Steelheart

by Brandon Sanderson

In a world where a mysterious event called Calamity granted superpowers to a random subset of humanity, every single person who got powers — every Epic — became a villain. Steelheart rules Newcago, a city literally turned to steel. David Charleston watched Steelheart kill his father and has spent years studying Epics to find their weaknesses. Now he's joining the Reckoners — a group of ordinary humans who assassinate Epics.

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

Characters

• Abraham Desjardins — The Reckoners' gentle giant — a former Canadian special forces soldier who carries big guns, speaks softly, and believes that someday an Epic will cho
• Calamity — The red star in the sky — not a cosmic event but a sentient being who gave humanity superpowers and poisoned them with his own hatred to prove we'd mi
• Cody — The Reckoners' sniper — a Southern boy who insists he's Scottish, tells the tallest tales in three states, and can put a bullet through an Epic's weak
• Conflux — Newcago's power source — an Epic who generates limitless electricity, held prisoner by Steelheart and forced to keep the lights on for a city that nev
• David Charleston — An orphan with a notebook full of Epic weaknesses and a talent for terrible metaphors — the only person alive who saw Steelheart bleed, and he's going
• David's Father — The man who made Steelheart bleed — an ordinary father in a bank who picked up a gun, aimed at the wrong Epic, and accidentally proved that gods can h
• Dawnslight — Babilar's invisible god — a comatose Epic whose powers feed an entire city, light its streets, and communicate through fortune cookies grown on vines.
• Deathpoint — The Epic who caused everything — his disintegration touch killed people in a bank, David's father shot at him instead of Steelheart, and the rest is h
• Exel — The Babilar Reckoners' intel man — enormous, friendly, and disarmingly charming for someone whose job is extracting secrets.
• Fortuity — A precognitive Epic in Newcago — could see the future clearly until an attractive woman walked into the room.
• Knighthawk — The Reckoners' arms dealer — a paralyzed genius who builds weapons from dead Epics' DNA and runs backdoors on every device he's ever sold.
• Megan Tarsen — A Reckoner who is secretly an Epic, a spy who fell in love with her target, and the woman who figured out how to use superpowers without losing your s
• Mitosis — A cloning Epic who attacked Newcago after Steelheart's fall — and the only Epic whose weakness can kill him all by itself.
• Mizzy — The youngest Reckoner — bubbly, optimistic, and carrying a grudge against Megan for killing her mentor, which makes team dynamics awkward.
• Newton — Regalia's chief enforcer in Babilar — a katana-wielding Epic who bounces every attack back at you, killed by the most unlikely weakness in the series.
• Nightwielder — Steelheart's shadow — the Epic who blotted out the sun over Newcago and maintained ten years of darkness because his master demanded it.
• Obliteration — A teleporting, heat-absorbing religious fanatic who has already destroyed multiple cities and quotes scripture while doing it.
• Prof — The founder of the Reckoners — a former science teacher who built a resistance movement against Epics while hiding the most dangerous secret in the wo
• Regalia — The dying queen of Babilar — an Epic who flooded Manhattan, manipulated Prof into becoming a monster, and did it all because she was running out of ti
• Sourcefield — An electricity Epic who teleports through power lines — brought down by the most absurd weakness in the series.
• Steelheart — The tyrant of Newcago — an Epic so powerful he turned all of Chicago to steel, so paranoid he killed anyone who saw him vulnerable, and so arrogant he
• Tavi — An alternate-reality daughter of Prof and Tia — pulled from a parallel dimension by Megan, with her father's powers but without the corruption.
• Tia — The Reckoners' research brain — a former NASA rocket scientist who plans operations, crunches data, and knows Prof better than anyone, which is why hi
• Val — Leader of the Babilar Reckoner cell — gloomy, suspicious, and tough enough to run a resistance in a flooded city ruled by water.

Locations

• Babilar — Babylon Restored — formerly Manhattan, now a flooded neon paradise where people live on rooftops, eat glowing fruit, and party under luminescent spray
• First Union Bank — The bank in Chicago where everything started — where Steelheart appeared, Deathpoint killed, David's father bled a god, and a boy spent the next ten y
• Ildithia — Formerly Atlanta — a city of salt that moves across the landscape, buildings dissolving behind it and regrowing ahead, ruled by a Coven of Epics and h
• Knighthawk Foundry — The world's most important weapons lab — where a paralyzed genius turns dead Epic DNA into technology that levels the playing field between humans and
• Newcago — Formerly Chicago — every surface turned to solid steel by Steelheart, plunged into permanent darkness by Nightwielder, and home to millions who live u
• Sharp Tower — Steelheart's palace — built on the frozen steel lake, a monument to absolute power that Prof eventually destroyed in a burst of tensor rage.

Items

• Epic Weaknesses — Every Epic's Achilles heel — a specific, personal vulnerability that temporarily negates their powers, always fear-based, always unique, and always th
• Harmsway — The Reckoners' healing device — like the tensors, it does nothing. Prof's gifted healing power does everything.
• Mobiles — The Reckoners' communication devices — reliable, encrypted, and backdoored by the man who made them because Dean Knighthawk trusts absolutely nobody.
• Motivators — Devices built from living Epic tissue that replicate superpowers — the bleeding edge of human technology in a world where the gods walk.
• Tensors — Gloves that vaporize solid matter — except they don't actually do anything. Prof is secretly gifting his own power through them, and nobody knows.
• The Darkness — The corruption that turns every Epic evil — not a side effect of superpowers, but a cosmic entity's hatred for humanity projected onto anyone who rece

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