Darth Wiki / The Sensuous Frame

The Sensuous Frame is an in-progress work by troper aija. It is in very early planning and this page is mostly character sheets an basic worldbuilding.

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The Sensuous Frame contains the following tropes:

Series Tropes

• Alchemy Is Magic: Dr Hussein and Lisette both show a knowledge of alchemy, which is an accessible branch of magic much like ritual spells.
• All Witches Have Cats: Chloe has at least three, though they live in the shop more often than her flat.
  • Cats Are Magic: She likes them because they can tell when she's herself.
• Alone in a Crowd: Aisha becomes this when she tries to go back to her normal life after the breakup with Chloe.
• And I Must Scream: Chloe, possessed by a malicious spirit.
• Artifact of Doom: The labradorite necklace, of the Soul Jar variety.
  • Also Artifact of Attraction, at least to Chloe.
• All Webbed Up: A favourite punishment of spiderwitch Lisette.
• Another Man's Terror: A frequent affect of Chloe's powers.
• Backup from Otherworld: Chloe and the Necromancer, [Our Ghosts Are Different though the ghosts can only interact with them.]]
• Battle Couple:
  • Aisha and Chloe.
  • Damon and Lisette.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: Chloe, the Spirit, and the Necromancer. Twice.
• Bilingual Dialogue: Lisette often speaks in untranslated French, with Chloe and Damon responding as often in English as French, and occasionally translating for Aisha. Aisha occasionally retaliates by speaking in Urdu.
• Britain Is Only London: Semi-averted, the main story takes place in London but the viewpoint character, Aisha, is from Yorkshire.
• Cannot Cross Running Water: Played with. Running water is used frequently for cleansing, and is just about the only way Chloe could break free of powerful possessions— whilst she couldn't move, she was able to stop herself from moving, tumbling into the river and refusing to swim unless freed whilst the running water of the Thames weakened the spirits grip on her.
• Can't Move While Being Watched: The thing that haunts Aisha after she meets Chloe.
  • Beast in the Maze: The nightmares she has of it.
• Cast from Stamina: Chloe and the Necromancer both grow exhausted after exerting their powers, unless they draw power from other sources.
  • Cast from Hit Points: Using huge amounts of power, with or without a backup source, has a withering effect on the body. Whenever not actively using these powers the Necromancer is generally confined to a wheelchair.
  • Power-Strain Blackout / Fainting Seer
• Casts No Shadow: Dead people.
• Clock Punk: The dusty old grandfather clock that sits by the counter of The New Curiosity Shop is a major motif. Chloe pets it at several points, especially after interacting with Aisha, but never clears away the soft layer of dust or swathe of cobwebs. Despite the cracked face and untouched body, it continues to tick.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Pretty much all the main characters apart from Aisha.
• Cryptic Conversation: Chloe and Lisette are the worst offenders, though everyone seems to get in on it from time to time.
• The Dark Arts: Necromancy, the flip side of psychic mediation.
• Dark Is Not Evil and Light Is Not Good: Chloe's powers, uncorrupted, are a rich shadowy black, like the night sky on a cloudy night or the depths of the ocean. The Necromancer's, having been used to drain energy and manipulate spirits, is the glistening uhealthy white of dead trees or stripped bones. When Chloe does exert her powers over spirits, they are tainted with little white flecks.
• The Corruption: Necromancy and psychic abilities have an addictive, deteriorating impact on their users.
• Damsel in Distress: Chloe, when captured by the Necromancer.
• Deadly Book: Lisette has several of these.
• Demonic Possession: Happens to Chloe, frequently.
• Demon Slaying: Chloe's side hustle. With some encouragement from Aisha, she begins to devote a lot more time to it.
• Extranormal Institute: Lisette attended one.
• The Fair Folk: It is never confirmed whether they exist or not, but Aisha frequently compares Chloe to a pixie or an elf, in the vein of Mr Rochester.
• Familiar: Lisette's spiders.
• Fate Worse than Death: Possessions can be spectacularly horrifying.
• Fire Purifies: One of the main ways of cleansing haunted objects is to burn them, though this will not work on all hauntings— especially spirits fuelled by fire, such as the one that possessed Chloe. Other forms of cleansing include submersion in running water or immersion in smoke, blowing blessed ashes over something, burying in sigil-inked cloth, or ritual under a half-moon.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Damon (Sanguine), Lisette (Chloeric), Chloe (Melancholic), and Aisha (Phlegmatic).
