Characters in The Sword of Truth
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This is a list of notable characters from Terry Goodkind's epic fantasy series The Sword of Truth.
Contents |
[edit] Major characters
[edit] Adie
Adie is a tall fine-looking woman, taller than Kahlan, but not as tall as Richard. She typically wears a simple tan robe of a coarse weave with red and yellow symbols and decoration at the neck. Her hair is fine and straight, a mix of black and gray, parted in the middle, and chopped square with her strong jaw. Age has not stolen the handsome features of her weathered face, which is covered in fine wrinkles. For a good part of her life, she leaned on a crutch, having had to sever her own foot when a gripper attached itself to her in the King's Port pass. Zedd restored her lost foot during his first visit. Her eyes are completely white and she is physically blind, although she can see with her gift. She has thin lips and her voice has a harsh, throaty, raspy quality that can send shivers up one's spine. Her arms are skinny, her hands wrinkled, and her fingers slender.
Adie is an old but powerful sorceress. She lived in the mouth of the King's Port in Westland, about 4 hours ride from Southaven. Many call her the bone woman. Most of the people of Southaven were afraid of her and wouldn't go near her home (partially because she lived so close to the boundary). Many also thought she was bad luck of some sort and that the people she didn't like had a bad habit of dropping dead. Whether these rumors were true or not is unknown, although she has been known to help some folks out from time to time. She is known, as most sorceresses are, for speaking in riddles.
Adie claims that she lived in the mouth of the pass because she became tired of people coming to her all the time, wanting spells and potions. She wanted to be left alone to study her "higher summons", although the actual reason is much more complex.
Adie's home was destroyed when the bones of a skrin came to life. Adie and Zedd later returned and destroyed the remains of the house in order to keep the bones from reaching the wrong hands.
Adie is a long-time friend of Chase. She is now also good friends with Richard and especially Zedd. In fact Adie soon becomes one of Richard most trusted allies in the war against the Imperial Order.
When Adie was a young woman she travelled to the Old World and studied with the Sisters of the Light. She also travelled the Midlands and learnt a great deal about her gift of magic from other sorceresses and soon learnt of how rare her strength of power was.
Known Powers:
- The ability to see with her gift, despite being blind.
- The ability to be in the rain without getting wet.
- The ability to know of the occurrence of some past events even though she was not present.
- The ability to sometimes determine whether someone has knowledge of something or not.
- The ability to know the absolute truth or falsehood of a statement told her by another.
- The ability to fill the head of someone with their own memory of a past event simply by a touch of her finger.
- By using a bone rattle and chanting for about 10 or 15 minutes she can briefly awaken one who has been struck down by underworld beasts, although they can't speak and don't know where they are.
- By rubbing her hand in a slow circle over someone's stomach she can detect the nature of the anger within someone and how it will manifest itself.
- The ability to survive and endure (and with her powers, cause) great trauma
- The ability to learn the fears of anyone,the secrets spill form their mouth against their will. The power cannot uncover anything but fears.
- The ability to create shields of magic to protect herself or another.
- The ability to create lightning or other blasts of light and fire that create extreme damage to her surroundings or death to those she aims at.
- The ability to stop or explode someones heart.
- As she is one of the most powerful sorceresses she is able to even send another sorceresses' magic back at them to destroy them, as she did to a Sister of the Light in the Confessors Palace.
- She can create a certain spell thats magic is embedded inside the victim, if it fails to kill on impact, that must be removed quickly and will almost certainly kill some of those gifted that heal the victim or the victim themselves.
- The ability to create the illusion of being someone else.
[edit] Cara
Cara is the unofficial leader of the three Mord'Sith who guard Richard Rahl. Cara is the closest to Richard, and he comes to consider her as a member of the family.The two other Mord'Sith, Raina and Berdine, listen to Cara's commands and follow her directions. Cara is a beautiful woman, tall, though still not as tall as Kahlan, and very muscular and powerful. She usually wears her red leather to hide the blood, for she often protects Richard from oncoming foes with her Agiel, a tool of torture. She has icy-blue eyes, and long blonde hair that she wears in the trademark braid of the Mord-Sith. She is considered to be more sensitive and caring than most Mord'Sith, and is still haunted by her fears of rats, which she connects to the death of her father, who she was forced to murder for her training. She carries great respect for Kahlan, who wears the Agiel of Denna, Richard's former Mord'Sith mistress, and calls Kahlan a sister of the Agiel.
