine (though as of Leaving a Mark 4.1, her human form now looks about eleven).
We Are as Mayflies: Vanishing Points 8.7 implies that despite being an Other, Snowdrop still has a natural opossum lifespan of around two to four years on average. It ends up being a major reason Avery decides to make Snowdrop her familiar despite her initial misgivings, as she'll live for as long as Avery does.

Julette

A fetch constructed by Verona from Fae glamour to take her place when she needs a decoy. Deliberately granted sentience in Arc 19.

Type: Fetch

Alternative-Self Name-Change: She adopts the name Julette, Verona's middle name.
Animorphism: Verona gives her the ability to turn into a cat.
Changeling Tale: Julette carefully avoids denying that she wants to take Verona's place.
Differently Dressed Duplicates: Once she and Verona start coexisting, Julette's slight difference in clothing serves as a tell for which is the original. She's shown to have different taste in clothes than Verona's when they argue over whether given articles are "trash clothes" suitable for wearing in an environment likely to ruin them. Sometimes she and Verona wear the same clothes with inverted patterns of black and white.
Good Thing You Can Heal: As a construct made of twigs, twine, paper, and glamour, Julette can be repaired from grievous wounds very quickly, and even if she's fully discorporated Verona can theoretically recreate her. As such, she tends to take major injuries.
Who Needs Their Whole Body?: In 20.z, Julette is blasted almost completely to pieces by Kira-Lynn, only to reveal that she'd hidden a goblin layer in herself containing enough faerie glamour to form a small cat body she uses to escape.

Others

The various supernatural beings having taken up residence in Kennet. They have agreed to Awaken and provide power to our protagonists, in exchange for their assistance in solving the mystery of the Carmine Beast's disappearance.

Council Leadership

Miss

A mysterious woman whose face and hands are always conveniently covered by something. Seems to be the most knowledgeable about what is going on in Kennet.

Type: Lost

Big Good: While she's a suspect along with everyone else, she's generally the most stable, reliable, and friendly of Kennet's Others, and serves as both their leader and the girls' primary mentor. It's also heavily implied that she's effectively the leader of the implicit faction opposing the conspirators who killed the Carmine Beast.
The Bus Came Back:
- The Trio plus Snowdrop is able to briefly meet with her during Back 5.d, where it's revealed that she's been stuck traveling through various Paths ever since rescuing Avery from the Wolf because as an Other the normal ways out of the Paths won't work for her. Direct summoning is also out of the question since there's a chance the Wolf could come back with her.
- In One After Another 10.4 she returns once again, this time having managed to free herself of the Paths, though the barrier around Kennet keeps her from entering.
Dimension Lord: Becomes the Founder of Kennet Found, the pocket realm of Kennet associated with the Paths.
Eyes Out of Sight: Her hair is long enough to completely obscure her face.
The Faceless: Anyone who looks at her (including Others) cannot see her face or hands- they'll always be conveniently covered by something. Going by Nicolette's Interlude, she also appears to be nearly invisible to scrying, only being perceived as a vague presence. Snowdrop, a fellow type of Lost, is a notable exception to this rule. Back Away 5.d reveals that she's literally faceless, lacking a mouth or eyes, but still has something approximating the latter, allowing her to see.
Heroic Sacrifice: Goes into the Forest Ribbon Trail to rescue Avery, while fully aware that she may not return.
The Leader: Seems to have a leading role amongst the Kennet Others, being in charge of keeping practitioners away from Kennet, and Snowdrop mentions in her Interlude that she's made deals with Others outside Kennet by giving them items of power and taking them back or calling in favors as necessary in order to keep people busy.
Murder by Inaction: Avery's Alcazar vision shows that Miss was not only there the night the Carmine Beast died, she actually showed up when it was dying, but chose not to help because she felt her own plans were better served by someone else sitting on the Carmine Beast's throne.
Mysterious Backer: Downplayed. Miss has been the most helpful of the Others so far, was the one to introduce Avery to Lucy and Verona, and to hire them to solve the mystery. While she seems genuine in wanting the protagonists' help, she makes no secret of the fact that she has her own agenda, and refuses to answer several of their questions for various reasons. She also refuses to divulge what type of Other she is, up until she reveals that she's a Lost, someone who got lost on one of the Paths.
Mysterious Woman: So mysterious she's literally The Faceless; she is central to events in Kennet, knows more than almost everyone else about what's really going on, and her motives and goals remain ambiguous for most of the story.
No-Sell: Has no heart, so getting stabbed or shot in the chest doesn't really hurt her more than it would anywhere else, though it still does hurt.
No Mouth: Back Away 5.d reveals she has no mouth or the concept of one, so one side effect is not needing to eat. She is still able to speak because of the connection between the air that connects to the outside world and the open space in her lungs.
Non-Action Guy: She cannot directly attack and instead fights indirectly by either relying on allies who can attack or trickery.
The Needless: Lacks not only a mouth, but the concept of a mouth, so part of that is not needing to eat.
Offscreen Teleportation: How she appears when she is summoned by the protagonists. When Verona and Lucy try to corner her behind a tree, she reappears behind a different tree.
Precision F-Strike: In Crossed with Silver 19.17, Miss says "Fuck" for the first time in the story when she joins in with Kennet's "Fuck Musser" chant. Avery lampshades the fact that this is the as far as she knows the first time she's ever heard Miss swear.
Put on a Bus: She goes onto the Forest Ribbon Trail to rescue Avery, and gets stuck traveling Paths for a large chunk of the story afterwards.
What the Hell Is That Accent?: Is described as having an accent that sounds almost but not quite English.

Matthew Moss

A former practitioner who became more Other than man in order to save the life of Edith.

Type: Host, formerly Heartless

Dirty Business: Doesn't like the things he has to do to keep Kennet safe from hostile Others and practitioners after Miss is stuck back on the Paths, including letting Others in that he doesn't necessarily trust, but feels it necessary to keep the town safe.
Discard and Draw: When the Doom's outside of him he can use the Practice again until it comes back, though he still lacks the Sight.
Dishing Out Dirt: Possesses himself with earth spirits during a fight in order to create diagrams from earth.
Eye Scream: He doesn't actually have eyes, he's got illusions of eyes. One After Another 10.z reveals that his father forced him to rip his own eyes out as a child before he could be Awakened.
Good All Along: He was a suspect for a long time, due to his being a former practitioner and Edith's husband, but it turns out that he's not connected to the conspiracy, and is also Edith's victim.
Immortality Immorality: Started out as a Heartless, a practitioner who steals the life from others to become immortal, but didn't stay that way because he wasn't interested in eternal youth, especially after his father was killed by witch hunters.
Interspecies Romance: Is married to Edith, who is a composite spirit possessing a human body.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: He went out of his way to help the Girl By Candlelight, a spirit anyone else would have bound or destroyed without a second thought, and it got him married to a woman who's poisoning him to keep him with her.
Pet the Dog: Goes out of his way to help Louise, because she's dying slowly and painfully.
Powers via Possession: As a Host he specializes in voluntary possession, and when the Doom is out he can host other spirits in order to use their abilities.
Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: The Doom sealed inside him is terrifyingly powerful, with John comparing it to a Wraith King in terms of power. Turns out there's a good reason for that...
Shoot the Dog: Feels that the Trio shouldn't be killing, and therefore he'll handle their enemies that can't be bound or otherwise convinced to leave.
Strong Family Resemblance: In a vision Verona sees of Matthew as a child, it's shown that Matthew is a near-complete copy of his father in terms of looks save for ironically his lack of grey hair.
Was Once a Man: He started out as a practitioner who became more Other than human, so he can't practice anymore, save for when he lets the Doom out while fighting.
You Are in Command Now: With Miss currently out of the picture, the remaining Others of Kennet vote in him as leader in her stead. He ends up resigning once the news of Edith's betrayal proves to be too much for him.

Edith James (Unmarked Spoilers)

A composite Spirit called the Girl by Candlelight, possessing the body of a human woman named Edith James. Has control over fire. She's the viewpoint character of 10.z.

Type: Complex Spirit

Bungled Suicide: The original Edith James tried to kill herself seven years before the story began and failed. Her body was still alive, though not unharmed, but her personality was effectively gone apart from some fragments, so the Girl by Candlelight moved in.
Deadlier Than The Male: Out of the two Edith is far more ruthless than Matthew. In the flashback showing how they met, Matthew is shown to be nice enough that he needed to fill himself with spirits that killed his sense of empathy in order to attack some enemy practitioners, whereas Edith has no hesitation killing anyone if she deems it necessary.
Evil All Along: It's revealed in Shaking Hands 9.9 that Edith is part of the conspiracy behind the Carmine Beast's murder. Later interludes reveal that she initially helped Charles because he'd helped her in the past, but got more involved because of the potential benefits.
Exact Words: Maricica promised Edith/the Girl by Candlelight that she'd have Matthew. Edith married him, but Maricica never said she'd keep him, which she points out repeatedly after Matthew leaves Edith.
Happily Married: Is Matthew's wife, and they appear happy together. This is later subverted when it turns out she's been poisoning Matthew with the Doom the whole time.
Insistent Terminology: She's not a candle, she's a complex spirit with some candle-related imagery.
Killed Off for Real: The remainder of Edith James is murdered in Let Slip 20.z, and the Girl by Candlelight is killed in Go For The Throat 23.f.
Law of Inverse Fertility: She and Matthew would like to have children, but can't- not because they physically can't, but because the child of a complex spirit and a man containing a Doom would likely be susceptible to being possessed by either the complex spirit or the Doom before it was born, which would get nasty for Edith.
Love Makes You Evil: The Girl By Candlelight confessed her love to Matthew after he gave her the living but essentially braindead body of Edith James as a new vessel, but he didn't reciprocate. So she's been poisoning him with her Doom ever since so he won't leave her.
Many Spirits Inside of One: Is made up of numerous spirits related to fire and loss that all coalesced into one being inside the human Edith James, such as the ghost of a girl who died in a house fire, or the emotions and spirits shed in a candlelit vigil for a teenage girl who died in a car accident.
Mole in Charge: With Miss gone, she leads Kennet's Others along with Matt. Unfortunately for everyone else, she's part of the conspiracy that killed the Carmine Beast.
Never My Fault: She spends most of Dash to Pieces 11.4 blaming the trio for destroying her marriage, when it was entirely her doing and the trio just told Matthew what was really happening, and blaming them for actually wanting to solve the Carmine Beast's murder. Later on, she acts as though Matthew's being petulant and unreasonable by not wanting to get back with her after she poisoned him to make him stay with her.
Parents as People: Edith James' parents are very skilled in and passionate about their chosen professions, and want Edith to be the same- and they also want her to have kids. The complications that come with being an Other possessing a human body means that Edith can't elevate herself to the same degree or have children, and she can't tell them why.
Playing with Fire: The Girl by Candlelight is a spirit created from the emotional impact of human encounters with fire, mostly negative ones, so control over fire comes with the territory.
Stalker with a Crush: After Edith's body is killed, the Girl by Candlelight makes it clear that she wants Matthew, she refuses to accept no for an answer and she doesn't care what she has to do to get him.