• Fright Deathtrap: The main way weaker ghosts attach psychics. Also possibly used by Lisette.
• Gaslighting: Inflicted on Chloe by evil spirits, showing her disorienting and confusing visions which leave her struggling to maintain a tether to reality.
• Ghostly Chill
• Ghostly Goals: Varying. The most powerful ghosts tend to have strong, emotionally driven motives such as vengeance or protection, whereas the wispier, less solidly formed ghosts tend to be watching over something or someone. None express a desire to make it into an afterlife.
• Ghost Story
• Good Animals, Evil Animals: Played with. A lot of witches seem to have abilities which connect to a specific animal, which they often take as a familiar. Many, if not most, of these are animals which are generally considered creepy or mystical (though the magical connection is not always obvious). This is implied to be a quirk off setting— residents of the big cityy are more likely to have pets and vermin around to bond with than anything else. It's also implied that Lisette's preference for hiring outcasts predisposes her network towards the cool and unusual. Includes:
  • Dreadful Dragonfly: A tank of them is seen in Lisette's basement library, indicating that somebody uses them.
    • As is a cage of rats.
  • Hair-Raising Hare: One of Lisette's informants, Josiah Lozhkin, is a burrowwitch. Or, as the others usually say, bunnywitch. In addition to an oversized, somewhat rabid, hare familiar, he seems to have a gift for travelling unseen.
  • Noble Wolf: One of the previously-overlooked details Aisha catches once she becomes aware of magic is the odd way the lab security guard's sniffer dog seems to mimic its owner's movements— and how she never really questioned what kind of dog it was, all grey and tall and yellow-toothed.
    • Another of these is the girl in her local coffee shop who always seems a little more awake than anyone else— and whose butterfly hairclips seem to be moving, now that Aisha really looks.
  • Ominous Owl: A young woman named Cora Chaucer who can apparently travel completely unheard and unseen acts as a go-between for Lisette.
  • Snakes Are Sinister: Phoenix, a contact of Damon's rather than Chloe of Lisette's, appears to be an information broker who does dealings with a snake dangling from his neck.
  • Slippery as an Eel: The fishmonger near Chloe's flat is a witch, and his eel tubs are implied to be his familiars. Presumably they contain edible eels, rather than electric knifefish.
  • Threatening Shark: Another of Lisette's informants, Fahad, works at the London Aquarium and tends to linger about the shark tank. Visitors would do well not to look too closely at his pitch-black eyes.
  • Wicked Weasel: Phoebe Tate, a patron of Chloe's shop, has a stoat in her inside pocket. She plays bodyguard for Chloe when needed, and is an absolutely vicious fighter.
• Hearing Voices: Chloe Morgan. For the most part, these are the voices of the dead, but some of them are a little harder to explain.
• Hell Is That Noise: The scraping sound made whenever the ghost is following Aisha.
• Horrifying the Horror: How Chloe gets away from the Necromancer.
• Hunter of Monsters: Chloe, as a Good Samaritan, as well as the Necromancer, as a way of finding powerful spirits.
• Ignorance Is Bliss: The reason Chloe is reluctant to involve Aisha (or anyone else) in the world of witchcraft.
• I'm Having Soul Pains: Psychics (primarily Chloe) frequently wake up from visions wracked with the pain of the echo they were experiencing without any physical signs.
• Immortality Immorality: For psychics, frequently.
• Insufferable Genius: Lisette, literally, and Chloe, through Psychic Powers, have shades of this. Especially to one another.
• Is It Always Like This?: From Aisha. Met with the traditional chorus of "Yes, pretty much."
• It Was There the Whole Time: The spying ghast. When Chloe enters the room, she recognises it immediately, to the horror of the group which have been alking in its presence the whole time, growing slowly colder and colder.
• Jack the Ripoff: One of the spirits Chloe speaks to is almost definitely not Jack the Ripper. He probably was Victorian, and very likely a murderer, though.
• Junkie Prophet: Averted. Chloe refuses.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Lisette (light feminine) and Chloe (dark feminine). Played with, given that gothic medium Chloe is a much less morally grey figure than prim librarian Lisette.
• Literary Allusion Title: From Tennyson's In Memoriam A.H.H. 50.
• The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: Averted, The New Curiosity Shop is not one of these, but the contents seem to move about the shop and change unexpectedly.
