The heroine is Prudence Carrou, who is by trade, a trouver although she can't exactly put that on her business card. A trouver finds things via magical means but magic in Prudence's world can also mean death. Ultra religious fundamentalists called the Authority (or the Others) use their own powers to punish and kill anyone not brainwashed to believe in their god. Prudence isn't my first female character to wield a gun, but she is extremely trigger happy, especially when guys try to make a pass at her.
Dash Martin is also a trouver. He is a closet romantic as well. He can't help himself when it comes to rescuing maidens in distress. That's also the reason why he always gets mobbed by women where his reputation is known. His relationship with Prudence is, to say the least, unresolved. As teenagers, they had both trained to become trouvers under Axel Redding and had viewed each other as competition but as they became older, it isn't quite the same.
The instigator of the quest to find Salamander Hill is Cassius Ficket, a city man who inadvertently fell under the spell of a society belle who probably doesn't even know he exists. Ficket received a map to Salamander Hill from his eccentric cousin and wants to find the treasure purportedly hidden there to impress the object of his affections. Of course, this is the story that he tells his traveling companions. He might have ulterior motives.
The wilderness guide who takes the group into the Dustlands, a.k.a. the end of the world, is William Altner. He's huge and imposing but he's spent most of his life wandering the edges of the Dustlands, finding sun-sands for a living. He's the best chance for the group's survival when they will encounter the Dustlands' hidden dangers. But is he to be trusted? Wilderness guides are also hunted down by the Authority because they use their powers to survive the rigors of the Dustlands, but their allegiances are quite shifty when it comes to other people.
