open/close all folders
Dreams, Nightmares, and other inhabitants of the Dreaming
Matthew
Voiced By: Andy Serkis (Audible Audiobook), Patton Oswalt (Netflix series)
Dream's companion, a raven who was once a man who died in his dreams and was given the chance to become a servant of Dream. Matthew often questions Dream, pointing out the holes in his plans and keeping his perspective in check. He's the spirit of Matt Cable, a supporting character in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing.- Audience Surrogate: In many of his appearances, he's the one who gets the job of saying the things the audience want to say.
- Book Dumb: He confesses to Lucien that he wasn't much of a reader as a man.
- Clever Crows: Though he doesn't like being compared to crows, thanks to Animal Jingoism (crows and ravens don't get along, and Matthew doesn't have very nice things to say about crows), he fits this stereotype perfectly — he's more of a wiseguy than a trickster, but he's among the brightest and most sensible characters in the series.
- Deadpan Snarker: He's not as snarky as, say, Merv Pumpkinhead, but he gets in a few quips here and there.
- Death Seeker: Following Morpheus's death, he asks Daniel-Dream if he can kill him. After the wake, however, he realizes that Daniel needs a friendly advisor more than Morpheus ever did, and decides to stick around.
- Heroic BSoD: Following Morpheus's death. The wake and meeting Daniel help him come to terms with it.
- Honest Advisor: It's implied that Dream keeps a raven around to give him a human perspective.
- Meta Guy: Most notably in The Wake, where he, like the audience, is shown taking Morpheus' death hard, and has problems accepting Daniel as the substitute, but it shows up on many other occasions as well.
- The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: After becoming a raven, he has the tastes and instincts of a carrion bird. He makes it clear that he's not "a man in a raven's body," he is a raven.
- Nice Guy: He's a little crude and rough around the edges, sure, but you couldn't ask for a friendlier raven.
- Polly Wants a Microphone: He's a raven that can converse just as well as any human. Justified, in that he used to be human.
- Survivor's Guilt: There really, honestly wasn't anything he could do to save Morpheus, but he still feels guilty for allowing himself to be sent away in his master's last hours.
- Transplant: He's Matthew Cable from Swamp Thing.
- The Watson: As the most recent addition to the Dreaming, he's still unfamiliar with many of the themes and concepts of the realm, and as such is in need of an explanation — a fair number of plot points would have gone completely unexplained for the reader if Matthew hadn't been around to say "What? Who's that? What does that mean? What's going on? Why is this happening?"
Lucien
Played By: Simon Vance (Audible audiobook), Vivienne Acheampong (Netflix series)
A tall, thin bookish man who serves as Dream's librarian, maintaining the Lord of Dreams' collection of all the books that have ever been dreamt of. He was once a mortal man, and after his death he became Dream's first raven before his promotion to librarian. When Dream came back from his imprisonment, he found Lucien the only one of his servants still trying to tend to the palace, and rewarded him with the position of majordomo (he still manages the library as well). His first appearance was pre-Sandman in DC's Weird Mystery Tales in the 1970s, hosting his own horror comic series.
- Badass Bookworm: When the Dreaming starts becoming even more chaotic than usual, dangerous things that Morpheus imprisoned are freed to wreak havoc. Lucien, however, is on hand to deal with them. And he does.
- Hidden Depths:
- Aside from being a former raven, Lucien takes Mervyn's death surprisingly hard, to the point of chastising Morpheus for allowing it to happen.
- Lucien is an extremely gentle person who almost certainly abhors violence, but threaten his library, and it turns out that he's much tougher and more capable than he lets on. When the Furies free some of Morpheus' prisoners, implied to be nightmarish, dangerous things, Lucien, who has never shown any evidence of being anything besides a Non-Action Guy librarian, "dealt with them" when they tried to enter the library. It's implied that it wasn't particularly hard for him to do so either.
- Magic Librarian: It is quite a library, and despite his non-assuming looks and personality, he lives up to the responsibility of being the second-in-command of the entire Dreaming.
- Noodle People: He's taller than Dream, who's pretty noodly himself, and at least as thin.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: His defense of Dream's library during volume 9, as mentioned under Badass Bookworm and Hidden Depths.
- The Reliable One: He was the only dream not to flee Dream's castle as it fell apart. Because of this, Dream comes to rely on him heavily after being freed of his imprisonment, and all but makes Lucien his Number Two.
Cain and Abel
Played By: Michael Roberts (Cain) and Kerry Shale (Abel) (Audible audiobook), Sanjeev Bhaskar (Cain) and Asim Chaudhry (Abel) (Netflix series)
Two brothers who both live in the Dreaming. Cain is a violent abusive man prone to murdering Abel, who is a meek and shy man who often stutters. Abel always recovers after a few hours. Yes, they are that Cain and Abel. Cain is the keeper of the House of Mystery, and Abel of the House of Secrets; they entertain dreamers who visit their homes with stories. Both originally appeared as hosts of DC Comics horror anthologies, and figured in a Swamp Thing story that helped inspire the Dreaming.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: While it is left vague in Abel's case whether he's the original Abel or not, Cain is most definitely one of Morpheus' creations. All in all, Cain and Abel are not so much the biblical figures of their namesake, but rather representations of the "Victim" and "Victimizer" archetypes in all stories.
- Bag of Spilling: In Swamp Thing, at least, if you choose to receive a secret from Abel instead of a mystery from Cain and you try to tell the secret, you forget it entirely. The mystery, on the other hand, needs to be figured out, but can be shared freely.
- Big Brother Bully: Cain is this to Abel, as might be expected.
- Blessed with Suck:
- Abel's immortality. It just allows him to be killed again, and again, and again...
- Downplayed with Cain. The Mark of Cain branded on his forehead protects him from being harmed by others (except for Lucifer, who sees threats from God as more of a challenge than an ultimatum), lest they suffer far worse. While this protects Cain from anything harboring ill intent towards him (including the Furies), he implies that this kind of fate isn't as glamorous as it sounds.
- Cain: The Sandman features both Biblical brothers as characters in the Dreaming and associates of Morpheus. Cain is a violent man who is prone to murdering Abel, which is a cycle they repeat ad nauseum; the series states that the brothers were "the first story", with Cain the jealous brother and Abel the eternal victim. When Dream came back to Earth, the brothers were the ones to find him and nurse him back to health. Cain also serves as Dream's messenger to Lucifer, specifically because of the mark on his forehead that prevents anyone from killing him, as told in actual Biblical story.
- Cain and Abel: The sons of Adam, or at least beings sharing their names and representing their story. One murdered the other, and the rest, as they say, is history.
- Cursed with Awesome: Nothing can harm Cain without incurring the wrath of God. Unfortunately for Cain and for obvious reasons, Lucifer finds that particular stipulation hilarious.
- Deadpan Snarker: What Cain does when he isn't killing his brother.
- Fat and Skinny: Cain is tall and scrawny, while Abel is short and chubby.
- Haunted House: Their respective homes.
- Heroic BSoD: Cain has one after he returns from Hell, where he was tortured and abused by Lucifer. It especially gets to him because his mark usually protects him from physical harm.Cain: My lord? He is most terrible. He...he didn't care about my mark. He just didn't care. He thought it was funny...
- Hypocritical Heartwarming: Cain kills Abel on a daily basis, but he's the only one who gets to do so; God forbid anyone else tries to do the same.
- Immortality Hurts: For poor Abel, mostly, but if someone is sufficiently motivated to harm Cain, he won't die either — he'll keep suffering. And sometimes, he genuinely doesn't want to hurt his brother, but he always ends up killing him somehow.
- Logical Weakness: Cain is marked so that anyone who harms him faces God's wrath. Lucifer finds it highly amusing that Morpheus sent him as an envoy, since Lucifer doesn't care whether he pisses off God or not.
- Magic Librarian: They have libraries of secrets and mysteries in their homes. They may even share them with you.
- Narrator: In their original horror comic appearances, they were these for their respective horror anthology series.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Cain is described as sounding just like Vincent Price.Cain: You wound me! I sound nothing like that vaudevillian ham!
- In the audiobook adaptation for Audible, actor Michael Roberts does a very good impression of Vincent Price while playing Cain.
- Older Than They Look: Granted, they've never looked young, but if one considers where they come from...
- The Only One Allowed To Kill You: Cain is furious when the Furies kill Abel, insisting that their contracts specify that he's the one to kill him.
- Starfish Aliens: Cain makes it clear that there was a time when they didn't look remotely human. They aren't the first human murderer and his victim, they're the first intelligent lifeform in the universe to commit murder and its victim (and we have no idea how far back that was, given that in all probability it was before carbon-based life developed).
