Milan
also known as Milan
A kandra Faceless Immortal in a tall jet-haired True Body of her own design, who fights her way out of an ambush at Wax's side in an industrial alley and then announces — half-laughing — that she is the help Harmony promised him. Carries a pistol concealed inside one of her transparent breasts; warns him that, technically, she is not supposed to kill people and would prefer TenSoon not hear how often she breaks that rule. MB2:SoS:Ch 11
A tall woman in a red dress with most of its top half missing — gunpowder-coloured hair, creamy skin, several inches taller than Wax — who finds him while he is waiting his turn to see Governor Innate at Lady ZoBell's party and tries to flirt him into a conversation. Wax meets her eyes, waits her out, and privately decides to keep an eye on her: either an over-confident partygoer or Bleeder in a face. MB2:SoS:Ch 9 superseded at MB2:SoS:Ch 11
A kandra of the Seventh Generation in a deliberately unhuman True Body — bones of pale wood, drawn out willowy and triangular, with twisted cloth where hair would be — one of a group of younger kandra making a kind of quiet rebellion against the Second Generation's preferred orthodoxy by designing themselves to look as little like their human masters as they can. She is present at TenSoon's trial and is plainly distressed by it. MB1:HoA:Ch 9 superseded at MB2:SoS:Ch 9
Known facts
- delivered-waxs-earringWas the kandra who, years earlier and wearing this same body, brought Wax the Hemalurgic earring he now uses to speak with Harmony — a small errand at the time that Wax still remembers.MB2:SoS:Ch 11
- true-body-of-emerald-crystalWears a *True Body* of her own making rather than bones taken from someone real — the skull beneath her face, revealed when she lets the skin go transparent across a table at the pub, is carved emerald-green crystal. By her own account she is no better than *so-so* at imitating real people; her preference is her own body and her own face.MB2:SoS:Ch 13
- spent-catacendre-undergroundA late-generation kandra by their own reckoning *still a kid*; over six hundred years old by human reckoning; spent the Catacendre underground as an adolescent and so never knew the world covered in ash. Has always served Harmony and never the Lord Ruler — and admits she has never gotten around to reading the Words of Founding.MB2:SoS:Ch 13
- takes-dead-guard-bonesTakes the bones of one of the female constable-guards killed in Bleeder's assault on the mansion in order to stand in as Innate's bodyguard — sling on the arm, voice unchanged, a half-hour of digestion done in the washroom near a drain. The first Wax sees of her trick of stepping into a freshly-killed person's life to inherit their cover.MB2:SoS:Ch 17
- hanged-as-innate-on-purposeAfter the crisis, refuses to testify against the lords on the Innate letters — *people have to be able to trust the law; I'm not going to set the precedent that the kandra can lie under oath even when you're pretty sure you've got the right evidence* — and goes off, on her own initiative, to hang herself in Innate's cell. Cannot at first work out the knot. The corpse will be cremated for the coroner; she will breathe through a tracheal system in the meantime and slip the bones for Aradel to burn.MB2:SoS:Epilogue
- copied-body-off-young-girlMeLaan mentions in passing that the body she is wearing on this mission is copied off a sixteen-year-old girl whose corpse she ate a few months ago — *hardly rotten at all*. The room goes quiet; she winces her way through realising belatedly that this was not the right thing to say to humans.MB2:BoM:Ch 9
- aluminum-skeletonHer current body's bones are pure aluminum — she has had several hundred years to save up for it — with a long blade built into the left forearm in place of the radius; she rips the forearm off in front of Wax to skewer Kelesina's Terris steward through the chest, then slides the arm back over the blade as though changing a sleeve.MB2:BoM:Ch 16
- stores-memories-in-thighMeLaan keeps her cognitive system in a solid metal compartment in her thigh — *people aim for the head* — while her head currently holds her sensory apparatus and an emergency canteen.MB2:BoM:Ch 19
- nearly-seven-hundred-years-oldMeLaan tells Marasi while cracking Irich's safe that she has been alive *pushing seven hundred years* — long enough that Marasi will have trouble finding a joke she has not heard, and long enough to dismiss the post-Catacendre Originator era as squabbling, big-city people who never cared about settlements outside Elendel. *People are people.*MB2:BoM:Ch 19
- kandra-do-not-touch-anothers-spikesOffered ReLuur's spike from Irich's open safe, MeLaan refuses to carry it — handling another kandra's spike is not done. The implied exception — the Guardian — she will only confirm with a stern *yes*.MB2:BoM:Ch 19
- grafts-skin-to-patch-woundsMeLaan patches Marasi's perforated intestine with catgut spun from her own spare guts and a graft of her own flesh replicated to match Marasi's skin — the body, she explains, accepts a kandra graft as its own once the kandra has *tasted* the surrounding tissue. A trick that turns a near-fatal wound into a dull bruise within hours.MB2:BoM:Ch 21
