History Literature / BlackCompany

The verisimilitude is incredibly high - GlenCook served as a soldier, and the books form a very honest look at a band of mercenaries who find themselves in service to an apparent BigBad. However, while "the Lady" may have the evil magic behind her, the rebels are, if anything, far more ruthless in their tactics, and some of them are incredibly nasty pieces of work.

* BeigeProse: Descriptions and dialogue are kept to a minimum. [[LiteraryAgentHypothesis The Annalists]] often skip over large swaths of the narrative, and usually ignore parts they are uneasy with unless it's relevant to the cohesion of the Annals.

* IntoxicationEnsues: the mushrooms growing on Shivetya's body have an euphoric effect. The consumers start singing or laughing for no reason.

* ArtifactOfDoom: The Silver Spike. The Books of the Dead. [[spoiler:The Lance of Passion, One-Eye's spear, the golden Deceiver artifact, or any of the keys to the Shadowgates could also qualify.]]
* AwesomeButImpractical: The flying poles. A heavy-duty FlyingBroomstick capable of transporting two people plus equipment, programable and usable by non-wizards thanks to an internal power source... which just happens to be the strongest explosive known in the setting.

* BeigeProse

* BittersweetEnding: The last chapter of ''Soldiers Live'' - which is still much better than you would expect from the rest of the saga.

* BreakTheCutie: Though Croaker hardly qualifies as a "cutie", the events of the series gradually transform him into a [[ShootTheDog pragmatic]], [[ManipulativeBastard crafty]] soldier who [[ImplacableMan will not be stopped]] from reaching Khatovar and [[NecessarilyEvil will do whatever he must]] to protect [[spoiler: Lady]].

** Subverted with [[spoiler: Murgen when he wakes up and finds that he had been tortured, but remembers none of it]]. Of course this may not have happened, who the hell knows with that guy.

* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Quite a bit to go around, though [[spoiler: Soulcatcher]] is the queen of this trope.
* CombatPragmatist: Is the Company's MO. Acknowledged in-universe; anybody who goes up against the Company develops a healthy amount of paranoia about what the Company might do next.
* ComedicSociopathy: The Company's main source of entertainment is a "feud" between two of their wizards, One-Eye and Goblin.
* CrapsackWorld: The setting is an arguable one, but the age of the Domination that preceded it is constantly mentioned as one of these. Just having grown up there is said to go a fair way towards explaining Lady's outlook on life.

** Also Narayan Singh to a degree.
* CryonicsFailure: Not everyone imprisoned beneath the Plain of Glittering Stone lives until they can be rescued.
* CuteAndPsycho: [[spoiler: Soulcatcher, again. Oh, is she ever...]]
* DeusExMachina: Quite literally at the end of [[spoiler: ''Water Sleeps'']].
* DidMomJustHaveTeaWithCthulhu: Croaker literally makes tea for the Limper, who is so taken aback that he actually sits down and drinks it rather than just blasting everyone.
* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: It's not easy but it happens a few times, no where near as much as...
* DidYouJustScamCthulhu: Frequently.
* TheDragon: The Lady ''was'' this to the Dominator in her backstory. She herself doesn't have a clear example- Soulcatcher is the strongest Taken, but she's also probably the most treacherous and unstable (and therefore unreliable). In the end, the best fit is probably Limper. In the later books, Mogaba serves as TheDragon to Longshadow and later to [[spoiler: Soulcatcher]].
* DreamSpying
* DroppedABridgeOnHim: Raven gets an honorable mention for having pulled this off no less than three times. With progressively bigger bridges, I might add.
** With the sheer number of characters it is inevitable that some of them die anticlimactically or even without a proper death scene, simply found dead after a large battle.

* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: The plot of one of the Big Bads, and actually happens to one of the worlds linked to the one most of the story takes place in due to a combination of the arrogance of one of the local overlords and the cunning of the Company.

* EpicFail: The attempt to capture [[spoiler: Mogaba]] culminates in the whole team rushing into a bedroom in the dark, setting off a trap intended to ensnare a very powerful sorceress and starting a wild shootout that kills nearly all the commandos, [[spoiler: Murgen]], three company wizards [[spoiler: including Howler]] and putting [[spoiler: Lady]] in a coma. As a cherry on top, Croaker knocks himself out during evacuation, trying to ram his flying pole through a reinforced window.
** First Father, setting off SelfDestructMechanism in the pole the Company stole, only to realise [[spoiler: the Company left with a fake and set the real one under the portal that protected his world from being swarmed by millions of murderous shadows.]]

* HoYay: [[spoiler:Soulcatcher]] attempts to seduce Croaker, but is not "entirely" successful.
* HubLevel: The Plane of Glittering Stone; an artifact created by the gods in times long past to link sixteen worlds together.
* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: Every last bad guy in the series is a human being, and the good guys aren't all that good.

