Characters / The Magicians The Real World

"Ordinary People"

Julia

Julia Wicker

One of Quentin's oldest friends. Originally introduced in the first book as a tertiary character, she becomes a protagonist in the second.

• Amnesia Missed a Spot: Took the entrance exam to Brakebills alongside Quentin, only to fail and have her memory erased with all the other failing applicants. However, thanks to an out-of-character alibi provided for her, she soon uncovers her real memories of what happened.
• Ascended Extra: In the first book she was a background character, and something of a mystery. In The Magician King the narrative is split between Quentin in the present day and what happened to her during the first book.
• Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: Already having become a demi-goddess, she eventually goes on to travel to the other side of Fillory, a world yet to be created that is to Fillory as Fillory is to Earth.
• Benevolent Mage Ruler: Serves as one of the four monarchs of the land, and despite her grim demeanour, the people absolutely love her.
• Black Eyes of Evil: At one point in the second book, she ends up casting a spell with the side-effect of turning her eyes black — permanently. When she returns to the real world, she has to cover them with a pair of sunglasses.
• Blood Magic: Cuts her thumb and puts it to the ignition in order to magically hotwire a car.
• Broken Bird: By the time she meets Quentin again rouhgly halfway through The Magicians, Julia has suffered an awful lot of depression and self-doubt not helped by the damage the failed memory wipe did to her sanity. However, it's not until the second book that we realize just how much she's suffered.
• Can't Stay Normal: After realizing that she'll never be admitted to Brakebills, Julia finally decides to admit defeat and opt to pursue a normal life with what little remains of her mundane potential... only to end up blundering directly into a magical safehouse, plunging herself right back into the lifestyle of an obsessive hedge-magician.
• Childhood Friends: With Quentin.
• Dark and Troubled Past: We can tell almost from her re-introduction in the first book that she is pretty badly traumatized, but the full cause is not revealed until close to the end of the second.
• Despair Event Horizon: Julia finally abandons her attempts to study magic after her meeting with Quentin in the cemetery, having realized that he's fallen in love with someone else and has found somewhere that he can be happy - somewhere that she can never reach. Giving in to her depression, she miserably accepts that she's never going to learn magic and opts to recover her mundane life. She eventually recovers from this initiative-crushing moment when she makes contact with the magical safehouses... though perhaps "recovery" might not be the right word to use under the circumstances.
• Depression: After uncovering the truth behind her missing memories and growing obsessed with Brakebills, Julia begins suffering brutal attacks of depression that leave her too crushed to function - especially once she believes that she's failed. She eventually starts attending an online support group known as the Free Trader Beowulf Group... which just so happens to be her ticket back into the world of magic.
• The Determinator: She is going to learn magic, dammit, no matter what it takes. Even if it means abandoning all opportunities for a prosperous life in the mundane world, disappointing her family and prostituting herself to hedge-wizards.
• Drowning My Sorrows: During the second book, Julia demonstrates an ability to drink incredible quantities of booze; as he learns more about her past traumas, Quentin begins to suspect that she's trying to anesthetize herself or cauterize a wound. Unfortunately, Julia can't get drunk anymore.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After her rape and the loss of all her friends, it takes a long, hard journey back from despair, but eventually she manages to cast off her Broken Bird self and be reborn as a dryad.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: She starts to look this way when she dyes her hair black and loses a lot of weight after being rejected from Brakebills.
• Goth Girls Know Magic: After she's rejected from Brakebills and still remembers, she dyes her hair and starts wearing black.
• Happiness Realized Too Late: Julia finds herself participating in the Free Trader Beowulf Group's attempt to summon a goddess in order to attain ultimate truth and happiness. However, just as the ritual is on the verge of completion, she realizes that she doesn't actually want or need anything this final experiment could provide: she's already perfectly happy as a member of the FTB; she has friends who understand her, she has all the intellectual challenges she could ever want, and best of all she's studying magic as she always dreamed of doing... but by now, it's too late to protest. The ritual ends up summoning a monstrous Trickster God who slaughters most of Julia's friends, then grants her the knowledge that the group wanted - by brutally raping her and tearing her soul out.
• Hope Spot: In The Magician King, Julia has several moments when it looks like she might be able to recover from her obsessions and be happy... only for things to blow up in her face.
  • First, she uncovers a working spell from the Internet and manages to conclusively prove to herself that she isn't insane when she manages to get Quentin to admit that Breakbills is real. Unfortunately, Quentin turns down her requests for help.
  • After this, she manages to recover one of her college offers, repair her relationship with her family, get a job, and even find a place in a support group. For a while, it looks as if she'll be able to stay normal, happy and sane... and then one of her rambling walks takes her right onto the doorstep of a magical safehouse. Back into obsession she goes...
