Only child of famous hunter Frank Kendrick and his Yeꞌkwana wife Maia, Alice's mother died when Alice was four, leaving her to grow up at her father's side as a hunter. After her father was paralyzed below the waist after getting careless with a rhino, Alice took over as field commander of his business, Kendrick's Cagers, which mostly supplies animals for zoos and circuses. She's one of the best at hunting, as well as a first-class shot and animal handler.

An Awe-Rimi tribesman who joined Kendrick's Cagers when Alice was about ten. Jabilo is an expert hunter and tracker. He has a morbid fascination with the sensations at the moment of death that many people find off-putting. He prefers not to wear clothes, since his people traditionally don't.

Luke Wulf is a Texas Ranger, but rather than coming from West Texas like most, he's actually from New Braunfels and therefore culturally German. He had a childhood fascination with ghosts and is a self-made expert on the occult, so he is often the ranger who is assigned the odd cases. As part of this specialized duty, the DPS supplies him with specialized equipment like silver bullets, and allows a certain amount of fudging in the results.

First Mate Paul Hausser in the balance to Captain Raubritter, a friendly face the crew can talk to, willing to be "one of the boys." He's an artist of some note, making sketches of the vistas he encounters in his travels and painting them into a breathtaking landscape later.

Primal goddess of the sea, precursor to both the Olympians and the Titans. Torsten Raubtritter is the latest of a series of sailors she has befriended over the ages. She is a powerful ally, but she is also the sea, and if the circumstances demand it, she will break Torsten's ship and swallow him as she's swallowed so many others.

Dirk Palaez is Professor of Herpetology at California State University. He's been going down to South America on specimen-collecting missions most of his life, and is an expert of the Amazon rainforest and everything in it. He's an expert on all reptiles and amphibians, although his specialty is frogs. He's had many unusual experiences in South America and acted as a guide for desperate people more than once.

Lembui is a Maasai and Frank Kendrick's longtime partner. Lembui travelled the world with Frank long before Alice was born, and the two are inseparable at home. Lembui fought in the Western European theater in World War I as part of the British Army, and earned two Military Medals and a Distinguished Service Medal. But he came back markedly less interested in killing, and now prefers to concentrate of tracking, which he excels at.

A purebred and uncannily intelligent Rhodesian Ridgeback, He leads the pack of four Ridgebacks owned by Kendrick's Cagers. He's not the largest or the most aggressive, but the others defer to him anyway. Mars is extremely intelligent in addition to well-trained, to the point he can make indirect associations, recognize himself in a mirror, and defy his orders if he judges them to be misguided. Despite this, he is ferociously loyal to his pack and his human family.

3rd engineer of the Elefant and Captain Torsten's younger son. Rainer is rather like Bertie Wooster in that he means well, he's even heroic, but he's nowhere near as smart and capable as he thinks he is. All too often, his heroism will land him in a big mess that his father has to clean up.

The formidable captain of the SS Elefant (German registry), Torsten Raubritter spent most of his youth in the Kaiserliche Marine. Although he became an officer on a cruiser, Torsten badly damaged his career by spotting a sea serpent and recording the details in the log. His report was labelled "mistaken" and his pay docked for entering a false report in the log, leaving Torsten bitter and leery of admitting any unusual experiences to anyone. Nevertheless, he coordinated the flotilla of lifeboats after his cruiser was sunk at the Battle of Jutland, ensuring no one who made it off the ship was lost. After the war, he had to move on to commercial ships, but quickly made captain.

Torsten is an autocratic, stern commander, but a fair and top-notch one. His crew wouldn't like to have a beer with him, but if they were told an English ship had foundered in Hell, they would follow him to the rescue.

And they'd come back with the entire English crew.

Corporal George McLeod joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police after failing in his career as a machinist. He still works on inventions, including his snow-cycle, a vehicle intended to convey people across deep snow. In the Mounties, he mostly works in communication, coordination, and and paperwork, so he isn't often out in the field.

Stella's longtime employee, Louis grew up in Algeria with his two brothers, the sons of a shopkeeper and a soldier in the French Foreign Legion. After his younger brother drifted away under bad influences and his elder brother went to the Western European theater in World War I and never came back, Louis learned flying as something to occupy his time. He never thought it would be his job until he met Stella and realized just how good he was at it. While working with Stella, he ordinarily acts as co-pilot, but he often flies one of the other company planes as the pilot. When working together, he also supplies the devious streak Stella lacks.

Taciturn and odd, Otto Elfeldt is the best at anything in his routine, and not very good at anything else. Fiercely loyal to his crew, his ship, and above all his captain, Otto is a stout ally to whoever needs him. He's a champion in fist fights, and Captain Raubritter often takes him along when extra muscle is needed.

Stella got her love of flying from her father, Lance Baker, a metalworker who was a 2nd Lt. in the USAS during World War I, and her inquisitiveness from her mother, newspaper reporter E.B. Baker. Between those two influences and her desire to help, she's been all over the world and had more adventures than ten average people would have in a lifetime. She's picked up a friend and skill almost everywhere she's gone, and knows at least the basics of almost anything you can name. Smart, skilled, and daring, Stella is game for any challenge, and if you need a hand, she can probably help.

A demon near the bottom of Hell's pecking order, Ulocim became bitterly disillusioned and desperate to return to its post from the early days of creation. When it tries to defect, it discovers there's more needed than "Take me back!"