K.A. Applegate: Animorphs

OTHERS Here are the characters who play some significant part in the books but aren't major allies or major enemies. (I won't list minor or incidental characters.) ANDALITES ALDREA-ISKILLION-FALAN: Aldrea is an Andalite and the daughter of Prince Seerow. Her father was shamed when he was idealistic enough to give technology to the Yeerks, which they used against him and his whole race. Aldrea is embarrassed of her father's actions, especially since it means they get relegated to the Hork-Bajir planet where nothing important happens. But Aldrea makes friends with the natives, particularly Dak Hamee--a Hork-Bajir seer who can communicate and comprehend much better than the intellect-limited normal Hork-Bajir. When the Yeerks do attack the Hork-Bajir world in order to infest the Hork-Bajir and use them as shock troops, Aldrea loses her family and must join forces with the Hork-Bajir . . . and she also has to stop the Andalites from doing something terrible. She eventually gives up her Andalite form to become trapped in a Hork-Bajir morph, which she uses to mate with Dak and share his life as they fight in a futile war. Aldrea's consciousness is preserved after the events of her life, and in joining with Cassie she is able to meet her great-granddaughter Toby and help the Animorphs using knowledge only she has. During her life as a morph-capable Andalite, Aldrea acquired the morphing bodies of a chadoo, a Jubba-Jubba monster, the Andalite body of Alloran, and the Hork-Bajir body that she eventually made her own. ALLORAN-SEMITUR-CORRASS: Though he enters the story as a Prince, Alloran is best known for being the first Andalite to be infested by a Yeerk. That Yeerk is Visser Three. Alloran also had a terrible role in condemning the Hork-Bajir to death because he used a quantum virus on their planet in order to try to hurt the Yeerks. He succeeded in limiting the number of host bodies they could get, but he also nearly wiped a whole species out. Before infestation, he could morph a Hork-Bajir and a Taxxon, and possibly a kafit bird but no one's been specific about when he acquired that morph. Alloran's life story before becoming host to Visser Three is mostly told in The Andalite Chronicles and The Hork-Bajir Chronicles. ARBAT-ELIVAT-ESTONI: This Andalite causes problems for the Animorphs when he and his group come to Earth and ask them to stop fighting. He was Alloran's brother and he came up with a germ that could kill the Yeerks (at the expense of their hosts as well), and he was planning to sacrifice even his own teammates as well as the population of Earth to get rid of the Yeerks. The young Andalite whom he taught, Estrid, was helpful in bringing him down from his mission. He was seen to morph a male human while on Earth. The others on his mission were ALOTH-ATTAMIL-GAHAR and GONROD-ISFALL-SONILLI, and their group was not acknowledged and was written off as dead by the Andalite military, as it was a black ops mission. ESTRID-CORILL-DARRATH: She's a brilliant young Andalite who excels at morphing and tail-fighting and her branch of science (with Arbat as a mentor). She didn't know the full extent of what he was up to when she went along on his team, but she didn't really care if humans perished because they were not Andalites. She designed the virus that Arbat wanted to release. Even though Ax was attracted to her (and it seemed mutual), knowing this about her made him not like her very much. Estrid was pretending to be a soldier at first, but Ax could see that she did not behave like one, and was suspicious. She tries out a human morph at one point so she can eat with a mouth and kiss Ax, and she also got a crow morph and a rabbit morph. (She also has the usual kafit bird in her repertoire.) SEEROW: His full name is unknown (despite his fame--or infamousness!). Prince Seerow is Aldrea's father and he is saddled with the blame for giving technology to the Yeerks. He felt sorry for them, lacking the resources to make their lives better, so he befriended them and taught them, believing their relationship with the Gedd hosts on their planet was more of a symbiotic one than a parasitic one. Because the Yeerks betrayed the Andalites' generosity and attacked them and stole their technology to go on a galaxy-spanning domination scheme, laws were put in place for the Andalites about not giving technology or interference to other species. This law of "Seerow's Kindness" was used to justify not equipping the humans with morphing technology to help them win the fight, though Elfangor broke this law while creating the Animorphs. Seerow died in a Yeerk attack on the Hork-Bajir planet, where he'd been sent by the Andalite military to keep him from causing any other damage. ARBRON: His full name is unknown, but Arbron is an Andalite who served with Elfangor when they were both just starting their careers. In The Andalite Chronicles, Arbron goes on a routine mission to pull over a Skrit Na ship and examine the contents, but he gets caught up in a huge plot to chase the Time Matrix onto the Taxxon home world, also involving two humans and Alloran. Arbron eventually ends up getting stuck forever in his Taxxon morph, which is horrific because excruciating hunger plagues these creatures. Despite that, he finds the strength to lead some Taxxons in a more peaceful movement, and he eventually ends up on Earth helping the Animorphs and helping his Taxxon followers get morphing power so they can change themselves into something else. Before he got trapped as a Taxxon, Arbron could morph the djabala and the kafit bird from his own world. GAFINILAN-ESTRIF-VALAD: This Andalite is found by the Animorphs to be living on Earth posing as a human, and he secretly takes care of his life-partner Mertil, who has a crippled tail. Gafinilan has a disease called Soola's, which will eventually kill him and which he medicates with a narcotic substance. He has shown some not-so-upstanding tendencies, as he was willing to bargain with Visser Three to give him one of the Animorphs in place of himself, but his devotion to his partner is impressive considering the Andalites' usual attitude toward the crippled. He and Mertil can communicate using the Andalite thought-speak with a range that's unprecedented as far as the Animorphs know; they can still hear each other as long as they're on the same planet. Gafinilan can morph his human disguise, Henry McClellan, as well as an owl and a possum and maybe other unknown animals. MERTIL-ISCAR-ELMAND: As an Andalite who both lost part of his tail and was allergic to morphing technology, Mertil was crippled for life and would have been shunned