Chronicles of Thomas Covenant/Characters

Introduced in the First Chronicles

Thomas Covenant

Anti-Hero: In the first series, Type 1 mixed with Type V. In the second series, Type 3.
The Chosen One: Deconstructed
Designated Hero: Deliberately.
Flat Earth Atheist: Though to be fair, he's convinced that if he allows his worldview to contain anything but leprosy, he'll lose his self-protective skills and die a very prolonged and unpleasant death.
Hero with an F In Good
How Do I Shot Web?: It takes a whole trilogy for Covenant to learn to use his ring.
Jerkass: In the first series
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In the second.
Moral Event Horizon: Raping Lena. Notably, Covenant himself views it as a crossing; he's never free of his guilt, and the consequences dog him from pretty much the whole Chronicles.
- At the time he did it, Covenant explicitly believed that Lena's existence- and the existence of everything else in the Land, was an hallucination. He ultimately concludes that this does not constitute a legitimate excuse.
Heroic Sacrifice: By the end of the second trilogy, he resolves to give Foul his ring and let himself die, since the broken Law of Death will allow him to remain forever as a barrier between the wild magic and the Arch of Time.
Power Incontinence: In the second series, Lord Foul uses cursed venom to deliberately induce this, hoping Covenant will lose control completely and annihilate the Land on his own.
Take a Third Option: How he resolves his dilemma about the Land's reality.
What the Hell, Hero?: The aforementioned Moral Event Horizon.

Lord Foul the Despiser

Artifact of Doom: He uses one, the Illearth Stone.
As Long as There Is Evil: "Despite can never die".
Batman Gambit: His specialty. He's not bad at the Xanatos Gambit, either.
Big Bad
Card-Carrying Villain: Look at the name! Foul's what Card Carrying Villains want to be when they grow up.
The Chessmaster
Color Coded for Your Convenience: Generally speaking, if anything is a distinct shade of sickly green, Foul's involved somewhere.
Complete Monster
The Corrupter
Despair Event Horizon: Not his own, but pushing people past these is pretty much his standard MO.
Enemy Without: Depending on what explanation you favor, he's either Covenant's, humanity's as a whole, or the Creator's. He's definitely somebody's Enemy Without.
Evil Gloating: He treats new heroes to the Land with magnificent monologues of exactly what he's done to hurt them, then explains how he'll continue to hurt them, predicting their breaking points. He hasn't been wrong yet.
For the Evulz: He just hates everything, and he's not shy about explaining this in detail.
Glowing Eyes of Doom
God of Evil
I Have Many Names: And they're all unpleasant. As a sampling, there's Lord Foul the Despiser, The Gray Slayer, Fangthane, A'Jeroth of the Seven Hells, and Satansheart Soulcrusher. The Haruchai just call him Corruption, which for them is pretty damned horrible.
Not So Different: He and Covenant are more alike than either will willingly admit until the end of the second chronicles, when Covenant uses that knowledge to get under Foul's metaphorical skin and pull a nasty Batman Gambit on the great Chessmaster.
Obviously Evil: He can hide it, but normally doesn't bother.
Orcus on His Throne: Foul is off-page for most of the series, since he usually spends most of his time in his current lair- Ridjeck Thome (first Chronicles), Kiril Threndor (second Chronicles) and an unknown location (Last Chronicles). Doesn't mean the reader isn't treated to the consequences of his Chessmastery in great detail, though.
Physical God
Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: At the end of The Last Dark, Covenant imprisons Foul inside himself.

