For the recurring characters of Alice, Girl from the Future, see the series’ character page.
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Poklons
Squirrel
The lonely daughter of Old Mole and Centipede.
- Embarrassing First Name: In-Universe, among the poklons, her name is considered ugly.
- Friend to All Living Things: The forest animals and the unicorns are very fond of her.
- Foil:
- To her mother (it even gets lampshaded by Veri-Meri). Centipede, too, was a kind highborn girl snatched, after careful planning, by an Abhorrent Admirer who tried to force her into marriage. However, Squirrel seems to have inherited her father’s spirit and ultimately manages to run away, while Centipede marries Old Mole and slowly gives up on her life.
- To Veri-Meri. Both are born basically without any rights, with everyone looking down on them, and a lifetime of abuse lying ahead, both struggle with the fact and desperately want to escape. But Squirrel finds friends, love and a new life thanks to her good heart and courage, while Veri-Meri makes a life for himself by backstabbing everyone who can be backstabbed and selling out everything that can be sold.
- Hidden Heart of Gold: She says that her brothers will be murdered one day and then she’ll reign the castle and hang everyone who slighted her. Then she bursts into tears.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: After meeting Alice, Brook and Iria and learning they're to be sent to the slave market, she snaps and decides to run away and help them.
- Messy Hair: She has unkempt curly hair.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When, at the slave market, Boar buys both her and Iria, she can’t restrain herself and rushes to hug the woman with a squeal. While they are still on the market square. Veri-Meri recognizes her at once and tracks Boar down.
- Rebellious Princess: Runs away from her castle the first time several outsiders (Alice, Pashka, and Iria) treat her with respect and friendship.
- Super-Senses: She has excellent hearing, probably after spending a lot of time in the woods.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: Briefly disguises herself as an atani boy to be able to get out of the castle.
- Thicker Than Water: Even though her father and brothers treated her awfully, she springs to their defense whenever anyone criticizes them.
- Took a Level in Badass: Starts as a reserved, fearful girl, and ends up escaping Veri-Meri and the vkushetses completely on her own and riding a unicorn into the woods to find Brook.
- The Unfavorite: One can imagine how acutely she feels it if she turns to Veri-Meri for comfort.
The Mole Brothers
Left Mole and Right Mole, two practically inseparable robber brothers who ride unicorns.- And Now You Must Marry Me: Both try to pull this off with Iria. They don’t suspect that apart from being one of the galaxy’s greatest beauties, she is also one of the greatest fighters.
- Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: They employ Veri-Meri to spy on the atani tribes and the city poklons. And they can barely stand the sight of him.
- Big Brother Bully: Towards Squirrel; not so much physically abusive as their father used to be, mostly they just ignore her.
- Bond Creature: They consider the unicorns their brothers and can even talk to them.
- Creepy High-Pitched Voice: Their voices are quite high.
- The Dividual: They are identical twins and nearly always appear together.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: They love their mother, each other, and their unicorns. It foreshadows their Heel–Face Turn.
- Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: They have very narrow and piercing black eyes.
- Identical Twin ID Tag: Left Mole and Right Mole are distinguishable by their boots: one of them wears only the right one and the other only the left one.
- Man of Wealth and Taste: They are dressed in pitch-black, with a silver cape and a wolfskin to complete the picture. It looks very sharp and impressive (in contrast to most of the other poklons who wear bright colors and look ridiculous).
- Rebel Leader: Deconstructed. They are at war the neighboring nobles, the atani, the rememberers, and basically everyone, and they always win because they are amazing fighters and their unicorns are fast as lightning and very clever. However, when one of their escapades goes too far (they kill Worm Thefattestone during a truce for a rather petty reason), not a single voice sounds in their defense and they are sentenced to death by Radiculitis and put on the frontline in the campaign against the Shelter.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Downplayed; but Right Mole is shown several times to be more impulsive and Left Mole more careful.
Centipede
The mother of the Moles and Squirrel, a soft-hearted highborn lady who had been kidnapped by Old Mole.
- Extreme Doormat: Resigned to her fate after it became clear no one would rescue her. After her husband died, she just passively allows her sons to rule.
- I Was Quite a Looker: Now elderly and fat, she used to be perfectly lovely in her youth.
- Pet the Dog: She tries, albeit feebly, to defend Iria against the Moles’ advances, and later gives Alice a large pie.
- Stopped Caring: She gently tells her sons "boys, be careful out there, don't be naughty" when seeing them off, and that's now the limit of her attempts to influence them.
- Took a Level in Cynic: A long loveless marriage with a bandit does that. When she was younger, she opposed her husband and tried to instill some kindness in the boys more energetically, and now she is tired of everything and just wishes to be left in peace.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Her fate isn’t mentioned in the epilogue.
