Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin
Freelance human scientist obsessed with crisis theory. His attempt to help Yagharek accidentally creates the slake-moth plague, making scientific curiosity inseparable from responsibility.
Lin
Khepri sculptor and Isaac's lover. Her commission from Motley places her at the intersection of art, criminal power, species prejudice, and bodily exploitation.
Yagharek
Garuda exile whose wings were removed for rape. He seeks technological restoration, assists courageously against the moths, and remains morally irreducible to either victimhood or villainy.
Derkhan Blueday
Art critic, dissident, and writer for The Runagate Rampant. Her loyalty to Lin and hatred of the government bring her into Isaac's coalition.
Lemuel Pigeon
Fixer and underworld intermediary who acquires specimens and information. He helps Isaac navigate the market that made the disaster possible.
Mr Motley
Criminal leader whose body is a deliberate collage of Remade parts. He controls dreamshit production through captive slake-moths and commissions Lin's sculpture.
Bentham Rudgutter
Mayor of New Crobuzon. He protects state power through militia force, secret research, criminal dealings, and negotiation with supernatural entities.
The Weaver
Gigantic transdimensional spider that perceives reality as a worldweb requiring aesthetic correction. Its help is decisive, dangerous, and never fully predictable.
The Construct Council
Artificial intelligence emerging from connected discarded machines. It assists Isaac while pursuing its own expansion, until he judges its appetite too dangerous and engineers its destruction.
Lublamai Dadscatt
Isaac's colleague and the first victim of the laboratory slake-moth, left alive but emptied of conscious personality.
Benjamin Flex
Editor associated with The Runagate Rampant. His persecution shows the cost of documenting government violence.
Jack Half-a-Prayer
Famous Remade outlaw and folk hero. His intervention against the militia gives the hunted group a chance to continue.
Kar'uchai
The garuda Yagharek raped. She travels to New Crobuzon to tell Isaac herself, and explains the crime through the garuda principle that choice is the defining property of the individual.
Spoiler Warning
The grouped summaries below reveal the slake-moths' origin, Lin's capture and injury, Yagharek's crime, and the final fates of the main characters. The standard English text opens with a first-person prologue and runs to 52 untitled numbered chapters gathered into eight named Parts — Commissions, Physiognomies of Flight, Metamorphoses, A Plague of Nightmares, Councils, The Glasshouse, Crisis and Judgment — punctuated throughout by passages in Yagharek's voice. To keep this long guide usable, consecutive chapters are summarized in short ranges.