The cast
The cast of Titanlord
Titanlord is a completed dark epic fantasy saga in four volumes by M.G. Darwish, published between 2018 and 2023. It is a series of novels, not a game.
A hundred and twenty named characters walk through the saga, and the saga spends them. These twenty one matter most. This page is safe for a reader who has finished Of Death & Sacrifice: anything that spoils a later volume sits behind a sealed gate, labelled with the book it spoils.
The Trio
Three people out of one small village: a girl who cannot keep quiet, the boy who follows her out, and the sword master who takes them both.
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Village boy of Palleria
Griffyn Haikrou
Palleria
A talker, not a fighter. Something in him answers anyway.
Griffyn is a village boy of Palleria with no rank, no sword and a great mind for strategy. When his closest friend Vendel is banished, he refuses to be left behind and walks out of the only home he has into a country that is quietly coming apart. He is unarmed, out of his depth and frightened. Then, watching the person he loves most being hurt, he shouts four words at a grown man, and the man obeys.
“Do not touch her!”
Book 1, Chapter 6 Spoils A Thousand Ashes.
What becomes of them sits behind the gate.
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Village girl of Palleria
Vendel
Palleria
Sixteen, loud, and carrying something that answers to an older name.
Vendel is sixteen, an orphanage child of Palleria, and incapable of holding her tongue. She taunts the King's Black Knight in front of the whole village and is lifted off her feet by the throat for it. The Elder banishes her to spare Palleria worse, and hands her to the First Sword as an apprentice. She cannot lift a blade properly yet. She also knows things are coming before they arrive, and nobody can tell her why.
“You are all sinners in the eyes of the Creator. By what right do you invoke my name?”
Book 1, Chapter 8 -
First Sword of Palleria
Roriana Macintyre
Palleria
A general of the rebellion, hiding in a farming village.
Rory teaches village children to hold a blade and fights the Empire's Black Knight to a draw in the street. She is thin, sardonic, faster than anyone she meets, and carries twin swords in a back sheath. She keeps her real name and her rank to herself. Palleria knows her as its First Sword. It does not know she was a general of the Red Hand, or that going home was meant to be the honourable thing.
“The myths will neither be forgotten, nor will they perish for a thousand years to come! For tonight, we slay the darkness before it reaches the dawn.”
Book 1, Chapter 4
The Red Hand
The rebel army that calls itself the light, and the captains who carry its gripping hand burned into their arms.
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Commander of the Red Hand
Benjen Daguth
The Red Hand's Army
The Crown calls him a traitor. The north calls him protector.
Benjen is the rebel of Palleria who lost a war and did not stop. Black armour, a gripping hand burned into his captains' arms, an army that calls itself the light. The Crown wants his head on a spike. The people he passes curse him to his face, and he bows and asks their forgiveness. He empties the Citadel's granary for the hungry, and when told it means shortage, answers that they will starve with the people.
“The war for the world now begins.”
Book 1, Chapter 7 Spoils Child of Prophecy.
What becomes of them sits behind the gate.
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Second of the Red Hand
Natasha
The Red Hand's Army
Holds the fort nobody can find, and never shows doubt.
Natasha is the Red Hand's Second and commands Fort Eldren whenever the Commander is elsewhere. Twin swords on her back, bruises she covers, a grin she uses like a weapon. She is bawdy one minute and iron the next, and she will not let her soldiers see her afraid. She takes Griffyn down into the mines under the fort and teaches him the oldest story there is, carved into the rock by people who were there.
Spoils Child of Prophecy.
What becomes of them sits behind the gate.
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General of the Red Hand
Kaven Holt
The Red Hand's Army
Buries every man he orders forward, and keeps ordering them forward.
Kaven is one of the Commander's senior generals, a left-handed swordsman from Snodia who was a watchman until Benjen saved his life. He walks into a war council complaining that it needs tidying, mocks a rival's rank, and then argues for splitting the army and charging. He fights in the front line. He admits fear out loud, which almost nobody in this army does, and he prizes composure over strength.
“I have never doubted you, not once in my lifetime.”
Book 1, Chapter 15 Spoils A Thousand Ashes.