- Time Abyss: They've been around a lot longer than Judaism — probably a lot longer than Earth. The concepts they embody (the first murderer and the first victim) are very, very old.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Their first appearance in the Sandman has Cain trying desperately to articulate that he really does love his brother, but he can't defy his nature.
Eve
Voiced By: Sandra Mae Luyckx (Audible audiobook)
A woman who lives in a cave in the Dreaming. Cain and Abel consider her their mother, though whether she is the Biblical Eve is unknown. She has a close friendship with ravens, including Matthew. Originally, she was the host of the DC horror comic anthologies Secrets of Sinister House and Weird Mystery Tales.
- Adam and/or Eve: Eve, in this case. Possibly that Eve.
- Friend to All Living Things: Mainly ravens.
- The Hecate Sisters: She switches from lovely maiden to gentle mother to haggard crone between panels. Notably, when the Furies attack the Dreaming, they steer clear of Eve — she's said to be a separate aspect of the three.
- Mysterious Past: She may be any of the "Eves" in the stories she tells, or she may be none of them.
- Nice Girl: A gentle, warm person. Perhaps the word is "motherly".
The Corinthian
Played By: Riz Ahmed (Audible Audiobook), Boyd Holbrook (Netflix series)
A nightmare with tiny teeth-filled mouths for eyes.
- Anti-Hero: The second Corinthian. He's still a terrifying nightmare for all intents and purposes, but now follows Morpheus' orders, strikes up an Odd Friendship with Matthew (at least in The Dreaming spin-off; it's rather ambiguous in the main story), and is nowhere as megalomaniacal as his first incarnation.
- Arc Villain: The first Corinthian for The Doll's House.
- Blood Knight: The first Corinthian refers to himself as a gladiator and exalts killing for its own sake in his Motive Rant.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: He ends up the receiving end of one from Dream. Since he himself is a dream, challenging his creator was never going to go well.
- Deathly Unmasking: Downplayed; when confronted by Dream at the serial killers' convention, the Corinthian finally removes his omnipresent shades to reveal his true nature as a living nightmare — signified by the fact that he sports tiny mouths where his eyes should be. Dream then annihilates him.
- Depraved Homosexual: The original Corinthian, according to Neil Gaiman, primarily targeted men for sexual reasons. The second one is less depraved, and is seemingly in a relationship.
- Eyeless Face: Technically speaking, since his eye sockets are full of teeth.
- Eye Remember: Eating someone's eyes with his sockets lets him see what they saw.
- Eye Scream: What he tends to dole out. Not to mention, getting a look at him without his sunglasses is this, not so much implied as promised, be it actual, or him haunting your dreams for years to come.
- Faux Affably Evil: His serial-killing first incarnation is unnervingly friendly and cordial. His second incarnation is equally so, but is no longer truly evil.
- Fingore: When a punk tries to reach at his face, his mouth-eyes end up biting the punk's fingers clean off.
- Inhuman Eye Concealers: He wears dark glasses to obscure the fact that his "eyes" are actually small mouths with sharp teeth.
- Magnum Opus Dissonance: In-Universe example: Dream intended him to be his masterpiece — the ultimate nightmare of man's capacity for evil — but instead he ended up just another Serial Killer.
- Manly Gay: The first is a buff serial killer who holds himself to an ancient warrior ideal. The second is equally buff and adept at combat, but without the delusions of upholding a grand warrior tradition.
- Meaningful Name: "Corinthian" is archaic slang for gay men.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: He has three mouths, although each mouth has a normal number of teeth.
- Older Than They Look: He's at least three hundred years old, but his lack of aging is unsurprising for a dream. However, one member of the Serial Killer convention remarks on how he thought the Corinthian would be older, considering how long he's been killing people.
- Picky People Eater: The first Corinthian, at least, consumed only male eyes.
- Redeeming Replacement: It would be enough if the second Corinthian learned from the first's death what a bad idea it is to disobey Dream. Fortunately, he also seems to have a conscience of sorts, and is only seen to Pay Evil unto Evil rather than being a self-indulgent murderer.
- Serial Killer: The Corinthian makes his first appearance at a serial killers' convention. It's implied that he inspired the modern serial killer — that it was how he interpreted his stated purpose as revealing the dark side of humanity. He's wrong, and Dream unmakes him for it to try again another day.
- Shadow Archetype: Dream said that he constructed the Corinthian to be the embodiment of all of the negative aspects of humanity and the things within mankind humans are too afraid to confront. Unfortunately, Dream is disappointed to discover that all the Corinthian has done is demonstrate that there are bad people in the world, and has shown humanity nothing it didn't already know.
- Straight Gay: He's not camp in the slightest.
- Sunglasses at Night: They do serve a practical purpose, namely to conceal his mouth-eyes.
- Too Many Mouths: He has two extra mouths where his eyes should be.
- White Hair, Black Heart: Played completely straight even in his "nicer" incarnation.
- Would Harm a Child: The first Corinthian neglects Jed badly while the young boy is his prisoner. Of course, being dehydrated isn't nearly as bad as what he probably had planned for the kid. However, the second Corinthian seems to take to Daniel quickly.
Brute and Glob
A pair of dreams, never seen apart, who temporarily escape the Dreaming. Glob represents base cunning, and Brute, of course, represents brute strength.
- And I Must Scream: Dream banishes them to what's only called the Darkness, which subsequent mentions say is exactly that: an dark, empty void of silence. Their reappearance in JLA slightly changes that, and Glob complains that their punishment in the Darkness was helplessly bearing witness to the sweet dreams of children.
- Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: They look exactly how you'd picture creatures named Brute and Glob to look.
- Big Guy, Little Guy: Brute and Glob, respectively.
- The Ditz: Brute is, unsurprisingly, an idiot. Glob, despite being an embodiment of cunning, isn't much smarter.
- Dream Weaver: Dream himself is impressed by the sheer number and complexity of the obstacles they place within Jed Walker's mind. All their measures only delay him long enough for them to realize how screwed they are, however.
- Fate Worse than Death: When Dream finds them, they are both banished to an unknown place, described only as the Darkness. Judging from their cameo in Lucifer, they eventually either escape or are allowed to leave, but still, their reaction gives the impression that maybe death would have been preferable to what awaited them there.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Whether they're anything-sexual or not is unclear, but they seem very loyal to each other.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: While Brute isn't exactly the brightest bulb, he plays up the "Dumb Muscle" look around Hector Hall to keep him from realizing just how much of an Unwitting Pawn he is to them, right down to talking in Hulk Speak.
- Simple-Minded Wisdom: Brute knew that Glob's plan to create their own private kingdom separate from the Dreaming in the mind of an abused child would never work, but, as he says, it was fun to try.
Fiddler's Green / "Gilbert"
Played By: Ray Porter (Audible audiobook), Stephen Fry (Netflix series)
A place in Dream, said to be the land all travellers dream of someday finding. He usually takes the form of a human resembling G. K. Chesterton, and sometimes wanders the earth for his amusement.
- Antiquated Linguistics: Mildly, but it's still noticeable.
- Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: His suit wouldn't be out of place in the 19th century.
- Big Fun: What he basically is. He's out to enjoy himself, and is quick to help others manage to do so when their day (or month) is otherwise turning out to be dismal.
- Boisterous Bruiser: He's not shy when it comes to most scraps, to put it one way. Although, he initially deems going against the Corinthian to be far more terrifying than it'd be worth, accurately so.
- Cane Fu: He beats down a couple of muggers about to prey upon Rose in this fashion.
- Cloudcuckoolander: The first time he's described doing anything (in Rose's letter), he's requesting that the landlord bring him a six-foot-long pencil so he can draw on the ceiling from his bed. Which he has decided to stay in all week. Normally he's more grounded, though.
- Combat Pragmatist: He wisely intuits that confronting the Corinthian, who was at the hotel where he and Rose were, is a bad idea. Instead, he gives Morpheus's name to Rose to recite in case of an emergency, knowing the King of Dreams would do better confronting the Corinthian, and goes to rescue Jed while the Corinthian is distracted.
- Face Death with Dignity: He's fairly calm and relaxed when the Furies kill him. He even manages to give a small speech as he lays dying about how he doesn't mind it all that much, given how fair and enjoyable his life had been, only remarking he would've preferred to have died some other way.
- Genius Loci: When a place, he's a very pleasant place, with blue skies, soft grass, and gentle streams; one of the hearts of the Dreaming. (There are several of them. Dreams aren't exactly logical.)
