The Kingkiller Chronicle

by Patrick Rothfuss

Kvothe is a legend — musician, arcanist, killer, called Kingkiller, Bloodless, and Six-String. Now he runs a quiet inn under a false name, and he has agreed to tell his story — from his childhood in a troupe of traveling performers to the University where he studied magic, to the events that made him the most notorious man alive.

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

Characters

• Kvothe — A legend dismantled by his own story — once the most brilliant student, musician, and arcanist of his age, now a hollow innkeeper named Kote, waiting
• Denna — A woman of many names and no fixed address — beautiful, elusive, and possibly entangled with powers she cannot escape, she is the shape of Kvothe's lo
• Bast — A Fae prince disguised as an innkeeper's apprentice — impossibly beautiful, casually dangerous, and desperately trying to wake the dying legend he cal
• Devan Lochees — A scribe who hunts legends with ink instead of iron — rational, methodical, and entirely unprepared for the truth behind the stories he has come to re
• Ambrose Jakis — A wealthy baron's son who wields privilege like a cudgel — petty enough to ruin lives over slights, connected enough to face no consequences, and dang
• Master Elodin — The youngest Chancellor in University history, driven mad by Naming and returned from madness with something stranger than sanity — a master who teach
• Master Kilvin — A mountain of a man who forges knowledge into metal and light — Cealdish, meticulous, and fair, he runs the Artificery with the exacting standards of
• Master Lorren — The stone-faced guardian of the Archives — a man who has made himself into a wall between the world and dangerous knowledge, expressionless as a locke
• Master Hemme — A petty academic who mistakes cruelty for authority — he teaches Rhetoric and Logic but practices neither when his pride is wounded.
• Master Dal — The sympathy master who teaches with calm precision — likeable, practical, and the closest thing the masters' table has to a fair referee.
• Master Arwyl — The exacting head of the Medica — a man who demands perfection because anything less costs lives, and who views healing as the highest application of
• Simmon — Kvothe's truest friend — warm-hearted, earnest, and constitutionally incapable of deception, he is the gentle center of a circle drawn by sharper mind
• Wilem — Cealdish, quiet, and steady as bedrock — he speaks rarely but precisely, drinks methodically, and is the friend you want beside you when things go wro
• Auri — A broken girl who lives beneath the University in the Underthing — fragile as spun glass and strange as starlight, she sees a world of names and kindn
• Devi — An expelled arcanist turned moneylender who is probably the most dangerous sympathist alive — brilliant, ruthless with debtors, and hungry for the kno
• Fela — A gifted student who called the name of stone when her life depended on it — tall, beautiful, and quietly powerful, she is proof that Naming chooses i
• Abenthy — The wandering arcanist who lit the fire in a young boy's mind — he recognized Kvothe's brilliance before anyone else and gave him the tools that would
• Arliden — Kvothe's father — a master musician and troupe leader whose curiosity about a forbidden song called the Chandrian down upon everyone he loved.
• Laurian — A noblewoman who traded her name and inheritance for love and the open road — she was born Netalia Lackless and became an Edema Ruh in her heart befor
• Maer Lerand Alveron — The wealthiest nobleman in Vintas — shrewd, proud, and powerful enough to make or break a man's fortune with a word, he is the political center around
• Meluan Lackless — A proud noblewoman who guards her family's ancient secrets and ancient hatred — she despises the Edema Ruh for stealing her sister and does not know h
• Stapes — The Maer's devoted manservant — fiercely loyal, quietly competent, and more politically astute than his humble station suggests.
• Bredon — A charming older nobleman who plays beautiful games of tak and may be playing a far more dangerous game behind every smile — the most likely candidate
• Haliax — Once the hero Lanre who loved too deeply and lost too much — now the shadow-cloaked leader of the Chandrian, cursed to wakefulness and unable to die,
• Cinder — The Chandrian with the frozen smile — white-haired, black-eyed, and terrible in his beauty, he killed Kvothe's parents with a cruelty that Haliax hims
• Felurian — The most beautiful and ancient of the Fae — a seductress who has kept men until they died of longing, and the only lover Kvothe escaped by calling the
• The Cthaeh — An omniscient malevolence trapped in a tree — it sees every possible future and chooses its words to cause the maximum harm, making every conversation
• Tempi — A young Adem mercenary who speaks more with his hands than his mouth — quiet, earnest, and the unlikely bridge between Kvothe and a culture that views
• Vashet — Kvothe's Adem teacher — a woman who fights like poetry and teaches with pragmatic humor, she is the blade that shaped him and the voice that warned hi
• Shehyn — The leader of the Adem school at Haert — ancient, formidable, and keeper of a story about the Chandrian that predates written history.
• Count Threpe — A music-loving nobleman who became Kvothe's patron and advocate — generous, well-connected, and one of the few people who helped Kvothe without wantin
• Trapis — A kind man who cares for orphans in the worst part of Tarbean — gentle, exhausted, and quietly heroic in a way that no legend will ever record.
• Puppet — The Archives' strangest resident — a man who carves puppets, knows every book by heart, and sees patterns in knowledge that the masters cannot or will
• Sleat — The University's underworld broker — he can get you anything forbidden, for a price, and he has survived by knowing exactly where the line is and neve
• Skarpi — An old storyteller who speaks the true history of the world in Tarbean's taverns — he may be Amyr, he may be immortal, and his stories are not stories
• Mola — A capable medical student and quiet friend — steady, competent, and one of the few people at the University who helps Kvothe without ulterior motive.
• Penthe — An Adem warrior who approaches both fighting and desire with the same forthright clarity — she finds Kvothe fascinating for reasons that have nothing
• Caudicus — The Maer's trusted arcanist who was slowly poisoning him — competent enough to hide it, arrogant enough to think no one would notice.
• Deoch — The Eolian's broad-shouldered bouncer — warm-hearted, perceptive, and one of the few people who knows Denna well enough to tell Kvothe the truths he d
• Sovoy — A wealthy Modegan student and one of Denna's many suitors — well-meaning but ultimately one more man caught in her orbit and left spinning when she mo

