by Robin Furth
Originally, the Grays were the city’s besiegers. They were led by DAVID QUICK, the outlaw prince. In our story, the Grays are led by ANDREW QUICK, also known as TICK-TOCK, who is David Quick’s great-grandson.
Tick-Tock and his band don’t really understand why the god-drums work, but are eager to try to control more of Lud’s computers. In the end, the computers (à la Blaine) destroy both of Lud’s warring factions.
The easiest way to tell the difference between Pubes and Grays is by checking the color of their headscarves. The Pubes wear blue ones while the Grays wear yellow ones. The Grays also have a taste for young boys.
III:232, III:238, III:240, III:244–45, III:298, III:304, III:307, III:309, III:318, III:321, III:322, III:350–61 (high command), III:362, III:365–72, III:373–82, III:388, III:403, III:411, IV:57, V:135, V:178, VI:152
GRAY HIGH COMMAND:
BLACK-HAIRED WOMAN: This unnamed woman has an annoying laugh, so TICK-TOCK throws a knife at her. The blade stabs her in the chest and she dies in front of JAKE. III:352–53, III:356
BRANDON: Brandon is a short, bandy-legged man. III:353–61, III:365–72, III:374, IV:646
COPPERHEAD: Copperhead is a tall, bespectacled man in a white silk shirt and black silk trousers. He looks like a college professor in a late-nineteenth-century Punch cartoon. III:313, III:365–74
GASHER: The first time Roland’s ka-tet meets Gasher, he is wearing patched green velvet pants and looks like a dying, but dangerous, buccaneer. Since he is in the late stages of the nasty venereal disease known as mandrus, his face is covered with oozing sores. Gasher has gray eyes, and is bald except for a few black hairs that stick out of his head like porcupine quills. Gasher is responsible for kidnapping JAKE CHAMBERS on the city side of LUD BRIDGE. His former lover is named HOOTS. III:296–303 (takes Jake), III:304–7, III:308, III:312–14, III:314–16 (followed by Roland), III:323 (indirect), III:325–28, III:328–31 (followed by Roland), III:334–39, III:340, III:341, III:350–61, III:363, III:365–72, III:375, III:383, III:402, IV:23, IV:28, IV:88 (indirectly compared to Charlie the Choo-Choo), IV:100–101 (Eddie’s bulldozer dream), IV:646, V:44, V:55, V:165, V:187, V:204, V:493, VI:184, VI:269, VI:337, VI:400, VII:502, W:3
GASHER’S FATHER: When he died, he was so rotten with mandrus that the dogs wouldn’t even eat him. III:355
HOOTS: Hoots is GASHER’s former lover. When we see him in the CRADLE OF THE GRAYS, he is a tall skinny man in a black suit. He has a terrible, itchy rash on his face, caused by mandrus. III:338, III:352–61, III:365–72, IV:646, V:44, V:187, VI:269
QUICK, DAVID: Also known as the outlaw prince, David Quick was the original leader of the Grays. He was also the harrier who organized the sundry outlaw bands besieging the city of LUD. In The Waste Lands, Roland’s ka-tet finds his giant, mummified body in a wrecked German Focke-Wulf airplane a few days’ walk outside the city. David Quick was TICK-TOCK’s great-grandfather. III:241, III:244, III:273–75, III:355–56, III:358 (plane), III:381, III:410, IV:22 (dead harrier), V:265, W:47
TICK-TOCK (ANDREW QUICK): Tick-Tock is the leader of the Grays at the time of Roland, JAKE, and OY’s little visit to the CRADLE OF THE GRAYS. He is also the great-grandson of DAVID QUICK, the outlaw prince. Tick-Tock reminds Jake Chambers of the Morlocks from H. G. Wells’s novel The Time Machine. This is probably due more to Tick-Tock’s sense of cruelty than to his actual appearance. With his heavily muscled upper body, long dirty gray-blond hair, and green eyes, he is one of LUD’s few healthy, vibrant inhabitants. In fact, Jake thinks he looks like a cross between a Viking and a giant from a child’s fairy tale. Tick-Tock’s name comes from the coffin-shaped clock around his neck. The clock runs backward. III:298, III:305, III:313, III:314, III:326, III:327, III:336, III:338–39, III:351–61, III:365–72, III:373, III:375, III:381, III:385–90, III:394, IV:28, IV:645–47 (in Oz; killed by Roland’s ka-tet), IV:663, V:36, V:44, V:55, V:187, V:204, V:535, V:573 (as Morlock), VI:269, VII:502, W:3, W:31
TICK-TOCK’S FAMILY AND FORMER ASSOCIATES:
DEWLAP: Once upon a time, a scrawny old man named Dewlap worked the cider presses located in a park on the far western side of LUD. In the later chaos of that city, even the cider houses were probably destroyed. By the time our tale takes place, Dewlap and his companions are no more than memories in the damaged brain of the injured Andrew Quick (Tick-Tock). III:386
FATHER: After he was scalped by JAKE’s bullet, Tick-Tock has a memory of his father taking him to see the cider presses of Lud. III:386