  • Finally, her time with the Free Trader Beowulf group in Murs is the happiest time in her life: she has magic, she has intellectual challenges to keep her stimulated, and she has a new family that understands and loves her. And then Renard comes along and kills all but one of the FTB group, then rapes Julia for good measure.
• Inhuman Eye Concealers: Early in The Magician King, Julia casts a spell that turns her eyes pitch-black as a side-effect. All well and good up while she's in the magical land of Fillory, but when Quentin and Julia end up accidentally returning to Earth, she's forced to acquire a pair of sunglasses so unexpecting Muggles aren't freaked out.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: After hitting the Despair Event Horizon in her efforts to learn magic, she decides to cut her loses and rejoin the normal world, making amends for disappointing her parents, even studying hard to reclaim a place at one of the colleges she previously rejected. It doesn't stick.
• Lady of Black Magic: A powerful, attractive magician with a gift for dark and disturbing spells that most of the group have never seen before. She's also rather casual about sex.
• Mark of the Supernatural: During The Magician King, the physical side-effects of Julia's spells linger and in many cases remain permanent; initially, this is a simple case of Black Eyes of Evil, but then her heart begins glowing in the dark so brightly that it can be seen through her body, and then a spell to enhance her height for a major battle results in her turning into a giant full-time. As a dryad, she looks much more human - except for her skin, which is like pale wood.
• Mega Neko: Rides a giant talking civet in Fillory.
• Nature Spirit: Ends up getting turned into a dryad with her own tree by Our Lady Underground.
• Never Gets Drunk: Noted for her ability to tolerate inhuman quantities of alcohol in the second book, ultimately revealing that she can't get drunk at all.
• Nightmare of Normality: The few memories of magic and her potential were erased upon failing the Brakebills entrance exam... but thanks to a mistake on the part of the faculty, she ends up figuring out the truth.
• Rape as Backstory: After witnessing Julia's descent into depression, her mother actually has to ask if she's been raped. And then, horrifically enough, Julia actually does end up getting raped by Renard the Fox, resulting in her ongoing transformation into a borderline Humanoid Abomination.
• Rape Leads to Insanity: Initially believed by Julia's mother. Julia really does go completely bonkers after Reynard the Fox rapes her, but that has as much to do with him stealing her soul in the process as the rape itself.
• Refused by the Call: Had a chance to get into Brakebills and experience all the fantastical things that Quentin did, only for a mistake in her entrance exam to send her back to New York empty-handed.
• The Resenter: Quietly resented Quentin for getting into Brakebills where she failed, at least prior to their next meeting in the cemetery.
• Sanity Slippage: Given that the memory wipe only partially worked, Julia is lumbered with an entire memory running contrary to both reality and what had supposedly happened on the day of her exam; as a result, she ends up becoming depressive, paranoid, and so fixated on the magical world that she disregards almost all of her college offers. Then, after a brief return to normality, she dives headlong into the deep end of Hedge-Wizardry and joining the Free Trader Beowulf group, which opens her up to further sanity slippage.
• Scrubbing Off the Trauma: In The Magician King, Eliot mentions that Julia was in the habit of obsessively taking steam-baths at the spa where they first met, often cranking up the heat so high that nobody could bear to be in the same room as her. This ultimately turns out to be a consequences of her traumatic encounter with Renard, which resulted in Julia being raped and all but one of her friends murdered; for good measure, Julia left this encounter covered in blood.
• Sex for Services: At her lowest point in the first book, she offered to sleep with Quentin in exchange for magical secrets. He refuses, but we find out in the second book that she later successfully made similar deals with several men in the safehouse scene.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Shocks Quentin by casually showing up at the door of her cabin topless and clearly not giving a damn. It's heavily implied that this is a low-level version of Rape Leads To Promiscuity.
• Spock Speak: In Quentin's parts of the novel, Julia tends to speak in short, clipped sentences, often without contractions. It's eventually revealed that this is one of the side effects of her continuing transformation into a demigod.
• That Man Is Dead: When she finally manages to recover from her trauma and ascend to the level of a dryad, she makes it clear that as positive as this transformation is, she can't go back to the happy-go-lucky girl she once was; the old Julia is dead and isn't coming back.
• Took a Level in Badass: Made clear when she shows up at the end of the first book as a Hedge-Witch powerful enough to join Eliot and Janet in flying off to retrieve Quentin. The extent of her power and its origins aren't made clear up until the second book, though.
• Wandering Walk of Madness: After being denied her chance to learn magic and setting out to rebuild her life, Julia Wicker took to obsessively walking across town, usually while remaining glued to her smartphone and instinctively dodging obstacles. Quite apart from being the first indication that her apparent recovery from depression wasn't so successful as it first seemed, her walking ultimately led her to a Hedge-Wizard safehouse, and from there, right into learning serious magic - resulting in even more Sanity Slippage.
• Youthful Freckles: Julia has them. It’s mentioned that they clash with her Goth appearance later on. As a dryad, she no longer seems to possess them, further driving home the fact that her old self is gone forever.

