Malazan Book of the Fallen

by Steven Erikson

The Malazan Empire wages wars across continents while gods, ascendants, and elder races manipulate events from the shadows. Ten books, three hundred named characters, and a scope that makes most fantasy look small. Gardens of the Moon throws you into an epic already in progress — no hand-holding, just a world so vast that rereading reveals entirely new stories.

120 characters, locations, and items in this world codex.

Characters

• Anomander Rake — Son of Darkness, last lord of the Tiste Andii — a three-hundred-thousand-year-old warrior who carries a sword that devours souls and the grief of an e
• Whiskeyjack — Sergeant of the Bridgeburners, the best soldier the Malazan Empire ever produced — a man demoted from command because he cared more about his soldiers
• Quick Ben — Twelve souls bound in one body, access to a dozen warrens, and the audacity to bluff gods — the Bridgeburners' high mage who survives by being smarter
• Kalam Mekhar — The finest assassin the Malazan Empire ever trained — a man built like a bear who moves like smoke, carrying principles beneath every kill and loyalty
• Fiddler — Bridgeburner sapper turned Bonehunter sergeant — a red-bearded demolitions expert who reads the Deck of Dragons and plays a fiddle that makes gods wee
• Ganoes Paran — Noble-born officer who stumbled into a war between gods and climbed out as Master of the Deck — the reader's bewildered entry point into a world that
• Tavore Paran — Adjunct of the Bonehunters, Ganoes's sister — a woman of iron will and impenetrable composure who marches her army into oblivion on nothing but faith
• Karsa Orlong — Seven-foot Toblakai who began as a savage raider and evolved into a civilization-shattering force of nature — a man whose answer to every broken syste
• Icarium Lifestealer — Half-Jaghut gentle scholar who builds clocks and studies time — until his rage awakens, and then civilizations fall and even gods retreat. He never re
• Cotillion — Patron god of assassins, the Rope that binds Shadow's throne — an Ascendant with a killer's precision and a compassion that no god of murder should po
• Shadowthrone — God of Shadow, formerly Emperor Kellanved — a giggling, scheming, rotund silhouette who hides the most dangerous mind in the pantheon behind a perform
• Kruppe — Round, sweaty, pastry-devouring master of Darujhistan's underworld — a man who speaks in third person, thinks in spirals, and may quietly be the most
• Mappo Runt — Trell guardian bound by ancient oath to keep Icarium contained — a massive, gentle scholar who has spent centuries lying to his only friend to save th
• Tehol Beddict — Genius economist who crashed an empire's economy while wearing nothing but a blanket — Lether's most dangerous man disguised as its laziest.
• Bugg — Tehol's humble manservant who is actually Mael, Elder God of the Seas — an ancient divinity hiding in plain sight as an old man who cooks terrible sou
• Crokus Younghand — Young Darujhistan thief who fell in love with an assassin and lost his innocence to a world that grinds idealists into weapons.
• Apsalar — A fisher girl possessed by the god of assassins as a teenager — left with a master killer's skills and the memories of murders she did not choose to c
• Kallor — The High King who has lived hundreds of thousands of years under a curse — an ancient monster who destroyed his own empire rather than lose it and wil
• Tattersail — Large, red-haired Bridgeburner cadre mage who died at Pale and was reborn as Silverfox — the reader's first loss and the series' first resurrection.
• Caladan Brood — Warlord who carries a hammer that can wake the sleeping goddess Burn and end the world — and has the discipline to never use it.
• Dujek Onearm — One-armed High Fist of the Malazan Empire — the grizzled commander who held the army together when the throne tried to tear it apart.
• Empress Laseen — Former Claw who assassinated Emperor Kellanved to seize the Malazan throne — a cold, calculating ruler whose paranoia is slowly dismantling the empire
• Coltaine — Wickan commander who led the Chain of Dogs — the greatest and most terrible forced march in Malazan history, herding refugees across a continent while
• Itkovian — Shield Anvil of Fener's Grey Swords who took the grief of an entire people into himself — the Malazan world's purest expression of compassion as an ac
• Felisin Paran — Noble girl sent to the Otataral mines by her own sister, broken by suffering into Sha'ik Reborn — the Paran family's deepest wound and the series' har
• Hood — Jaghut who seized the Throne of Death and became the God of Death, ruling over the gateway between life and what follows with grim, dry humor.
• K'rul — Elder God who created the warren system by spilling his own blood through the world, sacrificing his power so that mortal magic could exist.
• Mael — Elder God of the Seas who hides in plain sight as Bugg, Tehol Beddict's bumbling manservant, concealing oceanic power behind domestic servitude.
• The Crippled God — An alien god dragged from another realm and shattered upon impact with this world, chained by other gods, poisoning existence with his agony and rage.
• Fener — The Boar of Summer, God of War, who was pulled from his realm into the mortal world and lost his godhood — a deity made suddenly, terribly vulnerable.
• Oponn — The Twin Jesters of Chance — two gods sharing one divine portfolio, one pushing luck toward fortune and the other pulling it toward ruin.
• Trake — An ascended mortal who became the new God of War in tiger aspect, filling the void left when Fener was pulled from his throne.
• Burn — The Sleeping Goddess — an Elder God whose body IS the world itself. She sleeps, and if the Crippled God's poison wakes her, everything built upon her
