Literature / Wraith Knight

Evil is a matter of perspective.

Wraith Knight is a Deconstruction High Fantasy series by C.T. Phipps.

The King Below, Enemy of the World, is dead. Will his successor save the world...or rule it? Jacob Riverson was once the greatest hero of an age. Cut down during what should have been the final battle against the King Below, he was condemned to centuries of torment as a Wraith Knight in the service of said monster.

With the destruction of his master, Jacob finds his free will returning and discovers he is in a world torn by civil war between the King Below's former slaves and the heroes who "saved" them. Joining forces with the overly-idealistic but brilliant warrior Regina Whitetremor and sorceress Serah Brightwaters, Jacob must determine whether he has any place in the new world and whether his destiny is as a hero or monster. Or both.

Books in the series:

• Wraith Knight (2016)
• Wraith Lord (2019)
• Wraith King (2023)

It is part of the Futurepunk setting, which is The 'Verse for all C.T. Phipps' science fiction stories.

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Series

• Abusive Precursors: No less than two of them with the Terralan Dominion serving as The Empire in the distant past and the First Humans being the people who made the world as a gigantic theme park.
• Action Girl: Regina is a dragonriding, dragonslaying, sword-swinging daredevil. Serah can kill a hundred people with a single spell. Half of the Nine Heroes are also women, including their leader, Morwen. It's implied there's literally as many of these as men in the setting too.
• Affectionate Parody: A Downplayed Trope example as the story is entirely serious and really you need to know J.R.R Tolkien to get all the references but the entire book includes innumerable digs at the typical Tolkien pastiche as well as assumptions of the original work. These include Always Chaotic Evil races, the omnibenevolence of supernatural beings, the "Return of the King" being anything other than a usurption, Can't Argue with Elves, and that smaller weaker races wouldn't get swept up in events.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The setting is actually an enormous playground of Sufficiently Advanced humans 10,000+ years in the future. The three ruling A.I.s eventually degenerated into believing themselves gods after being abandoned by their masters.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Deconstructed, Reconstructed, and Subverted. The Shadowkind races were created to be plagues on the Lightborn races but have their own moralities as well as cultures. Generally, though, they did all of their atrocities on the orders of the King Below and because their homeland was an icy hellhole compared to the Southerner's nicer climate.
• Ambiguously Brown:
  • The physical description of the High Humans indicates that they are mostly this, being brown or black skinned with crystal blue eyes.
  • The Riverfolk are also this as they are descendants of the Indras, G'Tay, and Gael countries plus various other refugee peoples. This includes Jacob in his mortal years.
• Ancient Conspiracy: The Oghma are a group of archmages who manipulate events throughout the world to preserve civilization through the Great Shadow Wars.
• Ancient Tradition: The Shadowguard are basically the Grey Wardens or Night's Watch of the setting. They are a group of working class knights, wizards, and professional killers who include many criminals among them. They exist for the purpose of destroying the Shadowkind and fighting the King Below, no matter how many centuries it takes to ultimately defeat him.
• Arc Words:
  • Arcus Maeharl a.k.a "Shadow aid, my brother."
  • The war was never meant to end.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: The aristocracy is frequently changed for being corrupt, brutal, and useless. Subverted by Regina, who is a Royals Who Actually Do Something.
• The Anti-God: The King Below is considered the equal and opposite to the King Above, representing chaos, madness, darkness, and evil to the King Above's order, logic, light, and good. This proves to be significantly more complicated than it appears as the Lawgiver proves to be a tyrant while the King Below seems more mischievous than actually evil. Then we discover they were actually allies the entire time.
• Bad Powers, Good People: A common Fantastic Racism of the setting. Anyone who displays a facility with shadow magic, is treated as a ticking time bomb at best or just murdered out of hand. Many of them actually end up in the King Below's service because it's better than the alternative.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: The series subverts a lot of traditional high fantasy tropes as the good side of light and order isn't particularly nice. The Lawgiver is a tyrant, the Nine Heroes are ruthless conquerors, and even Saint Jassamine is a religious fanatic. However, the Shadowkind AKA the forces of darkness and chaos aren't much better. Even protagonist has a Dark and Troubled Past where he did some pretty awful stuff in the name of the greater good.
• The Black Smith: The forging of magical items is an important part of the setting with this trade being something that a lot of magicians have to learn. A handful of wizards have also ascended to become Ultimate Blacksmith types like Co'Fannon, Tharadon the Black, and Jacob Riverson