- can-suppress-pain-and-bone-feelMeLaan walks willingly into trap after trap with a casual *this is going to absolutely ruin my wardrobe* because kandra of her age have learned to turn off the nerves that cause pain — and her crystalline aluminum bones don't feel at all. The limitation: she cannot heal or remake bone. Once a spike or a femur shatters, she splints it with ligament and walks on.MB2:BoM:Ch 23
- cannot-heal-or-make-boneConfirmed under load: MeLaan cannot heal her crystalline aluminum skeleton. When the bones snap she splints them along the sides with ligament and walks on; when her left hand is crushed beyond repair, she fuses the splinters together with tendons and lives with a permanently shut fist. The damage from this temple expedition will not undo itself.MB2:BoM:Ch 24
- spikes-pulled-becomes-mistwraithIn the Sovereign's temple Telsin injects MeLaan with a fluid that paralyses her and unmoors her muscle from bone, then digs both of her Hemalurgic spikes out and pockets them. Without them the kandra melts to a slick of greenish-brown flesh around her bones and green-crystal skull — reduced, for the moment, to a mistwraith.MB2:BoM:Ch 26
- shadesmar-mission-departureMeLaan tells Wax and the others that she is leaving the Basin — soon — on an open-ended mission for Harmony to begin exploring the wider cosmere via Shadesmar, the misted inversion of the real world. She is to be the first kandra to go out long-term with an official mission, prompted by Harmony's judgement that the cosmere already knows about them.MB2:TLM:Ch 11
Events
- MB1:HoA:Ch 9 Enters the Trustwarren among the first, in a willowy pale-wood True Body of her own design, and freezes a moment in the doorway when she sees TenSoon — then takes a seat in the front row with other young Seventh Generation kandra wearing similarly rebellious bodies.
- MB1:HoA:Ch 20 Pushes through the kandra watching TenSoon's cage in the great cavern, kneels beside the bars in her spindly wooden-boned True Body, and presses him to fight back, to challenge the Seconds, to use his hidden Potency — telling him that ash now cloaks the land, mists kill by day, men march to war, and Ruin has returned.
- MB1:HoA:Ch 78 Comes in with TenSoon wearing a delicate, willowy wooden True Body, carries the keys, and unlocks Sazed's grate.
- MB1:HoA:Ch 79 At Sazed's side during the assembly; cries out TenSoon's name when he attacks.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 3 Sprawls in the companion easy chair in a different body than last time — tight trousers, loose blouse — and provides the irreverent commentary while VenDell lectures: the gap in their memories from the days of the Ascendant Warrior, the kandra's inability to reproduce, and the fact that some Hemalurgy questions still hurt.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 6 Drifts through the dining car in a fine lace gown and an oversized hat, her figure plainly sculpted to fit the outfit; Wayne waves at her on his way out.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 9 Climbs unashamedly out of the floor compartment beside Wayne, asks dryly whether Wayne's *snog* was actually any good (it was), then admits in the next breath that the body she is wearing was copied off a sixteen-year-old corpse she ate a few months ago.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 10 Sticks her head in from the adjoining suite first to ask the room's opinion on bust sizes for the evening, and then again — bald, bare-chested, masculine-featured — announcing she will attend the reception as a man instead, in support of Wax's play.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 12 Passes Wax in the ballroom in a six-foot-tall, square-chinned, tuxedo-wearing male bones with a flock of interested young ladies — winks at him.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 16 Punches the Terris steward hard enough to split her own face open over her aluminum skull, then rips off her left forearm to skewer the steward through the chest with the blade beneath.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 16 Joins Wax at the edge of the cliff in her female body, doing up the buttons on her shirt, and tells him Suit has stage-managed his options so that he sees no choice but to ride for Elendel.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 17 Keeps the panicked horses under control from the driver's seat when Marasi hits the speed-bubble threshold.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 17 Waters the horses at the stream, then spots a fake-fallen-tree roadblock down the road and waves Wax up to see the Set's cordon for himself.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 17 Scouts ahead through the wilderness around Dulsing and offers to eat one of the guards so she can take his shape and walk the team in — a *pragmatic suggestion* the rest of the team declines.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 18 Crosses the hallway to watch where Irich goes after he leaves the ship, then waves Marasi forward to follow.