- Heroic Sacrifice: Attempted. He turns himself into Dream on learning Rose is the Vortex and offers to die in her place. Dream turns him down because killing Gilbert won't stop the Vortex, and he can't find it in his heart to punish Fiddler's Green, the only dream that came back willingly.
- Laser-Guided Karma: A benevolent variety; he's a dream that wanted to become human. He's also a Nice Guy who helps people when they need him, like Rose. He turns himself in to save Rose's life, and although it fails, Dream forgives Fiddler's Green and Rose's life is saved thanks to her grandmother Unity. Instead, Dream lets him resume his place as a heart of the Dreaming.
- Nice Guy: He wins Rose's friendship after he saves her from muggers, and helps her find Jed.
- Samaritan Syndrome: He can't help but stop to help people, even at a personal cost. This is why he saves Rose from muggers, and Jed from the Corinthian.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: Waistcoat? Suit? Tailored? Classic cut? All checked.
- Shoutout: Just in case his appearance and the name "Gilbert" wasn't enough, Fiddler's Green is introduced with another tie to G. K. Chesterton. Asking for a six-foot-long pencil to draw on the ceiling refers to Chesterton's essay "On Lying in Bed" (here
). That particular essay fits well within the Dollhouse storyline. It praises heroic virtues associated with eccentricity, while saying respectable minor virtues like getting up early are overvalued. - Staring Down Cthulhu: When Daniel tries to bring him back to life, he just scolds him for it, saying it would cheapen the meaning of his death. Daniel acquiesces.
- Sword and Gun: Sword Cane and antique revolver for extra cool points.
- Unwanted Revival: When "Daniel"/the new Dream attempts to bring him back, he refuses.
- Verbal Tic: Hoom.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Rose refuses to believe that Gilbert was just a place in the Dreaming; he was her friend, and he loved her. As she puts it, if her dream of nearly dying wasn't real, then it means nothing matters, and Gilbert mattered.
- What You Are in the Dark: Like many dreams, he eluded capture and punishment from Morpheus. What does he do when he recognizes the Corinthian at the hotel where he and Rose were staying? He gives her Morpheus's name to recite in an emergency and runs off to rescue her brother, whom he figures out was in the Corinthian's trunk. Gilbert also turns himself in to Dream upon learning Rose was the vortex and that Dream would have to kill her to save the world. He does this knowing full well what the capricious and petty Dream does to deserters.
Nuala
Voiced By: Niamh Walsh (Audible audiobook)
A member of the faerie folk who was given to Dream by her brother, and assumes the role of a housekeeper in Dream's palace.
- All Love Is Unrequited: With Morpheus.
- Armor-Piercing Question: She puts one to Dream.Nuala: You... you want them to punish you, don't you? You want to be punished for Orpheus's death.
- Break the Cutie: She was sent by Auberon and Titania as a gift to Dream as part of a diplomatic mission to keep Hell closed (long story). No one expected this mission to be successful, and Nuala was allowed to believe she'd be returning to Faerie when it was done. Cluracan reluctantly informs her when he leaves that Titania will not allow the gift to be rejected, win or lose, and so she will not be welcomed back to her home. When Dream accepts her into his employ, he strips her of her beautiful and dignified Glamour, returning her to her gawky, awkward, and mousey natural appearance. She spends a lot of time afterwards being utterly miserable. Dream doesn't even give her a position in his court — she begins acting as a housekeeper out of a need for something to do.
- Character Development: Starting out as a typical shallow member of Faerie, after Dream strips of her glamour and leaves her to her own devices in the Dreaming she eventually starts helping out and talking to its people out of something to do, and develops into her own person. When she returns to Faerie, nothing about it appeals to her anymore.
- Defector from Decadence: By the time she returns to Faerie, she finds she's outgrown its shallow, nihilistic culture. She leaves, defying the Queen to Kill Me Now, or Forever Stay Your Hand at the gates.
- The Fair Folk: A benign example. She's neither threatening nor ambitious, but mostly meek and polite. It is implied, though, that she was different — haughty, cruel, and manipulative — before coming to the Dreaming.
- Glamour: When she first appears, she's apparently a tall, beautiful blonde woman. Until Dream strips her of the glamour, and she turns out to be very short, skinny, and mousy-haired underneath it.
- House Fey: She's a fairy who ends up taking the job of Dream's housekeeper.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Although she realizes that she didn't kill Dream by summoning from his realm in a well-intentioned effort to protect him, she also knows that if she hadn't loved him, he would still be alive.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: She calls in a promise from Dream at the worst possible moment. Unusually, nobody really blames her for it, and even Titania forgives her.
Mervyn Pumpkinhead
Voiced By: Kevin Smith (Audible audiobook), Mark Hamill (Netflix series)
A comical pumpkin-headed dream who performs odd jobs in the Dreaming, such as being a bus driver and janitor. Although he's a simple-minded slob, he helps keep Dream grounded.
- Deadpan Snarker: His sarcasms and quips are more frequent, but usually less intelligent, than Matthew's.
- Dumbass Has a Point: This is explicitly one of the reasons Dream keeps him around."It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But a half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor."
- Dying Moment of Awesome: "Eumenides this!"
- Expressive Mask: The jack o'lantern on his head changes like a face would.
-
Faux Symbolism: In a Take That! to Sigmund Freud, he describes meeting Freud in a dream, with Freud horrified at what Merv's cigar represents. Merv scoffs at this and declares that potential sexual allusions do not mean that they are sexual symbols. - The Friend Nobody Likes: Most people roll their eyes as they listen to Merv drone on about his supposed working-class wisdom, but when he is killed, Lucien is so aghast he angrily reprimands Dream. Lucien even later wishes Merv was there as the Dreaming is being destroyed.
- I'm Your Worst Nightmare: "A pumpkin with a gun!"
- Plucky Comic Relief: His job in the series is to point out when Dream is being ridiculous (although, as Dream himself points out, just because Mervyn has the occasional sharp insight doesn't mean he's any less a doofus or that Dream is any less fearsome or powerful).
- Pumpkin Person: He's an animated pumpkin-headed scarecrow.
- Right Behind Me: He sometimes forgets that complaining about Morpheus is the same as summoning him.Merv: I think the boss is headed for serious trouble. You gotta love the guy, but sometimes he's a complete...
Morpheus: A complete what, Mervyn?
Merv: Uh... Just-just, just a complete.
The Cuckoo
Voiced By: Sarah Pitard (Audible audiobook)
- Animal Motifs: Unsurprisingly, the cuckoo bird.
- Anti-Villain: All she's done is follow her natural inclination to grow up and leave her nest, which unfortunately means killing Barbie and bringing misery to the Land.
- Big Bad: Of "A Game of You".
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: It's really only acting according to its nature, and there is no true malice in its actions.
- Compelling Voice: She can brainwash people in an instant just by talking to them. She ends up manipulating Luz into turning traitor this way.
- Creepy Child: It takes the shape of Barbie when she was younger.
- Evil Overlord: She appears to be a fairly standard example of this, until her true nature is revealed.
- Glamour: It can make you bend to its will just by talking to you, and make you want to protect it and do whatever it wants.
- Karma Houdini: She doesn't get to kill and replace Barbie, but otherwise gets everything she wants.
- Not Growing Up Sucks: She wants to leave her nest, even at the cost of all the wonderful things in the Land and the Land itself.
- What Is Evil?: Dream suggests she's just acting in accordance with her nature. Can any being acting according to its nature be called evil?
George
Voiced By: Joe Duley (Audible audiobook)
- Affably Evil: Aside from dirty looks and trying to get the people in his apartment trapped in dreams as a servant of the Cuckoo, he's a fairly pleasant guy after his face is nailed to a wall and he's unable to die. He strikes up a conversation with Wanda, and alerts her to when Barbie is in danger.
- Butt-Monkey: After Thessaly is done with him. It's just not a good idea to upset that lady.
- Deadpan Snarker: Sometimes. "What have I got to be worried about? I'm dead."
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: His brothers were the Creepy Crows he had inside of him, and he says that they loved him and he didn't feel alone.
- Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: Some of his jokes need work.Wanda: [Your joke] differs from the usual kind of joke only in the vast gulf between it and any kind of a sense of humor.
- Eye Scream: Gets his eyes nailed to a wall, and he's still using them.
- Interrogating the Dead: Thessaly brings his face back for this purpose.
- Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Thessaly kills him because he threatened her, not out of any moral obligation. She brings him back as a face hung on a wall after that.
- Oracular Head: Well, face.
