The Ropemaker Characters

Tilja Urlasdaughter is a pretty normal girl... at first. She loves her home at Woodbourne in the Valley as much as she loves her family. Unlike many kids, she's a good listener, gets up every morni...

This old lady puts the mean in Meena (okay, that's a little bit of a stretch… but you follow) when she gets crabby. Meena Urlasdaughter is Tilja and Anja's grandmother, Selly and Grayne's mother,...

Faheel's a bit of a puzzle. He's a great wizard who saved the Valley from the invading Empire by blocking it off magically and ordering the Urlasdaughters and Ortahlsons to renew that power annuall...

The Ropemaker is a pretty solid dude—which is fitting since rope is made of tons of tiny fibers twisted together to make one pretty solid rope. He first rescues our heroes by making the cords tha...

Tahl is a handsome young guy, and definitely pretty crush-worthy. He's also Alnor Ortahlson's grandson and one of the heirs of the Ortahlsons, who chat with the river up north in Northbeck—his fu...

Alnor Ortahlson is your typical old guy—stoic and in charge. He's a descendant of Reyel Ortahlson, and lives in Northbeck and talks to the river, protecting the glacier and keeping the Valley saf...

Where did Selly get her magic? She got it from her mama—a.k.a. Meena. Like Anja from Selly, Selly inherited the power of the Urlasdaughters to chat with the cedars. And like Anja with Tilja, Sell...

What a smart aleck. Anja Urlasdaughter is Tilja's sometimes-annoying little sister, the daughter of Selly and Da, and granddaughter to Meena. When the book starts, Anja stays in bed after Tilja get...

Tilja is a daddy's girl—she has a really close relationship with her papa, whom she calls Da. Da is the one in charge of the family, but he allows Tilja to come along with him to the Gathering (3...

Dorn is a bad boy. He's one of the Watchers who control the Empire's magic for the Emperor; he represents the South of the Empire and is the second most powerful Watcher (8.159). Tilja first meets...

You'd better watch yourself around the nasty Silena, who is one of the twenty Watchers of the Empire (8.159). The section of the Empire she supervises is next to Dorn's, and the space where Meena a...

Want to know who the number one bad guy is in The Ropemaker? Moonfist, that's who. He's a mysterious magician who first appears when he fights Silena and Dorn for Axtrig's magic on the walls of Tal...

Here's the couple of the hour—Lananeth and Ellion. Lananeth is a magician in the Empire (6.15). She is wife to Ellion, Steward to Lord Kzuva, Oversecretary of the Northern Roadways, and has his a...

Asarta is the original magical lady who helped the Valley. She's the magician who—twenty generations before Tilja's time—was asked to seal off the Valley from the Imperial soldiers. A deserter...

Dirna is the lady who kicked off the magic in her family. In the story of how the Valley became warded off from the Empire, Dirna Urlasdaughter, along with Reyel Ortahlson, is one of two people who...

Reyel should also be known as Big Daddy—at least in the Ortahlson family. In the story of how the Valley became warded off from the Empire, Reyel Ortahlson, along with Dirna Urlasdaughter, kept o...

Everybody should be lucky enough to have a great aunt like Grayne. Grayne is Tilja's aunt, Meena's daughter, and Selly's sister. Like Tilja, Grayne didn't inherit the family magic, and she left Woo...

Salata isn't the most welcoming of folks. She's the first person Tilja and Co. meet when they arrive in the Empire after washing up on shore in their raft: She was square and sturdy and very differ...

Zara's got it going on. She's one magical lady—the Lord Kzuva's magician (8.137), and as such a servant wizard to a noble of the Empire. She's middle-aged and has the "smooth stillness" of the Wa...

The Emperor is all over this book—though he doesn't have a name and only pops up in person once. He's such an arrogant jerk that his power ripples through the book's pages. It's his soldiers that...