The Paramedic / The Driver

A strange woman that keeps bumping into Quentin and Alice at various stages of the story, sometimes serving as a paramedic, sometimes working as a taxi driver.

• All-Powerful Bystander: Despite being powerful enough to wander in and out of Brakebills as she please, she doesn't involve herself directly in the affairs of the main characters except to encourage them to take certain courses of actions. She's actually the Watcherwoman and orchestrating the events of the entire first book from behind the scenes.
• Blue-Collar Warlock: A powerful witch currently working as either a paramedic or a taxi driver, even providing the conversation expected of the average cabbie.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Initially just seems to be unknowingly responsible for getting Quentin and Alice in contact with Brakebills... then she begins cropping up at Brakebills - and Dean Fogg seems to know about her. She's actually Jane Chatwin, the Watcherwoman.
• The Taxi: Moonlights as a taxi driver. In Alice's Story, she helps get Alice to the outskirts of Brakebills, and later "coincidently" turns up at exactly the right time to pick Alice up on the way to the airport - giving her the opportunity to talk her out of leaving Quentin.

Emily Greenstreet

• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Styles herself as a sweet girl who was just a victim of evil magic, yet strung along Alice's brother for no good reason and ended up using him as a healing resource instead of seeking out professional help - getting him effectively killed in the process. For good measure, she has no problem living a parasitic existence dependent on the funding of the magicians she claims to hate and mistrust.
• Career-Revealing Trait: Quentin instantly recognizes Emily as a fellow Brakebills alumnus by the overdeveloped musculature of her hands and fingers, acquired as a result of years spent practicing ridiculously complex gestures.
• Defector from Decadence: Subverted — she only thinks she's one of these. In reality, she's just making excuses for just how miserable she really is.
• Facial Horror: Accidentally inflicted this on herself while trying to pretty herself up for Mayakovsky. The novel doesn't go into much detail, though the brief glimpse we get in Alice's Story indicates that her nose was destroyed. According to Janet, even after having her face repaired, Emily looks quite different today.
• Hypocrite: Seems quite content to go through life believing that magic and its practitioners are the source of all the world's ills while at the same time working a job provided for her by Dean Fogg and enchanted to disguise the fact that she does absolutely nothing.
• Never My Fault: Emily blames the death of her boyfriend on magic, claiming that it would have happened regardless of what she did; however, it's made clear that Charlie's death was due to her a) stringing him along while pining for Mayakovsky, b) accidentally disfiguring herself while trying to make herself more attractive for Professor Sexypants, and c) Charlie trying to heal her but being too upset to work magic calmly and transforming into a Niffin. She even serves as an enabler to Quentin's own version of this trope, before he finally realizes he can't blame magic and he can't stop dodging the blame for a disaster he helped cause, and leaves her.
• The Slacker: Not only does she spend her days pretending to hold down a real job while under full support of the Brakebills old boys' network, but she's too lazy to even make her idea of The Unmasqued World a reality.
• Vain Sorceress: A failed version, having disfigured herself with magic.
• Windmill Crusader: Apparently believes that Bakebills is populated entirely by human nuclear bombs waiting to go off, and believes that someone has to break the Masquerade and bring the whole thing into the public eye... and judging by her frankly delusional idea of what magic is, it's best not to imagine what she hopes would happen next. Not only does Emily not have the ambition to make her demented beliefs a reality, but she's completely wrong: when the big apocalyptic disaster does occur, it's not due to the Brakebills crowd at all - who actually instruct their students not to screw around with forbidden knowledge - but due to a group of Hedge-Wizards.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Emily seems to be under the impression that she's the virtuous hero of a story in which the brave Defector from Decadence leaves pure evil magic and all its Evil Sorcerer practitioners behind before they can cause an apocalypse, and finds love in the arms of a fellow defector. In reality, most magicians are too busy wasting time to bother with an apocalypse, and Quentin ends up so turned off by her attitude that he can't stand to remain in her presence.