** Another before they take Dejagore. Croaker [[spoiler: tells Lady they're going to bang in Stormshadow/Stormbringer's bed that night. They do, to their own disbelief. Also that's when the Daughter is conceived]].

** The series' biggest PlotHoles revolve around why more wizards weren't Named when it would have been expedient. [[spoiler:Everyone knew Soulcatcher's name! But it goes totally unused, leading to huge problems for the Company.]]
* ImplacableMan: The most powerful wizards are all but impossible to kill. The Dominator only died once his body was completely destroyed, Limper kept coming [[spoiler: even when he was just an undead head controlling a golem body]], and Soulcatcher [[spoiler: survived decapitation and carried her severed head around with her in a box for fifteen years before finally forcing Croaker to sew it back on]].
* [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity Plus One Spear]]: In this case, two of them: the Lance of Passion, an artifact the Company has carried from its origins in Khatovar. Also One-Eye's spear, a magical weapon that was the masterpiece and legacy of one of the Company's mages, designed to kill archmages and magical beasts, it worked far better than advertised in the end. [[spoiler: It ends up killing a god, albeit with a bit of explosive help.]]

* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler: Despite having taken part in a scheme that caused the death of hundreds, and having personally killed several people, Smeds ends up owner of a brewery, with a pile of money hidden for tough days.]]

* {{OldSoldier}}: Croaker, and the rest of [[spoiler: the Old Guard after they're resurrected from a fifteen year magical imprisonment in ''Water Sleeps'']].

* OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness: The File of Nine, a group of warlords running a city state on the opposite side of the Glittering Stone, serves as a rather inneffectual example of this trope. The identities of the members are only known to the more senior members, each more anonymous than the last. Unfortunately, the File is so anonymous that it undermines their own ability to rule. After all, they can't just throw a fit in the street saying "Don't you know who I am?", if someone refuses to comply with an order, without revealing who they are.

* {{OldSoldier}}: Croaker, and the rest of [[spoiler: the Old Guard after they're resurrected from a fifteen year magical imprisonment in Water Sleeps]].

* IfWeSurviveThis: Croaker makes one to Lady before the big battle in The White Rose, which he actually comes through on.
** Another before they take Dejagore. Croaker [[spoiler: tells Lady they're going to bang in Stormshadow/Stormbringer's bed that night. They do, to their own disbelief. Also that's when the Daughter is concieved]].

* BittersweetEnding: The last chapter of Soldiers Live - which is still much better than you would expect from the rest of the saga.

-->-- '''Croaker''', p.102

*** Probably due to the True Name being the universal lynchpin of all wizards' powers in series, therefore all wizards go to great pains to make sure their's is hidden, such as wiping out everyone from their town who was alive when they were born (or worse). The Lady's true name was probably long buried by the time he married her.

** Even though Lady knows True Names of [[spoiler: Howler, Shapeshifter and Soulcatcher]], she never uses them, even though doing so would solve literally every single Company's problem. This problem gets acknowledged ''once'', when she is still [[spoiler: De-Powered]] and Goblin says that she won't ever tell him or One-Eye True Names of their enemies. After she [[spoiler: gets her powers back]]... Well, she still does nothing. And gets [[spoiler: sealed under the glittering plain, along with the majority of the Company]] for her troubles. Made worse when you realize a lot more people than just Lady knew [[Soulcatcher's]] True Name and still did not use it.

* OurLichesAreDifferent: The Ten Who Were Taken, and later the Shadowmasters. All of them are very powerfull sorcerers. They are not refered to as liches in-universe, but they are described as undead many times. They lack proper philacteries, but they are also very difficult to kill definitively. [[spoiler: The Dominator]] gets a special mention: his soul gets forced into a philactery since there is no way to destroy it for good.

* LoveRedeems: [[spoiler: Lady]], thanks to Croaker. Possibly averted; [[spoiler:even in the last book of the series, Croaker admits that Lady did not regret anything she did as The Lady and that she still has plenty of evil left in her.]]

* MoralityPet: Darling for Raven. Inverted in that it makes Raven overall worse, not better. As Croaker muses in ''Shadows Linger'', Raven "concentrates" all the good in him for Darling, and so acts more evil to everyone else.

* VoiceOfTheLegion: Soulcatcher. (But serial, not parallel. She only uses one voice at a time, but she's got a lot of them, and switches every sentence or two.)

* WhatTheHellHero: Croaker arranges so that an entire world is invaded by more than a million killer shadows, because he doesn't like the dictators controlling it. Thus arranging the death of more innocents than all Company enemies do throughout the books combined.

