Loki

"The thing about fate, Magnus: even if we can't change the big picture, our choices can alter the details.That's how we rebel against destiny, how we make our mark. What will you choose to do?"

- Loki

Loki is a trickster Jötunn and ex-honorary Norse god, and an enemy of Magnus Chase. While treated as a nominal member of the Aesir tribe, he was known to switch his allegiance very often. He is, as of now, destined to ultimately side with the Jötnar and lead them against the gods.

Birth
Loki was born to the Jötnar Farbautí (ON: "cruel-striker") and Laufey (ON: "leaves"). At some point in his life, Loki became Odin's blood brother and was made a nominal member of the Aesir. During his time in Asgard, Loki was as much an ally as he was a hindrance; although his sly and mischievous personality often got him into trouble with the god, but he just as often helped them when in need.

Death of Balder and Punishment
One day he tricked Hod into throwing a mistletoe-dart at Balder, the only thing that could harm him, and killed him. As punishment he was bound to a slab of rock with the entrails of his sons Vali and Narvi. A snake was placed over him that dripped caustic venom on his face. His wife Sigyn was present to catch the venom with a cup, but when it had to be emptied he would be burned by the venom and cause earthquakes as he writhed in pain.

In Series
Loki had a demigod son at Hotel Valhalla who dated Thor's daughter Gunilla. But the demigod broke Gunilla's heart when it was discovered that he was a spy for Loki. This incident caused Gunilla to hate and distrust the children of Loki.

In 1972 he tricked the demigod Mallory Keen into planting a car bomb on a school bus full of children, while making her believe the bus was full of enemy soldiers.

The Sword of Summer
Loki frequently appears in Magnus Chase's dreams to convince him to give up tying the Fenris Wolf. The first time was when Magnus died. The second was after Magnus' first battle practice where he told Magnus he would eventually sit on Odin's throne. The third was when Magnus and friends jumped into a river to get out of Nidavellir and promised he would be reunited with his mother in Helheim if he gave the sword of summer to Randolph. Loki hopes to bring Ragnarök by manipulating Randolph Chase. After Magnus re-tied his son, Loki appears in Randolph's office, revealing he was the priest at Magnus' funeral. He gives Randolph a burn scar on his face for failing him. He says that there are many triggers for Ragnarök.

The Hammer of Thor
Loki arrives to Samirah's house to inform her grandparents that he has arranged a wedding between his daughter and the Jotunn Thyrm, he explains to them the existence of the Norse Gods, the Nine Worlds, and what their granddaughter truly is. This left them shocked.

Loki communicated with Magnus via Randolph during battle training, inviting him to the wedding. He tries to self-destruct Magnus when he sees Alex, but is stopped when Alex decapitates Magnus.

After Samirah and her friends defeat the draugr, he and Randolph appear before them. When his daughter attacks him, he stops her from breathing. Loki explains why he needed them to retrieve the Skofnung sword for the bride price and  the conditions that come with welding the sword. He commands Randolph to attack with the sword and stab Blitzen in the gut. After he tells them he needs the Skofnung Stone in addition to the sword, he tells them where to find it and calls Randolph to leave.

At Samirah's wedding, he requests that the bride show her face to ensure it is really Sam, Alex them shapeshifts into Sam while Loki thinks the maid of honor is Alex. He also requests the sword and stone. He then summons Randolph to take the sword and stone from Magnus. As the ceremony's starts he asks the bride Tom sit between him and Thrym. Once Randolph has the sword and stone, he asks his henchman to cut him free. When the fight brakes out at the wedding, he commands Randolph to use the Skofnung Sword to cut him free, despite women being present. His legs and right arm are freed before Magnus and friend's backup arrives. His remaining binds are frozen until Randolph chips away and cuts the last of the binding, freeing the trickster. He kills the venomous serpent that has tortured him for the last thousand years and fled when the gods came.

The Ship of the Dead
Loki shows Magnus the melting ice caps, saying he will sail in less then a week.

When Magnus is waiting to slay Alderman, Magnus dreams of him and he tells the son of Frey his plan will fail and he should have a plan B.

He shows himself to Magnus and his children on Naglfar. He declines the son of Frey's challenge of a flyting and offers to kill him instead. He grudgingly accepts when Hrym tells him he is honor bound and, as the ship's captain, he will not allow Naglfar to sail until the flyting is over. He asks Sam to hold his hat and she refuses. The contest starts and he quickly out-insults Magnus by praying on his worst fears and insecurities. After Magnus starts to complement his friends and tells Loki he is alone, he starts to shrink. Sam resists his commands and she and Alex block his escape routes while Mallory imprisons him in the walnut.