The Chatwin Children

Overall Tropes

The protagonists of the highly-popular Fillory And Further novels; starting out as a small group of young siblings sent to their home of their aunt during the chaos of World War I, they were the first to stumble upon Fillory and have adventures there - later to be documented and published by Christopher Plover.

• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Chatwin family was a dysfunctional mess when they first stumbled upon Fillory, and only got worse as time went on; the father was a casualty of WWI, the mother suffered a mental breakdown, the aunt never took responsibility for the children in her care, Martin was prone to mood-swings and ran away from home, Helen got so devoted to Ember and Umber that she became a religious fanatic, and Jane ran away as well.
• Expy: For the Pevensies; in particular, Martin becomes the recognized stand-in for Peter as both are the eldest siblings and both become the High Kings of their respective fantasy realms. Meanwhile, Fiona Chatwin remains the only member of the family to forget about Fillory and move on with her life, making her a stand-in for Susan.
• Free-Range Children: Saddled with a guardian who could barely spare a glance in their direction and living in a time before social services would have intervened, the Chatwin children took to roaming around the neighbourhood at will in search of new portals to Fillory. In fact, they met Christopher Plover by happening to barge into his house one day; deconstructed - this lack of supervision resulted in Martin getting molested by Plover while alone at his house.
• Hero of Another Story: The Chatwins were all heroes in their own adventures in Fillory, the full extent of which remain unknown thanks to Plover's artistic license. Jane took it to the next level by waging a secret war against the Beast over the course of her entire adult life.
• Kid Hero: All of them had their adventures when they were very young - and weren't allowed to return to Fillory once they grew up.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: After returning from their adventures, they had to pretend to be less adept at what they'd learned in Fillory in order to avoid attracting attention. Not all of the children could keep up the façade, though.
• Parental Neglect: The Chatwins' aunt had zero interest in actually paying attention any of them, and was usually more preoccupied in entertaining her huge entourage of potential suiters at various parties. As a result, the kids had to learn to look after themselves.
• Real After All:
  • Though widely known as the protagonists of a popular children's fantasy series, the Chatwins were actually real people living in the early 20th century, much to Quentin's surprise.
  • Even among people who know that the Chatwins were real and are aware that magic exists, Fillory is believed to be just a tall tale made up by Christopher Plover. Even Plum - Rupert Chatwin's great-grandaughter - initially believed that the whole thing was due to mental illness.

Martin

Martin Chatwin

The oldest of the siblings and the first High King of Fillory.