Now complete with a [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/BlackCompany character page]].

** Especially in last two books, their collective edition is not titled ''The Many Deaths of the Black Company'' for nothing.
* ArtifactOfDoom: The Silver Spike.

* BabiesEverAfter: [[spoiler: Implied to happen with Darling and Raven's Soldier companion, Case.]]

* BaitAndSwitchBoss: In ''She is the Darkness'', Longshadow is built up as the BigBad [[spoiler: only to have Soulcatcher show up in his inner sanctum and take him down, though he does enough damage to her that she's not really able to savor her victory much]].

* BigBad: Played with and often subverted - the protagonists are often seen to be serving the BigBad. But there's a lot of candidates for the role.

* BittersweetEnding: The last chapter of Soldiers Live. - which is still much better than you would expect from the rest of the saga.

* TheChosenOne: The White Rose. Subverted when, unable to find the ''real'' chosen one, the Rebel just grabs a random kid to fill the role for a morale boost.

* CombatPragmatist: The Company as a whole.
* ComedicSociopathy: The Company's main source of entertainment is a "feud" between two of their wizards, One-Eye and Goblin.

* CryonicsFailure

* EpicFail: The attempt to capture [[spoiler: Mogaba]] culminates in the whole team rushing into a bedroom in the dark, setting off a trap and starting a wild shootout that kills nearly all the commandos, [[spoiler: Murgen]], three company wizards [[spoiler: including Howler]] and putting [[spoiler: Lady]] in a coma. As a cherry on top, Croaker knocks himself out during evacuation, trying to ram his flying pole through a reinforced window.

** Another before they take Dejagore. Croaker [[spoiler: tells Lady they're going to bang in Stormshadow/Stormbringer's bed that night. They do. Also that's when the Daughter is concieved]].

* ImplacableMan: The most powerful wizards are all but impossbiel to kill. The Dominator only died once his body was completely destroyed, Limper kept coming [[spoiler: even when he was just an undead head controlling a golem body]], and Soulcatcher [[spoiler: survived decapitation and carried her severed head around with her in a box for years before finally forcing Croaker to sew it back on]].

* LoveRedeems: [[spoiler: Lady]], thanks to Croaker.

* {{OldSoldier}}: Croaker, and the rest of [[spoiler: the Old Guard after they're resurrected from a decades-long magical imprisonment in Water Sleeps]].

** GambitPileup: The series has several -- in the Books of the North the Dominator's plan slams headlong into the Lady's; in the Books of the South the Company's plans crash into Longshadow's, and ''everyone's'' plans get derailed by [[spoiler:Soulcatcher]].

** After [[spoiler: The Lady loses her powers, all her Taken]] immediatly die; however, after [[spoiler: Dominator's soul gets sealed in a silver spike and it is acknowledged by characters that he can no longer project his will onto the world, the old Taken (created by Dominator)]] continue functioning perfectly;
*** I would have to double-check, but I believe it mentions that she specifically set up the spell controlling her Taken so that if she died or lost her powers, they would too. The Dominator apparently did not include that clause in his.
** Even though Lady knows True Names of [[spoiler: Howler, Shapeshifter and Soulcatcher]], she never uses them, even though doing so would solve literally every single Company's problem. This problem gets acknowledged ''once'', when she is still [[spoiler: De-Powered]] and Goblin says that she won't ever tell him or One-Eye True Names of their enemies. After she [[spoiler: gets her powers back]]... Well, she still does nothing. And gets [[spoiler: sealed under the glittering plain, along with the majority of the Company]] for her troubles.

* ''The Silver Spike'' (set between ''Dreams of Steel'' and ''Bleak Seasons'', but not part of either collection)

* QuirkyMinibossSquad: The Ten Who Were Taken. Much like if the [[TheWheelOfTime the Forsaken]] were actually badass, although prone to the same ChronicBackstabbingDisorder.

->''You who come after me, scribbling these Annals, by now realise that I shy off portraying the whole truth about our band of blackguards. You know they are vicious, vilolent, and ignorant. They are complete barbarians, living out their cruelest fantasies, their behaviour tempered only by the presence of a few decent men. I do not often show that side because these men are my brethren, my family, and I was taught young not to speak ill of kin.''
-Croaker, p.102

* AbsentAliens: No elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs, or other fantasy species. There are some ''very'' weird nonhuman creatures in the Plain of Fear, but they've got a very minor role in the plot.

* The Black Company
* Shadows Linger
* The White Rose

* Shadow Games
* Dreams of Steel
* The Silver Spike (set between ''Dreams of Steel'' and ''Bleak Seasons'', but not part of either collection)

* Bleak Seasons
* She Is The Darkness
* Water Sleeps
* Soldiers Live

----