Character guide

Pegāna Mung

major

Also known as Mung

Mung moves through Pegāna as the god men fear and worship because they fear him, his sign a sentence no mortal can appeal. Where prophets fatten on gifts and tell the people what they wish to hear, Mung comes unbidden — through a garden at night, past a window, to a door — and his coming strips away every comfortable lie. He is the pressure that turns the book's early theology into dread, the reason its prophets must decide whether to speak hope or truth.

Māna-Yood-Sushāī

major

Also known as Māna, Yood-Sushāī

Māna-Yood-Sushāī made the gods, grew drowsy, and fell asleep, leaving Skarl to drum forever so he will not stir. The gods play with worlds and men only because he rests, and they dread his laughter more than his wrath. He is the silence at the center of Pegāna — unseen, unspoken to, the reason every other god's power is borrowed and every game is temporary.

Sish

major

Sish governs the passing of ages in Pegāna, the force that wears down worlds and gods alike even as they play their games. His presence makes every act of creation provisional — the gods build knowing that time will eat what they make. He is the quiet engine beneath the book's cosmology, the reason its hymns carry both grandeur and grief.

Kib

major

Kib grew weary of the gods' first games and raised his hand to cover Earth with beasts, then remade them into Men — a creation the other gods feared would endanger their Secret. He was the first to speak with his mouth like a man, and for that the gods were angry, and silence left Pegāna forever. He is the restless maker at the heart of the book's middle arc, the god whose curiosity forces every other god to choose a side.

Kabok

supporting

Also known as Kabok the Prophet, High Prophet

Kabok told men that Mung withheld or granted death by his advice, and he took their gifts for the telling. But when Mung began treading in his garden at night, the prophet who knew All Things discovered he knew nothing of what lay behind the god's back. His terror is the hinge on which the book turns from doctrine to dread, and his fate sends the people searching for a prophet with no fear of Mung.

Limpang-Tung

supporting

Limpang-Tung gives men pleasure because he thinks even a god owes them that much, painting the sky so they may rejoice and painting it again so they will not be sad. He carves organ pipes from mountains and stands unseen behind minstrels in cities of song, and he has sworn his pictures will never repeat. He is the tenderness in Pegāna's pantheon, the counterweight to Mung's sign and Sish's hunger.

Imbaun

major

Also known as Of How Imbaun

Imbaun rises to the highest prophetic seat in Aradec, praying for a people unaware that the Hall of Night holds only darkness and a secret writ in an unknown tongue. He carries a private grief the crowd cannot share: he has sold his happiness for wisdom and given his hopes to the people, so that no one may come to tell him his own hopes are true. His visions of men slaying men down the paths of Time, and his sayings on anger, fate, and forgiveness, anchor the book's meditation on what a prophet can honestly offer.

Skarl

major

Skarl is the tireless hinge between creation and oblivion: his drumming is the only thing keeping Māna-Yood-Sushāī asleep, and some say the worlds and suns are merely echoes of his beat. His arm sometimes grows weary, yet he cannot stop, for a single instant's silence would wake his master and end gods and worlds alike. When at last he lays down the drum, he will walk into the void beyond the worlds, indifferent whether he serves another god or perishes, having done the work of Skarl.

Slid

supporting

Slid speaks in the prophetic register that shapes Pegāna's cosmology, describing the fountain that curtains the resting-place of Māna-Yood-Sushāī and the still blue pool where every soul may see its life and sins. His words carry the book's central consolation and dread: that all in Pegāna have sinned, that no darkness truly falls because the gods' blue eyes shine like sunlight on the sea, and that at the Last the mists will be drawn back. He matters because his sayings give the reader the map of the world's end before the story has finished beginning.

Dorozhand

supporting

Dorozhand comes to Imbaun in mortal guise, his eyes shining blue enough to light the whole temple, and commands the prophet with a look rather than a word to walk the paths of Sish into the future. He is the driver of men, the power Imbaun invokes when he tells the angry to be calm because they are driven as bullocks are driven by Dorozhand. Yet when the hound Time crouches to spring at the throats of the gods, it is Dorozhand's face that seems to show fear, and he hurries the prophet back before the end can be seen.

Roon

supporting

Roon is no hearth-god to be worshipped by the fire; his incense is camp smoke, his song is the sound of going, and his temples stand beyond the farthest hills in the lands behind the East. He sets no boundary at mountains or seas, and whosoever hears his voice at evening forsakes the little home gods—Pitsu who strokes the cat, Hobith who calms the dog, old Gribaun in the heart of the fire—and goes. He matters because he embodies the restlessness that pulls men from the settled hearth, and because even he whispers the question none can answer: what doeth Māna-Yood-Sushāī?

Triboogie

minor

Also known as Hish

A minor god associated with shadows and twilight realms.

Yadin

supporting

Yadin is a mortal whose thirst and delirium in the desert become the vessel for one of the book's strangest rumors: that somewhere sits a Thing called Trogool, neither god nor beast, turning the leaves of a book black and white until it reaches the words Mai Doon Izahn, The End For Ever. Some in Bodraháhn say he only dreamed while thirst seized him among the rocks; certain aged men insist the Thing is real. His story matters because it plants, early and quietly, the possibility that even the gods and worlds are pages in something else's book.

Yūn-Ilāra

supporting

Also known as Yūn

Yūn-Ilāra rules sea and storm from a tower by the shore of the world, and his long defiance of Mung, the god of Death, becomes the measure of his pride. As Sish grinds the hours away, whiteness takes his hair and ivy his tower, and his curses curdle into longing for the rest he refused. His reversal gives the book one of its starkest portraits of a god learning what mortality means.

Yoharneth-Lahai

minor

Also known as Lahai

A god of dreams and illusions who weaves visions for mortals.

Alhireth-Hotep

minor

A prophet who speaks of the gods' will and the coming of doom.

Hoodrazai

minor

A god of the abyss who dwells in darkness beneath the worlds.

Yug

minor

A prophet who foretells the end of days and the gods' wrath.

Sirāmi

minor

A minor deity or figure in the pantheon of Pegāna.

Trogool

minor

A god of silence and endings who dwells in the void.

Yonath

minor

Also known as Yonath the Prophet

A prophet who delivers the gods' messages to the people.

Arb-Rin-Hadith

minor

A minor deity or figure in the mythology of Pegāna.

Habaniah

minor

A minor prophet or figure mentioned in the chaunts.

Zānēs

minor

A minor god or spirit mentioned in the chaunts of the priests.

Umbool

minor

A god of the underworld who guards the gates of death.

Ood

minor

Also known as Ood Men

A race of beings or a god associated with the river of time.

Kilooloogung

minor

A minor god of chaos or laughter in the divine court.

Wohoon

minor

A god of the winds who stirs the storms across the worlds.

Segástrion

minor

A god of the stars who watches from the celestial heights.

Eimēs

minor

A god of fate or destiny who weaves the threads of life.

Sidith

minor

A city or region whelmed by the gods for its sins.

Old Gribaun

minor

An aged figure or minor character in the narrative.

Jabim

minor

A minor character or name in the divine chronicles.