Padan Fain

Character from The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan

A peddler twisted by the Dark One and corrupted by Shadar Logoth — a unique horror that is neither Shadow nor Light, carrying a malice older than the Dark One's prison.

Padan Fain started as a Darkfriend peddler sent to the Two Rivers to find the Dragon Reborn. The Dark One's conditioning broke something in him, and then Shadar Logoth's corruption — the spirit of Mordeth — merged with the broken pieces. The result is something unprecedented: a creature of pure malice that serves neither the Shadow nor the Light but exists as a third force of destruction. He can corrupt people through touch, drive crowds to paranoid violence, and spread a spiritual plague that has no cure. He carries the ruby-hilted dagger from Shadar Logoth, and his presence makes even Shadowspawn uncomfortable.

Appearance

A thin, rat-faced peddler who deteriorates through the series into something inhuman. His eyes gleam with a shifting, oily wrongness. Mordeth's corruption gives him an aura that makes people instinctively recoil. By the end, he's less a man than a walking plague of paranoia and decay.

Also known as: Padan Fain, Mordeth, Ordeith, Shaisam, Jeraal Mordeth

What They Know

• The ability to corrupt people through touch and proximity — a spiritual plague unique in the world
• The Dark One's operations, Darkfriend networks, and intelligence-gathering methods — remnants of his original role
• Shadar Logoth's malice — the paranoid, self-destructive hatred that consumed an entire city, now mobile in one man
• How to track ta'veren — he can sense Rand, Mat, and Perrin across continental distances

Connections

• enemy_of — rand
• enemy_of — dark_one
• corrupted_by — shadar_logoth

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