Stephen King's the Dark Tower: The Complete Concordance Revised and Updated

by Robin Furth

  BECOMING: For Mia, “becoming” was the process of becoming human, or for transforming from a creature of the PRIM into a being of flesh and blood. The bizarre surgery which made this transformation possible took place in the Fedic Dogan. Becoming is also the term that the CAN-TOI use for their own process of becoming human. However, despite all their efforts, the only thing that the can-toi are becoming is uglier. It is probably almost impossible for the can-toi to become human since they can’t comprehend true human emotion. Hence, their humanoid faces—made from a kind of living latex—will never be more than masks to cover their lice-infested rat snouts. VI:251, VII:235, VII:293

  BHST: Blue Heaven Standard Time. This is the way they measure time in the DEVAR-TOI. VII:271

  BLUE HEAVEN: See DEVAR-TOI, below

  BREAKERS (BEAM BREAKERS): The Beam Breakers are a group of psychics who were tricked by servants of the Crimson King into taking the perfect “job of a lifetime.” It certainly turns out to be a lifetime job, since none of them can leave the DEVAR-TOI, or Breaker prison, until the universe collapses. Each day, the Breakers go to the Devar-Toi STUDY, where they focus their special skills on eroding the weakened Beams. For page references, see BREAKERS, in CHARACTERS

  CHILDREN OF RODERICK: See entry in MID-WORLD ARGOT

  CLAN-FAM: Clan-fam denotes a CAN-TOI clan family. The clan-fam gives a low man or low woman a human name as part of their process of BECOMING. The clan-fam name is a maturity-marker. VII:293, VII:617

  CLOSIES: A term used by a washerboy in the Dixie Pig who warns Jake Chambers about Sayre and his “closies” or henchmen. VII:84

  CRAZY, THE: This form of madness afflicts many in Thunderclap, especially the RODS. VII:300

  CUT-EM-UP-MAN: A coroner. VII:106

  DARKS: A dark is a unit of expelled psychic energy and is used to describe units of Breaker Force. In other words, it is a way to measure the amount of psychic energy which the BREAKERS emit at any one time—a force which is trained to erode the Beams. Ted Brautigan’s talent as a facilitator means that he raises the Breaker Force exponentially every time he enters the STUDY where the Breakers do their work. With Ted around, the Breaker Force radiating from this room can jump from fifty breaks an hour to five hundred breaks an hour. VII:236, VII:295

  DEEP TELEMETRY: See TELEMETRY, below

  DESERT DOGS: This is the End-World term for coyotes. VII:289

  DEVAR-TETE: See entry in HIGH SPEECH

  DEVAR-TOI: The BREAKER prison located in End-World. For page references, See entry in PORTALS

  DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE EGGS UNTIL YOU’RE ALMOST HOME: This phrase was originally used by the grandfather of Pimli Prentiss, the Devar Master. VII:232

  EAR-STYKE: Like boils, eczema, headaches, and nosebleeds, this is one of the many ailments that can affect people in Thunderclap. VII:494

  EATING SICKNESS: A nasty cancer that moves quickly and painfully through the body. The RODS often suffer from it. VII:300

  END-TIMES: According to those who work in the DEVAR-TOI, End-Times are almost upon us. This is because the Tower and the Beams are almost ready to collapse. VII:226

  ENJOY THE CRUISE, TURN ON THE FAN, THERE’S NOTHING TO LOSE, SO WORK ON YOUR TAN: This saying is popular among the BREAKERS. Rather disturbing when you consider that they are working to destroy all the known universes. VII:289

  FACILITATOR: A facilitator is a psychic whose gift includes the ability to increase the power of other psychics. Ted Brautigan is a facilitator. VII:243

  FLOATERS: CAN-TOI guards that roam about the DEVAR-TOI. VII:293

  GMS: GMS stands for the General Mentation Systems found in North Central Positronics robots. There are two such systems—rational and irrational. VII:155–56

  GOOD MIND: Good Mind is what rises from the BREAKERS when they work. It is a kind of psychic happy-gas. Not only does it dispel depression and pique, but it also increases the telepathic abilities of ordinary HUMES. VII:242

  HINKY (HINKY-DI-DI): This is a term used by Finli O’Tego. (He picked it up from the HUME crime novels which he likes to read.) When something feels hinky-di-di, it means that it doesn’t feel quite right. Trouble is on the wind. VII:226, VII:239

  HUME: This term refers to humans. The CAN-TOI, who believe they are BECOMING human, find it demeaning. VII:9, VII:235