• Logical Weakness: Psychics' main passive power is seeing, sensing, and interacting with the spirits of the dead. Naturally this means they can get sensory overload, and be incapacitated by bright or loud projections, that nobody else can even see, up to and including being trapped by restraints that, to their allies, aren't even there (meaning noone can free them).
• London: Specifically, Chloe lives and works on Golborne Road in Notting Hill, Lisette appears all over the place but seems to live with Damon in the East End, since he works in Canary Wharf, and Aisha attends Kings College London and lives in Camden.
• Loners Are Freaks: All the main characters are isolated from most of society by their connection to witchcraft.
• Love at First Sight: Chloe and Aisha.
• Magical Girlfriend: Delightfully gender-flipped when dissatisfied, unlucky-in-love student Aisha meets mysterious psychic Chloe.
• Magical Incantation: Frequently used in complex ritual spells (as opposed to the cantrips that come naturally to witches.
• Magical Society: The Gravetouchers' Society, which operates in splinter cells across the world to collect magical individuals before they can shatter The Masquerade.
• Magic Is a Monster Magnet / Magnetic Medium: Spirits are drawn to psychic energy, and spirits with a goal can only interact with the world through mediums.
• Macabre Moth Motif: Chloe is associated with moths in the antiques shop, and even passes herself off as a witch with a moth familiar.
• Marionette Motion: Chloe, when fighting possession.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Played with a lot. From Aisha's perspective, Chloe does seem to know things that she couldn't possibly know without psychic powers, but all her symptoms and traits line up perfectly with her diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy. From Chloe's perspective, the magic is unavoidably real— but then, Chloe suffers from a condition which causes vivid and realistic hallucinations.
  • The characters are also pretty aware of this, checking for potential natural causes before interacting with a haunting. Chloe refuses to even check for a haunting until the site has been tested for carbon monoxide.
  • Magic Realism: There are a lot of elements which aren't even explained by the magic acknowledged in the text which seem to just happen, particularly with items Chloe is restoring and/or exorcising.
• Mirror Monster: Several.
• Model Couple: Lisette and Damon are noted to be very attractive by Aisha at several points.
• Mouth of Sauron: Mediums and necromancers, as a class, act as this for the dead. On a more human scale, Damon is frequently this for the Necromancer, whilst Lisette uses a range of allies, including eventually Aisha.
• Muggle–Mage Romance: Chloe and Aisha.
• Mundane Horror
• Must Be Invited: Ghosts need to be invited to exert any control over someone. Unfortunately, they can be very liberal in their interpretation of "invited".
• Mysterious Employer: Played with with Lisette— she is this to pretty much everyone but the viewpoint characters. Chloe, Aisha, Damon, and Damon's sister Camille are the only characters who know who the mysterious Spiderwitch really is, aside from some nameless higher-ups in the Society. To all the other players in London, she is the Society's mysterious Chessmaster, seldom heard except through the Mouth of Sauron and never seen in person without a cowl or mask.
• Neverending Terror: Chloe. Once torn open by her eight-year possession, she can never rebuild the defenses needed to keep herself safe from the dead, and has to rely on external protections to continually resist their attacks.
• Nothing Is Scarier: The ghost that haunts Aisha.
• Occult Detective: What Aisha is planning. Lisette and Chloe both get in on some of this.
• Ominous Fog: Pretty frequent (it is set in London), in addition to being how Chloe sees the world constantly.
• Ominous Owl: One delivers a message to Lisette, implying that it may be somebody's familiar.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The Gravetouchers' Society.
• The Ophelia: How both the Society and the Necromancer see Chloe. How much is Obfuscating Insanity and how much is her actual trauma and epilepsy is pretty debatable— Chloe is certainly more functional that she lets on to anyone but Lisette and her friends, but her health can be genuinely debilitating, as seen when she is captured.
• Our Sirens Are Different: Angel Faqir, a Philosophy student also at Kings, who has siren-based abilities— a Compelling Voice that draws people to her alongside More Teeth than the Osmond Family, for when she catches them.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Necromancer. Also, though considerably less evil, Lisette.