Angels, Demons, Heaven, and Hell
Lucifer Morningstar
Played By: Peter Stormare (Constantine), Tom Ellis (Lucifer (2016)), Michael Sheen (Audible Audiobook), Gwendoline Christie (Netflix series)
The Devil. One of the leaders of Hell, alongside Azazel and Beelzebub, until he decides that he no longer wants the responsibility and quits. See Lucifer for more.
- Anti-Villain: In the end, he's just a guy stuck doing a pointless job he hates.
- Badass Boast: He points out to Remiel that he has not lost one iota of power since he was God's greatest angel, and now he's the ruler of Hell.
- Breakout Character: He got his own comic book series, Lucifer.
- Celestial Paragons and Archangels: In Heaven, "he was the wisest, the most beautiful, the most powerful" angel of them all. Due to how high-ranking he was, falling didn't diminish any of his power.
- Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: He's drawn to resemble David Bowie.
- Deal with the Devil: He has no idea where humans got this idea from, and considers it a feeble attempt to avoid responsibility for their actions. What would he do with a soul, even if he could "own" one, anyway?
- Deadpan Snarker: Especially in his appearance in The Kindly Ones, in which he also lays a brutally accurate "The Reason You Suck" Speech on Remiel.
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: "Life" may be the wrong term for an immortal, but the principle is the same.
- The Dreaded: Even Dream is wary of dealing with Lucifer after having gotten one over the ruler of hell, well aware he is one of the few entities in existence whose power exceeds the Endless, and many other characters follow suit, with even the noticeably belligerent Cain being left a sobbing wreck after being subject to Lucifer's torments after relaying a message from Dream.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Lucifer changes significantly between his first and second appearance.
- Even Evil Can Be Loved: Lucifer treats his enamored underling Mazikeen rather well, which makes him more interesting.
- Exact Words: After Morpheus humiliates him in their first meeting (in the series at least), Lucifer swears he'll destroy him. Upon a later meeting, Morpheus is (understandably) wary of Lucifer, so Lucifer swears he'll do nothing to harm him as long as they're within the boundaries of Hell. Once their business is complete and they find themselves outside Hell, Lucifer's last act as Lord of Hell is to give Morpheus the key, noting that "it may destroy you, or it may not". Lucifer later states to Delirium that his own decision to quit may have caused Morpheus' (soon-to-be) demise. Either way, he will not interfere for either side.
- Fallen Angel: Well, yeah. It's Lucifer, after all.
- Foil: To Morpheus. Lucifer is the ruler of Hell just as Morpheus is the ruler of the Dreaming, but their character arcs go in opposite directions. In addition, Lucifer is extremely emotive and passionate (but makes masterful plans), while Morpheus is The Stoic (but also capricious and impulsive when he really shouldn't be).
- I Have Many Names: Lucifer Morningstar, Prince of Hell, the Devil, Prince of the East...
- The Man Behind the Monsters: It's purely a matter of appearances, but Lucifer plays this trope to the full. While most of the demons of Hell (including its two other nominal co-rulers) are hideous and monstrous, Lucifer generally appears human and beautiful. But all of those demons are rightly respectful or just plain scared of Lucifer (as for that matter is Morpheus).
- New Era Speech: When he learns that Dream is coming to free Nada, he promises everyone in Hell that they will remember this day forever.
- The Paragon Always Rebels: It wouldn't be Lucifer without this. Dream outright states he was the greatest of God's creations before his fall.
- Pet the Dog: In The Kindly Ones, where he is friendly, kind, and helpful to Delirium.
- Retcon: A minor one. At the end of Sandman Lu-Lu talks about planning to shut down Lux because he's getting weary of running it and finding something else to do to pass the time alongside Mazikeen. When Lucifer starts, he seems to have gotten over his discontent with the place entirely.
- Royal "We": He starts referring to himself in the singular to show that he really has quit being King of Hell.
- Satan: Well, yes.
- Seen It All: One of the main reasons he gives up Hell. He got bored.
- Smart People Speak the Queen's English: Implied; after quitting Hell, he relaxes on a beach in Australia, and the man he's talking to asks him if he's a "pom" (Australian slang for a British person). Given that Lucifer doesn't come from any earthly country, nor has he pretended to do so for the purposes of a disguise in this scene, it seems likely that his voice sounds British.
- Sympathy for the Hero: He briefly expresses how he almost pities Dream in The Kindly Ones.
- Time Abyss: Along with all other angels, fallen or not.
- To Hell with This Infernal Job: On learning Morpheus is coming to free Nada, he...hands over the Key to Hell and saunters off to do his own thing. Morpheus is utterly lost for words.
- Winged Humanoid: He's depicted with wings in Preludes and Nocturnes, but in Season of Mists he has Morpheus cut them off just before giving him the key to Hell.
Azazel
Voiced By: Kerry Shale (Audible audiobook)
One of the leaders of Hell alongside Lucifer and Beelzebub.
- The Bus Came Back: Azazel managed to escape imprisonment when Morpheus was temporarily dethroned and barred from his realm, and became one half of the Big Bad Duumvirate in the second arc of Nightmare Country. He gets trounced again once Dream is forced to intervene.
- Demon Lords and Archdevils: Azazel co-rules Hell with Lucifer and Beelzebub.
- Living Shadow: Perhaps. The art is a little unclear.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: All teeth — sharp sets of them floating in an amorphous void.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Specifically, a jar in Dream's attic.
- Too Dumb to Live: It's expressly stated that even in Hell and in a weakened state, Morpheus is more than capable of dealing with any threat short of Lucifer himself. Azazel later picks a fight with a fully empowered Morpheus on his home turf, and gets thoroughly and effortlessly crushed for his trouble.
Choronzon
Voiced By: Paterson Joseph (Audible Audiobook)
A demon of Hell who challenges Morpheus for possession of his helm.
- Butt-Monkey: Any time he appears, it's to have something awful happen to him.
- Demon Lords and Archdevils: At the start of the Oldest Game, Choronzon introduces himself as the "High Duke of the Eighth Circle".
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: In a Shapeshifter Showdown with Morpheus, Choronzon becomes entropy. In response, Morpheus becomes hope. Unable to think of a counter, Choronzon loses the duel.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: In Dust Covers, Neil Gaiman relates the tale of how he actually met Choronzon. Yes, in Real Life. They encountered each other at a parade in 1992, and Choronzon asked for a light and insisted that he make further appearances in the comic. Gaiman obliged by writing him into Season of Mists.
- Too Many Mouths: One more than usual. More Teeth than the Osmond Family, too.
Mazikeen
A daughter of Lilith, and a demon who fell in love with Lucifer.
- The Big Damn Kiss: She shares a memorable kiss scene with Lucifer.
- Ignored Enamored Underling: She's in love with Lucifer, and wishes to follow him after he leaves hell.
- Two-Faced: Half her face is a beautiful woman, and the other half looks like a skinned, rotting corpse.
Remiel and Duma
Voiced By: Adrian Lester (Remiel) (Audible audiobook)
Two angels who are given dominion over Hell after Lucifer abandons it.
- Angelic Beauty: The pair of angels from Season of Mists take the form of immaculate pale-skinned blondes who are as pleasing to the eye as the demons are torture to look at.
- Break the Haughty: Remiel is not altogether happy about being ordered to maintain Hell.
- Fallen Angel: Remiel initially rejects the order to take over Hell, and plans to rebel as Lucifer did to avoid it, barely relenting due to Duma's sacrifice. Duma, on the other hand, does exactly what his Creator wills, and is explicitly mentioned to not have fallen, even maintaining the silence that is his charge in spite of Remiel's temptations.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Technically averted, since they're genderless beings, but Remiel always stays by Duma's side.
- Irony: See also Fallen Angel above. Remiel desires to rebel against the order to rule Hell, but cannot because there would be no place for him to go. Duma obeys his creator, and is cast out of Heaven for it. It's very much a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Literally.
- Jerkass: Remiel. He blusters a lot.
- Manly Tears: While Remiel is breaking down upon receiving the order to take charge of Hell, Duma silently extends his hand to take the key of his own free will, tears and sorrow mixing with dignity on his face. It shames Remiel into coming along.
- Meet the New Boss: They decide to redeem the souls in hell rather than punish them, but their methods are no different than what the demons were doing before.
- Morton's Fork: The order to take over Hell is this for them. Disobey? You've fallen, you're barred from the Silver City forever. Obey? The order...bars you from the Silver City forever.
- Odd Couple: Remiel as the self-justifying and somewhat pompous partner, Duma as the silent and far more thoughtful foil.
- Our Angels Are Different: They're generally bog-standard as it goes for angels, especially for Duma, but Remiel is a real jerk. They're also non-fallen angels who take charge of Hell, and Remiel's rule somehow manages to make Hell even worse.