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 19 Grows a set of lockpicks from the skin of her own forearm to open the hallway door, then melts her hand into translucency and squeezes through the safe joints to crack it; tells Marasi post-Catacendre heroes were big-city people who never cared about the outer cities.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 19 Watches the masked rescue with folded arms and a skeptical look — *if he alerts the guards, I'm blaming you* — then whispers *by the Father and the First Contract* in the mask room when she sees what was done to his fellows.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 20 Kneels over a bleeding Marasi and takes bullets meant for her — *this doesn't hurt*, she says, *but it's not particularly pleasant either* — and loses a chunk of her cheek to a round, exposing green crystalline bone.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 20 Pulls herself up into the compartment without needing the ladder; declines a medallion when the masked man notes *you will not need one, yah?*.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 21 Identifies the strange machines aloud as flying ships, not boats, before turning to Marasi's wound.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 21 After patching Marasi, lounges in the doorway with her legs dangling out over open air; reacts darkly to Wax knowing the book Ironeyes gave him.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 23 Lounges in the back bench in an *attractive* way while Steris takes notes beside her.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 23 Looks at Wayne *fondly* when he tries to flirt, then warns him not to touch anything in the abandoned temple.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 23 Takes a spear straight through the torso, sighs about her wardrobe, yanks it out, and limps onward — the first immortal trap-tester in temple history.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 24 Climbs out of a pit with one humerus snapped, body re-compacted to taut muscle, hair stowed in Allik's pack, left hand crushed beyond crystal repair and walked on a permanently shut fist.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 25 Limps in from the trap corridor on her uneven legs and joins the others — battered, broken, but upright.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 25 First through the door at Wax's order; walks the perimeter and confirms no traps fired before calling the others in.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 26 Holds a gun on Suit until Telsin injects the immobilizing fluid and digs out both her spikes; collapses to a melted shape around her bones and green skull.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 29 A mistwraith now, flesh reassembling around her bones in a strange unfinished shape; still alive on the chamber floor where Telsin left her.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 30 Reassembled and on her feet again, helps Wayne gather the surrendered soldiers' weapons.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 30 Stands taller than anyone present with arms folded; cocks an eyebrow then makes her skin translucent so the Malwish can see the cracked, mangled bones of her true body.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 30 Takes the Bands from Wax beside the statue and disappears them into her flesh.
- MB2:BoM:Ch 31 Strides over in borrowed southern men's breeches at Wax's request to take over the conversation with Aradel — *Holy One,* he says, strained but reverent — and to carry the Bands for the kandra.
- MB2:SoS:Ch 11 Drops out of the mist into the half-finished building beside Wax, crawling over a pile of bricks with a knife and a torn-off gown. Saves him from the crossbow line, then crosses the alley at his side, opens her chest to draw a hidden gun, fights through the second ring of attackers, and helps him execute his planned split — taking the up-street while he takes the other.
- MB2:SoS:Ch 13 Sitting at one of the carved tables; her face shifts blue then violet when Wayne slips a pouch of blue powder into her gin-and-lime, and her eyes flicker through the colours afterwards. Identifies herself with Wax's passphrase and tells Wayne he may have headed off a riot.
- MB2:SoS:Ch 13 Demonstrates a True Body trick by belching out of a mouth that splits in her palm; opens her face up to show an emerald-crystal skull; lays out the kandra rules for Wax and hands him two prototype syringes.
- MB2:SoS:Ch 14 Trails Marasi through the precinct turning male heads with her chosen body, needles her about why she puts up with the way the other constables treat her, and reads the dam-trial transcript over her shoulder — picking out the grave-desecration line as the real evidence of a kandra swap.
- MB2:SoS:Ch 15 Performs the divine-Faceless-Immortal act for Aradel — body going transparent, emerald skeleton glittering, *thee* and *thy* and a sober warning about Paalm — then in the alley afterwards laughs the whole performance off as routine theatre for a believer.
- MB2:SoS:Ch 17 In the dead guard's bones and uniform, sling on her arm, peeking out of the ladies' washroom; identifies the perchwither powder on sight and sends Wax down to the Homeland with Harmony's permission.