Lena

Break the Cutie
Defiled Forever: It drives her insane.
Victim Falls For Rapist: Deconstructed. It's her way of coping, and is explicitly very unhealthy.
The Woobie

Saltheart Foamfollower

Badass
Last of His Kind: But only in the Land- there are still plenty of Giants in other parts of the world.
The Messiah
Messianic Archetype: To the jheherrin.
Morality Chain: In the first series, he's about the only thing tying Covenant to humanity (and for that matter, sanity) for a while.
Our Giants Are Bigger
Spanner in the Works: To Lord Foul.
Warrior Poet

Lord Mhoram

Authority Equals Asskicking
Badass
Blessed with Suck: Prophetic visions aren't a lot of fun when a). they're normally about horrible things, and b). you can't stop the visions from coming or coming true.
Magic Knight
The Messiah
Only Sane Man: In a world where the good guys favorite toy seems to be the Idiot Ball he's a refreshing breath of rationality.
Supporting Leader
Wizards Live Longer

High Lord Elena

Back From the Dead: Foul brings her back to be The Dragon.
Broken Bird
Dark Magical Girl: Elena's not evil, but she's got... issues.
Hoist By Her Own Petard: Calling up the ghost of Kevin Landwaster bites her hard.
Magic Knight: She actually holds her own against the undead Kevin for a while, though the fact that she had the Staff of Law probably helped.
Parental Incest: Covenant's her biological father, though she doesn't consider him her "real" father. She does however, hero-worship him and nurse a deep-seated attraction to him. He says no, because, well, Squick.
Unholy Matrimony: "Elena Foul-Wife". Word of God is that it was just to mess with Covenant, though.

Hile Troy

Despair Event Horizon: What prompts him to even try luring Foul's minions to Garroting Deep in the first place.
Disability Superpower
Eyeless Face
Heroic Sacrifice: In the Second Chronicles.
Nature Spirit: As the Forestal Caer-Caveral.
Supporting Leader
The Strategist: Played with. Troy's very good- but Fleshharrower's army is so much more powerful that it (almost) doesn't matter.
Was Once a Man: The price that the Forestal Caerroil Wildwood exacts for helping Troy destroy Fleshharrower is that Troy will become a Forestal himself.

Bannor

Drool Rockworm

Alas, Poor Villain: In the Last Chronicles, Covenant expresses pity for Drool, regarding him as just another victim of the Illearth Stone and Lord Foul.
Big Bad Wannabe
Evil Sorcerer: Subverted. He tries. It doesn't work out well for him.
Starter Villain
Unwitting Pawn

High Lord Kevin

Despair Event Horizon: Oh God.
Names to Run Away From: After the Desecration, he gains the name "Landwaster"

Ravers

As Long as There Is Evil: As long as Foul lives, the Ravers will be there with him.
Demonic Possession: It's what they do best.
Meaningful Name: Their own chosen names are moksha, turiya, and samadhi, all terms for the various levels of enlightenment in the Hindu religion (Donaldson grew up in India, as the son of missionaries.) Word of God is that this reflects the tendency of evil people to think they are really more clear-sighted than everyone else.
- Names to Run Away From: In their Giant forms their names are Fleshharrower, Kinslaughterer and Satansfist
The Dragon
- Co-Dragons
The Starscream: Subverted. Foul knows they could be this, if they ever got their hands on enough power- so he makes sure they don't.
Was Once a Man: They were once three human brothers, but their evil was so great it continued on after their physical deaths- eventually Foul found them, and made them his lieutenants.

Cavewights

Exclusively Evil: Though they weren't originally that way.
Axe Crazy
Mooks
Our Orcs Are Different: They don't physically resemble orcs, but fill basically the same niche.
Weak-Willed

Ur-viles

Exclusively Evil: Subverted. They're more a case of...
- Blue and Orange Morality
Conservation of Ninjitsu: Inverted; loremasters can combine the strengths of individual ur-viles together, meaning individual ur-viles' power has a good chance of going up the more of them are around.
Enigmatic Minion: A whole race of them.
Elite Mooks: They're no stronger than cavewights, but are a lot smarter and have powerful magic on their side.
Evil Sorcerer: Ur-vile Loremasters are some of the most dangerous magic-users in the Land.
Heel Face Turn: Started in the Second Chronicles, fully in the Last.
Magic Knight: The loremasters.