- Painting the Medium: Remiel has elaborate, cursive text, suggesting a majestic and musical voice. Presumably Duma would, too, but...
- The Silent Bob: Duma contributes more to a conversation than Remiel with just a few facial expressions, despite Remiel's almost complete inability to shut up. A perfect example of how their dynamic works comes at Dream's funeral. Remiel delivers a long speech. Duma weeps a single tear.
- The Voiceless: Duma, as an angel of silence.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: When Remiel and Duma are handed Hell's reins, Remiel decides to retool it all — they're not punishing the damned, they're redeeming them...using exactly the same methods as they used when punishing them, but because they love them and want them to be better people. When he informs the damned, they're astounded he managed to make Hell even worse than before.
- Winged Humanoid: They're angels.
- You Are Worth Hell: Rarely is it so literal as in Remiel's case. Duma shames him into accepting his new role.
The Presence
God.
- Alternate Company Equivalent: His Marvel counterpart is called The-One-Above-All, it's never been clear how the two relate to each over in the greater Omniverse.
- Balance Between Good and Evil: His counterpart, the Darkness exists for this reason. In it's debut arc in Swamp Thing it was built up as some kind of Omnicidal Maniac, but all it ended up doing was connecting to The Presence in an eternal handshake to demonstrate that without darkness there is no light.
- Canon Welding: As the Vertigo imprint is technically canon to the greater DCU, but follows its own path, as more and more of the DCU's cosmology was revealed, it became unclear how the Presence, who is the Judeo-Christian God, fit in with invented beings and concepts like the New Gods, the Monitors, the Anti-Monitor, the World Forger, the Seven Forces of the Universe, and Perpetua. All of these beings and concepts are connected in some form to the enigmatic Source the New Gods revere. In Dark Nights: Death Metal, as Wally West, who has gained Doctor Manhattan's omniscience, is explaining to Wonder Woman how Perpetua has been masterminding every Crisis event, he says, "The Presence, of the Source", heavily implying that the two are in fact one and the same. How Michael and Lucifer fit in is still unclear though. Grant Morrison is also of the opinion that the Presence and the Source are also Monitor-Mind the Overvoid from their take on DC's genesis, as stated in this interview.
- The Chessmaster: Well, He's God, so yeah. In Season of Mists, he has Destiny arrange a meeting of his siblings by writing it in his book. This sparks a chain of events that ends with Lucifer retiring from his position as the ruler of Hell, Hell coming into the control of two angels that proceed to make it a place of repentance and salvation rather than simple punishment, and Morpheus receiving some much-needed perspective about some of his more jerk-ish tendencies.
- Depending on the Writer: DC editorial has gotten pretty lax from the 2010's onwards about allowing writers to outright contest The Presence's role as the absolute creator of all the DC multiverse/omniverse; new supreme beings were created, old supreme beings rewritten to be all-powerful, etc. The Presence is often reduced as the creator of something, not of absolutely everything, to even being just an avatar of The Source Wall.
- Divine–Infernal Family: All angels, even the fallen ones, see the Presence as their father, and He sees them as his children.
- The Ghost: He never manifests in person in The Sandman (uh, sort of, we're talking an omnipotent omnipresent omniscient deity here, just roll with it), but is obviously spoken of and performs offscreen actions that shake the foundations of the universe.
- God: Unlike in the Marvel Universe, where the various human deities are all around the same level of power and are subordinate to more abstract cosmic beings, the Presence is explicitly the Abrahamic Creator and the highest being.
- God in Human Form: In Lucifer, on the few occasions he manifests, His preferred form is a pudgy British guy with a bowler hat and umbrella, for some reason. Since he takes this form after meeting Elaine Belloc, it's possible he plucked it from her mind and took a liking to it.
- Grandpa God: He usually takes the form of a portly man with a grey mustache, and is also literally Elaine's grandfather.
- I Have Many Names: He is typically called the Presence, but has manifested as the Voice, the Great Hand, the Source, and Wally the God-boy amongst others. It's also possible that he was "Glory" in The Sandman: Overture and Monitor-Mind the Overvoid from Final Crisis.
- The Maker: Creator of the DC Universe.
- Not So Above It All: Despite being a serious and wise figure in Vertigo's comics, He plays along with His creation's weirdness from time to time, like that time He allegedly was Wally the God-Boy, a bespectacled young boy with a baseball bat, or that time He got into an argument on the phone with the Spectre in Sixpack and Dogwelder: Hard-Travelin' Heroz, or that time He took the form of a Scottish Terrier to communicate with The Phantom Stranger. Even in Vertigo, there's the fact that He can look however He wants, but consistently chooses a fat British gentleman."Just because you don't have a sense of humor, Corrigan, doesn't mean that I don't."
- The Omnipotent: The be-all, end-all authority within The Multiverse. However, He has no authority outside it, a loophole Lucifer exploits in his own series to become a Creator himself.
- Passing the Torch: At the end of Lucifer, he decides to retire and appoint His half-human granddaughter Elaine Belloc, daughter of Archangel Michael and a mortal woman, as His successor.
- Truly Single Parent: Unlike the God in Lucifer (2016), the Presence created the entire angel race all on his own, and is considered their Father.
- Two Aliases, One Character: Dark Nights: Death Metal implies the Presence seen in the Vertigo imprint and the Source seen in the mainstream DCU are one and the same.
Glory of the First Circle
An aspect of God, or else a being within His inner circle.
- God in Human Form: Dream calls Glory "Shekinah", which is an indication that they might be the Abrahamic God.
- Grandpa God: They look like an authoritative older man.
- Mr. Exposition: During The Sandman: Overture, Glory is the source of information for Dream. Glory also helps narrate the end of the story.
- Shout-Out: Dream calls Glory "Shekinah", which is a reference to Book of Exodus. "Shekinah Glory" is a Hebrew phrase meaning a visible manifestation of God in the natural world. The pillar of fire guiding Israel through the desert was a "Shekinah Glory".
Other Supernatural Beings
The Three-in-One
Voiced By: Sandra Dickinson (Maiden), Ellen Thomas (Mother), Cathy Tyson (Crone) (Audible audiobook)
The Triple Goddess. The Mother, Maiden, and Crone. Also called the Hecatae, the Erinyes, the Fates, the Three Witches, the Norns, Mut, Moirai, the Eumenides, the Furies, Parcae, Fortuna, and the Charities.
- Above the Gods: As the Kindly Ones, they are one of the few entities that surpass gods, and can pose a threat to the Endless (at least, in certain cases.)
- Anthropomorphic Personification: They can represent several things, but the one that becomes most important towards the end is their Greek mythological aspect of revenge. In this state, they're technically the Furies (Erinyes), but they much prefer to be called the Kindly Ones (Eumenides), dearie. To call the Furies on someone, the victim must have spilled family blood. It can be in self-defence, assisted suicide, a mercy kill, or even accidental or unknowing, but that doesn't matter. They'll come.
- Badass Boast: The Kindly Ones are fond of making these for two reasons. One is that their nature is of terrifying rage, so it's good if their targets fear them. The other is that they are very nearly always capable of walking the walk. Though Death, angered, can cow them.
- Bait the Dog: The first two volumes have them sincerely try to help Dream when he asks his three questions trying to get his items back. They also try to warn Rose Walker about her destiny, though they aren't much use when they appear to her in a random closet, and they likely told Dream about Calliope's imprisonment so that he could work to free her. When Lyta calls on them for vengeance, they carve a path of death and destruction through the Dreaming and finish off Dream, though they are cowed enough to let Death say goodbye before they do. It's how the rules work.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Three, in all their incarnations, seem to be so far removed from anything remotely resembling human morality that calling them "evil" would miss the point. It would be like trying to assign moral values to a natural disaster.
- Composite Character: They represent several mythological trios of women at once: They're the three fates from Greek mythology, but also the three Furies. Lucien calls them "Urth, Verthandi, and Skald", meaning that they are also the three Norns from Norse mythology. Finally, they're Cynthia, Mildred, and Mordred, the three witches who hosted DC's The Witching Hour series.
- The Fettered: Like Dream, they have a function. Unlike Dream, we see no evidence that they have any choice at all in whether or not to fulfill it.
- The Hecate Sisters: Personified. One is old, one is middle-aged, and one is young.
- Horror Host: They started out, years earlier, as the hosts of DC's horror comic The Witching Hour.
- Implacable Woman: Three of them. They never stop until they have avenged spilled family blood, even if the person who invoked and merged with them actually wants them to stop. That person is only the vessel, directed by the Three. The only thing that gives them pause and actually makes them back off is Death yelling at them.
