Joseph Henry: The unborn son of Arthur and Liz whose spirit leaves his mother’s body when the family is threatened by a spark of dark fire. Joseph enters the form of the Pennykettle dragon Gwillan and becomes heavily involved in David’s quest to prevent Gwilanna malevolently altering the Earth’s timeline. Toward the end of the series, it becomes apparent that Joseph has been the guiding force behind all those on the side of good.
David Merriman: David Rain in one of his other guises.
Eliza Merriman: An alternative Elizabeth Pennykettle. “Mother” of David.
Penny Merriman: A different version of Lucy Pennykettle. “Sister” of David.
Rosa: Looks after the librarium (a museum of books) for Mr. Henry. She is the Co:pern:ican version of Zanna.
Harlan Merriman: Arthur Merriman in another probable life. “Father” of David.
Aunt Gwyneth: Known as Gwilanna, in the earlier books — but still up to her old tricks.
Counselor Strømberg: Another version of Anders Bergstrom. He investigates the young David’s disturbing dreams.
Mr. Charles Henry: Henry Bacon’s alternative self. Curator of the librarium in Bushley, Co:pern:ica’s version of Scrubbley.
Mathew Lefarr: Tam Farrell in this world. Like Lucy with Tam on Earth, Penny has strong feelings for Mathew.
Angel: See Alexa Martindale (on Earth). Angel is capable of “Traveling” across the time nexus between worlds, in much the same way as her father, David, can.
Gadzooks: An inspirational writing dragon with a powerful ability to make events happen simply by writing down words on the notepad he carries. He guides David throughout the series and is influential in all the major developments of the story.
Groyne: More birdlike than dragon and allegedly created for Anders Bergstrom by an Inuit shaman, not by Liz Pennykettle. Tremendously powerful, he can make himself invisible, morph into different shapes (particularly a small piece of narwhal tusk), and move whomever is carrying him through time and space.
Gretel: A potions dragon who casts spells in the scents of flowers. Initially made for Gwilanna, she later defects to Zanna.
G’reth: A dragon with the ability to grant wishes (but only if beneficial to dragonkind). He is the first point of contact with the thought-beings, the Fain.
Gollygosh Golightly: A healing dragon made by David. Golly can heal ailments but is more often employed in fixing or solving mechanical or electrical problems.
Gwendolen: Specifically Lucy’s special dragon and a whiz at IT. She comes to Lucy’s rescue on many occasions.
Gwillan: A kind and loving “house” dragon who helps Liz with domestic duties and ultimately has a hugely significant role.
Gruffen: A slightly hopeless guard dragon, often involved on the periphery of dramatic events. He’s very young and new to the job, so he has to keep referring to his manual for the correct procedures to follow.
Grace: A “listening” dragon. She has the ability to pick up and beam signals from and to Liz, David, etc., or any of the other Pennykettle dragons.
Gauge: A dragon with the unique ability to tell (and measure) time.
Glade: Glade is a rarity — a Pennykettle dragon who lives with a “normal” family (that of Lucy’s friend, Melanie). Glade can detect and predict changes in mood. She enters the story in Dark Fire.
Gawain and Guinevere: Two of Liz’s clay dragons who rarely leave her pottery studio, the Dragons’ Den. They have been named by her in tribute to their ancient namesakes. Their role is to “kindle” other clay dragons into life. They are deeply mysterious and rarely mentioned.
The Listener/Ganzfeld: Although he lives in the Pennykettle household, Ganzfeld was not made by Liz. He is, however, the template for all those she did make. He is never referred to by name until the final stages of the series. Like Grace, he has the ability to receive and send messages. He sits atop the fridge in the kitchen at Wayward Crescent, quietly absorbing everything that goes on.
Gawain: He is the “last dragon” that the series title refers to. At the end of the last great age of dragons on the Earth, he was the final dragon to die. When he shed his fire tear (documented in Icefire), he left behind him a legacy which fuels the whole series.
Gawaine: A queen dragon, mother of Gawain.
Grockle: A modern-day dragon born when Zanna and Liz “kindle” an egg between them. At the end of Fire Star he is taken by the Fain into their home world, Ki:mera, but returns to aid David in Dark Fire.
G’Oreal: A powerful ice dragon and the leader of the new “Wearle” (or clan) which has been sent to recolonize the Earth.
Galen: A dragon who comes to Kasgerden, a mountainous region on old Earth, to die. He is one of the last twelve dragons and is hugely significant in Agawin’s story, related in The Fire Ascending.
Gideon: Not actually a firebird himself, Gideon is an eagle who goes through an amazing transformation to begin the firebird line.
Aurielle: Cream and apricot colored; she is the sweetest creature, adorable and highly intelligent. She guards the Tapestry of Isenfier and spends her days trying to make sense of it.
Azkiar: Red; feisty and cross most of the time, but with a soft spot for Aurielle. He attacks David one day in the mistaken belief that David has injured another firebird, setting off a chain of events which leads to the tapestry finally being understood.
Aubrey: Sky blue; goes to investigate a ripple in the fabric of time but falls foul of the Ix, who turn him black and use him for their own devious ends.
