Ampyx

TL;DR: An Atlantean guard with a crush on Gwen who has decided the way to win her over is to dress and act exactly like Martin Banks. The book's most reliable comic-relief beat in the early chapters, and one of its most genuinely earned allies by the climactic plaza brawl.

Spoiler level: full book. This page assumes you've finished Spell or High Water.

Snapshot

A nice, earnest, well-meaning man who has come to a wrong conclusion about how attraction works. Ampyx is everything Martin Banks isn't trying to be — and exactly what Martin looks like to someone watching from a respectful distance. The joke is that he is studying the wrong textbook with admirable diligence.

Role in the story

Ampyx is introduced in chapter twelve, where he debuts his unsettling Martin-cosplay attempt while trying to catch Gwen's attention. The joke is played straight enough that it lands as comedy without curdling into cruelty; Ampyx is genuinely trying and the book lets the reader feel for him even while laughing. He recurs as comic relief through the middle chapters and then earns a real role in the climactic chapter twenty-five plaza brawl, where he ends up fighting alongside Martin against Neeloh and proves himself a competent guard once the costume comes off.

His arc is small but real. He starts as a man performing someone else's identity for someone he doesn't actually know, and ends having done genuine good in a fight as himself. The book doesn't promise him Gwen at the end; it gives him something better, which is the dignity of being known on his own terms.

Personality in plain English

Earnest, observant, slightly hapless. Ampyx is paying attention to the world; he just keeps drawing slightly wrong conclusions from what he sees. He is the kind of person who notices what someone wears and how they hold themselves and tries to take notes. He is humble enough to learn from being corrected, and self-aware enough to be quietly embarrassed about the costume after the fact.

He is also, as the plaza brawl proves, genuinely a guard. Once the comedy stops, he is competent, brave, and useful, and the book lets him have that without making a speech about it.

What he wants

For Gwen to notice him. To do his job well. To find a version of himself that someone could love without him having to put on a hat.

What he fears

Being unlovable as himself. Being the punchline of a story he doesn't get to write. The book takes both of these fears seriously even while playing the costume for laughs.

Key relationships

• Gwen. Crush; she barely registers him through most of the book and is gentle about it when she does. The book does not punish her for his feelings, which is the right call.
• Martin. The unaware model. Martin clocks the cosplay relatively early and the two of them end up in the plaza brawl as proper allies. By the end, they read more as colleagues than as imitator-and-original.
• Neeloh. Fellow Atlantean staff turned plaza-brawl antagonist. Their fight is the moment Ampyx visibly stops being comic relief.

Visual identity

Adult man, athletic build, short dark hair pixels under a poorly-shaped wizard hat. Two looks in the book. In his Martin-imitation outfit (chapters twelve and onward), a mis-fitted dark teal striped conical hat — the stars on the brim are crooked or miscounted, two or four instead of three — a black tunic that doesn't quite read as a t-shirt, light-blue-dyed Atlantean trousers that fall like a robe rather than jeans, a poorly-imitated wooden practice staff with a small painted (non-glowing) pixel at the tip. The silhouette is deliberately slightly off, so the gag reads at sprite scale. In his proper Atlantean guard outfit (default and plaza-brawl): a short white pixel toga belted with bronze, a steel-grey breastplate over the chest, sandals, a guard's spear or trident with a bronze head. His expression in either outfit is hopeful and slightly squinting with concentration.

Aliases

The following names and references in the book all point to this character. Use any of these as link anchors back to this page.

• Ampyx (canonical — the most common form)

Discussion questions

1. Ampyx's cosplay is the book's most consistent running gag. Is the book laughing at him, with him, or in a careful position between the two?
2. Gwen never has to acknowledge Ampyx's interest in any pointed way. Is that mercy on the book's part, or a missed opportunity?
3. The plaza brawl is where Ampyx stops being the joke and starts being a guard. What changes for the reader in that scene — and does the costume help or hurt?
4. The book gives Ampyx no romantic resolution. Is that the right outcome for him?
5. If Ampyx is what Martin looks like from the outside, what does that tell us about how Martin looks?