- Karma Houdini: For rampaging in the Dreaming, they get away scot-free, owing to the rules of vengeance and how the Endless must suffer punishment if they kill their blood relatives (even when it's Orpheus actually asking Dream to kill him). Lyta ends up bearing the punishment of exile from the Dreaming and every supernatural being who was fond of Dream hating her guts, since she's the one who summoned the Furies and is only a mortal human, thus vulnerable.
- Kick the Dog: Their function is to hound and torment their victims, so there is a lot of wanton cruelty in their rampage, from which they seem to take a great deal of pleasure.
- Legacy Character: Invoked. Every time exactly three female characters appear together, or three and a character who's rendered distinct from the other three, the three women each represent an aspect of the Three in some way. Over the course of the series, several characters come to represent one or more of them. Lyta Hall comes to embody all three at once.
- Loophole Abuse: Suffice to say, they were not entirely forthcoming about how or why they were enabling Lyta's mistaken cause for revenge. Not enough for it to be against "The Rules", however...
- Murderer P.O.V.: Whenever the Furies kill someone while attacking the Dreaming, it is always shown through their eyes.
- Non-Indicative Name: 'The Kindly Ones' are anything but kind. They're called that to avoid insulting them, like calling faeries "the fair folk" or "the good neighbours".
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Not that running will do you any good if they're invoked against you.
- The Omniscient: They seem to know absolutely everything, to the point that even Destiny can be caught off-guard by their pronouncements.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: They're usually quite confident in their power, and rightfully so. But when their antagonism begins to make Death angry, they instantly become much more subdued, respectful, and defensive, showing even they have limits.
- Pet the Dog: While they're unable to free Calliope from her imprisonment, they do feel sorry for her, and it's implied that they alerted Dream to her plight so that he could rescue her.
- Revenge Before Reason: Unsurprising, given that they are vengeance incarnate. Lyta's attempt to reason with them when she finds out Daniel is alive does not work — it isn't Daniel they're pursuing Morpheus for.
- Sadly Mythtaken: In their guise as the trio from The Witching Hour, Mordred (the Crone) complains about how this form should be called Morgaine. Mildred (the Mother) states she got the two mixed up.
- Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Averted. They seem to be incapable of this. In their own miniseries, they reveal that many of the rules that bind them (and which they're complaining about at the time) were made by themselves "when everything was new and making rules seemed the thing to be done". Those rules are binding nonetheless.
- Terms of Endangerment: The mother calls everyone they meet things like "dearie" and "poppet" and "my lobelia", and while they are not normally aggressive, it's still pretty unnerving. It gets creepier when she speaks the same way while they're becoming the Kindly Ones, and as a Fury, the mother's pet names change to unpleasant things like "my little smelfungus".
- You Didn't Ask: This seems to be one of the rules that binds them. Even if they want to help a questioner, as they seem to with Rose Walker, they can't unless the questioner asks the right questions, and the questioner only gets to ask them three questions. If they don't want to help a questioner, they enjoy this greatly.
Time
The father of the Endless.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Of time.
- Cosmic Entity: He's Father Time, the Anthropomorphic Personification of time itself.
- Domain Holder: His domain is essentially one big Timey-Wimey Ball, because he's Time, and that's what he wants it to be.
- The Hermit: He wants to be left alone. To his mind, the only reason any of his children visit him is because they want something — aside from Destiny, who asks nothing of him because Time gave him all he had as his birthright, and leaves him alone. The one person he's interested in meeting again is Night.
- Humanoid Abomination: Like his children.
- Like Father, Like Son: His aloof attitude towards Dream when he finds him in his realm is an awful lot like Dream's interactions with his own son Orpheus, implying he was emulating Time after Orpheus came of age.
- The Omnipresent: It's said that he watches everything from the micro-moments between seconds.
- Painting the Medium: His speech bubbles are grey with white lettering.
- Strong Family Resemblance: You can see the physical similarity to Destruction, especially when he's younger. It makes sense, as Time is how reality itself can begin, change, and end, which is what Destruction is all about.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: Cause and effect work very differently for Time than everybody else. He doesn't experience things in linear, consistent, chronological progression, and his physical appearance ages and de-ages at random.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Dream is not happy when Time summons him before he can stop his travelling companion Hope being killed.
Night
The mother of the Endless.
- Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Fittingly for the personification of the night. It's where a majority of her children got it from. Furthermore, she has some detachment from her surroundings, and doesn't show much emotion (apart from getting angry at Dream.)
- Ambiguous Situation: While Night represents the "true darkness" that predates and will eventually overtake creation, there are other cosmic entities in the DC Universe — such as Nyx and The Great Darkness — that fall under that very same description. A conversation with Dusk acknowledges that she does indeed coexist with The Great Darkness, but it doesn't elaborate just what their relation to each other is.Dusk: They say that the hosts are gathering, from all across creation. That the time of worlds is drawing to a close. That the Darkness will return.
Night: And who are "they" that say these things?
Dusk: I dare not tell you, ma'am.
Night: Long, long ago, all this was mine. In time, it will be mine again. - Anthropomorphic Personification: Of the night — and by implication thus of darkness and the void.
- Big Beautiful Woman: When she's not a formless cloud of stars and void, she manifests as this. Her introduction shows her bathing naked in a sea of darkness.
- Celestial Body: Her skin and clothes contain the night sky.
- Cosmic Entity: She's Mother Night, the Anthropomorphic Personification of the night.
- God of Darkness: Night is the Anthropomorphic Personification of the emptiness that predates Creation. She is the estranged lover of Time, and mother of the seven Endless. While not evil, she is known for being rather narcissistic, and while affectionate, she tends to pick favorites while neglecting others when it comes to her children.
- Humanoid Abomination: Like her children.
- Lack of Empathy: Given that she shrugs off Dream’s comment on her neglect of Delirium without much of a reaction, it appears she lacks much feeling.
- Like Father, Like Son: Her body type evokes a less monstrous Despair, her Celestial Body evokes Dream's sparkling black-eyes, and she is noted for being petty, selfish, a bit proud and aloof, traits that Dream and Desire both have in spades.
- Painting the Medium: Her speech bubbles are blue with white lettering.
- Parental Favoritism: According to Neil Gaiman, she plays favorites with the Endless, ignoring some and adoring others, as opposed to Time, who just wants to be left alone.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Dream calls Night out on her treatment of Delirium. She ignores it.
Calliope
One of the Muses, she used to be Morpheus's lover and is the mother of his child, Orpheus. She was imprisoned for many years by a writer in order to provide inspiration.
- Amicable Exes: Calliope tries to reconcile with Dream twice. The first time, his gate guardians wouldn't even let her into the Dreaming. The second time is after he rescued her, since she was grateful that he had changed and put the past behind them. Dream calmly turns her down, because he feels it would be a bad idea. At his funeral, Calliope doesn't regret their relationship, though she wishes Orpheus hadn't suffered so much.
- Damsel in Distress: Erasmus Fry knew the ritual for binding a muse to his service, and she was forced to serve both him, and Madoc once Fry passed her on to him. It took Dream's intervention to set her free.
- Muggle in Mage Custody: Inverted. She is held captive by Richard Madoc, an ordinary human writer, who uses her as as source of inspiration.
- The Muse: One of the nine.
- Nice Girl: She's one of the nicest deities you'll meet; if you don't capture her and use her powers against her will, she may generously grant you ideas. Calliope also asks Dream to free Richard Madoc of his punishment after Madoc freed her.
- No Accounting for Taste: She fell for Dream before his Character Development, even though he was a jerk of a father towards their son. Millennia later, she doesn't want to send a distress call to him, because she's realized how foolish her infatuation was.
- Sex Slave: As mentioned, due to being bound by Fry, she unable to lift a hand against him and Madoc or to escape. Fry felt that forcibly taking her favors was the best way to get inspiration for writing, a tip he passes on to Madoc. Both used her as one to get inspiration for new novels, and repeatedly raped her whenever the inspiration is running low.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Moly flowers can be used to in a ritual to bind her, along with burning her scroll.
- Wizards Live Longer: She's thousands of years old.
Bast
Voiced by: Bebe Neuwirth (Audible audiobook)
The Egyptian goddess of cats, who's also associated with women and fertility.
- Cats Are Magic: She is a version of one of the oldest examples, the Egyptian goddess Bast(et). She's not only the cat-headed goddess of cats, but also her domain also includes the moon and secrets.
- Face–Heel Turn: A tragic example, out of desperate need to be remembered and worshipped. See the trope below.
