< Malazan Book of the Fallen

Malazan Book of the Fallen/Characters


Malazan Empire

Empress Laseen

Adjunct Lorn

Whiskeyjack

Dujek One-Arm

Captain Ganoes Paran

  • Blessed with Suck: How he sees the intervention of various gods in his life.
  • Can't Stay Normal: Whether it's falling for a mage, being used by the Adjunct, absorbing the blood of a Hound of Shadow, or becoming Master of the Deck Paran cannot seem to stay away from the supernatural.
  • The Chosen One: Becomes Master of the Deck of Dragons in Memories of Ice, a position he'd really rather avoid.
  • Cool Sword: For a while. His sword, Chance was blessed/cursed by Oponn.
  • It Sucks to Be the Chosen One

Quick Ben

  • Defector From Decadence: A Former High Priest of Shadow.
  • Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Shadowthrone, Hood, the Crippled God, Quick Ben's made a very long list of powerful enemies, and doesn't seem to mind in the least.
  • The Smart Guy: For the Bridgeburners and the Malazan Army in general. It's been said that if Kruppe is one of the smartest people in the world, than Quick Ben is only a step behind him. A short one, mind you.
  • The Trickster: Definitely has some aspects of this trope. He alters his plans easily, and plays with mortals, Ascendants and gods with equal ease.
  • Underestimating Badassery: People and gods do this to Quick Ben a lot. It doesn't usually end well for them.
    • "He was Quick Ben. He thought outwitting gods was fun." (Dust of Dreams)
  • Taking You with Me: Quick Ben goes out in a literal blaze of glory in Dust of Dreams unleashing all his magic at once to eliminate part of a attacking Nah-ruk invasion force. It doesn't help the Bridgeburners much...
  • Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner: After Quick Ben unleashes half of his warrens (sources of magical power) to blast Korbal Broach through a wall, Bauchelain, partner of the aforementioned Korbal Broach, notes that Quick Ben's power is most impressive, but that, in retrospect, he ought to have saved at least half his warrens.

"But Bauchelain," replies Quick Ben, "I did."
He then blows Bauchelain through the wall too.

Corporal Kalam

Tattersail

High Mage Tayschrenn

Dassem Ultor

Coltaine

  • Badass
  • Mercy Kill: Delivered to him by a Malazan marksman to release his soul and spare him the shame of being crucified.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: The leader of the Wickan tribes in service to the empire.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Escorted 30,000 Malazan refugees across the worst desert in the world, under constant attack from dozens of different armies and in constant danger of starvation. His reward? To be abandoned by his superiors and crucified right outside the walls of Aren. Most of the refugees were Ungrateful Bastards as well.
  • The Stoic

Darujhistan

Crokus Younghand/Cutter

Rallick Nom

Kruppe

Murillio

  • The Casanova
  • Informed Ability: We're often told that Murillio is extremely skilled with the rapier. Usually right before (or as) someone or something kicks his ass.
  • Killed Off for Real: And rather pointlessly to boot.
  • Stuffed in The Fridge: His death serves only to force Cutter to kill Gorlas Vidikas, which is in and of itself, completely irrelevant to the overall plot of both the entire series, and Toll the Hounds'.

Coll

Alchemist Baruk

Lady Simtal

Snell

Bellam Nom

Caladan Brood's Forces

Warlord Caladan Brood

Kallor, The High King

"If you call it a sudden reversal of strategy, the sting fades."

"Kallor Eiderann Tes'thesula each time you rise you shall than fall. All that you achieve shall turn to dust in your hands. As you have willfully done here, so shall it be visited upon you in all that you do."

  • Famed in Story
  • Fridge Horror: Kallor was so evil that his people dropped the Crippled God on him to try and get rid of him. This means that he is indirectly responsible for every bad thing that happens in the series.
  • Gone Horribly Right: Kallor's curse did exactly what it was supposed to do. It made him an even bigger SOB.
  • Hero-Killer: Clearly has this status by Toll the Hounds.
  • Immortality: Type VI. And he hates it. He's still around though, which says a lot about him.
  • Immortality Hurts: Although he'll deny it to the end.
  • Jerkass
  • Lone Dalek: In Toll the Hounds, where the degree that Kallor's life has sucked becomes apparent. It's almost entirely his own fault, but you can still feel a certain amount of pity for him.
  • Misanthrope Supreme: Kallor is fully aware that he is a spiteful, vicious minded bastard, who takes out his frustrations on everyone around him. He also believes that Humans Are the Real Monsters, and that as such, his tyranny and brutality are not only justified, but the norm.
  • Not So Harmless: Everybody mocked Kallor as a bullying braggart. Right up until he joins with the Crippled God and performs an epic backstab on Brood's forces. Averted in Toll the Hounds where he approaches near Hero-Killer status.
  • Number Two: Serves as Brood's second-in-command.
  • Precision F-Strike: Twice during his duel with Spinnock Durav in Toll the Hounds.
  • Pride: Kallor is arrogant, prone to overestepping his bounds, and very touchy about insults to his person. And then there's the whole, "allowing a continent to die rather than relinquishing control of it" thing, and the obsession with power and becoming an Ascendant.
  • Really Seven Hundred Years Old: He's older than most Ascendants, despite being completely mortal. He was cursed over 120 000 years ago and is still alive and kicking.
  • Sanity Slippage: Seems to have suffered some between Memories of Ice and Toll the Hounds.
  • Time Abyss
  • Turncoat

