NOTE: Many of the named characters and entries are Late Arrival Spoilers for Nona the Ninth; discretion is advised.
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Resurrection Beasts
The revenants of murdered planetary souls, forced into existence by their deaths and mad from grief.
In General
- Brown Note: The presence of a Resurrection Beast has horrible effects on the health and sanity of nearby necromancers. Most can't do much besides scream. Nona also perceives the blue light emitted by Number Seven/Varun the Eater as being directly responsible for the violence sweeping New Rho, which is populated by regular people. The Sixth House theorizes the effect is carried by sight, and so blinded themselves to resist it with some success.
- Eldritch Abomination: Murdered planetary souls, feral with grief and madness, shaped into wildly different forms that appear different to everyone who sees them.
- Genius Loci: All planets are subtly alive, even those without anything like bacteria, full of memories and complexity from their formation and long existences. John says, and thus the Empire believes, they're not truly self-aware or intelligent, which is false; they are as self-aware as humans, though potentially only able to communicate with Nona, the "salt thing", their sibling Earth.
- Mook Maker: Mature Beasts are accompanied by thousands of Heralds, human-sized mix-and-match monsters made out of the dead matter of a Resurrection Beast's corpus, capable of threatening a Lyctor physically even as they wrestle with the Beast spiritually. They aren't independent creatures, but extensions of the Beast itself, like fingers.
- No Kill like Overkill: A full-fledged Resurrection Beast requires it. The primary way that the Lyctors fight them is by fighting them to the point of mauling them or exhausting them enough that they're able to drag the Beasts' brains to the mouths of Hell in the River.
- Planet Eater: In their grief and hunger, Beasts devour the energy of other planets as they wander through the universe.
- Sliding Scale of Villain Threat: Lesser Beasts form from planetary deaths and can be put down rather easily by a single Lyctor. It takes thousands of years of consuming other planets to accumulate into a true Resurrection Beast, which are practically small planetoids in and of themselves, and require multiple Lyctors to fight on even terms, let alone attempt to kill.
- Uncertain Doom: According to John, there are three Resurrection Beasts remaining of the original nine, and the Lyctors have killed five, leaving it up in the air what happened to the one that is supposedly dead but not killed by the lyctors. Nona the Ninth reveals that the missing one is none other than Alecto, who's been sealed in the Locked Tomb for the past myriad and so inactive.
- You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Both played straight and subverted. Fully mature Beasts appear as indistinct swirls of madness and ghosts to Lyctors who encounter them, with each seeing them slightly differently. However to non-necromancers, they resemble nothing more than massive translucent planets.
Number Seven
Number Seven / Varun the Eater
"I have crossed the face of the universe. I poison it to match my grief."
The Seventh Resurrection Beast born of God's sin, and technically the background antagonist of both Harrow the Ninth and Nona the Ninth. It is presumably (but not confirmed) the revenant of the murdered soul of Venus.- Black Speech: Its communication through Judith is only intelligible to Nona because she is Alecto, who was the Earth. Everyone else only hears pained screaming that physically hurts necromancers.
- Hero Killer: Although none of the remaining Beasts are minor foes, Number Seven is alone in having killed multiple Lyctors and still remaining active. Long before the series begins, Cassiopeia the First died in a failed attempt to drive it fully into the River and was devoured by the feral ghosts within as a result, and it takes Gideon the First fighting to the death alongside the ghosts of several of the Empire's greatest warriors (and Ortus) to drive it off at the end of Harrow the Ninth.
- Horde of Alien Locusts: Number Seven's heralds resemble giant insects made out of an amalgamation of nightmarish insectoid anatomy melded with distorted human features. They begin their attack on the Mithraeum by engulfing it in their bodies and trying to cook it from the inside, like bees killing a hornet, while as individuals they attack with snapping jaws, sharp stingers, and burning venom. Chapters where they feature prominently are even headed with a wasp's head instead of one of the House skulls.