- Fading Away: Her fate (and that of other Egyptian gods) by the present day in Sandman Presents: Bast three-issue miniseries. While her fellow gods came to terms with it, she defiantly refuses to be forgotten and enacts a plot to reinstate cats as dominant species of Earth in order to be worshipped again. She eventually comes to her senses and accepts her fate, disappearing for good.
- Gods Need Prayer Badly: In the modern day, she shown as barely scraping by on whatever stray bits of worship she can get. In Sandman Presents: Bast miniseries, it leads her to a desperate attempt to force humans to remember her and worship her again, and her actions are admonished by other Egyptian gods who accepted their fate.
- Non-Human Head: She is drawn as having a human body and a cat head.
- Sexy Cat Person: A cat goddess who's always drawn topless and who has a longstanding flirtation with Dream.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: A Rare Female Example — she's usually drawn topless with exposed humanlike breasts. As she's a cat goddess from an older time, she doesn't have the same attitudes to nudity modern humans do.
Loki
Voiced By: David Tennant (Audible audiobook)
A Norse Trickster God.
- And I Must Scream: Odin releases Loki from a punishment that — even by Norse mythology standards — is pretty hard-core. It's so terrible that even Dream shows some Sympathy for the Devil. Which turns out to be an error in judgement. Maybe.
- Badass Boast: In The Kindly Ones.Loki: I am Loki Scar-Lip,Loki Sky-Walker, Loki Giant's-Child, Loki Lie-Smith. I am Loki, who is fire and wit and hate... I am Loki. And I will be under an obligation to no one.
- Big Bad: Of The Kindly Ones, as his kidnapping and apparent murder of Daniel spurs Lyta to seek out the Furies.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: With a shout-out to The Farmer and the Viper from Odin; it's in Loki's nature to lash out at those who help him, as much as it is in Cain's to attack his brother.
- Debt Detester: His behavior in The Kindly Ones is due to him owing a debt to Morpheus.
- Dying Curse: As he's being tortured by the Corinthian, he threatens him with a death-curse and the vengeance of the Asgardian gods. Corinthian settles for breaking his neck and tearing out his eyes instead of killing him. Loki then tries to taunt Thor into ending his agony, but Odin stops him.
- Eye Scream: It's bad enough that the Corinthian tears out and eats his eyes, but when he's bound under the earth again, the agony of the snake's venom dripping into his face is much worse, because now it's getting into his empty eye sockets.
- Master of Illusion: As in the myths.
- Mouth Stitched Shut: As in the myths. He still has the scars, and the epithet that goes with them.
- Playing with Fire: One of his powers.
- Sapping the Shapeshifter: "The Kindly Ones" arc, the Corinthian tracks down and successfully corners Loki, who at first attempts to trick the Nightmare into leaving him alone by shapeshifting into Dream of the Endless well in advance. However, the Corinthian isn't fooled and begins slowly strangling the trickster into submission; as he does so, Loki frantically shapeshifts into anything that might force the Corinthian to release him - a dragon, a mass of flames, the Corinthian himself, even a child - but his attacker just shrugs off everything and goes on throttling until Loki reverts to his true form and starts begging for his life.
- Trickster God: Given that he is Loki, more than half of his dialog and plotlines concern him trying to trick his way to victory for one reason or another.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Another one of his powers, in keeping with his mythological origins.
Thor
Voiced by: Mitch Benn
The Norse thunder god.
- Boisterous Bruiser: In line with his traditional depiction in Norse mythology, Thor is portrayed as a loud, drunken, womanizing lout.
- Casanova Wannabe: Thor just can't understand why the other gods have so much less trouble with the ladies. After all, none of them employ his killer technique of leering in a woman's face and bellowing about his hammer getting bigger when you rub it...
- God of Thunder: Thunder and lightning are his domain as a deity.
- Jerk Jock: He's a muscle-bound, womanizing asshole who only gets worse when he's drunk, which is most of the time if he has anything to say about it.
- Top-Heavy Guy: Thor has so many overlapping muscles on his upper torso he looks deformed.
Orpheus
Voiced By: Regé-Jean Page (Audible audiobook)
A famous ancient Greek musician.
- Beautiful Singing Voice: He has a voice so haunting and beautiful that it moved the hearts of Hades and even the Furies.
- Death Seeker: After losing his wife for the second time, he gives up on life, and doesn't listen to his mother's warnings to not be in the same place as the Maenads are going. It gets even worse when he doesn't die even when they tear him apart and he has to live as a head without a body.
- Despair Event Horizon: And that doesn't stop his situation from getting exponentially worse.
- Didn't Think This Through: His aunt Teleute (Death in a Greek guise) warns him to avoid this. She tells him that while she could get him to the Underworld to bargain with Hades, the condition would be that she would never take him, and he would become immortal. Sometimes immortality isn't a good thing. Orpheus only takes a few seconds to consider the implications, confident that he can get his wife back and they'll have a long life together. It doesn't end well for him when he fails to get Eurydice back and finds out the hard way that living as a sole head without a body really sucks.
- Driven to Suicide: Eventually. The first time, it doesn't kill him. Nor does it help. By the second time, he's lived long enough as a disembodied head that death is an act of mercy bestowed by another. His father, in fact.
- Foregone Conclusion: If you know your Greek myths, you know how his quest to bring his wife back is going to end.
- Immortals Fear Death: When Dream comes at last to grant Orpheus's wish to die, he confesses to his father that he is very scared.
- In Love with Love: It's very strongly hinted that he was far more in love with the feeling of loving Eurydice than he was with Eurydice herself.
- Magic Music: A very, very old example. His magic soothes and attracts animals, thaws Hades' cold heart enough to allow the king of the underworld to release his wife, and even makes the rageful Kindly Ones cry.
- Music Soothes the Savage Beast: Not only is he the archetypal example (when he plays his lyre to lull Cerberus), his song for his lost love touches the heart of Hades and makes the Furies weep. Unfortunately, neither of those things end well for him.
- Oracular Head: He's reduced to one in the end.
- Orphean Rescue: Again, Older Than Feudalism (and the Trope Namer).
- Torn Apart by the Mob: Orpheus is gruesomely ripped apart by the Maenads after he refuses to cavort with them (echoing the events of the actual Greek myth of Orpheus), leaving only his immortal head.
- Trauma Conga Line: His wife is killed in a horrible accident at their wedding reception. His father fails utterly to be any help (though his aunt grants him immortality against her own better judgement). He ventures into the underworld to retrieve his wife's soul and succeeds, but then loses her forever moments before she would have lived again. He becomes so mired in grief that he lets his body get torn apart and eaten by the maenads, female followers of Dionysus. Even then, he doesn't die — he becomes a head without a body, drifting on the ocean. When he washes up on the shore, his own father tells him he's been an idiot, feels no sympathy at all, disowns him, and walks off. It takes millennia for them to reconcile (during which time Orpheus remains an immobile Oracular Head), and only then, finally, does he die.
Ishtar
Voiced By: Ashleigh Haddad (Audible audiobook)
The Babylonian goddess of love and desire, and an ex of Destruction's.
- Brown Note: Ishtar's "True Dance" taps into her Living Aphrodisiac powers and is so unbelievably hot that it causes all men who see it to experience Forced Orgasms until they die of arousal."And Shep Cayce, who hasn't had an erection in a dozen years, is ejaculating violently - again, and again, and again: and now he's coming blood and he doesn't care."
- Interspecies Friendship: She might be a long-lived goddess, but she still looks out for her human friend Tiffany.
- Mesopotamian Monstrosity: In one episode, Morpheus has brief dealings with the Babylonian Love Goddess Ishtar, who has been reduced to dancing in a modern strip club. Where else could a rather dark Sex Goddess find mass worship? She doesn't appear to be a monstrosity — she appears to be an exceptionally talented exotic dancer — until she gets suicidally depressed, and chooses her own way to go.
- Modernized God: An ancient love goddess who now works as a stripper due to her worshippers dying out. She's running on fumes from men who desire her at night.
The Dead Boy Detectives
Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine are the ghosts of two school boys, both killed at the same school but in different decades. After leaving their haunting grounds, they decide to start their own detective agency.
- Adaptational Jerkass: In their appearance in Vertigo: Winter's Edge #3 (the specific story being a crossover with The Books of Magic), they've undergone some Character Exaggeration and are rather obnoxious in their belief that they're "proper detectives."
- Character Development: Justified. Although Charles spent several days being tormented and ultimately killed by ghosts, once he's actually dead and a ghost himself he becomes remarkably calm and confident. He even decides to leave the school—what's there to be afraid of, now, and who says ghosts have to stay in one place?
