History Literature / WitchKing

* {{Familiar}}: Expositors can magically dominate unlucky witches, demons, or other mages, enslaving them into a life of servitude. A common practice among them is to remove the voice of their familiars to prevent them from spreading information, and to periodically remove their memories so they don't know their origins, the details of their enslavement, or anything else that could be inconvenient.

* BlackMagic: Expositor magic is powered by pain, death, and domination, and its practitioners tend to become amoral sociopaths in short order. Kai avoids being corrupted by it by using his ''own'' pain, a resource he wryly says is [[BrokenHero quite inexhaustible]].

* AllForNothing: [[spoiler:Ramad is crushed to realize that Kai foiled Bashat's plans to become Emperor years before Bashat ever moved against Kai, making his betrayal an utter waste.]]

* OurWitchesAreDifferent: They're humans whose demonic ancestry allows them to work magic through {{Nature Spirit}}s. Ziede is also LongLived compared to a human, but it's not specified whether this is a common trait of witches.

* PsychicLink: Kai can telepathically communicate with Ziede because of a magical "pearl" in her heart. Ziede and Tahren have one too, though they are too far apart for the duration of the novel to use it. Ziede's inability to contact Tahren upon waking in the water tomb is what clues them in that Tahren may also be in trouble.
* PuppetKing: When it became clear to the nations of the world that the Hierarchs could and would destroy them utterly if they resisted, it was common for existing rulers to be overthrown or assassinated by their family members and for the new ruler to be a puppet for the Hierarchs in exchange for their personal safety. The Nient-Arik were the first Arike kingdom to do so, and were the first kingdom conquered by the Hierarchs. The Benais-Arik also had a puppet king installed, but only after the majority of the royal family had been murdered.

* {{Familiar}}: Expositors can bind unlucky witches, demons, or other mages that the Expositor can get their hands on, enslaving them into a life of servitude. A common practice among them is to remove the voice of their familiars to prevent them from spreading information, and to periodically remove their memories so they don't know their origins, the details of their enslavement, or anything else that could be inconvenient.

* LesCollaborateurs: Karanis Calis, the puppet leader of the Benais-Arik who assassinated the previous leader and was put in charge when the Heirarchs took over. When Bashasa (the proper heir) escapes the Heirarchs' prison and returns, Karanis tries to kill him, too.

* OutGambitted: The reason Kai, Ziede, and Tahren were imprisoned was so [[spoiler: Bashasa's descendant, Bashat Bar Calis, could convince the other rulers to form an expansive empire, with Bashat in charge as the new emperor-- something he knew Kai would resist. However, Kai had anticipated Bashat's imperial aspirations years ago and had gone to the independent Enalin leaders to convince them not to join the empire, thus losing pivotal support Bashat needed and preventing the empire from being formed.]]

* ProperlyParanoid: Kai, in regards to [[spoiler: Bashat. He had known far in advance that Bashat would likely try to make a play for being emperor, and so preemptively ruined his chances by convincing the myriad of small city states against forming an empire. He hadn't expected Bashat to actually take him out of the picture by allowing other conspirators to imprison him, but he isn't surprised that it happened, only very angry.]]

Now Kaisterron, Prince of the Fourth House of the Underearth has woken up dead in a waterlogged tomb with no memory as to how he got there. But Kai is a life-devouring demon, able to possess the corpses of freshly dead mortals, and lucky for him, there happens to be a convenient corpse nearby. Less fortunately, there's also a necromantic "Expositor" and his entourage nearby, and it seems they've woken him up from his year-long death to try and bind him to do their bidding.

Thus begins ''Witch King''. Now Kai, along with his also mysteriously-imprisoned friend, the witch Zeide, must find out who put them in that tomb, why, and what's happened to Ziede's wife Tahren in their absence.

Interspersed between the current day mystery are scenes from the past, explaining where Kai came from, how he, Ziede, Tahren, and Tahren's brother Dahin met, his introduction to the great Bashasa, and the beginning of the Hierarch's fall.

!!Provides examples of:

* BeenThereShapedHistory: Kai, Ziede, Dahin, and Tahren are all far older than any humans they encounter, and they were all present during the war that eliminated the Hierarch's rule and founded the Rising World Coalition Council. Ramad the historian is constantly trying to get information from Kai about the past and the heroic founder of the Coalition, Bashasa. When the group needs to travel to the Summer Halls, the flooded ruins of a city once owned by the Hierarchs, we are treated to this exchange:
--> Ramad: So the interior really is flooded, the way the stories say?
--> Ziede: Oh, it’s flooded all right. Kai did it.
--> Kai: It was an accident.
-->Ramad was staring at him now, he had no idea why.
* BetrayalByInaction: [[spoiler: Bashat Bar Calis, who wanted Kai and the others out of the way, fearing they would interfere with Rising World Coalition Council negotiations. He knew that the Neint-Arik also wanted Kai and the others out of the way, and had plans to imprison them, but also knew their plan to capture them wouldn't work. Bashat secretly drugged Kai with a special concoction, then left him vulnerable for the Nient-Arik to capture.]]
* DemonicPossession: One of the things Kai and the other demons can do. In the past, before the Hierarch's destruction, demons and the Saredi people had an arrangement wherein young demons would possess the dead of Sarendi households and be raised along like family. This gave the demons exposure to new cultures and ideas, built strong relationships between demons and humans, and also gave the Sarendi witches-- magical offspring of demons and humans. The arrangement had strict rules and respect for the original owner of the body's memory, and it was absolutely forbidden for any demon to possess any living human, even an enemy. During the battle with the Hierarchs, Kai accidentally possesses an Expositor when his host-body is too destroyed to support his spirit, and it's enough to turn the remaining demon survivors against him.
* ElementalPowers: Witches, for the most part, do magic through the use of elemental spirits, and tend to have an affinity for one kind over another. Ziede's magic works with air, while Tenes magic is

