Character guide

Maskull

major

Also known as Mr. Maskull, Corpang, Spadevil, Oceaxe, Tydomin, Sullenbode

Maskull arrives on Tormance with no wife, land, or profession to hold him back — a man deliberately unencumbered, which makes him both free and dangerously available to whatever force wants to use him. When Surtur appears and names him servant and helper, Maskull accepts a destiny he cannot yet imagine, and the thought lodges in him like the growing image in a creative artist's soul. His journey through Tormance's peoples and temptations — Joiwind's love, Oceaxe's hunger, Panawe's beauty — becomes a test of whether a man of destiny can keep faith with a purpose he doesn't understand.

Krag

major

Krag materializes with unsettling familiarity, knowing Maskull's name, his companions, and his readiness to leave Earth, and speaks of the star Arcturus as casually as a suburb. His manner swings between scraping laughter and sudden gravity, and he warns plainly that a gift declined is not offered twice. As the agent who sets the voyage in motion and later steers Nightspore toward his ordeal, Krag embodies the story's insistence that some summonses are not invitations.

Nightspore

supporting

Also known as Mr. Nightspore

Nightspore stands beside Maskull at the moment Krag announces the voyage, and it is his strangled question — has Surtur gone to Tormance? — that reveals he already knows more than he admits. Later, urged up a cold, deserted staircase that feels like a ladder to heaven, he labors under a weight like a man on his shoulders while strange pulses of laughter and machinery beat against the windows. His ascent, and the luminous sphere he glimpses, mark him as a soul being prepared for something Maskull himself may not be ready to face.

Joiwind

supporting

Also known as the real Joiwind

Joiwind moves through Poolingdred with a calm, low-voiced grace, teaching Maskull to walk on the heavy lake water and laughing with a joy that shows all her teeth. When the unholy music calls her away from Polecrab and her sons, she kisses her children convulsively and wades into the sea without protest, leaving Maskull to wonder what music could tear a wife and mother from all she loves. Her quiet surrender establishes the moral register of Tormance — love that costs everything, offered without complaint.

Panawe

supporting

Panawe receives Maskull with a candor that unnerves him, naming the Earthman's half-truths as half-truths and comparing him to Prometheus, the thief who ennobled his fellow creatures. He walks on the swampy lake as if it were solid ground, and when he coughs up a delicately beautiful egg-shaped crystal, he lets it fall with no further interest — an overflowing of beauty, Joiwind explains, and nothing more. His serene detachment gives Maskull a model of Tormance's strangeness at its most generous, before the harsher regions begin.

Oceaxe

supporting

Oceaxe sits on a fallen tree pulling off bark and telling Maskull plainly that he cannot resist her forever, her scornful voice carrying both mockery and genuine hunger. When he invokes Surtur as his master, she laughs — rich, sweet, and enchanting — and asks whether love is such a manly sport, or whether he simply thinks himself above nature. Her persistence and her contempt for the passive creed of Poolingdred pull Maskull toward a life of appetite and action, testing the vow he made to a god he barely understands.

Tydomin

supporting

On Disscourn, Tydomin exerts a strange, enslaving influence over Maskull, one of a chain of figures who commandeer his will during his journey. Her power is not physical but moral and hypnotic, and it leaves him complicit in violence he barely recognizes as his own. She matters because she shows how Tormance works on the traveler from within, turning freedom into another form of bondage.

Spadevil

supporting

Spadevil preaches a stern creed in which pain and obligation are the highest goods, and his hold over Maskull becomes one of the enchantments that carry him through the day. His crushed, bloody features haunt the aftermath, proof of how thoroughly a moral system can override a man's own judgment. He matters because he embodies the novel's darkest question: whether a philosophy can be judged by what it makes its believers do.

Polecrab

supporting

Polecrab hosts Maskull and explains the Wombflash Forest, but his stillness hides depths Gleameil alone seems to measure. When he poles the raft into the current and wades back to shore without a word, he enacts a sacrifice the story never quite names. He matters because his quiet, unprotesting surrender of what he loves foreshadows the book's recurring cost of passage.

