History Characters / Pact

Tropes related to particular significant characters and groups for the web serial ''Literature/{{Pact}}'' go under the pages here.

Tropes related to particular significant characters and groups for the web serial [[Literature/{{Pact}} Pact]] go under the pages here.

* Characters/PactJacobsBellPowers
* Characters/PactOtherHumansAndPowers
* Characters/PactOthers
[[index]]

Tropes related to particular significant characters and groups for the web serial [[Literature/{{Pact}} Pact]] go here.

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! Jacob's Bell Powers

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Thorburn Family]]

!!! General Tropes

* AHouseDivided: Into many, many plots, counter-plots and shifting factions. Unity? Ha! Only if they have a single target or threat to attack together.
* AllOfTheOtherReindeer: The Thorburn family are among if not the most hated beings in Jacob's Bell due to their history of generally being bastards and diabolists by other practitioners, and by the rest of the town due to all the land they own preventing expansion.
* BigScrewedUpFamily: As shown in FamilyDisunion and KissingCousins below. There are an awful lot of Thorburns who don't get along.
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Oh, yes. Even among Thorburns who do kind of get along (ish), you'll find a little of this going on.
* ConsummateLiar: All of the ones capable of speaking, even the twelve-year old, are adept at lying and seeing through them.
--> Six adults and seven children who were so versed in the lies and deception that they could all manage to avoid reacting in surprise.
* TheDarkArts: The Thorburns are traditionally a cabal of diabolists, practitioners who deal with demons.
* {{Determinator}}: There are very blurry lines between being a stubborn git, an outright jerk, a borderline personality and this trope. When Thorburns put their best feet forward, they're this... even if it [[BewareTheNiceOnes usually]] [[CorneredRattlesnake hides]]. When they don't put their best feet forward, see the previous jerkass allusions. Found in almost each, single Thorburn. However it comes out.
* DysfunctionJunction: The Thorburns as a whole have... issues. Lots and lots of issues besides even their inherited Bad Karma Syndrome. Most of their interpersonal ones stem from their shared well of bloody-minded stubbornness and greed, however and in what proportions they get expressed in each individual. As a result, the various personalities don't mix easily or well. Various forms of abuse crop up in the family, ranging from emotional to financial and even physical. Unsurprisingly, messy divorces and second marriages happen. Just to complicate the family tree more.
* EnemyMine: Are willing to put their mutual enmity with one another aside if they think another family member is getting too close to the inheritance. Then you see them working like a well-oiled machine of malevolent intent. It's ''scary''.
* FeudingFamilies: With the Behaims and Duchamps, the latter having been the case since before the 1930s.
* FamilyDisunion: Happens in the first chapter, when the Thorburn family gathers at Hillsglade House to hear who Grandma's heir will be and fight amongst themselves. Rosalyn's death sets in motion events that lead to Molly's death and threaten Blake's life and the lives of everyone in line for her inheritance. Even before this they had trouble getting along, even amongst the siblings, with the feud between them descending into outright violence.
* {{Gaslighting}}: The go-to tactic used by all those caught up in the race to be the Thorburn heir. Even Rose and Paige took part in Rose's memories. However, some took part more enthusiastically than others. Isn't that right, Ellie? None of the parents were particularly adverse to various forms of this, either.
* {{Greed}}: That inheritance looks really tempting, and most of them would rather like to get their hands on it. The various manoeuvrings they've all made in trying to either get it or avoid being steamrollered by those who do have twisted and poisoned what little of a healthy set-up the family had before Grandma declared the race open.
* InsanityImmunity: A good number of them have some resistance to Choir of Madness demons because they're slightly unhinged.
* {{Jerkass}}: A common family theme. They grow them well in and around Jacob's Bell.
* JerkJustifications: The entire family is (arguably) the way it is because Rose Senior made them fight each other for the inheritance. Her children trained their children to attack, manipulate, and lie in order to sabotage the others. There's also the fact that Jacob's Bell hasn't been a wonderful place for them to grow up in.
* KarmaHoudini: They were successfully this for ''[[RuleOfSeven seven generations]]'' of diabolism. Of course, that just means...
** KarmaHoudiniWarranty:...that the current heirs have to work even harder to avoid death by karmic backlash thanks to the accumulated debt (with interest) landing on their doorsteps in red-lettered envelopes.
* KissingCousins: Apparently Blake's great-grandparents happened to be related.
** Also, Grandma's advice on finding husbands? Find a bastard (meaning "[=SOBs=]") with the subtext being "of Thorburn or practitioner bloodlines far enough from the family not to have grown up with the issues, but close enough to ensure passing along the power to your kids if you can manage it". Yeah.
* LockedOutOfTheLoop: Due to Rosalyn Thorburn accidentally making a vow not to make her children practitioners, the two generations of Thorburns after her have [[MuggleBornOfMages no idea of]] their [[RitualMagic true heritage]], up until Molly and later Blake inherit the Thorburn house. Paige becomes the only other one who knows something of what is going on by her own actions, but [[TakeAThirdOption takes a rather different path]] getting there.
* MisfitMobilizationMoment: [[spoiler: When Blake rallies all the Thorburn cousins except James, Paige, and Rose to help retake the house from the witch hunters. It was either that, or die.]]
* SnarkToSnarkCombat: Irony, sarcasm, brutally backhanded compliments, passive-aggressive none-statements, outright trolling and (should poor, old honesty show up) cutting truths: these are the usual modes of Thorburn familial communication. To the point where when anybody, family or not, tries to use kind words and sympathy quite legitimately even on the kids... it broadly doesn't compute as most Thorburns automatically try working out what your game is, where the knife could be, how thick you seem to be and how easy it would be to use your naivety, if that's your problem.
* TallPoppySyndrome: They can't help but try dragging each other down.
* ThickerThanWater: The Duress Arc shows that despite not being the nicest people in the world, in the end they're willing to stick their necks out for each other if need be.


!!!Blake Thorburn

The twenty year old protagonist of the story, who is abruptly dragged into the events that unfold from his grandmother's death, with just about everyone in Jacob's Bell set against him. [[spoiler:He gets his connections cut by Ur at the end of the Void arc and falls into the Drains. He manages to claw his way back to reality but in the doing comes to the realization that he was actually a [[strike: vestige all along, created by his grandmother complete with false memories to shield Rose]] half of another Thorburn that grandmother had split into two beings, Rose and Blake, to make her perfect heir, free of petty things like friends or personal connections. Still the protagonist despite now being "the Thorburn Boogeyman".]]

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* ActionSurvivor: Blake just wanted to live his life, preferably without interacting with his family ever again, and get to a place where he felt all right with himself. Instead, he now fights monsters. [[spoiler:This turns out to be one of the issues he has to face in the Drains.]]
* AdviceBackfire: Tells Paige to get the hell out of the events he was going through and away from them, she jumps right into the sphinx's paws when he has Rose press the point by breaking the television.
* AManIsAlwaysEager: Averted. Blake notes that he doesn't see his sexuality as an important aspect of his identity, and turns down an offer from a friend to be FriendsWithBenefits.
* AnArmAndALeg: [[spoiler:Loses his hand to Barbatorem.]]
* AnAxeToGrind: Wields a hatchet bound with the ghost of June Burlinson, who died of hypothermia, until it broke.
* AnIcePerson: Thanks to the aforementioned hatchet. And, only while in possession of it.
* AnimalMotifs:
** Birds, specifically his bird tattoos and the fact that his familiar Evan takes on the form of a sparrow. Also, when he's weakened, he starts bleeding feathers.
** [[spoiler:After he takes on his Other form, his wounds are filled with spirits that manifest as birds.]]
** [[spoiler:At the end of the story, he's even turned into a bird.]]
* AndIMustScream: Barely Averted. [[spoiler:The Abyss rooted his body to the ground intent only tormenting him by having him only able to look on and constantly hear the bell ringing so that he would be angered into being a GateGuardian. Rose finds a loophole for him through possessing her.]]
* BetterToDieThanBeKilled: He displays this mindset when he agrees with Fell's proposal to kill him rather than die or surrender to Conquest or his champions. Doubles as IDieFree, as he specifically requests that Fell work something with his soul to keep it out of the grasp of Conquest.
* BookDumb: In comparison to Rose, yes. She stuck it out in school and actually could sit still for ten minutes at a stretch even while in it. Blake...well, not so much. He's a fidgeter, better using his hands and learning through doing rather than through theory.
* BrokenBird: Thanks to his experiences both with his family and as a runaway, which he notes have given him keen instincts but have not made him stronger as a whole. He admits, when facing Conquest, that he doesn't consider himself much of a "man," and that if Conquest gets too close he'll lose all thought and attack until he escapes or is brought down-probably the latter. [[spoiler:Even worse, Grandma Rose ''programmed'' this backstory into him as a means of protection not just for his wraith-vestige self, but Rose as well. This automatic panic reaction almost backfired on both of them. Figuring this out breaks Blake a little as it is "for real", as such, even while he keeps the backstory as a part of him.]]
** Maybe. Later on we find out that [[spoiler:much of his backstory, probably including his time homeless, was an actual experience of the "original" that he and Rose were split off from.]]
* CatchPhrase: "Damn me, damn them, damn it all."
--> ''Damn me'', I thought, [[RuleOfThree not for the first or second time]].
* ChronicHeroSyndrome: Very nearly the ''first'' thing he does once he's in a space with some breathing room and nobody immediately trying to kill or use him is to begin to compose a plan of attack on the factory demon, which was no threat to him until he sought it out to kill, but remained a threat to others who carelessly blundered into the factory. Isadora comments that, as someone who has experienced both great good and great evil, he's driven to do good-especially knowing that he's [[YourDaysAreNumbered not long for this world]], and his oath to Evan (to fight the monsters) is a strong component of his thinking.
* CompanionCube: His motorbike, [[spoiler:until his trip to the Drains forces him to give it up.]]
* CorneredRattlesnake: When he's cornered by Conquest, Blake notes that his experiences noted under BrokenBird, above, make him likely to lash out mindlessly and then shut down. [[spoiler:This tendency led to him killing Laird and nearly being forsworn.]]
* CosmicPlaything: Due to the sheer amount of bad karma incurred by his ancestors (nearly seven lifetimes worth in fact), anything that can go wrong in Blake's life ''will'' go wrong.
* CruelMercy: His solution to Mara? [[spoiler: He essentially had her foreswear herself, knowing she would lie, while her house burned down and she was unaware. The methods she used to survive would be impossible since Peter and Roxanne have burned down her home, meaning that the ritual she went by daily would no longer have any effect and her current life would be her last one.]]
* CulturalPosturing: Likes to take the occasional potshot at the United States over the course of the story.
* DarkAndTroubledPast: His time living on the streets was unpleasant, to say the least.
* DangerousForbiddenTechnique: Demon summoning in general, as far as Blake's concerned. If he chose to he could unleash some really nasty creatures on his enemies, up to and including [[FallenAngel Ornias]], but he considers the cost too high to be worth paying.
* DeadManSwitch: [[spoiler: When Blake dies, Rose would be released from the mirror world. While he doesn't die, losing his connections did the trick with a few complications.]]
* DeathSeeker: [[spoiler:Rose hypothesizes that he is this by design, if not consciously, given his actions in Toronto where he picks fights and doesn't stop picking fights until something finally manages to kill him.]]
* DebtDetester: Not a particularly antagonistic example, but he hates having to owe people, and the fact that he owes Alexis a debt he feels he can never repay is something that weighs heavily on him.
* {{Determinator}}: Despite the crap he goes through during the story, [[spoiler:and the reveal of his true nature as a vestige-wraith-remnants-whatever]], Blake never gives up.
* DeadpanSnarker: To the extent that, as he's not allowed to lie, he has to consciously clamp down on the sarcasm.
* DealWithTheDevil: Avoided for the most part. Blake doesn't feel comfortable with calling on [[OccultLawFirm Mann,]] [[TheAggressiveDrugDealer Levinn,]] [[EvilLawyerJoke and Lewis,]] for anything unless the circumstances really call for it. [[spoiler: When he's trapped in the Drains, he attempts to call on them one last time, only to be told "[[DefiedTrope No. Too late.]]"]]
* DidntThinkThisThrough: Blake often gets in trouble because he tends to be a short term thinker who makes plans mostly for the moment. He occasionally describes himself as "the warrior" in contrast to Rose's "the thinker." He gets better at thinking later on after he realizes this.
* DomainHolder: [[spoiler: He realizes after he and Rose switch places that since the mirror world is ''his'' domain, he can control what enters it, binding circle or not.]]
* DontYouDarePityMe: He feels this way about an event in his past, where he begged for forgiveness to someone he considered a cult leader, commenting that he can't help but think that people who know think less of him.
* EarAche: Blake ends up getting his ear bitten by rodents while trying to escape following Pauz's binding in Collateral 4.8. He uses Glamour Ink to repair it, but once he falls into the Drains it goes back to how it was.
* EarnYourHappyEnding: [[spoiler:After everything he's gone through, the fact that he's turned into a bird similar to Evan is a blessing. He can fly around the country with Evan and they still hangout with Green Eyes.]]
* EmpathicWeapon: His Frost Hatchet that contains June Burlison's ghost is sentient to a degree that Rose considers it half-implement and half-familiar. [[spoiler:It was destroyed to stall Conquest.]]
* TheEmpath: As part of his EmotionEater powerset, he can sense fear.
* EmotionEater: Blake, [[spoiler:as a Bogeyman,]] can sense when he instills fear into someone and it feeds his new nature, allowing him to draw strength from it.
* FaceDeathWithDignity: Blake knows he's likely going to die soon, but hasn't succumbed to despair. [[spoiler:He ultimately gets around it after becoming a Bogeyman. If he's strong enough he can come back as many times as he wants.]]
* FamilyOfChoice: A big proponent of this. He rejects his biological family's toxic environment in favor of his group of friends, although he remains attached to his family-his inability to detach from his family is what kicks off the plot.
* FakeMemories: Blake [[spoiler:is actually a vestige created to buy time for Rose, and there is a large possibility that all of his memories prior to the dream scene in Pact 1.1 were created. Turns out to be greatly subverted: his memories are broadly real -- or, at least, based on real events and patched together to make sense. So are Rose's memories, as they both come from the same Barbered person. Neither is actually "more valid" than the other.]]
* TheFirstCutIsTheDeepest: His experiences [[spoiler:with Carl's cult, where sex and intimacy was used as a tool of control]] have left him with a fear of intimacy.
* FromNobodyToNightmare: Starts off as a random handyman hanging on the fringes of a bunch of artists in Toronto. [[spoiler:Spends a good portion of the final act being a horror movie monster, by his own description.]]
* GateGuardian: The Abyss wants him to guard one of the exits to the Library in order for the rest to escape. [[spoiler:He's forced to leave his body behind, but his spirit-heart is allowed to possess Rose.]]
* GoodThingYouCanHeal: Some of the beatings he gets [[spoiler:after becoming a bogeyman]] would be fatal if he couldn't.
* {{Handyman}}: After running away from home he [[spoiler:or rather his progenitor]] became this for his artist friends.
* HatesBeingTouched: Consistently reacts negatively or even violently to anyone touching him without his consent, and is hesitant about engaging in physical contact such as hugs. This appears to be a product of his experiences while homeless. [[spoiler:He later concludes that this was a deliberate part of his design, as touching other people caused him to decay, meaning that his grandmother deliberately wrote his backstory to be as traumatic as possible without making him useless to her goals.]]
* HeroicHost: Blake can use the spirits that have taken up residence in his body to do basic magic.
* HeroesPreferSwords: He wields the broken Hyena as a weapon, since it usually leaves a WoundThatWillNotHeal.
* HeWhoFightsMonsters: A very ''literal'' example. [[spoiler:Blake loses most of his humanity in the Drains after fighting Ur, leaving him a construct of bone and dead wood, filled with spirits. He keeps to his oath to fight monsters, but eventually amends it to note that not all monsters are Others.]]
* HomelessPigeonPerson: He was apparently this before he got an apartment, and Joel got him to stop feeding the birds at his window.
* HonorBeforeReason: At times. For example, when Rose asks why he trusted Maggie with an important task despite knowing that [[ObviouslyEvil something was off]].
-->'''Blake''': Because nothing’s suggested she’s not on our side. I like to give people the benefit of a doubt until they give me reason to do otherwise.
-->'''Rose''': Noble. Stupid as fuck, but noble.
-->'''Blake''': Not arguing that.
* TheIdealist: In spite of everything that he's been through and seen, he firmly believes in the inherent goodness of humanity and wants to do good. That being said, his opinions on humanity ''do'' vary when it comes to certain individuals... like his family or, when he comes into enough contact with them, most practitioners of a certain age and station.
* IndyPloy: Very much tends to make his plans on the fly. However, he has shown moments of trying out XanatosSpeedChess with actual longer-term goals to vaguely shoot for. The problems ''those'' face come down to 1) a lack of resources including time and 2) that Karmic Debt loading him down with almost instant fails and random [[SpannerInTheWorks Spanners]] which necessitate going for Indies with no warning. [[spoiler: When he loses the debt thanks to Rose getting stuck with it all, his goals have an actual ''chance'' (however remote) to get worked towards, rather than having ''everything'' blow up in his face on almost first-contact.]]
* IOweYouMyLife: He has this feeling towards Alexis, who got him off the streets.
* ItsAllMyFault: He inadvertently turns Toronto into a magical warzone in order to keep himself and Rose free from Conquest, and feels guilty about every resulting death.
* KidsAreCruel: He expresses a view that teenagers are just old enough to have an adult body, but lack the ability to make adult judgement calls, which is why he doesn't blame the gang of kids that beat on him when he was homeless, the Behaim and Duchamp children that have attacked him, or Maggie for murdering Molly.
* LightningBruiser: [[spoiler:After becoming a bogeyman. You wouldn't think someone made of wood and bone carrying a giant broken sword could move so fast, but apparently he's actually really light in spite of his inhuman durability and strength.]]
* LiteralSplitPersonality: [[spoiler:He and Rose are one to whoever their progenitor was, with each getting portions of the original life.]]
* MirrorMonster: [[spoiler:Whatever flavor of Other he might actually be, until he move himself to an effigy Blake was ''the'' kickass bogeyman in the mirror--armed with a dangerous broken sword he can threaten the world outside with, no less. He even gained the Nickname Bloody Marv.]]
* MeaningfulName: Blake's name can mean both "The pale, blond one" and "black" according to Isadora, which serves as an indicator that [[spoiler:It's not his ''original'' name, which he speculates to have been some masculine form of Rose.]]
* TheMirrorShowsYourTrueSelf: He doesn't have a reflection because Rose is bound in its place. [[spoiler:Afterwards he's the one in the mirror.]]
* MorphicResonance: His glamour forms always keep his tattoos as an anchor.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: See ItsAllMyFault, as he didn't realize the sheer collateral damage that Conquest was willing to cause in order to win.
* NotQuiteFlight: [[spoiler:After making a deal with the Abyss in Sine Die Blake gains wings, but they can't generate lift on their own, only glide. To get higher he needs either Evan or hot air (since it rises) in order to keep himself aloft for prolonged periods.]]
* NotSoDifferent: He gets really annoyed with Rose when she starts summoning dangerous things behind his back when he's out for the count and gets a taste of his own impulsive medicine as a result. [[spoiler: This only increases when he gets hits the Drains and comes back actually in the mirror-world.]] Note that both are as stubborn as each other and just as determined to do what they set their minds to, regardless of any other differences. [[spoiler:Because they come from the same origins.]]
* OnlyFriend: Signature 8.1 reveals that Blake pretty much is Maggie's only friend in Jacob's Bell. [[spoiler: In turn she's the only one who remembers him ''completely'' rather than bits and pieces.]]
* RageBreakingPoint: The moment after Conquest summons his ghosts and uses them against him, Blake drops all pretenses of trying to win without killing and stabs Laird, who was trying to hold him in place, in the throat.
* RedOniBlueOni: Is the red to Rose's blue, being rather impulsive and acting on instinct while Rose is much calmer and more methodical.
* RevengeBeforeReason: While he's idealistic and genuinely wants to make the world a better place, one of Blake's less obvious flaws is his spitefulness--he'll go out of his way to hurt those that he feels have wronged him, if it's at all feasible, as seen when he sets a goblin loose on an otherwise uninvolved Behaim woman's library, or when he places Laird in a situation meant to psychologically torment him. [[spoiler:He tries to rein this in once he realizes his nature as an Other since going by his instinct and lashing out in revenge at a slight would more than likely get him killed before he accomplishes his goal.]]
* TheRunaway: Blake was one before returning.
* SanitySlippage: [[spoiler:After becoming a bogeyman, his anger and rage is a very strong component of his thinking, and others express doubt that they can trust his decisions. For the most part he tries very hard to keep it in check to avoid losing what little humanity he has left.]]
* ScarsAreForever: He has several old scars on his body, some of which he erases with the glamour ink, only for them to come back later on.
* ScrewDestiny: [[spoiler:When his connections are severed by Ur and he falls into the Drains, he defeats his fate of eventually dying by becoming a bogeyman.]]
* SinsOfTheFather: As mentioned in CosmicPlaything above, Blake's troubles boil down to his ancestor's actions.
* TheSoulless: [[spoiler:There was only one soul to go around when the original child of Blake's parents was split in two, and Rose got it for the most part. It wasn't a flawless process, which is why they both are vulnerable to possession, with Blake's being arguably greater.]]
* SpannerInTheWorks:
** Derails the Toronto Powers plays regarding Conquest by dragging them into war.
** Meant to die all along? [[spoiler:Comes back as the Thorburn Bogeyman.]]
* SpearCounterpart: As much as Rose is a reflection of him, he reflects her. They can, and do, both bounce off each other or wind up at loggerheads as a result. It's brought up more than once. [[spoiler:Turns out they are part of a single individual and conflict between them is instigated by the separation.]]
* TheSymbiote: [[spoiler:After giving the last of his humanity to Rose, he becomes a pair of wings that attach to her back and allow her to fly, and a wooden gauntlet that lets her wield the Hyena without getting hurt.]]
* SympatheticMagic: After his [[spoiler:transformation into a bogeyman]] this is the one type of magic he's still capable of using his own personal spirits.
* TarotMotifs: The Fool on the right and the High Priestess on the left. More commonly compared to the Fool, though. Which is quite fitting: the more he relies on [[IndyPloy Indy Ploys]], the more uncomfortable he manages to make it for others--even if it does come with personal risk.
** Note that Fools in games of tarot are the sacrificial trump--they trump the suit-cards, but are the lowest of the low when it comes to the rest. There's a catch to that, however. Jokers are the standard, international card deck's equivalent to Fools or Jacks in Euchre, there are specific times when they can out-trump most of the other cards. If you use them ''wisely''.
* TarotTroubles: Alister Behaim tries to put him in it in a version of Practitioner Top Trumps, [[spoiler: somewhat forgetful of the fact he'd picked the Fool as Blake's sign at the start while trying to force him into a situation where he'd lose thanks to ignorance of the subject and forcing him off that cliff.]]
* TerribleArtist: The only art he's ever made was stick figures. [[spoiler:The original ''was'' an artist, but Rose got that talent. Blake just got the part that actually ''wanted'' to make art.]]
* TiredOfRunning: He declares, as he [[spoiler:rips his body to pieces to escape the mirror]], that he's done with waiting for people to come after him.
* TomatoInTheMirror: In [[http://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/null-9-4/ Null 9.4]], he [[spoiler:realizes that he, not Rose, is the Vestige of the true Thorburn heir, a warrior created to buy her time to learn of the world that she'd be thrust into. And, worse: he learns she actively botched her awaking ceremony to lie to him (even if she had her reasons). At the end of the chapter, he chooses to embrace becoming an Other. However, this gets ziggzagged much later: he wasn't "just" a Vestige. It was much, much worse than that: both he and Rose are the remains of a Thorburn who got Barbered. Neither are the original, yet both contain parts of him -- and their relative humanness was designed to be switch-able from the get-go. He didn't ''have'' to become an Other. Nor, did Rose ''have'' to be the Heir and accept that identity. Even if those were the roles chosen out for them by Rosalyn.]]
* TragicHero: [[spoiler:Over the course of the story, Blake loses his home, his possessions, his body, his connections to the world, and his very humanity.]]
* TranquilFury: Relies on this to help him function, fueling it from any number of sources.
* TroubledBackstoryFlashback:
** Conquest forces him to flash back to two of his most traumatic experiences on the streets in Void 7.5 using the ghosts that those experiences created.
** In [[http://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/null-9-4/ Null 9.4]], he goes through a full flashback, though he describes it as more of a play than a memory.
* {{Trigger}}: Being touched, having his personal space invaded, or seeing himself as being surrounded or helpless. Duncan Behaim takes advantage of this, invading his personal space when Blake is locked in an interrogation room with him in order to put him off balance.
* {{Unperson}}: [[spoiler: Ur, the Abstract Demon, did this to him by erasing the connections to the world he had. Only three beings have any idea who he was initially, and only two of them can remember his real name.]]
* UnwittingPawn: [[spoiler:Ms. Lewis]] reveals that he was more or less this to Rosalyn Thorburn in Null 9.3.
* VoluntaryShapeshifting: Via Glamour ink.
* WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer: Referenced by Rose about Blake in Toronto. [[spoiler:He was made to be a warrior, to not back down if pressed and to fight and fight, meaning that even when things are peaceful he would seek out a fight. When things settled down in Toronto he went to fight with the demon that was already secure for a time in the factory and it got him sent to "The Drains".]]
* WhenTreesAttack: Blake's looking more and more like a tree as things go on.
* YouCantGoHomeAgain: Upon [[spoiler:managing to defeat Ur and returning to his apartment only to find that his life has been torn to pieces]], Blake realizes that he can only move towards the future.
* YourDaysAreNumbered: Blake was fated to die eventually, at which point [[spoiler:Rose takes his place as the Thorburn heir.]] He somewhat mitigates this by [[spoiler:falling into the Drains, making it not as clean a process.]]
* WeaponOfChoice: Broken Swords like the Hyena and a broken machete.