• Paranormal Mundane Item: Plenty, both as plot devices and littered about the shop where Chloe works.
• Possession Burnout: Immunity to this is part of what makes necromancers like Chloe so special/
• Psychic Dreams for Everyone: Chloe gets them frequently. Aisha (and other victims of hauntings) also receive them when inflicted by a spirit.
• Psychic Nosebleed: Chloe, after seizures.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Lisette's recruits.
• Regret Eating Me: Chloe's Badass Boast to the Necromancer.
• Religious Horror: Downplayed, but a lot of spirits, and particularly older ones, can't enter holy ground. Chloe spends a decent amount of time tiding out in churches, but this applies to Aisha's temple as well.
• Romanticism Versus Enlightenment: Played with a lot, the Romantic world of the witches and the society played up in contrast with the more Englightenment-leaning worldview of Aisha and Dr Hussein's scientific minds and modern outlook.
• Sensory Abuse: How most ghosts attack.
• Spiders Are Scary: Lisette's creepiness factor is increased significantly by her spider-themed magic.
• Spider Swarm: Lisette can control one.
• Spooky Séance
• Squishy Wizard: Psychics and necromancers are rendered seriously ill when they use their powers unless they steal energy from other spirits, making them fragile and vulnerable in the aftermath.
• Stay on the Path: Chloe and Tamanna tell Aisha at several points to "take the main roads home". She seldom listens.
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: Possessed Chloe.
• Superhuman Trafficking: Implied to be a hobby of the Society, who see it as Necessarily Evil to keep gifted youngsters from causing massive disasters.
• Supernatural Team: Lisette is already in control of a supernatural intelligence network, of which Chloe is part, prior to Aisha's arrival, but by the end of the book a core team of Chloe, Aisha, Lisette, Damon, and their mismatch of allies.
• Surreal Horror: Chloe's powers tend towards the... bizarre. In addition to more traditional communications with ghosts, there are the other spirits she sees, the ones which have been changed by magic or were never human at all, with too-long limbs and rustling scales, following her in the street or watching from windows. She sees the world blanketed by a grey fog, the gauzy fabric of the dead layered over the city of the living, voices ever-present on the edge of her senses, phantom pains where she brushes against unseen ghosts. To those who can't see what she does, this makes Chloe seem jumpy and distracted, turning her gaze on nothing in particular or whispering words under her breath that nobody but she could hear.
• Teasing from Behind the Language Barrier: Aisha is the only main character who does not speak fluent French, which is Lisette's native language. She delights in this.
• Tired of Running: Chloe, with some encouragement from Aisha.
• True Companions: Lisette and Damon, from the outset, and eventually Aisha and Chloe.
• Vagueness Is Coming: Chloe (and the Necromancer)'s prophecies tend to come in this form, in contrast to the much more informative information they can gather from the dead. It appears mostly in abstract visions and flashes of dialogue.
• Victorian London: The story is set in modern-day London, but borrows heavily from a Gothic Horror Victorian setting, with Farsi-speaking flower girls, exhausted young prophets who make rent working in antiques shops, evil necromancers with dapper young gentlemen as their secretaries and mysterious librarians in fine poofy gowns. In addition to the modern pollution, Chloe sees the world obscured by a pea soup fog of ghostly residue. Dr Hussein is a good doctor but a clear send-up of a Mad Scientist with her fascination with magic and alchemy. There is a magical drugs trade that clearly models itself on a Victorian era Opium Den. Lisette's information network, consisting mostly of magically gifted young people struggling to make a living, resembles the Irregulars. Chloe herself is a patchwork of Victorian tragedy tropes, a surreally broken psychically gifted young woman who, whilst not exactly a criminal, is a talented in the art of breaking and entering.
• Welcome to My World: Chloe, to Aisha.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: Chloe's has wide, souldful grey eyes shot throught with blue.
• Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: The spirit which possessed Chloe punished her when she tried to take control, blaming her for its actions.
• Will-o'-the-Wisp: All Aisha can actually see of the magic that goes on around her is foxfire, implied to be trying to lead her to her death.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The Necromancer. Implied to be the norm for psychics and necromancers in general, when they start stealing power.