- It Can Think: Speaks to Nona via Judith and song nobody else can hear; Varun loves the "salt thing", its "green thing", the dead soul of the Earth. When it responds to her cries for help, Nona has to explain and coaxes mercy to prevent it from devouring New Rho, revealing that the Resurrection Beasts are not nearly as mindless as John let on.
- Meaningful Name: In Nona, people have taken to calling it Varun the Eater. Varun comes from Varuna, a Vedic deity associated with the sea, and in ancient times was twinned with Mitra, the pairing said to have governed oaths. Via cultural exchanges and reinterpretation across history, Mitra would also give rise to the term the Emperor used for his sanctum, the Mithraeum.
- Planet Eater: Like all Beasts, it chases Lyctors and the Emperor around the universe in feral hunger. Its presence above the planet in Nona the Ninth in its wraith-like "periscoping" projection from the River only serves to further cause panic and desperation in an already unstable city.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Against John, its murderer.
- The Unreveal: Temporarily; its presence at the end of Harrow the Ninth remains obscured from the audience due to the viewpoint characters being otherwise occupied and Gideon the First's sacrifice driving it off. However it reappears in Nona the Ninth and is shown in full, even featuring on the cover.
Devils
In General
"There is a hole at the bottom of their tower."
Something that comes out of the River to possess empty bodies. Devils are malevolent, feral, and spread a spiritual plague through damage to living souls.- Early-Bird Cameo: They're the things that possess Colum Asht at the end of Gideon the Ninth.
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: Their appearance seems concurrent with the appearance of a mysterious, gigantic bell tower in the River, coupled with Number Seven's creepy Infallible Babble that "they are coming out of their tower... there is a hole at the bottom of their tower".
- Hell on Earth: They're implied to come from whatever lies beyond the stoma at the bottom of the River, which the Empire reflexively refers to as Hell.
- Outside-Context Problem: Introduced in full late into Nona, having only been vaguely hinted at prior; the Empire, already dealing with numerous enemies within and without are completely caught off guard by their sudden and unexpected appearance.
- Too Many Mouths: The eyes of people possessed by them transform into mouths, complete with teeth and tongues.
- Zombie Apocalypse: They possess both the living and corpses alike, and they can't be cured, only warded against (by very good necromancers). Otherwise, their victims must be killed, dismembered, and burnt. According to Kiriona, living hosts are more dangerous.
Blood of Eden
THE ONLY THING OUR CIVILIZATION CAN EVER LEARN FROM YOURS IS THAT WHEN OUR BACKS ARE TO THE WALL AND OUR TOWERS ARE FALLING ALL AROUND US AND WE ARE WATCHING OURSELVES BURN
WE RARELY BECOME HEROES
An ancient enemy of the Empire's, a millennia year old resistance force with a violent hatred of necromancy, fighting to ultimately extinguish it entirely. They crop up time and again in varying forms, serving as a militant revolutionary force fighting to avenge the endless slaughter and conquest of the Empire, and the death of humanity's long ago home, the First House, better known as Earth.
In General
- Category Traitor: Blood of Eden was unified and founded by Source Gram, Cassiopeia the First, around six thousand years ago; even in the present they will try to turn and collaborate with defectors, Lyctors included.
- Faceless Goons: As a decentralized guerrilla militia, Blood of Eden covers their faces to keep their identities anonymous, even from each other in case of capture. Some of them even use voice filters. However, they don't really have a uniform, so it's still possible to recognize individual members by their preferred facewear.
- Hit-and-Run Tactics: Their preferred method of attacking the Empire; their primary tactic described are long distance sniper shots on necromancers or buried explosives, largely because any prolonged conflict with necromancers only strengthens them.
- Homeworld Evacuation: They are the very distant descendants of the ultra-wealthy trillionaires who abandoned the Earth to die, along with the workers who actually built and flew their ships and 200 token refugees, for which John can never forgive them.