Old Mole
A baseborn forest robber who found an old observatory and declared it to be his castle. That and his riches ensured his sons would be considered poklons.
- Abusive Parents: Sometimes even towards his sons, whom he could beat up in a rage, but especially towards Squirrel who sometimes ran away from him into the forest.
- The Dreaded: His sons remind the other poklons how they had fled from Old Mole like the fastest tortoises.
- Hiding the Handicap: After he lost one eye and the other one began to go blind, he ordered the servants to light lots of candles, claiming it was simply too dark in the castle.
- Parental Favoritism: Made no secret of his preference towards his sons and disdain of his daughter.
- Posthumous Character: He is dead by the time of the plot.
- Reverse Psychology: He was considering selling the unicorns and halted only because Centipede and his sons begged him to let the animals stay. But then Radiculitis ordered him to sell the unicorns, and Old Mole firmly said now he would never do that.
Radiculitis
The supreme ruler of the poklons.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: He delays the Moles’ execution until the end of the war with the rememberers, reasoning that their knowledge of woods is very useful – and they can get killed and save him the trouble.
- Deadpan Snarker: He might be evil but he certainly understands he’s surrounded by lickspittles – and loves to poke fun at the most ridiculous ones.
- The Determinator: He has survived forty-four plots against him and three rebellions.
- Evil Genius: He is very shrewd, figuring out Alice is much smarter than she looks at once, and he is behind the Malicious Slander spread about the rememberers. He also can read.
- Faux Affably Evil: Talks very sweetly but is in no way to be trusted.
- Terms of Endangerment: "My dear mole boys, you'll have to die".
Cockroach
The ruler of the region where Blue Nose and River live.
- Evil Is Petty: He gets mad at Blue Nose, a poor ferryman, for not giving him enough money.
The Worm Brothers
Worm Thelongestone and Worm Thefattestone. The latter is killed by the Moles.
- Fat and Skinny: Accordingly, Thefattestone is fat and Thelongestone is skinny. Thelongestone is the more intelligent of the two.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: They are related to Radiculitis and very aware of that.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: With the Moles, with whom they had already fought. The slightest provocation was enough for Worm Thefattestone to go back to fighting again.
Rememberers
Brook and River
Brother and sister, kidnapped and raised by rememberers and now working as their spies.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Brook has quite a lot of it with Squirrel.
- Captured on Purpose: Brook allows himself to be captured by Left Mole's soldiers to find out more about the mysterious guests of the planet, as he sees that Alice, Pashka and Iria look like the group of be-pe that the rememberers picked up in the forest.
- Fiery Redhead: Inverted. They are both red-haired and are among the most composed and level-headed characters in the novel.
- Inter-Class Romance: Brook is a ferryman’s son and an outlaw in Radiculitis’s realm, and Squirrel is a rich poklon’s daughter.
- Pretend to Be Brainwashed: Brook disguises himself as a be-pe (a person whose memory is fully wiped) to avoid detection.
- Stealth Expert: Both of them, especially River. As she lives with her father and not in the Shelter, she has lots of experience in hiding from all sorts of jerks.
Boar
Brook’s friend, the rememberers’ agent in the city and Nightmare’s steward.
- Gentle Giant: Despite his intimidating appearance, he is very kind.
- Innocent Blue Eyes: The only part of his face visible behind his hair and beard.
- Nice to the Waiter: He is very friendly towards Nightmare’s atani cook. Not to mention that he buys crowds of slaves and sets them free.
Dr. Crack
Physicist and doctor of the Shelter, an atani by birth.
- Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: He is married to a Krinian woman, who, although short by human standards, is taller than him.
Teacher Dawn
River's teacher from the Shelter.
- The Lost Lenore: Her husband, another teacher, has been killed by vkushetses.
Atani
Veri-Meri
The most dangerous man in the region, he is an atani suffering from Chronic Backstabbing Disorder whom nobody likes but everybody employs.
- Animals Hate Him: He’s given a good kick by Left Mole’s unicorn. Everyone else is glad to see it.
- Batman Gambit: He knows the Moles are too hotheaded to act carefully and too stubborn to make allies, so he counts on them getting either killed in battle or executed, leaving Squirrel the heiress with nobody to object to him marrying her; while Squirrel herself would be easy to deal with because she's too abused and scared to escape. After Radiculitis does sentence the twins to death, he becomes so sure of his success that he refers to himself as "the future Baron Mole".
- "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Doesn’t understand why everyone hates him so much: he’s not a traitor, he’s a spy just like most of the others!
- Boomerang Bigot: He gleefully sells other atani into slavery.