by Andalite society (if he and Gafinilan weren't living on Earth). He's ashamed of his own disability, but allows Gafinilan to hide him and take care of him. At one point he was captured by the Yeerks but they wouldn't infest him because he couldn't morph and had no tail blade. Gafinilan and the Animorphs have to rescue him. It's unclear who is going to take care of Mertil after Gafinilan dies of Soola's, but it's suggested Marco from the Animorphs cares about what happens to him. HORK-BAJIR DAK HAMEE: He's a Hork-Bajir seer whose fellows all call him "different." When Aldrea and her Andalite family land on his world, she opens his eyes to the stars and all the knowledge of the Andalites, but he feels a bit condescended to when she teaches him. Eventually, though, because of hardship and the closeness they forge fighting that hardship, Aldrea and Dak form a close bond and end up getting romantically involved once Aldrea settles permanently into a Hork-Bajir body. They have a child and name him Seerow after Aldrea's father. Dak has leadership skills and surprising wisdom for someone who has no one in his species to comprehend his thoughts. HUMANS Jake's parents: STEVE AND JEAN: Steve is a pediatrician and Jean is a writer. They don't figure heavily in the series except that at one point Steve becomes a Yeerk target because he is forcing Jake's brother Tom to go to a funeral which will have him away from the Yeerk pool for too long. They get infested at the end of the series when the Animorphs' identities are uncovered, and the enemy manages to get to Jake's family before he can save them. Rachel's parents: DAN AND NAOMI: Dan is a TV news personality and Naomi is a lawyer. The parents are divorced. Rachel's close with her father but lives with her mother. Her dad offered her a chance to come live with him (and maybe even take gymnastics lessons with a famous teacher), but she refuses because of the Animorphs. Naomi plays a bit more of a prominent role toward the end; though she's just in the background working on various legal cases during the series, she shows up a lot once the Animorphs' families have had to be relocated to the Hork-Bajir camp at the end of the series. Naomi spends a lot of time working on "legal" issues for the Hork-Bajir, even though they don't have a government. Rachel's sisters: JORDAN AND SARA: Her siblings don't get much play in the series, but they are both younger and both provide perspective on the famousness of a particular TV personality (Jeremy Jason McCole) when the Animorphs need it. They provide an incentive for Rachel to have more people to protect. Marco's parents: PETER AND EVA: Because Eva is thought dead for most of the series, Peter is still in a deep mourning phase when the series begins. He ends up having to face life again and makes a new start getting a better job as a scientist, which is what he did before he lost his motivation. He becomes a target a couple different times because his work crosses over into intersections with alien technology. Peter and Marco are the first to have to retreat to the Hork-Bajir valley to escape the Yeerks knowing who they are. As for Eva, she did not die in a boating accident; she was the host of Visser One, and spent her time mostly being a Yeerk overlord. As Eva shared the Yeerk's thoughts, she was a very useful ally when she was freed and rescued by Marco and the Animorphs. It's unclear whether her ability to calculate and plan is something she had as strongly before she was infested, but it certainly helps the Animorphs. Marco's stepmother: NORA: Because Eva is legally dead and Peter thinks he no longer has a wife, he is able to get remarried and does so when he falls in love with Nora. Much to Marco's disgust, Nora is also a math teacher at his school, and he hates math. Nora has an annoying poodle who likes to attack Marco. And worst of all, Marco can't say anything against their marriage because he'd have to admit why he knows his mother is alive and what happened to her. Nora is later infested and Marco suggests to his dad that she may have been infested before the Yeerks targeted them, as a way to spy on his scientific undertakings. Cassie's parents: WALTER AND MICHELLE: Both are veterinarians and Walter runs the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic (in their barn), while Michelle works at The Gardens (an amusement park with a zoo section). Walter likes to make chili. The family's truck is stolen by the Animorphs at one point for use in a mission. When they are evacuated to the Hork-Bajir valley at the end, they're notably sympathetic to what Cassie's been going through, and they help in their vet capacity once they're living with the Hork-Bajir. Tobias's mother: LOREN: Though his father is an Andalite who was in his permanent human body when he fathered Tobias, his mother was of Earthly origin. Loren was kidnapped as a teenager by Skrit Na (a type of alien), which was where she met Elfangor. She was brave and participated in the fight against the Yeerks, only to return to Earth and marry Elfangor once he'd become human and decided to abandon the war. When the Ellimist decided Elfangor needed to be back where he was "supposed to" be, Loren's memory was erased. She was also in a car accident that left her scarred and blind. (It's unclear whether the amnesia she is said to have suffered was actually caused by an Ellimist-inspired car wreck, or whether her memory was wiped separately from the car wreck, but both her eyesight and her memory were taken away from her.) Loren got a guide dog and lived as a very poor blind woman, volunteering on a phone hotline to help people. Because of the amnesia, she didn't know how to get in touch with her son or how she could provide for him if she did, so she just lived her life until Tobias found her and rescued her from the Yeerks (once they were targeting their families). Her sister is one of the uncaring pseudo-parents that Tobias was raised by. Tobias was also raised by an equally cruel uncle, but it's unclear whether that uncle is related to Loren or whether he is an ex-husband of this sister. MELISSA: Melissa is the daughter of Yeerk-controlled Chapman, and she is Rachel's friend from school and gymnastics. Melissa is being protected by her parents from Yeerk infestation. Melissa's got a cat (which Rachel morphs into at one point), and she figures into the plot a couple times--once in an alternate timeline. MR. TIDWELL: He's a human teacher in a partnership with his Yeerk Illim in the peace movement. He's instrumental in helping Cassie and the others save Aftran, and his Yeerk allows Cassie the chance to get a Yeerk morph.