Tiste Andii

Annomander Rake

Korlat

Orfantal

Spinnock Durav

Silchas Ruin


Tiste Edur

Fear Sengar

Trull Sengar

  • Badass: The first person to ever successfully hold off Icarium Lifestealer.
  • Blade on a Stick: His spear is his favourite weapon.

Ruhlad Sengar

See High House Chains

Hannan Mosag, The Warlock King

Tulas Shorn

T'lan Imass

Onos Too'lan

  • Badass: Yes he's undead. Yes he has a host of advantages related to being undead. And yet, Tool is still incredibley Badass.
  • Berserk Button: Tool doesn't have a lot of friends. Don't hurt the ones he has.
  • Cool Sword: A huge, enchanted flint sword.
  • Deliberate Injury Gambit: As a T'lan Imass, Tool can surive anything short of beheading or total dismemberment. It's not surprising, therefore, that these kind of tactics feature prominently in his playbook.
  • Good Thing You Can Heal: Like most of the T'lan Imass, Tool regularly shrugs off crippling injuries, just to remind us that, yes, he is undead.
  • Implacable Man: Comes with being a T'lan Imass, although even by their standards he's pretty damn hard to stop.
  • Loners Are Freaks: Tool is unbound, and unconnected to any clan. Other T'lan Imass tend to view him with a mix of suspicion and awe because of this.
  • The Undead: Naturally.
  • The Unfettered

Silverfox

Jaghut

Raest

  • A God Am I: Like many Jaghut Tyrants, Raest took perverse delight in being percieved as a god by the Imass.
  • Armour Is Useless: You don't even find out he was wearing it until several books after the fight. To be fair, he was fighting Dragons, so it probably didn't make all that much difference.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Is evolving into one as the series progresses. His sense of humour is definitely an odd one though.
  • Morality Pet: Has several Malazan soldiers find him a dead cat. He brings it to life so that it can keep him company inside the House of Azath and names it Tufty.
  • My Species Doth Protest Too Much: The Jaghut loathed community and avoided it as though it were a disease, believing it led only to horror and violence. Raest is a tyrant, who gets his kicks out of enslaving weaker species.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Well, sealed in a barrow anyway, and by his own species no less. His Finnest, which contains most of his power, is also an example.
  • Soul Jar: The Finnest has most of Raest's power in it.
  • The Undead: He's not Undead like the Imass are, but it's clear that Raest and his body no longer share a particularly intimate connection, and the destruction of the latter causes him few difficulties. A straight example now that he's inside the Azath House.

Gothos

Pannion

See Pannion Domin

Pannion Domin

Pannion Seer

  • Break the Cutie: His backstory. His mother was killed by the T'Lan Imass and he was shoved through a rent and into the arms of the K'Chain Che'Malle Matron. This has had a rather negative impact on his sanity.
  • Dark Messiah: As dark as they come.
  • Evil Overlord
  • Mordor: Is deliberately transforming his realm into one.
  • Religion of Evil: Runs one.
  • The Reveal: He's a Jaghut named Pannion in disguise.
  • Sorcerous Overlord
  • Unwitting Pawn: He's being manipulated from the start by the Crippled God, who is messing with his emotions.

Anasater, First Child of the Dead Seed

The Defenders Of Capustan

Gruntle

  • Badass
    • Badass Normal--> Badass Abnormal: When he becomes Trake's Mortal Sword, Gruntle shifts from a very capable caravan guard to a nigh-unstoppable warrior.
  • Dual-Wielding: Cutlasses.
  • Hired Guns: Worked as a caravan guard for hire.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Big, strong and fast. Becomes stronger, and lethally quick and agile when Trake selects him as his Mortal Sword.
  • Panthera Awesome: As the Mortal Sword of the Tiger of Summer, Gruntle now moves like a big cat.
  • Power Makeover: His appearance becomes very, very tigerish following his selection as Mortal Sword of Trake, to the point where it creeps people out.
  • Power Tattoo: Trake's blessing tattoos his skin with tiger stripes.
  • Technicolor Eyes: They turn tiger-yellow.