• Big Brother Instinct: Even in his lowest moods, he still did his best to keep Rupert safe by warning him not to end up alone in Plover's house.
• Broken Ace: The High King of Fillory, a brave warrior and an intrepid adventurer, not to mention a natural athlete back in the real world... and yet, none of it meant anything to him by the end, overshadowed as it was by his own depression.
• Child Mage: Went out of his way to learn magic in the hopes of finding a way back into Fillory.
• Chekhov M.I.A.: Mysteriously vanishes after fleeing into the depths of Fillory; among those who aren't aware that Fillory is real, it's widely believed that he simply ran away from home. He's actually none other than the Beast.
• Deal with the Devil: Eventually revealed to have made a deal with Umber, exchanging his humanity for a permanent stay in Fillory. Unfortunately, without his humanity, he gradually trandformed into the Beast - and ended up becoming so dangerous that he forced both Ember and Umber into hiding.
• The Dog Bites Back: Took revenge for Plover's repeated molestation by murdering him not long after becoming the Beast.
• Emo Teen: Known for being moody, bitter and prone to mood swings towards the end of his time in Fillory. His younger siblings took this as a sign that he was just going through a dodgy adolescence, and little sympathy is afforded him in Plover's books. He was actually being molested by Plover.
• Escapism: As he spent more time in Fillory, he grew more and more contemptuous of the real world, fixating on Fillory's positive elements to the exclusion of all else - never realizing that the place was a Crapsaccharine World - to the point that he fled into the wilderness of Fillory and never came back.
• Foil: To Quentin, both being known for obsessing over a fantasy world where happiness is always within reach and ruining what they had in their attempts to achieve contentment.
• The High King: As the eldest of the kids, serves as the High King of Fillory.
• Mood-Swinger: Known for swinging wildly between periods of excitability and crippling depression as the series continued. Retains this trait as the Beast.
• Only the Pure of Heart: With Fillory insisting on total innocence among those who visit, Martin was the first to be excluded from the land - not just because he was growing up, but because of Christopher Plover molesting him.
• Parental Substitute: With both parents absent and the aunt having no interest in caring for the children in her care, Martin had to look after his younger siblings himself.
• Tragic Dream: All he wanted was to escape the horrors of the real world and stay in Fillory forever... but the very reason why he wanted to stay was the same reason why Fillory wouldn't let him return.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Used to be the sweet-natured responsible member of the family, doing his best to keep his brothers and sisters happy; then he got addicted to Fillory and Plover started raping him behind closed doors. By the end of his time on Earth, Martin was so bitter he could scarcely pretend to give a damn about his family or the real world. And then he became the Beast.

Fiona

The second-eldest member of the siblings; joined Martin on his journey to Fillory.

• I Just Want to Be Normal: After what happened to Martin, Fiona gradually drifted away from Fillory and did her best to pretend that it never existed.
• Master Archer: Became a brilliant archer in Fillory, though she was forced to play dumb when she took archery classes back in the real world for a time - until, like the rest of her siblings, she gave up on seeming ordinary altogether.

Rupert

Martin's younger brother. The middle child of the family.

• Apocalyptic Log: Writes his own instalment of the Fillory and Further series while waiting to die in World War II, adding a barbed ending in the dim hope that Ember and Umber might save him.
• Blackmail: Threatened to reveal the existence of Fillory - and by extension, magic - to the entire world if Ember and Umber didn't end World War II. Tragically, it didn't work.
• Innocent Inaccurate: As a child, he completely misinterpreted Martin's warning not to be alone around Christopher Plover, believing that Martin enjoyed being the man's protégé and was just jealous of anyone who might take his place. As an adult, Rupert realizes his mistake, now understanding that Martin had been sexually assaulted by Plover and was trying to prevent the same thing from happening to Rupert.
• Jade-Colored Glasses: All the Chatwin kids had their innocence crushed over time, but Rupert arguably plunged deeper into cynicism than any of the others; as an adult, he cast aside any nostalgia for Fillory, gave up all hope of the Allies winning World War II, and even became convinced that his family would be doomed if he didn't go so far as to blackmail the gods of Fillory.
• Papa Wolf: As an adult, Rupert was deathly afraid of what would happen to his wife and child if the Allies were to lose the war, to the point that he actually called upon the power of Ember and Umber to bring the fight to Hitler - though it didn't work. Thankfully, his family survived the war, eventually resulting in the birth of Plum Polson Purchas, Rupert's great-granddaughter.
• Posthumous Character: Killed in World War II, only being known as a character due to the autobiography he leaves in his wake.
• Rich Recluse's Realm: Having gotten rich from the royalties granted to him by Christopher Plover, Rupert bought a spectacular manor in the countryside and almost never left until World War II, having been consumed with guilt over the events of Martin's disappearance.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: His experiences in World War II destroyed what little hope and idealism Rupert had left, to the point that he was fully convinced that the Allies would lose.
• The Shut-In: Apparently spent most of his adult life as a guilt-ridden recluse before joining the army.

Helen

• The Fundamentalist: Known for being a devout worshipper of Ember and Umber, to the point that she actually hid the magical buttons that would have allowed the children to return to Fillory of their own accord, believing that they were against the laws of the Rams. After Fillory, she moved to Texas and spent the rest of her days as a Christian Evangelist.

Jane

The youngest of the siblings.