- Friendly Ghost: They're Undead Children, sure, but they're kind, helpful and not even remotely creepy.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Ghost version. They're completely inseparable, and it's in fact Charles's refusal to be separated from Edwin that leads to their current situation — because they would end up in different afterlives, they went on the run from Death together.
- Innocently Insensitive: During the crossover with The Books of Magic in the third and final issue of Vertigo: Winter's Edge, they try to court Joh and "Mary" (Tim Hunter taking on a female form using his mother's glamour stone in order to lie low from his Other), not quite grasping that their dated behavior borders on being chauvinistic and isn't acceptable courtship.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Well, they're physically and mentally the same age, since they both died as young boys, but chronologically Edwin is more than 70 years older than Charles.
- Kid Detective: Parodied. They decide to start a detective agency after having studied she school's library books and films (mostly children's adventure fiction), and they turn out to be pretty terrible at it because they're kids who mainly learned about investigations from reading kids' books.
- Ret-Canon: The miniseries for The Sandman Universe incorporates the element from their appearance on Doom Patrol (2019) of Edwin secretly being in love with Charles.
Faerie
The Cluracan
Voiced By: Aidan Turner (Audible audiobook)
A prominent figure of Irish folklore, adventurer, raconteur and personal messenger of Queen Titania herself, and brother to Nuala.
- The Alcoholic: He's often drunk.
- All Gays are Promiscuous: But he is from a race that more or less devotes itself to eternal partying.
- Arch-Enemy: He strays off the path in the castle of Dream and makes a Nemesis, basically a clone which is a foil for him in every way, who will inevitably destroy him one day. So far it/he doesn't seem to be doing a whole lot in that direction, though it/he agreed to enter a political marriage with a woman in Cluracan's stead, which may end up incredibly socially-awkward someday. Quite a long game...
- Brainless Beauty: While "Brainless" might be a strong word, but between never thinking before he acts and spending most of his time inebriated, the Cluracan has a good deal more in the way of looks than foresight.
- The Charmer: He's good at charming people — though when it comes to charming them into his bed, he sticks only to charming men.
- The Fair Folk: A fairly benign example. He's just not all that bright.
- Friendly Enemy: His Nemesis is going to utterly destroy him someday, but that doesn't mean he has to be rude to him.
- Genius Ditz: The Cluracan is a bit of a fool, but he has one area in which he is an undisputed genius: he's got an unparalleled gift of the gab. He can talk his way out of anything; even the most vengeful of people end up being charmed and mollified by his words.
- The Hedonist: When he's sent to Dream's mansion in order to make an offer for the key to Hell in the name of The Fair Folk, he tells Nuala they can't possibly compete with so many big names also in the mix; he'll just take advantage of the excellent (and free) wine and sex he'll get out of the whole situation.
- Loveable Rogue: The general opinion of him. He's somewhat of a Phrase Catcher in that people have a tendency to tell him what a scoundrel he is, but what a charming scoundrel.
- Modified Clone: His clone's into ladies, probably 100% given that he's supposed to be Cluracan's opposite.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When the stranded travellers in World's End see a vision of the funeral of Morpheus, the previously drunk-as-a-skunk Cluracan is instantly sober and immensely grim — since he understands full well what he's seen and is going to have to report it to Titania. "I am the most unhappy soul alive."
- Pet the Dog: As ditzy and vain as he is, he still loves Nuala, asking for her release from Dream, and then throwing a glamour on her when her normal form nearly gets her banished.
- Stay on the Path: When he goes to Dream's castle alone, he doesn't, and in the process he generates a Nemesis for himself.
- Unreliable Narrator: Invoked and lampshaded. When he tells a story about getting free of wrongful imprisonment and dethroning a corrupt ruler of a nation, his tale is called into question, and he freely admits to adding in things and removing other details, but the only falsehood he cops to is when he gets into a sword fight with the palace guard (he added that because he thought the climax of the story was boring). He does point out that the embellishments (that he admits to) are solely to make his tale for interesting, as in the story he's still a ditz and screws up to the point he needs Dream to save him.
Puck
A member of the Fae who is The Trickster.
- Badass Boast: He doesn't seem to think that the guy who just blinded and paralysed Loki is any threat to him whatsoever.
- Cheshire Cat Grin: As is visible in the attached image of him, Puck almost always sports a huge grin that bodes ill for anyone so unfortunate as to be faced with it.
- The Fair Folk: A very traditional example. He is not a pleasant creature.
- It Amused Me: His motivation for anything he does.
- Nigh-Invulnerable: He states that he's far harder to kill than Loki... a god.
- Pet the Dog: He compliments Will Kemp on playing him well.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After seeing the Corinthian curb-stomp Loki and eat his eyes, he decides now would be a good time to head back to the land of the Fey.
- Those Two Guys: He acts like this when he pals around with Loki for a while, until he gets bored and leaves.
- The Trickster: But not the benign sort.
- Walking the Earth: Puck refuses to leave Earth and its associated realms behind when the other inhabitants of Faerie abandon it.Puck: Go, my lord? When there be mortals here to confusticate and vex? Go you all! Your Puck shall remain... the last hobgoblin in a weary world.
Titania
The Queen of Faerie, and widely believed to be one of Morpheus's ex-lovers.
- Ascended Extra: Introduced in The Sandman, she has a more prominent role in Books of Magic (the first miniseries of which was written by Neil Gaiman, and indicated she was Timothy Hunter's mother) and its spinoff The Books of Faerie.
- Deity of Human Origin: According to The Books of Faerie, Queen Titania was originally a human peasant girl named Rosebud during the Middle Ages, who took "Titania" as her regnal name when she married Auberon. She is such a powerful sorceress that for all practical intents and purposes, she is a Physical God and appears to be The Ageless. Titania easily outmatches most mythological gods in the modern age, as she does not depend on worship for power. The supernatural community in general simply regards her as the godlike Queen of Faerie.
- The Fair Folk: She's the Queen of them.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: She has her good days, but she can be magnificently petty, spiteful, and manipulative, even for a Fae.
- The High Queen: Subverted. She looks the part, and is nice enough as long as she's in a good mood, but reacts very badly if she feels she's been slighted in any way.
- They're Called "Personal Issues" for a Reason: She declines to talk about her relationship with Morpheus at his wake.
Auberon
The King of Faerie, and Titania's husband.
- Ascended Extra: He's a very minor character in The Sandman. In the ongoing Books of Magic series and the various Books of Faerie miniseries, however, he has a much larger role.
- The Fair Folk: The King of them all, though he often takes a backseat to his wife.
- Hidden Depths: Auberon can come across as rather oblivious and ineffectual, especially when seen next to his more forceful wife, and he can be ridiculously easy to fool... but he's far wiser and more aware than he seems. He's also rather more willing than your average Fae to learn from his mistakes and grow as a person.
- The Stoic: It's not that he doesn't have it in him to get angry or excited, but generally he is rather calm and reserved.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Compared to Titania. Where she is often petty and spiteful, he is far more likely to hear people out and give them a fair chance.
Talking Dogs
Barnabas
Destruction's dog. How and why he talks is unknown.
- Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: When inherited by Delirium.
- Deadpan Snarker: And fairly incisive art critic. In supplementary material, Gaiman has observed that while the former Destruction revelled in creation, it was necessary for him to have a buddy who could say, 'You know, that isn't very good.'
- The Kid with the Leash: To Delirium. In the first Little Endless storybook, which is all about Delirium wandering off and Barnabas looking for her, he ends up having her on a literal leash so she won't wander off again.
- Older Than They Look: Bast mentions Destruction’s companion attacking one of her cats some fifty years previous. Assuming that was Barnabas that would make him nearly twice as old as the oldest dog on record.
- Unfazed Everyman: Well, as "everyman" as a talking dog can be, anyway. He doesn't seem to have any real powers apart from human-level intelligence and the power of speech, but he's equally at home with Endless, gods and human beggars.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: A downplayed version, but still noticeable with Destruction. Barnabas is very devoted to Destruction, but that doesn't stop him from flinging insults at him left and right, especially when it comes to giving his honest opinion about his artwork and poetry.
Martin Tenbones
One of Barbie's imaginary animal companions in her dream world, but who came into the waking world to warn her of the invasion of her former realm by The Cuckoo.
- Big Friendly Dog: Despite his friendly demeanor, he scares a homeless woman half to death.
- Canis Major: About the size of a small car, and so large that he cannot get out of the way of traffic in the downtown in which he materializes.
- Living Dream: Of his own volition though Barbie originally imagined him.
- Loyal Animal Companion: He never forgot Barbie even if she had (mostly) forgotten him.