Stonny Menackis

Brukhalian

Itkovian

High House Chains

The Crippled God

  • Big Bad: About as close to one as the series gets. Arguably subverted in that he's treated with considerable sympathy, particularly in the later books, and in the end the protagonists end up having to save him when his plots get Hijacked by the Forkrul Assail.
  • Black Cloak: Of sorts. He usually covers himself in dark-colored rags, rather than an actual cloak, but the look is very similar.
  • The Corrupter: The Crippled God specialises in bringing out the worst in people, typically offering them exactly what they want in exchange for their inclusion in his House of Chains. He seems to like driving his followers/victims mad.
  • Deal with the Devil: Munug, Kallor and many others have made them with him.
  • Dysfunction Junction: His followers. It's entirely deliberate too. The Crippled God desires every member of his House to be as flawed, mentally and/or physically as he is.
  • Evil Cripple: Evil due to crippling. The Fall destroyed his mind.
  • Freudian Excuse: The Fall did not do good things to his sanity. The fact that most of the pantheon has periodically gotten together and chained him up for, from his perspective, no real reason didn't help either.
  • God of Evil: Deconstructed. He's more like a god of suffering, and that suffering includes his own. While he's initially presented as causing it, in the end after the Bonehunters risk everything to save him from the Assail and succeed, he ends up becoming the god who has sympathy for those who suffer.
    • well at least up until the point Cotillion kills him with a surprise backstab.
  • Good All Along
  • Hidden Villain: For the first two and a half books.
  • I Have Many Names: The Crippled God, the Fallen God, the Chained One. But his real name is Kaminsod.
  • Kick the Dog: His treatment of Ruhlad Sengar. See below.
  • Mad God
  • The Man Behind the Man: To so many different villains, with the Pannion Seer being a particularly spectacular example.
  • Narrator All Along
  • Omnicidal Maniac: He's slowly poisoning Burn. Whether he genuinely wants her dead, or is hoping that someone will free him in order to prevent this isn't known for most of the series. It's the latter.
  • Pillar of Light: When he's freed.
  • Physical God
  • Red Right Hand: The evil god is the crippled one. Go figure.
  • Sadistic Choice: See Xanatos Gambit below. The best case scneario is his freedom, and the end of civilisation as they know it. The worst case scenario is the slow death of the entire world.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Chained in place, to the sleeping goddess Burn, though his spirit can move around inside a Warren and has appeared in several places around the world.
  • Start of Darkness: He was just a foreign god who fell to earth as the result of a trap meant for Kallor. And went stark raving mad as a result.
  • Vader Breath: Has to constantly inhale incense in order to keep his lungs clear. Even then, his breathing is still ragged and wheezing.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The fate of many of those who choose to follow him.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The Fall left him crippled, agonised and totally insane. He seems to be out to destroy the world in order to make the pain go away. It's very hard not to feel bad for him on some level.
    • After his plans get taken over by the Forkrul Assail, who are basically using his heart as an Artifact of Doom, he turns into more of a straight-up Woobie.
  • Wound That Will Not Heal: None of the injuries from the Fall have healed. Not one in a hundred thousand years.
  • Xanatos Gambit: If they don't loose him, Burn dies and he gets his revenge. If they do, he's free to wreak havoc and get his revenge via other means. Kind of a win-win situation for him.

Rhulad Sengar

Karsa Orlong

High House Shadow

Shadowthrone/Ammanas

Cotillion The Rope

"It's not such a bad thing girl, to be the pawn of a god."

  • Anti-Villain
  • Badass: If the stories are to be belived, Dancer was a Badass even before his Ascension to Godhood. He's definitely one now.
  • Career Killers: Cotillion is the Patron of Assassins.
  • Demonic Possession: Takes over Apsalar/Sorry during Gardens of the Moon.
  • The Dragon: To Shadowthrone.
  • Knife Nut
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast: The Rope, Patron of Assassins.
  • Parental Substitute: Seems to be trying to become one to Sorry/Apsalar, as a means of making up for what he put her through.
  • Pet the Dog: Has a minor one with Sorry right before he possesses her, reassuring her that the experience won't be that bad. Has had many more since than; see Parental Substitute, above.
  • Physical God
  • The Reveal: Was formerly Dancer, Emperor Kellanved's companion, and Ascended alongside his master.
  • Revenge: For the same reasons as Ammanas.
  • Shipper on Deck: He seems to want Cutter and Apsalar to be happy. It's just that, well, try as he might to be a kind father figure, he's not the god of happy endings, he's the god of murdering people in the face. It's not working.