Sullenbode

supporting

Also known as Poor Sullenbode

Sullenbode enters Maskull's journey late, taking his arm and declaring him hers against Corpang's reminders of nobler things. Her love is not possessive but self-erasing, and she speaks of not going on living with a calm that unsettles him. She matters because she offers the novel's most radical vision of devotion, one that tests whether Maskull can accept a gift whose price is someone else's disappearance.

Haunte

supporting

Haunte is a figure of threshold and cost, encountered as Maskull moves through the later regions of Tormance. His death weighs on Maskull, who insists he is the real murderer even as Sullenbode argues the life she has been given balances the loss. He matters because he forces the traveler to reckon with the price of his own ascent, and with the uncomfortable arithmetic of who pays for another's transformation.

Corpang

supporting

Corpang is single-minded to the point of severity, dismissing love as a distraction and pressing on toward a destination he never questions. He reads the lich wind and the hanging peaks with grim authority, and his presence sharpens the contrast between duty and desire in Maskull's company. He matters because he represents the ascetic impulse in the novel, a man whose certainty is both admirable and quietly terrifying.

Gleameil

minor

A beautiful woman encountered in the Wombflash Forest who embodies illusion.

Crystalman

supporting

Crystalman governs Tormance, the one inhabited planet of Arcturus, and is spoken of with a grin and a shiver by those who know his country. His beauty and pleasure are the bait; Krag's warning that the travellers are bound for 'Crystalman's country' turns an idle night into a summons. For Maskull, the name becomes the question the whole journey must answer: whether the world's loveliness is a gift or a lure.

Earthrid

minor

A silent, powerful figure who appears on Swaylone's Island.

Broodviol

minor

Also known as Old Broodviol

An ancient musician who plays the instrument of sorrow on the Lusion Plain.

Gangnet

minor

A guide who leads Maskull through the region of Threal.

Hator

minor

Also known as ancient Hator

An ancient being who reveals the history of the Shaping.

Catice

minor

A cold, beautiful woman who lives on the Lusion Plain.

Leehallfae

minor

A wise woman who teaches Maskull about the nature of love.

Dreamsinter

minor

A being who creates illusions and dreams on the Lusion Plain.

Crimtyphon

minor

A monstrous being who guards the approach to Muspel.

Backhouse

minor

Also known as Mr. Backhouse

A scientist on Earth who experiments with spiritual forces.

Digrung

minor

A grotesque creature encountered in the Wombflash Forest.

Faceny

minor

A being of pure intellect who tests Maskull on Disscourn.

Trent

minor

Also known as Mrs. Trent

A woman on Earth who hosts the séance at the story's opening.

Lang

minor

A friend of Nightspore present at the séance.

Branchspell

minor

The sun of Tormance that influences the planet's strange phenomena.

Mrs. Jameson

minor

A participant in the séance on Earth.

Alppain

minor

The second sun of Tormance, associated with pain and longing.

Thire

minor

A being of pure will who appears on Swaylone's Island.

Muspel

minor

Also known as Muspel - light

The realm of ultimate reality and light beyond Tormance.

Swaylone

minor

A mysterious figure who lives on an island and tests Maskull.

Nuclamp

minor

A creature encountered in the Wombflash Forest.

Slofork

minor

A being of pure sensation encountered on the Lusion Plain.

Teargeld

minor

A woman who weeps perpetually on the Lusion Plain.

Tormance

minor

The planet itself, sometimes personified as a character.

Sant

minor

A being of pure love encountered in the final regions.

Sature

minor

A being of pure joy encountered on the journey.

Professor Halbert

minor

A scientist present at the séance on Earth.

Maulger

minor

A being of pure strength encountered on the Lusion Plain.

Barey

minor

A guide who leads Maskull through the final approach to Muspel.

Lichstorm

minor

A being of pure intellect encountered on Disscourn.

Amfuse

minor

A being of pure sensation encountered in the Wombflash Forest.

Threal

minor

A being of pure will encountered on the journey.

Prior

minor

A being of pure duty encountered on the journey.

Muremaker

minor

A being of pure sorrow encountered on the Lusion Plain.