The Haruchai

Honor Before Reason: To a mind numbing degree
Proud Warrior Race

The Giants

Made of Iron: Fire don't hurt 'em, cold don't hurt 'em, acid does but not as much as humans.
Our Giants Are Bigger

The Ramen

Planet of Hats They love horses. A lot.
Snark Bait They are called "Ramen" because they are from the Plains of Ra, not because they have any connection to cheap Japanese noodles!

Ranyhyn

Cool Horses

The Creator

Introduced in the Second Chronicles

Linden Avery

Anti-Hero: Type 1
Dark Magical Girl: Rather like Elena, she's not evil, but has issues
Despair Event Horizon: Particularly in the second Chronicles she wrestles with depression and nearly crosses this several times
The Empath: Even by the Land's standards, her health sense is strong
Mama Bear: In the Last Chronicles
Mind Rape: A victim of one, courtesy of Gibbon
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Resurrecting Covenant in Fatal Revenant, which seemed like a good idea at the time but also woke up the Worm of World's end. Oops.
The Medic: Half of Against All Things Ending is her healing everyone.
Sugar and Ice Personality

The First of the Search

Pitchwife

Alchemy Is Magic
The Grotesque: Though he keeps good humor about it
The Heart
Our Giants Are Bigger: Though Pitchwife is actually a dwarf, hunchbacked giant, so he's not as big as most, though still larger than a human
Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: With the First.

Sunder and Hollian

Back From the Dead: Hollian
Battle Couple: Eventually
Blood Magic
Defector From Decadence: Both of them
La Résistance: Against the Clave

The Clave

Blood Magic
Color Coded for Your Convenience: Oh, the guys who wear black and red and use Blood Magic can't possibly be the bad guys...
Path of Inspiration
Villain with Good Publicity: Well, not good exactly, but while the people hate them, they do trust them to keep them safe from the Sunbane. That's not quite how it works...

Kasreyn of the Gyre

Vain

Heroic Sacrifice: Didn't see that one coming, did you?
Implacable Man
The Load: On account of following the heroes around while being nearly impossible to make do anything.
The Voiceless
Wild Card: Sort of. Vain doesn't do much, but he does have an ultimate purpose, and nobody knows what that is (except for Findail, who's not telling). It turns out he's half of what's needed to recreate the Staff of Law.

The Elohim

Introduced in the Last Chronicles

Roger Covenant

Big Bad Wannabe
Magnificent Bastard: Roger may not have the power to measure up against Foul, but he is very intelligent and manipulative.
Red Right Hand: Courtesy of Kastenessen, one of his hands is made of lava.

Joan Covenant

Jeremiah Avery

Liand

Last of His Kind: The only living Stonedowner.

Esmer

Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: He doesn't even want to, it's literally woven into his nature.
Meddling Parents

Kastenessen

Ax Crazy
Big Bad Duumvirate: Arguably with Foul, since unlike most of the Despiser's dupes, Kastenessen's an Elohim and is too powerful to be treated as a minion- and his goal of destroying everything dovetails nicely with Foul's goal of breaking the Arch of Time.
Omnicidal Maniac
Physical God
Playing with Fire
Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Yeah, he wants to destroy the Elohim (and everything else) but given what he's been through, it's kind of hard to blame him.

Anele

Stave

The Masters

The Humbled

Proud Warrior Race Guy

The Insequent

Ancient Keeper
Big Bad Wannabe: The Harrow
Crippling Overspecialization: This can happen to them, as the Harrow found out. Seems that being the world's expert on using and fighting Demondim magic doesn't do much to protect you from a Kastenessen-powered Roger Covenant.
Evil Sorcerer: The Harrow. The Vizard wasn't very nice either.
I Know Your True Name: An Insequent's true name gives its speaker power over them, which is why they usually go by titles.
Proud Scholar Race: Of the Mystic variety.
The Unfettered: To varying degrees.
Wizards Live Longer: Exactly how long-lived they are isn't stated, but if the Theomach is any indication, they last for several milennia at least.

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