!!!Rose Thorburn

A Vestige of Blake with her own set of altered memories, their lives are tied together. [[spoiler:She takes Blake's place once he falls into the Drains. It appeared for a time that she was the actual Thorburn heir, and Blake was created to serve as a sacrificial shield. However, it is eventually revealed that both Blake and Rose were created from the same person, who was split into two by the demon Barbatorem following instructions given by their grandmother Rosalyn Thorburn. Rose was given the parts of that person that made her into an "ideal" heir, while Blake got the rest.]]

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* AmbiguouslyHuman: She doesn't breathe or have a heartbeat, her awakening as a practitioner didn't give her the standard practitioner skillset (instead she got the Thorburn voice), she can break glass and other fragile reflective surfaces at will, and when she's cut, instead of a normal wound, she gets a fracture along her chest that bleeds. [[spoiler:In Null 9.4, however, these turn out to be red herrings; as the true heir she was HumanAllAlong. The reason she didn't have full practitioner powers? She intentionally botched the ritual so that she would be able to lie and prevent Blake from realizing his true nature. However, this gets zigzagged yet again: she may be currently more human, but both she and Blake are parts of (and the remains of) somebody who existed before either of them came onto the scene: neither is the original and both contain aspects and memories of that person.]]
* ArrangedMarriage: [[spoiler:Alister Behaim proposes to her at the end of arc 12, following through on her grandmother's plans, and she accepts.]]
* BewareTheNiceOnes: While probably the nicer of the two Thorburns (most of the time), in some instances Rose can be a lot more ruthless than Blake as she is more aware of how things need to be handled. For example, it was her idea to bind June the ghost to Blake's hatchet in a constant state of suffering and she's the one who suggested burning down a warehouse to lure out a demon. She's also more willing to quickly escalate in firepower and brutality, including deliberately setting Bloody Mary on her enemies-albeit with orders not to kill.
* BlankSlate: [[spoiler:She lacks a lot of Blake's experiences and connections, being mostly the traits that Rosalyn felt were essential in an heir, along with the heart and soul of their progenitor.]]
* BrokenBird: As with Blake, but with subtly different reasons and effects--as she was raised as a potential heir, she learned to distrust everyone to deal with her family's increasingly toxic environment instead of running away like Blake did.
-->“The enemy of my enemy-“
-->“Is still a ''damned'' enemy!” Rose said. “The sooner you realize there is ''no such thing'' as a true ally, the better off we’ll be.”
* TheChessmaster: By instinct, she's one of these. She utterly hates having to make things up on the fly (although she can do it) and prefers to have people, plans and contingencies in place well ahead of meeting trouble. And, she would happily strangle Blake every time he goes on an IndyPloy binge, given the chance to.
* CorneredRattlesnake: After two weeks of being trapped in a mirror world without human contact, and then being interrogated by Conquest, she resorts to summoning things like [[TheBrute Midge]] in order to give herself agency. It's later suggested that Conquest tainted her in a manner similar to demonic corruption.
* TheCorruption: Conquest ''attempts'' to do this to her, but she's aware of it, and rather than cutting the connection, decides to take the power and use it, preventing it from getting too much of a hold on her.
* TheCynic: In comparison to Blake she tends to be a bit more cynical.
* DamselInDistress: Pauz does this to her to keep her out of the way when contracting with Blake, doing something to the connection between them such that she was drained of power, until Blake broke the effect using his blood.
* DeadpanSnarker: When she feels up to it, she can produce zingers. Unlike Blake, though, she doesn't make a habit of it as stress-relief and chooses to stick to BrutalHonesty or ExactWords as primary weapons almost from the start. Which means rather less danger of inadvertent fallout.
* DeadManSwitch: [[spoiler: Rose slightly breaks Barbatorem's bindings such that if she can't regularly repair them (such as when dead) it will go free.]]
* DefrostingIceQueen: Following [[spoiler:Blake falling into the Drains]] she starts caring a lot more about other people.
* {{Determinator}}: Although, it takes her a while to realise and accept that she is one. But, when she puts her mind to implementing a plan, she can be just as bull-headed pushing it through as Blake can.
* DistaffCounterpart: Rose is a female version of Blake that can normally only interact with him through reflective surfaces such as mirrors. [[spoiler: They switch places later on.]]
* DoomedProtagonist: As a vestige, she's running on a limited amount of power, and when it runs out she'll fade away. This is a major source of depression, though Blake has promised to help her. [[spoiler:Reversed in that she eventually takes his place in the material world.]]
* EtTuBrute: [[spoiler: Betrays Blake by helping Jeremy bind him, and leaving him bound, unwilling to trust his bogeyman nature. He gets out anyway once things get bad enough.]]
* FakeMemories: Zigzagged so much, you can get whiplash. Initially, when she's to all appearances a Vestige stuck in a mirror, it's theorised that her memories were moulded to be that of a sort of AlternateUniverse Blake who was [[DistaffCounterpart born a female]] potential heiress. As it turns out [[spoiler: she might well have quite a bit of fake in there to make any gaps consistent, but ''she's'' not fake nor a vestige -- and was probably lying to Blake for a while about all that. Then it turns out that ''neither'' she nor Blake are fake after more of Grandma Rosalyn's diary is read and analysed, even if ''both'' have some fake and some real memories. But, her being the female one suggests she's got more faking in the memory department to make things consistent for her, for all she's now got the bulk of what was the "Ross Thorburn" identity package before the Barber got busy. Blake punches through her insistence that she's the "more real" of the two when he points out how much of a BlankSlate she actually is--being only those bits ''Grandmother'' thought were important to have as Heir, not what made them them-when-they-were-whole: the bad stuff, Toronto and the human connections that were made outside Jacob's Bell are as important to ''them'' as the name and identity are.]]
* FriendlessBackground: She's envious of Blake's friends, as she had none of her own. Blake had Molly and Paige as friends during childhood family gatherings, but to Rose they were just rival potential heirs. [[spoiler:This turns out to be deliberate on her grandmother's part, and a large clue as to what's really going on-she had friends, it's just that they were ''Blake'''s friends. He inherited the friendships with Molly and Paige as well as his friends in Toronto, and Rose got nothing at all-Blake makes references to numerous high school friends that she ''never'' had.]]
* GenderRestrictedAbility: As all the Thorburn practitioners prior to Blake were women, simple-minded and older Others will only respond to Rose's voice. Blake handles the physical things and pays the costs for power instead.
* HumanAllAlong: [[spoiler:Subverted. While Rose is considered the true Thorburn heir and Blake the vestige, both are actually creations of Barbatorem due to another Thorburn being cut by its shears.]]
* ItsAllMyFault: After Conquest forces her to divulge everything that she knew or speculated about that could be used to hurt Blake, she naturally blames herself for every tactic that Conquest subsequently uses against them.
* LiteralSplitPersonality: [[spoiler:To whoever the original child of her parents was, along with Blake. She suspects that she's the more whole of the two, but acknowledges that neither of them is a complete person.]]
* TheMinionMaster: During the war with Conquest, she falls back upon the long lists of Others that her grandmother contracted with in the various parts of Limbo, binding them into service to provide manpower for the fight. She keeps this up afterwards.
** ShootTheDangerousMinion: More like Banish the Dangerous Minion back to Limbo, but if one minion is just a little too dangerous or she can't trust them they go straight back. Midge and John Pica being the main two, with good reason.
* MindOverMatter: She can shatter and to a limited extent manipulate glass that she is reflected in. [[spoiler:Prior to returning to human anyway.]] She later is able to move objects using SympatheticMagic.
* MirrorSelf: Exists in mirrors near Blake and in the Thorburn house, taking the place of Blake's reflection. [[spoiler:At least until she was freed from the mirror.]]
* NotGoodWithPeople: She doesn't really have much practice making or keeping friends, even though she's not bad with the concept of dealing with people (she ''did'' get training in being a [[ManipulativeBastard Manipulative Bitch]]). She's not ''horrible'' at friendship, either; just very unsure about the whole process and constantly on eggshells, for all she finds it a remarkable experience once she actually does get some. [[spoiler: There turns out to be a very good reason for all that: Blake got all the experience and memories of ever having had any friends. Including within the family. Rose was robbed of this section of their life: all that envy was probably realising this on some level.]]
* NotSoDifferent: Rose doesn't react well when stuck in a corner just like Blake. And, just like Blake, she can weasel her way around you with words, given the chance to--in fact, she's slightly better at it. In some ways, her embracing [[spoiler: Conquest could be seen as her trying to make herself more dynamic and less passive, seeing as it tended to work for Blake.]]
* OtherMeAnnoysMe: She gets ''very'' irritated when Blake acts without consulting her beforehand. Because she's trapped in a mirror most of the time, she's found some purpose in being Blake's guide, so when he ignores her advice it becomes an issue. Especially since while she was out of action Blake ended up getting a Familiar and making three of his friends into practitioners, which Rose wasn't pleased about at all. [[spoiler:Later on she flat-out doesn't trust him because they're supposed to replace one another and by holding more advantages she remains human, otherwise he'll regain everything he lost. Once they make up it's slightly better.]]
* OutdatedOutfit: Is forced to wear her grandmother's old early 20th century clothing, but she appears to have grown into it since she continues wearing it [[spoiler:even after she gets freed from the mirror. It also helps that her own possessions mysteriously disappeared in an arson aka never existed in the first place.]]
* PentUpPowerPeril: She has to quickly spend what she gets from Conquest, to prevent it from becoming TheCorruption.
* PoorCommunicationKills: Averted--she tells [[spoiler:her Cabal]] about her being influenced by Conquest and they work out a plan together to deal with it.
* PowersViaPossession: Being possessed by Conquest enables her to compel others with greater ease, as well as act as a power source.
* ReasonYouSuckSpeech:
** Gives one to Blake in [[http://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/subordination-6-5/ Subordination 6.5]] regarding how he's been keeping her out of the loop and disregarding her input.
** She also ends up giving one to [[spoiler:their parents regarding their parenting]] in [[http://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/08/07/null-9-5/ Null 9.5]].
* RedOniBlueOni: Is the blue to Blake red, as she's the calmer of the two, and the one that follows a more methodical, scientific approach.
* TheSleepless: She doesn't need to sleep[[spoiler: while in the mirror world]]-the only time that she's unconscious is when she's been drained of power and needs to recharge.
* SpiritAdvisor: To Blake, in theory-though at first she doesn't know anything more than he does.
* SummonMagic: Her specialty as a practitioner since she can't interact directly with the world. [[spoiler:It remains so after she's freed of the mirror and, as she becomes a Scourge, it is her main magic.]]
* SupernormalBindings: During the Toronto arc, Conquest places a manacle on her wrist which allows him to bring her to him at any time.
* TarotMotifs: The Hanged Man on the right and the Chariot on the left. To summarize, sacrifice in exchange for knowledge (it can be empty knowledge and a very real sacrifice; or a small sacrifice for great knowledge), patience/ caution/ things held in suspension, a degree of trickery and cunning learned and the potential for change once suspense ends; forward momentum (or, you know, bulldozing--this can bite the hand that feeds it), willpower, impulsiveness, increased energy and ''conquest''. On the face of it, they're opposites, but then so are reflections.
** Side-note: Sphinxes. In the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, the Chariot is pulled by a black sphinx and a white sphinx. We've met at least one sphinx who likes to balance karma, so it ''might'' be related to karma, bad and good.
* TheOnlyOneITrust: She trusts Blake to keep his promise to help her, it seems mostly because he's laid out the reasoning for why he needs her alive than because he considers her family. [[spoiler:After the Toronto Arc this is a SubvertedTrope and he's the one thing she will never trust.... and then they make up enough that she willingly let's him possess her.]]
* ThickerThanWater: She has this view of family, having stuck it out despite the toxic environment, as opposed to Blake, who ran away. That being said, she doesn't trust any of them... with very, very good reason.
* TomatoInTheMirror: She has a moment like this when [[spoiler:she realizes that neither she nor Blake are fully real, so much as fragments of the original person mauled and separated by Barbatorem. It's followed up upon when Blake points out that they were probably originally male and not the female she kept insisting they had to have been. Worse, she had been consoling herself on having the soul, the name and the identity of the original, so "getting rid" of the few remnants Blake represented was just a thing that had to happen for her own safety. Until he points out that from a name like "Ross" or "Russ" to "Rose" isn't ''that'' great a shift--and, even their parents wouldn't be tacky enough to use the same phonetic trick on Ivy, while still keeping the theme (and hint) going. Oh, and everything he remembered having that she didn't, including the flat in Toronto? ''Was'' actually ''theirs'', and no fake. Including the friends and independence she so envied him for having: those memories just hadn't been handed to her because ''Grandma'' didn't consider them or Toronto as being important for the Heir to have. This really does floor her.]]
* TookALevelInJerkass: Due to Conquest's taint affecting her, she starts becoming a lot more ruthless.
* TookALevelInKindness: [[spoiler:Once Blake possesses her and gives her his memories, she becomes noticeably more considerate to her friends and family.]]
* YourDaysAreNumbered: As a vestige, she and Blake initially come to the conclusion that she'll fade away eventually, due to her incomplete nature. [[spoiler: Except this wasn't actually the case, as she was a human trapped in a mirror world, and Blake was the [[strike:vestige]] sacrifice.]]

!!!Molly Walker

The original inheritor of the Thorburn house, her death kicks off the plot. [[spoiler:And then she becomes a Wraith bent on vengeance.]]

----

* ActionSurvivor: She managed on her own for four months practically barricaded in Hillsglade House, under constant attack with her only likely sources of vaguely-safe contact being the Lawyers. Which she probably didn't use much or at all. She didn't have a vestige or anything to act as a shield or backup, yet worked out how to avoid diabolism to take up barrier and binding magic starting from a normal position. The worst karmic debt known to man was likely behind her critical slip-up, more than anything else. She might have looked less-than-capable, but she actually had tenacity to survive as long as she did.
* AGodAmI: In her own words:
--> "Sometimes, in the right time or place, an idea can become a spirit, and a spirit can become a god."
* AllOfTheOtherReindeer: Blake mentions that she wasn't very popular while alive.
* BewareTheQuietOnes: To survive alone, she had to have something. [[spoiler: Her wraith is more than making up for lost time, after her death.]]
* CreateYourOwnVillain: [[spoiler:If the Behaims and Duchamps hadn't murdered her, then they wouldn't have to deal with her vengeful wraith. Furthermore, they only fed her ''more'' with their squabbling over the leadership of the town, since she feeds on negativity.]]
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: Getting [[spoiler:beaten to death by goblins]] was likely not very pleasant. [[spoiler:Molly's ghost mentions that they tore her apart using corkscrews and needles and that the the search party that came across her corpse thought it was an animal carcass at first.]]
* {{Foil}}: To Maggie Holt, since she's constantly fighting whereas in both life [[spoiler:and death]] Molly focused mainly on defensive magic.
* FromNobodyToNightmare: [[spoiler:The reserved murder victim becomes a wraith powerful enough to drive every Other in town to attack indiscriminately.]]
* HatePlague: [[spoiler:Her wraith uses a ringing church bell that drives Others to attack.]]
* LivingMemory: Signature 8.1 reveals that [[spoiler:Maggie's been keeping her ghost around as a form of penance for her involvement in Molly's murder. As of Mala Fide, she's gained an increased amount of awareness and becomes a wraith powerful enough to draw the attention of the Jacob's Bell council.]]
* PosthumousCharacter: She gets more character development ''after'' her death, including descriptions of her methods as a practitioner, than she got in the one chapter for which she was alive.
* SacrificialLamb[=/=]StuffedIntoTheFridge: Dies in ''the first chapter,'' just to make it clear to Blake how high the stakes are.
* ShrinkingViolet: Is described as being rather timid in life.
* StringyHairedGhostGirl: Has a ''very'' high chance of turning into a dirty-blonde version of this, [[spoiler: now that she's a wraith on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge]].
* WeHardlyKnewYe: See above.
* UnfinishedBusiness: Her murder was explicitly never going to be solved, as far as the local police chief was concerned. [[spoiler:Making Jacob's Bell pay for this is the cornerstone of her existence as a wraith.]]
* UnwittingPawn: It's hinted in Mala Fide 10.4 that Rosalyn Thorburn was also using her as a sacrificial pawn in her schemes.

!!!Rosalyn D. Thorburn

Blake's grandmother, and the original owner of the house before it got passed down to Molly, and later, Blake.

----

* AbusiveParents:
** Both abused by her father and the abuser later in life. Rose and Blake suspect that she used at least one of her children as bait to lure in Barbatorem, by placing them on top of a pile of ''festering boar carcasses'' when they were ''one year old.''
** [[spoiler: She set up two of her grandchildren to die so her ideal heir was brought into the world. Said ideal heir being the result of having a demon spiritually mutilate one of her grandchildren to split them into two people.]]
** Judgement reveals that she only viewed her children as an obligation.
* AmbiguouslyEvil: Aimon says that she embraced diabolism as a method of ''protecting'' others, but it's pretty obvious that she had a ruthless streak a mile wide, particularly when it came to matters of the inheritance.
* BerserkButton: The only time she shows anger during her meeting with Blake is when he calls her a liar.
* EvilMatriarch: She plays the family against each other for the inheritance, and [[spoiler:set Blake and Molly up to die, [[TomatoInTheMirror creating both Blake and Rose from whichever Thorburn they had been before that]] for this purpose.]]
* ForeseeingMyDeath: She calls the family together to inform them that she is dying, hands off the inheritance to Molly, and then dies on the stroke of midnight. Aimon Behaim's Histories chapters suggests that she arranged this by having her time artificially extended.
* GenreSavvy: Knew enough to avoid getting ensnared by the lawyers, [[spoiler:placed a mole, and even manipulated things so that they'd get nothing.]]
* HeroWithBadPublicity: Appears to have been this at some point in her life, as Aimon Behaim claims in his Histories chapter that she "embraced diabolism as a way to ''protect'' others."
* InadequateInheritor: [[SubvertedTrope Subverted.]] At first it appears that she considers her children this, which is why the grandchildren are first in line for the inheritance. Later it is revealed that in a moment of angry argument with her father, she swore an oath to never make her children go through the experience of being a practitioner. All oaths made by practitioners are binding, so she could not reveal the existence of anything magical to her offspring. She made no such oath about her grandchildren, however.
* NotGoodWithPeople: Got along better with Others than humans.
* OffingTheOffspring: When Blake discovers that he's likely always been intended to die by her plan for Rose, he reflects that she's effectively murdering her own grandson, posthumously, no less. Worse: Molly seems to have also been planned to die to set everything up, as well. She may not be a direct killer, but... she certainly put the pieces in place with a pretty unavoidable outcome looming for them. [[spoiler:It's suspected she intended to kill off her entire bloodline to stop them from using demons.]]
* OneThingLedToAnother: After a brawl between a young Rosalyn Thorburn and Aimon Behaim.
* PassedOverInheritance: What she pulls on her children and grandchildren. Of course, part of this was kicked off because of an accidentally binding oath she made to never teach her children the family trade even before she was a teen... [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom She broke a couple of eggs before she realized she might need to make an omelette to correct a few things.]]
* PosthumousCharacter: After her death in the first chapter, more of her character is developed through insights left in her house (her massive collection of self-published diabolic texts and her notes) and through appearances in interludes
* RightHandCat: Had one which was most likely her Familiar, since it died the same time she did.
* ThanatosGambit: [[spoiler:She cooperated with the Behaims, deliberately sabotaging her own heirs, in order to set ''something'' in motion after her death. How much is going according to plan is up for debate. And, what, exactly, she set up? More debate.]]
* TomeOfEldritchLore: Wrote many of those, with titles like "Fiends and Darker Beings". They're of course part of the inheritance.
* TrainingFromHell: Quite literally. Her teaching style involved ''summoning improperly bound demons in front of the student'' for the first lesson.
* WeWinBecauseYouDidnt: [[spoiler:This is what she's running on the lawyers, or so Blake theorizes. Molly was the sacrificial lamb necessary to power Blake and Rose's separation. Neither Blake nor Rose has both the ability to create children and the desire (Blake's traumas preclude having sex, and while we don't know what RDT did to Rose, it would be child's play to make her barren). Kathryn's only child is male. Ellie is highly immature, and would probably get killed. Roxanne is nine, Ivy younger still, meaning they'd meet with a similar fate. And last but not least, Paige is a lesbian. What do these heirs have in common? None of them will survive long enough to produce an heir of their own. And the lawyers are none the wiser.]]
* WhenTheClockStrikesTwelve: She and her cat died at exactly midnight.
* ZeroPercentApprovalRating: She appears to have been hated and feared even more than usual for a Thorburn by the entirety of Jacob's Bell.

!!! Ivy Thorburn

Blake's younger sister of about one and a half years old, who was born during the time period that he was a runaway.

