The Dossier

Aruma Nayra

Sorceress of the New World

“The beast has eaten. The man has not.”

Small, watchful, and newly arrived from across the sea, following a vision of a broken man who brings the light. Channels an ancestor who was a much larger warrior (visibly, when it matters) and carries a club that has ended arguments the muskets could not. The spirits call her the oracle. They are not wrong.

Axel von Dämmerung

Reichsgraf of Stützung

“Nobody in this room needs struck. There'll be plenty of striking to pass around later.”

An Eisen lord a long way from home, in pursuit of a family sword and pursued by questions he does not answer. Generous with his purse, silent about his past, and recently the subject of a great deal of Inquisition attention. The wolf seen running through San Cristóbal is, of course, unrelated.

Diego

Duellist, of the Gonzalo Quesada

“Do you forgive me?”

Castilian blade, merchant-house son, and the company's designated talker when charm must be armed. Monologues mid-fight, shoots the right person at the right moment, and punched a friend bloody once strictly for verisimilitude. He apologized first.

Grigori

Prophet of Matushka

“You are not the boss of me.”

Barefoot Ussuran holy man, chosen, insistently, by powers he did not apply to. Preaches to people who run away, converses with someone nobody else can see, and once held off a tunnel of ghouls with a raised lamp and sheer conviction. Fights best unclothed. Ask him why at your peril.

Henryk Turczyński

Hussar of the Sarmatian Commonwealth

“Surrender or die.”

A winged rider a long way from a lost cause. Loyal to the Commonwealth's crown, contemptuous of its enemies, and possessed of exactly one negotiating posture. Rode alone at an Inquisition column and demanded its surrender. Owed a life-debt by a countess who does not care to owe anyone anything.

Kharkov

Marksman of Ussura

A giant with a long rifle and a longer patience, whose bear could smell what people were hiding. Cleared a monastery roof from a clifftop at dusk. Went home to Ussura, the bear walking beside his horse, having had, in fairness, quite enough of Castille.

Yvette

Porté sorceress of Montaigne

“Close your eyes.”

The company's voice, interpreter, and emergency exit; the only one who ever heard the ghouls out. Left for Montaigne in the ambassador's carriage, visibly troubled, and her seat is kept in memory if not at table. No one says more than that.

Elena von Dämmerung

Daughter of the house

The young lady of Stützung, raised at a careful distance from her father's troubles. What she knows, and what she has merely guessed, is a subject the Reichsgraf does not discuss with anyone. Including her.

Franz Ulrich

Steward of Stützung

Runs the estate in the lord's long absence: the accounts, the servants, the letters that must be answered and the ones that must not. The furthest thing from an adventurer, which is precisely why everything at home still works.

Dr. Ilsa Gerhardt

Personal physician

“You look terrible.”

Physician, herbalist, and, say it quietly, Hexe. Manages the Reichsgraf's health with an iron schedule and an unimpressed expression. Taken by the Inquisition after the events of midsummer, questioned at length, and recovered from a prison wagon on the pilgrim road. Recovering. Do not crowd her.

Otto Falken

Commander of the Household Guard

“No sword is worth a man's life.”

The old soldier who has kept the von Dämmerung house, and its lord, in one piece for longer than anyone will say. Disapproves of nearly everything and is nearly always right. Seven guards were sent to collect him. None returned. Current whereabouts unknown.

Amanda de la Rosa

Bodyguard to the Princess

“Words, your grace. Words.”

Never takes her hand off her sword, never softens an assessment. Asked the Reichsgraf to his face whether he could control it, and voted accordingly. Was overruled. Watches him anyway, and once gave him a respectful nod, which those present describe as unsettling.

Emilio Crespo

Ex-Inquisitor, Ducado de Torres

A progressive churchman, which proved nearly fatal: shot as theater, spirited to a cliff monastery, and slowly poisoned so he would die a hero. Rescued, cured by means the Church would not approve of, and now a fugitive who knows the Inquisition's bureaucracy from the inside. Owes the company his life and pays in expertise.

