Artemis Fowl
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Foaly is a centaur who heads the technological department of the LEP. One of the last centaurs remaining, Foaly is among one of the less than five fairies who know the language Centaurian. He has been instrumental in helping Artemis Fowl many times, and Opal Koboi is his arch nemesis. He also likes to irritate Root. Foaly is extremely proud of his inventions (having registered more patents than any living fairy) and codes them all in the ancient language Centaurian.


During the second book of the series, Foaly is working undercover for LEP, although he does not have any magic. LEP does not recruit non-magical fairies, as stated in The Artemis Fowl Files. He and Lazuli Heitz are the only known non-magical fairies in the series.

Biography[]

Not much is known about Foaly outside of the books' time, but he was Opal Koboi's rival in college and won the science prize in the Brotherhood of Engineers Masters for his iris-cam. He then founded his own company and started working for the LEP.

In the first book, he helps Commander Root with the siege on Fowl Manor by setting up the Time-Stop Towers and providing general technical assistance.

He plays a large part in the second book, and in the third and fourth books. He even helped Holly Short illegally when she assisted in recovering the C Cube from Jon Spiro. In the fourth book, he was the one who convinced Ark Sool and the council that Opal Koboi had returned from her coma to seek revenge on the fairies. Foaly also anonymously posts on his own website called www.horsesense.gnom, on which he put that Holly and Trouble Kelp had a date once, as well as other updates about the LEP that are more accurate than the public information released by the LEP Press Office.

Personality[]

Foaly

Foaly as he appears in the graphic novel.

Foaly has a bad case of paranoia, and wore a tinfoil hat to prevent brain-probing rays wherever he went until he met Caballine.

He is often offended when other people take his inventions for granted, or refer to them in layman's terms. At these moments, he generally tries to explain the genius of these inventions, but to no avail. He is generally extremely sarcastic and delights in teasing and mocking just about everyone, including his superiors, knowing he can get away with it because he is irreplaceable to the LEP. He also loves soap operas, which is mentioned in passing throughout the series.

While he works, he has a habit of singing Riverbend, a band that plays the fairy equivalent of human country and western.

His greatest weakness is his overconfidence in his intelligence, which have left him defeated and manipulated several times. He underestimated humans as a whole rather than individuals, which lead to his initial defeat at the hands of Artemis Fowl. In The Atlantis Complex it was shown that Foaly might not be as smart of a hacker as he makes himself out to be, or that his nephew is really good at hacking, because he traded his nephew to hack into secure files and fax them to him in under ten minutes for an extra large ice cream cone. It is most likely the second option because in the Atlantis Complex, Foaly himself acknowledges that Artemis Fowl is at least as good of a hacker as he himself, and we know how good Artemis is. Plus, this shows Foaly conceding that someone may be better than him.

Physical Appearance[]

Foaly's appearance in the books is not described, although it does say he has golden eyes in the first novel. The Graphic Novels depict him with dark grey skin (possibly greenish—nearly all his scenes are lit green so it's hard to tell), facial features that differ little from those of chimps, horse-like ears, and a white beard and hair. He is almost never seen without his lab coat or tin foil hat.

Edit.

Inventions[]

Quotes[]

"Come to press the button with my head, Commander?"
Artemis Fowl[src]
"...now push the button before I come up there and push it with your face!"
―Commander Root, to Foaly
"Confidence is ignorance. If you are feeling cocky, it's because there is something you don't know."
―Foaly
"Don't tempt me."
The Arctic Incident[src]
"Okay, surgery for morons it is."
The Eternity Code[src]
"That was the longest ten seconds of my life."
The Time Paradox[src]
""Nice Underwear.""
The Time Paradox[src]
"Look!' said Foaly, pointing with some urgency into a vast steel-gray gloom, 'Someone who cares!"
The Atlantis Complex[src]
"Shave me. What are you? Deaf?"
The Atlantis Complex[src]
"There's no crazy chair, it's more like a couch or a futon."
The Atlantis Complex[src]
"Captain Short goes rogue once more. Hands up who's surprised. Anyone?"
The Last Guardian[src]

Trivia[]

Eoin Colfer admitted in a virtual Q+A event with Books Of Wonder, in order to promote the publication of The Fowl Twins Deny all Charges, that he originally intended for Foaly to be more akin to a bipedal horse-man hybrid like a faun or a satyr:

“I’m going to tell you something now. When I wrote (and this is quite embarrassing), when I started to write Artemis Fowl, I got the words ‘centaur’ and 'satyr’ mixed up. So, I intended to write a satyr like Mr. Tumnus, uh, but I wrote the word centaur. And so for the entire book, I had written centaur, but meant satyr, and then I was too embarrassed to admit that. Uh, and so I just left it. And so I had to put in references to four legs and everything. So that’s why Foaly is a centaur. Because I mixed up, and people say to me “oh, it’s very clever the way you did the Foaly pun, since he’s a centaur,” and I’m like “that was a total fluke.” I was so lucky. So then I had to keep it, basically.” (source).

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