- Hypocrite: The Emperor views them as such because they claim to be avenging the murder of Earth when they themselves left it to die. However, John's own Lyctors view this as little more than an excuse for an endless campaign of symbolic revenge waged on the very, very distant descendants of the people who escaped Earth before he killed everyone.
- La Résistance: Not all civilians outside the Empire are members of Blood of Eden, even if they defy the Empire, but Blood of Eden is by far the most serious and well organized of the Empire's human enemies.
- Location Theme Naming: All their wings or cells are named after places long ago destroyed. Merv, Ctesiphon, Troia, Lemuria, Mu are all out of myth or long-obscured history - but the others mentioned are Saaftinge, Zoar, Birmingham, Maputo, Taree, Memphis, Taksa, Calakmul, Valencia, Opava, and Dundee, which are normal cities to the reader but far-distant tragedies that at the latest were killed by John.
- Meaningful Name: The "Eden" in their name means Earth.
- Meaningful Rename: New members of Blood of Eden ceremonially discard their old names to take up new names made up of remnant cultural fragments from Earth, though members born to the organization are given code names from birth.
- The Mole: Has a number of converted agents within the Empire, particularly at the highest ranks of the Cohort, and even some of the Emperor's own Lyctors have worked with them in the past including Augustine the First and Mercymorn the First.
- Overly Long Name: Used both symbolically and comedically. Blood of Eden names are elaborate, discordant messes of remnant phrases and sentences from the cultures of Earth, destroyed millennia ago by the Resurrection, and they clearly take great pride in their adopted names. However, from the point of view of John (the only man to live through the Resurrection) and the reader, they're also comedic, as Blood of Eden has no longer has context for what their names actually mean:Wake: (After forcing John to refer to her by her full name) "They're dead words—a human chain reaching back ten thousand years. How did they feel?"John: "Genuinely sad, bordering on very funny."
- Properly Paranoid: Explored. BoE has a patchwork at best understanding of Necromancy, and much of their tactics for approaching combat with the Empire and necromancers is riddled with superstition and paranoia to the point that it misses what's actually relevant, but at the same time that same attitude allows them to see through imperial propaganda and remain effective with Hit-and-Run Tactics.Mercymorn the First: "Why are you people always such a curious mix of the competent and the completely deranged?!"
- Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Their names for Lyctor contacts are all mythological swords. Piotra is the name of the sword associated with Saint George and Saint Peter, Joyeuse was Charlemange's sword, Chrysaor is a character's name but also the sword wielded by the embodiment of justice in The Faerie Queene, Gram is the dragon-slaying sword of Sigurd. The one exception is Source Aegis, named for Athena's shield, but that's Pyrrha and not Gideon anyway.
- Sins of Our Fathers The original trillionaires who screwed over the rest of humanity and left the Earth to die were long dead even before John had the resources to come after them and take revenge, besides which most of Blood of Eden are likely descended from the engineers and refugees that the trillionaires took along for show, so he's been waging war for millennia against a bunch of people who have nothing to do with what happened to him, his friends and the planet.
- Weapon of X-Slaying: In Harrow the Ninth it's mentioned that they once killed a Herald of a Resurrection Beast and fashioned its corpse into all sorts of anti-necromancer weapons, which proved to be extremely effective but are now in short supply. Ianthe gets shot with just such a Herald bullet at the end of Nona the Ninth, which takes her out of commission just long enough for everyone to reach the Tomb. It seems the reason they don't have more is that Heralds are incredibly lethal for regular people to fight; Blood of Eden's preferred tactic is to start shooting at them from several kilometers away.
- We ARE Struggling Together: Higher management of BoE is described as one that's constantly squabbling between leadership of different political factions, though part of this is due to their dislike of Commander We Suffer.
- Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Viewed as terrorists and revolutionaries within the Empire. At least by most.
Wake
Commander Wake / "The Sleeper"
Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pa Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity
The most recent commander of Blood of Eden, Gideon Nav's mother, and the vengeful revenant attempting to take control of Harrow's mind.