She also is among the Mord Sith one of the most affected by Richard's new rule, in that she has learned to truly love others, and to be willing to openly show her affection for them. The proof of this is in her relationship with the D'Haran General Benjamin Meiffert.
She cares deeply for Richard as his bodyguard, and would die for him, not simply because he is the Lord Rahl, but because he is her friend and she understands and agrees with what he stands for and why he fights. This makes her one of the most loyal Mord'Sith. However, in Chainfire, Cara confesses to Nicci that she was one of the Mord'Sith who tortured Richard when he was enslaved to Denna in the Wizards First Rule.
[edit] Minor characters
[edit] Giller
Giller is a wizard in the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind.
Known Powers:
- Giller could put a magic seal around a room preventing certain objects from getting through it.
- Giller could put a wizard's web around an object that would not allow anyone to find it except those who were meant to.
- Giller had the power to take away the sting of an injury by the touch of his hand.
- Giller could create a "trouble doll", which would smile, nod, and say basic phrases. In addition, Giller could communicate over long distances through it without anyone around him knowing. The doll lost its magic when Giller was killed.
- Giller could fix cracked objects so they looked like brand new.
- Giller could put a wizard's web around a magic object so that no one could sense the magic.
- Giller could put a finger to each side of someone's forehead to give them a safe feeling and fill them with confidence and hope.
- Giller is able to speak into someone's head while looking in their eyes.
- Giller could conjure Wizard's Life Fire
- Giller could transform a human being into a wolf.
- Giller could create a dog-like creature out of rocks that moves around the Wizard's Keep.
[edit] Innkeeper Bill
Bill is the proprietor of an Inn and dry goods store in the town of Southaven in Westland, near what used to be the King's Port. He is a stout man with a shiny, shaved head, curly eyebrows, and curly black hair on his thick, husky, muscled arms that seem to compete with his beard. He typically wears a shirt with no sleeves and an apron that looks like it could never have been white. He often has a dry voice and a toothpick rolling around in his mouth. Unlike the other men of Southaven, Bill keeps his eyes where they belong when he looks at women. He is tough and hardened but doesn't appear devious (although appearances are deceiving). His son, Randy, is a lanky young man who helps him run things.
The inside of his Inn reflects the condition of Southaven as a whole. Oil lamps light the main room, which is usually filled with a fog of pungent pipe smoke. The tables, all arranged in a haphazard fashion, are rough, some no more than planks and barrels. There are no chairs, only benches. A door leads to the kitchen, and on the other side of the room, in the shadows, a stairway (minus the handrail) leads up to the guest rooms. The floor is mottled with dark stains and spills, with a series of paths through the litter.
Most of the guest rooms are windowless and feel bare and naked and have a rank smell to them. The ceilings are lower than what is comfortable. The walls next to the bed are covered with years of spit. The only furniture is typically a 3-legged table and a small, short bench. A single oil lamp usually sits on the table, glowing weakly and providing the only light for the room.
Bill is an approved supplier for government officials needing supplies while near Southaven, and is reimbursed from Hartland. Although most of the residents of Southaven disliked the boundary wardens, Bill appreciated how they kept some of his other customers at bay and brought an income from the government with their business at the Inn and the dry goods store. He is a close acquaintance of Chase.
[edit] Demmin Nass
Demmin Nass was the right hand of Darken Rahl, the lightning of the Master's dark thoughts, a good friend of his since they were boys, and a man as big as any in D'Hara. He had sharply chiseled muscles and his chest was covered with skin as smooth as that of the young boys he had a weakness for. In stark contrast, his face was riddled with pockmarks. His blond hair was cropped close enough to cause it to stand up in a collection of spikes. A streak of black hair started in the middle of his right eyebrow and continued back over his head, to the right of center, which made him recognizable from a distance, a fact appreciated by those who had cause to know of him. His voice was deep and coarse. He had a very sick interest in little boys.
The weakness for young boys Demmin Nass had would occasionally get him into trouble, such as when he had the trader Brophy arrested for the murder of a young boy (Rachel's brother), but who submitted to a Confessor to prove his innocence. Demmin Nass was castrated and killed at the hands of Kahlan Amnell after he revealed to her the apparent death of Richard, invoking the Con Dar.