  I TELL YOU TRUTH: This TAHEEN gesture is similar to the one used by Roland. The taheen (assuming he has hands) lays his right forefinger over a circle made by his left thumb and index finger. VII:238

  KA-HUME: A term used by the GRANDFATHERS for human beings. VII:9

  KEYSTONE EARTH: Keystone Earth, also called Keystone World, is our world—the one where Stephen King writes his books and where we read them. Keystone Earth is the only world in which time flows in a singular direction, or where (in the words of Dorrance Marstellar, a character from Stephen King’s novel Insomnia) things that are “Done-bun-can’t-be-undone.” Keystone Earth is real in the same way that Mid-World was real before the Beams began to weaken. The KA of our world is NINETEEN. The ka of Mid-World/End-World is ninety-nine. When the two come together, as in the year 1999, cataclysmic events can take place. For page references, see KEYSTONE WORLDS, in PORTALS

  KI’CAN: Shit-people or shit-FOLKEN. This is Ted Brautigan’s term for the guards at the DEVAR-TOI. VII:286

  KI’-DAM: Shit-for-brains. This is Dinky Earnshaw’s term for sai Prentiss, the Devar Master. VII:197, VII:207, VII:262

  LIGHT-STICKS: See entry in CALLA BRYN STURGIS DIALECT

  MAKERS: The term that the ASIMOV ROBOTS use for the Old Ones. VII:156

  MOMPS: A HUME disease. VII:356

  MORKS: This is another term for a BREAKER. It comes from the 1970s American sitcom Mork & Mindy. Like the alien Mork of the series, Breakers don’t have the same emotional makeup as other human beings. They tend to be disconnected from their fellow humans and so cannot form the emotional bonds that others feel. As a result, many of them are sociopaths. According to Ted Brautigan, most morks are selfish introverts masquerading as rugged individualists. Ted Brautigan, Dinky Earnshaw, and Sheemie Ruiz are three exceptions to this rule. VII:268–69

  OTHER-SIDE WORLDS: To the Warriors of the Scarlet Eye living in End-World, our world is one of many other-side worlds. VII:300

  PRECOG/POSTCOG: Precogs are psychics who see events before they happen. Postcogs are psychics who pick up on events that have already taken place. VII:238, VII:271

  PROG: Dinky Earnshaw’s word for reading thoughts. VII:292

  REAL WORLD: Keystone Earth. VII:300

  RED DEATH: See entry in MID-WORLD ARGOT

  SHEEP GOD (’HEEP GOD): The GRANDFATHERS’ term for the Christian God. VII:12

  SHUFFLEFOOT BAH-BO: This is Pimli Prentiss’s term for the CHILD OF RODERICK named Haylis. VII:346

  SIM SEX: The kind of sex which most of the BREAKERS end up having. You can have sim sex with anyone you like. The only problem is that it’s an illusion. The other person will seem real enough, but if you blow on them, the part your breath touches disappears. (Not a very nice thought.) In essence, sim sex is a fancy form of masturbation. VII:210–11

  SNEETCHES: See entry in CALLA BRYN STURGIS DIALECT

  STUDY, THE: The room in the DEVAR-TOI where the BREAKERS work on breaking the Beams. It looks like a library in a nineteenth-century men’s club. See DEVAR-TOI, in PORTALS

  SWING-GUARDS: The guards of the DEVAR-TOI. The term probably refers to either a particular rotation on the compound or to the changing of the guards. VII:237

  TELEMETRY: Telemetry (or Deep Telemetry) is the machinery used in the DEVAR-TOI to detect psychic bursts. No one is sure exactly what this machinery was originally made to measure, but one suspects it was to detect telepathy, teleportation, or even deep tremors in the fabric of reality. VII:344

  TELEPATH: Someone who can read other people’s thoughts. VII:275

  TELEPORTS: Teleports are psychics who can teleport, or move from one place to another using mind energy. Teleportation is the one w
ild talent that the DEVAR staff fear. VI:238–39

  THINKING CAPS: The thinking caps are, in actuality, anti-thinking caps. The HUME and CAN-TOI guards at the DEVAR-TOI wear them so that the BREAKERS can’t read their thoughts. The small radar dishes located on top of the heads of the robotic WOLVES are also called thinking caps. VII:171, VII:288

  VAI, VAI, LOS MONSTROS PUBES, TRE CANNITSEN FOUNS: These words (which are never translated) are spoken by a huge warthog-headed chef at the Dixie Pig just before Jake Chambers cuts off its head with an ORIZA. The quote continues, “San Fai, can dit los! . . . Can foh pube ain-tet can fah! She-so pan! Vai! And eef you won’d scrub, don’d even stard!” VII:82