- MB2:SoS:Ch 19 Sits across the mansion hallway from Wayne in the dead constable's bones, practising accents and trading bone-and-hat philosophy with him, and lets slip the kandra post-Catacendre self-termination method in the course of it.
- MB2:SoS:Ch 22 Stationed outside the study door in the body of the guard with the sling, furious at being shut out. Once Bleeder is revealed she swarms her legs from inside one of the dead guards, takes the needle into her own shoulder so Paalm can't put it back in Wax's direction, and recovers in a minute.
- MB2:SoS:Ch 23 Strolls into the workmen's shed in the body of the dead guardswoman but back to her own voice, gripes about the crowd, gripes about being asked to imitate someone she did not digest, and agrees to step onto the stage as Innate if Marasi will write her something to say.
- MB2:SoS:Ch 24 Steps onto the stage in front of the mansion wearing Innate's body and starts in on the speech Marasi wrote for her — well-imitated enough to quiet the crowd to a hostile silence, though Marasi now knows that silence is also being Soothed from the alley.
- MB2:SoS:Ch 26 Loses the room halfway through the speech and snaps at the crowd in Innate's voice, then is shoved obligingly into the constables' hands when Aradel arrests *the governor* on the spot.
- MB2:SoS:Epilogue Strolls in still wearing Innate's body holding a belt, asks how to tie a noose, refuses to testify on the Innate letters under oath, and tells Marasi at the cell-block door that the metal of the strange spike is unknown to Harmony himself.
- MB2:SoS:Ch 9 Steps in beside Wax in a red dress missing most of its top, ignores Steris, remarks on Wax's sidearms and his Roughs mistcoat, and excuses herself when his look meets hers and waits.
- MB2:SoS:Ch 10 Trails Wax's counter-clockwise loop of the room while pretending to mingle with one knot of guests after another; turns out later to be the kandra MeLaan in another face.
Backreferences
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 3
- factMarasi
- factReLuur's Spike
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 6
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 9
- factMeLaan
- factWayne
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 10
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 15
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 16
- factKelesina's Terris Steward
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 17
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 18
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 19
- factMeLaan
- factMeLaan
- factMeLaan
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 20
- factMarasi
- factMedallion
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 21
- factMeLaan
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 23
- factMeLaan
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 24
- factMeLaan
- factSteris's Usefulness Chart
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 25
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 26
- factMeLaan
- factKandra-immobilizing fluid
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 29
- factWayne
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 30
- factThe Bands of Mourning
- summaryMB2:BoM:Ch 31
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 9
- factSeventh Generation
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 20
- factTenSoon
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 24
- factTenSoon
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 78
- factTenSoon
- summaryMB1:HoA:Ch 79
- summaryMB2:TLM:Ch 1
- factWayne
- summaryMB2:TLM:Ch 11
- factMeLaan
- summaryMB2:TLM:Ch 12
- factWayne
- factWayne
- summaryMB2:TLM:Ch 14
- summaryMB2:TLM:Ch 18
- summaryMB2:TLM:Ch 23
- factVenDell
- summaryMB2:TLM:Ch 37
- summaryMB2:TLM:Ch 38
- summaryMB2:TLM:Ch 58
- summaryMB2:TLM:Ch 74
- factWayne
- summaryMB2:SoS:Ch 9
- summaryMB2:SoS:Ch 10
- summaryMB2:SoS:Ch 11
- summaryMB2:SoS:Ch 11
- factThe Set
- factThe Counsellor's Cup
- summaryMB2:SoS:Ch 13
- factkandra
- factBleeder
- factTemple of the Common Man
- factKandra-Detection Syringe
- summaryMB2:SoS:Ch 14
- factMarasi
- factBleeder
- factBleeder
- factJohnst
- summaryMB2:SoS:Ch 15
- summaryMB2:SoS:Ch 17
- factPerchwither
- factKandra Homeland
- summaryMB2:SoS:Ch 18
- summaryMB2:SoS:Ch 19
- factkandra
- summaryMB2:SoS:Ch 22
- summaryMB2:SoS:Ch 23
- factMarasi
- summaryMB2:SoS:Ch 24
- summaryMB2:SoS:Ch 25
- factBleeder
- summaryMB2:SoS:Ch 26
- factBleeder
- summaryMB2:SoS:Epilogue
- factTrell
- factTrell's Spike