Artemis Fowl Artemis Fowl II uses his intelligence to build his family fortune through crime. This stems from his family, who have been criminals for generations. Artemis is cold, cynical, and often outright ruthless in his manipulation of people for his own ends. Following his father's presumed death at the hands of the Russian Mafia, and his mother's subsequent descent into madness, Artemis stopped attending his boarding school, assumed control of the Fowl criminal empire, and embarked on a crime spree to restore the family fortune and fund Arctic expeditions to rescue his father. His investigation into the supernatural eventually leads him into contact with the People in the first book. Due to a strict upbringing, and a lack of any intellectual equals to ground him, Artemis is socially awkward, his best friend and bodyguard Butler being one of the few individuals whom Artemis trusts. He is very pale with raven-black hair and blue eyes. In
The Lost Colony, Holly Short and he switch eyes, leaving him with one blue eye and one hazel eye. Artemis is famed for his intelligence; he claims to have the "highest IQ tested in Europe", but is also known for a lack of coordination and athletic ability. Throughout the series, he learns profound morals from the Fairy People and becomes more compassionate and trustworthy, but still maintains much of his intelligence. Because of the time travel in
The Lost Colony, his legal age is older than his real age.
Domovoi Butler Butler is the Fowl family's loyal
manservant and Artemis's
bodyguard and friend, accompanying him around the world on his adventures. He is the third-most skilled martial artist on the planet (the first is a monk on a Pacific Island and the second is his uncle), a formidable marksman and firearms expert, and has immense experience of the criminal underworld, often providing help to Artemis through his many contacts. His first name is Domovoi though no one knows that besides Artemis and his little sister, Juliet, who appears in most of the books. Butler is rendered dead temporarily in
The Eternity Code, but is rescued by the ingenuity of his principal and the healing powers of Holly Short. Butler's favored weapon is a treasured
SIG Sauer P226 pistol chambered in 9mm
Parabellum, but he often must resort to other fairy weaponry for his tasks. Due to his healing in
The Eternity Code, his body is older than he should be.
Holly Short Holly is a determined, forthright elf and the only female captain of LEPrecon, the
reconnaissance division of the LEP. Holly is three feet tall and slender, with nut-brown skin and auburn hair. In the first book, she is kidnapped by Artemis and held for ransom, but over the course of the series they slowly become friends--and by the end of the series, best friends. She helped Artemis save the world on numerous occasions. Holly holds a disregard for the rules and orders given to her. She is also one of the best pilots in LEPrecon.
Foaly Foaly is a centaur, technical genius, and computer geek. He works for the LEP, the fairy authorities, and is in charge of preventing humankind from discovering the fairy civilization. His intelligence makes him paranoiac, which causes him to wear a foil hat to "protect him from human mind-probing technology". He designs most of the weaponry, wings, and other technical gadgets that the LEP use, such as the 'Iris Cam'. His sarcasm and talkative nature often annoy LEP officers, though his greatest pleasure outside of his engineering is aggravating the notoriously bad-tempered Commander Root. He 'hitches' or marries a centaur named Caballine in
The Lost Colony while Captain Short and Artemis are in Limbo, and apparently has foals. He has a rivalry with Opal Koboi, which she sporadically mentions throughout her dialogue.
Opal Koboi Opal is a deranged, paranoid genius pixie whose dream is world domination and the destruction of the LEP. A prodigy, she built Koboi Laboratories, a technology company, which she used to crush her father's company out of spite. Opal is featured in several of the Artemis Fowl books as the main antagonist. She detests Foaly, as he won a science competition in college over her, and she believes the judges chose Foaly instead just because he was male. However, she became Artemis' archenemy after he and Holly foiled her plans numerous times. In
The Opal Deception, she creates a clone of herself to escape imprisonment, later killing Julius Root rather violently with a bomb, and framing Holly Short. In the past, it is revealed that she harvested a silky silfaka lemur's brain fluid as one of the steps to achieving world domination. She later kills her past self created in
The Time Paradox, creating a paradox. Opal is later killed by Oro Shaydova, the leader of fairy soldiers killed in the battle of Taillte.
Mulch Diggums Mulch is a kleptomaniac, criminal dwarf who has been involved in crime for four centuries. When considered with the average dwarf lifespan, he is not that old. He once was a mining dwarf, but later decided that stealing from Mud Men (humans) suited him much better. Because he has stolen from Mud Men, Mulch no longer has the significant magic powers of the usual fairy, but he has retained some aspect of the gift of tongues as "all tongues are based on Gnommish if you trace them back far enough", and has even shown his ability to speak 'American dog' in
The Arctic Incident. He insists that humans were stealing from fairy-kind and the earth and that he is simply taking them back or repossessing the items. In the early books, he assisted the LEP against Artemis Fowl, although later, he sides with Artemis Fowl. Eventually, when the fairies and Artemis are on stable ground, he joins forces with the Fairy People on many adventures, acting as an LEP helper at the beginning of
The Time Paradox.
Julius Root Julius Root commanded the LEPrecon and was in charge of all activities related to the tracking of those who leave fairy civilization, to prevent them making contact with humans. Known for his ruddy face (hence his nickname, "Beetroot") and extremely short temper, he led the LEPrecon on missions until Koboi killed him with an explosive in
The Opal Deception and framed Holly Short. He usually despised Holly's disregard for rules and orders. However, Root also seems to have been a lot like Holly Short when he was younger; a book states that Holly Short had recently beat the speed record that had been set 80 years prior by Julius Root. Julius Root hates when Foaly called him by his first name. Julius Root also had a brother, Turnball Root, the main antagonist in
The Atlantis Complex.
Briar Cudgeon A minor antagonist in the first novel, Cudgeon was an ex-LEP lieutenant who was humiliated by Commander Julius Root and had the misfortune of having a terrible-looking face, the result of illegal mind-boosting liquid colliding with tranquilizer Julius Root used in the first novel. Looking for revenge, Cudgeon teams up with Opal Koboi in
The Arctic Incident. Their plan suddenly goes wrong when LEP technical consultant Foaly inserts a video in Koboi Laboratories to expose Briar Cudgeon's confessions to treachery to Opal. Enraged by this, Opal attacks Cudgeon, and in the struggle, they smash into a pipeline containing reignited plasma, which violently fries Cudgeon to death, and gruesomely incapacitates Opal. ==Themes==