He is handed over to the Aesir when the Big Banana lands in Vigridr. They with return him to his bonds and strengthen them and make his cave harder to find.

Personality
Loki is sly, manipulative, charming, humorous, mischievous, quick to anger, and cruel (demonstrated when he burned Randolph Chase's face as punishment for failing him). Rick Riordan says he wrote Loki as he was in the myths: "[...] clever, funny, capricious, silver-tongued and quick to anger,". Loki is also extremely persuasive, to the point that he once successfully convinced Ran to lend him her magic net.

At times, he almost appears to be a casebook psychopath with a lack of remorse and any form of empathy. Even his wife, Sigyn, who has been loyally at his side for centuries was at the mercy of his temper, and he wasted no time in calling her a "stupid woman" when she slipped and dripped poison on him. When Blitzen had been stabbed, Loki seemed to take great pleasure in it, even going so far as to make jokes at the dwarf's expense.

Despite his negative traits, Loki does harbor affection for some of his children, especially Vali and Narvi. When speaking to Magnus on Naglfar, Loki is visibly upset and grieved about the shocking fate that his sons Vali and Narvi suffered as part of Loki's punishment for killing Balder - with them being slain by the gods, and their entrails used instead of ropes to bind Loki to a slab of rock under a serpent.

However, his affection for his kids may be an act. He didn't think twice about attempting to murder his other kids, Sam and Alex in The Hammer of Thor, and nor did he think twice about using force to manipulate them against their free will, going as far as to tease and jeer at them as well as even willing them to die. He was also plenty willing to treat his children as tools in his schemes, as exemplified by his using Sam as a bargaining chip to get the Skofnung sword.

Loki has actively put a lot of effort into ruining his demigod children's lives. He even succeeded in doing so with Alex's life by ruining her home stability and turning her family against her. He attempted the same thing with Sam by trying to ruin her relationship with Amir and her grandparents. Thankfully, Sam was able to resolve the situation.

On the other hand, this hostile behaviour towards his other children may actually be an act as well. Loki could be purposely making his own children hate him and keeping up the image that he views them as nothing, so that the gods do not go after them like they did with Narvi and Vali, thus sparing them the same gruesome fate.

Appearance
In The Sword of Summer, Loki has dirty blonde feathery hair (with red, blonde, and yellow tints), tousled in a fashionable I-just-got-out-of-bed-and-I-look-this-good sort of way, and he is seen wearing a Red Sox jersey, jeans, and white tennis shoes. Loki is considered shockingly handsome, though his appearance is somewhat ruined by his scars. Burn tissue is splashed across the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones (caused by the snake venom dripping onto his face), like impact lines on the moon's surface. Loki's lips are marred by a row of welts all the way around his mouth, much like many piercing holes that had closed over (marks from the time his lips used to be sewn together by the dwarves).

In The Hammer of Thor, Loki's true, grotesque appearance is revealed. When projecting, Loki is able to manipulate himself to appear extremely handsome. In reality, Loki's hair is bleached white from centuries of toxins, his face is no more than a melted mask of scar tissue, and he is sickly-thin.

In The Ship of the Dead, his appearance now matches his illusions. Whether he had himself healed or is masking his true appearance is unknown.

In female form, Loki appears as a young woman with long red hair and dazzling eyes.

Loki's eyes have an intense glow to them, much like those of his daughter Samirah, with his gaze flitting restlessly, like fire in a hearth, pushed by the wind, looking for anything it could set ablaze.

Abilities

 * Illusions: Loki can throw illusions of himself, wherever he wants. However, Loki's illusions can not get magic weapons.


 * Shapeshifting: Loki is able to change into various forms including, but not limited to, a salmon, a mare (in this form he even gave birth to the colt Sleipnir), a seal, a fly, and an elderly woman called Thokk.


 * Enhanced Strength: When Loki grabs Magnus' wrist, the latter claims that his grip was "like steel."


 * Serpent Venom Pain Transferral: While touching Randolph Chase's face in The Sword of Summer, Loki was able to make the latter feel the extreme pain that the serpent venom causes when it drips onto the trapped god's face from time to time. As revealed in The Hammer of Thor, Loki can transfer his pain to any close relatives of his victims, as he did with Randolph and Magnus.


 * Consciousness Splintering: Despite being securely imprisoned by the gods, Loki can still make part of his consciousness materialize into another physical body from time to time, like when he visits Randolph in the epilogue of The Sword of Summer. If done incorrectly, however, this process can cause him intense pain.


 * Pyrokinesis: Loki can create and control fire, as shown when he created images of Randolph's wife and daughters out of fire within his hand in The Sword of Summer epilogue.