----

* CuteButCacophonic: Has a scream that would fit easily in any given slasher flick. [[spoiler: Mind you, seeing Blake did give her just cause to let loose.]]
* InvisibleToAdults: Due to being an innocent [[spoiler:she can see Blake as a bogeyman without being awakened.]]
* ReplacementGoldfish: She was born about a year and a half after Blake ran away, and Blake thinks of her as being this for him to his parents-the girl they always wanted.
* MeaningfulName[=/=]{{Foreshadowing}}: Ivy's (lack of a) meaningful name was taken by both Rose and Blake as a clue that [[spoiler: Rose was the real heir rather than Blake, as Rose was named such as an attempt to flatter Grandma Thornburn. Had Blake been the real first child, Ivy would have been named Rose. Until Blake bursts that bubble and points out that "Ross", "Russ", "Russell" or *shudder* "Bud" also sound like the kind of things their parents would do to flatter Grandma before they learned about the female-only clause... if the original had been ''male''. "Ivy" would still be keeping to the theme... just not quite so tackily as repeating some derivation of "Rose" twice.]]
* MercyKill: Malcom Fell offers to do this to Ivy in the event that Blake dies in Toronto -- all to prevent her having to face potentially inheriting the family curses. That, or denying her her birthright by making sure she gets brought up as a {{Muggle}}. The first offer was for a quick bullet, though.
* SpareToTheThrone: From Rose's perspective, it's fairly suspicious that her little sister gets born just a bit after her parents might have concluded that having a young, cute, backup horse in the race might be wise, thanks to the family infighting doing a number on her reputation. Just in case she couldn't top Paige.

!!! Blake's Parents

Blake's parents, with whom he's estranged.

----

* AbusiveParents: From what Blake and Rose have said, their childhood included a lot of lessons in how to manipulate others, and it was bad enough that Blake ended up running away.
* ForWantOfANail: When Blake bitterly notes that it sounds like they grew up with different parents, Rose corrects him to call them the same people, just from different angles.
* {{Manipulative Bastard}}s: Both are as bad as the other and they both forced Rose and Blake to take lessons. Reading about their [[spoiler: trying to manoeuvre Rose into being declared insane as a well-oiled machine is quite something.]]
* NoNameGiven: We know Blake's father is named Bradley, but we never learn his mother's name over the course of the story.
* ToughLove: Apparently, all Thorburn parenting contains at least some amount of this. Encouragement to man up and take responsibility is to be expected, regardless of gender.
* WhyCouldntYouBeDifferent: In Blake's case: "Why couldn't you be born a girl?". In Rose's: "Why can't you be ''better''?". Net result: equally awful parenting, if in slightly different ways.

!!! Callan Walker

The eldest son of Blake's Aunt Irene. Molly's older brother.

----

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: He wanted to find out what Molly had gone through and why she died...
* BigBrotherInstinct: His loyalty to his younger siblings, Molly and Christoff, is one of his few redeeming qualities.
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: [[spoiler:Gets his throat slashed by the Bane, and then gets eaten alive by the Homonculi.]]
* CorneredRattlesnake: [[spoiler: When he realizes he's got no hope of surviving a really nasty injury, he charges his killers full-on [[HeroicSacrifice in a bid]] to create an opening for his brother and the rest to act on. Give him his due--when he can be convinced to switch gears from Jerkass to Determined, he really doesn't stint.]]
* EstablishingCharacterMoment: The first thing he does upon seeing his runaway cousin for the first time in years is to berate him on his wardrobe.
* EatenAlive: [[spoiler:After the Bane slashes his throat, he gets eaten alive by homunculi.]]
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Well, Callan's just a jerk, but he did seem truly distraught about Molly's death, and cared enough about Christoff to [[spoiler:sacrifice his life against the Bane.]]
* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:Knowing that he's going to die from the Bane's necrotic slash, he manages to hold on to the robotic zeitgeist's ankle to prevent it from getting inside.]]
* {{Jerkass}}: To everyone around him that isn't one of his immediate family members. Blake describes him as a blindsider -- he went to Paige's teachers to sabotage her chance at getting into a US college, and was behind Kathryn's restaurant being vandalized.
* TheLoad: His major contribution to events, most of the time. [[spoiler: You could replace him with a sack of barley for the same effect on the plot... until he decides to pull a HeroicSacrifice, that is.]]
* NotSoDifferent: To the nice, relatively fluffy Molly: both start out looking to be rather-less-than-impressive as individuals, if for rather different reasons. [[spoiler: But, to protect others of their immediate family from clear and present danger? They both dug around and found grit. And, both died very similar, very gruesomely prolonged deaths for pretty much the same set of reasons and thanks to a blank refusal to easily give up, however terrified and knowingly doomed.]]
* ObliviousToHints: Isn't good at picking up on Blake's mood in the beginning, and continues to be resistant to others' opinions, words, outright statements and hints when we meet him later, too. His stubbornness, as one of the oldest Thorburn cousins, seems to be a learned trait.
* TheReliableOne: To Molly. He backed her all the way during the fight for the house, and if she hadn't been unwilling to bring her family into it, would probably have done so in the supernatural nastiness that followed.
* SelfDestructiveCharge: [[spoiler:His HeroicSacrifice.]]
* SlashedThroat: [[spoiler:The Bane slashes his throat and kills him with its necrotic effect.]]
* WrongGenreSavvy: No, Callan, sorry; you're more in a Horror movie, than not-in-an-Action one. If you're going to deny the absurd nature of everything, do try to get the genre right, at least. In the main, he's not the best picker-upper of atmospheres.

!!! Paige Thorburn

The last in line for the inheritance if all the other heirs die, and Blake's favorite living cousin. Daughter of Paul Thorburn and his first wife, Stephanie.

----
* TheAce: Blake thinks of Paige as the hardest-working and, overall, most naturally talented of all his cousins. As well as enjoying the fact that she's nice.
* DontSplitUsUp: Happened to Paige and her twin brother, Peter, after their parents' [[DivorceAssetsConflict messy divorce]]. They got split up, regardless. TwinDesynch happened as they each got brought up separately. Much to Paige's surprise, he chose to side with their sister Ellie over her in the whole FamilyDisunion scene. It's strongly suggested that he narced on her being a lesbian to Grandma for points.
* {{Familiar}}: She is this to Isadora, and can draw on Isadora's power to do karmic-related workings.
* LipstickLesbian: Has interest in women only, which is why she's the last heir rather than higher on the list, unfortunately. Guaranteed continuation of the line trumped likely natural ability in Grandma's eyes.
* OnlySaneMan: Is one of the few Thorburns who isn't a massive jerk. She's still relatively obsessed with the inheritance, which is quite understandable given the amount of money involved.
* TakeAThirdOption: It's very risky to be adopted by a Sphinx. But, arguably, quite a bit less risky than trying to deal with the Thorburn karma alone, without the family library, Hillsglade House, the inherited "perks" of being heir or any hope of any other backup in the world of practitioners.
* TooCleverByHalf: Much to Blake's chagrin, she's so clever she managed to get in the middle of the things he wanted to keep her away from and earned Isadora's attention.

!!!Ellie Thorburn

Paige's sister and rival in the heir race. Few of her cousins regard her highly. Daughter of Paul Thorburn and his first wife, Stephanie.

----

* AllergicToRoutine: Is always fiddling with something electronic when she's not front-and-centre in every scene we've seen her in. No matter where she is. Granted, hanging around while all the politics happens ''can'' get pretty dull.
* AmbiguousDisorder: She mentions to Tiffany that things finally started to make sense for her when she was diagnosed with a learning disorder shortly before she dropped out of high school.
* AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther: She takes on [[spoiler:Eva]] to save Peter. And afterwards reiterates to him that she's going to hit him five times for every time [[spoiler:Eva]] hit her. Later, when she's presented with the chance to get out of Jacob's Bell, she decides to stay because Peter is staying.
* CombatPragmatist: Like her brother. She'd ''much'' rather not fight, as it risks her skin. But, when she does, it's uncompromising, no holds barred (including the use of well-targeted [[BattleOfWits psychological warfare]]) and [[ImprovisedWeapon any weapon goes]]. Including [[spoiler: using a syringe full of ''something'' and Eva's sibling loyalty against her after having deliberately taken knocks to get close enough to use it on Andy. Awesomely nasty.]]
* CorneredRattlesnake: When [[spoiler:Peter is about to be killed and Eva is holding the only object that could save him]], Ellie overcomes her usual cowardice and [[spoiler:poisons Andy, taking a beating from Eva in the process.]]
* CowardlyLion: Blake outright calls her a coward in his narration, but when the chips are down [[spoiler:she's willing to go on the line for her brother]].
* TheCynic: Years of dealing with her family have left her with the impression that there's no real way for her to get ahead without ''somebody'' taking advantage of her. She figures that her best shot is to lose in a way that hurts them or to drop out entirely. She's practically "chosen" Peter because she trusts him slightly more than others.
* {{Delinquents}}: She's known to be into drugs, drink, petty vandalism, theft and violence with a rap-sheet that's quite long. Also happens to have a number of tattoos. Unsurprisingly, few in the family actually ''like'' her or want her to win Hillsglade House. Except for those who think they can use her to get a foot in the door. Like, say, Peter. And her father.
* {{Jerkass}}: She'll bicker just to bicker. She'll strenuously object, probably to make sure you don't forget she's in the room, and then suddenly back down for no reason. She'll ask questions she doesn't care about on top of ones she does... [[{{Troll}} just to waste your time and see steam jut out your ears]]. She'll nick your stuff if you're not looking (or even if you are). [[{{Gaslighting}} She'll prank you nastily if she can get away with it.]] She'll mooch off unless you keep an eye on her. And, she'll even do most of these things to her own brother (who she actually quite likes). Yeah: she's not exactly ''nice''. But, heaven help you if she decides it's worth it to her to ''really'' come at you rather than just annoy you...
* HairTriggerTemper: Yes, there is a lot of Duchamp emotional manipulation about. But, nobody in the restaurant was the least bit surprised when [[spoiler: Mags]] easily got her to lash out as part of a gambit. Kind of hints that she goes off pop fairly regularly, that.
* MadeOfIron: Underplayed. However, she can take surprising amounts of damage, [[spoiler: seen when she wilfully takes punishment from Eva both to distract and misdirect]], considering she loathes having to do so as a general rule. Part of it may be down to just known ''how'' to avoid the worst effects of it, though. Roll with the punches, indeed.
* ManipulativeBitch: Has had lessons in this from her mother. Which she mainly uses to keep her criminal record as short as possible by talking her way out of trouble with the police, as she doesn't have the patience for more involved schemes. However, she can use it more [[BattleOfWits practically]] [[CombatPragmatist when needed]].
* SmarterThanYouLook: She might look like a delinquent waste of space, but when it comes to picking up on mood-shifts and other people's [[BerserkButton Berserk Buttons]], she's actually not bad. At all. Particularly if they both somehow touch on the topic of saving her own skin.
* StickyFingers: Gotta pick a dresser or two...

!!! Charles Thorburn

The firstborn child of Rosalyn Thorburn.

----

* TheBait: Rosalyn used him as bait in order to lure in Barbatorem by leaving him on top of a pile of festering boar carcasses.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Hasn't appeared in-story.

!!! Roxanne Thorburn

Another cousin in the running. Aged twelve, and already an accomplished schemer. Paul Thorburn's second child with Jessica, his second wife.

----
* AnnoyingYoungerSibling: To her half-siblings Kathryn, Ellie, Paige, and Peter, and probably to her full sibling, James.
* BreakTheHaughty: [[spoiler: Where Andy and Eva couldn't, the Abyss most certainly ''could''.]]
* CrazyPrepared: After [[spoiler:her trip to the Abyss]] she starts carrying around knives and basically anything that could be used to kill monsters. [[spoiler:Blake included.]]
* CuteButCacophonic: The threat of her screaming is bad enough that she can use it as a bargaining chip against Kathryn.
* DittoFighter: Not necessarily a combat version. Peter's analysis of her suggests that her main defense mechanism is emulating the most successful person around her, as seen when she [[spoiler:picks up witch hunter tactics after their attack on Hillsglade House.]]
* EnfanteTerrible: She's 12 years old, and Blake thinks that there's something distinctly ''off'' about her. It's pretty much stated she goes for the jugular when things don't go her way, and that means potentially lethal options.
* GenreSavvy: When she has a chance to ask questions, the only thing she asks about is to confirm that practitioners CannotTellALie.
* GroinAttack: Does this (with a purloined letter-opener acting as a knife) to [[spoiler: Andy]]. He wore a cup.
* IJustWantToBeBadass: Her reaction to Andy and Eva after [[spoiler: Eva [[WouldHurtAChild kicked her repeatedly in the head]] after incapacitating all the other Thorburns?]]
-->I think I want to ''be'' them. Then I want to ''find'' them, and pay them back.
* LittleMissBadass: She goes about secretly armed with a letter opener when possible, [[spoiler: and proved herself rather quick and dangerous thanks to managing to take the vastly more experienced Andy by complete surprise with her attack on him. Pity for her that [[HairTriggerTemper Eva]] is part of that particular package deal, as it cost her quite the painful loss.]] But, still pretty badass for a twiggy, twelve-year-old girl who wouldn't have been expected [[spoiler: to have those two]] land on her when she woke up that day.
* LittleMissConArtist: Apparently, she's ''very'' good at getting people into trouble.
* MadeOfIron: She's the one who [[spoiler: gets her head repeatedly kicked in, has what has to be concussion, a possibly broken jaw and nose, a wonderfully developing cauliflower ear, as well as likely kicked-in ribs and defensive wounds to her hands and arms.]] Yet, she's moving about, is fairly lucid and is as ready for pay-back as she can be, if rather creakily. [[spoiler: Contrast with [[TheLoad Callan-dropped-like-a-sack-of-potatoes-with-one-hit-and-out-for-the-count]].]] Girl's pretty damn tough.
* ManipulativeBitch: Already has levels in this, according to both Rose ''and'' Blake. Peter also seems to be a bit wary of her.
* NoSell: When the group is attacked by [[spoiler:a demon of the choir of Madness]], Rose notes that she's one of the least affected because she's ''already'' unhinged.
* TheSociopath: Blake considers her a budding one. Her actions do rather back this assessment up. Also in the midst of the siege of Hillsglade (where her life and the lives of her immediate family are in danger), her only question is whether she would really need to give up her ability to lie. She grows markedly more hesitant than she had been to become a practitioner when she learns the answer. This implies that she relies on, or at least enjoys, her ability to lie to the extent that she considers foregoing magical power to keep it. In case it needs to be said this is NOT normal for a minor.
* TheStoic: Doesn't seem to have the usual startle-function or natural reactions to shocks. [[spoiler: Even her attacking Andy didn't come across as particularly anger-driven, but more like "we're under attack: OK -- attack in kind".]]
** NotSoStoic: It ''can'' happen. It just takes something rather extreme like [[spoiler: a quick trip to the Abyss and its [[PsychologicalTormentZone Mind Games]] to pull it off. Mind you, having said that, she can be talked down surprisingly easily, considering.]]
* TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior: Basically everything she does.
* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: Or in this case [[spoiler: magical insects of horrendous, skin-burrowing yickness.]]
* WiseBeyondTheirYears: Or, at least, has the adult filters in place a lot younger than usual. That's actually a bit creepy.


!!! Peter Thorburn

One of Blake's cousins and Paige's fraternal twin about one year older than him. Son of Paul Thorburn and his first wife, Stephanie.
[[spoiler:Several lines of his in later chapters hint that he has some intact memories of Blake, referring to his friendship with Molly and Paige(he himself called Rose a friendless loser) and expressing jealousy that he managed to call Rosalyn senoir a C-word.]]


----

* AcademicAlphaBitch: In school he coasted by on his intelligence and Blake describes him as mean enough to make his teachers cry.
* CombatPragmatist: He's not too big on fair fights. And, he will use ''anything'' he can think of to tip the scales if running is not an option.
-->'''Peter''': Lesson numero uno for Thorburns. Go for the jugular.
* DeadpanSnarker: Has wit and knows how to cut with it, does our Peter. He can also use it to snap somebody out of a funk, too, with a one-two combo with BrutalHonesty... if only out of a renewed wish to strangle him.
* GenreSavvy: Much like his sister he's clever-when he's told that in Jacob's Bell live the children of a professional killer, one of whom specializes in explosives, he believes it.
* TheHeart: Strangely enough, starts stepping up to act as this almost from the moment things take a dive southwards. He backs Blake up (or anybody else who says something that sounds like it might remotely pan out as a survive-the-next-few-minutes idea), ruthlessly puts down less-than-stellar input, contributes as best he can (given his total FishOutOfWater status when it comes to things that go bump), bucks spirits up when others start to fray and manages to help keep the group focused on surviving from moment to moment. He... just takes a rather different tack from normal, though: as Hearts go, he's quite dark. He uses ''spite'', irritation and pushing your triggers to keep you going. [[spoiler: However, he's rather careful in ''not'' pushing those particular buttons when it comes to Blake and keeping it lightly snarky at most. Almost goes under the radar until you sit back and look at it again.]]
* HyperAwareness: When most of the family are focused on digging at Rose, he's the one noting such things as [[spoiler:chalk sigils in odd corners and hidden behind things.]] He's also amongst the quickest to realise that those in the room actually mean what they say about the dangers within Jacob's Bell. However absurd it may sound on the surface.
* IfYouDieICallYourStuff: When [[spoiler:he's about to be killed by the Bane]], he has the following exchange with Ellie:
-->'''Peter''': If you make it out of this, you can have my stuff.
-->'''Ellie''': Fuck you, I don’t ''want'' your stuff.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Granted, it's not a big heart and one would have to ask questions about the actual value of the gold. There is also an awful lot of Thorburn jerktasticness to dig through to find it, as well: but, he ''can'' actually find it in himself to care beyond what would be strictly necessary for personal survival, only. He's... still rather the [[ToughLove sarcastic and cutting jerk]] when he does so, though.
* JumpedAtTheCall: [[spoiler: His response to finding out about the supernatural is to quote Harry Potter and the Matrix before extracting a promise from Blake to tell him everything. While practically ''giddy.'']]
* ManipulativeBastard: Has had lessons in this in the care of his mother. And it shows.
* ShipTease: A little bit with [[spoiler:Ainsley Behaim]] of all people in the Possession arc. [[spoiler:Alister doesn't exactly approve.]]
* ShutUpHannibal: Does this to [[spoiler:Barbatorem possessing Johannes]] in Judgement 16.10, noting that even if things are horrible now he would always push forward to tomorrow.
* TheSmartGuy: As far as Ellie is concerned, letting him do the thinking most of the time is standard procedure.
* ToughLove: Displays this in his pep talks to the younger Thorburns, telling [[spoiler:Roxanne that it's okay that she's never going to be okay, because, as a Thorburn, she was never going to be okay anyway]] and telling [[spoiler: Christoff that deliberately sacrificing his humanity to get away from life won't help]].
* WelcomedToTheMasquerade: [[spoiler:By Blake, to fight the witch hunters. He takes it pretty well, up until he realizes that {{Karma}} exists.]]

!!! James Thorburn

One of the younger cousins at 14. Paul Thorburn's first child with Jessica, his second wife.

----

* FourEyesZeroSoul: Wears glasses and happens to be kind of a jerk, having been involved in sprees of vandalism and hanging out with other hoodlums.
* InvisibleToAdults: Seems to be able to see Others to some degree. [[spoiler: He spotted Blake in the TV's reflection and even tried to react.]] He's perhaps not as quick to as Ivy is, but he's still got it.
* YoungerThanTheyLook: He's 14 and not the sweetest lad you'll ever meet; however, he still has the protections and abilities of a more innocent child. Given that he's a [[{{Jerkass}} Thorburn]], it's quite the achievement to stave off early-onset cynicism while starting to go off the rails.

!!! Kathryn Thorburn

The oldest of the Thorburn cousins. A chef and former businesswoman. Paul Thorburn's first child with Stephanie.

* AFateWorseThanDeath: [[spoiler:Gets taken by the Abyss during the Possession arc.]]
* AlmightyMom: The only Thorburn cousin to have a child. She's described as a "mother bear" and a "tyrant."
* AttackAttackAttack: Her primary tactic. She's a bulldog who doesn't let up. If she runs into a wall, she'll just undermine it and keep attacking.
* AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther: She [[spoiler:orders Blake to save Roxanne instead of her when it looks like only one of them can make it out.]]
* BadassInANiceSuit: She dresses to give this impression, by contrast to her cousins. In a courtroom, she'd be a terror. When she [[spoiler:beats a clockwork robot with a chair]], it's this.
* ExoticEyeDesigns: [[spoiler:When the Abyss takes her, her eyes are overwritten with crayon scribbles.]]
* IHaveAFamily: She briefly cites her son, and others who depend on her, when she's trying to rationalize away the horde of Others trying to kill the cousins.
* ImprovisedWeapon: She beats [[spoiler:the Behaim's clockwork robot]] with a chair, which [[spoiler:proves effective as the splinters jam up the gears.]]
* IWillOnlySlowYouDown:
** When [[spoiler:her arm is dislocated in the Tenements, a mostly vertical space where you need to climb to move around, she instructs Blake to get Roxanne to safety instead of helping her. Blake refuses to leave her behind.]]
** In [[http://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2015/01/06/possession-15-1/ Possession 15.1]] [[spoiler:she tells them to leave her once again out of despair, and this time they're forced to do exactly that.]]
* NeverMyFault: Blake suggests this about her, that she has always had someone to take the fall for her.
* TheScrappy: In universe at very least, Blake thinks that even if the Thorburn family hadn't been pitted against one another by Rose Sr. that he would still have heavily disliked her. Even if it was intentionally only showing her the worst and most depressing things about her the book she reads in the Abyss hints that her closer family don't like or care for her much either, with her feeling the same loathing for herself as they do.
* WasOnceAMan: [[spoiler:Becomes a boogeyman in the Abyss.]]
* WhatTheHellHero: Gives Blake this for [[spoiler:taking them all to the Drains and nearly getting Roxanne killed.]]

!!! Christoff Walker

Callan and Molly's younger brother, who was often bullied by a Behaim. The third child of Blake's Aunt Irene.

* ChildrenAreInnocent: The closest to blameless of all the Thorburn cousins. He's still comfortable with stirring up trouble, though.
* HarmfulToMinors: [[spoiler:He has to watch his brother die.]]
* {{Revenge}}: Following [[spoiler:Callan's death]], he desires revenge on the Behaims and Duchamps.
* WhatTheHellHero: His interest in throwing away his humanity to get his revenge makes ''Peter'', of all people, slap him with a very pointed one of these.