- Foil: Apart from Squirrel (see above), he is also a foil to Brook. Both of them come from outsider groups who can't fit with the current regime (the atani and the rememberers). Both work as spies and have a whole network of agents and assets in the city and the woods, and each of them has his hiding technique developed to perfection (Veri-Meri prefers Hiding in Plain Sight and Brook is a Stealth Expert). Both are ready to be Necessarily Evil for the sake of the bigger picture. Both of them despise poklons and want to marry Squirrel. But while Brook acts for the sake of Krina's lost knowledge and the poor deluded people, really believes he can make it all better, and falls genuinely in love with Squirrel, Veri-Meri's values are centered around himself and his primary motive in pursuing the girl is her title and inheritance.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: "I have it all written down!"
- I Shall Taunt You: He tells the Moles they shouldn’t fight Worm Thefattestone: after all, he’s related to Radiculitis, and they are minor nobles. It works like a charm.
- Lack of Empathy: His first appearance is all about that. First he is completely indifferent to the idea that the atani might eat their captives, and then he’s just equally indifferent when Left Mole attacks the tribe. Then, of course, it’s quickly revealed he’s spying for the Moles.
- Manipulative Bastard: He has the Moles’ castle and almost the whole city under his thumb and manages to weasel his way out of everything or nearly everything.
- Master Poisoner: Squirrel says he is, but it never figures in the plot. Maybe it’s just what he told her.
- Rags to Riches: He used to be a simple atani boy destined for slavery, now his riches are legendary.
- Playing the Victim Card: Caught in the act of trying to kidnap Squirrel, he begins to sob and says he just loves the girl too much and doesn't believe Nightmare's house to be a safe place for her, so he risked his life to watch over the place. Alice – who has already seen his true colors – is almost taken in.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Probably part of the epilogue’s Sequel Hook:[Veri-Meri] swears he remembers nothing at all about his dark past.
- Villain Has a Point: He turned to treason and backstabbing to make the poklons pay for the discrimination against the atani. The Fantastic Racism of the poklons (the Moles especially) is indeed horrifying.
- Villainous Crush: Claims to have one on Squirrel, but it’s quite possible he’s faking it to win sympathy.
Moro-Pari
The cook in Nightmare's house.
- Nominal Importance: He is the only atani besides Veri-Meri and Dr. Crack whose name we know. Subverted, as he does nothing plot-relevant and gets killed off-screen when the vkushetses ambush the house.
Other Krinians
[[folder:Nightmare]]A wiseman.- Absent-Minded Professor: So absorbed in his "studies" that he doesn’t notice his own steward is an agent of the rememberers.
- Fantastically Indifferent: He has had so many memory wipes that nothing can surprise him.
Bug the Celestial
The High Vkushets of Oblivion.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: He has a right to enslave horrible sinners. For sins such as: letting a rememberer get away, not paying debts, theft, or blowing their nose in a temple.
- Hated by All: Shares the laurels with Veri-Meri as the most hated man in the city.
- The Hypocrite: His own laws forbid smoking on pain of death and confiscation of property. He smokes.
- Justice by Other Legal Means: He orders to arrest Veri-Meri for being rude to the vkushetses.
Blue Nose
A ferryman, father to Brook and River.
- The Drag-Along: He helps River with her spying, but he’d much rather hide and stop taking risks.
- Fiery Redhead: Unlike with his children, played straight.
- Hope Is Scary: Gets more afraid when River tries to cheer him up.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He constantly snaps at River and shoos away Iria, Pashka and Alice, but that’s because he’s terribly afraid for his children who are both working undercover for the rememberers.
- Loose Lips: Accidentally lets it slip that his daughter lives with him (when the common knowledge is that Brook and River were kidnapped and never returned). Thankfully, Poklon Cockroach has more pressing matters to worry about.
Alta
One of the sentient birds, an ally of the rememberers.
- Clip Its Wings: Gets her wing wounded by a mutant bat.
- Failure Is the Only Option: Gives up very quickly after the wound renders her unable to fly.
Alina
Alta's cousin.
- The Pollyanna: Much more cheerful than Alta. Outwardly, at least — she is revealed to have recently lost her mate.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Bursts into such an elaborate song about Pashka Geraskin's bravery that even Pashka (usually not the one to refuse praise) wants to beg her to stop.
The passengers of the Dnieper
Hermes, Poseidon, Mercury and Aphrodite, elderly Krinians returning home.
- Demoted to Extra: They're major characters in The End of Atlantis, but here they spend most of the book with their memories wiped.
- The Homeward Journey: It all began as a simple flight to bring them home. Then it’s revealed their home is so not what it used to be, and much has to be brought back on Krina itself.
- Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Mercury drowns soon after being found by the heroes.
