It is a number that felt abstract until it arrived. Five hundred characters tracked across the universes, series, and standalone novels on OpenFiction - their descriptions, relationships, occupations, first appearances, and fates recorded and linked to the books they live in.
It has taken longer than expected and moved faster than expected, in the way these things tend to do.
What 500 characters actually means
The count includes everyone from Vin and Kelsier in Mistborn to Logen Ninefingers in The First Law, from Naomi Nagata in The Expanse to Judge Holden in Blood Meridian. Protagonists, antagonists, supporting characters. Characters who live, characters who die, characters whose fate the spoiler filter will hide until you are ready to see it.
That is what the number actually represents - not a headcount, but a web of connections that grows more useful the more of it exists.
Each one has a page. Each page is connected to the books they appear in, the people they are related to, and where in the narrative their story begins and ends. That is what the number actually represents - not a headcount, but a web of connections that grows more useful the more of it exists.
How we got here
The content has come in waves. The Cosmere and The Wheel of Time established the core. The Expanse, First Law World, and Gentleman Bastard Sequence followed. Middle-earth and Discworld filled in the fantasy classics. The Millenium Trilogy brought crime fiction into the picture. And most recently, Cormac McCarthy arrived as the first serious push into literary fiction proper - ten novels, from The Orchard Keeper to The Road, with John Grady Cole, Anton Chigurh, and the rest now part of the platform.
The shape of the database reflects what has been seeded, not the full shape of what fiction is. There is far more to add. But 500 is a real foundation.
What comes next
More literary fiction. More crime and thriller. Deeper coverage of the universes already here - more appearances mapped to specific chapters, more relationships filled in, more life events recorded. The spoiler filtering only gets more useful as the data gets richer.
If there are characters, books, or authors you want to see added, the content request feature is there. The next 500 will come faster than the first.