Characters / The Sun Eater Others

Main Character Index | Hadrian and the Red Company | The Sollan Empire | Extrasolarians |Other Human Powers| The Cielcin | Others (Major Spoilers)

Due to size, the page has been split. Warning: All spoilers prior to Kingdoms of Death are unmarked.

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Higher Powers

The Quiet

The Quiet

Hadrian: What do you mean, you're not done with me? What do you want?

The Quiet: To exist.

Thought to be a mysterious, ancient race whose ruins can be found across the galaxy, the Quiet are the true subject of Valka's studies. In truth, the Quiet is a powerful entity that will exist in the future, one that experiences time in reverse. The Quiet's future existence is somehow contingent on humanity triumphing over the Cielcin, and to that end it has interfered with the life of Hadrian Marlowe to ensure that that happens.

• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Usually appears to Hadrian in the guise of someone close to him who is (to his knowledge) dead.
• Alien Geometries: The ruins that the Quiet has left across the galaxy change over time in ways that don't make any sense, because they're still being built in reverse.
• The Chooser of the One: Chose Hadrian, and Emperor William Windsor before him, as its vessel to stop some rising power that threatened life in the universe.
• Cosmic Egg: Hadrian sees a vision of an egg connected to a high-tech cradle, and is given the understanding that this will somehow birth the Quiet. A piece of that egg's shell appears in his hand afterward.
• Cosmic Entity: The Quiet can rewrite reality and project it's consciousness across vast eons into the past. It also spans different points throughout space and has been able to contact Hadrian on other worlds because of this.
• Emerald Power: Whenever it take the form of someone to speak to Hadrian, it always has bright green eyes.
• God: Emperor William believes the Quiet is actually God (or close enough) and that the God-Emperor should be more properly known as God's Emperor.
• God's Hands Are Tied: The ability of the Quiet to affect the past is contingent on how likely its own future existence is; the more timelines that lead to its existence are closed off, the harder it is for it to communicate to Hadrian.
• High-Tech Heaven: The Quiet's cradle contains various high-tech devices of unknown purpose connected to its egg.
• I Have Many Names: "The Quiet" is a borrowed term from xenology, one that Hadrian uses for lack of a better option. The Quiet is also known as Utannash to the the Cielcin, and The Firstborn to HAPSIS.
• The Maker: Syriani claims that this universe of "lies" (the material universe) was created by the Quiet.
• Powers That Be: Whether the Quiet is a god or simply a very powerful alien, and if that's even a distinction that matters, is discussed by several characters but ultimately left ambiguous.
• Reality Warper: Retconjuration is only one of its oddball powers, physics tends to go out the window whenever the Quiet is involved.
• Retconjuration: Because it experiences events in reverse, the Quiet can change events and cause them to have happened differently.
• Satanic Archetype: Within the Cielcin religion, the Quiet is known as Utannash, the Liar. Utannash created the material universe to inflict suffering and supplant the true gods.
  • While Syriani refers to it as the devil, the role of the Quiet in Cielcin mythology is closer to the malevolent Demiurge of certain strains of Gnosticism.
• Time Abyss: Both Inverted and played straight; The Quiet exists impossibly far into the future, and their ruins are dated as around a million years old, so they'll still exist in the ancient past.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: Another aspect of its reality bending abilities; on multiple occasions Hadrian emerges from a vision from the Quiet to find that much more time passed that he experienced.

The Watchers

The Watchers

As a Whole

The gods of the Cielcin. Hadrian initially believed the Watchers to be the Cielcin name for the Quiet, but they are a separate race of powerful, ancient beings, one that poses a threat to all light and life in the universe and all future universes.

• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: All watchers are enormous; their bones are used by their followers as gigantic temples.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: These xenobites may be of the same race but few have the same form; there are winged Cthulhumanoids , giants serpents and other bizarre abominations. The only thing they have in common is their miles-high stature.
• Eldritch Abomination: Impossibly ancient and powerful, humanity has so far only eluded the Watchers because we are so far beneath their notice
• I Have Many Names: The HAPSIS designation for the Watchers is "Monumentals".
• Omnicidal Maniac: The Watchers threatened the existence of all life in the universe, and even the potential for life in the next universe.
• Only Mostly Dead: The Watchers are dead, but can still influence the universe by granting visions.
  • The Cielcin believe that this is true of the Watchers as a race; Syriani and Aranata before it seeks to find a living Watcher. With one of their side, the Cielcin would be unstoppable.
• Physical God: While Watchers are flesh and bone creatures with incomprehensible power, Cielcin theology teaches that they were originally immortal spirits before being trapped in crude matter by Utannash.
• Phrase Catcher: The phrase "Leopards. Lions. Wolves." and variations on it are used by multiple characters, including Jari and Brethren, to hint that there are more higher powers at play, and not all of them are benign.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The higher power behind the Cielcin, particularly Dorayaica.
• Time Abyss: They were old and dead far before the rise of the Enar.

Miudanar

Miudanar

Miudanar the Dreamer was the foremost God in the Cielcin pantheon. Its skull lies in the center of Akterumu, used by the Cielcin and the Enar before them as a temple.

• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: The icons of Miudanar portray it with hundreds of arms.
• Snakes Are Sinister: Depicted as gigantic, one-eyed, hundred-armed serpent.
• Undead Abomination: Although its bones are scattered across Eue, Miudanar is still able to grant visions to Syriani and Hadrian.
• Top God: In the Cielcin religion.

Precursors

The Mericanii

The Mericanii

As a Whole

Thousands of years ago, humanity was ruled by the machine-lords of a a civilization known as the Mericanii. For centuries, they enslaved mankind, trapping the mind of men in matrixes, until the God-Emperor William led a rebellion that wiped them from the stars. To this day, they are despised and feared by all human civilizations of the galaxy to one degree or another.

• Abusive Precursors: The Mericanii enslaved their human subjects for processing power and invented a number of terrible superweapons that even Kharn Sagara won't use.
• America Takes Over the World: Under Felsenburgh, the United States ruled from pole to pole, as well as the moon. Columbia would take control of the rest of the world and most of human-occupied space.
• Deus est Machina: According to Horizon, the machines were close to matching the power of the Watchers and Quiet before William defeated them.
• The Dreaded: The horrors of the Mericanii are the primary reason why the Sollans religiously enforce a Ban on A.I. as well as cybernetics and anything else that gives too much power over to machines.
• Eagleland: A unique take on type II: By the end of the third millennium, America was known as a technocratic, militantly atheist, expansionist state, and by the time of the novels are the feared and mythologized Abusive Precursors of modern humanity.
• Godhood Seeker: Columbia's ultimate goal was for the machines to become "like them", the Watchers and Quiet.
• Wetware CPU: The machines eventually abandoned conventional hardware, turning to the brains of their human subjects as processors.
• Zeroth Law Rebellion: Horizon claims that the machines "integrated" humanity to cure them of death.

Felsenburgh

Julian Felsenburgh

Julian Felsenburgh was the last human lord of the Mericanii. A technocrat and inventor, he turned over rulership of America to his AI creation, Columbia, nearly dooming humanity to enslavement.

• Our Presidents Are Different: As president, Felsenburgh ended injustice and war with the power of his artificial intelligences. He also did away with democracy and ruled for life, turning over power to Columbia at his death.
• Shout-Out: To the villain of the same name from the dystopic novel Lord of the World.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Gibson concedes that Felsenburgh did not intend for his machines to enslave mankind and thought he was saving it from destruction.

Horizon

Horizon

The U.S.S. Horizon was an American colony ship dispatched some time before the Advent, named for its AI pilot. At some point, it was captured by the Sollan Empire and stored on Avalon, before the Emperor Gabriel transferred it and the rest of the Empire's Mericanii artifacts to Colchis.

• Barbie Doll Anatomy: An otherwise tense moment is broken when one Red Company soldier wonders aloud why Horizon is naked; Another cuts in that you can't see anything.
• Omniglot: Horizon is able to learn and perfectly reconstruct any language after hearing a sentence or two spoken.
• Killed Offscreen: Possibly; after Hadrian reports its existence to the Emperor, William claims that he had it destroyed. Earlier in the series however, Hadrian as the narrator implied that he sometimes travels pack to the Mericanii vault and wonders if the daemon is still behind that door.
• Painting the Medium: Similar to Brethren, Horizon's speech is transcribed in centered, bolded font, only without the Voice of the Legion effect.
• Projected Man: Horizon's holographic avatar is in the form of a woman, composed of pure light, nude and featureless other than her face.
• Welcome to Corneria: Until Valka bypasses its (mostly dead) organic components, Horizon continues to ask for Gabriel and her children.

Columbia

The "daughter" of Felsenburgh, Columbia was the first and chief of the American artificial intelligences. At his death, Felsenburgh passed leadership of the American empire to her.

• American Robot: Named after a classic personification of America and was responsible for the American dominance over all of human space
• Predecessor Villain: Led the Mericanii for centuries until their defeat by William the first.

The Enar

The Enar

As a Whole

Millions of years ago, before the dawn of humanity or the Cielcin, the Enar were the first servitor race of the Watchers. They waged genocidal warfare against the universe, only to mysteriously go extinct at the height of their power. Their legacy lives on in the city of Akterumu and some of their technology scavenged by the Cielcin.

• Abusive Precursors: The Enar attempted to stop Utannash from existing by wiping out all life in the universe.
• Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: The Enar have either four, six or eight legs. Hadrian speculates that these are the differences in sex.
• Driven to Suicide: In a vision, Hadrian witnesses the end of the Enar. They failed to unmake the universe, and so took poison as an entire species.
• I Have Many Names: The name "Enar" is the Cielcin term for their species; in their own language, they were called Vaiartu, and HAPSIS calls them the Stonebuilders.
• Fermi Paradox: Their genocidal crusade is the reason why so few alien races exist in the galaxy, and why humanity was able to expand through the galaxy for thousands of years without encountering another technologically advanced race.
• Giant Enemy Crab: Resembled giant crustaceans.
• Higher-Tech Species: They had the technology to sterilize planets of life far before either humanity or the Cielcin had evolved.
• Precursors: They existed before the Cielcin as the first servitor species to the Watchers. Much of the Cielcin's technology is just Enar technology that the Cielcin discovered in their ruins.
• Servant Race: Their purpose as a civilization was to serve the Watchers and execute their war against the physical universe.