Toadswallow

A goblin in a waistcoat and monocle who hires himself out as a "kid-friendly" Goblin to teach the children of practitioners how to interact with goblins. He serves as the leader to the goblins of Kennet, several of which are his apprentices. He's the viewpoint character of 10.e.

Type: Goblin

An Offer You Can't Refuse: Offers Tatty's group a place in Kennet in return for he and Bluntmunch not killing them.
Arms Dealer: Part of wanting to create a goblin market is also allowing trade in harmful materials, such as the Milkmaid's Abyss milk.
Badbutt: Toadswallow is an invoked example; he deliberately turned himself into this so he can sell his services to practitioners who want to teach their kids how to interact with goblins by starting with a kid-friendly one. Such as, for instance, giving himself and the other goblins less disgusting stage names.
Combat Pragmatist: When Toadswallow was just born, he had to fight a much larger goblin, and won by tricking them into eating a bunch of mud, and then slicing their belly open while they were distracted.
The Don: He essentially serves this role to the other goblins, being their more intelligent leader with a classy front, but being just as capable of viciousness as they are given the right circumstances.
Hidden Depths:
- Toadswallow is far smarter than most people assume Goblins to be. Among other things, he has a decent knowledge of botany, even if he does explain it to Snowdrop with typical goblin crudeness.
- Based on his interactions with America and Liberty, he genuinely cares for the children he helps train, specifically asking the girls to save America if they can.
High-Class Glass: As part of his efforts to appear kid-friendly and sophisticated, he wears a monocle.
Large and in Charge: Downplayed. At the beginning of the story he's bigger than most of the other goblins but still much smaller than the larger than a man Bluntmunch despite being the leader, and shorter than the average person. By the final epilogue three years later, the power he's gained through his goblin market has allowed him to grow to Verona's height (who has also grown much taller).
Not in Front of the Kid: Part of Toadswallow and his apprentice's deal for working with child practitioners is to downplay their more crude tendencies, including giving themselves less disgusting stage names. When Snowdrop spots Toadswallow as she's trying to free Brie, he's in the midst of singing a crude song before stopping himself mid-curse when he spots her.
My Species Doth Protest Too Much: He's basically the opposite of what people expect an Otherverse Goblin to be - civilized, intelligent, subtle, and focused on long-term plans.
One Degree of Separation: Knows Maggie Holt from Pact as revealed in Poke, and used to teach the Tedds before heading to Kennet.
Playing Both Sides: He implies that he's actually playing a third agenda, separate from the two obvious sides in Kennet. His Interlude reveals that he plans on making Kennet into an eighth fairy court consisting of goblins to oppose the Winter Court.
Properly Paranoid: He's very wary of practitioners, and for good reason. If one manages to bind him and force him to alter how he operates in order to set him on another practitioner making use of his services, it would tank his entire setup. Likewise, he's always wary that anyone who calls on him might want to eliminate him in case their child accidentally spilled family secrets to him.
Rescue Romance: He and his lover Bubble got together after he killed a larger goblin who was planning on eating her when both were just newborn goblins.
Sophisticated as Hell: Toadswallow's attempts to craft a "child-friendly" image include wearing a monocle, a waistcoat and speaking with "classy" mannerisms.

Original Council Members

John Stiles

A Dog of War born from the Afghanistan War, currently living in Kennet. He's the viewpoint character of 10.a.

Type: Dog of War

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/john_stiles_1.PNG

Big Damn Heroes:
- Saves Verona from Sharon via knocking her out from behind.
- He also saves Ted from being killed or enslaved by Alexander by shooting him in the head from behind.
- In his Interlude he manages to send himself and the Wolf falling off the Promenade.
Bottomless Magazines: A variation in that while John does need to reload, part of his Dog of War powers is that he never truly runs out of ammo. Grenades on the other hand aren't infinite for his particular type, but his nature means that if he needs them he'll find them in one way or another.
Brought Down to Badass: Sharon's Skeptic abilities negate his Other powers... which "just" makes him a trained soldier who easily subdues Sharon once he gets the drop on her.
Brutal Honesty: Tells Reid that while he feels sympathy for his situation, it is one that was self-inflicted by years of taking from others, and that if Reid slows down the Carmine contest any more despite their agreement that John kill him quickly, he'll name him forsworn on the spot.
Call on Me: After their meeting, John gives the trio dog tags from his fallen comrades and tells them that if they go into battle and throw them down on the ground, he will be right behind them.
Combat Pragmatist: John normally prefers to attack from behind and from a distance, as shown during his fight with Zed and "fight" with Sharon. He also takes out Alexander Belanger by shooting him in the head while he's distracted after using his senses of war and conflict to determine the best moment to strike.
Drives Like Crazy: His method of trying to stop Nicolette from reaching Kennet is to get Matthew's truck and run her off the road.
Et Tu, Brute?: Calls out Charles and the other conspirators for betraying the Kennet Others in general and him in particular by creating the Hungry Choir from Yalda.
Give Him a Normal Life: John's Interlude reveals that all he wants for the girls and originally for Yalda prior to her death is a world free of war.
Hunter of Monsters: John's job is basically taking out outsider hostile Others who would prey upon the humans of Kennet, and gets more defined with every kill he makes.
In Love with Your Carnage: Inverted, his nature as an Other of War makes him attractive to Others associated with violence such as goblins and warrior fae like Guilherme.
Innate Night Vision: After killing Alexander, one of the boons he gets is better night vision.
Made of Iron: Not demonstrated yet, but he says that most injuries won't actually affect him all that much, and even if his body is completely destroyed he won't stay gone for long.
Mercy Kill: He was forced to kill one of his fellow Dogs, Yalda, about a decade before the story started.
The Needless: He only eats as a matter of habit, and doesn't need sleep either.
No Mouth: Up until he assisted in killing an enemy practitioner John didn't have a mouth, and couldn't talk either.
Nom de Guerre: Prior to actually getting his proper name, John had the callsign "Carnivore".
Not Hyperbole: When John says that he will be right behind the trio if they call for his help, he means it. Literally, he will appear not more than 5 steps behind them and armed.
Not Quite Dead: An inherent ability of Dogs of War is that as long as it's in any way plausible for them to survive an injury, they will, no matter how gruesome. If it's not, that's where their Resurrective Immortality kicks in.
Resurrective Immortality: If something does do so much damage that being Made of Iron isn't enough, he says he will be back in a few days. In his Interlude detailing his time in Afghanistan, after he's shot dead by enemy soldiers he wakes up some time later no worse for wear.
Revenant: He's a Dog of War, which Charles describes as similar to a revenant due to their resurrective immortality, but for War instead of Death.
Sacrificial Lion: Dies at Charles' hands with the use of the Choir, and due to the nature of the battle for the Carmine Throne, he doesn't only die for good, he gets completely unmade.
Shell-Shocked Veteran: Stiles is the shellshock in human form, so naturally this defines his character. Lucy describes his eyes as looking perpetually wounded, and his Interlude reveals that he got those eyes and proper sapience from killing a soldier who just wanted to go home and be done with war.
Sole Survivor: He came into existence with nineteen other Dogs. Over the years, their numbers were whittled down gradually until John's the last one left who isn't dead or bound.
Tragic Keepsake: One After Another 10.a reveals that his dog tags aren't just from his fallen comrades, they're actually the form they took upon being bound by an enemy practitioner. It's unknown just how aware they are in their current state, but John can call on their power in a pinch, which he does while fighting the Wolf.
Undying Warrior: As a Dog of War, as long as the conflict he was born from continues, he'll survive anything that's plausible for a human to survive; anything a person couldn't survive he'll revive from within a few days due to Resurrective Immortality.
Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Played with. He's usually playing by the Trio's rules and he doesn't enjoy killing, so he tends to act nonlethally, if at times brutally. But when it's necessary, he can and will kill whatever or whoever poses a threat to Kennet. Just ask Alexander.
Would Hit a Girl: Sneaks up on Sharon while she's threatening Verona with a rifle and subdues her by first smacking her with her own gun, and then slamming her head into the handle of her car door so hard that apart from knocking her out and splitting her forehead, the door itself flies off the car.
You Are in Command Now: Became the leader of his group of Dogs by virtue of being the only one with leadership qualities left after the rest were bound.