What becomes of them sits behind the gate.
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Captain of the Red Hand
Gilkas
The Red Hand's Army
Left to hold a city on four words, and does.
Gilkas towers over six feet, carries a double-handed axe, and is described as one of the strongest warriors the Red Hand has. He is also furious most of the time, and looking for somebody to blame who is not his Commander. He holds a grudge against a man who deserted years ago and never lets it go. When the army marches, Benjen leaves him the Citadel and a small force, and an order: the Citadel must not fall.
Spoils Child of Prophecy.
What becomes of them sits behind the gate.
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Captain of the Guards of the Citadel
Clint Sebastian
The Citadel
A decorated general disguised as the shabbiest man at the gate.
Clint meets Rory and the children at the Citadel's gate looking like a beggar, which is the point. He is a decorated general of the first rebellion who walked away from his own Commander mid-battle, and has been serving a city garrison ever since. He reads people at a glance and lies to the public to keep them calm. He tells Rory what the Citadel is really fighting, and the answer is not bandits.
“Demons, my Lady. We are being attacked by demons.”
Book 1, Chapter 3 -
Captain of the Red Hand
Tatiana Hunter
The Red Hand's Army
Takes off her helmet so you remember who beat you.
Tatiana is a senior captain at Fort Eldren, silver armour, face-covering helmet, the gripping hand burned into her upper arm. She leads the raid that wipes out a slaver camp north of the Citadel, frees the prisoners, and then steps in front of her own comrades' blades to keep them off a frightened boy. She does not drink. She refuses the escort she is offered, takes two men instead of twelve, and promises she will be fine.
“I did this, because I want you to remember the face that struck you down.”
Book 1, Chapter 6 Spoils Child of Prophecy.
What becomes of them sits behind the gate.
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Senior captain at Fort Eldren
Dale Hunter
The Red Hand's Army
Among the two best swords alive, and a constant worrier.
Dale is a senior captain at Fort Eldren and, with Natasha, one of the two best swordsmen in the lands. He is also an expert archer and an anxious, stubborn, easily flustered man whose sister mocks him for it. He does not trust what Griffyn can do, presses the fort's scholar on whether it is demonic, refuses to be the test subject himself, and draws steel on the boy the moment he is proven right.
Spoils A Thousand Ashes.
What becomes of them sits behind the gate.
The Crown
The Magmar dynasty that cast the Titans down, the knights who serve it, and the men who would trade anything at all for its favour.
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Art: The Weeping TitanMonarch of the Empire
King Magmar the Thirteenth
The Crown
Rules an empire his ancestors took from the Titans.
Magmar the Thirteenth sits at the head of the dynasty that cast the Titans down and buried them in myth. White hair, fine silks, gold rings, and a temper he takes out on his own throne until his skin splits. He screams for the Red Hand's head on a spike and swears he will cast the rebel down the way his fathers did the Titans. He is also image-conscious, self-pitying, and capable of much worse.
“I will catch this fool and cast him down, as my fathers did the Titans.”
Book 1, Prologue -
Princess of the Empire
Luna
The Crown
Goes looking for the rebel who wants her father dead.
Luna is the King's daughter, dressed in white and red silk with a golden eagle at her shoulder, and she has never seen a battle. She travels to Fort Eldren to find the Red Hand herself, because her father grows crazier by the second and she wants him stopped. She swears on her honour that no harm will come to Griffyn or Rory while they are with her, and then keeps the oath on a technicality.
“Do you follow me now, or do you follow my father?”
Book 1 -
Colored Knight of the Crown
Aizeya
The Crown
Never lost a battle but one, and never forgave it.
Aizeya is the King's Black Knight, one of only six Colored Knights in recorded history: tall, bald, a scar across his left eye, a black breastplate with a red dragon on it, and an axe most men could not lift. He is crude, drunk by morning, and feared enough that nobody will stand near his door. He rides into Palleria calling the whole village traitors, and duels its First Sword to a draw in the street.
“If you want to die, do it some other time, won't you?”
Book 1, Chapter 4 Spoils Child of Prophecy.
What becomes of them sits behind the gate.