  WE MUST ALL WORK TOGETHER TO CREATE A FIRE-FREE ENVIRONMENT: These signs are posted all over the DEVAR-TOI. VII:236

  WILD TALENT: A pulp-fiction term for psychic ability. Wild talents can manifest as precognition, telepathy, or even teleportation. VII:238–39, VII:277

  LANGUAGE OF THE LITTLE SISTERS OF ELURIA

  Roland doesn’t hear much of the Little Sisters’ language, but what he does hear he cannot identify. It is neither low speech nor High Speech, and it sounds like no other language or dialect he has ever heard. Since the Little Sisters are not human, it seems likely that theirs is a demon-tongue. The following phrases are uttered by Sister Mary (Big Sister) when she and the others of her vampiric order feed on the unconscious, unnamed man in the Sisters’ hospital tent in Eluria. The words are never translated. E:180–81

  CAN DE LACH, MI HIM EN TOW

  RAS ME! ON! ON!

  HAIS!

  APPENDIX II A BRIEF HISTORY OF MID-WORLD28 (ALL-WORLD-THAT-WAS) AND OF ROLAND DESCHAIN, WARRIOR OF THE WHITE

  In the beginning there was only the Prim, the magical soup of creation. From the Prim arose Gan, spirit of the Dark Tower, who spun the physical universe from his navel. Gan tipped the world with his finger and set it rolling. This forward movement was Time.

  The magical tide of the Prim receded from the earth but left behind it the Tower and the Beams, the fundamental structures which hold the macroverse together. Enough magic was left in Tower and Beams to last for eternity, but the Great Old Ones, in their hubris, decided to remake Beams and Tower using their technology. Magic is eternal, but machinery (like the men who build it) is mortal. Hence, the great technological advances of the Old People made possible not just the destruction of one level of the Tower but the obliteration of all of them.

  The Great Old Ones had the knowledge of gods, and so, like reckless demiurges, they assumed that they had the right to manipulate reality with impunity. For their own decadent entertainment, they created doorways that led from their world to other wheres and whens on every level of the Tower. They built great cities where centralized computers and Asimov robots catered to their every need.

  But still, it wasn’t enough. The Old People designed Dogans, where magic and technology could be joined. Here, their scientists/alchemists created new diseases, such as the Red Death, and terrible weapons which they launched against their enemies, poisoning earth, air, and water. Soon every living creature on the surface of the Earth became contaminated. Animals and humans gave birth to mutants, and Mid-World was reduced to a great poisoned wasteland.

  The time of the Great Old Ones was almost over. But before they disappeared from their level of the Tower, the Old People made a final act of atonement. To make amends for their atrocities and to pay penance for the sins they had committed against the earth and against each other, they built twelve giant mechanical Guardians to watch over the twelve entrances into, and out of, Mid-World. These Guardians—Bear and Turtle, Elephant and Wolf, Rat and Fish, Bat and Hare, Eagle and Lion, Dog and Horse—were cyborg versions of the twelve immortal animal totems left by the Prim to guard the Beams.

  Yet even this final act of atonement proved misguided. The fabric of reality, rewoven by the Great Old Ones, was destined to fray. Less than three thousand years after being built in the farthest reaches of Out-World, the giant cyborg Bear Guardian, Shardik, ran mad. The mechanical Beams (already eroded) began—one by one—to topple. The computers and robots built by the ancient company North Central Positronics (a leader in mind-to-mind communications since the ten thousands) became dangerously psychotic and either murdered their masters’ descendants or joined forces with the Crimson King, that ancient Lord of Chaos. And as the Old Ones’ technological web collapsed, whole worlds were destroyed by plagues like the superflu.

  But life is striving to be life, and against all odds it will defy the Outer Dark. The Tower had more than a little of its old magic left, and from its ancient gray-black foundations deep in the red rose-fields of End-World, it sent out a call. From In-World-that-was, it drew forth the world’s last gunslinger—final descendant of Arthur Eld, King of All-World-that-was, Warrior of the White, and Guardian of the Tower. Although this gunslinger believed that his only ambition was to climb to the top of the Tower to meet whatever being resided there, ka had greater plans for him.

  Like his enemy the Red King, Lord of Discordia, Roland Deschain of the White both darkles and tincts. Leaping from one level of the Dark Tower to another, he pursues his vision and his quest. With the help of a ka-tet drawn from other levels of the Tower (ones where the great city of Lud is called New York, and where North Central Positronics and the Sombra Corporation have not yet poisoned the ambitions of their culture), he opposes Discordia and fulfills the will of the White.

