Los Malditos (“the Damned”) are a band of four mercenaries — Luis, Vermir, Dallas and Farruco — hired as cannon fodder by the Flying Dutchman, whose descent into Hell mirrors the ascent of the Emissaries of Pomola in the Northern Crown cycle.
| Type | Faction (mercenary band) |
| Members | Luis, Vermir, Dallas, Farruco |
| Employer | Flying Dutchman |
| Spanish entry | Los Malditos |
History
They operated in the last stretch of the Northern Crown cycle as a group parallel to the Emissaries, until Farruco was dragged into the well. The Dutchman hired them as expendable units for missions his main crew would not undertake. Each had a past of his own: during the ocean descent, psychotropic visions revealed how atrocious those pasts were. The men hired as mercenaries without biography turned out to be four souls with long histories and accounts that Hell had not yet closed.
The descending arc
While the Emissaries rise — from earth to the Moon, boarding the Dutchman in orbit, making the lunar peace — Los Malditos descend from earth into the Dantean Inferno, through successive penal layers, ending near the Melancholy Medallion that opens the Gate to the depths. The arc closes with Farruco’s fall into the well.
The Dutchman as employer
The Dutchman did not foresee the descent’s effect on his mercenaries: what the Captain (the Captain of the Flying Dutchman) meant as disposable use became an initiatory passage. Each faced his own hell, and some came back as something other than common mercenaries.
Background
Their links to the Green Dragon, Lope de Vega and California — the chronomantic lineage of the corsair Drake and the corruption of the Californian coast in 1579 — form the doctrinal background: Los Malditos descend along the same track by which the Medallion rises toward the Gate of Hell.