- Abusive Parents: Downplayed. She only ever viewed the unborn Gideon as a weapon to be used to break the seal on the Tomb, a fact that she throws at John about while Gideon is listening. However, she also saves Gideon's life from Mercymorn's assault, and leaves without harming her despite Wake's infamous hatred of 'zombies.'
- In Nona the Ninth, she's shown as a genuinely doting aunt to Our Lady of the Passion and adored by all of Blood of Eden overall, so it's likely this trope only applied to Gideon.
- Anti-Magic: She destroys Harrow's skeletons in her Dream Land while in control of its reality, and there's evidence to suggest she might have possessed an innate ability to negate necromancy in the real world too, as she evades detection on the Mithraeum for months while in Cytherea's body.Wake: No magic. No tricks. None of your foul bullshit.
- Color Motif: Notably one of the few characters to have a specific association not tied to any of the Houses of the Empire; she is strongly associated with orange in both her distinctive feature being bright red hair and that in death she wears a bright orange suit.
- Combat Parkour: Incredibly fluid in her fighting and movement in battle. Harrow notes she seems to move in her bulky protective suit in a way that seemed physically impossible.
- Combat Pragmatism: She fights to kill above all else, and does so by fighting in underhanded ways constantly."There was no trace in her of the beribboned show fighter: she fought like she wanted to kill you and she hoped it would hurt."
- Determinator: Even by the standards of revenants, spending years clinging to her bones and then to a sword is unprecedented. The Emperor is openly amazed by her endurance when she threatens him.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: She does genuinely seem to have cared for Pyrrha, and perhaps Gideon the First in some way, looking at their shared body with affection. Doesn't stop her from trying to kill them by dumping their regenerating body into an incinerator; she is, after all, on a mission, and Gideon *did* kill her.I KISSED YOU AND LATER I WOULD KISS HIM TOO BEFORE I UNDERSTOOD WHAT YOU WERE AND ALL THREE OF US LIVED TO REGRET IT—BUT WHEN I AM IN HEAVEN I WILL REMEMBER YOUR MOUTH, AND WHEN YOU ROAST DOWN IN HELL I THINK YOU WILL REMEMBER MINE.
- Fantastic Racism: Violently and viciously despises everything to do with necromancy and necromancers, only referring to them with various insults, such as wizards, zombies, and liches. Ironically, downplayed later in Nona the Ninth, as her Ctesiphon Wing (led by her direct successor We Suffer and her niece Our Lady of the Passion) is known as the moderate faction of Blood of Eden, willing to compromise and cooperate with "wizards" and "zombies" for Blood of Eden's benefit. Pyrrha outright tells Camilla that as bad as Blood of Eden have been, Merv Wing is far worse.
- Fiery Redhead: Much like her daughter, Wake is an extremely passionate person, though this comes out primarily in the form of a violent hatred and fury towards anything necromantic.
- Got Me Doing It: The Noniad warping the conditions of Harrow's Dream Land gets her to start talking in meter briefly before she immediately stops talking to avoid it.
- The Gunslinger: Her preferred weapons are various forms of firearm, particularly shotguns. But she proves devastatingly effective in close quarters as well, able to match the legendary Nonius blow-for-blow.
- A Hero to His Hometown: Among Blood of Eden, she seems to have not just been their most effective commander ever, but was also immensely respected, to the point where decades after her Suicide Mission, BoE still idolizes her.
- Hypocrite: She formally charges John with genocide (which is accurate), and then in her next breath calls for an ethnic cleansing of all necromancers. John dryly threatens to present cute pictures of necromancer toddlers.John: They don't make for fat-cheeked roly-poly babies, but they've got a certain something, and nobody likes toddlers juxtaposed with cleansed.
- "It" Is Dehumanizing: Refers to the child she bore in deliberately dehumanizing language, referring to the infant that would become Gideon Nav as "that thing", "it", and "Bomb".