 * Control over Children: As revealed in The Hammer of Thor, Loki has control over his demigod children's bodies. He has displayed this ability by stopping Samirah from breathing and threatening to put her in a permanent coma.


 * Alf Sign Language: Loki is able to understand ASL, as seen by his doing so to tell Magnus and company where the Skofnung Stone is.
 * Enchanced Agility & Velocity: In The Hammer of Thor, Loki demonstrated a certain agility when he quickly held Magnus's hand and escaped to the hole that was made in his cave at end of the book.
 * Charmspeaking: Loki could be much persuasive, like his son, Fenrir, which is one of the reasons why Gunilla suspected Samirah of being a spy of her father. That ability is shown in The Sword of Summer with Fenrir, Jormungand (hypnotists / attractive eyes) and Hel.


 * Mystiokinesis: As the God of Magic, he has divine authority and absolute control over magic.
 * Telumkinesis: In The Hammer of Thor, his child Alex mentioned that Loki knows a spell to turn anything into a weapon which he taught her.


 * Geokinesis (limited): When the poison touches one's face, Loki can make earthquakes, and he can open holes on the ground. It is possible that Loki could make these things because he's the son of the King of the Frost Giants so he would probably have all of his species' power, (ice, fire and earth) as is demonstrated in The Hammer of Thor.
 * Monster Sense: In The Sword of Summer, his daughter Samirah demonstrated that she could feel monsters and his location. As his daughter is capable of this, then it would probably be one of Loki's powers as well.
 * Erponkinesis: In The Hammer of Thor, his daughter Alex suspected that he sent a lindworm to her location. This is very possible on account of the fact that Loki is the god of snakes, serpents, dragons, lindworms and wyrms of fire (sometimes) and is capable of controlling them, too.

Trivia

 * During Ragnarök, Loki is destined to kill Heimdall, but is also destined to be killed by him.
 * As he doesn't think that Heimdall can kill him (as Loki is assumed a powerful god even if he hasn't been shown fighting), it is still possible that Heimdall would kill him indirectly, maybe by a hit in some specific place or by battle wounds, like Thor & Jormungand.
 * He was the one who tricked dwarves into making Odin's spear, Gungnir, and Thor's hammer, Mjolnir.
 * According to Utgard-Loki, the name Loki is a common one among the Jotnar.
 * A joke was made in The Sword of Summer about Loki's name being similar to the English phrase "low-key."
 * In The Sword of Summer, Thor says that Loki is Odin's brother not his, unlike the depiction in Marvel Comics.
 * In some versions, Loki was represented as the god of fire.
 * His Greek equivalent is Prometheus.
 * Loki is the only main antagonist of Riordan's book series that doesn't have any sort of army that attacks the protagonists throughout their own series.
 * At some point in history, Loki was made the king of Giants, which is a possible reason for him having the power to control ice, fire and ground/earth. No one knows if being king is the reason for having these abilities or if he became king for having these abilities.
 * ReadRiordan.com has an interview of Loki and Sigyn. It reveals that Loki calls Skadi's snake Beatrice, that Sigyn empties the cup for the venom every few hours, Loki doesn't think Heimdall can actually defeat him, and he'd rather stick to the family of the giants instead of the Aesir gods.
 * Loki appears on the American cover of two of the three books in the series; The Hammer of Thor and The Ship of the Dead.
 * It's possible that he could control serpents and other reptiles since he is their god, as Alex suspected that Loki was the one who sent her a lindworm. If that's true, it is also possible that Loki, as the god of snakes, serpents, dragons, lindworms and wyrms of fire (sometimes), can control them as well.
 * However, even though Loki is the god of serpents and other reptiles, he is supposedly not immune to their venom as he would not be scarred by the venom's acidity during the time he was chained in his cave. Another possibility is that the venom of the snake above his head was created specifically to hurt him.
 * Loki is the first LGBT antagonist in any of Rick Riordan’s books, the second is Commodus.
 * Loki is actually the only Norse God who has more powers and abilities than any of the others.
 * It is possible that in his female form he has dazzling pale-amber eyes, as Alex's father is Mexican, and Mexicans are usually with dark hair and dark eyes. (And Alex's other eye is dark-brown, usually of Latin people and couldn't be from Loki because it isn't bright or dazzling).
 * It is unknown how strong Loki is, as he never been demonstrated fighting, even in the myths, since he usually uses the mind and manipulation to win, (only in Ragnarök by using force), but is assumed that he is a very powerful god.
 * The rune that represents him is Kenaz or Kaunan ("kee-naz"), that corresponds to the [k] sound, and symbolizes "torch", "passion", "inspiration", and "creativity." It also has use for rune magic.