Goblins

In General

Badbutt: Toadswallow forces Bluntmunch, Gashwad, and Cherrypop into this role as his apprentices, to varying degrees of success. This includes giving them more child-friendly names and limiting them to one f-bomb a month. When Bluntmunch calls up Doglick, Nat, and Butty, he imposes the same restrictions on them.
Equippable Ally: All goblins have the ability to be bound into the form of a weapon based on their themes and powers.
Pay Evil unto Evil: For the most part they limit their more malicious tendencies towards those who deserve it, though they don't especially care who gets caught in the crossfire, and this is more because it's easier to do bad things to bad people than any moral judgment on their part.
Sixth Ranger: Doglick, Nat and Butty joined the group in Out On A Limb 3.6, and a whole bunch of new goblins joined after the fifth arc.
Toilet Humor: They find various bodily functions highly amusing, and are generally as disgusting as they possibly can be.

Cherrypop

The smallest goblin, about the size of a rat, with no specialization. She's the viewpoint character of 12.a.

Amazing Technicolor Population: Her skin is bright red, which contributes to her name.
Achievements in Ignorance: In 12a, she overcomes a curse that drains her ability to act and move despite not knowing she was cursed to begin with.
The Chew Toy: Cherrypop is the smallest goblin and as such is on the bottom of the food chain, picking and losing fights to other goblins, ordinary animals, and inanimate objects. Comes around into The Woobie in her interlude, where the previously comedic trait is revealed to be something she's painfully aware of and hates.
The Ditz: The most complementary thing you could say about her intelligence is that she's capable of speech.
Equippable Ally: She can become a rusty fork, which is... not great, but as Snowdrop points out is at least more useful than her goblin form usually is.
Improvised Weapon: Her weapon form is a rusty fork.
Perpetual Frowner: Her face is near-permanently stuck in a frown.
Self-Deprecation: Cherrypop often talks about how stupid or worthless she is. Her interlude reveals this is largely the result of her parroting things she's been told all her life.

Bluntmunch

The largest of Kennet's local goblins, bigger than a full grown man, who is currently hiding out from Gerhild the Redcap Queen.

An Arm and a Leg: Loses his lower legs to Raphael Tindall's traps.
The Big Guy: Most of the Kennet goblins are around three feet tall or smaller. He's bigger than a full-grown man and can be mistaken for a small boulder.
Boxed Crook: Following the battle for the Carmine Throne he's kept bound in a shack for his part in assisting the conspirators, only being temporarily released when extra muscle is needed amongst the goblins.
Category Traitor: He resents Toadswallow's leadership due to Toadswallow holding and using power in an "ungoblin-like" manner, on top of being smaller than him but still being the leader. This is part of why he chooses to assist the Carime conspiracy besides Edith promising him cash, the other portion being a resentment in general of feeling left behind by the plans of those like Toadswallow and Miss.
Even Evil Has Standards: Bluntmunch can very much be a Token Evil Teammate, and does do terrible things to karmically deserving people outside of Kennet, but Gerhild's brand of brutality was too much even for him, hence his fleeing to Kennet.
Equippable Ally: He can turn into the Greatclub Munchabunch, which creates more goblins every time it strikes the ground.
Just a Gangster: Bluntmunch couldn't care less about Toadswallow's greater plans for legitimacy, he just wants to act as a typical goblin does and wreak havoc (On those karmically deserving enough for him to get away with it).
Mr. Exposition: Spends a good chunk of 2.7 telling Verona about how goblins work.
The Minion Master: His specialty is being able to reach into the Warrens from random places and bullying minor goblins sent against him into switching sides.
Number Two: The closest thing to a second in command to Toadswallow.
Primitive Clubs: Bluntmunch is a brutal goblin, and so his bound weapon form is a large club.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Munch is in Kennet because Gerhild, the redcap queen who destroyed Maggie Holt's old town, was forcibly conscripting every goblin over a certain size into her army on pain of death, and he wasn't interested. Kennet's safe because it's far enough away that Gerhild can't easily find him, but close enough that its Warrens are still recognizable.
Smarter Than You Look: Bluntmunch is very much a goblin's goblin, but John notes that he's still very clever, it's just a different sort of clever to Toadswallow's.

Gashwad

Anti-Magic: Gashwad specializes in tearing up practice and turning it against practitioners.
Blood Knight: He really likes to fight. Though according to Bluntmunch, he's wasting his potential by focusing on this instead of what he's actually good at.

Alpeana

A mare, an Other who balances the cosmic scales by giving nightmares. She's the viewpoint character of 10.d.

Type: Mare

Cannot Keep a Secret: Alpeana is very bad at keeping secrets, such as when she lets the girls know about Familiars well before the Kennet Others were prepared to tell them. Furthermore she doesn't notice the split among Kennet's Others and shares information widely.
Cute Monster Girl: She still has the appearance of the young woman she was. Avery is appreciative though nothing comes of it.
Dream Spying: More like Nightmare Spying but it counts. It's actually a specialty of Alpeana's as she reweaves a Nightmare to focus on specific important memories.
Dream Weaver: Altering dreams isn't her specialty but she can do it when need be, like creating meetings in dreams, she notes that she can't make an Erotic Dream as that's a colleagues' specialty.
Funetik Aksent: Has a heavy Scottish accent that's spelt out, it gets worse if she's tired. Avery likes it.
Kindhearted Simpleton: She's probably one of the nicest of the Kennet Others, despite being a nightmare-delivering monster who gains power from painful dreams, but she's also one of the more naïve characters-most of the scheming going on has passed right over her head.
Nightmare Weaver: She gives full-blown Nightmares, the story even goes into detail how she does it, and is bound by oath as all the original Kennet Others are not to drive the trio mad with nightmares which she can explicitly do. At one point she keeps a Witch Hunter trapped in Nightmares for 24 hours, the fact that he doesn't break is noted as unusual.
Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Another failing of hers; She can share details on nightmares that no one wants to know.
Scare 'Em Straight: While her nightmares can be used to curse people, another thing they're used for is to help them get their lives back on track and/or sort themselves out. Others compare her to a torturer.
Sleep Paralysis Creature: Alpeana is a typical example of the clade even if she doesn't conform to the Scottish conception of them. She benefits from proximity to her subjects when she makes her nightmares.
- Later research by the trio point to her being a Night Hag, a human that became an Aware and then a Hag. She isn't completely predatory though and helps give some catharsis.
Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: She's not a ghost, but certainly seems to have the appearance and spookiness of one, with the addition of her hair able to turn to copious amounts of sludge and back.
Wall Crawl: She comes to Lucy's bed by crawling across the ceiling and dropping down. The narration says she can crawl across the ceiling about three times faster than Lucy could walk the same distance.
Was Once a Man: Was once human before becoming a Mare.

Maricica

A young faerie of the Dark Autumn court living in a cave as Guilherme's roomate/antagonist. She's the viewpoint character of 11.z.

Type: Faerie of the Dark Autumn court

Animalistic Abomination: Her true form is something winged and insectile, with only glimpses of it showing through the glamor at times.
Big Bad Duumvirate: Maricica is one of the culprits behind the Carmine Beast's murder and inarguably the most trusted accomplice to Charles. Due to being Forsworn, the only way he could have become the Carmine is by having Maricica pick up the reins of the plot, and she's happy to serve his grand vision if it means accomplishing her own goals. Once Charles becomes the Carmine, he raises her into an Abyssal Blood Goddess, with Maricica continuing to happily serve as his most powerful and longest-lasting ally.
Blood Is the New Black: After ascending to godhood, Maricica is soaked head to toe in blood.
Dragon-in-Chief: Charles is the true mastermind behind the conspiracy against the Carmine, but his Forsworn nature means he's practically incapable of accomplishing anything for the first half of the series. Maricica is therefore the greatest threat until the battle for the Carmine Throne is resolved, usurping the conspiracy for her own ends until Charles becomes the Carmine Exile. Even then, her scheming proves to be the backbone for many of his plots.
The Fair Folk: Maricica is a faerie from the Dark Autumn court, and is deeply manipulative and sly. No longer the case as of 17.y.
Forced Transformation: She uses glamor briefly to force Verona into the form of an animal in the Trio's first proper meeting with her. It's also one of the three traps in her nine gifts: the more the Trio use glamor to change their appearances, the easier it is for someone else to force them into those shapes.
I Just Want to Be Free: Maricicia's ultimate goal is to stop being a faerie, and she helped kill the Carmine Beast and assists Charles in winning the Throne to make that happen. By Interlude 17.y, she succeeds when she becomes an abyssal goddess.
Madness Mantra: Her apotheosis inflicts this on the Belanger Circle's augury tools in Interlude 17.y.
She is naked and glorious and forever soaked in blood.
Master of Illusion: Is noted to be very skilled with glamour. An interlude showing her first moments reveals that she started using glamor from the first moments of her life, sorting out her being into a form for the light and a form only for her.
Ms. Fanservice: In-universe. As noted by Avery, the way she drapes herself with her wings is never indecent but is often revealing. As with many things faerie it's for the sake of manipulation.
Older Than They Look: She's a "young" fae, which means she measures her age in decades instead of centuries. Presumably at least, she's spent at least sixty-one years in the courts before coming to Kennet, but it's unclear how old she was before that.
Physical God: With the help of Charles and Crooked Rook, she transforms into an abyssal goddess in Interlude 17.y.
Spell My Name With An S: It's 'Maricica', not 'Maricia'.
Sole Survivor: She once had seven siblings, but by the present she's the only one left whole in body and Self.
Supernatural Gold Eyes: She's a fairy with noticeably yellow eyes.
The Thing That Would Not Leave: She's slumming it in Guilherme's cave because she's after his treasured letter.
Trickster Mentor: She claims she's serving as this to the girls, though there's some reason to worry she might lean too much into the "trickster" part.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: Fae from her court are very skilled at both changing into animals and turning other people into animals. Marcicia herself demonstrates this to good effect when the Trio come to confront her to her part in the Carmine murder and she's wearing the appearance of something else.
Winged Humanoid: She appears as a woman with long, flowing moth-like wings that she drapes over herself to remain revealing but decent. She loses her wings after the Carmine Contest, though in Wild Abandon 17.1 she implies that she regained them somehow after becoming a Physical God.
Would Hurt a Child: The Dark Autumn court are noted for abducting human children, selling them for power, and cutting up the ones who can't be sold for parts to use in their potions. Maricica freely admits that she's considering it as an occupation.