!!! The Unknown Thorburn

A major spoiler character, one of the driving questions of Pact is answered by this character's very existence. Or lack thereof. The original version of Rose and Blake before they were split by the Barber to create Rosalyn Senior's perfect heirs.
----

* TheAce: Rose and Blake are both more than formidable on their own, and they're less than half of the original Thorburn heir each.
** Although Rose and Blake being so effective in their respective elements(direct fights and tenacity for Blake, analytical thought and diplomacy for Rose) may be because Rose senior made them "optimized builds" by ensuring to separating antagonistic traits that could hold the original back. A scrappy fighting nature wont get you far if you overanalyze yourself out of ever using it, or are too impulsive to thoroughly think out a strategy you would be capable of creating with a clearer head.
*** She could also have ensured that the parts lost of the original Thorburn(it's stated that the Barber's shears destroy at least a small part of you permanently when the cut you) was the superfluous or even negative character traits that wouldn't benefit either half (e.g laziness and procrastination)
* BrokenAce: Blake realizes, when he has access to both his and Rose's fears, that their progenitor not only had his severe PTSD but also Rose's deep paranoia about others, meaning that they would have been even more broken than Blake and Rose.
* TheNameless: Their name was cut away to form Rose's name. Blake occasionally calls them "Rusty," while Rose favors something like "Ross" or "Russel."
* NotSoDifferent: Shares one more thing with Evan than previously known, both of their potentials were cut short due to Others. Evan's resourcefulness, morals and intelligence would have made him an exemplary adult (at least in Blake's eyes) if he hadn't been hounded by the Hyena until he died of exposure.
* TerribleArtist: Not him. But, both Rose and Blake can never excel because his existing talent was smashed to pieces and partially portioned out when they were created. Rose got a truncated version of his skills (enough to draw diagrams well and visualise problems in the abstract) and Blake got his actual urge to create art with some very basic drafting skill and technical vocabulary, but little else. Blake's memories of aiding other artists in Toronto are likely misleading: Rus-- was very likely also exhibiting and/or learning the ropes or getting a discount on supplies and workspace by helping out. After all, to get two people able to draw and conceptualize complex magical diagrams, the guy must have been pretty bloody good at more than the carpentry.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Behaim Circle]]

!!! General Tropes

* BequeathedPower: They've done this for generations, storing vast reserves of time for later use. The family elders forced their children to swear oaths not to use it, but Laird, among others, has no such restriction and can access the power freely.
* DecapitatedArmy: Subverted when [[spoiler:Blake kills Laird.]] While the family as a whole is united behind Laird, when [[spoiler:he dies]], Duncan takes over seamlessly, and continues [[spoiler:the plan to seize the lordship of Jacob's Bell.]]
* TheFamilyThatSlaysTogether: Laird has no problem calling upon the other family members to assist his plans, ''regardless'' of age-Blake is sickened to see that none of the Behaims sent after him in Toronto besides Duncan are older than twenty.
* FatBastard: From Blake's perspective, since they've tried to cut access to the manor and Laird and Duncan have both tried to kill him.
* FeudingFamilies: With the Thorburns due to their rivalry with the Duchamps who they are allied to, but beforehand they merely kept their distance from the family of diabolists.
* ItsPersonal: Blake [[spoiler:killing Laird]] turns their enmity not only to him as a Thorburn and diabolist, but towards him personally.
* NeverMyFault: Both the Behaims and the Duchamps seem to operate off a morality system where they can never possibly be in the wrong. Given that both families more or less qualify as cults and the convoluted way karma works in Pact, it borders on BlueAndOrangeMorality.
* RingOfPower: The Behaim power can only be accessed through a special ring, whose enchantments make it so that its connections will always lead it back to the Behaims if lost. Alister Behaim is the first heir in generations to be able to wear the thing due to the rest of his family having fingers too big to wear it, forcing them to wear it as a necklace instead.
* StrongFamilyResemblance: Blake notes they all have the same dark haired, square faced, heavyset if not outright fat look.
* TimeMaster: The Behaim Circle specializes in chronomancy, the manipulation of time. [[spoiler: Or, more accurately, the manipulation of other peoples perception of time, though tapping into the Behaim power reserves does grant true time manipulation abilities.]] As a result they often use zeitgeists (time spirits) as familiars or attack dogs as well as great men from history.
* TimeStandsStill: An expensive trick, but one that they can still perform. [[spoiler:More accurately, it's making the people they ''use'' it on think that time is standing still, while they're unaffected.]]

!!! Laird Behaim

The police chief of Jacob's Bell, head of the Behaim Circle, and a major thorn in Blake's side. [[spoiler:Killed by Blake in Void 7.7]]

----

* BadassLongcoat: Wears one when he shows up in Toronto to bail Duncan out after his failure to stop Blake.
* BlatantLies: Proclaims that he's sworn to not harm others directly in Bonds 1.5, only to kick Blake in the face in Subordination 6.12.
* CantKillYouStillNeedYou: He tells Blake in Subordination 6.12 that he needs him alive at least a little longer for the sake of his plans.
* TheDarkArts: It's revealed in Aimon's Histories that [[spoiler:Rosalyn Thorburn trained him in diabolism]], explaining why he knows so much about defending against demons.
* DeathSeeker: Sandra suggests that his unconscious goal in Toronto was to give himself over to Conquest, and that he had previously set his affairs in order. [[spoiler: Blake killing him, though, was not apparently part of the plan.]]
* DirtyCop: Is papering over the circumstances of Molly Walker's death to cover up the magical aspects [[spoiler:and the fact that he's the one who orchestrated the murder]]. Why this doesn't interfere with his cop oath is currently up for debate.
* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Showing up at Blake's door, presenting himself as the better option in comparison to the unsympathetic Mounty he has with him, then taking Blake out for a walk to explain the situation before [[RulesLawyer Rules Lawyering]] his way out of his promise to keep Blake safe while he was out of the house.
* FollowInMyFootsteps: Played with with his backstory; while Aimon clearly placed his hopes and dreams in Laird, his hope wasn't for Laird to follow him but to ''surpass'' him, hence Aimon did not force Laird to swear to protect and not to use the vast Behaim power that he inherited.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: When Blake stabs Laird, it's the result of Laird holding him in place so that Conquest could force him to relive a moment of weakness he wasn't proud of. Previously, Blake had had Laird in his clutches and refused to kill him, instead imprisoning him. It was Laird's actions that turned Blake into a CorneredRattlesnake.
* ImpromptuTracheotomy: Blake stabs him in the throat with a splinter from the factory that the Abstract Demon dwelled in Void 7.6. [[spoiler: He chokes to death on his own blood in Void 7.7.]]
* {{Jerkass}}:
** As he states to Blake, "Oh, I'm a little bit of a bastard.", and takes pleasure in screwing him over at every turn.
** Briar Girl also backs that statement up.
** He tends to be nicer to those within the family though.
* ManipulativeBastard:
** He is introduced by freely giving out information regarding the world that Blake's found himself in-then leaving him vulnerable to its dangers.
** He brings discord into the budding alliance between Blake, Rose, and Maggie by revealing that [[spoiler:she killed Molly.]], as well as manipulating Maggie into doing it in the first place.
* NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup: Averts this when Blake goes to great lengths to foil his plan and get him arrested by his own policemen. The reader assumes the menace has been dealt with at least temporarily, but Laird immediately gets out of trouble and starts the ritual again within the hour.
* RulesLawyer: As part of his ManipulativeBastard skillset. It's also noted that he specifically stores up good Karma so that he can freely do harm to others if necessary without going into karmic debt.
* StepfordSmiler: While he acts the image of the professional practitioner and aspires to be Lord of Jacob's Bell, he's playing a part in schemes that were set in place some time before his birth, and Sandra suspects that inside he's screaming.
* TheUnchosenOne: He was raised as the unspecified culmination of his father and Rosalyn Thorburn's plans, given every privilege, and generally was treated as if he was TheChosenOne. He had no choice in the matter. Is it any wonder he ended up a StepfordSmiler willing to sacrifice his [[LossOfIdentity self]] in order to break free?

!!! Aimon Behaim

The former patriarch of the Behaim Circle, and one of Rosalyn Thorburn's few allies in Jacob's Bell. He was also a trained soldier during WWII fighting Axis practitioners.

----

* {{Determinator}}: During his brawl with Rosalyn Thorburn he didn't give up even when she had Arsepint grab his rifle before pointing it at his head.
* DotingParent: Rosalyn predicts in his Histories chapter that he'll be one to Laird, in order to avoid being the disciplinarian his father was.
* HandicappedBadass: His arm was crippled due to a ghoul attack, leaving it a necrotized ruin.
* MilitaryMage: Was a soldier during WWII who fought [[{{Ghostapo}} Axis practitioners]].
* PosthumousCharacter: Is long dead by the events of the story, but is the focus character of the sixth Histories chapter.
* ShellShockedVeteran: After coming home from the war he comments that it changed him in a lot of ways, since as a practitioner he had to be on-guard against Axis practitioners at all times.
* SlapSlapKiss: With Rosalyn Thorburn as mentioned above.
* StrangerInAFamiliarLand: After coming home from the war maimed, he considers going to work in an office "a quiet sort of hell."
* WouldHitAGirl: Had no issues fighting Rosalyn Thorburn.
* WoundThatWillNotHeal: His ghoul bite never truly healed, leaving his arm permanently damaged.

!!! Duncan Behaim

A police officer in Toronto, and Laird's nephew.

----

* AntiVillain: Type IV, verging into HeroAntagonist. He honestly sympathizes with Evan's situation and considers what happened to him a tragedy, and steadfastly believes that he is neither evil nor doing evil by [[spoiler:framing an innocent man for murder.]] He also considers Blake dangerous and believes that reducing him to something "smaller" is in the best interests of everyone.
* BulletTime: He can duplicate this effect with chronomancy.
* DragonAscendant: After [[spoiler:Laird's death]], he assumes control of the Behaim attempt to gain lordship over Jacob's Bell, leading his younger cousins.
* FrameUp: Frames Blake for [[spoiler:Evan's murder.]]
* {{Fingore}}: [[spoiler:Blake]] cuts at one of his hands with [[spoiler:June]] in Void 7.6, seemingly severing the tendons.
* FiveFingerDiscount: He's skilled at sleight of hand. Blake suspects that he abuses this skill to slip incriminating evidence onto the persons of the criminals he arrests.
* HappilyMarried: Appears to have a good relationship with his fiancee Joanna.
* JustBetweenYouAndMe: Is kind enough to take the time to explain to Blake just how badly outmaneuvered he's been while he has Blake locked in an interrogation room with no witnesses.
* LawmanGoneBad: From Blake's perspective, and from the perspective of the other cops once he [[spoiler:opens fire on an unarmed prisoner in the middle of the station.]]
* PoliceAreUseless: Expresses a view that the ''average'' cop is pretty good, but that by "average" he is saying that half of them are ''below'' that standard, and that even the good ones get tired, cut corners, and make mistakes.
* PunchClockVillain: He has nothing against Blake personally, but he's doing what he can to further his family's interests. [[spoiler:Averted after Laird's death, as he does indeed have a personal grudge against Blake now.]]
* VillainousBreakdown: Once Blake [[spoiler:damages his reputation for the third time, he starts shooting to kill]]. That's not the breakdown, though-the breakdown comes when [[spoiler:he realizes that Evan has stolen the power source he needs to rewind time and undo the above, leaving him trapped in a timeline where he opened fire on an unarmed, restrained prisoner in front of a room full of police officers.]]
-->'''Duncan:''' Blake Thorburn!
-->'''Officer:''' Dunc, stop. You're not doing yourself any favors.
-->'''Duncan:''' Thorburn! You took something from me! Give it back!
-->'''Blake:''' ''*smirks*'' Good job Evan.
* WouldHitAGirl: Ends up throwing hot coffee at and pistol whipping Maggie Holt during their scuffle following her holding him up with Fell's gun.
* YouHaveNoChanceToSurvive: Both before and after he's revealed as a practitioner, he lays out for Blake how he's been trapped, mentioning offhandedly that if Blake tries to summon any demons he'll kill him, let his family take care of the resulting disturbance, and walk away with a clean conscience.

!!! Craig Behaim

Laird's son, who is one of the children sent after Blake in Toronto.

----

* ChildProdigy: According to Ainsley he became a practitioner at a very young age and is very skilled as a result.
* InTheBlood: According to Ainsley he takes after his father in ruthlessness.
* PaperTalisman: Uses sticky notes covered in runes.
* YouKilledMyFather: Desires revenge on Blake for killing Laird.

!!! Ainsley Behaim

One of the Behaim children after Blake, and the oldest girl. She specializes in the use of candles and pins for binding.

----

* FoolishSiblingResponsibleSibling: The responsible to Alister's foolish, though they're cousins, not siblings.
* HumiliationConga: Gets slashed by Mary, covered in Hyena breath, and then gets pissed on by Screwloose.
* MoralMyopia: Proclaims that she's a better person than Blake even if she let a hundred people die due to Blake being a diabolist who destroyed a Behaim study. This ignores the fact that he was acting in self-defense due to her family's attempts to murder him. Blake's attempts to get her to see how ridiculous that is are met with denial, even after he saves her life.
* NiceGirl: Despite her first meeting with Thorburns getting off of the wrong foot, she does seem to be a genuinely decent person.
* RummageSaleReject: Alister describes her as wearing less than flattering clothing due to her parent's influence, and laments that if their older cousins were any indication she'd gain the generic Behaim body type upon reaching 18.
* TeamMom: Takes this role amongst the Behaim cousins and to Alister in particular, much to his annoyance.

!!! Owen Behaim

One of the Behaim children after Blake, identified by his sunglasses.

----

* CoolShades: Wears a pair of sunglasses all the time.

!!! Tandy Behaim

Another of the Behaim children after Blake, and the youngest girl.

----

!!!Benjamin Behaim

An older, retired member of the Behaim family.

* AppealToTradition: He feels that the family, and the world as a whole, has been becoming increasingly dishonest, and thinks that the universe is punishing them for it.
* GrumpyOldMan: If a reasonably polite one. He's quite open about what he sees as the moral decay of the world, with people becoming better and better at lying to each other and themselves.
* HonestyIsTheBestPolicy: He doesn't believe in the LiteralGenie antics of his younger family members, believing that it biases the universe against them.
* RamblingOldManMonologue: He gives one about how he thinks the world has become fundamentally dishonest, and how he doesn't want that to be the foundation for Jacob's Bell.
* TheTeetotaler: He doesn't drink, or even take medication that might impair his thought process.

!!!Alister Behaim

A younger member of the Behaim family, but talented, and a candidate for Lordship once [[spoiler:Blake kills Laird.]]
----
* AnArmAndALeg: [[spoiler:Loses a hand to the Barber in Possession 15.3, which unfortunately happened to be the one carrying the Behaim ring.]]
* ArrangedMarriage: [[spoiler:He's betrothed to Rose.]]
* AwesomenessByAnalysis: Through use of the [[TarotTroubles Tarot]], Alister can determine past and future events and get a good read on the personality of his opponents, but he has to interpret the cards. The catch to that is obvious: if he doesn't have enough background to interpret what he sees correctly, the wheels can fall off.
* BigBrotherInstinct: While they're cousins instead of siblings, he feels this way towards Ainsley, noting to Rose that despite her fussy nature she still displays a fair bit of naivete regarding men.
* ChildProdigy: He's no older than eighteen, but he led several attacks on Hillsglade House, and immediately after meeting Blake flat-out tells him what Blake's about to do without any qualifiers to allay against the consequences of a failed prediction. In his own Histories chapter, he claims (and Laird confirms) that he's much more talented than his older cousins only a year after awakening.
* TheDarkArts: His Histories chapter reveals that much like Laird [[spoiler:Rosalyn Thorburn trained him in diabolism.]]
* DoubleEdgedAnswer: The main flaw with Alister's use of the Tarot in that he has to interpret the cards correctly, and if he's not careful the effects of the cards can be turned back on him by a clever opponent.
* GreenEyes: Blake calls them "bottle-glass eyes."
* FoolishSiblingResponsibleSibling: The foolish one to Ainsley's responsible, though they're cousins, not siblings.
--> '''Alister''': Ah, Ainsley. You always play by the rules. We’d all be happier if you didn’t.
* HealingHands: He can spend power to briefly reverse time and undo recent injuries.
* InsufferableGenius: He ''knows'' what he's doing and, during his fight with Blake to a draw, only briefly does he stop smiling that smug little smile. Made all the more galling as he would have lost outright if not for last second intervention from Sandra Duchamp.
* MarionetteMaster: When he gains control of the Behaim family, he receives a weapon in the form of a large suit of armor, which he can control with his ring. It's NighInvulnerable and can FlashStep using chronomancy.
* MundaneUtility: Uses Chronomancy to speed through classes by sacrificing that time.
* PrettyBoy: Rose admits in her personal thoughts that she finds him very handsome.
* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: After [[spoiler:he becomes the leader of his family]] he focuses on the issue of [[spoiler:Jacob's Bell sinking into the Abyss]] by trying to keep the peace between Blake and Rose.
* ResetButton: See HealingHands, above. At one point he uses a more powerful version to save a Behaim whose throat had just been slit.
* {{Seers}}: He can make prophecies, and they tend to come true.
* SheatheYourSword: He pulls this on Blake to get him to stop attacking by placing the key to the Behaim power reserves in his hands without a fight. Blake is flummoxed enough that he actually stops long enough to hear him out.
* StepfordSmiler: It's revealed in Histories 12 that his smugness is mainly a defense mechanism due to the pressure he's under.
* {{UsefulNotes/TarotCards}}: His Implement is a Tarot Deck given to him by Laird Behaim, and with it [[TarotTroubles he can view present, past, and future through the medium of the cards.]]
* TimeMaster: Moreso than most of his relatives-his access to the store of Behaim power lets him ''actually'' manipulate time, instead of just perception of it.
* VainSorcerer: Well, Vain Chronomancer in his case, but he spends needed power just to undo minor scratches in the middle of a fight just so he can show off. Although given how much he relied on swaying the opinion of spirits during his duel with Blake he may be keeping up appearances for them (look unharmed and confident and the spirits will treat you accordingly).

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Duchamp Coven]]

!!!General Tropes

* ArrangedMarriage: Duchamp women end up getting placed in arranged marriages for power, as was the case with Sandra Duchamp. Not all of their husbands are as nice as Jeremy.
* BehindEveryGreatMan: In marriages they play to their husband's strengths, or shore them up if they're lacking in some quality.
* BigScrewedUpFamily: The Duchamps purposely lie through the truth to their children in order to ensnare them into practicing, and when they have children they repeat the cycle. In Jeremy Meath's words they also more or less whore out their daughters to other practitioners for power. [[spoiler:This ultimately leads to them breaking apart during the Lordship battle because Sandra wouldn't change the system despite all of them believing it.]]
* FeudingFamilies: Also with the Thorburns.
* EmotionControl: A coven of enchantresses.
* NeverMyFault: Both the Behaims and the Duchamps seem to operate off a morality system where they can never possibly be in the wrong. Given that both families more or less qualify as cults and the convoluted way karma works in Pact, it borders on BlueAndOrangeMorality.
* OneGenderRace: Any Duchamp children will be girls, and will only give birth to girls due to ancient magic, though there are ways of overriding that rule, such as the will of a god.
* TakeOverTheWorld: Their ultimate goal through marrying their daughters off to powerful practitioners.
* ThickerThanWater: Despite any issues that come about due to the BigScrewedUpFamily, they are extremely close knit. About the only time a Duchamp will think about revolting from the norm is when they're in their mid- to late-teens or as late as their early twenties. [[spoiler: In a kind of heart-warming way, most of the ones we've seen that have an against-the-grain mindset usually have it on the behalf of another Duchamp they've seen being given a particularly harsh match-up, rather than just as an ego-trip.]]
* {{Yokai}}: The Duchamps have ties to Japanese practitioners and Others of that region.

!!!Sandra Duchamp

The current head of the Duchamp family, who has a troll familiar named Hildr who takes the form of a stoat.

----

* AlphaBitch: Blake describes her in his words as being similar to the kind of woman who was queen bitch at PTA meetings.
* AmicableExes: She and her husband, Jeremy, don't talk much, but remain on good terms-he's the first one that she calls when she needs to ensure that Blake Thorburn never returns to Jacob's Bell.
* AntiVillain: Despite being a major antagonist to Blake, she's not all evil. For instance, she saves Maggie's life for nothing in return.
* ArrangedMarriage: With Jeremy, a devotee of Dionysius. They separated after his god caused her to conceive a son, against her family's magic and intentions.
** Briefly veered into PerfectlyArrangedMarriage prior to this, as Sandra clearly cherished their fragile relationship.
* BigDamnHeroes: Saves Maggie Holt in Signature 8.3 from a pack of goblins by threatening to have Hildr eat them all.
* EvilMatriarch: From Blake's POV, as she's essentially spearheading the campaign to have him killed or removed.
* {{Familiar}}: Hildr, [[AllTrollsAreDifferent a troll]] from Scandinavia that took her almost a year to find and bind. It takes the form of a [[WeaselMascot stoat]] when not needed.
* IronLady: Calmly tortures a Faerie ambassador to ensure that he wasn't planning something tricky (he was). Her familiar is ''a troll,'' rather than the minor Faerie courtier of her sister and nieces.
* LoveCannotOvercome: Her relationship with Jeremy did not survive his god forcing her to conceive a son.
* LoveHurts: She and Jeremy love one another, but their respective responsibilities damaged their relationship sorely.
* ManipulativeBitch: She pushed Laird to go to Toronto, knowing that he was unlikely to return, as part of her own ambitions to rule Jacob's Bell.
* MindOverMatter: She can achieve this with rapid enchanting, by altering the connections of objects in motion.
* PetTheDog: She saves Maggie after [[spoiler:Padraic steals her name]], citing "frustrated maternal instinct," and asks for nothing in return.
* SilkHidingSteel: Her family ideal is this, the power behind the throne. She herself is ''very'' ruthless when it's called for, but her personal ambitions are to hold power more publicly-specifically, she wants to be Lord of Jacob's Bell.



!!!Joanna Duchamp

Younger sister of Penelope.

----

* ChangelingTale: [[spoiler:Padraic replaced her on her tenth birthday, letting one of his friends or himself take on her guise. Nobody has noticed.]]
* OneSteveLimit: Averted. She shares her name with Duncan Behaim's fiance.
* PunchClockVillain: She didn't have anything against Blake when she sent Letita after him, but did so because her mother said to attack him if spotted.
* YearOutsideHourInside: [[spoiler:Should she ever manage to get out of the Fairy House this will be the situation she finds herself in. Years have passed since she went in and yet the house doesn't keep time.]]

!!!Penelope "Penny" Duchamp

Older sister of Joanna.

----
* LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe: Her implement is thought to be a small golden shield Blake noticed.
* PunchClockVillain: Same as her sister above. It got her grounded for half-a-month for letting him go.
* ReasonableAuthorityFigure:
** At least compared to the other Duchamp and Behaim kids, as she wasn't particularly rude or condescending to Maggie while trying to make a deal with her. She at least hears Blake out when he calls a meeting.
** That being said, others have called her out because she occasionally has some control issues.


!!! Lola Duchamp

One of the teenage Duchamps, a senior about a year older than Maggie, who attends St. Sebastian's alongside her.

----
* ArrangedMarriage: Despite her efforts she's been forced into one with a man ten years her senior so her family can have a little more power. She hates it, but if it earns the lordship for her family she'd do it.
* MommyIssues: With her mother, Joyce. They love each other, but Lola isn't exactly happy about a lot of things.
* NecessarilyEvil: While she felt that Molly's death was indeed necessary, she still found it horrible and as such [[spoiler:she dislikes Maggie]] for it.
* TeleportersAndTransporters: By "Pulling" along a connection, she can teleport people. Though the effort leaves her completely drained.
* ThickerThanWater: Believes that her Aunt Sandra knows what she's doing and will make things better, making her willing to go through with the marriage.

!!! Crooked Hat

A Scourge that married into the Duchamp family and was among those brought to Jacob's Bell for the battle for Lordship. Killed by Blake in Execution 12.5.
----

* AmbiguouslyEvil: He's not noted as evil ''per se'', but his paranoia was having a negative effect on his family, sealing his fate.
* ClassyCane: Has one.
* TheCynic: His experiences involving the Abyss have made him so, and he sees no difference between it and the world.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: Is killed by his own bound Other upon Evan managing to free it.
* NiceHat: His probable Implement and/or demesne is a worn, bent top hat that serves as a portal to the Abyss.
* RummageSaleReject: Blake notes that his outfit looks like a mess.