Sorry/Apsalar

  • Amnesiac Dissonance: Has been gradually remembering the things she did while controlled by The Rope.
  • Badass: She danced with the Claw. All of the Claw. When she was done, all of her dancing partners lay dead.
  • Break the Cutie: Twice. After Cotillion's posession she seemed to go back to normal...right up until she started recovering her skills and plunging into whole new depths of Wangst. She's now abandoned Cutter, the one person who really gives a damn about her in order to go off and do god knows what, excusing it by claiming that he'd only get hurt.
  • Creepy Child
  • Dance Battler
  • Dark Action Girl: Though much more sympathetic than most (she's one of the main protagonists).
  • Dark Magical Girl: Her personality is closer to this, even if her abilities are those of a Dark Action Girl.
  • Demonic Possession: Posessed by Cotillion, though whether it's in full or in part isn't entirely clear.
  • Knife Nut: Inherited from The Rope.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: Loses all her memories of The Rope's actions, post-posession.
  • Loss of Identity: She remembers quite a bit of her life pre-possession, but clearly isn't that girl anymore. Not to mention that she still doesn't know her name.
  • Maybe Ever After: One of the Epilogues of the Crippled God has Cutter finally tracking down Apsalar, at the ruins of the fishing town she originally came from.
  • Psycho for Hire: Poses as one while infiltrating the Malazan Army. She scares Quick Ben, Whiskeyjack, and Kalam she's so damn creepy.
  • Waif Fu

Iskaral Pust

  • Bunny Ears Lawyer: Somewhere between an extreme example of this, and Crazy Awesome.
  • Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: At times, Pust has been known to make comments like "she's falling for my clever scheme" to the person he is trying to manipulate.
  • Evil Genius: The only reason Shadowthrone keeps him around.
  • Obfuscating Insanity: Maybe. It's really hard to tell if Pust is faking it, or if he just happens to be both rather bright and totally nuts.
  • Smarter Than You Look: Despite his craziness, tendency towards accidentally stabbing himself in the foot, and an ego the size of some small countries, Pust is actually quite bright, and at times, suprisingly effective.
  • Talkative Loon: Trying to shut him up would likely take an act of god. Or several gods.
  • Thinking Out Loud: Often.

Lady Envy's Companions

Lady Envy

Toc The Younger

  • Achey Scars: His eye still hurts.
  • Action Survivor: Feels like one alongside Envy, Tool, Baaljaag, Gareth and the Seguleh.
  • The Archer: Although his missing eye has seriously screwed with his aim.
  • Can't Stay Normal: Or dead. He's been attacked by Hairlock and thrown into a rent, accompanied Lady Envy, Body Snatched Anaster and become Mortal Sword of Togg and Fanderay, been killed again, and now serves Hood. Phew!
  • Death Is Cheap: How many times has he come back from the dead now?
  • Eyepatch of Power
  • Grand Theft Me: Following His death, Toc's soul is transplanted into that of Anaster in order to give them both a second chance at life.

Mok, Thurule, and Senu

  • Asskicking Equals Authority: Seguleh hierarchy is modelled on combat ability. As the Third, Mok can and does kick a lot of ass.
  • Badass: All three of them. To the point where their fellow Seguleh class them as a "punitive army" and expect them to carve their way through the Pannion Domin on their own. They don't dissapoint.
  • Blood Knight: Three representatives from an entire nation of them.
  • Charles Atlas Superpowers
  • Dual-Wielding: All three Seguleh.
  • The Fettered: Courtesy of Lady Envy's magic.
  • Honour Before Reason: If the Seguleh think you might be tough, they will challenge you, no matter where or when. And they'll make it a fair fight too.
  • Implausible Fencing Powers
  • Improbable Age: Senu's just turned twenty.
  • Mask Power: All Seguleh go masked, and the markings on their mask indicate their rank (Mok is the third-ranked Seguleh, his mask has two slashes on it).
    • Although its never really specified which one, or if its yet a different Seguleh, Felash's handmaiden is revealed in The Crippled God to be a Seguleh who the 14th daughter 'took forever to train to get rid of her silly mask.'
  • Proud Warrior Race Trio
  • The Quiet One: All three of them, but especially Mok.
  • The Stoic

Baaljaag

Gareth

Letherii Empire

Tehol Beddict

Bugg

Brys Beddict

Shurq Elalle

Kettle

Gerun Eberict

Harlest Eberict


Unaligned Ascendants

Krul

  • Gods Need Prayer Badly: The lack of it is implied to be the reason he's so weak now.
    • Elder Gods accept prayer in the form of blood sacrifice. Give generously...
  • Karmic Punishment: Kallor's curse.
  • The Mentor: To Kruppe.
  • Older and Wiser: To all the gods.

Burn

Icarium Lifestealer

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