• Cargo Cult: The King Below, Lawgiver, and Earthmother turn out to have been the A.I.s put in charge of minding the Three Worlds for the First Humans. Then some sort of disaster occurred and it became home to the Terralan refugees. This resulted in the slow degredation of the AI's sanity as their minds collapsed under contradictory directives of caring for the refugees versus managing the location. After the refugees were destroyed, the AI were worshiped by the surviving humans and began to engage in Believing Their Own Lies
• Clarke's Third Law: The Wraith Knight series takes place in the far-far future of the author's other science fiction settings like Agent G and Lucifer's Star. The world was created as a playground for the godlike First Humans.
• Corrupt Church: The Grand Temple during the time of Jacob's mortal days is a grand guginol of corruption, excess, and hypocrisy. Which is why Jacob lets its leaders be burned alive.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: The Church of the Lawgiver is a massive religion that embodies many styles and ethics of Christianity in the Middle Ages. It even has its own version of Marian worship with the Great Mother. It is a polytheistic religion, though, that has a God of Evil set up as The Anti-God to the Lawgiver.
• Cycle of Revenge: A Central Theme of the books is the attempts to get justice for past crimes and grievances results in this. It is particular in Regina's case as her insistence on avenging Whitehold results in her dragging the rest of the world into war.
• Dark Fantasy: A Deconstruction tale of a Fallen Hero turned Humanoid Abomination that attempts to deal with the heroes of the last war who have become Fallen Heroes themselves. It questions traditional fantasy morality, Fantastic Racism, and power structures with a lot of Gray-and-Gray Morality.
• Dark Is Evil: What the majority of the Southern Kingdoms believe about the Shadowkind that threaten them every thousand years or so. The truth is a bit more complicated. It turns out to have been an Invoked Trope as the Trickster deliberately set himself up to be the God of Evil.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The Central Theme of the books. Jacob is an undead monster formerly enslaved to the God of Evil with many evil powers related to cold, shadow, as well as darkness. He is also a Nice Guy who just wants to do what is right (and is terrible at it).
• Deathseeker: Implied with the Trickster.
  I’ll kill you! I screamed in my mind.
  Perhaps, the spirit replied lazily. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
• Deconstruction: A lot of the book is, essentially, a Deconstructive Parody of the Lord of the Rings starting with the premise of, "What if a Ringwraith survived the death of Sauron and decided to go back to being a hero?"
• Deity of Human Origin: Protagonist, Jacob Riverson, ascends to the rank of becoming the new God of Evil after the death of the previous god occupying the role, The Trickster. He is determined to become an Anti Anti Christ, though. Later, he brings Regina and Sarah up to his level as well.
• Divine Conflict: The setting's history is defined by the Forever War between the Lawgiver and the Trickster as the two gods constantly war with each other. The series starts when one of them finally triumphs over the other.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Jacob and Jassamine's bloody reforms of the Grand Temple have a resemblance to the Protestant Revolution.
• Dragon Rider: The Shadowguard, Annessian Empire, and armies of the King Below breed clutches of dragons that they proceed to ride into battle as the settings version of WMDs.
• Dungeon Punk: The seemingly High Fantasy world rapidly shows itself to be full of Fantastic Racism, classicism, corrupt gods, religious fanatics, and no actual good guys. How twisted is the world? The best person in the setting may be the God of Evil and even he's someone with a Dark and Troubled Past.
• The Empire: The Anessian Empire is the aggressive, expansionist, and colonialist version of this trope. They have conquered many of their neighbors in the Southern Kingdoms and have even wholesale destroyed a few. They have also gone through periods of retreat.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: The King Below and his minions live in the Northern Wasteland, wield ice magic, and have their headquarters at the North Pole (called "The Eyes of the World"). The World Below is also an icy hell for the damned.
• Evil Overlord:
  • The King Below was this for the entire World Between. When he dies, there was much rejoicing.
  • The Nine Heroes/Nine Usurpers may also be an example of this. They saved the world, only to promptly take it over.
  • Even our heroes can be viewed as this, being mage rulers of the Northern Wasteland.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: The Tower of Everfrost is an enormous metal tower in the center of the King Below's capital city in the Eyes of the World. It is also built into a literal hole in the ground that leads directly down to the World Below (Hell).