King Amadeo Sandoval

The rightful King of Castille

Taken by the Inquisition 'for his own safety' and held, the whisper goes, in a prison without walls. His physician is permitted to visit, irregularly, by no visible road. Finding him is the first objective. Freeing him is the second. Everything else is detail.

Kodai

Operations

“You're welcome.”

A very small man in a very large red fez; the Princess's spymaster and the reason her handful of loyalists knows anything at all. Drinks everyone's wine, insults everyone's plans, produces schedules the Inquisition believes are secret. Drives the getaway wagon under one standing condition: no wolf.

Princess Rocío

The Yellow Lady

“If it comes to that, I will bang on the gate myself.”

For years the underworld of San Cristóbal dealt with a veiled woman called the Yellow Lady. She is the King's twin sister, who wore her brother's face for the realm's sake and went into hiding when the Inquisition took him. Impulsive, guilt-ridden, and the spare heir of Castille, which is why she is never, ever allowed to come along.

Queen Almunda

Oquendo de Sandoval Aldana

“We must ensure Castille has an heir.”

The King's mother, whose entrance once silenced a Cardinal's ball. Buried a husband, misplaced a son, and now runs a conspiracy of a dozen souls with the calm of a woman who has outlasted worse. Waits for people to arrive at her conclusions on their own; is generally not disappointed.

Santina

Scullery maid, El Alcázar

The palace's smallest spy. Three soft knocks, a pause, two more. The morning after the wolf night, everything the company needed to know, delivered breathless and exact. Kodai sent her back before she was missed.

Capitan Inquisidor Esteban Virello

At the Deep Vault's door

Virello arrives with Sister Ines Valcazar and four guards as the company prepares to take Coronel out of the lower chambers.

Fatima Campos de Gallegos

Inquisitor Cardenal

The one who watches. At the Cardinal's ball she studied every guest like a ledger to be balanced. What she concluded, she has not yet spent.

Knight Inquisitor Friedrich

Monster hunter, of Eisen

“It is there that we shall finish this.”

The hand behind the masked courier, the ball invitation, and the long hunt for the von Dämmerung line. Builds his traps out of silver and salt and calls the results mercy. Loads his men's guns with silver ball. Fled one ambush with his sergeant over his saddle and a promise over his shoulder: Eisen.

Jafet Moreno de Zepeda

Inquisitor Cardenal

Wheeled, scowling, and armed with questions that arrive like stilettos. Regards the foreign company with undisguised suspicion, which in fairness has been entirely vindicated.

Modesto Mejía de Sandoval

Inquisitor Cardenal, and something older

A Cardenal of the Inquisition whom a bear once refused to stop staring at. Cured a dying man with means no church sanctions, observed that the city was getting warm, and strolled out of it whistling. Filed under the Inquisition for form's sake; filed under nothing, in truth.

Pastora Losa de Aldana

Inquisitor Cardenal

Met doting on her grandchildren while a nervous man attended her every need. Also an Inquisitor Cardenal of Castille. Both facts are true, and the second explains the nervousness.

Patricia Albana de Soldano

Inquisitor Cardenal

The fifth Cardenal of the Inquisition's high table. Her name, her ducado, and nothing else, which from that quarter is a warning, not an absence.

Antoinne

Prisoner of Agrilla

One of Ruprett's promised exhibits. Antoinne calls him Shadow, answers his questions, and asks the company to let him out. They refuse.

Cardenal Esteban Verdugo

Protector of Castille

“The light is patient. The light is kind. But it casts a shadow all the same.”

The most powerful man in Castille, and the most courteous. Hosts magnificent balls, preaches magnificent sermons, and displays his enemies outside the cathedral with their crimes burned into them. Has taken a warm personal interest in the foreign company. This is not good news.

The Sewer Ghouls

Beneath San Cristóbal

“We do not take the dead. We are given them.”

Grey, strong, unbleeding, and, to the surprise of everyone dripping in that tunnel, capable of speech, in a tongue older than the city above. They dispose of what the shiny one delivers. They fear light, bargain honestly, and are owed nothing except perhaps a second conversation.

Artur Leśniak

Sarmatian, of the red

One of two Commonwealth men circling the company's hussar. Wears the red of the peasantry's cause and challenged Henryk in the open street. The quarrel is not finished, because with Sarmatians it never is.