!!! Gudbrand

A Valkalla whose father remarried a Duchamp and is allied to the family. Killed by Blake in Execution 13.5.
----

* GenerationXerox: According to Joyce he's not all that much different from his father, though it's possible her views may have been skewed by the high amount of bad karma he likely had.
* NotSoDifferent: Blake notes after killing him that they both suffered on account of their ancestor's sins.
* SinsOfOurFathers: Essentially this is the reason that he gets put on the hit list. His father decided to use his newborn siblings to fuel his craft.
* SwordAndGun: Wields a shortsword in one hand, and a pistol in the other.
* PoweredByAForsakenChild: He uses the souls of newborn babies to empower his equipment and allow him to autoparry any attacks.

!!! Carter Duchamp

A career criminal and pyromancer who married into the Duchamps and got his wife hooked on drugs. Killed by Blake in Execution 13.6.

----

* TheAggressiveDrugDealer: Got his own wife hooked on drugs.
* PlayingWithFire: As he is a pyromancer.
* TapOnTheHead: [[spoiler:Blake kills him by having Evan drop a bucket filled with ice and salt on his head.]]

!!!Hal Spikedick

A goblin king affiliated with the Duchamps who was summoned for the lordship contest.
----

* {{Familiar}}: His familiar is a particularly crafty goblin by the name of Gallowscream.
* HairTriggerTemper: Is incredibly irritable.
* UncattyResemblance: Is about as scruffy looking as the goblins he summons.
* UnfortunateNames: His surname is "Spikedick."

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Unaffiliated Practitioners]]

!!!Johannes Lillegard

A sorcerer who isn't tied to any family in particular, he dwells in the North End.

----

* AffablyEvil: Is polite and friendly to Blake, offering advice and not attempting to deceive him. Maggie notes that his territory looks like the bad old days before the Seal of Solomon. When Maggie comes to him for help, he's kind and courteous, offering her a position as TheDragon for him when he takes over Jacob's Bell, and requests that she not interfere with the group of child vestiges who he's filled with rats and mice after auctioning their torment off to various Others.
* AnimalMotifs: Rats, due to his heavy Pied Piper motif.
* DarkWorld: He has created one in his domain in the form of a huge Vestige, allowing Others to prey on the humans within.
* EvilCripple[=/=]GeniusCripple: He's noted to not only be powerful, but wise and arrogant in Rosalyn's notes despite lacking the use of an eye, arm, and leg. Histories 14 reveals that he got that way due to being beat up by goblins during his attempts to build a demesne.
* EyeScream: Histories 14 reveals that he lost his eye to a goblin queen turned partially goblin herself.
* {{Familiar}}: His is an angel and Gatekeeper of the Seventh Ring named "Faysal Anwar" that takes the form of an [[CanineCompanion Afghan hound]].
* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:Sacrifices himself to make sure the Barber is sealed within the Abyss. It works, but then the lawyers get involved...]]
* TheIdealist: He believes that in spite of everything, the world is a better place with magic in it.
* MagicalFlutist: His magic pipes, which serve as his Implement.
* ManInWhite: Dresses in a white outfit.
* MusicalAssassin: His implement is a set of pipes, which plays into his heavy Pied Piper theme. He's seen on screen using them to control some of the child vestiges he created. They were used by various people who ''really should not have been around children'' before he claimed them, and he suggests that they might even be the ones from the old tales.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: [[spoiler: Johannes performs the ultimate sacrifice, allowing Barbatorem to possess him in order to seal the demon in the Abyss. Unfortunately, the lawyers pull Barbatorem out. Since the Barber is still possessing Johannes, it gains control over Faysal by using Johannes's pipes.]]
* NouveauRiche: As far as practitioners are concerned, as he became very powerful in a short amount of time without being part of one of the old families, though he was descended from practitioners.
* PatrickStewartSpeech: He gives one to Maggie about how humanity is ''winning,'' in the long run, against the supernatural by virtue of HumansAdvanceSwiftly.
* PostModernMagik: [[spoiler:How he claimed his demesne. He claimed everything within the reach of his voice, but he set up speakers to play his statement in areas across town, so quietly and so far apart that only a few beings of note heard him. When he had emerged victorious, he claimed not just those areas where his voice was heard, but everything between them.]]
* {{Pride}}: Has shades of this. He's very powerful, talented, and charismatic, but [[spoiler:he totally misjudged his position in his familiar bond with Faysal.]]
* TheRedMage: He's a Sorcerer, meaning doesn't exclusively work with anything in particular and has multiple skill sets according to Maggie.
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveSupernaturalPowers: Is powerful enough to do pretty much whatever he wants.
* SpaceMaster: He favors space manipulation, evidenced in his domain.
* TotalitarianUtilitarian: Of the PoweredByAForsakenChild variety. He is of the opinion that the vestiges he's created suffer in the place of normal humans, and therefore his demesne is of a net benefit to the world by drawing the attention of those that would otherwise be looking for loopholes and victims. [[spoiler:This backfires on him when Faysal Anwar decides that ''Johannes'' is an acceptable loss for the greater good.]]
* UniquenessValue: He doesn't seem to care in the slightest about the suffering of the vestiges he created, many of which are taken from children who pass through his territory on their way to middle school.
* VisionaryVillain: He firmly believes that humanity is winning the war against the Others, and wants to get in on the cusp of this change, setting an example that other Lords will follow in order to reduce the damage that the Others do to humanity even further and preventing a potentially devastating conflict with the more powerful ones. Mags compares him, obliquely, to Lucifer.
-->'''Johannes:''' [[LampshadeHanging Ouch.]]
-->'''Scarf Girl:''' Just saying.
* VowOfCelibacy: Takes one as he stakes his demesne, stating that once he dies his demesne will disappear.
* WeCanRuleTogether: Tries getting Maggie to join him during her focus chapter, but she refuses.
* WellIntentionedExtremist: He wants to make what he's done in his domain a model for the rest of the world to follow in order to prevent some of the more powerful Others from acting against their oncoming obsolescence, and doesn't seem to mind that the vestiges that he creates for the process feel and react exactly like the children that he copied them from.
* WouldHurtAChild: He tore spiritual pieces out of the children in his territory and then charged Others for the thrill of hunting the vestiges he made for them. When they decay, he fills them with rats and mice. Maggie notes that he preys on the local middle-schoolers who pass through his territory.

!!!Maggie Holt/Mags

A newcomer to the scene of Jacob's Bell, she had no real knowledge prior to the scraps she had to barter for. As a Goblin Queen, she specializes in binding goblins to her service.

----

* ActionGirl: She's a sword wielding, gun toting, goblin summoning {{badass}}. [[spoiler:Or not, since Padraic stole her name]], but she still is pretty crafty.
* AllTheOtherReindeer: Similarly to Blake, it's revealed in the Signature arc that she's not very popular in Jacob's Bell either, partially due to being a goblin queen who in Lola's words is, "doing the metaphorical equivalent of grubbing in the dirt for cockroaches" compared to the grander plans of the Behaims and Duchamps, and partially due to [[spoiler:her goblins murdering Molly despite it being considered necessary by everyone else.]]
* AmbitionIsEvil: Describes herself as a "power hungry idiot" for [[spoiler:having her goblins kill Molly in exchange for instruction and favors from the others in Jacob's Bell]].
* TheAtoner: Wants to make amends for [[spoiler:killing Blake's cousin Molly.]] As of Signature 8.1 it's revealed that [[spoiler:she's been keeping around Molly's ghost as penance, unknown to either Blake or Rose.]]
* BloodKnight: She's very at home in conflict. More than once, after Blake involves her in his war with Conquest, she indicates that she's enjoying herself-something he finds pretty disturbing. [[spoiler:This is likely due to it actually being Padraic.]]
* BrokenBird: In Signature 8.4 she notes that despite loving her parents she can't help but feel that her priorities are a bit skewed because her surrogate mother wasn't around enough and her dads aren't the most emotionally sensitive people. She also believes she's fated to die young. There's also the fact that [[spoiler:she's wracked with guilt for her part in Molly Walker's death.]]
* BulletDodgesYou: She can make bullets miss with a wave of her hand, though how she does this is unknown. [[spoiler:It's likely a work of fairy magic by Padraic.]]
* DarkAndTroubledPast: Goblins apparently killed most of the people where she used to live, though Maggie refuses to go into much detail about it.
* DissonantSerenity: To the extent that Blake is disturbed and suspicious by her chipper attitude during the Subordination Arc. of course, [[DramaticIrony readers know]] that it's because she's glad to finally be getting the second round of blood and fire out of the way. [[spoiler: Or they think they know, because she's actually a disguised Padraic]].
* DealWithTheDevil: Made a deal with the ringleader of the goblins that wiped out her town to submit to a total of [[RuleOfThree three rounds]] of "blood and darkness and fire" in order to get out alive with her family. Two apparently remain by the time the story starts.
* EarlyBirdCameo: The protagonist of a YA series published in the {{Literature/Worm}}verse.
* {{Foil}}: To Molly Walker, as she constantly fights whereas Molly focused mainly on defense in both life [[spoiler:and death as a ghost.]]
* GirlWithPsychoWeapon: During the Void arc she [[spoiler:or to be more exact Padraic]] starts wielding the Hyena in its bound form. She needs a specially made gauntlet just to hold the thing.
* GoshDangItToHeck: Maggie is forced to resort to this, much to her displeasure, after a deal with Others removed her ability to curse. It's later revealed in Signature 8.7 that the exact form of the deal was that she traded the ability to curse in order to gain the knowledge to bind superior goblins. [[spoiler:After losing her name she can swear all she likes and exercises it when appropriate.]]
-->'''Maggie:''' You’re leaving me hanging? If I could say anything crude, I’d say it now. I... can’t even allude to it. Blue. You’re leaving me blue.
-->'''Rose:''' Sad?
-->'''Maggie:''' ''*groans*''
* HeIsNotMyBoyfriend: Insists to Penelope Duchamp that she has no romantic interest in Blake, seeing him more as something akin to a friendly stray dog.
* HeroOfAnotherStory: Is the POV character of the Signature arc.
* HasTwoMommies: Her father, and her father's husband, Chris. She also keeps in contact with her birth mother, who lives in Toronto.
* IconicItem: Her checkered scarf, which doubles as a ScarfOfAsskicking. [[spoiler:It's iconic enough that after Padraic steals her name she's referred to as the girl with the checkered scarf.]]
* IncompatibleOrientation: States in Signature 8.4 that both of the guys she had serious crushes on turned out to be gay.
* InterspeciesRomance: In Signature 8.1 it's revealed that she had an attraction towards Padraic, but is well aware that he's very dangerous. Pretty sure that ended after what he did though considering she plans to go blood and fire on him.
* KnifeNut: Her implement is an athame, noted for it's heavy use in Wicca. Maggie favors it because of its roots as a sacrificial blade. After [[spoiler:Padraic steals her identity]], she gets a stiletto from Sandra Duchamp.
* LossOfIdentity: In [[http://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/07/12/signature-8-2/ Signature 8.2]], [[spoiler:Padraic takes her name, and with it all her connections.]]
* MeaningfulRename: To Mags following [[spoiler:Padraic stealing her name]].
* PinnedToTheWall: Eva pins her by her scarf to the walls of her and Andy's house via crossbow bolt in Signature 8.5.
* PowersViaPossession: Blake suspects in Toronto that she's been possessed by something to give her the ability to fight toe to toe with Others. [[spoiler:It turns out that Padraic was using glamour to disguise himself as her.]]
* PrecisionFStrike: After [[spoiler:Padraic steals her identity, giving her back the ability to curse]], she lets out a pointed "''Fuck you.''"
* RippleEffectProofMemory: As a side effect of [[spoiler:losing her name to Padraic]], she appears to be the only person who [[spoiler:can remember Blake for who he was.]]
* ShotgunsAreJustBetter: Starts wielding a pipe-shotgun in the Judgement arc.
* SirSwearsALot: Had quite a foul mouth before her deal with Others. [[spoiler:It returns upon Padraic stealing her identity.]]
* SkirtOverSlacks: Wears a skirt over her jeans.
* TheSleepless: In Toronto, Rose observes that instead of sleeping, she ''pretends'' to sleep, but she gets restless and often shifts around. [[spoiler: Since she's actually Padraic under glamour, it's probably because Faerie don't sleep]].
* SummonMagic: Specializes in summoning goblins in particular.
* TrademarkFavoriteFood: Apparently she really likes salty foods.
* TrueNeutral: Her role as Ambassador requires that she maintains neutrality to all parties, without regard to favoritism, and is enforced by the fact that if she gets called on it the title can be taken away, which would be an arguable FateWorseThanDeath. [[invoked]]
* UnwittingPawn: Was one to [[spoiler:Laird, as he had her summon goblins to kill Molly Walker.]]
* UncattyResemblance: To Blake her unkempt appearance makes her look a lot like the goblins she summons, which is apparently very common amongst Goblin Kings/Queens.

!!!Crone Mara/Mara Angnakak

A practitioner who appears to be a middle-aged aboriginal woman, she's older than she looks.

----

* AmbiguouslyHuman: Blake describes her as straddling the line between practitioner and Other. Tiffany later describes her as a "blood hag," a being with both practitioner and Other abilities.
* AndIMustScream[=/=]FateWorseThanDeath: She likes dishing these out to those who trespass. Being turned to mulch is the least of what happens: she can bind your still-aware spirit/soul to your physical remains until you do become compost over centuries. Now, think about her doll collection a bit...
* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Disdains "the white man" and vows "never" to help Maggie.
-->'''Crone Mara:''' ''Never. Not ever.''
* DeliberatelyCuteChild[=/=]WoundedGazelleGambit: Masquerades as a child enslaved by, well, herself, to lure Maggie into a verbal trap.
-->'''Child!Mara:''' Will you help me, white girl? You can, if you act now.
-->'''Maggie:''' I'm thinking.\\
'''Child!Mara:''' Please tell me you will help me. Please. Just say it.\\
'''Maggie:''' I-\\
'''Child!Mara:''' Please!\\
'''Maggie:''' I think that I've read too many fantasy novels to fall for this. Crone Mara.
* DodgeTheBullet: She's fast enough to evade bullets from rifles that have been altered with runes to increase their accuracy.
* DontGoInTheWoods: She lives in a cottage in the woods, where she's old enough to have cultivated the growth of every single tree in order to discourage visitors. She turns visitors into compost.
* DomainHolder: In her woods, which she has shaped for all but a fraction of her incredibly long life. With that much time to work, challenging her there is pure madness, as she knows every inch and every part is a trap.
* FeatheredFiend: She's trained Crows and Turkey Vultures to attack on command.
* GrandTheftMe: How she maintains her youthful figure as a Blood Hag, taking over the bodies of her own daughters. She even tells Corvidae not to bother asking about where she finds the men, and she's done it so long that she's become numb to their deaths.
* HatesEveryoneEqually: Hates every other practitioner in Jacob's Bell. About the only distinct individual she doesn't seem to mind acknowledging as something other than an object of hate? [[ManipulativeBastard John]] [[ConflictBall Pica]]. Not encouraging.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: How Blake's CruelMercy would pan out. [[spoiler:He appealed to her survival nature as her rituals had geared her to that. She's going to lie to them when they question her because she bitter towards white men, which costs her the hold she had on her forest, but they're going to make her take oaths to never practice again and she has to do it because she'd be killing herself not to since if she didn't one of the Knights of the Basements were going to kill her otherwise.]] The very rituals that made her powerful end up being her undoing.
* HumanoidAbomination: Due to her straddling the line between practitioner and Other as a Blood Hag.
* TheHecateSisters: Mara takes this trope and batters it to pieces all in her own self. [[spoiler: Her name tells you that she's mentally the Crone the vast majority of the time. Yet, she deliberately gives birth to daughters whose bodies she takes over and whose looks she uses in illusions whenever she pleases. For all she "Mothers" them, she doesn't really look after them that well; and, for all she looks like a Maiden whenever she chooses... she really, really isn't ever one in outlook.]]
* MeaningfulName: Mara means "bitter" in Hebrew. Crone Mara is a very bitter person, understandably so.
* MisanthropeSupreme: She loathes humanity with the kind of deep and bitter hatred that you can only get after living for untold millennia.
* NeverLearnedToRead: At least Rosalyn Thorburn assumed that was the case.
* OlderThanTheyLook: When the colonists came to settle down, she was already there. She has to be well over three hundred years old simply by the records other local practitioners have access to, yet she looks like she's pushing 40, at best, the first time we see her. [[spoiler:The key to her immortality is that steals her own children's bodies.]]
* SoftSpokenSadist: See AndIMustScream, and the fact that after she [[spoiler:tricked Blake into thinking she killed Alexis]] she considered his anguished expression delightful.
* TimeAbyss: Histories 12 states that she's been around longer than [[spoiler: the Algonquin were a people, making her at least more than 2,000 years old. In Sine Die 14.6, she states that she has lived in the same place, and performed the same actions, for ''nine million days,'' making her the oldest character in the story by far save for Faysal Anwar-even Isadora is only in the four-digit years. (If you do the math, that makes her ''at least'' 24,657 years old.) She also implies that during the lifetime of her parents they migrated to the Americas from Eurasia, so she predates human civilization.]]


!!!The Briar Girl

A teenage practitioner that desires the marsh and woodlands of the Thorburn family, she's not aligned to any side in particular and lives out in the forest. She specializes in the creation of [[OurHomunculiAreDifferent Feorgbold]].

----

* EquivalentExchange: She puts tireless effort into her creations rather than call forth a demon, which is why she isn't concerned with making a play for ''power'' like most of the others. In her words, what she does is "balanced" in terms of nature.
* HufflepuffHouse: Mentioned many times, but never contributes much to the plot. [[spoiler:Though she does serve as an illustration of how the practitioner/familiar relationship can go bad.]]
* HumbleGoal: She doesn't really want ''power,'' unlike almost every other practitioner in the story, and is more concerned with balance than overthrowing the ruling families.
* LackOfEmpathy: Can't really relate with others due to her transformation.
* MagicEnhancement: She's modified her body through the use of her magic to survive as she does.
* PowersViaPossession: She's almost completely controlled by her familiar.
* ShapeShifter: Can take on a more human like form for interaction with non-practitioners.

[[/folder]]

! Other Humans and Powers

[[folder:Toronto Powers]]
!!! The Lord of Toronto/Conquest

The current Lord of Toronto, and an incarnation of Conquest. [[spoiler: Tricked by Rose and bound by Blake in Void 7.7]]

----

* AnthropomorphicPersonification: He's the incarnation of Conquest, a sapient embodiment of a concept, and what amounts a god as long as there is some form of conquest, be it business or war. He is, however, a ''weaker'' Incarnation as there are multiples running around and he needs more power.
* BadassBeard: Has a waxed mustache explicitly called one by Blake.
* BayonetYa: His rifle has a bayonet attached.
* {{BFS}}: Wields one twice as long as Blake is tall.
* TheCorrupter: He seemed to have been having this effect on Rose, tainting her into taking more violent measures while seeking more power through her hair being used as a binding.
* GenderBender: [[spoiler:In the Possession arc Conquest takes on a female form inside Rose's mind.]]
* HumanoidAbomination: Blake describes him as looking like he came out of a diorama, complete with lifeless "painting eyes."
* IAmWhatIAm: He follows his nature, which is that of conquest. Despite the fact that it would put him at odds with Isadora and Diana, he wants the power that Blake can offer as a Diabolist and will fight over it.
* IHaveYourWife: Binds Rose to him using a magical chain so that Blake will do tasks for him. [[spoiler:And if he just so happens to die then Rose is his pet diabolist forever.]]
* Main/HorsemenOfTheApocalypse: When Blake firsts learns about Conquest, he asks if he's one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The answer is both yes and no, and also that a Conquest from Toronto starting the apocalypse would make a weak narrative.
* ManInWhite: Wears a white colonial-style jacket.
* MindRape: Attempts this on Blake in Void 7.6 by sending echoes of his past at him.
* {{Plunder}}: He a taker that leaves things bereft, as such he only accepts the painting that was offered by Blake when he claimed that the artist would miss it, always feeling a pang when she recalled it in the future, after coming from broken origins and putting so much effort into it.
* PuppetKing: All the major powers in Toronto know that he's getting steadily weaker, and has been for some time despite the second wind that 9/11 gave him. They let him be because if he was deposed, one of them would have to take his place, and none of them are immortal. Meanwhile, they can work around him and manipulate him as necessary. [[spoiler:This of course starts to fall to pieces once Blake starts messing with the status quo.]]
* RealityWarper: The environment he's in warps from his sheer presence, and within his domain he was able to pull Rose from her mirror and into a physical body.
* ToThePain: As an Incarnation of Conquest, torture is part of his domain, and he ''loves'' to talk about what he's going to do before he does it. Most especially obvious when he corners Rose and Blake, and elaborates on what Blake is going to look like when he's done.
* TrophyRoom: His home is littered with the spoils of his conquests, mainly pieces of their homes and themselves in the form of psychic echoes. The three beings he wanted Blake to bind were going to be mere additions to it.
* WasOnceAMan: Was apparently human before becoming what he is now. His body was that of the father of Fell's Grandmother, and therefore his great-grandfather.

!!! The Eye

A being in the service of Conquest, with fire powers and an eye so bright it hurts to look at. It is a manifestation of the 1904 Fire of Toronto.
----

* AnthropomorphicPersonification: Of the 1904 Fire of Toronto.
* ConvectionSchmonvection: Averted, his abilities with fire are such that the air around him is burnt away.
* BodyHorror: Blake describes him as being covered in blisters and burns.
* HumanoidAbomination: Takes the form of a man, but isn't human at all.
* NoSell: Its madness renders it immune to demons of the Choir of Madness.
* PlayingWithFire: Has powers over fire.

!!! Jeremy "High Drunk" Meath

A practitioner in the service of the god Dionysus and husband of Sandra Duchamp.
----
* AmicableExes: With Sandra Duchamp, though they're separated, not divorced.
* AnguishedDeclarationOfLove: He ''finally'' tells Sandra that he loves her when [[spoiler:he turns on her at the end of 13.7]]
* TheBerserker: A gift from his god, a horn filled with alcohol-laced blood, gives him the fighting ability to fight Isadora-a seven thousand year old sphinx-on equal footing, at the cost of his sanity.
* CombatPragmatist: [[spoiler: His alliance with Blake is pure pragmatism, due to timing rather than any morals. He's not going to betray Sandra when she's having a ''good'' day, after all.]]
* ConditionalPowers: He has little power of his own. Instead, he gains favor from Dionysus by honoring him, and then expends that favor by asking his god to act. Thus, his power is contingent on staying in the good graces of Dionysus.
* TheGoodKing: He aspires to be this as Lord of Toronto.
* IntoxicationEnsues: All is it takes is calling in a favor.
* LoveCannotOvercome: His relationship with Sandra appears to have ended when his god, displeased with his choice to marry her, forced them to conceive a son.
* LoveEpiphany: He has a minor one in his Histories chapter, when he realizes that he ''can'' see himself loving Sandra.
* LoveHurts: His and Sandra's love has brought them both sorrow due to their respective positions, him as High Priest of Dionysus and her as a leading member of the Duchamp family. At the start of the story, they haven't talked for seven years.
* LoveInterestTraitor: [[spoiler:He turns on the Duchamps and Sandra by siding with Blake.]]
* ManipulativeBastard: He manipulates the meeting between Blake and the Lord of Toronto so that Blake would be forced into his service, knowing that his lineage would afford him information to beings that would bring defeat and pain, much to the Lord of Toronto's delight.
* NeverGetsDrunk: It's stated that when he gets ''slightly'' drunk the alcohol ingested would be enough to send a normal man to the emergency room.
* NoSell: He sloughs off an attack by a demon from the Choir of Madness because he worships a god of madness. He can make others have some resistance to it as well by calling in a favor.
* PerfectlyArrangedMarriage: Briefly had this with Sandra, described by him as a kind of "good natured tolerance."
* WorkingWithTheEx: When Sandra calls, he answers, dropping whatever he was doing at the time and heading over to Jacob's Bell.