Guilherme

Type: Faerie of the Bright Summer court

Affably Evil: Affably morally ambiguous, more like. He's fairly personable and a good teacher, and Lucy notes that she's getting way to comfortable around him that it's safe to be with Fae.
The Fair Folk: Guilherme is a faerie from Summer Above.
Long Game: One of his plans to kill Maricica involved him attacking in a particular pattern every day for several years, leading to her building the perfect habits to avoid that attack so that she'd be off guard and atrophied when he attacked a different way.
The Mentor: Pledges to teach Lucy how to fight and takes a few more students later, notably he explicitly doesn't give Verona tips as it would only distract her in her development.
Mr. Fanservice: When he takes the form of a boy in order to give Lucy a fair fight, he appears shirtless and attractive. Given his reaction to her reaction, he definitely did this on purpose.
Trickster Mentor: One After Another 10.z reveals that he was the one who hired the Witch Hunter. Deconstructed in that it ends up causing more harm than good as Guil's teaching event leads to a three way between Kennet, the Witch Hunters, and Musser.
Who Wants to Live Forever?: It's noted by both Fae that quite often, Faeries wind up moving to the Winter court because they live so long and see the same things in their court over and over that they get bored of it. Summer Above loses the most Fae to Winter, and Daniel notes that Guilherme is pretty close to becoming a Winter Court fairy due to his depression.
Your Days Are Numbered: He is very close to descending into the Winter court, which is like death for Faeries. Events over the course of the story shorten this timeframe from decades or centuries to mere months. He's fully joined the Winter court as of Arc 14.
You Do Not Want To Know: When Verona and co need to get to a place fast, Guilherme tells them to "imagine" that he's teleported them over, because what he's really doing to get them over there is implied to be too horrific for words.

The Hungry Choir

A living ritual that grants its winners the ability to eat, drink, and otherwise indulge in consumption without consequence.

Type: Ritual Incarnate

Anthropomorphic Personification: Well, ritual personification. They're described as a Ritual Incarnate by Matthew and Charles.
The Assimilator: People who fail their ritual join the Choir. This may be a holdover from Yalda, whose nature as a Dog of War meant she assimilated power and Self for every kill that could be attributed to her.
Creepy Child: The Hungry Choir is made of over a hundred childlike, cannibalistic wraiths.
Disproportionate Retribution: People participating in their ritual have to sing a song while attempting to take a bite out of a chosen animal. If they mess up the song in any way, be it getting a word wrong, not being in time with the group or missing a beat, a waif will bite into them, doing them serious damage.
Hoist by Their Own Petard: The trio swore at their Awakening ritual to not attack or bind the Others of Kennet, but Lucy pointed out that the Choir took the trio's meat and gave them nothing, so they're not technically party to the deal. As a result, the trio could pass on crucial information about them to people looking to bind them without being forsworn.
Horror Hunger: They assimilate people who fail their ritual by devouring them alive, leaving only a new waif behind. They also bite into anyone who messes up during the ritual.
Leitmotif: It's not fully described, but whenever they're around, there's always a faint sound of someone humming and/or singing an indistinct song.
Pocket Dimension: Played for Horror as the realm of the Ritual doesn't exist outside of it, only for the night in question. Other times they're just a collection of kids milling around.
Starter Villain: They're the first antagonist the Trio goes up against.
Token Evil Teammate: Calling all the other Kennet Others "good" might be a stretch, but according to Miss, they are for the most part fair and friendly. However, nobody likes the Choir, and everyone seems a little wary of them. When the girls decide that they want them gone for good, the only objections are to losing the firepower they bring to the table.
Tragic Monster: It's revealed to be the remains of Yalda, John's Dog friend who he had to kill.
You Cannot Grasp the True Form: The Choir is described as akin to a storm- the waifs are simply the raindrops, while the actual Choir can't be seen. Averted once its origin is discovered; there is one waif in particular that serves as its core.

Charles Abrams

A former practitioner who was forsworn after breaking a badly worded oath, he sticks with the Kennet Others for protection.

Type: Forsworn (formerly Summoner)

All of the Other Reindeer: According to him, while in school Charles was poor enough that the more well-off kids didn't want much to do with him, but he was simultaneously just well-off enough that the poorer students didn't want to hang out with him either.
Arch-Enemy: He understandably utterly loathes Alexander Belanger for getting him forsworn.
Became Their Own Antithesis: In the end, Charles ends up becoming the exact sort of practitioner he claims to despise, as his last conscious act is trying to foreswear the Trio, only for his Self to be subsumed by his Role because of the hypocrisy in doing so.
Beneath Notice: Well aware of how cut-throat practitioner society is, and wanted to avoid the worst of it when he was a part of it. He carved out a comfortable territory for himself where he wasn't big enough to be noticed and wasn't small enough to be vulnerable and was happy to stay in it.
Big Bad: Charles was the original mastermind of the Carmine Conspiracy before Maricica took over. He and Edith originally created the Hungry Choir to trap Alexander, but turned it on the Carmine Beast after she interfered with its creation. Once he becomes the Carmine Exile, Charles begins his own quest to destroy the corruption of practitioner society, but his ruthless methods make him a far worse threat than anyone else.
Big Bad Duumvirate: Charles forms several alliances with other villains throughout the story, though his goals always remain dominant:
- Maricica is his most trusted accomplice, masterminding his rise to the Carmine Throne throughout the first half of the series. He repays the favor in kind by helping her become a blood goddess, with the two continuing to work together to advance Charles' goals.
- He and the Aurum serve as the last major antagonists after Charles offers the Aurum control of the Crucible, allowing the Aurum to not have to worry about getting unmade by a future challenger.
Cosmic Plaything: More like a Cosmic Chew Toy- as a Forsworn, the spirits are literally against him. He can't hold a job, can no longer practice, the Roles want nothing to do with him, and people will naturally be distrustful of him even if he has done nothing to deserve it. He pretty much has to rely on the kindness of Kennet's Others to survive.
The Cynic: Needless to say, his experiences have given him a cynical view of the world.
Dark and Troubled Past: Ray tells Lucy that even prior to getting forsworn Charles hasn't had a good life, having spent quite some time in prison prior to becoming a practitioner. Later it's revealed that some time after he became a practitioner, a revenant came calling for a group he was associated with, and though she spared him she left him hanging in the wind to take the fall for all the group's misdeeds.
Death of Personality: At the end of the story, everyone hammering on his hypocrisy causes his Self to be subsumed by the Carmine Role, effectively killing him. The Aurum's narration even stops calling him Charles and simply as the Carmine.
Don't You Dare Pity Me!: He considers any kindness given to him as condescending pity, and it's deconstructed in that it only serves to make him more alone.
Hypocrite:
- Early in the story, he's appalled by the new practitioners of Kennet being young teenagers and makes it clear that he doesn't want kids to get hurt. Later in the story, he has no problem with his side recruiting kids to be child soldiers, or all the damage they take as a result.
- And at the very end of the story, his hypocrisy proves to be his undoing. He became the Carmine, and defined his relationship to the role, entirely around ending the injustice of foreswearing; when he tries to foreswear the girls unjustly, it does so much damage to his Self that he's left as an Empty Shell, completely subsumed by his role.
Jerkass Has a Point: As the story goes on, despite being quite the dick and very hypocritical about it, it becomes apparent that Charles is right: the established system is bullshit. Practitioner society is blatantly biased toward the powerful, the powerless have almost no recourse because the elite can cheat and weasel their way out of any blowback. People are forsworn for bullshit reasons and the people who are supposed to help refuse any assistance. The final fight for the Carmine Throne is a perfect example: John is the Judge's preferred candidate. He has made deals with the Judges, he has killed most of the other contestants in fair fights, and he's shown himself to be fair and reasonable. But Charles, a Forsworn who helped kill the Carmine Beast, walks in with the Carmine Furs and the Hungry Choir after everyone else is dead and wins in a few minutes, and the Judges do nothing.
Maker of Monsters:
- Alexander mentions in 2.z that Charles specialized in creating Others prior to being forsworn, and Charles compares his former specialty as a practitioner as being similar to an animal trainer back when he worked with the BHI. And after being forsworn, he used his knowledge to create the Hungry Choir, with Edith's help.
- As the Carmine Exile, Charles spends large amounts of power in order to create powerful, vicious Others who supplant Musser's Lordships and swear to leave decisions to the Judges, effectively undoing the Lordships in all but name.
Might Makes Right: As he tells Matthew, since he's a Judge, by virtue of power, his decisions are considered Right by the spirits, and if he wants to do something about it, he can either try to take his place or place a Lordship in Kennet.
Moral Myopia: As far as Charles is concerned, his goals are good, the way he thinks is the only right way, and therefore anything he does in pursuit of those goals and everyone who aids him in those goals are good, no matter how horrible those actions are. He's also very adamant that his new Solomon has to think like him and share his attitudes.
Never My Fault:
- Charles has a very self-absorbed attitude after becoming the new Carmine: if his side fails at something or has a setback or someone opposes him, it has to be because the universe hates him for having been forsworn, it can't possibly be because he made a bad choice or because his side mostly consists of arseholes who don't work well together, and it definitely couldn't be because of all the harm he's caused and not apologised or tried to make amends for.
- When it seems like Avery has died, he doesn't take it well but immediately blames everyone but himself for the situation.
The Oathbreaker: Broke a badly-worded oath to not get Alexander hurt within his desmesne by accident, which resulted in his forswearing. The fact that Alexander deliberately set this up did nothing to soften the blow.
Parental Neglect: Mentions that his parents were comparable to Verona's in how they never paid him much mind.
Pet the Dog:
- After killing John and becoming the Carmine Exile, apart from forcing Matthew to either fully forswear Edith and unmake her or undo her binding, he doesn't bother trying to take revenge on the Kennet Others who tried to stop him from becoming Judge. He also unmakes the Hungry Choir completely instead of continuing to use it, and makes Kennet part of his new domain in order to stymie Musser.
- When Raquel needs help getting out of her arranged marriage and the Alabaster refuses to give it, citing the fact that an oath is an oath even while done under duress, Charles unforeswears her with no strings attached.
Power Dyes Your Hair: After donning the Carmine Furs and becoming the new Judge, his hair turns red to match his clothing.
Powered by a Forsaken Child: And Charles is the child. In exchange for their protection from forces that would prey on him as a Forsworn practitioner, whenever the Kennet Others need to work magic that has a negative effect on the person casting it, they arrange to transfer that backlash to him.
Red Baron: Upon taking the Carmine Throne, he names himself the Carmine Exile.
The Resenter: A lot of Charles' motivations are rooted in a deep-seated resentment for how his life has gone, from being considered not good enough to directly assist in binding the Blue Heron god and being a nobody living in a dying ski town while Alexander and the others became regional if not global names, to getting foresworn and having to live off of other's mercy while the likes of Alexander, Bristow, and Musser became yet more powerful.
Sacred Hospitality: Accidentally breaking hospitality via getting Alexander Belanger hurt is what got him named Forsworn. The fact that Alexander engineered the situation is considered irrelevant by the spirits.
Shadow Archetype: Near the end of the story, it becomes very clear that Charles is an example of what the trio could've become if they weren't able to surmount their flaws and refused to cooperate with others.
Teens Are Monsters: When he was a teenaged practitioner, he served as a middle man between an unaware Toronto gang and the monsters of the city, setting bogeymen, elemental vestiges, and ghouls on various "problems". It was bad enough that age made him less scary rather than more as he gathered power, connections, and resources.
Ungrateful Bastard: John and the rest of Kennet come to consider him one for essentially betraying them by turning Yalda into the Choir for his revenge scheme, later killing John in the Carmine Contest, and doing just about everything possible to bite the hand that fed him after he became foresworn without any strings attached.
John: You're a traitor at heart, a worm of a man who turned on friends and allies, you bit the hand that showed you hospitality!
Villain Respect: He admits to admiring the Trio in his own way, stating that Lucy in particular is the sort of person he wished he was.
Villainous Rescue: Things are pretty dicey between him and Kennet, but when Raquel needs help getting out of her marriage and induces foreswearing on herself, he unforeswears her with no strings attached.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: Variant one. Charles is correct that the system is broken and corrupt, but he has no plan beyond breaking it as thoroughly as possible in the hopes that something better will emerge in the aftermath, and damn the consequences to those vulnerable people who've eked out existences within it. To accomplish his goal, Charles furthermore has very few moral limits in terms of who he targets.
- Later we get more details on how his plan has evolved over time. Given the success that he has received but was not expecting, he is going to embroil the entirety of his territory in a Ritual Incarnate, designed to winnow away potential challengers and give the eventual victor the experiences and the power necessary to build a new Seal of Solomon for the new age, from the ground up.
What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Like most practitioners, Charles is shown not to think much of most Others, which becomes doubly damning when you remember that it was Others who gave him safe harbor when everyone else abandoned him after Alexander foreswore him.
Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: He starts to dip into this when he succeeds more than he originally expected. He planned to take the Carmine Throne and break the system as much as possible in a blaze of glory before getting swiftly replaced. But once Musser is gone and the other Judges are complicit in feeding him power, there is very little actually standing in his way. At this point, he starts shifting from "breaking down a shitty system consequences be damned" to "being the shitty system," taking extensive steps to solidify, secure, and expand his power with no intention of his rule being replaced by something better. He also recruits a following of servants, many of whom don't sincerely care very much about his espoused ideals but are happy to hurt his enemies in exchange for power, which Charles is aware of and okay with, justifying it by planning on pulling a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness on the most loathsome once he's taken everything he needs from them. He's just fine with some of those servants being children, and doesn't seem to care much when they get hurt and traumatised. It also becomes clear that a lot of his issues with how shitty things are have to do with those shitty things being dumped on him in particular.