- Killed Off for Real: Pyrrha shoots her in Cytherea's head, banishing her revenant nearly 20 years after her death, finally ending her desire for revenge... probably.
- Love Triangle: Was in a relationship with both Pyrrha Dve and Gideon the First, the former being the dead cavalier powering the latter's Lyctorhood. Both seem to have genuinely loved Wake in their own ways, while Wake primarily seemed interested in Pyrrha.
- Meaningful Name: Many times over. According to comments from Muir, Blood of Eden names
are intentionally chosen to have specific meaning and are broken into three parts.- Her shortened name of "Wake" ties into the associations necromancy has with water and the ripple effects of the Gambit Pileup that was the Ninth House Operation, and her full name is nineteen words long.
- Her "title" in Harrow's recreation of Canaan House being "The Sleeper" is both a Punny Name and a reference to the Edgar Allan Poe’s poem of the same name, several passages of which seem to have inspired her out of place clothes and her long hair.
- “Awake Remembrance Of These Valiant Dead” is a line from Shakespeare’s Henry V, part of a longer quote beseeching King Henry to live up to his ancestors’ deeds and legacy so they can live again through him. Wake sees herself as the avenger of Earth and the ten billion, fighting to destroy the Emperor in the name of every atrocity he’s committed against the human race.
- "Kia hua ko te pai" is Māori for "May Goodness Flourish", and is used in the Māori version of New Zealand's national anthem, an indigenous language version of an anthem of a nation formed by colonialism of the British Empire.
- The lyric from "Lose Yourself" in her name in context refers to running out of time on one opportunity to change your circumstances, while Wake persists as a ghost who failed in her final mission at the last moment.
- One-Woman Army: She was very likely one of the greatest warriors who ever lived, and planned to assault the entirety of the Ninth by herself. Pyrrha calls her "the most dangerous woman I'd ever met who wasn't me."
- Overly Long Name: Her full name is "Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity".
- Possessing a Dead Body: She possesses Cytherea's body for most of Harrow the Ninth.
- The Power of Hate: It is clear in every action she takes that Wake's primary motivation is complete and total hatred of necromancy and the Empire. She held onto her bones as a revanant for eight years, and then to Gideon's sword for another twelve, purely by the power of her single minded hatred.
- Punny Name: Wake is "The Sleeper". She's also post-humously a Deep Cover Agent who's persisted as a revenant for 20 years after her initial plan failed.
- Rebel Leader: The most recent leader of Blood of Eden, and one seemingly still venerated in the decades since her death.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Hates the Empire and necromancy with every fiber of her being.
- Stalker with a Test Tube: With a twist. Since the Emperor was naturally paranoid about his blood, Wake, Mercy, and Augustine contrived to concieve a child with his DNA. However, the surrogate wombs and eggs Mercy gave her failed, so Wake impregnated herself to complete the mission, and thoroughly hated every part of the process.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Gideon Nav inherited her facial features and bright red hair.
- Soul Jar: Has been inhabiting Gideon Nav's two-hander for a very long time. Harrow stabbing Cytherea a second time transferred her spirit into the empty body, which she continues to use until it's destroyed.
- Suicide by Cop: Invoked by name. The Emperor accuses her of this being her motivation for continuing to go after him and the other Lyctors after her death, despite surely knowing she has little chance of succeeding in taking them out. Wake neither confirms nor denies, and her supposed reason for doing so remains unclear.
- Suicide Mission: Her final role in the Ninth House Operation was to assault the entire House by herself to kill the Emperor's child at the doorstep of the Tomb, only to fail before she ever dropped into the House, running out of oxygen on the descent due to Gideon the First catching up to her.
- Throw-Away Guns: Does so in her assault on Harrow and the gathered revenants, summoning new guns in her hands to keep fighting.
- Unstoppable Rage: When it comes to anything necromantic, her rage is immediate and all-consuming. Even her dying thoughts are rendered in BOLDED AND ITALICIZED CAPSLOCK.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: From her perspective, she's fighting the ultimate evil in human history to preserve the worlds outside the Nine Houses who've yet to be conquered and avenge the deaths of humanity's home system, including countless millions of children, which justifies any act she takes, no matter how extreme, even including killing her own child.