!!! Diana Thompson

A Toronto practitioner who holds the title of Astrologer. Threw in her lot with Blake as of the Subordination arc, but is forced into Conquest's service during their competition.
----
* {{Astrologer}}: Her moniker and schtick.
* ApologeticAttacker: When she acts against Blake and his companions as Conquest's champion, for which she later apologizes. Alexis forgives her, but [[spoiler:Fell's family is less understanding]].
* {{Geek}}: When Blake and company visit her in Void 7.10, she's revealed to be a big one, particularly about computers and how astrology works.
* ItsPersonal: Hates Conquest because her mentor exchanged his life for hers, becoming one of Conquest's ghosts.
* LegacyCharacter: Her title is inherited and passed on to a successor when the current holder gets old.
* MrsRobinson: What Jeremy claims her to be. That and she may have a thing for Blake being younger.
* PostModernMagik: Her magic uses computers and lights to make constellations that she calls spirits into.
* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Out of all of the other powers, she's the one who is neither hostile, overbearing, or predatory towards Blake. Blake even thinks to himself she's probably the first practitioner that hadn't screwed him over.

!!! Isadora

A Sphinx and the Sixth Daughter of Phix, she's also an ethics professor at the local university.
----
* {{Badass}}: She's thousands of years old, and not even the wrath of a personification of Conquest is enough to faze her.
* BerserkButton: The classical answer to RiddleOfTheSphinx: Man. Considering it resulted in her mother's death, the only reasons she didn't kill Blake when it came up was because she asked first and even then she was tempted. As she wisely points out, when he admitted it crossed his mind, virtually anything is better than being a smart-ass with a Sphinx.
* BlueAndOrangeMorality: While she's perceptive and familiar with human nature, she's not human and some of the things that clearly bother normal people, such as eating siblings right out of the egg, tend to be normal for her. Her priorities are centered around Karmic Balance and she places that over individuals, which means if someone or several thousand have to go to balance things out better...
* ExpositionOfImmortality: She repeatedly cites her long familiarity with the patterns of diabolists, and that she was born long before humans started keeping records.
* FriendlyEnemy: To Blake. From long experience, she's certain that he's going to break his oaths, fall into diabolism, and generally make the world a worse place-but she ''does'' like him, and even gives him advice. [[spoiler:Her maiming him was to buy him more time before he died (or provide a clean death compared to what was to come) and she imparted extra good karma. In the end she's the only one who can remember any details about him.]]
* HistoryRepeats: Long story short, Blake seems to want to do good and probably does, but she's been around long enough to know either he dies young and doing the right thing or he lives and becomes TheCorrupter until she puts him down. The best she thinks she can do is wish/offer him a clean death.
* ImmortalsFearDeath: She swore long ago that she'd put her own survival at the highest priority, and when she thinks herself truly at risk, she'll bargain rather than fight, abandoning whichever cause led her to fight in the first place.
* KarmicTrickster: She's an Other that is tied to Karmic Balance. Her powers and what she can do vary depending on what the person who she judges does. If they lie to her, break tradition, or go against a code, then all bets are off and she can dole out a fitting punishment--namely death. Every death by her hands balances the universe, makes things better overall and cleans up loose ends that get left behind rather than leave behind mistakes.
** That being said, every decade or so she usually tests students. The ones that do well are given Good Karma, while the ones who don't...well, they disappear overnight.
* KryptoniteFactor: As a Sphinx, which is an other of balance, things that throw it out are harmful to her with demons being the worse. One attack from a demon of the Choir of Madness, which is her opposite entirely put her down for the conflict.
* MySensorsIndicateYouWantToTapThat: Describes Tiffany as being "warm for Blake," her crush being very obvious.
* NayTheist: Notes in Histories 7 that despite being the daughter of a being created to guard a religious site, she's not exactly inclined to prayer, probably due to her mother's death.
* RiddlingSphinx: Takes after her mother, though her questions tend to be more direct.
* RippleEffectProofMemory: [[spoiler: When the Abstract Demon cuts Blake off, because of her nature she could mitigate most of the damage. As a result she could remember some of the finer details about Blake, although she lost his name in the process, when reality restructured itself.]]
* SinkOrSwimMentor: Her approach to the students appears to be this, with her killing the ones that don't appease her expectations.
* TheSocialDarwinist: Ate her weaker siblings after hatching from her egg, with no signs that this is particularly unusual amongst sphinx. She continues this policy with her students-those that fail to appease her are eaten.
* SmugSuper: She's an ages-old Sphinx who is confident enough to be lounging in a room filled with people who she's maimed, ruined, or tried to kill completely relaxed while drinking a beer. She's the only one who hadn't been under Conquest's ire and she openly states if she's gunning for someone. She knows flat-out that she's too tough to face head-on and, even though she doesn't gloat, she knows where she stands amongst the rest.
* ThisIsMyHuman: She pretty much stated this when she ''claimed'' Paige Thorburn. She's a tool in order to exorcise her power.
* TimeAbyss: She predates recorded history.
* ToServeMan: She ''eats'' people that answer her questions wrong.


!!! Fell (Malcolm)

A practitioner bound to serve Conquest due to his family being sworn into his service, and not very happy about it. His soul is currently claimed by the Shepherd following his death at the hands of one of the Astrologer's constructs.

----
* AnOfferYouCantRefuse: Conquest made this offer to his grandfather, Joseph Attwell, giving him the option of refusing and being forsworn. Fell is living with the consequences three generations later.
* BarredFromTheAfterlife: Due to the Shepherd claiming his soul.
* BornIntoSlavery: His entire family is this, in service of Conquest. Fell was allowed to live without knowledge of magic until his twelfth birthday, when his own father awakened him and bound him. He's understandably a bit resentful.
* CompanionCube: His car.
* DeadpanSnarker: Mainly towards Blake.
* DrivesLikeCrazy: Drives really fast as it's the only form of freedom allowed him by Conquest. Even if he dies by chance or accident, there are others who can take his place, so he'll go 90 in a 50 zone.
* EmotionControl: As an enchanter, he can do this with connection-manipulation.
* ForcedIntoEvil: He by no means ''enjoys'' being Conquest's servant.
* IJustWantToBeFree: The reason he [[spoiler:agrees to be Blake's champion in his war with Conquest is that, even though he's pretty sure Blake is going to lose and knows that it will upset the delicate balance of Toronto even more if Conquest is overthrown, he wants his family to be free.]] As he says, he really had no choice in the matter.
* ManInWhite: Is often dressed completely in white, which marks him as a slave of Conquest.
* ImpromptuTracheotomy: Fell ends up getting shot in the collarbone by a construct of the Astrologer's.
* MasterOfIllusion: His family lineage is based around being illusionists-though Fell himself is also an enchanter.
* PetTheDog: Tells Rose that it's best not to struggle when [[spoiler:Conquest compels her to tell him their plans.]]
* PerceptionFilter: One of his favorite tricks involves doing this-by manipulating connections, he can make people ignore him. He mentions that he could also do this offensively, cutting a victim off from support.
* RestrainingBolt: The oaths he's been forced to swear to Conquest are extremely restrictive, to the point that he and his family can't actually plot to free themselves without several degrees of separation.
* SourSupporter: During [[spoiler: Blake's war with Conquest, he repeatedly informs Blake how much he loathes him for bringing him into it, though he admits that he could have refused but did not for the sake of having a chance to free his family. He also informs Blake that should he appear to be about to lose, he'll kill Blake, exploiting a loophole in the agreed-upon rules to prevent the contest from ending, keep Conquest weak, and maintain his freedom.]]
* TeethClenchedTeamwork: With Blake, when Blake is working to bring Conquest a trio of diabolic creatures-something that he ''must'' support, as it benefits Conquest, but which he is strongly opposed to on every other conceivable level. He tells Blake that it would simplify things ''immensely'' if he died quickly instead of binding the Others. Also, his entire service to Conquest.
* WouldHurtAChild: Tells Blake that he would kill Ivy if she turned towards diabolism once she's six or twelve, though only as a last resort as merely keeping her from her family legacy would be easier. Blake admits that this is a fairer chance than a lot of people would give her.


!!! The Shepherd

A powerful Valkalla who claims all local ghosts, spirits, spectres, phantoms, wraiths, poltergeists, and apparitions.
----

* AboveGoodAndEvil: Doesn't think in terms of right and wrong.
* CombinedEnergyAttack: He can sacrifice large amounts of his ghosts to empower other ghosts, in order to force that ghost to inflict the agony of its death on his enemies.
* {{Intangibility}}: His main method of avoiding damage is to assume ghostly properties and become intangible.
* KilledOffForReal: [[spoiler:He's killed by a mote during the Judgement arc.]]
* MagicStaff: His implement is a shepherd's crook that functions like this. He uses it to direct those spirits under his control so that rules that normally apply to them don't work as effectively.
* {{Psychopomp}}: His main job, the ferrying of ethereal beings. He claims the impressions left behind and should anyone else do the same he becomes immediately hostile towards them.
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Gets called out by Blake for being too much of a coward to go get Evan when he needed someone and then having the audacity to be mad at him for it.
* TheSilentBob: Doesn't speak except during rituals in order to gain greater power.
* VillainTeleportation: He can manifest at a location by appearing out of ghosts, and when he's defeated, he fades away like one.
* WeaksauceWeakness: When he assumes ghostly properties, he's vulnerable to salt, like any ghost.
* YourSoulIsMine: He can do this to people that die in his vicinity.

!!! The Sisters of the Torch

A group of elementalists, specifically pyromancers, led by the Elder Sister. They are seen as a somewhat weaker group because they aren't practitioners first, but family women who joined for the confidence boost and connections with others.
----

* EyeSpy: Utilizing flyers with eye-symbols they can spy on a number of areas.
* NeutralNoLonger:
** They decide to act by joining Isadora's coalition, in order to prevent Conquest from gaining the Thorburn knowledge.
** Later on they are forced into the game on Conquest's side.
** [[spoiler:Rose finally forces them to help fight for the sake of Jacob's Bell.]]
* MarionetteMaster: They use ''Vessels,'' mannequins and life-sized dolls that have runes on them that move them towards a target depending on their actions, such as for every breath they take those with a breeze rune move half-a-step or the use of magic makes those with a water rune lunge. Theirs are specifically called Terracotta Soldiers.
* PlayingWithFire: They specialize in fire magic.
* RingOfPower: The rings they forge as part of their pact into the sisterhood.
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: They get called out by Evan because they actually could have done something to deal with the Abstract Demon but didn't, yet they criticize Blake's actions and see him as the main threat.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Blake's Friends]]

!!!In General

Blake's friends from Toronto who aren't involved in his life in Jacob's Bell, all of them are rather close to him. During the Subordination Arc they get clued into the supernatural world and Alexis, Tiffany and Tyler become practitioners.
----

* AmnesiaMissedASpot: [[spoiler:After Blake's death they can feel something is off since they had more than a passing familiarity with him.]]
* EtTuBrute: [[http://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/10/18/duress-12-5/ Duress 12.5]] reveals that [[spoiler:Alexis, Ty, and Tiffany all agreed not to inform Blake of his true nature.]]
* MamaBear: How Blake describes Goosh.
* NoSenseOfPersonalSpace: Amanda, much to Blake's chagrin.
* NonActionGuy: Joel, Goosh, and Joseph decided to work in a supporting role because they had other responsibilities or couldn't wrap their heads around it, such as Blackguards.
* StarvingArtist: Most of them, excepting Blake and Joel.
* StraightGay: Joel, Blake's landlord and friend.
* ThePerfectionist: Joseph, who is the most successful of them because he's able to keep an eye on what his audience wants and execute it as perfectly as possible.
* TrueCompanions: Have this relationship with Blake.
* UnwittingMuggleFriend: What they were to Blake after he Awakened. In the Subordination Arc he clued them into his circumstances.
* WizardsAndWitches: Tyler, Alexis, and Tiffany decided to join in to support Blake, as well as their own interests.


!!!Alexis

Blake's best friend, a 22 year old woman who saved his life while he was on the streets.

----

* BiTheWay: As seen below, she has no problem with the idea of being involved with both Blake and Tiffany.
* CameBackWrong: [[spoiler:Either the Abyss was screwing with Blake again by offering to bring her back, or she actually came back as a bogeyman or wraith afterwards.]]
* ChronicHeroSyndrome: She says when awakening that she wants to be one of the people that fixes things instead of breaking them.
* CigaretteOfAnxiety: Smokes when nervous.
* CooldownHug: She gives one to [[spoiler:Roxanne]] when she's waking up from a Limbo-induced nightmare.
* DisneyDeath: [[spoiler:During the fight against Crone Mara she is seemingly killed, but it turns out to be an illusion caused by Mara and Corvidae.]]
* DisneyVillainDeath: [[spoiler:Dies from falling off the top of a pillar after being swarmed by Others.]]
* HumansAreFlawed: She takes this viewpoint, referring to the group as "beautifully fucked up people," and expressing the view that life beats people down and does everyone permanent damage.
* HypocrisyNod: Alexis admits that she's a bit hypocritical as a chain-smoker who wants to make as few mistakes as possible.
* KilledOffScreen: [[spoiler: In Possession 15.3, Blake notes that she is not among the survivors leaving the Library. She fell from the top of the pillar during the battle, after being swarmed by Others.]]
* ShipperOnDeck: Ships herself and Blake with her friend Tiffany.
-->''I’m doing the relational equivalent of banging stones together until stuff works.''
* PerpetualFrowner: Doesn't like smiling without cover, mainly because it shows her dentures.
* {{Polyamory}}: As mentioned above, she has no issues being involved with both Blake and Tiffany at the same time.

!!!Tiffany

A part time student and splatter painting artist with a crush on Blake.

----

* AbusiveParents: It's thought that her withdrawn nature is due to suffering abuse at home.
* EveryoneCanSeeIt: Her crush on Blake, including Blake himself, though he's not entirely sure if he reciprocates.
* TheFettered: Claims that she deliberately sets herself rules and standards that she does her best to hold to.
* IJustWantToBeBadass: Tiffany wants power in order to define herself, rather than be defined by others.
* LoveAtFirstSight: She got smitten with Blake upon seeing his picture on Alexis' phone.
* MiseryPoker: She calmly informs Ellie that the Thorburns don't have a monopoly on abusive families. Hers was ''worse.''
* NiceGirl: Is nice enough that she even worries about Midge catching her death from cold despite her trying to murder them before.
* OptOut: After dealing with The Eye, The Shepherd, and then Midge going rogue, she opts to remain safe and away from the conflict.
* OutOfCharacterMoment: Suddenly swearing at Professor Isadora, given her [[ShrinkingViolet nature]]. It's hinted to be the effect of Pauz's radiation on Blake when he was around her.
* ShrinkingViolet: Is very shy normally.

!!!Tyler

Another of Blake's friends, and an archetypical starving artist.

----

* TheAce: Blake describes him as being pretty good at everything.
* BlackBestFriend: He's the sole non-white member of Blake's group of friends.
* DoingItForTheArt: He habitually moves on to another type of art as soon as he starts to make money off of his current type. [[invoked]]
* DesperatelyLookingForAPurposeInLife: Tyler's main motivation, after having seen his twenty-years-older sister get worn down by life after doing everything "right," is to figure out where he needs to be.
* EvilOverlordList: Ty reads it, and abides by its precepts.
-->'''Ty:''' Evan, back me up here. The rule for an evil genius is that you’ve got to have, like, an ordinary five year old kid to keep around and tell you your plan is idiotic.
-->'''Evan:''' I'm not ''five.''
-->'''Blake:''' He's not ordinary.
-->'''Evan:''' And Blake's not evil.
* GenreSavvy: Upon finding out about the karma system, he quickly realizes the implications:
-->''You’re telling me the universe ''encourages'' being the Bond villain?''
* IJustWantToBeSpecial: Tyler's stated motivation for awakening is that he doesn't want to be a salaryman.
* JumpedAtTheCall: He's actually excited at the idea that everything terrible he could imagine is real.
* NightmareFetishist: One of his reasons for awakening was because he wanted to see if monsters and spooks were real. His reaction to seeing Isadora in full sphinx mode was that she's beautiful rather than terrifying, and he expressed an interest in meeting Green Eyes the mermaid bogeywoman.
* OddFriendship: He and Evan get along great, despite the fact that [[IntergenerationalFriendship he's in his twenties and Evan was eight when he died.]]
* PaperTalisman: Takes to using Ofuda and having spirits guide them to the targets.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Other Humans]]

!!! Andy & Eva

A brother and sister witch hunter team, they serve as the Jacob's Bell council's hitmen when it comes dealing with Others and Practitioners.

----

* BacktoBackBadasses: Andy and Eva make one extremely fearsome, well-oiled team when they kick themselves into gear.
* BadassNormal: Eva especially is this -- she can outfight a Faerie that glamors itself as a vampire in close quarters, and in Judgement even holds her own against a demon. Andy relies more on planning and traps, but is also an example. Together, they're a worry for most Others and practitioners.
* BerserkButton: For Eva, it's harming Andy, as [[spoiler:Roxanne and Peter]] unfortunately learned.
* BewareTheQuietOnes: Andy is the quiet, polite, and reasonable one, but most of the characters are sensibly more scared of him than his more openly homicidal sister, and a brief section of his POV reveals that he fantasizes about blowing up the Jacob's Bell Council with a rocket launcher.
* BloodKnight: Eva is really into fighting when she gets going.
* BrainsAndBrawn: Andy's usually the brains, and Eva's mostly the brawn. But, if you think this means he can't pull the strong-arm act and she the tactical nouse, you deserve what you'll get.
* BrotherSisterTeam: They work together. Oh, they might bicker about doing so, but that won't stop them making mincemeat out of you if you're a target.
* ColdSniper: Andy executes one practitioner with a hunting rifle at one hundred fifty meters, and doesn't much care beyond feeling proud for being able to make the shot.
* CombatPragmatist:
** Andy is described as this, since he lacks his sister's brawn. Eva herself also has no problem with tripping and stabbing in the back.
** [[spoiler:Faced with a bunch of enemy diabolists? Andy chooses to blast them at range with a rocket launcher without warning.]]
* DemolitionsExpert: Andy hands out plastic explosives like it's ''candy''. Then there's the claymores, incendiary grenades, flash bangs, and tear gas. He's strapped.
* DissonantSerenity: When [[spoiler:Molly]] kicks off the conflict in Gathered Pages 10, Andy just smiles and helps Mags to her feet while everyone runs, thinking about the day when he'll kill all the council practitioners with a rocket launcher for the betterment of the town. [[spoiler:Though he eventually ends up using it on the lawyers instead.]]
* HeWhoFightsMonsters: Andy figures this is what happened to his sister, and is walking this road himself.
* HitmanWithAHeart: Andy. Unlike his sister he doesn't like doing his role as a witch hunter and he'll feel bad about it. He'll still do it out of duty, but he'll feel for you. And this is to practitioners he's amicable about.
* TheHunter: As an occupation and a calling. They were trained by what appears to be a loosely held together CreatureHunterOrganization that provides them and other Canadian hunters with (illegal) weaponry.
* ImprovisedWeapon: Shower Rods make for a decent spear with Eva and a Grenade works as well as a bludgeon.
* InsanityImmunity: Eva managed to keep fighting against a Choir of Madness demon specifically because she's already partially insane and disordered.
* KatanasAreJustBetter: Eva wields a katana. Apparently, she knows that they're not actually as effective as in the movies, but doesn't really care.
* MageKiller: As witch hunters, their job is to deal with troublesome practitioners and Others, while lacking powers of their own. They're aided in this by the fact that as non-practitioners they can lie and break oaths without incurring karmic backlash, and can enter demesnes without being invited. They can also peer through certain protections because they aren't awakened.
* MoralityChain: More that Andy serves as this to Eva, although it goes both ways. He's the one who keeps her on a leash, but god help you if something happens to him and Eva is still around.
* ParentalAbandonment: Of the both dead variety. At some point the two had to be saved by another witch hunter who had to MercyKill their parents.
* ParentalSubstitute: Mac, the witch hunter in question, served as this for Andy afterwards.
* ThePromise: Andy made one with Mac, which is why he follows his obligations as a Witch Hunter to protect the people.
* RedOniBlueOni: Andy is the blue to Eva's red, being more levelheaded while she's extremely trigger-happy.
* TriggerHappy: Eva, who repeatedly pulls weapons on nonhostile practitioners just to scare them.
* {{Troll}}: Eva has threatened Blake and Maggie with no intention of actually harming them just for laughs.
* WouldHurtAChild: Eva beats the crap out of [[spoiler:Roxanne Thorburn]] in Malfeasance 11.7 for stabbing Andy in the groin with a knife (he had a cup), including stomping on her head and kicking her while down. Andy has to drag her away to keep her from outright killing her. Mind you... this is [[spoiler:Roxanne]]--Eva might have just recognized a [[TheSociopath kindred snake]].

!! Joanna

Duncan's fiancee, who shares an apartment with him in Toronto. Unlike Duncan, she's not a practitioner.
----

* HappilyMarried: Her and Duncan appear to have a fairly healthy relationship, though she finds his clocks rather quirky.
* UnwittingMuggleFriend: She's Duncan's unwitting fiancee.
* NiceGirl: Let Blake and company into her house and [[SacredHospitality offers him hot chocolate]] after they helped her out without a second thought.
* OneSteveLimit: Averted. Shares a name with one of the first two Duchamp kids met in the story.

!!!Mann, Levinn, and Lewis Firm

A demonic law firm staffed by practitioners who wish to get rid of substantial karmic debt.