New Council Members

Tashlit

The daughter of a laborer and a woman who had her mind exchanged with a many-eyed sea serpent. She grew up normally (apart from being hatched from an egg) and became Other when she came of age. She's sponsored by Alpeana and Guilherme. She's the viewpoint character of 9.z.

Type: God-Begotten

Body Horror: Her skin is described as drooping like a bulldog's, and beneath it is endless eyes.
Extra Eyes: She's pretty much nothing but a solid layer of eyes beneath her outer human "shell."
Half-Human Hybrid: Started out as one, being the child of a laborer and a sea-serpent, before becoming an Other.
Irony: Cares little for cats, or images of cats, but takes a strong liking to the very cat-associated Verona.
Meaningful Name: 'Tashlit' is very close to 'tashlich', a Jewish atonement ritual where worshippers symbolically cast their sins away into a body of water.
The Medic: Her inherited divine powers allow her to heal people, though it takes a lot out of her so she can only do it once every so often.
Sixth Ranger: One of ten new Others to join with Kennet in the wake of the fifth arc.
The Speechless: She can't speak or write, but manages to communicate with Verona through gestures.
Was Once a Man: She was basically normal despite her parentage until she turned seventeen.
Whale Egg: Rather than being born like a regular human, she got hatched from an egg.

Newcomer Goblins

Biscuit

Type: Tod

Binge Montage: She makes drinks and drugs so she's prepared for any Barney's given tastes.
Booze-Based Buff: Creates alcohol with special traits for the future Barneys she'll manage.
Cute Monster: Most Goblins invert this by trying to disgust everything they meet in one way or another, often undergoing extreme body modifications to do so. Biscuit is going the complete opposite direction by playing this trope straight by being visually appealing to look at.
Equippable Ally: Her bound weapon form is a frisbee.
Gargle Blaster: Brews a selection of powerful alcoholic concoctions during her apprenticeship, some are even capable of causing time travel.
Heal It with Booze: Exaggerated but the magical version of this is part of her arsenal. When she gets her own barney she may have to, to pick one example that actually happened have a drink that with one swig will help her victim/partner walk-off being caught up in helicopter blades.
Pink Elephants: The job of a Tod is to be remembered/interpreted as a hallucination after the Barneys they manage (Supernaturally soused individuals) finally sober up and try to piece together their drunken rampages.
Puppy-Dog Eyes: She's very much capable of using her cuteness in order to manipulate people, it doesn't always work but it's surprisingly good for infiltration.

Butty McButtbutt

Character Death: He's shot by one of the bound Dog Tags in the battle of the Blue Heron Institute.
Charged Attack: His specialty is "building up" nastiness and unleashing it to violent and disgusting effect.

Doglick

Equippable Ally: He turns into the crossbow Dognailer, which can shoot an individual bolt, or can be used to fire two bolts with a tongue between them to bind people nonlethally.
Voice Changeling: He can perfectly mimic the sounds of dogs and screams, though is otherwise The Voiceless.
The Voiceless: Doglick is unable to talk.

Peckersnot

A small goblin with massive nostrils. He's the viewpoint character of 5.d.

Equippable Ally: He can turn into a water-pistol that shoots some sort of disgusting slime.
Groin Attack: In the goblin's poorly planned raid on the cat lady's house, he gets an impromptu circumcision at a cat's claws.
Hidden Depths: He's a lot smarter and more perceptive than you would think at first; for instance, he was the first one to see through Maricica's substitution when the trio came to apprehend her.
Killer Rabbit: He's small and silly looking, with his main skill being the ability to create lots of snot, but in an Interlude he kills Willy, a goblin about three times his size, by gluing his mouth and nostrils shut with his snot.
The Voiceless: He can't talk, and so he communicates with gestures.

Ramjam

Character Death: He dies in the battle of the Blue Heron Institute, shot by a bound Dog Tag.
Fun Personified: Loves music, moshing and dancing.

Snatchragged/Nat

Body Horror: One of her arms is festooned with metal stuck through the skin until it's virtually armored from shoulder to fingertips, and she occasionally injures herself with it by doing things like scratching her eye.
The Speechless: Gashwad ate her tongue at one point, so she can't talk.

Cig

A roughly century-old cigarette that never burns out or diminishes, with an inhuman, ambient awareness. It's sponsored by Matthew and the original goblin trio. It's the viewpoint character of 10.b.

Type: Ambulatory Object

Animate Inanimate Object: Nope. It's not personified, it doesn't speak, and you'd be forgiven for thinking it's a normal cigarette.
Beneath Notice: As they're a living cigarette with nothing obviously Other about them, their job is to keep a lookout in the motels and gas stations of Kennet for Others that can more easily blend in with humans, and practitioners and witch hunters that might notice something up with the town.
The Mole: It's revealed in 10.a that it's aligned with Edith against the Kennet Trio and their allies.
Playing with Fire: Has some fire-based abilities due to being a living cigarette that never goes out or diminishes, but the most it uses them for is burning the fingers of those who smoke them once they're bored of them, or burning paper with choices when it wants its opinions known.
Scars Are Forever: Has an abrasion on one side as a result of one of its two known prominent owners, an alchemist, blowing themselves up with their own experiment. Cig insists they had nothing to do with it and dislikes the topic being brought up.
Sixth Ranger: One of ten new Others to join with Kennet in the wake of the fifth arc.
Teleportation: Perhaps an overly grand way of putting it, but Cig has a tendency to just show up places. It puts this to good use as a lookout for Kennet, watching the perimeter and appearing on a map, Ouija bard, or list of names when something needs to be communicated.
Walking the Earth: Due to bans on indoor smoking, prior to reaching Kennet it spent its time traveling the roads of Canada, though it avoids places that smoking isn't allowed or doesn't happen. Matthew and Edith theorize that this is because Cig requires the presence of cigarettes in order to travel to a place.