- Worlds Greatest Warrior: Tied with Nonius as the only mortal to have crossed swords with a fully-realized, superhuman Lyctor on even footing and having lived to tell the tale, even getting the best of them on multiple occasions. Even legendary warriors like Protestilarius (who can deflect bullets with nothing but sheer martial skill) are no match for her. The only one capable of bringing her down is Nonius himself, and only after Wake was deprived of her primary weapons.
We Suffer
Cell Commander & Ctesiphon Wing Commander We Suffer and We Suffer
Wake's disciple and successor in Blood of Eden.
- Meaningful Name: She comes across as much more aware of and concerned by suffering than Wake, more interested in trying to alleviate it and protect people than in taking bloody vengeance. Not that she shies away from violence. "We Suffer and We Suffer" is probably from Aeschylus, an ancient Greek tragedian, who wrote something that can be translated as "But justice turns the balance scales, sees that we suffer and we suffer and we learn."
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The primary voice of reason within Blood of Eden, and one who is smart enough to view their House captives as potential assets, enough to create Troia Cell, giving them considerable leniency given they're essentially the only chance to finally complete Wake's mission. In Nona the Ninth she repeatedly insists that Camilla try to look at the situation from her point of view.
- Sketchy Successor: In a rare take, done because she's a Reasonable Authority Figure. Commander Wake was a single minded anti-necromantic warrior, with a fierce personality and charisma who turned Blood of Eden into a bona fide threat to the Empire. Commander We Suffer is more willing to think long-term and scheme, but lacking Wake's charisma and drive has led to the rise of rival factions that are locked in a power struggle for the future of the organization.
- Spock Speak: Nona notes We Suffer speaks House with a heavy accent, which translates into text as a very precise, slightly stilted manner of speaking, and she almost never uses contractions.
Unjust Hope
Merv Wing Commander Unjust Hope
A rival to We Suffer, favoring aggression and militancy.
- The Ghost: Never appears in person, or is even heard from, but his rivalry with We Suffer causes no small amount of friction; Day Five in Nona has a full on civil war between Merv Wing and Ctesiphon Wing erupt.
The Angel
The Messenger / Aim / "The Angel"
A very nice teacher at Nona's school who oversees the hour of science. Also an extremely high-ranking Blood of Eden member with a mandatory bodyguard.
- Ambiguous Gender: The Angel is described as vaguely butch and referred to variously as "they", "she", and "sir" by different characters. The way they talk about being "they" suggests the pronoun is the plural form and a function of their status—they're extremely proud to be "they", but given a choice to be someone other than The Messenger, they enjoy "she" just as well.
- Closest Thing We Got: They're actually a vet, but given how badly things are going on New Rho, the local clinic is in no position to be picky.
- I Am the Noun: "The Angel is Blood of Eden," according to We Suffer.
- Legacy Character: Aim is not the first Messenger. Collectively, she and the preceding Messengers are intended to form a single Message. The name "Aim" is literally part of the message. The message is also finite; whoever is appointed the next Messenger will be the last one. Aim cryptically states that "the message is too simple for human beings like us to understand."
- Married to the Job: The role of the Messenger in Blood of Eden is effectively a lifelong commitment to be the Messenger.
- Mind Hive: When asked point blank by Nona who they are, Aim refers to themselves with plurals. Palamedes' inspection of Aim also has him pointedly ask if a necromancer had ever performed any surgery on them in the past due to the presence of an "implant".
- The Nameless: They are the Messenger, and the Message is "Aim"; even their nickname of "the Angel" is just a nickname. That their forebear is named by Aim implies that like other members of Blood of Eden, it was a symbolic discarding of a prior identity, but without any new name being granted.