• Dessembrae — Lord of Tragedy and the greatest swordsman who ever lived — once Dassem Ultor, First Sword of the Malazan Empire, now ascended into godhood of grief a
• Poliel — Goddess of Pestilence, the Mistress of Disease — she walks where plague walks and delights in the suffering of the afflicted.
• Silchas Ruin — White-skinned Tiste Andii Soletaken dragon, brother to Anomander Rake, imprisoned for millennia and freed into a world he barely recognizes.
• Korlat — Tiste Andii noblewoman and warrior who served Anomander Rake for millennia and found unexpected love with the mortal Whiskeyjack.
• Spinnock Durav — Young Tiste Andii warrior who plays board games in taverns and carries absolute loyalty to Anomander Rake in his heart.
• Trull Sengar — Tiste Edur warrior exiled and shorn of his name for speaking the truth about his brother Rhulad's madness and the Crippled God's corruption.
• Rhulad Sengar — Youngest Sengar brother who claimed a cursed sword and became Emperor of the Tiste Edur — dying and resurrecting endlessly, each return eroding his sa
• Onos T'oolan — First Sword of the T'lan Imass, an undead warrior who carried a flint sword for three hundred thousand years before finally regaining mortality and th
• Silverfox — A Bonecaster reborn, containing the souls of Tattersail, Nightchill, and Bellurdan — three mages fused into one child who commands the T'lan Imass.
• Kilava Onass — Renegade T'lan Imass Bonecaster who refused the Ritual of Tellann and has walked the world in living flesh for three hundred thousand years.
• Onrack the Broken — A shattered T'lan Imass warrior held together by will alone, whose soul remembers beauty and art even after three hundred thousand years of undeath.
• Hedge — Bridgeburner sapper who loves explosives with unsettling passion, died in battle, walked out of Hood's realm, and came back to keep blowing things up.
• Mallet — Bridgeburner healer whose quiet competence and steady hands kept his squad alive through campaigns that should have killed them all.
• Trotts — Barghast warrior serving with the Bridgeburners, fierce and scarred, bridging two worlds — his tribal heritage and his loyalty to the squad.
• Picker — Tough, pragmatic female Bridgeburner corporal who survived through common sense, sharp instincts, and a refusal to die for anyone's grand plans.
• Bottle — Young Bonehunter mage who walks the spirit world and sees through the eyes of animals, a gift taught by his dead grandmother's ghost.
• Gesler — Bonehunter sergeant burned golden by passage through the Telas warren, a simple soldier elevated to something more than human against his will.
• Stormy — Red-haired, massive marine burned golden alongside Gesler, who became Shield Anvil of the K'Chain Che'Malle — a role requiring compassion from the ang
• Lostara Yil — Seven Cities dancer turned soldier who became Tavore Paran's aide and one of the few people allowed close to the Adjunct's guarded heart.
• Rallick Nom — Darujhistan's deadliest assassin, a dark and brooding killer who serves the mysterious Eel and carries an unrequited love that haunts him.
• Murillio — Charming Darujhistan nobleman and swordsman whose good looks and wit mask a loyal heart devoted to his circle of misfit friends.
• Raest — Ancient Jaghut tyrant of terrifying power, now imprisoned within an Azath House in Darujhistan where he serves as an involuntary and irritable guardia
• Heboric Light Touch — Defrocked priest of Fener whose hands were cut off as punishment, replaced by ghostly jade appendages that channel powers he cannot control or underst
• Iskaral Pust — High Priest of Shadow — a cackling, apparently insane old man who mutters his secret schemes aloud while believing no one can hear him.
• Draconus — Elder God who forged Dragnipur, the sword that chains the slain in an eternal march — then was trapped inside his own creation for millennia.
• Gothos — Ancient Jaghut scholar who wrote the Gothos' Folly — a deliberately inaccurate history of the world, because he found truth too depressing to record f
• Beak — Simple-minded Bonehunter mage who saw warrens as colored candles and lit every single one to save his comrades, burning himself away in the process.
• Brys Beddict — King's Champion of Lether and the finest swordsman in the kingdom — Tehol's younger brother, a man of duty and honor in a corrupt empire.
• Lady Envy — Draconus's daughter — stunningly beautiful, impossibly vain, and terrifyingly powerful, traveling the world with Seguleh bodyguards and an inflated se
• Toc the Younger — One-eyed Malazan Claw agent who endured more suffering across more books than almost any character, his decency surviving horrors that would break any
• Tayschrenn — Imperial High Mage of the Malazan Empire — immensely powerful, deeply distrusted by the military, and far more complex than his forbidding exterior su
• Fear Sengar — Eldest Sengar brother and Weapon Master of the Tiste Edur — an honorable warrior torn between duty to his maddened brother Rhulad and his own conscien
• K'azz D'Avore — Commander of the Crimson Guard, bound by a terrible Vow that grants immortality at a cost none of them fully understood when they swore it.
• Shimmer — Second-in-command of the Crimson Guard, an Avowed warrior bound by the Vow, increasingly conflicted about the cost of immortal service.
• Hetan — Barghast warrior woman, daughter of Humbrall Taur, fierce and unapologetic in both battle and desire — Toc the Younger's wife.
• Scillara — Beautiful, sardonic, pipe-smoking woman who traveled with Heboric and Cutter, surviving the worst Seven Cities could offer with wit and stubbornness.
• Pearl — Malazan Claw operative — elegant, deadly, and trapped between professional loyalty and personal entanglements that compromise his mission.

