Characters, Magical Objects, Magical Forces

There's only three boxes to a man…. Best and highest is the head, with all the head's ideas and dreams. Next is the heart, with all our feelings of love and sadness and joy and happiness…. In the last boxis all what we'd call low-commala: have a fuck, take a shit, maybe want to do someone a meanness for no reason…

V:630–31

AARON JAFFORDS

See JAFFORDS, AARON

ABAGAIL, MOTHER

In the alternative version of KANSAS which our tet traveled through in Wizard and Glass, JAKE CHAMBERS found a note tucked under a camper wind-shield. The note read, "The old woman from the dreams is in Nebraska. Her name is Abagail." Although our tet never meets this 108-year-old black woman, her path is nevertheless linked to Roland's. In STEPHEN KING's novel The Stand, this daughter of a former slave is a Warrior of the WHITE, and her archenemy is the evil RANDALL FLAGG.

In Song of Susannah, we discover that Mother Abagail's world is definitely linked to Roland's. Both the Red Death (the plague which devastated the END-WORLD town of FEDIC) and the superflu (the disease which wiped out 99 percent of the people in Abagail's version of earth) are both physical manifestations of a metaphysical illness. As the GREAT OLD ONES' technology fails and the mechanical BEAMS collapse, such viruses and plagues are breaking out on many levels of the TOWER.

VI:405

ABRAHAM, DAUGHTER OF

See TASSENBAUM, IRENE

ADAMS, DIEGO

See CALLA BRYN STURGIS CHARACTERS: RANCHERS

ADAMS, RICHARD

See GUARDIANS OF THE BEAM: SHARDIK

ADAMS, SAREY

See ORIZA, SISTERS OF

AFFILIATION

The Affiliation was the name given to the network of political and military alliances that united MID-WORLD's baronies during Roland's youth. (See Stephen King's The Dark Tower: A Concordance, Volume I.) By the time Roland reached adulthood, the Affiliation was in tatters, due in large part to the bloody rebellions and terrible betrayals staged by THE GOOD MAN (JOHN FARSON) and his followers.

The Affiliation—which played such a large part in Wizard and Glass—does not figure directly in the final three books of the Dark Tower series. However, we can guess that the gunslingers who fought beside Roland in the final battle of JERICHO HILL were all that remained of the Affiliation's forces. For page references, see DEMULLET'S COLUMN.

AIDAN

See TET CORPORATION: FOUNDING FATHERS: CULLUM, JOHN

ALAIN JOHNS

See JOHNS, ALAIN

ALBRECHT

See VAMPIRES: TYPE THREE

ALEXANDER, BEN

See CAN-TOI

ALIA (NURSE)

See TAHEEN: RAT-HEADED TAHEEN

ALICE OF TULL (ALLIE)

See TULL CHARACTERS

ALLGOOD, CUTHBERT (ARTHUR HEATH)

Cuthbert Allgood was Roland's beloved—if sometimes irritating—childhood friend. (See Stephen King's The Dark Tower: A Concordance, Volume I.) Although possessed of an anarchic sense of humor and a deep-seated belief in human dignity, tall, dark-haired Cuthbert was every inch a gunslinger. At age eleven, he and Roland informed upon the traitorous cook HAX and then scattered bread crumbs beneath his feet as he swung upon the gallows tree. Under the name Arthur Heath, he and another gunslinger-in-training friend ALAIN JOHNS accompanied Roland on his dangerous MEJIS adventure, which figured so prominently in Wizard and Glass.

Long before EDDIE DEAN took the job of being Roland Deschain's wise-cracking mouthpiece, thin, dark-haired Cuthbert held that position. In fact, in Song of Susannah we find out that Eddie and Bert—both considered by Roland to be ka-mais, or ka's fools—are actually twins. The two of them appeared to seven-year-old STEPHEN KING, who was on punishment duty in his uncle's barn. They saved him from the CRIMSON KING (who appeared in the form of tiny red spiders) and won him over to the cause of the WHITE.

Roland once predicted that Bert would die laughing, and so he did, on the battlefield of JERICHO HILL. Still holding the HORN OF ELD, the horn of Roland's fathers, a laughing but badly wounded Bert accompanied his friend in a final, suicidal charge against the legions of GRISSOM'S MEN. Unlucky Cuthbert was shot through the eye by RUDIN FILARO (another manifestation of Roland's longtime nemesis, WALTER) and entered the clearing at the end of the path at the much too young age of twenty-four. The Horn of Eld tumbled into the dust and Roland, perhaps out of grief, did not bother to retrieve it, a decision which he regrets greatly by the time he reaches the TOWER.

Copyright © 2005 by Robin Furth