The Dresden Files/Characters/The Kemmlerites
Heinrich Kemmler
Heinrich Kemmler was considered to be the most dangerous wizard who ever lived. An immensely powerful necromancer who spent over a century planning World War I and wreaking havoc in World War Two, up until the White Council and every ally they could pull together gathered and killed him for good. His legacy remains, however, in a series of books spreading his knowledge of necromancy, as well as his survivng disciples.
- Axe Crazy
- Big Bad: For his timeframe, at least.
- The Chessmaster: Spent over a century engineering World War I, after all.
- Complete Monster: In-Universe, he is considered one, even by people who otherwise have no concept of morality like Bob.
- Evil Overlord
- Necromancer
- Not So Different: Harry's conversation with Evil Bob implies that Harry and Kemmler might have been similar.
- Posthumous Character: Kemmler is dead. Very, very dead. The Council killed him real good, but it took a few tries to make it stick. Seven, according to Ghost Story.
Cowl
An incredibly powerful and mysterious necromancer who, with his assistant Kumori, showed up in Dead Beat to try to harness the Darkhallow. Both he and his assistant Kumori are probably White Council members, and they're pretty much confirmed to be on the Black Council, but their identities are otherwise unknown. Cowl does, however, deny being a Kemmlerite.
- Affably Evil: While not as friendly as Nicodemus or Marcone, Cowl is pretty respectful of Dresden.
- Ambiguously Evil: Is he really Necessarily Evil or just evil?
- Badass: He shrugs off Death Curses like ping pong balls and isn't more than a little winded after Harry flips a car over on him.
- Not to mention the amount of power he'd have to put into taking all of Chicago off the technologicial and communicational grid.
- He's also said to be stronger than Ebenezar and to pack a magical punch equivalent to a Fairy Queen, making him in all probability one of the five or so best wizards in the world.
- Black Cloak: Harry, of course, makes lots of bad jokes about it.
- Chekhov's Gunman: First seen in Grave Peril with the rest of Chekhov's Army, giving Lea the athame. Not really introduced until he shows up 4 books later with the rest of Necromancers-R-Us.
- Determinator: Again, a car thrown at him or multiple Death Curses will not stop this guy!
- Evil Counterpart: Dedicated, a bit curmudgeonly, and uses dark power for what seem to be good-ish purposes.
- The Faceless
- Hidden Agenda Villain: We know what he was after in Dead Beat specifically, but his long-term goals are still mysterious.
- Implacable Man: See above, the car.
- In the Hood
- No Name Given
- Not So Different: Harry notices a lot of similarities between the two of them in Dead Beat, and is appropriately disturbed by the implications.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Why does he want to become a god in Dead Beat? He thinks its inevitable that someone will and considers himself the least possible evil (and when you look at Corpsetaker and Grevane, he probably has a point...)
- Wicked Cultured: Prefers Goethe.
Kumori
Cowl's apprentice / sidekick. Apart from the fact that she's female and a pretty solid Well-Intentioned Extremist, she's almost as much a blank slate as her boss.
- Anti-Villain / Token Good Teammate: Compared to the other members of Necromancers-R-Us.
- Black Cloak: Apart from being slightly smaller and having a female voice, she's pretty much identical to Cowl.
- Dark Is Not Evil: How she views herself and Cowl. Harry disagrees.
- The Dragon: To Cowl
- Enigmatic Minion: Who serves an enigmatic master, no less.
- In the Hood
- Necromancer
- Pet the Dog: Using her necromancy to save a dying man's life. Harry is disturbed at the implications.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: More explicitly than Cowl; she genuinely believes that she can use her necromancy to benefit humankind.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: She does, and she wants everyone else to. Harry points out that by preserving everyone, she would be keeping around the tyrants, the torturers, the genuinely evil people as well as the intellectual all-stars.
