The most cheerful and seemingly simple of the dragon keepers, whose relationship with his dragon Heeby and whose gradual immersion in Elderling memory across the Chronicles produces one of the sequence's more unsettling character developments. Rapskal's arc is a study in what it means to be changed by something you invited in without fully understanding what it would cost, and his later appearances in the Fitz and the Fool trilogy give his transformation additional weight.

Alise's husband's secretary who accompanies the expedition under circumstances that are not initially what they appear, and whose arc across the Rain Wild Chronicles is one of its more surprising. Sedric's relationship with his dragon Relpda and the discoveries the expedition forces upon him require him to confront aspects of himself and his situation that he has been evading, and his development from reluctant participant to committed keeper is among the Chronicles' more quietly affecting character journeys.

The captain of the Tarman, the oldest liveship on the Rain Wild River, whose pragmatic competence and genuine warmth make him one of the more immediately likeable characters in the sequence. Leftrin's relationship with Alise is one of the Rain Wild Chronicles' central emotional threads, and his knowledge of the river and his loyalty to his unusual crew give him a grounded authority that the keeper expedition depends on. His history with the Rain Wilds and his connection to Tarman run deeper than they initially appear.

A Bingtown woman whose expertise in Elderling lore has been the purpose of a life otherwise constrained by an unhappy marriage and social expectation. Alise's journey with the dragon keepers to Kelsingra is the fulfilment of everything she has studied and the beginning of something she could not have anticipated. Her arc examines what happens when a person who has been living entirely in their mind is suddenly required to live in their body and in the world, and her relationship with Leftrin and with the dragons reshapes her understanding of what her life can contain.