Character Tropes

Chloe Morgan

I made me.

A modern prophet— a girl with tangled hair and shadows under her eyes, with knowledge that might bring gods and nations to their knees and a body wracked with sleepless nights and failing limbs. A mortal soul, shadowed by eternal lights and cryptic voices hanging over her, long ago freed and left behind by the Necromancer. By day, she is an apprentice antiques restorer, living in the flat above the shop with a cat and a ghost. She meets Aisha at the beginning of the first book, and falls in love.

• Action Survivor
• Afraid of Their Own Strength
• Awesome, but Impractical: On the one hand, Chloe's powers are huge— she can speak to the dead, control them, cast curses, and even control the weather. On the other, she has seizures, is rendered housebound by possessions, suffers from constant magical fatigue, and can barely ever use her powers out of fear of being completely insane by them. Chloe certainly considers them a curse, though the jury is split amongst the other characters.
• Beware the Silly Ones: The Society, and the Necromancer, think her too damaged to be of use due to the CPTSD and temporal lobe epilepsy she was diagnosed with by Dr Hussein. She plays this up to evade conscription by either party, maintaining a mask of detachment and incoherence when observed. Whilst she does suffer from both conditions, Chloe is entirely functional and extremely powerful. Lisette is the only society member who sees her as an asset, and puts her powers to full use whenever she can.
• Badass Bookworm: To an extent— she never went to university or college but works as an antiques appraiser and reads Romantic poetry for fun.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Abilities ranging from psychic powers to necromancy, but is generally sweet, shy, and good-natured.
• Blue-Collar Warlock: Chloe is a working-class Londoner with powerful psychic abilities, in contrast to wealthy Parisian spiderwitch Lisette, white-collar office worker Damon, and middle-class second-generation immigrant Aisha.
• Byronic Hero: A magnetic, charismatic young woman with a Dark and Troubled Past which has left her jaded and traumatised. Whilst not formally educated, Chloe is a self-taught antiques dealer and restorer who reads Romantic poetry and uses her Psychic P Owers to study history. Played with in the sense that whilst Chloe is The Determinator from the beginning, it is only after meeting Aisha that she gains the passion and drive to do good typically seen in the trope.
• Casting a Shadow: Having not used her powers to drain spirits, they manifest as rich black shadows.
• Creepy Good
• Cursed with Awesome: A horrifying and traumatic event leaves her with awe-inspiring psychic powers.
• Cute Witch: In contrast to Hot Witch Lisette.
• Cynicism Catalyst: The fire that killed her family.
• The Fettered
• Final Girl: Elements of this in backstory.
• First-Name Basis: Dislikes being called by her last name.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Heavy burn scars, but on her arms where they're easily hidden by a shirt.
• Handicapped Badass: Suffers from epilepsy (as a side effect of her powers), as well as CPTSD.
• Haunted Heroine: A more self-aware character than the classic, but nonetheless a fragile-seeming young woman haunted equally by her past and the spirits around her.
• Haunted House Historian: An antiques dealer who is also a Magnetic Medium.
• Hearing Voices: Of the telepath suffering from Power Incontinence variety, Chloe can hear the voices of the dead near-constantly.
• Human Notepad: Carries metallic sharpies around to scrawl on her arms and legs— sigils on her palms, her collarbones, her abdomen, all over the pulse points, sleeves tugged down to cover the words of the dead and the thoughts of the future ticking over at the back of her mind all the time, almost unaware of them.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Between hostile spirits trying to take over her body and her own powers tempting her to corruption, Chloe is constantly holding the line against evil inside her. She doesn't charge for her help when people need it despite living on the brink of poverty, never falters when faced with mental or physical trauma, and even acts as Lisette's moral compass from time to time. This puts her in good stead to serve as a foil to the Necromancer.
• Iron Woobie: Chloe has been through a lot, but she just keeps going.
• Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge: Due to her unusually strong [1]. Downplayed, since Chloe avoids being an active agent.
• Lipstick Lesbian: In comparison to Aisha, Chloe is shyer and more feminine in style, as well as working in a less traditionally masculine field as an antiques appraiser.
• Mad Hatter: Overlapping with Obfuscating Insanity, Chloe is perfectly self-aware of her mental state, takes medication and keeps regular contact with Dr Hussein to keep her mental health in check. Somewhat complicated by the Psychic Powers.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Strong shades of this towards Aisha, when not making an effort to pass for normal.
• Oracular Urchin: Modern twist on the trope: rather than living on the streets, Chloe is scraping by with rent and food money by working at the owner of her flat's shop using her powers. She remains isolated and disconnected from the world, thin and frail, and catches the attention of the Society just as a more traditional take on the trope.
• Safety in Indifference: Her main Fatal Flaw, until she meets Aisha.
• Waif Prophet: Physically frail from years of possession and neglect to her body, with mystical insight both from the voices of the dead and the strange prophecies she delivers.
• Willfully Weak: Justifed, as using her powers does a number on her health and sanity.