- Punny Name: The Messenger is named AIM, aka AOL Instant Messenger, a now-defunct instant messaging service. What cements this as a pun rather than a coincidence is that her predecessor was named Emma Sen, or MSN, which also had a service called MSN Messenger.
Crown
Lieutenant Crown Him With Many Crowns / Coronabeth Tridentarius
Pash
Lieutenant Our Lady of the Passion
A member of Ctesiphon Wing under Commander We Suffer, "Pash" is archetypal Eden through and through, violent, short-tempered, aggressive, and hating of all things necromantic; it's in the blood, given she's Commander Wake's niece.
- Child Soldiers: Born to Blood of Eden, and has been toting huge guns around since she was a child.
- Delinquent Hair: Has her hair dyed electric blue and shaved in an undercut, which Nona finds ridiculously cool and devastatingly attractive.
- Dramatic Irony: Pash hates everything and anything to do with necromancy, and her role in Blood of Eden is that of a "lifeguard", someone tasked with protecting and transporting VIPs. After a wave of inter-wing conflict leaves the other available lifeguards dead or tied up, she gets saddled with the role of protecting the Messenger, effectively tying her down in a reflection of the cavalier-necromancer bond.
- Dual Wielding: A subversion. She prominently wears two machetes on her hip, but claims it is only a tactic meant to intimidate zombies; in her eyes their minions are complete idiots for wielding swords against guns.
- However, given her Auntie's legendary skill, it's equally possibly she merely wants to follow in Commander Wake's footsteps, although we never see her use them onscreen.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: She responds strongly when Pyrrha tells her about how Wake cared fiercely and proudly about her niece, and loses a slight edge of her hostility.
- Fire-Forged Friends: "Friends" is pushing it, but despite her hatred of necromancers, she develops a begrudging but deep respect for Camilla after the two of them massacre a Merv Wing hit squad together. And eventually, even Pyrrha Dve as well.
- Hidden Depths: Despite her violent posturing and repeated threats, and being perfectly willing to shoot Nona and Camila out of precaution after they were shot by Merv Wing (and believed dead), Pash ultimately never follows through and remains loyal to We Suffer's cause, even after The Angel (mistakenly) gave the liquidation order in a panic.
- Hypocritical Humor: Scorns the Nine Houses' obsession with swords as 'complete fucking hand-me-down insanity', but of course carries two machetes on her at all times. When Camilla points this out, Pash says she wanted to "get into their heads," sometimes literally.
- Long-Lost Relative: Subverted. Pash is very aware that the undecaying corpse of Gideon Nav is her cousin, but is equal parts disgusted, outraged, and terrified by Commander Wake's death, a twice-over zombie abomination. Pash outright refuses to go near her or be around her for any extended length of time.
- Nepotism: Pash is undeniably good at her job, but she's been promoted much faster than she would've otherwise due to Commander Wake being her aunt. She also enjoys some impunity from the rules; multiple characters say she should be court-martialed for discharging a weapon in front of the Messenger (this is apparently a great breach), but Pash seems pretty confident she'll face no consequences.
- Older Than They Look: Pash looks and acts like an angry young adult, but is in her late 20s to early 30s.
- One-Woman Army: Goes with being a member of Blood of Eden, though Pash is a mix of very competent and out of her depth, having been overpromoted due to nepotism.
School
Hot Sauce's Gang
Hot Sauce
The leader of the gang of kids at Nona's school. Quiet and taciturn, everyone respects her, even the teachers.
- Child Soldiers: Her friends brag that she's gotten to hold a gun in a fight against the Empire, though Hot Sauce doesn't talk about it much. That she reflexively looks at other buildings and notices a lookout watching the school, and advises Nona to stay under cover implies it was more than a simple occurrence born out of an emergency. However, it does seem like at least the local Blood of Eden chapters are less casual about child soldiers than the Nine Houses, since she's not expected to fight in Nona the Ninth.
- Covered in Scars: Burn scars, specifically. Part of the reason the whole school respects her is that her gang brings any new kids to her so she can show them off, which either awes or terrifies them.