• Gaslamp Fantasy: The series is unusual example as it takes place in a High Fantasy setting but which has combined technology with magic after the last war between the Dark Lord and The Alliance. While the protagonist is effectively a Ringwraith, he has to deal with an enormous clockwork spider and the flying airship navy of the Empress.
• Guns Are Useless: They exist but magic is so prevalent that they're not noticeably better than enhanced arrows or bolts which can be outfitted with runes to create explosions. Also, barriers (magical shields) exist so guns are not nearly as effective as they are in our world.
• Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The four Dark Lords (or Wraith Knights) deliberately invoke this. They are the four undead horsemen servants and wizard-knights of the King Below, who is the setting's god of evil. They are the Wraith Knights of War, Despair, Lust, and Plague.
• Loving a Shadow: This is essentially Jacob's relationship with Jassamine. Jacob has a worshipful and even religious veneration of his lover as well as remembers her in the most flattering of lights. It becomes increasingly clear that Jassamine was a Manipulative Bastard and used him repeatedly to advance her own position before trying to politely pawn him off on some of her female minions when he became politically disadvantageous to love.
• Precursors: The Terralan Dominion was a High Human civilization of wizards that served as the ruler of the Southern Kingdoms for a thousand years. It is also responsible for the majority of fantastic races and monsters on the planet due to their experiments. They ended up being destroyed by a volcano set off by Valance the Red.
• Order Versus Chaos: The primary conflict in the series is this rather than Good Versus Evil. The Lawgiver represents order with its tyranny, expansionism, and religious control. The Trickster by contrast represents freedom, chaos, and resistance. It's subverted when it's revealed that it is the Lawgiver and his brother Running Both Sides.
• Our Liches Are Different: The Wraith Knights of the King Below are all immortal ghost-warriors who can assume physical forms, wear black cloaks, and sport demonsteel armor. They are the leaders of the King Below, a God of Evil's armies, and each possesses a magical sword that grants them Resurrective Immortality. Of course, the destruction of their sword means that they immediately lose this (and get replaced with whoever figured it out).
• Polyamory: Regina, Jacob, and Serah are all in love with one another to varying degrees by the end of the book. It requires Jacob becoming the God of Darkness to realize that they can just do what they want. Polyarmory is also something that is common in the setting with the nobility known to taking second and third spouses after their primary one.
• Proud Warrior Race: Played with regarding the Formori, who are not Always Chaotic Evil but have been used as shock troopers by the King Below for millennium that their culture doesn't know much else but war.
• Pun: The World Between AKA Middle Earth.
• Running Both Sides: The Lawgiver and the Trickster are revealed to have been allied for the Great Shadow Wars, causing a conflict between "good and evil" so they could encourage more fantasticism in their worshipers. At some point, the Lawgiver, or Jassamine alone decided to make the conflict real and killed the King Below.
• Schizo Tech: A pretty big example of it as they still have bows, arrows, and mounted calvary despite having trains as well as electric lights. It's just the bows can shoot faster than guns, the arrows explode, and the mounted calvary is dragons. Oh and giant building-sized golems are serving as bulldoers.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: One of the big accomplishments of Jacob and Jassamine during the Temple Reformation was the outlawing of slavery. It's one of the signs of just how bad the Nine Usurpers are in that they have re-instituted it.
• Standard Fantasy Races: A Downplayed Trope example with Sidhe (elves), Formor (orcs), Trow (Trolls), and Bauchan (Dark Elves). There's also Boggarts, Dryads, giants, and Nockers. This is downplayed due to the fact that they tend to go with a more Celtic mythology influenced version of the characters than pure Tolkien fantasy. It is also an artificial world created by far future humanity making a playground for themselves.
• Standard Fantasy Setting: The setting is a collection of fantasy kingdoms of Light Is Good races from a warm Southern continent locked in an eternal war with a Dark Is Evil set of races from the frozen Northern continent. These races include Sidhe (elves), Formor (orcs), and Trow (trolls) with humans locked in the middle. One side is also led by a Physical God God of Evil who routinely invades the South while the side of good has a less active God of Good. The subversion is that this is all due to the fact the setting is a playground created by distant future humans and the two gods are working together to create a Forever War.
• The Trickster: The Trickster, natch. He is a conniving, sarcastic, and witty prankster in addition to being an Evil Overlord.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: More or less the Central Theme of the books as every villain has this attitude and the heroes too.