Locations

• Genabackis — Northern continent of free cities, ancient T'lan Imass wastelands, and Malazan invasion routes — a land where every hill conceals a barrow and every c
• Seven Cities — Southern desert continent of ancient holy sites, buried civilizations, and cyclic rebellion — a land that remembers every conqueror and eventually bur
• Lether — Eastern continent where a debt-enslaved kingdom fell to the Tiste Edur, and where the Crippled God's influence seeps through cracks in reality like po
• Kolanse — Far eastern continent where the Forkrul Assail enacted their final judgment and the Bonehunters marched to free a chained god.
• Darujhistan — The City of Blue Fire — last free city of Genabackis, where gas-lit streets wind through layers of political intrigue, assassin guilds, and the machin
• Pale — Genabackan city conquered by the Malazan Empire after Moon's Spawn withdrew — where the Bridgeburners were shattered and the northern campaign began i
• Capustan — Walled city on Genabackis that endured the Pannion Domin's siege — where Itkovian, Shield Anvil of Fener, took the grief of an entire city into himsel
• Coral — Capital of the Pannion Domin and site of the climactic battle that ended the Seer's reign — where Anomander Rake shattered Moon's Spawn to bury the en
• Black Coral — City claimed by the Tiste Andii after the Pannion War — draped in perpetual twilight from Kurald Galain, where Anomander's people finally found a home
• Moon's Spawn — Floating mountain fortress of the Tiste Andii — a wounded sky-keep that drifted over Genabackis as Anomander Rake's seat of power before its final des
• The Pannion Domin — Theocratic empire that devoured southern Genabackis through religious fervor and cannibalistic armies — ruled by a Seer whose madness was rooted in a
• Moranth Mountains — Mountain homeland of the Moranth — insectoid-armored allies of the Malazan Empire whose munitions changed the nature of warfare across the world.
• Aren — Major port city and imperial capital of Seven Cities — where the Chain of Dogs ended in massacre and the Malazan garrison watched Coltaine's army die
• Ehrlitan — Coastal city in Seven Cities and a center of the Whirlwind rebellion's fervor — where the old ways simmered beneath Malazan occupation.
• Raraku — The Holy Desert — a sea of sand concealing the memory of an ancient ocean, sacred to Seven Cities, birthplace of the Whirlwind Goddess, and a place wh
• Y'Ghatan — The city where the Bonehunters were forged — they crawled beneath it through tunnels of fire and emerged as something harder than the Empire had ever
• The Chain of Dogs — Not a place but a legendary march — Coltaine's fighting retreat across Seven Cities, protecting thirty thousand refugees while seven armies tried to d
• G'danisban — City in Seven Cities where Heboric's jade-hand revelations deepened and the Crippled God's falling influence became tangible.
• Letheras — Capital of the Letherii kingdom — a city built on debt and drowning, where wealth was religion and Tehol Beddict proved it was all a lie by destroying
• Drene — Letherii city on the empire's edge — a place where the machinery of debt-conquest ground against peoples who refused to be bought.
• Tiste Edur Homeland — Dark northern forests of Lether where the Tiste Edur dwelt — shadow-draped old growth where a proud people fell to the Crippled God's corruption throu
• The Shore — The edge where Kurald Emurlahn meets oblivion — where the Shake held the line against the forces of Darkness in a battle at the boundary of existence
• Malaz Island — The island where Kellanved and Dancer began their conquest — a backwater harbor town that accidentally birthed the most powerful empire in the world.
• Unta — Imperial capital on Quon Tali — where Empress Laseen rules the Malazan Empire through a web of Claw operatives, political purges, and the constant thr
• Deadhouse — The Azath House on Malaz Island — where Kellanved and Dancer entered mortality's exit and emerged as Shadowthrone and Cotillion, gods of the Shadow Re
• Mock's Hold — Fortress overlooking Malaz Harbor — where the pirate Mock ruled before Kellanved took it from him and began building an empire from a stolen tower.
• Shadow Realm — The fragmented warren of Shadow — Shadowthrone and Cotillion's domain, a shattered plane of twilight, illusion, and paths between places that should n
• Kurald Galain — The Warren of Darkness — ancestral homeland of the Tiste Andii, realm of Mother Dark, and the source of the darkness that Anomander Rake spent his exi
• Starvald Demelain — The First Warren — realm of the Eleint, where dragons were born and where the raw stuff of creation still churns in primordial chaos.
• Omtose Phellack — The Jaghut warren of ice — a realm of frozen eternity used to imprison, preserve, and endure, reflecting a people who chose solitude over dominion.
• The Warrens — The paths of magic — parallel realms created from K'rul's blood, each a source of sorcerous power, each accessible to those with the talent and the wi
• Azath Houses — Mysterious structures that appear wherever power accumulates dangerously — living prisons of root and stone that imprison threats the world cannot oth
• The Crippled God's Tent — The chained god's prison on the mortal plane — a ragged tent where an alien deity writhes in agony, his chains sunk into the earth of a world that is
• Kharkanas — The first city — built within Kurald Galain before the Tiste shattered into three peoples, now fallen into ruin and darkness, holding the memory of ev
• The Azath House in Darujhistan — The Azath House growing in Darujhistan's grounds — where the Jaghut tyrant Raest is imprisoned beneath roots that tighten with each passing century.