Aleron (also known as Runcey): Green; the first firebird to take a specific interest in the human world. He often follows David and Rosa around the librarium and is the unfortunate victim of an accident that results in Azkiar attacking David.
Thoran: Originally a brown bear, he helps the woman Guinevere to escape from Gwilanna after Gawain, the last-known natural dragon, has shed his fire tear. In an extraordinary moment of magicks, he is turned into the first white bear to walk the polar ice cap and thereafter becomes a creature of legend.
Lorel: One of nine polar bears that ruled the ice at the time of Thoran. Lorel is a Teller of Ways. His ability is to record, remember, and recount all the legends of the Arctic.
Ragnar: A fighting bear and another ruler of the ice. He is immortalized in legend when he sheds a tooth and beats it into the ice, apparently creating an island which comes to be known as the Tooth of Ragnar, though there is some debate as to the validity of this story.
Ingavar, Avrel, and Kailar: These three bears are the modern-day equivalent of Thoran, Lorel, and Ragnar. The most important of them is Ingavar, who is present when David fights a dramatic battle with an agent of the Ix at the end of Fire Star. The spirits of Ingavar and David merge, and David can thereafter appear in either form at will. At the end of Dark Fire, the ice bear population of Earth is taken away to the Fain dimension, Ki:mera, but the bears, led by Avrel and Kailar, return to engage Voss and his darklings in The Fire Ascending.
Snigger and Conker: Two of many squirrels who used to live on Wayward Crescent. The tree where they used to drey was cut down, so the majority of them moved away. Conker gets left behind because he is injured. Snigger returns to assist in his capture, so that he can be examined by a wildlife vet.
Caractacus: A crow who injures Conker the squirrel when he gets too close to the crow’s nest. Conker means no harm, but the crow is brutal in defense of his young, who are about to hatch.
Bonnington: The Pennykettles’ cat. He is transformed from a lazy, slightly stupid tabby into a creature of wonder when he “commingles” with a Fain entity in Fire Star. He rarely gets involved with the Pennykettle dragons (he knows minimal dragontongue, they even less felinespeak) but does come to their aid in times of trouble. On Co:pern:ica, Bonnington’s equivalent, a katt, is called Boon.
Winston: David’s teddy bear. Does not have a large role to play, but he’s there or thereabouts in the background.
Bronson: A toy mammoth belonging to Alexa. She sends a thought projection of him to
David in the Arctic at a crucial point in The Fire Eternal.
Gaia: The spirit of the Earth; Earth Mother. Appears in a variety of guises and semi-physical forms throughout the series. Helps Lucy, particularly in times of need. Also creates Ganzfeld, Liz’s listening dragon.
The Fain: A mysterious race of beings who first enter the saga in Fire Star when G’reth, the wishing dragon, makes contact with one of them. The Fain have no physical body and exist in another dimension on a plane of thought, manipulating the dark energy of the Universe to create a thought-world known as Ki:mera around them (though this is never seen). The Fain can “commingle” with any physical life-form, but regard dragons as the most perfect form there is. The Fain’s spiritual development depends upon them commingling with the “white fire” of a living dragon, a process called “illumination.” They frequently come to prominence as the story progresses, but their history with the human race is checkered, largely because humans and dragons have, in the past, struggled to live in harmony together on the Earth. On the alternative world of Co:pern:ica, the Fain collectively call themselves The Higher.
The Ix: In effect, the flipside of the Fain. They are in a continuous unseen war with the Fain, seeking to gain control of the dark energy of the Universe to manipulate it for their own evil ends. In the past, they have attempted to use the imaginative power of humans to their advantage, leaving shadows of darkness in the human psyche (gargoyles, bogeymen, fear of spiders, etc.). Dragons are the physical enemy of the Ix, but the Ix have countered them by producing a template for an antidragon, a creature they call a darkling. Darklings are terrifying monsters, but are no match for dragons, because so far the Fain have been able to prevent the Ix from creating “dark fire,” the most destructive force in the Universe, which the Ix would need if they were ever to “delumine” one of their darklings.
When Chris is invited to speak in schools, one of the questions he is always asked is “Where do you get the characters’ names from?” He usually replies that they just pop up when they’re needed. Although this is accurate, it’s worth citing a few examples of how this happens.
A good place to start would be with David Rain, since he’s the hero of the series. Chris was always fascinated by the stories he was taught in religion class. He particularly enjoyed those about David (later King David) and they stood out in his memory. Thus “David” comes from the Bible.
“Rain” is from a completely different source. Chris is a huge Beatles fan and many years ago they released a double-A-sided single with the songs “Paperback Writer” and “Rain.” Since Chris wanted to be the former, he thought his alter ego, David (who is based on Chris in his younger days), ought to be the latter. And while we’re still on the subject of the Beatles, you might like to know that David’s teddy bear is named after Chris’s all-time hero, and the person Chris would most like to have met, John Lennon. Winston was John’s middle name.
The Pennykettle last name is based on a previous neighbor of Chris’s. As a boy he used to live next door to a family with the last name Kettle. Whether the lady of the house was called Penny or not, he can’t remember.