Wraith Knight

• Anguished Declaration of Love: Serah gives one to Regina. Jacob eventually gives one to both.
• Body Horror: Jacob suffers a case of this when he realizes he's got no face. Subverted when he realizes he can conjure a new body for himself by draining the life force of others.
• Bowdlerise: In-universe. The Milkmaid Fair was originally a lewd drinking song in Jacob's time but is now an upbeat children's song with changed lyrics.
• The Fundamentalist: Both Jacob and Jassamine were this in their original times, being among the few to take the religion of the King Above seriously as the rest of their faith had become the Corrupt Church. They eventually led to a Protestant-style reformation before Jassamine Jumped Off The Slippery Slope and became a Knight Templar. Sadly, it's implied their god approved of this.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: Jassamine was a Manipulative Bastard Well-Intentioned Extremist who is remembered as "Saint Jassamine." Contrast to Jacob's Historical Villain Upgrade.
  • Played straight with Eric the Great, who was a complete scumbag and The Pawn according to Jacob.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: Sort of. Jacob Riverson was a sober, puritanical religious reformer in love with a single woman his entire life. He's remembered by history as a rowdy drunk Lovable Rogue lecher.
• Killed Off for Real: Thomas Brightwaters is the brother to Serah, a Lovable Rogue, and seemingly part of the main cast but dies unceremoniously in battle halfway through the book.
  • This also happens to Creature toward the end of the book, showing Anyone Can Die.
• Lovable Rogue:
  • Jacob is remembered as one of these but was anything but. His reputation is that of a hard drinking, lusty, and semi-blasphemous killer that was, nevertheless, allied to the forces of good. The actual Jacob was a somber, serious, and Single-Target Sexuality hero.
  • Thomas Brightwaters is a more straight example. Being a flamboyant, theatrical, lusty, and cheerful soldier who is better at speeches than war.
• Love Triangle: Serah loves Regina but is attracted to Jacob who is falling for Regina but attracted to Serah. They all end up together in the end.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Regina takes down all of Jon Bloodthorn's sons and a small army to rescue Jacob's wounded form from the battlefield.
• Rip Van Winkle: Jacob gets hit with this hard when he wakes up after two hundred and fifty years of mind-control.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Jacob's solution to the situation with the Formor's enslavement. Also, how he manages to resolve the love triangle between him, Serah, and Regina.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Jacob possesses this for Jassamine his entire living life. It changes when meets Regina and Serah.
• Suicide by Cop: More like Suicide By Evil God Jacob is revealed to have done this when he discovered Jassamine, his one true love, murdered the royal heirs for their magical power.
• Take a Third Option: Jacob does this when presented with the choice of enslaving the Formor to fight for him or letting the Nine Heroes/Usurpers run wild with their armies. He RECRUITS them to fight for him by breaking their magical enslavement.
• Trickster Mentor: The Trickster, appropriately enough. Though how much he's manipulating Jacob to do his bidding and how much he's just having fun trolling him is very much up to interpretation.
• Victory Is Boring: The Trickster claims that this was why he eventually broke off his occupation of the human lands after winning the Third Shadow War. Once he realised that no great heroes were going to arise to lead a rebellion against him, he just went home and waited for the humans to recover enough to be worth invading again.

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