Items

• Dragnipur — Anomander Rake's sword — a two-handed bastard blade containing a pocket universe where every soul it kills is chained to a wagon pulling the Gate of D
• Chance — Oponn's coin — a simple copper disc that draws the attention of the Twin Gods of Luck, turning whoever holds it into a fulcrum of fortune where every
• Vengeance — Karsa Orlong's flint sword — a weapon taller than most humans, carved from a single piece of bloodwood and flint, as crude and unstoppable as the Tobl
• Deck of Dragons — Cards that map the ascendant pantheon — reading the Deck is divination through direct contact with gods, and gods do not appreciate being looked at.
• Otataral — Magic-deadening ore mined on a single island off Seven Cities — nullifies all warren-based sorcery on contact, making it the most feared substance in
• The Finnest — Raest's soul container — an acorn-shaped vessel holding a Jaghut tyrant's power, a seed of apocalyptic potential that grew an Azath House when planted
• The Crippled God's Heart — Literally the heart torn from an alien god's body — whoever holds it holds the Crippled God's fate, and the Bonehunters carried it across a continent
• Moranth Munitions — Clay grenades that changed warfare in the Malazan world — cussers blow apart fortifications, sharpers shred infantry, and sappers love them the way ot
• Grief — Brys Beddict's sword — the finest blade in Lether, wielded by the kingdom's greatest swordsman in service of a nation that didn't deserve his loyalty.
• Flint Sword of the T'lan Imass — Stone weapons carried by the undead T'lan Imass for three hundred thousand years — impossibly ancient, still sharp, held by hands that forgot how to l
• The Jade Strangers — Enormous jade figures falling from the sky — connected to the Crippled God's alien origin, carrying the trapped souls of his worshippers from another
• The Acorn (Azath Seed) — A seed that can grow into a new Azath House — one of the rarest objects in existence, capable of sprouting a living prison wherever power threatens to
• The Spar of Andii — The black sword within Dragnipur's pocket universe — the weapon that holds the Gate of Darkness upright on the wagon, the last structural support betw
• Burn's Hammer — Caladan Brood's weapon — a hammer forged by the Sleeping Goddess herself, with one purpose held in reserve: strike the ground and wake Burn, ending th
• Hust Sword — Singing swords forged in ancient Kharkanas — they scream when drawn, howl in battle, and weep when sheathed, each blade carrying a fragment of the gri

View full codex at Simulacra.Ink