The most feared mercenary general in Styria, commander of the Thousand Swords, who is thrown from a cliff and left for dead by the Duke Orso she has served loyally and made very rich. She survives, barely, and the entirety of Best Served Cold is her working through the list of seven men responsible. Monza is not a hero - she is driven by revenge, capable of considerable ruthlessness, and honest about both. Her arc is about what vengeance actually costs and whether it delivers what it promises. She is one of Abercrombie's best protagonists: a woman in a man's world who got there through genuine ability and is not interested in being liked for it.

A Northman who tries to go south and be a better man - to leave the violence of the North behind and become something else. He fails, but the manner of his failure and what it costs him make him one of the most interesting characters in the series. Shivers appears first in Best Served Cold as Monza's hired muscle and grows into a recurring presence across the standalones and Age of Madness, each appearance showing him further from who he wanted to be. His arc is the purest expression of the series' central theme: people do not change, and the things that happen to them tend to make them more themselves rather than less.

A former convict from Safety - the Union's prison island - who counts everything and has strict rules about how things must be done. Friendly is one of the most consistently surprising characters in the series: apparently simple, actually precise, occasionally terrifying. He appears first in Best Served Cold as part of Monza's crew and recurs across the standalones. His comfort with violence and his discomfort with social interaction are presented without judgment and without explanation, and the result is one of Abercrombie's most original supporting characters.

A Styrian mercenary captain of considerable charm and negligible reliability, Cosca appears across nearly every book in the First Law World. He is funny, self-aware, genuinely skilled when sober, and almost never sober. His arc is one of Abercrombie's long games - a man whose capacity for self-destruction is matched only by his capacity for survival, and whose final trajectory is deeply unpleasant.