Brother Lazaro

Keeper of the lower seals

Lazaro carries the black key to Agrilla's Deep Vault. His work is to replenish water, relight candles, and repair the seals around a prisoner he begs the company to leave alone.

Capitan Edmundo Monet

An acquaintance behind bars

Edmundo recognizes Diego immediately. He is courteous, observant, and unimpressed by the company's borrowed uniforms. He offers help; Diego leaves the offer unanswered for now.

Colonel Bihortz Arrigorriagakoa de Torres

Soldier of the Montaigne border

A border colonel with a Basque name nobody at the ball could pronounce and a hatred of Montaigne nobody could miss: she spat on the floor in front of its ambassador. Direct, decorated, and wasted on parties.

Commodore Archibald Penny

Of the Avalon fleet

A commodore's portrait in the company's growing file. Where he sails, and for whom, nobody has said.

Countess Roswitha von Wirsche

Eisen noblewoman

“Old power is true power.”

A countess with a claim, ambitions the size of a vacant throne, and habits that do not survive daylight. Owes a hussar her life and has made the Reichsgraf an offer with a country attached. Whether she is an ally is a question with more than one correct answer.

Diego Ruiz de Soldano

Ducado de Soldano

A duke's man with a smuggler's reputation: things that are difficult to find, found. The sort of acquaintance one cultivates before needing him, because afterward the price changes.

Dr. Coronel

The King's physician

“Irreplaceable.”

The physician who can lead the company to King Sandoval. Freed from his cell beneath Agrilla, he is trying to leave with as many books as he can carry.

Estafania

Prisoner of the Deep Vault

A little girl stands inside a chamber bounded by salt, candles, scripture, and holy symbols. She asks to be let out to play. Coronel's written answer is emphatic: do not open her chamber.

Lord Fili Brousseau

Montaigne's ambassador to Castille

“Adventure makes hangovers twice as worse.”

Perfumed, gossipy, and far more dangerous than either quality suggests. Knows the who's-who of every room and trades in it; took a marked interest in the company's Montaigne sorceress and eventually took her home with him. The coachman declined to repeat what he said as she boarded.

Governor Carlos Pérez Gallegos

Colonial governor

A governor of the overseas holdings. In the file, which means he matters, or will.

Itzamatul of Tzak K'an

Decado de Ultramar

Warm, likable, and a very long way from home: a lord of the far colonies drinking cheerfully in a nest of Inquisitors. Everyone's favorite dinner companion. Nobody's confirmed friend.

Lord Leon Mynarczyk

Sarmatian, of the white

The other Commonwealth man: white, crowned cause, courtly manners, met at the ball. Whether he is Henryk's ally or merely his countryman is a distinction Sarmatia has bled over before.

Nagore Loyola

Of Ciudad Vatacinia

Never left the Cardinal's elbow through an entire ball, an assassination attempt included. Ate with the company and revealed nothing. Whoever she reports to sits very high indeed.

Pedro Álvarez

A face in the file, and as yet only a name to go with it.

Porzia Messore

The scripture-writing prisoner

Porzia covers the walls of her cell with scripture. When she begins a chant in front of the company, Ruprett turns white.

Prince Alcide Mondavi

Merchant Prince of Vodacce

A Vodacce merchant prince, in the file for reasons the chronicle has not yet caught up with. When Vodacce enters a story, it entered it earlier than anyone noticed.

Prince Gespucci Bernoulli

Merchant Prince of Vodacce

Master of a trade empire and its harbors. His portrait arrived with the others; his relevance, presumably, is in the post.

Prince Michele Lucani

Merchant Prince of Vodacce

The third of the Vodacce princes in the file. Three is not a coincidence; three is a faction.

Sister Ines Valcazar

An arrival at the vault

Sister Ines enters the lower prison just as the company is trying to leave with Coronel. Capitan Inquisidor Esteban Virello holds the door for her.

Father Armand Algassi

Priest of San Cristóbal

Spoke carefully against the way things are run, and went out an upper window at the Cardinal's ball for it. He fell, says the official account. His body was given to the things beneath the city. The company went down after it, and everything since followed from that descent.