[edit] Denna
Denna was a Mord'Sith and a captor of Richard while he was in custody of his father, Darken Rahl. Denna was assigned to torture Richard so he would be compliant and provide his father with the text from the Book of Counted Shadows which would allow Darken Rahl to open the Boxes of Orden and unleash the Keeper, thus granting himself immortality. Denna fell in love with Richard, due to his insistence on showing her compassion despite the way she treated him. She eventually asked him to kill her to free both himself from Darken Rahl's clutches and herself from her role as a Mord'Sith. She gave Richard her agiel as a token of her love right before he killed her.
After the second tearing of the veil of the underworld, Denna returned as a spirit to save Richard from both his own gift and from the mark of the Keeper placed on him by Darken Rahl. She removed the mark by taking it on herself, meaning that she will suffer for eternity at the hands of the Keeper of the underworld. However, her act of sacrifice on Richard's behalf "disgusted" the Keeper and he refused to take her, thus allowing her to join the ranks of the good spirits. When Richard and Kahlan are later separated and seek to know if the other is alright, Denna appears and causes a rift in time to briefly reunite the lovers.
After Richard enters the Temple of the Winds, he is visited by many spirits. Denna is one of them. She helps Richard finally decide to leave the temple and return to world of the living. She does this by forcing Richard to remember the events and emotions of what it was like to be under her control during the Wizard's First Rule.
[edit] Dennee
Dennee was a confessor and a good friend of Kahlan Amnell. She was a frail girl, as frail as her mother. After Kahlan's mother died, Dennee's mother took Kahlan in and comforted her. The two girls were thrilled that they were to be sisters, as they called themselves from then on, and it helped ease the pain Kahlan had from losing her mother.
Dennee did not have the strength of power that Kahlan did, and over time, Kahlan had become her protector, guardian, shielding her from situations that required more force than she could bring from within. For Dennee, it sometimes took several days to recover her power, as opposed to an hour or two for Kahlan. Dennee hated taking confessions, hated seeing the look in their eyes, and often Kahlan would go in her sister's place because she wanted to spare Dennee the torment of the task. Dennee never asked Kahlan to go in her stead, she wouldn't, but the look of relief on her face when Kahlan told her she would do it was words enough.
Dennee was killed by a quad sent by Darken Rahl before the series began as she was walking to meet Kahlan during one of her confessions. She had wanted to walk Kahlan home since Kahlan had taken the confession for her. Kahlan found her in the brush at the side of the road, moaning in mortal pain. She had been thrown there, discarded. Her arms were brutally broken and laid useless at her sides, bent in places where they shouldn't be bent. Blood trickled from one ear. Her dress was pulled up over her legs. Her last wish was for Kahlan to kill Darken Rahl. Kahlan had her buried along with a necklace with a small bone on it that Kahlan had worn since childhood and that her mother had given her (and that had originally been a gift from Adie while Kahlan was still in the womb). Dennee had always been fond of that necklace.
[edit] Abigail
Abigail is a girl, about the same age as Zedd, from the land of Pendisan Reach. She grew up in the town of Coney Crossing, where she knew every person living in the town. She had fine, dark brown hair that covered her ears, but no more. She often wore a crimson dress and a magic bracelet made of two wires intricately twisted together in interlocking circles, which her mother, Helsa, had given her. The bracelet would often give off an odd tingling sensation and get unusually warm, especially around great magic. Her mother had told her to wear it always and it would someday be of value.
Abby's mother was a sorceress who died before she could see her granddaughter. Abby herself did not inherit the gift (known as a "skip" because the gift skipped her), something that she often felt ashamed about. The people of Coney Crossing depended on her mother. She helped those who were ill or hurt. She advised people on matters of community and those of family. For some she arranged marriages. For some she meted out discipline. For some she bestowed favors available only through magic. She protected the people of Coney Crossing. She was revered openly. By some, she was feared and loathed privately.
While her mother was alive Abby had been shunned in subtle ways; after her mother died the shunning became more overt. It had been expected by the people of Coney Crossing the she would serve as her mother had served. People didn't understand about the gift, that it often wasn't passed onto an offspring; instead they thought Abby selfish.
Abby's father, husband and four year old daughter, Jana, were all captured by D'Haran troops under the command of Anargo. Jana was Abby's last chance at having children after the death of another son at birth. She left for Aydindril to seek help from the First Wizard, Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander.
