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Spindle was a mage and sapper with the 7th squad of the Bridgeburners[1] whose method of channeling his Warren disrupted and panicked animals when he unveiled it.[2] He once captained a company of sappers for three days until one of his soldiers accidentally set off a charge that killed many of them.[3]

Spindle was a short and scrawny, bald man known for wearing a particularly rank black and grey, hooded, thigh-length hair-shirt, allegedly woven from his dead mother's hair.[4][5] He refused to wash the shirt, saying that his mother never washed her hair when she was alive.[6] Damaged portions of the hairshirt slowly grew back.[7] Picker believed the shirt was the reason Spindle had survived so many years as a soldier.[8] He sometimes spoke of his mother in the present tense,[9] and was careful not to do anything to provoke her disapproval. He was once observed to duck as an impression of knuckles briefly appeared on his bald pate.[10]

"Beneath the skin beneath the hairshirt, there scrabbled the soul of a sapper, half mad - as were the souls of all sappers. Spindle's magery was notoriously unpredictable, and more than once she had seen him unveiling his warren with one hand while throwing a Moranth munition with the other."
Picker prior to the Battle of Black Coral[src]

He had an "eternally sour disposition".[4]

Spindle was capable of reading the Deck of Dragons and of making copies of the cards for his own set.[11]

In Memories of Ice[]

After Dujek Onearm's army went renegade, Spindle was promoted to cadre mage. Dujek allied with their old enemies, Caladan Brood and Anomander Rake, to war against the Pannion Domin. Spindle led Blend, Detoran, Hedge, Picker, and Trotts into Brood's command tent to steal Fiddler and Hedge's old card table. Rigged to win card games using the Deck of Dragons, it had been lost as a spoil of war when the Bridgeburner camp in Mott Wood was overrun. Spindle and the squad soon put the table back into action to swindle their fellow soldiers. But the presence of a new and heretofore unknown Master of the Deck card painted underneath caused the plan to backfire, lightening their own purses.[12]

Day 25 prickly by shadaan

Spindle by Shadaan

For four of Spindle's readings in a row, the Obelisk dominated for the first time in decades. The mage declared that the new card was a passive influence that had not yet awoken. The rest of Spindle's hand saw the Soldier of High House Death, the Magi of Shadow, the Captain of High House Light, and Hood's Herald. Spindle eventually recognised the face on the Assassin card as Kalam Mekhar and the face on the new card as that of Ganoes Paran.[13]

The Bridgeburners were sent by Quorl to the Barghast Range to forge an alliance with Humbrall Taur and the White Face Barghast. Spindle was part of a detachment led by Antsy that was to meet and escort Quick Ben to the Barghast camp.

The Bridgeburners and the Barghast were the first of the allied forces to make contact with the enemy at the Siege of Capustan. Using munitions, Spindle and the Bridgeburners punched their way through 200 Betaklites and over a thousand Tenescowri at Capustan's North Gate.[14] The Crippled God's growing infection of the Warrens made spellcasting dangerous and Spindle soon grew afraid to test his magic.[15]

Spindle by Dejan Delic

Spndle by Dejan Delic

After the siege was lifted, the Bridgeburners traveled secretly to Coral to reconnoiter the next battlefield. Spindle was part of a team of mages, along with Quick Ben, Bluepearl, and Toes, who defended a network of unmanned trenches and tunnels built on the forested slopes north of the city. The Bridgeburners held their position against Septarch Ultentha and a company of Beklites and Urdomen until Dujek arrived.[16]

During the Siege of Coral, Spindle and the other Bridgeburners were inserted into the city by quorl under the cover of darkness. Their mission was to attack the keep of the Pannion Seer while Dujek led the rest of the army into the city itself.[17] Spindle and Hedge rigged one of the keep's towers with munitions to blow open an entrance for the Bridgeburner attack. Spindle also unveiled his warren to disrupt the Seer's demonic Condors by panicking their animal hosts.[18]

After the battle, Dujek allowed Spindle and the remaining Bridgeburners to secretly retire as had been Whiskeyjack's wish.[19] The mage went to Darujhistan where several of his comrades used their accumulated back pay to establish K'rul's Bar.[20]

In The Bonehunters[]

Quick Ben told Fiddler and Kalam that contrary to reports there had been some survivors in Coral and named Spindle as one of those now living in Darujhistan.[21]

In Toll the Hounds[]

2020 - Spindle by Ploscost

Spindle by Ploscost

Spindle subsequently left Darujhistan to go on a pilgrimage to the Barrow of the Redeemer located just outside the newly re-named Black Coral.[22] However, upon reaching the Pilgrim camp of the Redeemer outside the city, Spindle discovered a place run by Gradithan and his thugs that was almost completely corrupted by the worship of the Dying God with its universal drinking of Kelyk--an addictive and ultimately deadly substance.[23]

