The Aes Sedai are an ancient and powerful sisterhood of women who can channel the One Power - the fundamental force that drives the Wheel of Time. Based in the White Tower in Tar Valon, they are divided into seven Ajahs, each dedicated to a different purpose: the Red Ajah hunts male channellers, the Blue pursues justice and causes, the Green stands ready for the Last Battle, the Yellow heals, the White seeks philosophical truth, the Brown preserves knowledge, and the Grey mediates disputes. Aes Sedai are bound by the Three Oaths - they cannot speak a lie, cannot make a weapon for a man to kill with, and cannot use the Power as a weapon except in defence. These Oaths, spoken into a ter'angreal called the Oath Rod, physically shorten their lives. The organisation is led by the Amyrlin Seat, effectively a queen among the sisters, supported by the Hall of the Tower.

The noble families of Arelon on Sel; their political power fills the vacuum left by the fall of Elantris.

The Ares 3 crew are the six astronauts selected for NASA's third manned mission to Mars. Commanded by Melissa Lewis, the crew includes pilot Rick Martinez, flight surgeon Chris Beck, systems operator Beth Johanssen, chemist Alex Vogel, and botanist Mark Watney. When a violent dust storm forces an emergency evacuation of the surface during the early days of their mission, the crew is forced to leave Watney behind after he is struck by debris and presumed dead. The rest of the crew departs Mars aboard the Hermes spacecraft, only to learn later that Watney survived. The decision to leave him - and the crew's determination to bring him home once they learn the truth - drives the emotional core of the story. Each crew member brings specialised expertise and a distinct personality, and their loyalty to one another is tested by the impossible distances and timescales involved in a Mars rescue.

The Asha'man are male channellers trained by Rand al'Thor as weapons for the Last Battle, based at the Black Tower near Caemlyn. Their name means "guardian" or "defender" in the Old Tongue. Where the Aes Sedai spend years learning to channel safely, the Asha'man are trained at brutal speed - the taint on saidin means many go mad or burn themselves out. They are organised in military ranks: Soldier, Dedicated, and the full Asha'man. Mazrim Taim runs the Black Tower in Rand's name, though his loyalties and methods are a source of growing unease. The Asha'man represent a fundamental shift in the world's power balance - for the first time in three thousand years, male channellers are organised, trained, and dangerous rather than hunted and killed.

The Barsavi crime family is the dominant criminal organisation in Camorr, controlling the city's underworld through a network of gangs, rackets, and enforced loyalty. Led by Capa Barsavi - a ruthless but pragmatic crime lord - the family maintains order among Camorr's thieves through the Secret Peace, an arrangement with the nobility that permits crime against commoners but forbids targeting the rich. Every gang in the city pays tribute to the Capa and operates under his rules. Barsavi rules from his floating headquarters and commands enough muscle to crush any gang that steps out of line. The stability of his reign, however, depends on the assumption that no one would be foolish enough to challenge him - an assumption that proves fatally wrong when threats emerge from both inside and outside the criminal hierarchy.

The Bene Gesserit are an ancient and secretive sisterhood of women who have developed extraordinary mental and physical abilities through generations of training and selective breeding. Their powers include the Voice (a form of command that compels obedience), Other Memory (access to the genetic memories of female ancestors), and superhuman observation and deduction. For thousands of years, the Bene Gesserit have pursued a covert breeding programme designed to produce the Kwisatz Haderach - a male Bene Gesserit with the ability to see where they cannot. The sisterhood operates as a political power behind every throne in the Imperium, placing their trained sisters as wives, concubines, and advisors to the ruling houses. The Bene Gesserit are neither heroes nor villains - they are pragmatists playing a longer game than anyone else, and their plans span centuries.

The Bennet family are the central household of Pride and Prejudice, residing at Longbourn estate in Hertfordshire. Mr. Bennet is a gentleman of modest income whose property is entailed away to a male heir, meaning his wife and five daughters face potential poverty upon his death. This precarious situation drives Mrs. Bennet's single-minded obsession with marrying her daughters to wealthy men. The five Bennet sisters - Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia - span a range of temperaments from Jane's gentle goodness to Lydia's reckless impulsiveness, with Elizabeth's sharp intelligence and independent spirit at the centre. The family's position in the rural gentry - respectable but not wealthy, well-bred but with embarrassing relations in trade - places them in an awkward social position that shapes every interaction with the wealthier families who enter their orbit. The contrast between the sisters' different approaches to love, duty, and social expectation forms the heart of the novel.

A trio of hired guns - gunslingers gone bad - who serve as enforcers for the Crimson King's interests in Mejis during Roland's youth.