• The Baby of the Bunch: The youngest of the siblings, the last of them to visit Fillory, and known for getting overruled by her older brothers and sisters - especially Helen.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: The shyest member of the family, but no less heroic for it. As an adult, she's the one to orchestrate Martin's death.
• Cain and Abel: When Martin descended into corruption and became the Beast, Jane was entrusted with the only power that could eventually ensure his death; though she tried to prevent him from ever selling his humanity to Umber, she found that history simply couldn't be rearranged that way, leaving her no choice but to pit the Physical Kids against him.
• Chekhov M.I.A.: Much like Martin, she eventually fell out of contact with the rest of her family and went AWOL. She's actually the taxi driver that got Alice to Brakebills and the paramedic that gave Quentin The Magicians in the first place... and most shockingly of all, she turns out to have been the Watcherwoman all along, trying to save Fillory from the Beast that Martin ultimately became.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: In-universe example. Out of all the Chatwin children, Jane is a fan-favourite, mainly because her thoughtful attitude sets her apart from the others.
• Future Self Reveal: Having already discovered that she was actually the past version of the Watcherwoman decades ago, Jane ultimately appears before Quentin to reveal that she was once the most famous characters of the Fillory And Further series.
• The Quiet One: Known for being quite withdrawn as a five-year-old; her one-sentence response to Martin's first visit to Fillory was considered quite wordy by her standards.
• Sole Survivor: By the end of the first book, she's the last surviving member of the Chatwin siblings, having outlived most of them and arranged for the violent death of Martin.

The Magical Underground

Warren

Poppy

Poppy

• Awesome Aussie: An Australian magician with a thing for dragons, a go-getter attitude and an impressive ability to adapt. After witnessing Poppy flourishing in her first battle, Quentin assumes she grew up fighting dingoes.
• Brutal Honesty: One of her main traits is that she always speaks the truth about a situation, but she never does it in a cruel manner or mean spirit.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Tends to just charge in when others are moving cautiously. For example, when Josh and Julia are still discussing what they should be doing in the swamp, she just jumps right in, not knowing this is what they were supposed to do to reach Castle Blackspire.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Despite her Brutal Honesty, she will engage in whimsical activities such as jumping into the river with Quentin to contact the dragon, for the simple reason of it doubling their chances, even though the river is disgusting. She also becomes Quentin's second major love interest, but ends up with Josh after Quentin is forced to leave Fillory by Ember at the end of the second book.
• Nerves of Steel: Proves astonishingly calm under fire, especially in her first battle; by contrast, Quentin and the other Physical Kids spent their first battle struggling to be of any use.
• Only Sane Man: Regards Quentin’s obsession with Fillory as bizarre and slightly unhealthy, pointing out that he’s ignoring the better parts of reality by accentuating the disappointing elements. For his part, Quentin has trouble believing that someone so practical could ever become a magician.
• Pregnant Badass: By the third books, she's pregnant with Josh's baby, but she hasn't slowed down in the slightest - joining the journey to Castle Blackspire and enthusiastically participating in the final battle.

The Free Trader Beowulf group

Asmodeus

Asmodeus, AKA Betty

• Femme Fatale: Adopts this as her persona while working in the magical underworld after her run in with Reynard.
• Hero of Another Story: After acquiring the knife with Quentin’s help, she leaves the story with the goal of hunting down Renard.
• Improbable Age: She is the youngest member of Free Trader Beowulf, at around seventeen. Julia wonders a few times how she managed to become a hedge witch so young, and where her parents are.
• Kill the God: Asmodeus eventually uses the knife from the heist to gut Reynard like a fish, as told by Julia near the end of the trilogy.
• Rage Against the Heavens: After the encounter with Reynard, Asmodeus begins looking for a way to get revenge on him.

Pouncy Silverkitten

Pouncy Silverkitten

• Broken Ace: A handsome, intelligent and successful young man who’s also a powerful magician but he has suffered from terrible clinical depression all his life, to the point where he has given up on finding happiness on earth and only hopes that the deity the group is trying to summon will take him with her into heaven.
• Deadpan Snarker: Known for his “acid sarcasm.” It turns out to be of the Stepford variety.
• Heaven Seeker: Wants to summon a goddess for the sole purpose of escaping his depression-plagued life and being taken to Heaven.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Tragically subverted, Reynard the Fox wounds him, and then he offers to give his life to save Asmo and Julia. Reynard dismisses it, saying he’s dying anyway.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His desire to summon a deity ends up getting him and most of his enclave killed, getting Julia raped and deprived of her soul, and leaving Asmodeus horribly traumatised. Worse still, his experiments end up getting the attention of the Gods and prompting them to “fix” reality - an act that would have wiped out magic everywhere and destroyed Fillory.
• Non-Idle Rich: Is the one who funds the Murs enclave, and one of the driving forces behind finding out how to harness the magic of the Gods.
• The Team Benefactor

