Cast of Characters – Founders Cycle

For a gallery of character images (I don’t own any of these images, by the way), please check out this link: http://www.pinterest.com/tagrendar/awakenings-characters/

 

The elements of the cast, roughly in order of appearance.  There are a few dozen minor characters, many of them named, that are of lesser importance.

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The Michigan Cast

Marin Astoris
Twenty-two years old, Marin was about to move to Connecticut to start graduate work at Yale University when the world ended.  She was spending one last semester at her alma mater outside of Grand Rapids, working  as a coordinator for summer camps and conferences and living in the dormitories with the rest of the camps staff.  At the same time, she kept her job at a local retail clothing chain, miles from campus.  Awakened as a child, Marin is a mystic and has a talent for catching glimpses of the future.  Four years ago, she had a vision fortelling the end of the world in a nuclear war, accompanied by the words Take a breath and wait to die.  That vision never came to pass…until one August day, when she realized it wasn’t a war that would kill the world at all, but something else.

Carolyn Roberts
Sheltered by her friends, twenty-two year old Honors student Carolyn was, to their surprise, the first to come into her abilities after the end of the world. Quiet, tall, but whipcord thin, Carolyn can apparently see some of the creatures that inhabit the world beyond “normal” sight, such as faeries, which is a rare talent at the time of Earth’s breaking. She’s been a close friend of Marin and Thom’s since they were all freshman together and at the time of the world’s ending, she’d been finishing a degree in elementary education. 

Jaqueline Bell
Twenty-one and one of the group’s “innocents,” Jac grew up (and remains) a devout Catholic. While she doesn’t share the outright contempt some of her friends have for the evangelical sects that surround them, she’ll willingly admit that they make her nervous. Bookish and smart, Jac was considering applying to medical or nursing school after college, but hadn’t made an outright decision yet.

Rory O’Hara
Undoubtedly the most ‘sinister’ of the friends, Rory works hard at maintaining his facade as a creepy but fun kind of guy. He’s into vampires without being goth, fire without being a pyro, and says things to other people just to watch their shocked and outraged reactions. At his core, though, the senior is a good guy and an extremely loyal friend. How he managed to make it through his university career only ever going to the library twice, however, is a question for the ages.

Kellin Willis
A junior Honors student when the world died, Kellin was part of a knot of students who were already Awakened when the world ended.  Sensitive to the ebb and flow of natural and supernatural energies since childhood, Kellin’s university career had focused on investigating the links between those energies and the religions of the world.  She struggled to always walk the path of balance and non-interference in the natural evolution of the unseen, but with the breaking of the world, she’ll be forced to choose between the friends she loves and the building darkness they’ll face.

Drew Smith
Twenty-six year old Drew Smith waited before he went to college, uncertain of what he wanted to study.  He finally settled on literature and was about to start his junior year when the world ended.  A gaming buddy of Marin and Thom’s, he later became one of Marin and Kellin’s late-night walk partners.  He has been able to sense supernatural forces since he was young, but the greater part of his ability lies in his empathic abilities, which caused migraines to plague him on and off throughout his life.

Matthew Astoris
Eighteen months younger than his older sister, Matthew Astoris was studying at the same university, staying close to his only surviving family–his older sister, Marin.  Always the outsider among her friends, Matthew never quite bought into his sister’s mystical mumbo-jumbo, despite the fact that he was aware of the prophetic dreams and visions she’d had since they were children. That changed once the world came to an end.

J.T. MacKenzie
J.T. MacKenzie has been Thom Ambrose’s closest friend since they were kids, and remained that way through their years at the university. A volunteer paramedic studying theater and English, J.T. is neither the picture of a lit scholar nor thespian. Rough around the edges with a checkered past, the twenty-three year old became fast friends with Marin, who he introduced to his friend. Fiercely protective of the people he cares about, J.T. believes that some of his friends really can sense, see, and do things beyond the ken of normal people and is terrified when he begins to manifest his own ability to see and speak to the dead.

Thomas Ambrose
Stubborn to a fault, twenty-three year old Thom Ambrose had an on-again, off again romance with Marin, much to the chagrin of Marin’s younger brother, Matt.  They recently broke up again in the wake of her decision to move to the east coast and his decision to interview for a position in Chicago.  Thom Awakened in college, not long after he met Marin, but eight months before the end of the world, he began to deny his own ability to perceive the supernatural and unseen, fighting hard against the visions he tries to pass off as nightmares.  He has since accepted his strange abilities, though perhaps not to the same degree as Marin.

Greg Doyle
Once a professor of biology, thirty-two year old Greg Doyle has found himself one of the few survivors on campus in the wake of the end of the world.  To the best of his knowledge, he’s the only professor to have survived and is certainly the only one among the group of student survivors on campus.  He knows that the survivors will be relying at least in part on his expertise to help them stay fed over the long months ahead and silently hopes to be up to the task.

Cameron MacKenzie
A former pilot in the US Military, Cameron was spared from death when the world came to an end. He encountered Neve Vaughan on the road headed east and saved her life–only to have his saved in turn. Cameron is the chosen heir to a fated blade and over the course of War Drums and Omens and Echoes makes his way to Michigan with Neve at this side.

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Other Michigan characters

Davon Hoekstra, Leah Vandenburg, Tala Johanson, Jack Schmidt, Brandon Thayer, Stasia Lane, Deirdre, Carl, Paul van Rijn, Angie van Rijn

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Princes of the Aes Dana

Phelan Conrad (O’Credne)
Teague Vaughan
Aoife (Eva) O’Credne
Neve Vaughan
Seamus Vaughan

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Other characters from myth and legend

Cariocecus
Thordin
The Morrigan
The Hecate
Leinth
Menhit

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Elsewhere Cast

Kira Ambrose Vaughan
Terezia “Teca” Ramsay
Gray Miller
Kestrel Marie Kenwick
Sherlock Watson
Dr. Elton Tapping