The enraged Spindle recognised a Bridgeburner deserter at the camp, now calling himself Monkrat, and interrogated him at knifepoint. Monkrat tried to warn Spindle to leave, but the mage called on the deserter's sense of duty as a soldier and convinced Monkrat to help him save as many of the camp's abandoned children as they could. Monkrat knew the children were to be rounded up by the new sect's fanatic adherents to be sacrificed as virgins to 'feed' the Dying God.[24] Spindle and Monkrat managed to rescue twenty young girls, some in very bad shape through neglect, and spirit them away to the safety of the nearby woods.[25] Monkrat felt redeemed in spirit by their actions, telling the mage he would never forget what he had done for him.[26]

From their hideaway, Monkrat and a gleeful Spindle watched the dragon, Silanah, take flight from her roost atop the New Andiian Palace and fly to the corrupted pilgrim camp to deal deadly payback to Gradithan and the rest of his evil followers.[27]

In The Crippled God[]

Spindle had been present in Black Coral (which was "Black" no longer, as the entire Tiste Andii population had vanished, without a word to anyone, along with Silanah) when all of the Great Ravens, thousands of them, suddenly took flight and left the city, flying out over the bay, heading eastward.[28]

In Orb Sceptre Throne[]

Spindle resurfaced at K'rul's Bar where he recruited Picker and Blend to join him for a surveillance job[29] keeping watch over Scholar Ebbin's latest 'find'--a site located out on the Dwelling Plain, a long walk due south from Darujhistan's Raven Gate.[30]

Later, Spindle and other regulars of K'rul's Bar[31] failed in their attempts to destroy, or at least to damage, the stones in the Circle supporting the newly re-created Orb of the Tyrants's protective dome. With Spindle and Fisher standing by, Caladan Brood was finally able to crack one of the stones of the Circle by two double-fisted blows of his mighty hands.[32] This breaking of the Circle removed not only the Orb of the Tyrants, but also removed the Legate's power and resulted in his ultimate fall and destruction.[33][34]

In The God is Not Willing[]

Ten years after the events of The Crippled God, Spindle was serving as Sergeant of the 3rd squad in the XIVth Legion's 2nd Company.

Spindle's 3rd squad:

(Information needed)

Notes and references[]

  1. Memories of Ice, Dramatis Personae
  2. Memories of Ice, Chapter 4, US SFBC p.130
  3. Memories of Ice, Chapter 21, UK MMPB p.906
  4. 4.0 4.1 Memories of Ice, Chapter 4, US SFBC p.129
  5. Memories of Ice, Chapter 10, US SFBC p.377
  6. Memories of Ice, Chapter 4, US SFBC p.140
  7. Memories of Ice, Chapter 17, US SFBC p.563
  8. Orb Sceptre Throne, Chapter III, US TPB p.105
  9. Orb Sceptre Throne, Chapter III, US TPB p.105
  10. Memories of Ice, Chapter 11, US SFBC p.411
  11. Memories of Ice, Chapter 4, US SFBC p.142
  12. Memories of Ice, Chapter 4, US SFBC p.139-143
  13. Memories of Ice, Chapter 5, US SFBC p.178-182
  14. Memories of Ice, Chapter 17, US SFBC p.560-566
  15. Memories of Ice, Chapter 17, US SFBC p.573
  16. Memories of Ice, Chapter 23, US SFBC p.863-865/876
  17. Memories of Ice, Chapter 24, US SFBC p.877-878
  18. Memories of Ice, Chapter 24, US SFBC p.883/886-887
  19. Memories of Ice, Chapter 25, US SFBC p.991-992
  20. Memories of Ice, Epilogue, US SFBC p.997-1000
  21. The Bonehunters, Chapter 2, UK MMPB p.118
  22. Toll the Hounds, Chapter 20, US TPB p.664
  23. Toll the Hounds, Chapter 20, US TPB p.662-663
  24. Toll the Hounds, Chapter 22, US TPB p.733-735
  25. Toll the Hounds, Chapter 24, US TPB p.800-801
  26. Toll the Hounds, Chapter 24, US SFBC p.974-975
  27. Toll the Hounds, Chapter 24, US TPB p.809-810
  28. The Crippled God, Chapter 11, US HC p.286-287
  29. Orb Sceptre Throne, Chapter 2, US TPB p.68-70
  30. Orb Sceptre Throne, Chapter 3, US TPB p.105
  31. Orb Sceptre Throne, Chapter 11, US TPB p.322/325-326
  32. Orb Sceptre Throne, Chapter 20, US TPB p.559/562-563
  33. Orb Sceptre Throne, Chapter 20, US TPB p.563-564
  34. Orb Sceptre Throne, Chapter 21, US TPB p.589-590
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