Bonnington, the cat, comes from a road name close to our old house in Leicester, even though Lucy claims, in The Fire Within, that he is named after Chris Bonington, the climber (who incidentally spells his version with a single “n”).
Mr. Bacon is a serious nod to Mr. Curry in the Paddington books, written by Michael Bond. Chris absolutely adores these. In fact, Paddington is hands down his favorite children’s book character.
Zanna was picked up when Chris signed a book for someone of that name, as was Godith. The girl in question pronounced it Godith, with the emphasis on the first syllable, but Chris changed the pronunciation to Godith in the books. Either way, a superlative find.
Grockle, the modern-day natural dragon, has an onomatopoeic name, that is, he makes that sound when he tries (and fails) to produce fire.
Gadzooks couldn’t have been called anything else. It’s a magical name for a magical dragon. Besides which, he wrote it on his pad, so Chris couldn’t mistake it.
The name Glade, another of the Pennykettle dragons, was suggested by a girl who e-mailed Chris. She just thought it would be a good choice, as it begins with a G. Chris thought so, too, but had to wait a long time for her to make an appearance in the story. When she did, it was the perfect name for her, and again, couldn’t have been anything else.
Lono, a mother polar bear, was “pinched” from a man who wrote a book about them, again as a tribute. It is his last name.
In some cases Chris’s characters have been based on the personalities of people he knows or has seen, rather than their names. For instance, Russ, the helicopter pilot for the Polar Research Station in Chamberlain, is loosely based on a working cowboy and musician that we know, who goes by the name of Austin Dan. And, believe it or not, Tam Farrell’s entire dress sense is based on a man featured on a fashion makeover show! Chris was so impressed with the jacket that the stylist provided this man with, that he not only went out and bought an identical one for himself, but wrote it into the story. He still has it to this day.
There are quite a lot of words in the series that are either obscure, in a foreign language, or simply made up by Chris. The following list should help you understand them all. Most are fully explained in the text as you come to them, so no need to think that you have to have a degree in languages and a memory the size of a planet to enjoy the books. You don’t. But here’s a general note: The Co:pern:icans use a lot of colons in their language, but almost all of their words are exactly the same in meaning as those we are familiar with in English. For instance — re:gressive, tele:scope, mech:anism. Only those that are substantially different in meaning have been included below.
auma — an Inuit word meaning “fire”; Chris, however, uses it in the Last Dragon Chronicles to mean inner spirit or animating force, the fire within. Dragons are the animating spirit of the natural world. The more auma something has, the more lively or creative it is, and the closer to Gaia it becomes. Auma can be sensed, “read,” followed by someone sensitive to it, or raised, usually by specific intention and focus of thought.
aumatic — containing or responsive to auma.
bonglers — everyday name for wind chimes with a relatively low note. As opposed to chinklers, those with a higher-pitched or tinklier sound.
Ci:pherel — a natural dragon who can “read” a person’s auma and thereby detect whether they are telling the truth, or are who they claim to be.
coelacanthis — stasis; a state of suspended animation.
Cluster — an Ix assassin, consisting of a few to a multitude of negative Fain entities. Also called Comm:Ix or Ix-risor.
commingle — to mingle or mix together. Used in the series to mean a conjoining of minds, or of whole personalities, usually involving an entity from a race of beings called the Fain.
Comm:Ix — see Cluster.
:coms — communications that are the equivalent to our e-mail, telephone, or video. Also called e:coms, t:coms, or v:coms.
construct — an imagineered being, in all other respects the equivalent of a human person, animal, or item.
dark fire — the most destructive force in the Universe. Can be brought into being only by an inversion of a source of spiritual purity, such as a selfless act of love, or a moment of inspired creativity. A dragon born of dark fire would be a monster, known as a darkling.
darklings and semi-darklings — semi-darklings are potential antidragons, created and controlled by the Ix. They have no separate volition of their own. Attempts to delumine them, i.e., give them independent life via the introduction of dark fire, thereby making them into full darklings, prove fruitless until the events of The Fire Ascending.
delumination — the means by which semi-darklings would be brought to independent life as full darklings, via the introduction of dark fire.
digi:grafs — digitally created photographs.
dream
it — a phrase used predominantly by Liz Pennykettle to lull someone into a state of relaxation so they can “live” what she is telling them, rather than just imagine it.
fain — on Co:pern:ica, a creative energy possessed by all, and used to imagineer constructs.
Fain, the — a race of thought-beings who have no physical body and exist in another dimension. They have the ability to commingle with any physical life form, the ideal being that of a dragon. This latter, highly desirable achievement is called illumination.
firebird — creature between a dragon and a bird in looks and temperament.
Fire Eternal, the — another name for love, and as such, the title of a book of poems written by Tam Farrell. Also the spiritual fire (white fire) at the center of the Earth, the source from which every natural dragon in this world springs. The greatest creative force in the Universe.
fire star — a portal used by the Fain and the Ix to travel between their world and the Earth. It had been out of alignment with the Earth for a very long time, but is coming into an appropriate position once again by the time of the third book, Fire Star.
Rain & Fire Page 4