Locations

• The Waystone Inn — Kvothe's meticulously kept inn in the village of Newarre, where he lives under the name Kote. Eerily quiet, holding secrets on its walls and behind it
• Newarre — A tiny, unremarkable farming village in the rural Commonwealth where Kvothe has hidden himself away. So small it barely warrants a name on any map.
• The University — The foremost institution of higher learning in the Four Corners of Civilization, where students study the arcane arts, artificing, medicine, and namin
• The Archives — The greatest library in the world, holding countless thousands of books, scrolls, and manuscripts in its vast stone Stacks. Within it stands the myste
• The Fishery — The University's artificing workshop where students craft sygaldric devices — lamps, heat sources, arrow catchers, and stranger things — under Master
• The Underthing — A sprawling maze of tunnels, abandoned rooms, and ancient pipe systems beneath the University. Home to Auri, who has named every passage and made the
• The Eolian — The finest music house in the Four Corners, located in Imre. A place where musicians prove their worth and, if they are exceptional, earn their talent
• Imre — A cultured city across the Stonebridge from the University, home to artists, musicians, moneylenders, and taverns. Where students go to live when the
• Tarbean — The largest city in the Commonwealth — vast, filthy, and indifferent. Where Kvothe spent three years as a homeless child after his family was murdered
• Severen — The capital of Vintas, divided sharply between Severen-High where the nobility play their games and Severen-Low where everyone else survives. Seat of
• Trebon — A small mining and farming town in the Commonwealth where Kvothe investigated a wedding massacre — the Chandrian's handiwork — and encountered a drug-
• The Commonwealth — The largest and most powerful nation in the Four Corners of Civilization. A vast patchwork of cities, farmland, and forest where most of Kvothe's stor
• Vintas — A wealthy kingdom east of the Commonwealth, steeped in courtly intrigue and old nobility. Home to the Maer Alveron and the powerful Lackless family.
• Ademre — The isolated homeland of the Adem people, high in the Stormwal Mountains. A warrior culture of extraordinary discipline where silence speaks louder th
• Ceald — The Cealdish nation, renowned across the Four Corners for its banking houses, trade networks, and the shrewdness of its merchants. Practical, prospero
• The Fae — The otherworld that exists alongside the mortal realm, separated by thin places and old magic. Time moves strangely here, and its inhabitants are beau
• The Cthaeh's Tree — A breathtakingly beautiful tree in the Fae where the Cthaeh is imprisoned — an ancient being of perfect knowledge and perfect malice, guarded by the S
• Myr Tariniel — The greatest of the ancient cities, once ruled by Selitos, destroyed by Lanre who became Haliax. Now lost to myth, its fall marks the origin of the Ch

Items

• Caesura — An ancient Adem sword given to Kvothe by Shehyn when he earned the right to leave Ademre. It has a long history of named owners and is called Saicere
• Folly — A beautiful sword mounted on a wooden plaque behind the bar of the Waystone Inn, labeled with a single word: Folly. Its origin and nature are unexplai
• The Shaed — A cloak of shadow woven by Kvothe with Felurian's guidance in the Fae realm. It drinks in light, shifts with movement, and makes the wearer difficult
• The Bloodless — An arrow-catching device designed by Kvothe in the University's Fishery. Uses sygaldric bindings to detect and deflect incoming projectiles. A clever
• Gram — A protective amulet inscribed with sygaldric runes that defends the wearer against malfeasance — sympathetic attacks directed through a mommet or simi
• Kvothe's Lute — More than an instrument — a lifeline, an identity, a piece of his murdered family. Kvothe has owned several lutes, and each one has been the most impo
• The Thrice-Locked Chest — A chest of dark roah wood in Kvothe's room at the Waystone Inn, sealed with three locks — one of iron, one of copper, and one that has no keyhole. Its
• Mommet — A small doll used as a sympathetic link to a living person, enabling malfeasance — the art of harming someone at a distance through the principles of

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