TILLY: Tilly is one of the two female members of the Grays High Command. (Unfortunately, Tick-Tock murders the other one.) She looks like a red-haired female truck driver. III:353–61, III:365–72, III:373–74, IV:646
OTHER GRAYS: After Blaine sets off the city’s alarms, Roland and Jake see a number of unnamed Grays fleeing through the gang’s kitchens. III:378
SCRUFFY MAN IN KITCHEN: Blaine kills this man by dropping open an oven door and directing a blast of blue-white fire at his head. III:376
GREAT OLD ONES
See OLD ONES
GREAT ONES
See DEMONS/SPIRITS/DEVILS: TODASH DEMONS
GREATER DISCORDIA
See PRIM
GREEN FOLK
See ELURIA CHARACTERS
GREEN KING
See WALTER
GREENCLOAKS
See WOLVES
GRENFALL, LORD
See ORIZA, LADY
GRISSOM
See FARSON, JOHN: FARSON’S MEN
**GUARDIANS OF THE BEAM (TOTEMS OF THE BEAM)
In The Waste Lands, Roland drew a metaphysical map of MID-WORLD. The map was circular and looked like a clockface, but its circumference contained twelve X’s rather than twelve numbers. Each X designated a PORTAL into, and out of, Mid-World. The twelve Portals were connected by six magnetic BEAMS. Each Beam, in turn, was guarded by two animal totems, or GUARDIANS. At the center of this map, in the place where all the Beams crossed, was the Thirteenth Gate or DARK TOWER, the linchpin of the macroverse.
During Roland’s youth, many people maintained that the Beams and Portals were natural. However, when Roland was a little boy, HAX (the traitorous cook we met in The Gunslinger) told him a strange story about the framework of the universe. He believed that the Tower, Beams, and Guardians were man-made, not naturally or divinely created. They were the handiwork of the GREAT OLD ONES and were manufactured as a penance for the sins those ancient people had committed against the earth, and against each other. This latter tale explains why GILEAD’s children were told that each Guardian had a thinking cap, or hat upon its head, which contained a second brain. This somewhat apocryphal story was based on the fact that all of the NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS Guardians had radar dishes coming out of their skulls.
When Roland was young, the Guardians were still revered. He sees them depicted outside HAMBRY’S MERCANTILE and then later upon the imposing CRADLE OF LUD, where they march along the roof in their Beam pairs. Many Mid-World sayings also invoke the Guardians, such as “Bird and Bear and Hare and Fish, Give my love her fondest wish.”
In the final book of the Dark Tower series, we find out that the Tower, Beams, and Guardians are simultaneously magical and mechanical. Before the coming of the world of form, all that existed in the universe was the magical PRIM, or soup of creation. From this GREATER DISCORDIA arose GAN, the spirit of the Dark Tower. From his towering body he spun the Beams, the ROSES of CAN’-KA NO REY, and the physical substance of the multiple worlds, which the Beams bind together. Once the worlds were formed, the Prim receded, but the magic of Tower, Beams, and Guardians remained.
However, the Great Old Ones—those technological wizards who once ruled Roland’s version of Earth—mourned the passing of the Prim. Although enough magic remained in Tower and Beams to last for eternity, the Old People used their technology to remake the supporting structures of the macroverse, and to create doorways into, and out of, as many wheres and whens as possible. As we saw as early as The Waste
Lands, the outcome of this misconceived folly was disastrous. Not only were the manufactured Beams destined to become unstable and the Old Ones’ doorways fated to be used by the evil followers of the CRIMSON KING, but the cyborg Guardians themselves—much like BLAINE, that other psychotic North Central Positronics creation—were fated to descend into a vicious, malfunctioning madness. When we meet the Bear Guardian (also known as SHARDIK, or MIR), he is coughing up white worms, a disease which (if we take a look at The Talisman by STEPHEN KING and Peter Straub) concurs with the breakdown of the time/space continuum.
By the time our tet reaches the DEVAR-TOI in the final book of the Dark Tower series, the Beams guarded by RAT and FISH, BAT and HARE, EAGLE and LION, and DOG and HORSE have all collapsed, and we can assume that their Positronics Guardians have already landed on the celestial junk pile. The only two guy-wires left holding the Tower in place are our tet’s Beam—the BEAR-TURTLE—and Gan’s Beam—the ELEPHANT-WOLF.
Luckily for all of us, the remaining magical Guardians, though weakened, are far from helpless. Just as Gan, the spirit of the Dark Tower, aids those who serve the WHITE, the Prim’s Guardians aid those who serve the Beams. In both Wolves of the Calla and Song of Susannah, the Turtle Guardian (in the form of a little CAN-TAH) takes an active role in assuring our tet’s success.