  What began, in The Gunslinger, as the journey of a goal-obsessed loner becomes, in The Dark Tower, a great journey of redemption and sacrifice. End-World lies ahead, and the Tower waits.

  TIMELINE FOR THE DARK TOWER SERIES

  Books I–VII and “The Little Sisters of Eluria”

  B.R.B.—Before Roland’s Birth

  A.R.B.—After Roland’s Birth

  2,700–1,700 B.R.B.

  The Great Old Ones, rulers of All-World-that-was, create the cyborg Guardians to atone for their sins against the earth and against each other.29

  2,200 B.R.B.

  Due to radiation poisoning and other types of fallout, most humans are already sterile. Women who can conceive give birth to mutants.30

  Although rumor states that Castle Discordia, in End-World, is haunted again, a few stoic individuals continue to occupy End-World’s towns and villages. They will soon regret it.

  A jar of the Great Old One’s demonstuff cracks open, loosening plague.

  The Red Death wipes out the people of Fedic.31

  1,800 B.R.B.

  The Great Old Ones finally destroy themselves.

  They disappear from the Earth.32

  Human society fragments, and the old knowledge is forgotten.

  Mutants roam the wastelands.

  Mid-World’s Dark Age begins.

  690 B.R.B.

  Arthur Eld rises to power and rules the Kingdom of All-World.33

  The people practice human sacrifice as part of the Charyou Tree Festival of Reap.

  464 B.R.B.

  The Great Old One’s technological web—supporting Beams and Tower—continues to decay.

  Blaine’s computerized monitoring equipment in End-World collapses.34

  464–64 B.R.B.

  The Kingdom of All-World fragments and is replaced by a loose Affiliation of baronies.

  The In-World Barony of New Canaan is the Affiliation’s hub.

  New Canaan, and its barony seat of Gilead, is ruled by the gunslingers, who are the descendants of Arthur Eld and his knights.

  64 B.R.B.–36 A.R.B.

  Civil War erupts in the distant baronies of Garlan and Porla.

  Wars continue for a hundred years.35

  The Affiliation begins to destabilize.

  ROLAND IS BORN

  John Farson, a harrier from Garlan and Desoy, gains power in the lands west of New Canaan. His followers call him the Good Man.

  Farson resurrects the Great Old One’s killing machines so that he can overthrow the Affiliation and the aristocr
atic gunslingers.

  Failed gunslingers from Gilead and the In-World baronies, sent west in disgrace, begin to join Farson’s cause.

  11 A.R.B.

  Roland’s father, Steven Deschain, is on the verge of becoming dinh of Gilead, and possibly dinh of all In-World.36

  Roland and his friend Cuthbert Allgood discover that Gilead’s head cook, Hax, is poisoning people for John Farson. They tell their fathers.

  Hax is hanged for treason. Roland and Cuthbert witness his hanging.37

  14 A.R.B.

  West of Gilead, near the edge of the civilized world, fighting breaks out between Farson’s rebels and the Affiliation.38

  Roland finds out that his mother is having an affair with his father’s sorcerer (Marten Broadcloak/Walter O’Dim), who also happens to be a secret supporter of the Good Man. Needing guns to exact revenge, Roland goes for his test of manhood five years too early.

  Roland succeeds.

  14–14.5 A.R.B.

  Roland and his two friends Cuthbert Allgood and Alain Johns are sent east to Hambry, in the Barony of Mejis, to keep them safe from Farson’s treachery.39

  They discover a plot against the Affiliation and defeat some of the Good Man’s forces.

  They find Maerlyn’s Grapefruit, the Pink One of the Wizard’s Rainbow, and steal it for their fathers.

  Roland is captivated by the Pink One’s glammer and gazes into its depths. He sees his pregnant lover, Susan Delgado, burned to death on a Charyou Tree fire.40

  14.5 A.R.B.

  Roland and his friends return to Gilead.

  Roland is given his father’s guns.

  Gabrielle Deschain, lately back from a retreat in Debaria, is still in Marten Broadcloak’s power. She secretly plans to kill her husband, but Roland prevents it.41

  Roland accidentally shoots his mother.42

  16 A.R.B.

  Much of In-World falls to the Good Man.

  Roland’s father is murdered.43

  19 A.R.B.

  Roland’s ka-tel (or graduating class) of gunslingers load their guns for the first time.

  Only thirteen remain out of a class of fifty-six.