--> Kai: Put that on and get up. I'm not going to eat you, we're friends.
* {{Familiar}}: Expositors can bind familiars. Unfortunately, these familiars aren't animals, but any unlucky witches, demons, or other mages that the Expositor can get their hands on, enslaving them into a life of servitude. It's noted that a common practice among them is to remove the voice of their familiars to prevent them from spreading information, and to periodically remove their memories so they can't remember where they had been stolen from, cant remember the details of their own enslavement, and cant remember anything the Expositor would find inconvenient.
* FamilialBodySnatcher: A benign example, this is the traditional method for demon's possession. Kai and many other demons are related to the Sarendi people through his grandmother, a human who married a demon. An arrangement with the Sarendi people means that young demons are permitted to possess the bodies of recent dead Sarendi relatives and raised like family. In the early flashback chapters, Kai recalls growing up with his beloved mortal cousins, aunts, and uncles.
* FindingJudas: [[spoiler: Ramad the vanguard]] was part of the conspiracy to imprison Kai. He had believed the imprisonment would be for the greater good of the Arike people, knew the it would be temporary, and he's sincere in his desire to help Kai and Ziede free Tahren. It's not until the end of the novel that he realizes [[spoiler: Bashat's betrayal was for nothing: Kai had preemptively ruined the Empire plan years ago, and that all Ramad and Bashat have accomplished is alienating a powerful demon and respected war hero of the Rising WorldCoalition.]]
* GambitPileup: [[spoiler: Bashat Bar Calis]] had Kai and the others incapacitated because he knew that the patriarch of the Immortal Blessed had his own plan to kidnap them. A year later, when he no longer wanted Kai and the others out of the way, he send [[spoiler:Ramad, his personal vanguard]] to free them. However, Expositors working for the Immortal Blessed ''also'' wanted to get Kai: Menlas because he wanted to try and make Kai his familiar, Aclines because he was trying to clean up Menlas' mess, and Faharin because the Patriarch wanted Kai's knowledge of the location of a magical artifact. Somewhere in the mix, Brehama of the Nient-Arik is ''also'' scheming with the the Immortal Patriarch in order to take Benais-Arik's place as the ruling capitol of the Rising World, and want to kill Kai and the others to prevent them from interceding on the Benais-Arik's behalf at the Rising World Imperial Renewal negotiations. And finally, Kai himself has a gambit; [[spoiler: he knew Bashat was going to try to become emperor, and would likely try something to get him out of the way, and so began negotiating with the independent Enalin leaders years ago to ensure they would not support the creation of the empire. Their withdrawal of support, combined with the exposing of the Nient-Arik conspiracy to usurp the potential-imperial throne, resulted in the Imperial Renewal negotiations failing, leaving the Rising World Council as a coalition of independent nation states-- just as Bashasa had wanted it to be.]]

* PuppetKing: When it became clear to the nations of the world that the Hierarch's could and would destroy them utterly if they resisted, it was common for existing rulers to be overthrown or assassinated by their family members and for the new ruler to be a puppet for the Hierarchs in exchange for their personal safety. The Nient-Arik were the first Arike kingdom to do so, and were the first kingdom conquered by the Hierarchs. The Benais-Arik also had a puppet king installed, but only after the majority of the royal family had been murdered.
* SheIsTheKing: The Arike city-states refer to their rulers as Princes or Prince-Heirs, regardless of gender. Kai's demon mother is also referred to as Overlord, despite being female. Relatedly, Demon's don't care about matching age or gender when possessing dead bodies, and so Kai-Enna causes a little confusion when Bashasa finds out he's a male prince.

** The "Cageling Demon Court" was a prison made by the Hierarchs specifically to hold demons. They were chained to the ground in a huge, plat pavilion, with magical rain pouring down on them constantly, preventing their spirits from leaving even after their host bodies had died.

* UndyingLoyalty: Kai to Bashasa. Bashasa was the Benais-Arik prince who freed Kai from the Hierarchs' torturous prison and led the revolution against them. He founded the Rising World Coalition Council after the Hierarchs' defeat and is implied to have been in a romantic relationship with Kai at some point. Regardless of whether there was romance or not, Kai remains fiercely loyal to Bashasa's memory and his vision for the new world, going so far as to [[spoiler: sabotage Bashasa's descendant's attempt to create an empire similar to the Hierarch's]].