In Song of Susannah, we learn that the Tower, Beams, and Guardians have a shadow side as well. When the Prim receded, it left behind not only twelve Guardians to watch over the Beams, but also six mischievous, hermaphroditic DEMON ELEMENTALS. Just as the Guardians watch over the mortal world (including the world of men), these DEMON ASPECTS watch over the invisible world of spirits and demons. Although there are only six Demon Elementals, each of these demons has a male and a female aspect. Hence, there are twelve Demon Aspects, just as there are twelve Guardians. In the original version of The Gunslinger, we were told that a thirteenth Guardian, called the BEAST, guarded the Tower. If each of the Demon Elementals corresponds to one of the Guardians of the Beams, then the Crimson King, the polar opposite of Gan, must be (in his spider form at least) the Beast that guards the Tower. This would make perfect sense, since at least one of the Demon Elementals plays a large part in the Red King’s plan to destroy both Tower and multiverse.
Throughout the Dark Tower series, our tet follows the Bear-Turtle Beam, specifically the Beam of the Bear, Way of the Turtle (sometimes called Path of the Bear, Way of the Turtle), which leads from Shardik’s lair deep in the GREAT WEST WOODS to the Tower itself. Had our tet begun their journey on the same Beam, but from the Turtle’s (or MATURIN’s) end, they would have traveled along the Beam of the Turtle, Way of the Bear (Path of the Turtle, Way of the Bear).
GENERAL INFORMATION: III:29, III:33, III:37–40 (40 thinking caps), III:171, III:325, III:331, III:333, IV:222, IV:326, IV:328 (Hambry’s Mercantile), IV:355 (and Reap charms), IV:424, IV:464, IV:529, IV:536, IV:571, IV:573, IV:606–8, IV:629, IV:667, IV:668, V:405, VI:112, VI:296, VI:297, W:234, W:250
BAT: III:39, IV:222 (Hambry’s Mercantile)
BEAR (SHARDIK/MIR):
DESIGN 4 GUARDIAN
SERIAL # AA 24123 CX 755431297 L 14
TYPE/SPECIES: BEAR
SHARDIK
**NR**SUBNUCLEAR CELLS MUST NOT
BE REPLACED**NR**
Shardik was made in the dim, unknown reaches of OUT-WORLD, where we can assume the factories of NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS operated. Standing seventy feet high, Shardik was the largest creature ever to walk the GREAT WEST WOODS. He was so huge that he seemed to be a moving building or a shaggy tower rather than a bear. The primitive people who came across Shardik in the years following the destruction of the OLD ONES’ world renamed the great bear Mir. In their language, Mir meant “the world beneath the world” (III:32). They believed him to be both a demon incarnate and the shadow of a god.
Although Shardik had roamed the woods for eighteen centuries before his encounter with our ka-tet, Roland believes that he is actually two or three thousand years old. By the time he attacks EDDIE DEAN at the beginning of The Waste Lands, this ancient cyborg has already been driven mad by the white worms tunneling through his body, and needs to be put out of his dangerous misery. (To save her husband Eddie, SUSANNAH DEAN kills Shardik by shooting the radar dish that spins on top of his head.) Though Shardik dies early on in our tale, his Beam still holds. This is probably due to the efforts of the magical TURTLE Guardian.
In Wizard and Glass, Eddie Dean has a dream-vision in which he and his friends stand before the fence surrounding the magic LOT. Written in dusky-pink letters upon the fence is the following rhyme:
See the BEAR of fearsome size!
All the WORLD’S within his eyes.
TIME grows thin, the past’s a riddle;
The TOWER awaits you in the middle. (Eddie’s Dream IV:100)
According to STEPHEN KING, the kas-ka Gan of our tale, Shardik’s name comes from a Richard Adams novel. (III:11–86 section title: Bear and Bone), III:19–21, III:24, III:25–36 (31 shot), III:37, III:39, III:50–51 (backtrail and portal), III:53–77 (58–65 following backtrail; 65–77 clearing and portal), III:79, III:84, III:154, III:162, III:260, III:261, III:262, III:264, III:325, III:331, III:333, III:347, III:407, IV:42 (Eddie remembers him), IV:222 (Hambry’s Mercantile), IV:326, IV:481, V:37, V:45, V:166, V:378, V:512, V:573, V:649, V:665, V:681, VI:14, VI:83, VI:112, VI:296, VI:297, VI:359, VII:21, VII:34 (by Shardik), VII:192, VII:232, VII:244, VII:272, VII:291, VII:295, VII:296, VII:301, VII:306, VII:307, VII:345, VII:409, VII:458, VII:466, VII:813
SERVOMECHANISMS (LITTLE GUARDIANS: TONKA TRACTOR, RAT, SNAKE, BLOCK, BAT): These nasty little mechanical creatures serve Shardik. Like the Guardians, they each have a radar dish on top of their heads. After Shardik’s destruction, our ka-tet comes across their pathetic but dangerous little retinue walking round and round in a circle. When EDDIE lists these odd creatures in Wolves of the Calla, he names the snake, the Tonka tractor, the rat, and “some sort of mechanical bird” (it was a bat). The original retinue also contained a walking block. III:65–71, III:72, III:153, III:260, V:378 (snake, Tonka tractor, stainless steel rat, flying thing), V:563 (indirect), V:665, V:681, VII:195
**BEAST, THE: In the original version of The Gunslinger, WALTER tells Roland that the DARK TOWER is guarded by a Beast, who stands watch over it. This Beast is the originator of all glammer and is an even more powerful force than MAERLYN. According to Walter, Roland will have to confront this Beast before he reaches the Tower.