[edit] Anargo
Anargo was a commander of a large military unit of the D'Haran army under the command of Panis Rahl during the first war between D'Hara and the Midlands. His unit was very large, it was rumored it was larger than the annual locust swarm that went through Pendisan Reach every year. At the end of the war, Anargo's unit was stationed in Pendisan Reach, primarily in the town of Coney's Crossing. Like most D'Haran units, Anargo had sorceresses and wizards under his command who used magic to imprison the people of Coney Crossing and the surrounding areas. The D'Haran troops would use these captives as shields, to blunt the deadly magic, spears, and arrows the Midlands army sent against them. They would drive the captives forward, "dulling the enemies' weapons on their own women and children".
The Midlands troops trapped Anargo's unit in Coney's Crossing shortly after Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander developed magical horns that turned the tide of the war. Midlands troops led by Sanderson swept in from the north while troops led by Mardale cut up from the south. General Brainard in the south sent half his troops north along the Kern River to block off their retreat into D'Hara.
[edit] Brophy
Brophy was a trader in things of dubious nature at the gray edges of law. These things were things of magic, such as artificats, books, stones, statues, staves, etc. However, some of the things of magic he traded were living creatures of magic. Brophy was wrongly accused by Demmin Nass of the murder of a young boy (Rachel's brother). Brophy submitted to the Mother Confessor, Kahlan Amnell, to prove his innocence. Kahlan's wizard, Giller, then turned Brophy into a wolf in order to allow him to continue to live his life. The change took away some of the magic of the Confessor, and gave him enough concern for himself to start over with a new life.
When he was a man he was as big for a man as he was for a wolf. He sometimes used his size to persuade people to do as he wished. He had a temper as big as his muscles. However, it only came out when he was wronged and being cheated.
Brophy's business was dangerous, and therefore very profitable. He made enough money to support his "hobby" that almost no one knew of. He had a weakness: children. As he traveled around in search of things to trade, he would stop at orphanages and see to it they had what they needed to take care of the children. All the gold he made ended up in different orphanages, so the children could be cared for and not go hungry. He twisted the arms of the people running the orphanages to swear them to secrecy. He didn't want anyone knowing. He didn't have to twist very hard. Because of his reputation and being seen around orphanages, no one was surprised when he was accused of the murder of a little boy.
As a wolf, Brophy was huge, and his thick fur was a charcoal color from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail. Fierce yellow eyes glowed from his dark head. He found a mate in the forest, the leader of his pack, with him at her side. They made a den near the Rang'Shada Mountains. Brophy and his mate had a litter of six fine pups, who were almost grown when Brophy died.
[edit] Samuel
Samuel is a wiry, ashen, putrid-smelling, disgusting little creature with a pallid head, bulging yellow eyes, bloodless white lips, sharp teeth, and a shrill scream, who is obsessed with obtaining the Sword of Truth. Despite his size (he isn't very tall), Samuel is powerfully strong (stronger than Richard) with big, powerful hands, long, sinewy fingers, and sharp nails. Spaces between his teeth are packed with spongy, gray debris. His heavy breath reeks of rot. Dark patches cover his hairless, waxy head. His feet are as disproportionately large as his hands and arms. His arms are so long that even as he stands erect, he often casually draws lines and circles in the dirt of the road with his fingers. His belly is round and full. There is no hair on him anywhere, and his skin looks like it hasn't seen sunlight in years. Short dark pants held up with straps is all he wears as he bounds along in his odd, skittering gait.
Samuel can speak a basic form of the common language, although his voice is often more of a hissing sound, and his laughter is more of a gurgling sound. Samuel's yellow eyes often change quickly between a taunting grin, greed, fierce hate and wide-eyed fear. They shine like twin lanterns in the dark. From time to time, when left alone, Samuel will occasionally snatch up a stick or rock or any other item and say, "Mine! Gimme!" to no one in particular, only to soon lose interest and drop his latest find. If given the chance, Samuel will slit the throat of those he dislikes without a second thought.
Samuel is the former Seeker of Truth, the direct predecessor of Richard. He lives in the Agaden Reach with his mistress, the witch woman, Shota. He came to her many years before the start of the series, desperate for help, but she could do nothing for him, besides take pity on him. Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander traveled to the Agaden Reach and took the Sword of Truth from Samuel and Shota and brought it with him to Westland. To this day Samuel thinks of the Sword of Truth as his.
Samuel bears a number of striking resemblances to Gollum from The Lord of the Rings.
