# A Voyage to Arcturus — Character guide

> Key figures in A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay.

- [Maskull](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/maskull.md): 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 appear
- [Krag](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/krag.md): 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 laughte
- [Nightspore](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/nightspore.md): 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, deser
- [Joiwind](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/joiwind.md): 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 h
- [Panawe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/panawe.md): 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
- [Oceaxe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/oceaxe.md): 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 —
- [Tydomin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/tydomin.md): 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 complici
- [Spadevil](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/spadevil.md): 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 afterma
- [Polecrab](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/polecrab.md): 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 sacrif
- [Sullenbode](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/sullenbode.md): 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
- [Haunte](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/haunte.md): 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 be
- [Corpang](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/corpang.md): 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 prese
- [Gleameil](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/gleameil.md): A beautiful woman encountered in the Wombflash Forest who embodies illusion.
- [Crystalman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/crystalman.md): 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 bou
- [Earthrid](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/earthrid.md): A silent, powerful figure who appears on Swaylone's Island.
- [Broodviol](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/broodviol.md): An ancient musician who plays the instrument of sorrow on the Lusion Plain.
- [Gangnet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/gangnet.md): A guide who leads Maskull through the region of Threal.
- [Hator](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/hator.md): An ancient being who reveals the history of the Shaping.
- [Catice](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/catice.md): A cold, beautiful woman who lives on the Lusion Plain.
- [Leehallfae](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/leehallfae.md): A wise woman who teaches Maskull about the nature of love.
- [Dreamsinter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/dreamsinter.md): A being who creates illusions and dreams on the Lusion Plain.
- [Crimtyphon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters/crimtyphon.md): A monstrous being who guards the approach to Muspel.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_voyage_to_arcturus_se/characters