In the 2003 version of The Gunslinger, Walter mentions neither the Beast nor Maerlyn. Instead he tells Roland that he will have to slay the AGELESS STRANGER, whose other name is LEGION, before he meets his final enemy, THE CRIMSON KING. Interestingly, in his spider shape the Red King bears an uncanny resemblance to this terrible monster. I:212, III:261, IV:464–65 (and the wind)
DOG: The Dog is paired with the HORSE Guardian. See also ROSE: UR-DOG ROVER. III:325, III:331, III:333
EAGLE/BIRD/HAWK/VULTURE (GARUDA): According to the NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS Guidance Module DARIA, the BEAM OF THE LION is also known as Way of the Eagle, the Way of the Hawk, and the Way of the Vulturine. The Eagle Guardian’s name is GARUDA. In The Dark Tower, we find out that the BEAMQUAKE which our tet felt in CALLA BRYN STURGIS was caused by a snapping of the Eagle-Lion Beam. IV:222 (Hambry’s Mercantile), IV:126–27 (on gold coins), VII:232, W:221, W:227, W:247, W:254, W:256
ELEPHANT: At the beginning of The Dark Tower, we find out that the only two BEAMS still intact are the BEAR-TURTLE Beam and the WOLF-Elephant Beam (also known as GAN’s Beam). Together they form the only remaining guy-wires holding the TOWER in place. By the time Roland and his friends reach the DEVAR-TOI, the Devar’s telemetry equipment has already picked up the first bends in the Bear-Turtle. Luckily for all of us in every world, our ka-tet defeats the CRIMSON KING’s henchmen and the Beams are able to regenerate. VII:232, VII:295
FISH: The Fish is paired with the RAT Guardian. When JAKE runs through the CRADLE OF TH
E GRAYS (prodded ever onward by the malicious GASHER), he sees a huge chrome and crystal fish statue. Upon it is written a single word of High Speech. That word is DELIGHT. III:39, III:304, III:325, III:331, III:333, IV:222, IV:326, VI:16
HARE: IV:326
HORSE: The Horse is paired with the DOG Guardian. III:325, III:331, III:333
LION/TYGER/CAT: The Lion-Eagle Beam (also known as the BEAM of the CAT and the Beam of the TIGER) plays an important role in The Wind Through the Keyhole, since it runs from THE ENDLESS FOREST to the NORTH FOREST KINNOCK DOGAN, where the powerful magician MAERLYN is trapped in the shape of a TYGER. After leaving the MUDMEN in the FAGONARD swamp, TIM ROSS follows the LION-TIGER Beam for fifty miles (forty-five-point-forty-five wheels) despite the fact that his computerized friend DARIA (a NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS Guidance Module) warns him that she detects a strong disturbance along the Beam Path, probably indicating deep magic. (DARIA reads the Beam electronically.) As we find out later, Daria is correct in her assessment of magical disturbances close to the North Forest Kinnock Dogan. Not only does she sense Maerlyn’s White magic and the CRIMSON KING’s black magic, but she also senses the chaotic energy of the STARKBLAST.
In The Wind Through the Keyhole, we learn that the Lion Guardian’s is called ASLAN, a name he shares with the great lion king found in The Chronicles of Narnia. According to the NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS Guidance Module DARIA, Aslan lives in the LAND OF ENDLESS SNOWS. It is possible that the BLEEDING LION, which the taheen FINLI O’TEGO says has been seen stalking to the north, is none other than the Guardian Aslan. In The Dark Tower, we learn that the BEAMQUAKE which our tet felt in CALLA BRYN STURGIS was caused by the snapping of the Eagle-Lion Beam. (For more information, see MAERLYN and ASLAN entries.) III:39, IV:222 (Hambry’s Mercantile), VII:232, W:221, W:234, W:250 (lion)