Nibble

A man who spent too long on the brink of death in front of a screen, only to have that screen turn off without being claimed by Death. He's sponsored by Matthew and the original goblin trio.

Type: Ghoul (Couch Ghoul)

The Caretaker: For Chloe. She's more feral than he is, so he tries to make sure she doesn't go off the rails.
The Face: As the closer of the two ghouls to humanity and not having to sleep as much, he serves as the lead when it comes with their dealings with the Kennet council.
Legally Dead: Was stuck in front of his screen for so long, barely surviving, that the authorities wrote him off as dead. Them shutting off the power to his screen was what thrust him into Undead.
I Let Gwen Stacy Die: He primarily blames himself for what happened with Faith, because he didn't know that Chloe and Faith couldn't get sustenance from screens/artificial light like he can, and he didn't realize how bad they were doing.
Older Than They Look: Nibble looks like a man in his 20's, but may be much older, though he can't specify outside of naming TV shows because he's long forgotten.
Polyamory: Was in a relationship with both Chloe and Faith before the latter was killed.
Our Zombies Are Different: He's a couch ghoul, a ghoul formed from a person barely surviving being cut off from their connections, in this case a screen. Unlike other ghouls, he can live off of television and other artificial light sources instead of having a constant hunger for corpses, and doesn't need to sleep as often as most ghouls do between hunts.
Sixth Ranger: One of ten new Others to join with Kennet in the wake of the fifth arc.
Sole Survivor: Prior to his undeath, a mass family death left him as the implied sole recipient of a very large inheritance.
Took a Level in Cynic: He used to be a mellow, jokey kind of guy, but after what happened with Faith, he's become a lot more serious, stressed and depressed, and primarily focuses on helping Chloe.

Chloe

A woman who was made a ghoul after offending the wrong people and having her humanity leeched away by their punishment. She's sponsored by Matthew and the original goblin trio. She's the viewpoint character of 10.c.

Type: Ghoul (Profane Ghoul or NDE Ghoul)

Cannot Cross Running Water: Ghouls can't cross water as a general rule. This ends badly when Chloe tries to take a shower.
Dark and Troubled Past: She and her friends were overseas and accidentally intruded on a funeral, offending the locals. They were made to hurt each other as revenge, and her friends kept picking Chloe to hurt, eventually naming her as the one responsible. What happened after that is unknown, but it resulted in Chloe becoming a ghoul.
Fed to Pigs: It's implied the conspirators have been using her as an unwitting garbage disposal for the corpses of those they've killed, as the arm of the woman with the clockwork heart that Edith kills is seen in her and Nibble's fridge later on (Though Verona has no idea who it originally belonged to).
Heavy Sleeper: Sleeps like the dead when she's not hunting.
Horror Hunger: As a ghoul, she needs to eat corpses to survive- a human corpse every two weeks, or an animal corpse every other day. If they don't eat, they become stupid, lose their memories, and rapidly decay. According to Verona, if Chloe is indeed an NDE Ghoul, the freshly killed corpses of frightened people work best because they help her maintain the balance between Life/Death.
I Just Want to Be Normal: She doesn't seem to mind being a ghoul that much, but she clings to remnants of 'normality'- listening to pop music, cleaning the abandoned factory she and Nibble live in so it's an actual home, taking showers with soap and conditioner, etc.
The Lost Lenore: She and Nibble had a girlfriend, Faith, who became so hungry she lost all her self-control and sense of caution and wound up getting killed by hunters. Chloe hasn't been doing very well since then.
Mortality Grey Area: Whatever ghoul type she is, her nature puts her between life and death.
Nice Girl: When she's not in the throes of hunger, she's one of the nicest Kennet Others.
Our Zombies Are Different: Chloe's ghoul type depends on what exactly happened between her being left with the locals and devouring her friends. If she's a Profane Ghoul, she became that way as the result of a curse the locals placed on her that put her between Life and Death, and is based around right/wrong and law/justice & maliciousness. If she's an NDE or Near-Death Experience Ghoul, the locals either almost killed her or were within a metaphorical hair's breadth of doing so, which would also place her between Life and Death. Matthew mentions that the exact details are irrelevant because the distinctions are so muddled at this point she has the weaknesses of both and is the more feral and visibly monstrous of the two, while Verona thinks it's more likely that she's a NDE Ghoul as Profane Ghouls tend to be rarer.
Polyamory: Was in a relationship with both Nibble and Faith before the latter was killed.
Sixth Ranger: One of ten new Others to join with Kennet in the wake of the fifth arc.

Montague

A corrupted spirit that possesses things for structure. He's sponsored by Alpeana and Edith.

Type: Folded/Corrupted Spirit, Elemental

Animate Inanimate Object: He has to possess things to have any kind of structure. Though objects aren't the only think this works with, they tend to be the default.
Blob Monster: When he's not possessing something, he appears to be an animate pool of blood or pool of red oil, even to those who aren't Aware.
Brought Down to Normal: He can fine-tune the wards around Kennet to shut down all practice within their confines. This was intended to be used by the conspiracy against the trio, and is instead used against the Mussers when they attempt to muscle in.
Creepy Good: He posseses things as a bizarre amorphic mess of flesh, blood, spider-limbs, and other disgusting stuff; nonetheless, he's a gentleman and basically a decent person.
Humanoid Abomination: He takes on a humanoid form when in a dream, where he looks like a tall, slender man in an old-fashioned suit. The 'abomination' part factors in where every part of what would be the actual human body constantly flickers between distorted, damaged, or otherwise corrupted images upwards of twenty times a second.
Morphic Resonance: When he possesses an object, it looks bent and battered, usually appears to be covered in blood, and has a lot of twitching legs.
Nice Guy: He's polite and courteous, raising the idea of offering the Trio gifts without being prompted and hosting a tea party when they meet with him in a shared dream. In his own words:
Montague: If I'm to be a corruptive ooze that seeps into patterns and processes, I'll be a gentleman corruptive ooze.
Sixth Ranger: One of ten new Others to join with Kennet in the wake of the fifth arc.
The Speechless: He can only communicate if he's possessing something, and even then it's usually by tapping his legs or repeating things the characters say (if it's something like a TV or a radio). Averted when he's looped into a dream, where he can speak, albeit with some distortion.

Lis

A doppelganger with a bloody past who matches groups rather than copying individuals. She's sponsored by Maricica and John, with Edith as an unofficial third sponsor.

Type: Doppelganger (Wallflower)

Ambiguously Brown: The form Lis takes when meeting the trio for the time averages all their features, which includes giving her light brown skin.
Anthropomorphic Personification: With enough power, she can average an entire town's worth of people, allowing her to displace Ken.
Dark and Troubled Past: She first came into being in a particularly vicious all-girl school, and she made things worse until people started dying. When witch hunters came in to investigate, Lis blended in with them and then methodically killed almost all of them. Having to flee ended up allowing her to gain a sense of Self independent of the infighting and ugliness that brought her into being. Out of all the conspirators, this makes her the one true believer in Charles' plan rather than going through with it out of loyalty (Edith) or personal gain (Marcicia, Bluntmunch).
Dystopia Justifies the Means: Lis' Interlude reveals that she has clear authoritarian leanings when it comes to ruling over Kennet as its new city spirit, to the point that she wants to invite an Incarnation of Authority to keep order.
The Empath: Can sense sentiment, allowing her to pick out hostile intent by going through groups and narrowing down the source.
Evil Is Petty: Chooses to interfere with Miss because she's pissed that Miss has full control over a third of Kennet even though she controls just about everything else, and is even willing to conspire with Musser-aligned practitioners to have Copycat Cassandra bound and her Aware friend critically injured if not killed to facilitate that.
Gender Bender: Because of her involuntary shapeshifting, she can go from male to female in an instant, depending on which group she's mimicking. She appears to identify as female, however.
Involuntary Shapeshifting: She automatically shifts to match the crowd she's with, appearing to be an averaged member of the group. When she mimics the trio, she appears as a girl their age with light brown skin, red-brown hair, and freckles, with a hat, cloak, and rabbit mask. According to Matthew more structured places like schools can give her more trouble when it comes to disguising herself.
The Mole: It's revealed in 10.b that she's aligned with Edith against the Kennet Trio and their allies.
The Nondescript: Her ability to disguise herself is based on looking like an averaged member of the group she's mimicking, so her face never really sticks out.
The Quiet One: Matthew describes her as not very talkative.
Shapeshifter Default Form: In her Interlude she chooses to appear as the closest approximation to a student in the private school she was born in using Kennet's local private school as a base, despite the fact that it costs power for her to stick to a form rather than being influenced by those around her.
Sixth Ranger: One of ten new Others to join with Kennet in the wake of the fifth arc.

Jabber

Fashioned from the clay gods once brought to life, Jabber is the sole survivor of a set of dolls with interlocking functions. He's sponsored by Matthew and Charles.

Type: Alchemical construct

Creepy Doll: Looks like a weird, macabre doll.
Emotion Eater: He was designed to harvest happy energies and mirth, a rarity for the trope. He incites them, draws them in, and then departs once he's "topped off."
Laser-Guided Amnesia: He can make Innocents forget what happens around them by absorbing enough positive energies to make them black out, at the cost of depression and emotional imbalance. For this reason he's only to be used as a proverbial "big red button" if trouble brews and civilians get involved.
Sixth Ranger: One of ten new Others to join with Kennet in the wake of the fifth arc.
The Unintelligible: He talks, but not in any way that's understandable, hence the name.

Ken

The physical manifestation and personification of Kennet itself. He's sponsored by Matthew and Edith.