----

* AffablyEvil: They are rather cordial to Blake. Ms. Lewis in particular was rather informative in teaching Blake how to deal with some threats and the driver admits to liking him as well because he's not as bad as the usual practitioners they deal with. That said, they still want him-or rather, the Thorburn heir-to eventually become part of the firm. Ms. Lewis also at least has the decency to [[spoiler:refuse Blake in person due to Rose taking his place as heir]] instead of keeping him in the dark for all eternity.
* AllPowerfulBystander: Could easily handle Conquest, but unless Blake demands their help they won't show up. Blake, in turn, will never demand their help because he's GenreSavvy enough to know that it won't end well for him or anyone else.
* AmoralAttorney: What do you expect from people who have agreed to centuries of servitude to a demonic law firm and loss of previous identity in order to redeem their (presumably huge) karmic debts?
* BigBad: [[spoiler: While they're initially helpful, the firm is really this. Rose Thorburn Sr's plan was to get her family out of the grip of the lawyers by ending the line of Thorburn practitioners. Once they take control of the Barber and enter the fight for Lordship, they become this in truth.]]
* BuriedAlive: [[spoiler:Rose does this to Ms. Lewis, burying her alive in the Abyss.]]
* DealWithTheDevil: They facilitate these. Joining the firm is also one; you get freed from all karmic debt, but you have to spend hundreds of years working for the firm (which is no walk in the park) and your deal gives demonic entities a greater foothold on the world. [[spoiler: The lawyers even ensure that diabolists remain in karmic debt so the remain desperate enough to consider the deal.]]
* EvilLawyerJoke: When Blake and Rose need to bind an Other of some sort and also talk to Mann, Levinn and Lewis.
* DemonicPossession: One lawyer fights by possessing himself with a demon from the Choir of the Feral.
--> '''Blake''': Sounds like we’ve got some disturbing, soulless freaks of nature to summon. When we’ve done that, we can take a break and summon some ghosts.
* FauxAffablyEvil: According to Rosalyn Thorburn, Lewis hides a lot of sadism under her polite mask, and is responsible for an event so bad reality would have to create another Black Death to rationalize it only a few years before the story started, which she enjoyed doing.
* FlunkyBoss: [[spoiler:Ms. Lewis summons five motes in quick succession to battle Rose and her allies.]]
* ImpliedDeathThreat: Ms. Lewis informs Blake that if the firm gets the impression that he will never call on them, he'll lose their goodwill as they "hasten the process" of his death prophecy. [[spoiler:It ends up coming true as they turn on Rose and her allies after she refuses to join the firm following the destruction of the library.]]
* LegacyCharacter: When you rank up through the firm, you can make partner and take on one of the names. But that means whoever had it earlier gets released early.
* LossOfIdentity: When you join their firm you lose your previous identity and life.
* MadeOfIron: [[spoiler: Lewis tanks a few bullets, including one to the heart, before being able to summon her motes. They incapacitate her for a bit, but she's effectively immortal as long as she serves the firm.]]
* TheMole: [[spoiler:An unnamed member of the firm turns out to be one for Rosalyn Thorburn.]]
* OccultLawFirm: Were once freelance diabolists, although now they are contractually obligated to use their (presumably prodigious) power only in the interest of the firm.
* AnOfferYouCantRefuse: Histories 15 reveals that one method they have for recruiting people is saving practitioners from botched demon summonings in return for their souls not being taken.
* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: Immortality is part of the deal of joining the firm, and they don't need to eat or sleep.
* VillainTeleportation: They can be where they're needed, or invited.
* WeHaveReserves: [[spoiler:How Ms. Lewis uses her motes, ordering them in and replacing them as they are killed or banished. Rose notes that the Firm uses Ms. Lewis the same way, being able and willing to send in further lawyers if Rose manages more than a delaying action.]]
* WhoWantsToLiveForever: They are immortal and heal from almost any wound so long as they are in service. It's much, much less fun than it sounds.

[[/folder]]

! Supernatural Creatures (Others)

[[folder:Goblins]]
!!! General Tropes

* AttackAttackAttack: Goblins are mainly good for destroying things.
* BodyHorror: They tend to have piercings in places like their genitals and eyelids.
* TheBully: They love pushing around anything perceived as weaker as they are, whether it's a weaker goblin or humans.
* CannotCrossRunningWater: A slight variation. They cannot cross power-infused metal, and water running through metal pipes infuses them with power for that purpose. This makes modern cities close to impossible to navigate for them, and this is (partly) why they mostly attack homeless and poor people, living in more reachable places.
* ClusterFBomb: The ones that can speak tend to have every other word be a swearword.
* DirtyCoward: Like most bullies, goblins tend to be a cowardly bunch.
* ForTheEvulz: Apparently, this is the main reason for goblins to do anything, the chance to ruin someone's day for little more than personal enjoyment.
* {{Foil}}: To fairies, being rather gross beings (figuratively and literally) that don't do well in cities, while fairies cover themselves in glamour and do very well in cities. As a result according to Maggie they don't like eachother very much.
* {{Gonk}}: All goblins are described as ugly.
* GripingAboutGremlins: Gremlins are a subcategory of goblins who happen to be [[DeathTrap trap makers]] who build things to catch their prey and generally live in junkyards.
* HeavySleeper: According to Andy they normally sleep for about sixteen to twenty-two hours a day,
* KickThemWhileTheyAreDown: In the words of Maggie, they prey on people who have fallen through the cracks of society. This makes Blake realize that both times he was physically attacked when he was living in the street, his aggressors were not [[Film/AClockworkOrange A Clockwork Orange]]-like teenagers, but goblins.
* LogicalWeakness: As very crude and direct beings, they're weak against refined things and cleverness.
* NotSoDifferent: From fairies, as both groups of Others are capable of great brutality for no reason other than amusement, but fairies use glamour to pretend they're anything but.
* OurGoblinsAreDifferent:
** They're for the most part little violent bastards that get off on the suffering of others and enjoy making people feel a little lower about themselves, and have names based around some variant of swear word. They're weak to metal charged with power and because of underground plumbing (the running water charges the pipes) they're weaker in the cities, so they loiter on the outskirts.
** The two main stories on their existence theorize that they're either what amounts to magical hairballs created by people, or the leftovers of humans becoming faeries.
** Sizewise they can be no bigger than a squirrel or a bar or soap to five times bigger than a man. A greater goblin that Blake spots in the Drains takes the form of a massive dragon.
* PoisonedWeapons: Sandra Duchamp notes that goblins like to cover their weapons with stuff such as feces, since it causes infections.
* SmarterThanYouLook: While gross and ugly, goblins are capable of great cunning, especially when it comes to making people miserable. The goblin woman used bone bridges to successfully raid a town, and Buttsack has a special trick in order to get around openings guarded with stainless steel.
* {{Squick}}: Goblins seem to run on being as gross as possible. [[invoked]]

!!! Dickswizzle

A chimp-sized goblin bound to a flute and owned by Maggie Holt.

----
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: See HalfTheManHeUsedToBe
* HalfTheManHeUsedToBe: Gets ripped in half by Midge in Subordination 6.8.
* {{Squick}}: Everything he attempts to do to a Behaim family member's library, to [[BadlyBatteredBabysitter Rose]]'s chagrin. [[invoked]]

!!! Arsepint

A goblin that was once bound to a clay doll by Rosalyn Thorburn as a child.

----

* {{Familiar}}: Followed Rosalyn's orders in exchange for being fed.

!!! The Hyena

A quadrupedal goblin that Conquest wants Blake to bind. It is killed by Conquest in Void 7.6, but it's weapon form is still used by Blake.

----

* BreathWeapon: Its breath is so noxious that it makes you vomit the moment you inhale.
* CharacterDeath: Is killed fighting Conquest in Void 7.6, and its corpse in sword form becomes Blake's main weapon.
* TheDreaded: While considered a mid-tier goblin, it's still extremely dangerous.
* ItsPersonal: To Evan. If given the choice between Blake and Evan, it wanted the kid's ghost, because he's the only one to escape being hunted long enough to die a natural death and even then eluded it.
* KryptoniteFactor: It serves as this to those with a HealingFactor due to absorbing some part of "The Drains", and makes an excellent anti-Boogeyman weapon due to its ability to kill them so dead that not even the Abyss can revive them.
* LightningBruiser: Not only is it tougher and stronger than most other Others, it's faster and ''silent'' as it moves.
* LivingWeapon: In its bound form, a massive, jagged sword with a spiked handle. When it dies, Rose makes it return to that form, and Blake continues to make use of it.
* MinionMaster: Has the ability to command lesser goblins.
* SealedEvilInACan: Seals itself in a sword after Blake defeats it.
* UncannyValley: Blake describes it as looking like a bipedal being that was twisted into a quadrupedal shape. [[invoked]]
* TheUnintelligible: It can speak, but in a simple tongue that certainly isn't English.
* UrineTrouble: Has no trouble pissing on its opponents.
* YourSoulIsMine: Whatever it kills, it mauls them body and soul and keeps them around as a ghost or spectre. The connection allows it to influence them and knows where they are, so if you run across run of them the Hyena knows where you are. Aside from humans, it can ensnare Others, including Faerie.

!!! The Goblin Woman

The leader of the goblins who destroyed Maggie's old town, who made her agree to bring forth three rounds of blood and fire in return for the lives of her, her father, and Chris.

* BishonenLine: Is among the most human looking of any goblins seen so far, but she still looks off.
* MonsterLord: Is the leader of a massive horde of goblins.

!!! Screwloose

A gremlin under the control of Maggie.

----

* AssShove: Literally pulls a gremlin-made shotgun shell out of his ass to use.
* EvilBrit: Speaks with a distinct English accent.
* EyeScream: Has a bottle jammed into his eye socket a la [[{{VideoGame/BatmanArkhamSeries}} the Batman: Arkham series']] version of the Penguin.
* KnifeNut: Wields a blade in case he runs out of shells.
* UrineTrouble: Will piss on his opponents as a surprise tactic.
* WildCard: Shot Blake with a shotgun for no good reason, while also attacking the Behaim children.

!!! Douchegargler

A female gremlin under the control of Maggie.

----

* WildCard: Like Screwloose she was just as much a danger to Blake as she was to the Behaim children.

!!! Buttsack

A goblin caught by Maggie in Signature 8.1. He is described as being small enough for most practitioners to simply ignore him, but large enough to boss the smaller goblins around, and is very intelligent as well. Mags eventually ends up binding him in service to her.

----

* CountryMatters: Refers to one schoolgirl he spots as a cunt, and every other female as a bitch.
* FearIsTheAppropriateResponse: Would rather be called Forsworn than get into a fight with the dragon and demon in Judgement 16.11.
* ForTheEvulz: Tries to get a girl hooked on cocaine by lacing it in her insulin for not having any money to steal, and forges suicide notes for no real reason at all.
* HumansThroughAlienEyes: The first portion of Signature 8.1 is from his POV as he sneaks through St. Sebastian.
* ImpaledPalm: Maggie stabs her stiletto into both of his hands before dragging him with her into Johannes' demesne in Signature 8.5.
* SinisterShiv: Wields a ragged-looking shiv as his weapon.
* ToThePain: When he corners Maggie in Signature 8.5 he states that once he kills her he'll make a thong out of her face with her eyes pointed towards his groin and her lips kissing his ass. As for the death itself, he states it'll be so painful that it'll create about a dozen ghosts, who will then be bound to said face thong so that Maggie can feel it.

!!!Gallowscream

A particularly vicious goblin who serves as King Spikedick's familiar and enforcer. His body is completely shot through with metal and he carries a number of powerful weapons.

----

* AnAxeToGrind: One of his weapons is an axe with a screaming face on the blade which causes whatever it hits to erupt into gore and entrails, including non-biological matter like bricks and mortar.
* {{Badass}}: Fought Blake to a standstill and pretty much stopped his rampage cold during the battle for the Lordship.
* {{Cyborg}}: His body is essentially a lumpy fusion of flesh and metal, and he has a multi-barreled gunpowder cannon concealed in his mouth.
* EpicFlail: Has a flail as one of his weapons.
* EyeScream: His eyes are held open by rusty pins.
* {{Familiar}}: To Hal Spikedick.
* KnifeNut: His secondary weapon is a rusty dagger.
* LightningBruiser: Exceptionally fast despite all the metal weighing him down.
* LudicrousGibs: The effect of the axe he carries, blood and gore wherever it strikes.
* MookMaker: His rusty dagger causes baby goblins to erupt out of whatever it cuts.
* TheMusketeer: Uses both ranged and close range weaponry.
* SuperStrength: Is extremely strong.
* UnusualWeaponMounting: He has a cannon, in his ''mouth.''
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Faerie]]

!!! General Tropes

* [[AllergicToRoutine Allergic To Boredom]]: Deathly so.
* ColdIron: A variation: Any crude, unworked material carries this property for them.
* TheFairFolk: Pact takes this view of faeries, with their mortal enemies goblins actually calling them "the unfair folk."
* {{Foil}}: To goblins, being beings that cover themselves in glamour and do very well in cities, while goblins are extremely gross and don't take well to cities. As a result according to Maggie they don't like each other very much.
* {{Glamour}}: Are constantly wrapped in illusions upon illusions.
* IntriguedByHumanity: Fairies have a great interest in humans since boredom is like death to them.
* NotSoDifferent: From goblins, as both groups of Others are capable of great brutality. Goblins are merely more honest about what they are than fairies.
* SceneryPorn: {{Invoked}} in their realms.
* StepfordSmiler: They build up layers and layers of artifice and artistry around themselves until it becomes unsustainable, at which point a revolution occurs, a new guard steps into place, and the cycle begins all over again.
* WasOnceAMan: One story told by goblins regarding their origins states that faeries were humans who used glamour to get rid of the bits of themselves they didn't like, those bits becoming goblins.

!!! Padraic

A fae that was exiled from his realm to Jacob's Bell. In chapter 13's gathered pages [[spoiler:his p.o.v chapter/diary .]] he alludes to his mother being the one to have sent him to Jacob's bell, earlier it was implied that he was banished by a member of royalty. This likely makes him a prince.

----

* AffectionateNickname: He likes to give people these, at least in his own narration. Sandra is "Lady Macbeth" and Blake is "the blighted Rose."
* BloodKnight: He's very at home in conflict-he's had a lot of time to build up experience, after all.
* BoredWithInsanity: He's bored with ''reality.''
* BulletDodgesYou: He can make bullets miss with a wave of his hand.
* TheCharmer: Due to his glamour he's very charismatic. [[spoiler:Enough to turn Letita to his side, and trick Joanna into a celebration that she's never left.]]
* ConsummateLiar: In ''spite'' of [[CannotTellALie not actually being able to lie.]] He even describes ''himself'' as a liar in his writings.
* CreepyCrossdresser: [[spoiler:As Maggie, for all of her appearances during the Conquest arc, and Joanna, before the series even began.]]
* TheExile: For some reason he has been exiled from the land of the fae.
* ExactWords: [[spoiler:He offers Maggie Holt several things, including a ring that allows one to draw out power from him until he's spent. The catch?]]
-->[[spoiler:“The deal was that the ring would go to Maggie Holt,” Patrick said. “Maggie Holt is ''my'' name.”]]
* FalseReassurance: See above.
* HighSchoolHustler: In his guise as "Patrick."
* KickTheDog: Taking Maggie's [[spoiler:very identity]] is bad enough, but [[spoiler:freeing most of her goblins of their bindings and promises and allowing them to run amok]] is another.
* LossOfIdentity: [[spoiler:He pulls one of these on Maggie Holt, taking her name for himself.]]
* ManipulativeBastard: He deliberately ruins friendships and lives at the local high school for amusement. Also shown when he [[spoiler:tricks Maggie Holt into letting him take her name for himself.]]
* NotSoHarmlessVillain: To most of Jacob's Bell and the Faerie Court that exiled him there. [[spoiler:He plays ''everyone'' for fools. Especially the ones that deal with him.]]
* PassThePopcorn: He can and will take time out to enjoy the play (and even comment on it). Whether he's responsible for the chaos or not. Case in point: watching Corvidae work.
* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: He's perpetually young, and therefore includes himself in the councils of the young practitioners of Jacob's Bell.
* SmallTownBoredom: He's trapped in Jacob's Bell, and ''hates'' it. He's forced to resort to messing with the local high school and ruining the lives of a quarter of the graduating class just to get some entertainment.
* TimeAbyss: Maggie mentions that he's got a bit of this going-he's old, and he's seen the same acts play out dozens of times. At this point, he's just trying to avoid boredom. Of course, this doesn't make him any less dangerous.

!!! Essylt/Evonne

An exiled fairy whose father was a torturer before he was executed.

----

* TheExile: Like Padraic, she's been exiled to Jacob's Bell.

!!! Keller

An exiled fairy who was the apprentice of Essylt's father, and follows her out of loyalty. He focuses on fringe groups for his personal amusement.

----

* TheApprentice: To Essylt's father before he was executed.
* TheDragon: To Essylt.

!!! Letita

Joanna Duchamp's familiar.

----

* {{BFS}}: The 12-foot sword oft-mentioned on the main page.
* {{Familiar}}: To Joanna Duchamp, taking the form of a chickadee. [[spoiler:She's pretending, actually working with Padriac.]]
* LadyOfWar: Projects this image.
* GlamourFailure: Her sword breaks into four pieces once Blake starts noticing how unwieldy it should be.

!!! Arthild

A fairy in the service of Johannes as a teenager, who was originally part of the winter court before being bound by him.

----

* FurAndLoathing: Wore a rat pelt over her shoulders.
* RodentsOfUnusualSize: Could transform into a giant, bloated rat bigger than a small room, that could also spawn masses of smaller rats from her stomach controlled by Johannes' pipes.
* {{Shapeshifting}}: Uses a rat pelt and possibly glamour to turn into a giant rat.
* SwarmOfRats: See above and be terrified.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Demons]]

!!! General Tropes

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Demons are nearly universally reviled by all other beings, and for good reason considering their abilities and dispositions. They exist only for destruction and what they destroy is gone forever, no exceptions. As such, a single demon is worse in the long term than a thousand non-demonic horrors.
* ApocalypseHow: Their ultimate goal is a Class X-4, the destruction of the universe, if not a Class Z, the destruction of all reality.
* TheCorruption: Demons have rot that corrupts everything they're around, which serves as their main identifier, and is often compared to radioactive fallout. Just summoning them causes damage to the world. Rosalyn Thorburn theorizes in Histories 7 that the universe might be the remnants of a feast devoured by the demons of the first choir, and in Histories 12.
* CreativeSterility: Demons cannot create, only destroy.
* DealWithTheDevil: Diabolists make deals with them for power, which incurs a massive karmic debt.
* EntropyAndChaosMagic: Their nature is fundamentally entropic, which is the reason why, in a straight fight, an angel will ultimately lose to a demon-entropy will ultimately win over order. The first choir especially this, described as "entropy distilled."
* {{Hellhound}}: The lawyer firm uses demon hellhounds to track down practitioners.
* HatePlague: Demons of the fifth choir specialize in this.
* ManipulativeBastard: The demons of the Choir of Unrest get people to summon more demons in the form of creating books to trick them.
* MirrorMonster: Demons like Ur and Barbatorem can travel through reflective surfaces, in the case of the former necessitating the prevention of direct eye contact.
* MookMaker: Powerful enough demons end up casting-off imps. Pauz for instance was cast off from Marquis Andras, a member of the Choir of the Feral, and in Histories 7, the Abstract Demon reveals that it's making several of its own in preparation for its bindings breaking.
* OurDemonsAreDifferent:
** Demons and Devils come in seven different choirs, listed from most to least powerful:
*** Choir of Dark: The Abstract Demon, Caacrinolaas, Shabriri, Tobu-Bōkyaku, Bazuili, Coronzon, Ouhim
*** Choir of Madness: Morax, Hauri
*** Choir of Ruin: Barbatorem, Zapan
*** Choir of Chaos
*** Choir of the Feral: [[HatePlague Pauz]], Marquis Andras, Surbas
*** Choir of Sin: [[HornyDevils Succubus from Black Lamb's Blood interlude]]
*** Choir of Unrest: Agares
** In terms of power they're ranked from imps, least, lesser, moderate, and demon nobles such as Agares.
* SpeakOfTheDevil: Some demons can be summoned by saying their name several times, like Ornias and what is hinted to be Baphomet.
* YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm: Rosalyn theorizes that the aftereffects that demons of the first choir leave behind aren't creations of the demons (who cannot create) but distortions of reality that try to fill the void they've left.

!!! Barbatorem

An Other in service to the Thorburn family since the 1950s and a demon of the third choir of Ruin, named after the fact that in the past Barbers were surgeons and the shears it carries, it remains locked away in a room in their house.

----

* AbsurdlySharpBlade: For two cupped handfuls of flayed flesh from its practitioner, it can ensure that blades never go dull. The blades are even sharpened enough that [[spoiler:it can be used to sever reflections]].
* AnimalisticAbomination: One of its forms is a mostly bald bipedal sheep with patches of hair.
* AFateWorseThanDeath: Since it can't directly kill, this is its specialty. [[spoiler:It splits its victims in two, and makes the pieces destroy each other-whichever survives is forever diminished.]]
* BaldOfEvil: His forms are always bald.
* DeadlyDoctor: Barbatorem can perform incredibly reliable, life-saving surgery in exchange for lowering the recipient's resistance to possession.
* DemonicPossession: [[spoiler: Johannes tries to trap the Barber in the Abyss by allowing it to possess him. It works, at first. Then the lawyers come to break Barbatorem out. The possession allows the Barber to control Faysal.]]
* TheDreaded: Is so feared that Laird states that if he were released he'd kill his family rather than leave them to its nonexistent mercy if he thought he couldn't defend them against it.
* EvilSmellsBad: Barbatorem is known for his repulsive stench consisting of rot, burning hair or/and blood.
* HannibalLecture: [[spoiler:Does this in Judgement 16.10 to Blake's party while using Johannes' body, attempting to break them down.]]
* HumanoidAbomination:
** His first form seen in-story is that of a old Middle Eastern or Indian man with a potbelly formed by hunger with a leg gouged open by his shears.
** Upon [[spoiler:getting freed from his bindings in the Abyss]], he takes on a more muscular form covered in bruises and scar wearing either a bleeding mule or horse head.
* ImmortalityInducer: It can extend the lifespan of others at a cost of them smelling like it.
* ImplacableMan: [[spoiler: When it is freed in the Abyss it starts chasing after the other characters, who are trying to escape. Even when it runs into a bunch of Others, even when it gets squished by giant worm monster, it just keeps coming.]]
* TheJuggernaut: [[spoiler:Upon getting freed it more or less shrugs off everything thrown at it, save for the Dionysus smiting that stunned it, before Johannes sacrifices himself.]]
* LiteralSplitPersonality: [[spoiler:It can ''create'' these. And then make them kill each other.]]
* MageKiller: It's especially good at evading defenses practitioners set up, and can cross into demesnes (But not the houses of non-practitioners) without permission.
* TheMedic: For enough blood that it would make the practitioner pass out, it can do medical treatments, but it leaves the practitioner in danger of getting possessed.
* MorphicResonance: Barbatorem's forms are always bald or balding and wield some sort of cutting implement, normally shears or scissors, though in one case it carried around a sickle.
* OmnicidalManiac: It believes that humans are going to end up in the Abyss and then the age of demons, so it's best to just get it over and consume everything now.
* PowerNullifier: Can get this effect by mutilating the soul of its victim, preventing them from using magic and also potentially denying them access to the afterlife.
* ShapeShifter: Has no real defined form, having taken forms including but not limited to a mostly bald bipedal sheep with patches of hair, a bloated man disfigured to a monstrous point by lash-wounds, two children hand in hand, and a legless man on a horse. The form he took when Rosalyn Thorburn bound him was that of a fat, festering man with a horse’s skull fixed over his head wielding a sickle.
* ShearMenace: Often carries scissors, clippers, or shears.
* SinisterScythe: When Rosalyn Thorburn bound Barbatorem while using her firstborn Charles as bait, it was wielding a sickle.
* StrawNihilist: [[spoiler: Acts this way while possessing Johannes. It talks about how humanity is ultimately doomed so it might as well put us all out of our misery.]]
* TeleportSpam: It can do this by transferring itself to the reflection in its shears, and throwing the shears.
* TheVoiceless: Barbatorem is mute and can't talk. [[spoiler:After possessing Johannes it gains the ability to speak.]]

!!! Ornias

A powerful demon that can be summoned by saying his name seven times.

----

* ChekhovsGunman: [[spoiler:Subverted, despite Ms. Lewis' attempt to summon him he never shows up during the story.]]
* FallenAngel: is billed like this by Ms. Lewis, "He who placed the stars in the firmament, he now calls them down to earth."
* PlayingWithFire[=/=]CastingAShadow: Briar Girl's description of his powers (as Blake relayed to her) suggest these power sets.

