Cast of Characters
With a serialized story, it can be tough to keep track of all those names! So I’ll update this page whenever new characters are introduced - in alphabetical order, with short descriptions of who they are and any key plot points they’ve been a part of. This will only include recurrent characters; folks who appear in only one chapter won’t show up here.
A quick note on the naming conventions: in this future, people honor the cultural memory of the journeys their ancestors made by naming their children after the places they settled in their journey. Hence, the nom de guerre that the protagonist chose for himself - Deimos Zaragoza - tells people that his ancestors spent a generation or more in a region of Spain and on a moon of Mars.
Bolingbroke Rhadamanthus - Ganymede’s current daimyo, highest-ranking member of the representative triumvirate within the League of Jovian Moons. Apparently utterly unremarkable, he somehow triumphed in a furious battle among the plutocrats for the position. [First appearance: Chapter 5]
Deimos Zaragoza - the protagonist and narrator of Jupiter Ruins Everything. He’s returned to Ganymede Prime after spending seven years amassing a fortune and plotting a complex web of intrigue and revenge. He’s also a bit of a fuck-up.
Klotho - Deimos’s sibling, whose tragic death is a big part of his rage. ALSO the name of the sentient software that Deimos created, in an attempt to re-create his sibling. Sort of his all-purpose personal assistant, with a lot of attitude and an awful big chip on their shoulder for someone who’s just code.
Paaliaq Wallingford - a sex worker who Deimos meets when he first returns home - Paaliaq explains to Deimos the rise of the Unity Corps, the “border patrol” of the totalitarian League of Jovian Moons, tasked with rounding up off-worlders. [First appearance: Chapter 1.]
Psamatha Jeddah - An innkeeper, owner of the Pleiades Hotel. Active in the fight against the Unity Corps’ anti-off-worlder crusade. Uses a gravity baffler as an accessibility aid - a sort of hoverboard-chair that attenuates the effects of Ganymede’s artificial gravity grid. [First appearance: Chapter 2.]
Sheboygan Thalassa - A member of the Lithospheric Extraction Collective, who helped Thyone Ullapool take it over; now she uses their shares to prop up her control of it. Blackmailed by Deimos into giving up his shares, even though to do so puts his life in danger. [First appearance: Chapter 6]
Thyone Ullapool - Deimos’s nemesis, the primary architect of his mother’s downfall and his family’s misery. A criminal who has gone legit. Rose to power running the metals-buying business in Ganymede Prime, and has since diversified her portfolio. [First appearance: Chapter 3.]
Tlatelolco Polyhymnia - barista who runs the Tacubaya Cafe, which operates out of the lobby of the Pleiades Hotel. A key organizer in the resistance against the xenophobic Unity Corps. [First appearance: Chapter 6]
Tulsa Calcutta - Thyone’s valet de chambre, the primary domestic worker in her employ. A prickly, grizzled old off-worlder whose husband and son have both been detained indefinitely in Wormwood Piers. [First appearance: Chapter 5]
Weywot Cao Lanh - a kind, harmlessly-weird unemployed professor of literature who lives at the Pleiades Hotel. He claims to have once served the king of Sedna, who is believed to have been assassinated by agents of the revolutionary collectivist government that overthrew the monarchy. [First appearance: Chapter 3.]