The last of the gunslingers and the sole surviving member of a knightly order sworn to protect the Beams that hold the multiverse together. Roland has pursued the Man in Black across a dying world for years, driven by a singular obsession with the Dark Tower - the nexus of all realities. Trained from boyhood in Gilead, he is one of the finest warriors alive, possessed of an almost supernatural speed and accuracy with his revolvers. He is also ruthless, willing to put the quest above all else - a quality that defines him across eight books.

The primary antagonist of the early Dark Tower books and one of Stephen King's most recurring villains across his wider fiction. A sorcerer of vast age and power, Walter has manipulated events across countless worlds and centuries. He is the Man in Black whom Roland has been pursuing since the first line of the series. Devious and theatrical, he is a figure of genuine menace.

An insane sentient monorail built by the Great Old Ones, running on a single elevated line out of the ruined city of Lud at speeds well beyond the sound barrier. Over the long centuries Blaine has grown bored, lonely, and dangerously unstable, with a fondness for cruel games. He agrees to carry Roland's ka-tet out of Lud on one condition - that they keep him entertained with riddles he cannot answer - and warns them that he will kill them all if they fail.

Roland's closest childhood friend and fellow apprentice gunslinger in Gilead. Cuthbert is the quick-witted, talkative one of the trio - sharper-spoken than Roland and quicker to a joke, with a ready grin he can produce even in situations no one else in the room can find anything funny about. He trains alongside Roland under Cort, present for the small everyday cruelties of their apprenticeship and the larger crises that shape them: the master hawkman David's training, the cook Hax's treason, and the unprecedented early test Roland is driven to demand for his coming of age. Loyal, sharp, and unsentimental about the kind of company gunslingers tend to keep, Cuthbert is the friend Roland trusts soonest and longest.

A heroin addict from 1987 New York, drawn into Mid-World through one of the doors on the beach. Quick-witted and irreverent, Eddie has a gift for defusing tension through humour that masks a deep well of courage. He becomes one of Roland's most capable and loyal companions.

A diseased, violent member of the Grays - the surviving faction in the broken city of Lud, where the centuries of feuding with the rival Pubes have left both sides degraded almost past recognition. Gasher is the ugliest face the Grays present to whatever new arrival happens to wander into their crumbling territory, and Jake's introduction to the realities of Lud comes very largely through him.

A boy from New York who finds himself drawn into Mid-World, where he becomes a companion to Roland and his ka-tet. Perceptive and brave beyond his years, Jake possesses a low-level psychic ability and bonds deeply with the billy-bumbler Oy.

A billy-bumbler - a raccoon-like creature native to Mid-World with limited speech ability - who attaches himself to Jake Chambers and becomes inseparable from him. Oy is capable of mimicking words, shows unusual loyalty and intelligence, and serves as both comic relief and emotional anchor for the ka-tet.

A civil rights activist from 1964 New York with dissociative identity disorder, drawn into Mid-World through one of the doors on the beach. Her two identities - the composed Odetta Holmes and the volatile, dangerous Detta Walker - must find a way to coexist. A wheelchair user who lost her legs below the knee in a subway accident, she becomes one of Roland's most formidable companions.