Aisha

• Action Girlfriend: To Chloe.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: For all her odd quirks and Nightmare Fetishist tendencies, Aisha is an excellent chemist and talented investigator.
• Butch Lesbian: Dating Chloe throughout the series, Aisha is a sporty and active forensics student.
• Bystander Syndrome: The main source of her conflict with Chloe is Aisha's belief that Chloe should be using her powers to help more people.
• By-the-Book Cop: Well, not yet.
• Deadpan Snarker
• I Can Change My Beloved: Her main Fatal Flaw, Aisha can be controlling and demanding of Chloe when she thinks that she is in the right, regardless of Chloe's needs.
• Magically Inept Fighter: The only main character who doesn't have any magical abilities, but also the only one with real combat training (admittedly as a teenager).
• Meaningful Name: "Aisha" means "alive".
• Naïve Newcomer: The viewpoint character for most of the book, as the one not previously acquainted with witchcraft.
• Nightmare Fetishist: She is... extremely attracted to her girlfriend's necromancy.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: To Chloe, especially when Chloe is out of commission.

Lisette Lachance

• Alliterative Name
• Badass Bureaucrat
• Badass Bookworm: She's a librarian.
• The Beautiful Elite: A tall, pretty young woman with wide storm-blue eyes and perfect rosebud lips, nails a little too long and sharp, and white-blonde hair that seems to catch the light in a way that isn't quite natural. Lisette's clothing is noted to be expensive and often too fine for the setting, and her disappearances from workspace to workspace without ever seeming to do any work, add up to a perfect caricature of the idle rich with a supernaturally vicious edge.
• Cultured Badass: A Parisian pseudo-aristocrat with a Classical education, her cover job is as a librarian.
• Cute Monster Girl: Depending on how human you interpret her.
• Friend to Bugs: Has a worrying number of pet spiders, to support her spider-based magic.
• Hot Witch: In contrast to Cute Witch Chloe.
• Human Notepad: Like Chloe, she has sigils traced onto her arm, where they're covered by her sleeves, though hers are done in carefully applied makeup each morning and sprayed neatly into fixed place.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Abrasive, judgemental, and rude, but ultimately one of the good ones.
• Lovable Alpha Bitch: An adult version, who's competitive and something of a primadonna, but a good friend and good leader.
• Magic Librarian: Also Hot Librarian. Also Scary Librarian, sometimes.
• Manipulative Bitch: Tamanna voices her suspicion that Lisette manipulated Chloe and Aisha's relationship to ensure Chloe would work for her more often. While nobody knows for sure, the other characters agree that this is in character for Lisette.
• Meaningful Name: Lisette (Lady) Lachance (Luck). Justified, given that this is actually a pseudonym she has been using since she was twelve. Her real name is implied to be Rosette or Rosetta (Little Rose), and Damon invariably calls her Zetta.
• More Deadly Than the Male: Despite being the Non-Action Girl, Lisette is a lot more vicious than her boyfriend Damon.