The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. A pure-blood family with a dark reputation.

The Bondsmagi of Karthain are an order of sorcerers who wield genuine magical power in a world where most people consider magic either myth or irrelevance. Based in the distant city of Karthain, they hire out their services to the wealthy and powerful for exorbitant fees - a single Bondsmage can turn the tide of a war, collapse an economy, or destroy a rival with terrifying precision. Their guild enforces a strict monopoly on magical practice and responds to any attack on its members with overwhelming, disproportionate retaliation, making them feared across the known world. Despite their power, the Bondsmagi are bound by their own internal politics and factions, and their interest in Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen draws the Gentleman Bastards into conflicts far beyond the scale of their usual cons.

A sellsword company of mixed nationality known for extreme brutality, also called the Bloody Mummers. Their numbers include men from half a hundred lands who share little beyond a taste for cruelty.

Bridge Four is a bridge crew - later an elite military unit - that becomes the heart of Kaladin Stormblessed's story in The Stormlight Archive. Originally a group of expendable slaves forced to carry bridges into battle on the Shattered Plains, Bridge Four was transformed by Kaladin's leadership into a band of fiercely loyal soldiers. Their defiance of the brutal bridgeman system and their refusal to break under impossible conditions makes them one of the most celebrated groups in the series. After earning their freedom, Bridge Four's members become the personal guard of Dalinar Kholin and, later, some of the first new Knights Radiant in millennia. The crew's members - including Teft, Rock, Sigzil, Lopen, and Skar - each bring their own backgrounds and struggles.

The training nome for young Egyptian magicians established by the Kane siblings in Brooklyn. An alternative to the traditional House of Life structure, more open to hosting gods and working with demigods.

An outlaw band formed from the remnants of a force sent by Eddard Stark to bring justice to the Riverlands. Led by Beric Dondarrion and the red priest Thoros of Myr, the Brotherhood fights to protect the smallfolk from the depredations of war, regardless of which side commits them.

The Camorri nobility are the wealthy ruling families of Camorr, a merchant city built on the ruins of an ancient alien civilisation whose indestructible glass towers still dominate the skyline. Noble houses compete for wealth through trade, political marriage, and social manoeuvring, their lives a world apart from the teeming streets below. The nobility are protected from the city's criminal underworld by the Secret Peace - an arrangement with Capa Barsavi that keeps thieves from targeting the rich in exchange for the authorities turning a blind eye to crime against commoners. This arrangement makes the nobility complacent targets for anyone bold enough to break the rules, which is precisely what the Gentleman Bastards specialise in. The nobles' elaborate social rituals, feasts, and business dealings provide the stage on which Locke Lamora performs his most ambitious cons.

The training ground for Greek demigods, hidden in the hills of Long Island behind a magical barrier. Run by Chiron the centaur and the perpetually aggrieved Dionysus. Most Greek demigod characters are members at some point, though belonging to the camp is always complicated by the knowledge that the mortal world cannot know it exists.

The Roman equivalent of Camp Half-Blood, located near San Francisco. More militarised and structured than its Greek counterpart, organised into legions with ranks and a Senate. Praetorians govern the camp. Greek and Roman demigods are kept separate to prevent the divine aspects of the same gods from colliding.

The Children of the Light - known disparagingly as Whitecloaks - are a military and religious organisation based in Amador, the capital of Amadicia. They believe that Aes Sedai are servants of the Dark One and that channelling is inherently evil, making them among the most dangerous opponents of anyone who can use the One Power. Their Questioners, the Hand of the Light, use torture to extract confessions of Darkfriendship. Despite their fanaticism they are a genuine military force and political power in the Westlands, and their hostility to Perrin - who killed two of their number in self-defence - drives a significant subplot across multiple books.

The dominant religion of the Elendel Basin in the era of Wax and Wayne, founded on the worship of Kelsier - the legendary rebel who defied the Lord Ruler in the final days of the Final Empire and is venerated by the faithful as the Survivor of Hathsin. The Church teaches that his example proves even the powerless can overcome tyranny, and his legend has become one of the defining cultural forces of the new world, though its relationship with Harmony is complicated.

The loose association of Darujhistan residents connected by circumstance, mutual interest, and Kruppe's apparently artless management of their interactions. Kruppe, Crokus Younghand, Rallick Nom, and Murillio are not a formal organisation - they share a tavern, a neighbourhood, and an accumulating series of entanglements that Kruppe navigates with more deliberateness than his manner suggests. The Circle is less a group than a social fact: these people are in each other's lives, and Kruppe has ensured that their combined capabilities are available when the situation requires them.