A big, blond, stolid young man from Gilead and one of Roland's closest friends, travelling under the alias Richard Stockworth during the Mejis expedition. Alain possesses the touch - a psychic sensitivity that gives him premonitions and an awareness of what others around him are thinking and feeling. Calm and diplomatic by temperament, he is the natural mediator between Roland and Cuthbert when their tempers collide, and an unfussily capable shot in a tradition that prizes the showier kind of capability above all else.