• Pest Controller: Lisette is a Spiderwitch— she has a natural gift for deals and trap magic using threads, as well as a flock of spiders she controls in a swarm.
• Pragmatic Hero: Of the Chessmaster variety.
• Punny Name: See Meaningful Name.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Proper, well-mannered, ladylike and usually formally dressed, but is the leader of this specific splinter cell and the main proponent of the fight against the Necromancer. She's also not afraid to get physical.
• Vain Sorceress
• Worthy Opponent: To the Necromancer.

Damon Drake

• Alliterative Name: Matching Lisette's.
• Badass Bystander: When he gets involved, since he's an executive assistant who happens to be a superpowered warrior.
• Meaningful Name: Damon (sounding like demon) and Drake (a kind of dragon) sound pretty sinister, but the meaning of Damon is "gentle", and the name was chosen to match his much-loved girlfriend— fitting for The Mole.
• The Mole: Works as a personal assistant for the Necromancer and his dragon, but reports back to Lisette.
• Nice Guy: In contrast to Lisette.
• Our Liches Are Different: He is referred to as a "revenant", but aside from the ability to do ritual spells he doesn't show any supernatural quirks or abilities.
• Undeathly Pallor: Unhealthy grey undertone.
• Understanding Boyfriend: To Lisette.

Camille Drake

• Little Miss Badass: Not part of the team, but completely capable of looking after herself.

Dr Tamanna Hussein

• Mad Scientist: A perfectly respectable, caring, and attentive doctor, who just happens to have a side hustle in alchemical experiments.
• Team Medic: A doctor with magical potential working with Lisette's group.

The Necromancer

• Age Without Youth: Has used necromancy to build power and extend his life, but is left old and frail— both from age and from the physical exertion of using his powers, growing weaker whenever he goes too long without drawing power.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He draws the line at killing children, leaving 15-year-old Chloe alive after exorcising her and saving infant Camille's life when his magic almost killed her. Of Course, both of these situations put very powerful individuals in a position of debt to him whilst they were still young and malleable, so whilst both of them did turn against him it could be seen as ultimately self-serving. Nonetheless it is clear that even the spirits of children are safe from his hunger.
• Life Drinker: Fuels his powers by draining the energy of other spirits and indeed living people in a pinch.
• Light 'em Up: After centuries of feeding on spirits, his powers manifest as bright white light.
• Mad Oracle
• The Unfettered
• The Villain Knows Where You Live: Knows where Chloe lives and works. Does not know where to find Lisette, however.

The Spirit in the Necklace

• Ancient Evil: Of the ancient Evil Sorcerer variety— an ancient necromancer whose spirit was bound to a labradorite necklace hundreds of years ago.
• The Dreaded
• Mirror Monster: Appears to Chloe in any surface that reflects the light as a crystal-clear reflection of herself.