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Art: The Weeping TitanColored Knight of legend
Robrin
The Colored Knights
Charged a Titan's army alone, won, and then vanished.
Robrin is a story people tell. One of only six Colored Knights in recorded history, ferociously strong and a tactical genius, he was charged with guarding the Citadel while the King marched on the last of the Titans. Instead he charged a Titan's entire army in open field and won. Then he disappeared, and no body was ever found, and the King declared him dead and named the site of his victory Robrin's Pass.
Spoils A Thousand Ashes.
What becomes of them sits behind the gate.
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Captain of the guard of Wynne
Jason
Wynne
Wants one tiny village, and will trade anything for it.
Jason runs the guard of Wynne and is credited with transforming the village's economy. He smirks constantly, keeps agents in the field, and reads people well enough to catch a lie in a single sentence. He is not trying to take on the Empire. He means to hand the King something the King wants very badly, and be given Wynne in return. He is also certain, out loud and more than once, that he will live forever.
“Would the King be mad at me for ridding him of a traitor? I offer him the Gods in exchange for one tiny village.”
Book 1, Chapter 11
The Titans
The old powers that ruled before the Magmars, buried in myth and worshipped by the few who never stopped believing.
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Titan of the Voice
Veda
The Titans
Spent a thousand years being a small city's beloved mayor.
For a millennium Veda has been Eskiban R. Grandulus, Lord of the Citadel: warm smile, silken robe the colour of fire, a mayor his people love. He is also the King of the Titans and the Pillar of the Voice, and he has kept the Titans out of the world's politics the entire time. He is calm, calculating and unwilling to flatter anyone. He defends the years he spent posing as a mayor without a trace of shame.
Spoils the end of Of Death & Sacrifice.
One line of dialogue sits behind the gate.
Spoils Child of Prophecy.
What becomes of them sits behind the gate.
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Art: The Weeping TitanTitan of the Strength
Pollus
The Titans
Destroyed a dozen men in one swing, then offered a hand.
Pollus is the Pillar of the Strength, one of the three Titans the Teetans still name aloud alongside Veda and Magnus. He is big, helmeted, evil in every line of him by the account of the only man who has met him, and he vanishes like a shadow. He annihilates Benjen's entire escort with one sword swing, overpowers Benjen in a duel, and then stops, offers his hand, and gives him a blade and a rule.
Spoils Child of Prophecy.
What becomes of them sits behind the gate.
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Bearer of the Foresight
Rodarion
The Titans
Wept on a hill for a hundred years. People noticed.
Three thousand years before the trilogy, Rodarion sits on a hill above the island of Myrn and weeps, and has done for a hundred years. He is battered, shunned, swollen-eyed, sworn to no one, and he calls himself King of the Titans, which is the part a human king will not tolerate. He carries the Foresight in his right eye. He has seen something coming, and everyone who hears him decides he is mad.
Spoils The Weeping Titan.
One line of dialogue sits behind the gate.
The Gods
The New Children, winged and gold-helmed, come down with one question for humanity: repentance or extinction.
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King of the Gods
Nepherin
The Gods
Winged, gold-helmed, and here to pass sentence on humanity.
Nepherin is one of the New Children, another branch from the Divine, and he calls the King of the Titans his elder brother. A golden helmet over half the face, white armour that looks like it would tear in your hands, two wings folded neatly, a staff made out of light. His voice is neither male nor female. He compares humans to bacteria, and he has come to tell them what he has decided.
Spoils the end of Of Death & Sacrifice.
One line of dialogue sits behind the gate.
Spoils A Thousand Ashes.
What becomes of them sits behind the gate.
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Archer of the Gods
Eros
The Gods
Arrives unseen. Three arrows at once. Never misses.
Eros is one of the New Children and the archer among them: white armour that shines by contrast, a golden helmet, a bow. Beneath the helmet is a face as pale as snow with golden eyes. He readies three arrows at once and looses half a dozen in a breath, and he moves fast enough that a man who fought him swore he had teleported. Ordinary weapons do not touch him at all.
Spoils Child of Prophecy.
What becomes of them sits behind the gate.