Type: Anima Corporeal

Anthropomorphic Personification: As an Anima, he's the personification of Kennet and all its people.
Fisher Kingdom: A tricky version, he's a reflection of Kennet itself. His personality represents those of its inhabitants, his appearance represents its demographics, his physical condition represents its being. Properly utilized, this can be reversed to reinforce parts of the town, to navigate it, and to discern the presence of intruders.
Hair-Trigger Temper: Just as the Carmine Beast's death and lack of successor are causing an uptick in violence and conflict in Kennet, it sharpens his temper and gives him a darker edge. This is notably not natural to him and disturbs him when it pops up.
Literal Split Personality: He can divide into four people, each representing a region of Kennet, specifically the industrial corner, the commercial downtown, the residential area, and the tourist end. Each has a distinct personality and traits depending on the area and average out the Kennet population in terms of age and sex.
Mr. Vice Guy: He represents Kennet, including its problems with drugs and alcohol.
Mundane Utility: His sympathetic existence with Kennet the town can be exploited for more minor effects, like cooling down a hot day by sitting him down in the shade with a fan pointed at him.
Politically Incorrect Hero: He's an embodiment of Kennet, which also includes its racism.
Sixth Ranger: One of ten new Others to join with Kennet in the wake of the fifth arc.

Crooked Rook

A secretive European Other who keeps away from the Kennet Trio and has a great deal of experience countering practitioners. She's sponsored by Guilherme and Maricica. She describes her Oni sect as specializing in metaphorical boxes and cages, and how to form and break them.

Type: Oni

The Chessmaster:
- She's not the best fighter, but her knack for strategy makes up for it. Her presence in Kennet makes her a player for its leadership, and she's already been laying the groundwork to hold the ears of the Others and potentially secure power in the long game. In more direct struggles, she usually operates in the background to direct others and Others, involving herself only when she can act decisively. The price is that she would make Kennet and its Others into something they're not in order to fit with her own ideas for how things should be.
- While talking with Tashlit, she even describes her moves as akin to a chess game.
Cool Old Lady: She has been fighting against corrupt practitioners and for the rights of Others for a century or more, and has the war stories to prove it. At the same time, she's willing to sit and speak cordially to practitioners who she believes are capable of doing better.
Cruel Mercy: In a vision provided by the Judges Verona learns that at one point she killed the parents of a fourteen year old girl and her 10 younger siblings but spared them. In the dead of winter, after having destroyed their food stores in the struggle, and taking the leftovers to feed her own group of Others. In the midst of the argument the girl says she's all but killed them because of this, and Rook just tells her that she'd best learn how to hunt in the next two weeks and offers to turn her or her siblings into Others to make that easier, which she refuses.
Cynical Mentor: While she is on the girls' side, she does not expect them to win, having seen countless starry-eyed idealists try to change the world and fail in the past. When the girls ask her about previous fights of this nature she's been in, she mentions fifty of them, of which only two were victorious, and both of those resulted in a Full-Circle Revolution that ultimately accomplished nothing.
Determinator: Rook has been fighting for centuries, and she admits to Lucy that if she stopped fighting-or even took a break to recover-she might as well stop existing. She started moving a long time ago, and that momentum is all that keeps her going.
Fantastic Racism:
- She's an Oni, so some strong dislike of Practitioners is to be expected, but she's notably one of the ones that never allowed that dislike to temper with time. Matthew makes a point of noting that he took great pains for get her to take the vow not to do harm to the Trio, but that even if decades pass she may never truly warm up to them. In the immediate present she refuses to attend any meetings where the Trio is present, and plans to keep their interactions minimal otherwise.
- Apart from her hatred of practitioners, she doesn't care about humans in general, but doesn't make a habit of antagonizing them either.
- One After Another 10.4 reveals that her Fantastic Racism towards practitioners is more measured than it seemed at first and that she was intentionally playing it up to mislead the conspirators; she's actually fine with individual practitioners as long as they're well-behaved, she just objects to modern practitioner society as a whole.
Forced Transformation: She can change the fundamental nature of an Other to transform them into another type, and implies in a vision Verona sees that she can turn humans into Others as well.
Good All Along: She was actually an old friend of Miss, and was sent to support the trio; her opposition towards towards practitioners is more measured than it seems at first, to the point where she's fine with them as long as they don't behave like or support "typical" practitioners.
Iron Lady: She's authoritative and stern, with the knowledge and power to back it up.
The Mole: One After Another 10.4 reveals that she's been Miss' spy in Kennet this whole time, using her reputation to ward off suspicion.
Never Mess with Granny: Takes the form of an authoritative old woman, and is perhaps the most dangerous of the new Kennet Others due to her craftiness and skills picked up over a long period of time.
Nice to the Waiter: She is always kind and courteous to Cherrypop, the weakest of Kennet's Others, and specifically mentions this trope as why, saying that we are defined by how we behave towards the least among us.
Sixth Ranger: One of ten new Others to join with Kennet in the wake of the fifth arc.
The Starscream: Matthew says she's likely to usurp leadership of Kennet from himself and Edith in the coming decades, and notes early moves she's made that could support such aims. Subverted in that she's actually an old and close friend to Miss; while she does end up taking a leading role in Kennet, it's with her full approval and support. She does help oust Edith, but that's because Edith is aligned with the Big Bad.
Wild Card: Exploited. Crooked Rook defects to the Carmine Faction late in the serial, and when asked gives a cogent explanation for her defection that aligns with her philosophy, but the tools and deeds she left behind for Kennet are crucial in their victory and the counsel she provides the Carmine faction has little effect. The Kennet loyalists are uncertain if she has exploited her pattern of defeats to aid them by aligning with Charles so that he would lose or simply followed her moral code, and three years later she is on respectful terms with Verona and still considers Miss a dear friend.
Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: As an Oni, she's considered, effectively, to be a dangerous terrorist by normal practitioner society; from her perspective, of course, she's a freedom fighter. In particular, Musser cites the bare fact of her presence in Kennet as evidence that the town's supernaturals ought to be completely annihilated.

The Composite Kid/Reggie/Hollow Yen

A composite spirit made up of the discarded bits of the losing contestants of the Hungry Choir's game. While he started out as an enemy, he joined Kennet after his cohorts were dealt with and serves as an apprentice to Crooked Rook.

Type: Complex spirit

Amalgamated Individual: He's formed from the hole that three indivduals who've been eaten by the Choir left in the world, repeatedly describing himself as a jigsaw of his three components personalities.
Ambiguous Gender: He identifies as male, but looks very androgynous due to being made from people of all genders. Later, seems to flip between they/them and he/him pronouns (though this could also be attributed to being made of multiple different people, as opposed to gender identity).
Anti-Villain: At the end of the day, all he wants is to not get wiped out of existence. He was prepared to do some bad things to stick around, but once he's offered a better alternative, he takes it.
Determinator: A lot of what makes him up is the losing contestants' drive to stay alive and win no matter what.
Eye Scream: One of his eyes is described as cataract white and scarred over, possibly inherited from Reagan.
Heel–Face Turn: He starts out as an antagonist, but eventually joins the Kennet council and becomes an apprentice to Crooked Rook.
You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Avery tells him that while the last moments of the people who made him may have left a heavy impact on him, at the end of the day, most of those people were not bad people, and he isn't just their trauma.

Freak and Squeak

A Lost that Avery freed from the Garricks. They're one Other with two bodies: Freak, a violent and verbally abusive little girl, and Squeak, a lanky, monstrous figure that's actually timid and docile.

Type: Lost

The Dividual: More literal than most, as they're one Other with two bodies.
Smart Jerk and Nice Moron: To the extent that they can be treated as separate people, Freak is a smart jerk and Squeak is a nice moron, though in practice Squeak rarely talks.

Turtle Queen

A Bugge freed from Basil Winters by Rook and Bridge, and subsequently brought on as a key portion of Kennet's defenses. Incredibly powerful, but deeply inhuman.

Type: Bugge

Always Chaotic Evil: Averted-Crooked Rook asserts that Turtle Queen's relentless expansion is a product of instinct and of fear of those who would bind her. Rook believes that the instincts can be restrained and the fear ameliorated by giving Turtle Queen a safe place.
Bitch Slap: Her other motif. People under her influence slap each other at the slightest provocation. The Turtle Queen's slaps are strong enough to kill, and have done so twice.
Color Motif: Black, green and gold. Things around her turn those colours in her presence.
Interspecies Romance: With Montague, the Plicate Horror. Montague is normally unable to communicate but finds he can with Turtle Queen, and enjoys her golden light in the horrorscape he sees as the world.
Hive Mind: Turtle Queen's infectious nature as a living concept allows her to possess both objects and people, and even powerful practitioners can fall victim when caught unawares. This makes her extraordinarily useful against Musser's practitioner army, as only a few of them can actually counter her so they're forced to band together in groups.
Tulpa: As a Bugge, the Turtle Queen represents herself as an image and a related event-in her case, a black, green and gold tortoiseshell pattern and a blow to the face. Replicating the pattern allows her to spread herself to objects, creatures, and people.

The Shrine Spirits

In General

Spirits that reside in perimeter shrines that the trio built to further secure the boundary.

Type: Spirits

Gate Guardian: Their shrines serve to bolster Kennet's boundary.
Odd Job Gods: They're spirits that represent minor concepts, such as Borrador being a spirit of cracked open doors.

Borrador

A spirit of cracked open doors.

Food as Bribe: The trio keeps him placated with graham crackers as an offering.
Heart Is an Awesome Power: Being a spirit of cracked open doors doesn't sound like much, but he's capable of opening portals to other realms.
Portal Door: As a door spirit, he's capable of opening doors to other realms such as the Ruins.

Dish

A spirit of porcelain.

Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: She's a porcelain spirit that looks like a living porcelain sculpture dressed for a tea party when she's being nice and a jagged tornado of broken dishware when she's angry.
Lethal Harmless Powers: Being a spirit of porcelain doesn't seem like it would have many combat applications, but she can make porcelain leaves that slice like glass.
Making a Splash: Dish can create fresh drinking water from what collects in her shrine, which can also serve as spirit water.
Occult Blue Eyes: As part of her nature as a spirit, she has blue ceramic eyes in all her forms.
Water Is Womanly: A female porcelain spirit that can create potable water that also serves as spirit water.

Footspur

A spirit representing the concept of stepping on something that hurts more than one would expect.

Bear Trap: As a spirit of unexpected hurt when stepping on something, she can manifest bear traps.
The Hermit: She's one of the least sociable spirits and has been working on making her shrine even harder to find.
Impaled Palm: Her hands and feet are pierced with spikes as part of her spiritual nature as a spirit of stepping on something nasty.
Odd Job Gods: She's effectively the spirit of stepping on a LEGO block, being representative of stepping on something that hurts more than you'd expect.

Grabsy

A spirit of Want, including thievery and "copping a feel", that combined with the echo of a thieving child which stabilized him.

Type: Complex Spirit

Bratty Half-Pint: Looks like a child and likes stealing things from people.
Dirty Kid: Part of being a spirit of Want is sexual desire, so he's also a spirit of "copping a feel" while looking like a child.
Sticky Fingers: Likes stealing and if he manages to steal something from you, you have to chase him for approximately 13 minutes and 20 seconds to get it back.
Sweet Tooth: Likes candy offerings.

Legs

A spirit of arthropod legs working on turning his shrine into a power battery.

Big Creepy-Crawlies: Manifests as a spider made of both insect and arachnid legs roughly Verona's size.

Lott

A wraith comprised of the echo of a drug dealer who died in prison, who surrounds himself with numerous canine and metal spirits. Items and people he possesses change to reflect his nature.

Type: Wraith

Animal Motifs: Dogs. In life, he kept guard dogs to protect his meth supply, as an echo he looks like a humanoid figure made of dog heads, and he attracts canine spirits.
Bag of Spilling: On his way to Kennet from Tripoli an unknown incident occurred that left him at square one in terms of power.
Extra-ore-dinary: Surrounds himself with metal spirits.
Many Spirits Inside of One: Similarly to Edith, he's the echo of a drug dealer who died in jail and cannibalized other echoes to became a wraith.
Practical Currency: Cigarettes are left as offerings at his shrine.
Transformation of the Possessed: He changes any item or person he possesses.

Miscellaneous

Yalda

One of the Dogs who came into being with John.

Type: Dog of War (Famine type), aka Black Dog

Came Back Wrong: After John shot her, she came back as the Hungry Choir's leader.
Creepy Children Singing: She sang a lot, which wouldn't be creepy on its own if not for the fact that she did it in warzones where you won't usually find many children.
Deader than Dead: Implied. Following Charles using Yalda as the Hungry Choir to kill John, he dissembles her permanently, and when Verona asks if he could revive her as the Carmine, says that the best he could do is make facsimiles out of her and John out of echoes that would only be cheap imitations of the real Others.
Death by Irony: She's ultimately defeated by Brie, one of the winners of the ritual, who eats her whole.
Enfant Terrible: She looks like a young girl, and her type of Dog would curse anyone who harmed her or so much as said a bad word about her. Most Black Dogs kill slowly through attrition and curses, in John's Interlude Yalda manages to kill eleven people in one night, something that's shocking to both John and Grandfather.
Nom de Guerre: Back in Afghanistan her callsign was "Songbird", presumably for her singing ability.
Mercy Kill: John had to shoot her about a decade before the story starts.
Only Friend: She was John's, after all the other Dogs in their group wound up gone.
Power Incontinence: In Dash to Pieces 11.4, it's revealed that this is the reason John had to Mercy Kill her.
John: She couldn’t exist without binding and rotting the guts of the innocents in the area, she had enough influence there was no getting far enough away, it was the only option.
The Reveal: Not only was she brought back as the core of the Hungry Choir, but she was actually the one who killed the Carmine Beast- but only because someone summoned her and told her to do it.

St. Victor's Practitioners

A group of students who attend St. Victor's High School and were made practitioners by the Roles and Maricica. The original group consists of Harri, Nomi, Kira-Lynn, Adrian, Dony, Teddy, Travis, Joshua, Stefan and Cameron.

Abusive Parents: Joshua's father is a 'brute', and Joshua wanted the power to protect his younger siblings.
All of the Other Reindeer: Cameron was ostracised after she was found to have stolen money from a fundraiser, but she was already isolated before that- she hit puberty early and got a lot of unwanted attention from boys and dislike from girls.
Ambition Is Evil: Kira-Lynn's desire to make something of her life and be better than the mediocrity that surrounds her leads her to be cruel and cutthroat, which leads her to do things like removing all her compassion through spirit surgery and implanting Abyssal things in herself and the others. It all goes downhill from there.
Broken Ace: Cameron was one- beautiful, fairly good at school, knew everyone, and very active with volunteering efforts. Then, when the school held a fundraiser, some of the money went missing and was found in Cameron's bag. She was instantly ostracised after that.
Brought Down to Normal: Uniquely among practitioners, they have this ability- if at any point (before they turn eighteen) they don't want to continue as practitioners or they're in a situation that could result in their getting killed, they can forfeit their power- or their teachers can forfeit it for them-, which will return them to Innocence and remove their memories of the practice, as well as making them unable to ever be Awakened again. Joshua takes this option after the trio disrupt the attack on the Belangers.
Dark and Troubled Past: Nomi was raised by an abusive mother who took drugs and would beat her children.
Evil Counterpart: They were deliberately chosen to be the counterparts to the Kennet Witches- a group of teenagers who go to the same school and were isolated or otherwise in bad situations. They have powerful teachers and mentors, and each specialises in a different form of practice. However, unlike the Kennet Witches, the St. Victor's kids don't mesh well and aren't especially good at working together.
Fake Memories: Kira-Lynn gets really sick of people defecting, so she implants fake memories of torture into the new recruits so they'd be so terrified of the idea of returning to Kennet that they'd stay no matter how bad things got.
Karma Houdini: Forfeiting the practice comes with a full return to Innocence, which essentially gives the forfeiter a get out of jail free card for any and all crimes they committed with the practice, which makes Lucy really angry.
My God, What Have I Done?: Dony and Teddy are hit hard by this trope after the BHI battle: having tapped into the Abyss, Teddy encouraged the others to be more paranoid and told Dony that his dad could be a fake, and Dony became vicious enough to shoot first and ask questions later. Unfortunately for them both, it really was Dony's dad, and they have to deal with being responsible for his death.
Parents as People:
- Kira-Lynn's parents live very mediocre lives that provide them with everything they need, but without any really good parts because they refuse to put any actual effort into anything. Kira-Lynn genuinely despises them for it.
- Cameron's mother has early onset dementia and her father refuses to acknowledge it, leaving Cameron to take care of her mother. Her mother also repeatedly misuses the funds for her volunteer projects and forgets to return what she takes, leaving Cameron to make it up with her own money.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Harri, Nomi, and Adrian take the opportunity to flee the group with Yiyun.
Shadow Archetype: They're essentially what the Trio's enemies think they are, a bunch of naive children being manipulated by powerful Others.
Sixth Ranger: Initially it was Cameron, and then they recruited a whole bunch of new kids.
Teacher/Student Romance: Cameron is dating her teacher, Seth Belanger. He's less than a year older than her, but he's still in a position of power over her.
Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Contrasting how the trio mostly gets along, most of them can't stand one another and it interferes with their group cohesion. Avery at one point manages to escape them when they'd otherwise have her dead to rights because they're too busy infighting to fight properly.
Younger Than They Look: Played for Drama. Cameron hit puberty early, and that led to unwanted attention from guys and jealousy from other girls.

The Unforsworn

A group of Forsworn practitioners who were freed from their status as Forsworn by the Carmine Exile. They've since joined him and are aiding him in his efforts, which include serving as teachers for the St. Victor's practitioners. They include Seth Belanger, Lenard Lily, Helen Kim, Yiyun Jen, Josef Miller, Joel Richardson, Freeman Boyd^note, and Griffin Lyttle.

Chekhov's Gunman: Helen was mentioned early in the story as the student at the Blue Heron Institute who was Forsworn after she swore to protect an important Other for a fellow student, got a better offer, took the Other apart for materials and gave them to the person who gave her the better offer.
Dark and Troubled Past: Most of them, given that they're all (except Freeman) ex-Forsworn. Special mention goes to Yiyun, who tried to save her daughter from being killed and raised as an undead by her family, and failed.
Mama Bear: Yiyun tried to do everything she could to save her daughter, but she ultimately failed. She has a similar stance regarding Nomi, her student.
Necromancer: Yiyun, who specialises in high-end crafted undead.
Token Good Teammate: Amongst the teachers, Yiyun is the least willing to do terrible things, and is against turning Gillian into a horror. She later leaves the group and takes the students who don't want to continue doing awful things with her.
Would Hurt a Child: Helen and Seth were perfectly happy to torture Seth's teenaged cousin Gillian and turn her into a horror.

Characters / Pale: Kennet Powers

The Kennet Witches

Companions

Others

Council Leadership

Original Council Members

In General

Cherrypop

Bluntmunch

Gashwad

New Council Members

Biscuit

Butty McButtbutt

Doglick

Peckersnot

Ramjam

Snatchragged/Nat

The Shrine Spirits

Miscellaneous

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Index

Next

Characters / Pale: Kennet Powers

Edit Locked

The Kennet Witches

Companions

Others

Council Leadership

Original Council Members

In General

Cherrypop

Bluntmunch

Gashwad

New Council Members

Biscuit

Butty McButtbutt

Doglick

Peckersnot

Ramjam

Snatchragged/Nat

The Shrine Spirits

Miscellaneous

Previous

Index

Next