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.

A seven-foot-tall messenger robot (Many Other Functions) built by North Central Positronics, and the last functioning robot in Calla Bryn Sturgis. Andy predicts the Wolves' coming on schedule, offers unsolicited horoscopes to anyone who will listen, cooks meals, and presents an unfailingly cheerful, courteous face to a town that regards him with a mixture of dependence and unease. A relic of a far more sophisticated age, he has outlasted every other machine of his kind in the Calla.

Foreman of Vaughn Eisenhart's Rocking B ranch and father of young Benny, Ben Slightman is a familiar figure at the council meetings that fill the early days of Roland's ka-tet in Calla Bryn Sturgis. A practical, self-contained man, he wears a pair of spectacles - a rare and valued thing in the Calla - and is fiercely devoted to his son.

Ben Slightman's teenage son and the first friend Jake makes in Calla Bryn Sturgis - a kind, eager boy who takes to Jake with no curiosity about his uncanny gunslinger gravitas and bonds quickly with him over barn-jumping, Oy's billy-bumbler tricks, and the small adventures the Rocking B ranch makes available. For Jake - older than his years and a long way from the friends he might have grown up with - Benny is the first easy companionship he has known on this side.

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 former Catholic priest first introduced in King's Salem's Lot, who crosses into the Dark Tower universe and eventually settles in Calla Bryn Sturgis. Whatever happened to Callahan in his New England parish - and the answer is not the kind of thing a man can give a short version of - left him spending years wandering before finding purpose again with Roland's ka-tet. His backstory occupies a substantial section of Wolves of the Calla.

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 fourth personality inhabiting Susannah's body, whose name means 'mother' in the High Speech. Mia exists solely to protect and nourish what she calls her chap - the strange and uncanny pregnancy Susannah is unwillingly carrying - and the dissonance between her perception of her surroundings (a grand castle, lavish meals) and what Susannah experiences in her body is one of the more disturbing notes of the later books. Whether Mia's interests can coexist with Susannah's is the central tension of the arc she dominates.

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.

A young farmer in Calla Bryn Sturgis with two sets of twins and a single child. Tian is the first to call for resistance against the Wolves, sending the opopanax feather through the town to convene a Gathering. Passionate and stubborn, he stands with Roland's ka-tet from the start of the resistance.

The biggest and most successful farmer in Calla Bryn Sturgis, initially opposed to fighting the Wolves. He wears a white Stetson and has a vast belly. His own twin brother Welland was taken and roont. Though sceptical, he is gradually won over by Roland's presence and eventually supports the decision to fight.

The fat, mild-mannered owner of The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind, a second-hand bookstore in midtown New York whose proprietor is conspicuously more interested in talking about his stock than in selling any of it. Tower has a curious reluctance to part with one particular piece of family property - a vacant lot at Second Avenue and 46th Street, almost worthless by any sensible commercial measure, that the Sombra Corporation has nonetheless been pressing him with disconcerting persistence to sell.

Tian Jaffords's ancient, nearly toothless grandfather - now reduced to a state of dribbling reminiscence the family treats with the mixed affection and inattention such states usually attract. What everyone in the household has forgotten, until Roland's ka-tet starts asking the right kinds of questions, is that Gran-pere has been carrying a piece of family history since his own grandfather's time that turns out to be unexpectedly relevant to the question of what, exactly, the Wolves are.

The elderly patriarch of the Manni folk who live north of town. He guides Roland to the Doorway Cave and helps with the todash passages. The Manni are a religious sect who believe in travelling between worlds and revere the Beams. Henchick possesses deep knowledge of the old ways and recognises Roland as being of the line of Eld.

Vaughn Eisenhart's slim, dark-haired wife, born Margaret of the Redpath family, and the unspoken leader of the Sisters of Oriza - the women of the Calla who have for generations been keeping alive a particular tradition of throwing razor-sharp ceremonial plates with the kind of accuracy a less prepared visitor would assume impossible. When Roland's ka-tet realises the Sisters are not the decorative society they at first appear, Margaret is the one who steps forward to demonstrate - cutting the head off a stuffy-guy at fifty yards in a single fluid throw that settles the matter without further argument.

Callahan's housekeeper at the rectory, a handsome woman of about forty. She is skilled in rough doctoring and treats Roland's arthritis with a potent cat-oil liniment. She becomes Roland's lover during the stay in the Calla and volunteers to fight with the Sisters of Oriza. Childless herself, she is fiercely protective of the Calla's children.

Owner of the Rocking B ranch, one of the three big men of Calla Bryn Sturgis - alongside Overholser and Took - whose opinion the Town Gathering has long been accustomed to take seriously. His twin sister Verna was roont by the Wolves a generation ago and died young, a wound he carries with him into every Wolf-related conversation, no matter how impatient with such conversations he tries to appear. Initially deeply sceptical of any plan to resist the Wolves directly, Eisenhart begins to come round when his wife Margaret demonstrates to Roland's ka-tet that the Sisters of Oriza's traditions are considerably less decorative than the Calla's men have been raising their eyebrows about for years.