Failstaff

Failstaff

• Big Fun: Failstaff's main character traits are that he is large, and he is one of the nicest members of Free Trader Beowulf

The Heist Team

Plum

A former Brakebills student and illusionist expelled for trespassing on a restricted area of the school. She joins the team alongside Quentin and shares the spotlight with him for most of the novel.

• Alliterative Name: Her full name is Plum Polson Purchas.
• Arbitrary Scepticism: Despite being a senior Brakebills student with full awareness of the magical world, Plum firmly refuses to acknowledge that Fillory and her family's adventures there might have actually been real all along, believing them to be symptoms of mental illness; she even believes that digging too deep into this line of thinking will only result in suffering, so she resolves to suppress such thoughts as best as she can. As such, she's left utterly shell-shocked when the heist concludes with her and Quentin getting their hands on her great-grandfather's Apocalyptic Log, revealing to her that Fillory was actually real.
• Famous Ancestor: Is actually the great-granddaughter of Rupert Chatwin, and grew up with the baggage and dramas of the collapsed family.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Variant - Plum's mother rejected her Chatwin ancestry and did her best to get as far away from her past as possible, and though she married a magician and fully accepts the fact that her daughter is a magician, she was insistent on not letting Plum read any of the Fillory books. As such, though Plum has been able to read the first book on the sly, she's inherited her mother's belief that Fillory was a delusion that ultimately destroyed the family.
• For Want Of A Nail: The incident that led to Plum being expelled and Quentin being fired occurred mainly because Plum was looking for the secret door to the wine closet so she could complete her prank on Wharton - only to accidentally pick the wrong wall panel, instead sending herself into the highly-dangerous restricted area. Without this series of events, the events of the novel would probably never have happened.
• Heroic BSoD: After learning the truth about Fillory, she has a very quiet meltdown in private as she realizes that the fantasy world that ruined her family's life was real all along and she's going to have to confront it head-on, until she finally finds herself admitting to Quentin that Fillory is real.
• In the Blood: Thanks to the aforementioned Fantasy-Forbidding Parent, Plum is convinced that she's inherited a perverse desire to learn more about Fillory and is predestined to die young.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: After a very traumatizing night ends with her being expelled, Plum is offered a glass of wine by Wharton - and very nearly skulls the whole thing in one gulp, her Sommelier Speak taking a nostalgic, near-heartbroken tone.
• Plucky Girl: Though she comes from a very troubled family, was pushed hard to excel by her parents, is expelled from Brakebills, is nearly killed on several occasions, and has her worldview completely shattered at one point, Plum continuously bounces back from her many misfortunes with seemingly boundless energy. She's not a full-blown version of The Pollyanna, given that she suffers from brief spells of depression, but she launches herself back into her work with such aplomb that even Quentin can't help but be impressed.
• The Prankster: At Brakebills, she was the head of the League, a small but dedicated all-female group of practical jokers. Their prime target - before Plum was expelled - was Wharton, who earned the group's wrath for watering their wine at dinner; unfortunately, the last stage of the prank ended in Plum accidentally trespassing on a restricted area, getting the attention of Alice the Niffin, nearly getting herself killed, and earning a swift expulsion. Away from school, she's a lot more mature.
• Skeptic No Longer: After spending roughly half of the novel convinced that Fillory was just a tall tale, she finds herself tearfully acknowledging the reality of the place after finding Rupert's last testament complete with a priceless god-killing knife.
• Teen Genius: Even by Brakebills standards, Plum excels in this field, having been tutored in magic for years in advance prior to being enrolled. With this in mind, it's the main reason she manages to keep up with a caper crew of professional magicians.

The Blackbird

A talking animal who just happens to be mysterious client behind the heist.

Lionel

The owner of the bookstore where the team assembles, and the Blackbird's right-hand man.

Pushkar

A formally-trained magician specializing in enchantments.

Stoppard

A petulant young hedge-magician specializing in artificing and other technomagic; hired specifically to tackle the target’s security.

"Betsy"