Capiorcorpus, aka the Corpsetaker, aka the Grey Ghost
One of the disciples of mad necromancer Hienrich Kemmler, the Corpsetaker is a necromancer who specializes in mental magic, raising spectres, and using dark magic to allow him/her/it to jump between bodies. Violent, savage, and thoroughly insane, behind a veneer of affable friendliness. One of the members of the Kemmlerite gang that showed up in Dead Beat to initiate the Darkhallow. When Harry encounters the Corpsetaker, he/she/it has stolen the body of a college student named Alicia. Returns for another round in Ghost Story as, well, a ghost.
- Axe Crazy: Of all of the Kemmlerites, Corpsetaker is probably the most unbalanced and twisted. Mental magic does that, of course.
- Body Surf
- Boom! Headshot!: How Harry manages to kill her after she takes over Luccio.
- Fallen Hero: Ghost Story reveals that she once a member of the white council before defecting and joining up with Kemmlar
- Grand Theft Me
- Karmic Death: In Ghost Story, Mort destroys her with the same wraiths she had used to torture him.
- Mind Rape
- Necromancer
- Pronoun Trouble: Precisely what gender the Corpsetaker originally had is not clear. Whether the concept of gender really applies to a necromancer who seems to exist purely as a body-hopping mind is up in the air. As of Ghost Story, she appears to be female.
- Weapon of Choice: A tulwar.
- What Beautiful Eyes!: Harry stops to mention them.
Li Xian
A ghoul serving under the Corpsetaker, both as her assistant and drummer to control her spectres.
- The Dragon: To Corpestaker.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Like all ghouls, Li likes human flesh.
- Karmic Death: For details, please cross-consult the Awesome / Dresden page. Hint: Sue.
- Ninja Zombie Pirate Robot: He's a ninja ghoul who specializes in throwing stars.
Grevane
The first of Kemmler's disciples, Grevane is a leathery old man who was Kemmler's "favored" student. Grevane's specialty is in raising large numbers of powerful zombie minions. As in, hundreds of them at a time.
- Axe Crazy: He projects a sense of calm and control, but he frequently loses it when things don't go his way or someone interferes.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Grevane doesn't appear to understand that the reason Harry is portecting Butters is because he's Harry's friend.
- Necromancer
- Our Zombies Are Different: Grevane's zombies are less shuffling mindless flesheaters and more like the Terminator.
- Weapon of Choice: A Kusari-gama which he is quite skilled with.
Evil Bob
Evil Bob is the dark side of Regular Bob that served as Kremmeler's spirit of intellect for centuries. While technically not a member of the Kremmlerites, he made his first appearance in the same book nearly killing Harry in the process. Harry not wanting someone to gain access to that part of him again ordered Bob to forget it completely. Naturally this backfires as Bob took that order as a command to sever the part of himself off leading to it becoming The Dragon to the Corpsetaker's ghost in Ghost Story. The last we see of Evil Bob is him locked in combat with his regular self.
- Badass
- Barrier Warrior: While not one in the traditional sense he is the creator of the Corpsetaker's system of wards.
- The Comically Serious: See below under We Can Rule Together
- The Dragon: To Kemmler and later on Corpsetaker's ghost
- Enemy Without
- Evil Counterpart
- Evil Me Scares Me
- One-Man Army: If Bob hadn't intervened he probably would have taken on the Lecter army by himself and won
- Putting on the Reich:Evil Bob worked for Kemmler for a while, and picked up an appreciation for SS gear, as is seen when Harry assaults his wards .
- Servile Snarker: Offers to kill a Fomor minion and leave a note on the corpse to call ahead next time after the minion interrupts Mort's torture session.
- Super-Powered Evil Side: Naturally
- Super Strength: He was able to grab Harry's staff with two of his fingers and lift up Harry's whole body in the process.
- We Can Rule Together: Gives Harry the usual speech about joining forces but because of the way he phrases it Harry manages to turn it into a gay joke. It takes a minute for Bob to realize he's being mocked.
- Wrestler in All of Us:His confrontation with his normal self consists mostly of grappling moves