- Fantastic Racism: She hates Necromancers with a burning passion, after being maimed fighting them, watching all her brothers die trying to fight them, and having to relocate because of them so often. When she receives incontrovertible proof Nona is one of them, she immediately shoots her between the eyes and runs away. Nona, being Nona, finds it in her to forgive even that.
- Foil: To Jeannemary Chatur from the first book. They're both young girls from large families who have had their lives irrevocably altered by the war. They're both committed to their own idea of justice and are eager to fight and to protect their friends. But while Jeannemary's naiveté and impulsive nature put her firmly in the position of surrogate younger sister to Gideon, the street-smart Hot Sauce acts more like an older sister to Nona, despite their difference in age.
- Meaningful Name: Nicknamed "Hot Sauce" because she just really likes hot sauce and puts it on everything. Nona is put out a little that it's that simple.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Not even the teachers know her as anything other than 'Hot Sauce'.
- Pet the Dog:
- Although it's not her natural impulse, when she says goodbye to Nona, she takes care to tell Nona that she'll always love her.
- She's also protective of her gang in general. When Honesty shows up with a black eye, the first thing she asks is who gave it to him, in an ominous sort of way, and later reassures him that "you're my boy. I'll take care of you."
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Not only is she homeless, refusing any help from anyone, but she carries a gun at all times and is on edge constantly. In general she carries herself more like a would-be militia leader than a fourteen year old.
- Again, when she sees it proven without a doubt that Nona is a necromancer, Hot Sauce doesn't hesitate to shoot her in the head.
- It gets mentioned that some older kids from outside school once challenged Hot Sauce and Honesty to a fight. Hot Sauce showed up later saying the fight had been called off because one of the kids got hit by a car. And also that she'd driven the car.
Honesty
Hot Sauce's right-hand man and drug dealer.
- Ironic Name: His main contribution to Hot Sauce's group is lying.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Approached Nona knowing she was 19 looking for her to get him drugs. Although Nona obviously couldn't, she says he ended up getting them from somewhere else. He also brags about ditching school to take a job stripping pipe cashing from underground roads for cash. Honesty is 12 years old.
Beautiful Ruby
Another member of Hot Sauce's gang.
- Meaningful Name: Beautiful Ruby is apparently the prettiest member of the gang, and so considered their expert on beautiful people.
- Out of Focus: Gets the least attention from Nona, so we know the least about him.
Kevin
The youngest of the gang.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Being only 7 years old and seemingly having gone through some sort of resettlement based trauma, Kevin is notably rather quiet compared to the others in his group, and has a habit of getting scared and locking himself in bathrooms for up to an hour.
- Tagalong Kid: The youngest and least liked of Hot Sauce's gang, though his presence in the gang is never questioned or debated.
The Nice Lady Teacher
Joli / "The Nice Lady Teacher"
The head teacher of Nona's school.
- Knocking on Heathens' Door: Vaguely pushy about her religion, trying to give Camilla a series of pamphlets that she never sticks around long enough to see. They're actually for a 'shelter' that she also urges the children without parents to go to. It might also have something to do with how she assumes Pyrrha is Cam and Nona's pimp.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Nona's narration almost exclusively refers to as "the nice teacher lady" instead of her proper name, which is only ever used by other adults.
Noodle
Noodle
The angel's dog.
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Hexapodal, "bred" to have "one arboreal pair" of legs.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Is upset when The Angel is upset, and is able to detect necromancers, immediately growling when Palamedes switches with Camilla, and when landing on the Ninth, starts barking before the protagonists discover devils have come to the Ninth.
- Small Role, Big Impact: The status boost that Nona gets from being the one to take care of Noodle while his owner is teaching the children helps her get in with the kids. Also, when she's steering the truck down the River, Nona is so tired and sad and willing to give up to die as herself, so long as she and her family all die at once, until Paul reminds her that Noodle's also on board.