!!! Pauz

An Imp of the fifth choir of the Feral, feral and foul. It is a mote, a cast-off of a larger entity (in this case [[Literature/ArsGoetia Marquis Andras]]), and one of the three things that Conquest wants Blake to bind and bring to him.

----

* TheBeastmaster: Can control animals.
* TheCorrupter: Corrupts animals and people just by proximity, spreading seeds of malignity. If related to a nuke analogy, it's the fallout and radiation that comes after. And it's thinking of trying it on Conquest.
* CunningLinguist: Knows over thirty languages, but not Pig Latin.
* DemonicPossession: Does this to whoever it chooses as a host, taking from them bits and pieces of them in the process and adding to itself.
* DidntThinkThisThrough: It's a fundamentally short-sighted creature, if a cunning one. Blake and Rose offer it a great opportunity, which it recognizes, but it still attempts to kill Blake through ExactWords after being bound, even though this would prevent it from reaching that opportunity.
* EvilSmellsBad: Not only does it register as a scent that rivals feces, hot garbage, and blood, but it has a sort of radiation effect that makes animals and beings like Isadora hostile to those it bleeds into since they can DetectEvil.
* ExactWords: Pauz agrees not to act against Blake once the sealing is done. Which means once he was sealed then all those feral animals plus his human host that were under his control were set free inside the house with Blake, mauling him.
* FliesEqualsEvil: And Blake is covered in them after binding Pauz.
* FisherKing: Once its finds a host and settles into an area, it upsets the natural order of thing to cause chaos in an effort to further along whatever goal it has. This includes connections, such as reversing Blake and Rose's power connection.
* HatePlague: Its very presence, the radiation or "ambiance" it gives off, causes people and animals to become irritable and aggressive.
* ItsPronouncedTroPay: Pauz apparently rhymes with "ooze."
* MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily: Has a mangled, double row of fangs.
* SummonBiggerFish: Rose gets it to behave by threatening to summon his master, who is hinted to be Baphomet (who is probably in the top tier of the Feral Choir), but it turns out to be a Marquis of Hell, Andras, instead.
* ToThePain: Describes in excruciating detail what horrible things he'll do to [[spoiler:Laird]] once he's been captured by Blake and company, to the point that Blake asks him to shut up about it.

!!! [[Literature/ArsGoetia Marquis Andras]]

The being that Pauz is a mote of, a far more powerful demon.

----

* SealedEvilInACan: Marquis Andras is currently sealed inside of a sabre and powerless until it is found.

!!! The Abstract Demon, Ur

The third being that Blake has to bind for Conquest, a demon of the first choir of Darkness capable of destroying the connections of others and rendering them unpersons. It also has the ability to travel inside mirrors and other reflective surfaces, including human eyes.

----

* AnArmAndALeg: Blake manages to sever one of its limbs while retreating.
* TheChessmaster: It deliberately fortifies the structure it's bound inside, because it knows it'll be free in a decade anyway, and it's not so much '[[SealedEvilInACan bound]]' as '[[MonsterIsAMommy nesting]]'.
* DarkIsEvil: Is part of the first choir of darkness, considered the most powerful.
* DeliberateInjuryGambit: It deliberately immolates a massive chunk of its body and sets its lair on fire by setting off Blake's gasoline, only to reveal that it can spread to the smoke that fire generates as well as shadows.
* EldritchAbomination: It constantly shifts form and is capable of eating abstract concepts, such as its own name. Isadora senses that it's so big that it fills up a deep chasm under the factory.
* FateWorseThanDeath: See RetGone below.
* FirePurifies: Contact with flames automatically makes whatever part it touch with go up.
* HeroKiller: In Void 7.11 it [[spoiler:ensnares Blake and severs his connections, causing him to fall through the cracks.]]
* LogicalWeakness:
** Since it is from the Choir of Darkness, [[KillItWithFire fire]] and [[LightIsGood light]] does wonders against it.
** [[spoiler: Also, because demons are by nature destroyers, an act of creation can bind it-the binding on the factory, for example, takes the form of graffiti.]]
* NoSell: Can get around having to tell its true name by ''eating'' it. [[spoiler: Can get around fire by hiding in the smoke.]]
* OmnicidalManiac: It's implied in it's narration that its ultimate goal is to consume ''everything''. In Null 9.5 [[spoiler:it's even found eating its way into the Drains, held back only by a long forgotten god of light.]]
* RetGone: The Abstract Demon can inflict this on its victims, removing all their connections in order to make them nonexistant. When Blake confronts the demon, [[spoiler: it attacks 3 unknown and unremembered beings, implying that Blake had 3 allies who have been destroyed by the demon. Allies whom he doesn't remember and who are not mentioned previously in the text, implying that they have not only been erased from existence, they have also been [[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou erased from the minds of the readers]]]].
** In Void 7.11 [[spoiler:it appears to have done this to Blake, with only Isadora remembering the most about him, though she can no longer remember his name.]]
* SealedEvilInACan: Is currently bound inside an abandoned factory, though after a decade the seals will break and it shall be free again.
* {{Xenofiction}}: It gets a brief moment of narration at the end of Histories 7. It's even more monstrous than you'd think.

!!! Caacrinolaas

A demon mentioned by Rosalyn Thorburn in one of her books. It has a venom that eventually eradicates a person's entire being. Those close to them upon their eradication will be afflicted by a pining so intense that they will never move of their own volition again, only staring into the distance.

----

* MoralEventHorizon: [[invoked]] In order to save their loved ones from the secondary effect of the venom, the afflicted must do unforgivable acts to them in order to save them.
* PoisonousPerson: Its venom will eventually render a person nonexistent.
* ThousandYardStare: Sported by its secondary victims, if [[BreakHerHeartToSaveHer preventative measures]] aren't taken, or fail.

!!! Shabriri

A demon mentioned by Rosalyn Thorburn in one of her books, she has a lantern that turns people blind, and a bell that makes her victims deaf.

----

* BrownNote: Her bell makes people deaf.
* GoMadFromTheRevelation: Those afflicted by her tools end up perceiving everything that doesn't exist in that space and time, as their eyes and ears are opened ever wider to true void.
* LightIsNotGood: Her lantern turns people blind, and she happens to be part of the Choir of Darkness.
* OxymoronicBeing: Part of the Choir of Darkness, and happens to have powers over light.

!!! Agares

One of the demons of the seventh choir of Unrest, whose powers involve bringing great things low.

----

* TheCorrupter: His modus operandi.
* KillTheGods: Once plotted with a diabolist named Jeffrey to kill all gods and spirits.

!!! Ouhim

A demon of the first choir of Darkness once summoned by Rosalyn Thorburn as a demonstration to Alister Behaim. Its abilities seem to be based around making cracks in the fabric of reality.
----
* BlackEyesOfEvil: It's described as having black pits for eyes, and is a demon of the first choir.
* HumanoidAbomination: Unlike the other demons shown so far it takes on a more humanoid form, but its inherent wrongness is very plain to see.
* SlasherSmile: Literally, as its smile causes cracks in reality.

!!! Hauri

A demon of the first choir and a mote of Flavros summoned by Ms. Lewis in order to punish Rose following its original binding by Marissa de Roust. As a result of Flavros being a demon of triality, it is a demon of duality that works by creating dissonance and splitting things in two, including itself.
----

* DecapitationPresentation: [[spoiler:Nick shows its head to the other motes after cutting it off.]]
* GiantMook: Was the noticeably largest of all the imps summoned by Ms. Lewis.
* MultipleHeadCase: Has another head growing out of one of its shoulders.
* OffWithHisHead: [[spoiler:Rose defeats it by binding it through invoking Marissa de Roust, before Nick cuts its head off in order to ward off the other imps.]]

!!! Surbas

A demon of the fifth choir summoned by Ms. Lewis to punish Rose, he has the ability to get larger from eating everything in its surroundings. Its voice is described as literally cutting.
----

* ExtremeOmnivore: Eats everything, even other demons.
* MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily: Like Pauz his mouth is lined with numerous teeth.
* SlasherSmile: His mouth is locked in a leering smile.
* ToThePain: Asks Rose's group to bow before him so that he could eat the first ones quickly before taking the time to slowly eat the others.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Ethereal Beings]]

The various types of ethereal beings that make up the Pactverse can be found here.

!!! General Tropes

* JacobMarleyApparel: Ghosts are dressed in whatever clothing they died in.
* LivingMemory: Ghosts are psychic imprints left by people as they died, with traumas being the most common, though brilliance can manifest a ghost as well.
* OurGhostsAreDifferent:
** Ghosts are [[LivingMemory Psychic impression]] left on the world, with traumas being the key ones that remain although moments of sheer brilliance can be there too. They tend to be single-minded and whatever sensation gripped them spreads around, such as June Burlison's death by hypothermia giving her a cold aura in death.
** Spectres are volatile ghosts that are akin to old explosives and not to be bound.
** Wraiths or Boggarts are ghosts loaded with enough negativity that they went off the rails and built with echoes that aren't their own making them closer to different Others.
* SaltSolution: All are weak to salt being thrown on them.

!!! June Burlison

A woman who died of hypothermia, and the spirit currently inhabiting Blake's frost hatchet.

----

* AnIcePerson: Has ice powers.
* CessationOfExistence: With her power spent her ghost faded away for good.
* PoweredByAForsakenChild: She is nothing more than the impression of dying from hypothermia. At first, Blake is understandably uneasy with this, but removing that suffering means removing June entirely.

!!! Leonard Harlan

A man who drank himself to death after his son died, formerly inhabited a bottle.

----
* CessationOfExistence: With his power spent his ghost faded away for good.
* PoisonousPerson: Because he drank himself to death, and because his son suffocated in cleaning fumes.
* ItsAllMyFault / MyGodWhatHaveIDone: The emotions he carried into death.

!!! Evan Matthieu

An eight year old who died of hypothermia after escaping the Hyena, who later ends up becoming Blake's familiar.

----

* BadassAdorable: He's about eight, likes motorcycles, and generally acts like a normal kid who's been through a traumatic experience (dying). He's also saved Blake and Rose numerous times. Will crow about beating you in any given fighting game (especially if he defeated the epic slog against the controller to do it).
* BarredFromTheAfterlife: Due to the Hyena scaring off whatever was supposed to take his soul. Later, when given the option, he refuses, as it isn't in his nature to go willingly to death. There's just too much to see, first.
* BeleagueredAssistant: He becomes this to Blake as Blake steadily loses more of himself and gets more self-sacrificing.
--> ''I can push him out of the way of dragons or demons or whatever but I can’t push him out of the way of being an ''idiot''! The last time I let you guys talk he talked himself into [[spoiler:letting you kill him!]]''
* TheConscience: To Blake, reining him in and pointing out when Blake starts to go overboard. [[spoiler:After Blake becomes a bogeyman, he realizes that he can no longer trust his instincts, which are geared towards murder and mayhem, and relies on Evan's input much more heavily.]]
* CreepyChild: When he still existed as a disconnected ghost in the Hyena's territory, he tended to repeat actions and phrases he used in life, often with disconnects-he was at his most realistic when being hunted by the Hyena, where he could can draw upon reactions he had in life, but even then he tended to flicker, vanish and reappear, and repeat the same phrases over and over. Once bound to Blake, his true personality returned; see BadassAdorable above.
* {{Determinator}}: Never gave up and evaded the Hyena and its ensnared Others for ''days'', only dying due to running out of strength and succumbing to hypothermia. Even after death, he continued to defy the Hyena by constantly escaping it.
* EscapeArtist: Since he was one of the few people who managed to constantly evade the Hyena both before and after death, his powers as a familiar focus on escapes.
* {{Familiar}}: To Blake, taking the form of a sparrow.
* FantasticAngst: He misses his parents and friends, who he can't talk to due to being dead, and he comments that he's actually sort of ''glad'' he died-because towards the end of it his life started to ''suck.''
* FiveFingerDiscount: Despite not having five fingers when he's solid, Evan is a skilled enough thief to steal multiple items from an alert practitioner without him noticing until it is too late.
* InTheHood: When in ghost form, wears a hooded jacket, the clothes he died in.
* IntoxicationEnsues: Gets drunk without even drinking anything when Dionysus "Jagerbombed" the place. He didn't like it.
--> '''Evan:''' This is been' drunk? ''Bluh''. What's ''wrong'' with people? Why would they ''want'' this? Can't even fly proper.
* KidSidekick: To Blake, before and after becoming his familiar.
* OddFriendship: He and Tyler get along great, same with Blake. Heck, any bloke with some remotely healthy connection to their inner child tends to melt to some degree around Evan. Even a few of the Knights were susceptible.
** IntergenerationalFriendship: Evan was eight when he died and they are in they're both in their twenties.
* OpenAndShut: In sparrow-form, he demonstrates the ability to open locks without a key, or, indeed, hands.
* OurGhostsAreDifferent: Even more so than normal ghosts for the setting. Due to dying in the Hyena's domain, Evan couldn't fully pass on and as a result is far more lucid than most ghosts.
* PlayingWithFire: He's ''very'' enthusiastic about finding a way to set him on fire. He doesn't want to go out in a blaze of glory, he wants to go out ''as'' a blaze of glory. [[spoiler:He finally gets his wish in Judgement 16.4 after the Elder Sister fills him with the Eye.]]
* PollyWantsAMicrophone: As a talking bird.
* ResurrectiveImmortality: Thanks to being Blake's familiar, he is protected from death so long as Blake has the power to keep his mortal body animate.
* TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior: Averted. Evan retains his childlike qualities even ''after'' he was killed by a goblin, came back as a ghost, became a diabolist's familiar, spent a month in a house under siege by monsters, and even after being an accessory to Blake's murders of Duchamp husbands.
* UndeadChild: Since he's a ghost.
* VoiceOfTheLegion: Occasionally speaks in a half-dozen different intonations of the same phrase, overlapping, though a rare occurrence since partnering with Blake.
* YourDaysAreNumbered: Following Blake [[spoiler:getting his connections severed by Ur]], Evan is currently living on borrowed time and requires constant power transfusions.

!!! Mary Frances Troxler

An Other that is a wraith and was used before the start of the A.D calender by mediums to find fiances for women, before the ritual was messed up in the late 19th Century and she started murdering women instead.

* EvilEvolves: She's constantly evolving as time passes.
* KnifeNut: Wields a knife as her main weapon.
* LegacyCharacter: One of the Nine Entities that make up the 'Bloody Mary' Urban Legend. She even has the right name.
* MagicMirror: Her rituals used mirrors, now she emerges from them when summoned.
* MirrorMonster: What she basically is. She has been constantly changing how she operates with them when it comes to the specifics, yet mirrors are always linked to her on a fundamental level. This was one of the reasons why Rose was interested in summoning her in the first place.
* TheMatchmaker: Used by mediums in the past to find husbands-to-be for women, until the ritual got corrupted about 120 years ago and she now kills women who inadvertently summon her instead.
* SerialKiller: A killer of women and only women, she's part of the 'Bloody Mary' legends for this. [[MotiveDecay Although, she started out defending women]] from abusive partners when things first started to go off the rails. "Serial killer" or "[[MercyKill mercy killer]]", take your pick.



[[/folder]]

[[folder:Subhumans]]

!! General Tropes

* HillbillyHorrors: Generations of descendants that come from [[WildChild feral children]] and isolated families who [[IncestIsRelative practice incest]] lead to almost-humans called ''subhumans''. They have less human trappings and if they become Other enough they can be summoned. They fall into their own categories as well:
** [[GeneticAdaptation Natural]]: They get twisted by their environment. Built for cold, desert, for living in ravines or deep caves, inhospitable places.
** [[LostTribe Social]]: They form tribes, [[CannibalTribe cannibal families]], or that sort of thing.
** [[LonersAreFreaks Loners]]: Break from the pack, their pack dies, or they’re exceptional members of a family unit, too crazy or brutal to be allowed to mingle.
* NoSocialSkills: Are not exactly well versed in human social mores, but they're not stupid.
* SmarterThanYouLook: Do not mistake their misshapen bodies for misshapen minds, the only skill they lost in the transition was their social one. Cunning is a survival trait.
* WildCard: Can be just as dangerous to the summoners as to whatever they're being pointed at if not properly bound. Which makes sense when you think about it: pacts, bounds, promises, contracts and seals ''[[FridgeBrilliance are social constructs]]'', and these guys are not good at normal social interactions.

!!! Midge

Daughter of Rackham Thin and of Fat Mam, she's a subhuman-turned-Other.
----

* AchievementsInIgnorance: [[spoiler:Her more or less going "whatever" to the terms of her binding allow her to very easily use LoopholeAbuse.]]
* BarredFromTheAfterlife: When vigilante practitioners came to visit doom on her family, they officially killed and bound her to the Seal before whatever claimed the dead could take her; so, officially, that's how she was stuck in the darker patches of Limbo only to be called up by Rose or other summoners. As a result, she's an iffy subhuman-bogeywoman. [[spoiler: As it turns out, those practioner-binders got that ''just a teensy bit'' wrong: more border-hopping bogey than subhuman by that point, she was.]]
* CreepyChild: What her own parents thought of her before chasing her off. [[LonersAreFreaks Uh, yeah]]. [[spoiler: So creepy, she managed to ''crawl'' into the Drains on her own, survived for years hunting Others, and came back before officially being "killed" and sealed.]]
* CombatSadomasochist: Blake notes she either doesn't feel pain or get a different sensation akin to this. Creepy either way. Turns out she had this even when she was a child.
* EatenAlive: The end of Duress has her being eaten alive by Others, but it's unlikely that she was truly killed.
* GeniusBruiser: She's large and powerful, but hardly dumb. As soon as all the enemies were dealt with she tried to get rid of the only person who could banish her.
--> '''Maggie:''' Subhumans aren’t stupid, they’re socially backward.
* HatesEveryoneEqually: She seems to be powered by hatred towards just about everything, probably due to her upbringing.
* ImAHumanitarian[=/=]HuntingTheMostDangerousGame: She was brought up this way. And, has continued since, when she gets the chance. Heck, she doesn't just stop at humans: Others are also fair game, if she can bag them. She also isn't in it just for the calorific/ spiritual content. ItAmusedMe is in play, too.
* ImprobableAimingSkills: Has very, very good aim with just about anything she gets her hands on.
* ImprovisedWeapon: An expert with these, turning damn near anything around her into a projectile weapon.
* LeakingCanOfEvil: She was improperly bound to the Seal of Solomon from the start. Probably because she was [[spoiler: a bogeywoman already, and the those who sealed her didn't realise this about her nature... Nor did they realise that she didn't give a damn about much of the meaning of the words they used and could shrug some of the Seal off as a result. This goes a long way in explaining just how easily she can use LoopholeAbuse in general.]]
* LoopholeAbuse: The terms she was bound by were that she needed to defeat all the enemies in the immediate area. Because Blake's group interfered she was unable to compete it and nulled the binding, giving her enough freedom to do as she pleased.
* MadeOfIron: Tanks bullets like they weren't anything, and even as a child could shrug off knife wounds. It took an entire horde of different Others ''hours'' to bring her down after the residents of the Hillglades House fled and its implied she took down a ton of them in the process.
* StoutStrength: Packs enough strength to bring down a house, tear apart a fully-grown goblin, and rip off a person's head. When she puts it behind throwing something it's akin to a cannonball.
* TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior: So much so that even her own cannibalistic parents locked her away.
* TurnedAgainstTheirMasters: Turned on Rose the moment she opened her mouth after summoning her due to the above LoopholeAbuse. She actively waits until whoever summons her makes a mistake and then takes advantage.

!!! Fat Mam

Midge's mother, who was killed by vigilantes.
----

* AbusiveParents: Had no issue beating Midge if she displeased her in any way.
* ImAHumanitarian: Her mother took people and turned them into sausages.
* OffWithHisHead: Died via beheading. She had it coming.
* PosthumousCharacter: We only know her from Histories 11 and the terms of Midge's summoning.

[[/folder]]


[[folder:The Undead]]

!! General Tropes

* FleshEatingZombie: [[OurGhoulsAreCreepier Ghouls]] that have flesh-rotting bites and are individuals who’ve interrupted the circle of life and death, usually by eating the dead, coming back from near-death one too many times, or practicing necromancy badly. They're out of balance and need to stave off their death by hibernating for months or years and eating flesh when they wake.
* OurZombiesAreDifferent: Much like every other creature imaginable in Pact, they also come in different flavors:
* RevenantZombie: Those that died, or suffered some gruesome injury, but didn’t go down. The spirit didn’t leave the body, and the body came back for unfinished business.

!!! Tallowman

A talented candlemaker who scrimped and saved to buy a woman’s love. He was betrayed by greedy brothers and their families who wanted the savings. He was repeatedly stabbed and left for dead, but filled the injuries with candlewax and went on to seek his vengeance.
----

* {{Determinator}}: No matter how many times he was killed he put himself back together and kept going in order to get revenge. It took possibly a divine act of repentance to get him to go down for good the first time.
* EyeScream: Is missing one of his eyes, which he replaced with a wax one.
* HumanResources: Takes the body fat of the dead and turns it into wax for its own use.
* KillItWithFire: Weak to fire [[LogicalWeakness Because so much of its body was replaced and held together with wax, fire makes it melt and makes him burn up]].
* LosingYourHead: Was decapitated once while seeking revenge. Barely slowed him down until he got some wax and put himself together again.
* RevenantZombie: Driven by revenge for his murder he refused to move on, plugged his wounds with wax, and started killing off members of his family responsible for his death.
* SerialKiller: Described as such.

!!! The Bane

Constructs made from perverting death with necromancy and alchemy, one of them was sent to attack the Thorburn base of operations and was made of bones. Since it lacks any fleshy parts it is incredibly difficult to take down physically.
----

* AchillesHeel: Despite their toughness Banes are vulnerable to a number of natural objects and phenomena such as [[KillItWithFire fire]], green wood, broken stalactites, daylight, living bone and, most likely, blood (don't think about it) and [[KillItWithWater natural running water]].
* AntiMagic: Sloughs off hexes and offensive magic like it's nothing, although barriers will bar it.
* DemBones: The Bane sent against the Thorburn Family was basically a skeleton with its bones stripped of flesh, softened, and then hardened again in alchemical mixtures.
* MageKiller: Their venom and thrice-bound attributes make them a potent weapon against practitioners.
* ThePlague: Can be, depending on the nature of the illness the person had when it was formed. Even if it's not carrying something easily transmittable, it's still going to be [[WalkingWasteland The Blight]] in some way: usually as transmittable necrosis. Worse, Banes ''can'' create Banes of their victims, under special circumstances.
* PoisonousPerson: Their attacks impart a corrosive, necrotic venom known as ''Blight'' strong enough to eat through wood.
* PoweredByAForsakenChild: Or in this case, some poor, very ill sod a necromancer thought would prove useful. Natural ones can occur (referred to as Nosferatu), but... you've still got the tortured soul of ''somebody'' powering the whole "entity".
* SinisterScythe: The one sent to murder the Thorburns had mantis-style sickles for arms.

[[/folder]]


[[folder:Bogeymen]]

!! General Tropes
* EmotionEater: They sustain themselves and gain power by leaving an impression through fear, as the very thought of them forges a connection so they remain out of Limbo. They can actually use other emotions as hooks to reality, but panic, terror and fear are the most viscerally immediate and the easiest for them to raise.
* {{Determinator}}: Each and every one of them has [[HadToBeSharp had to be this]] just to survive losing everything the first time and being changed by a manifestation of Limbo enough to come back and be a bother.
* HumanoidAbomination: They often take vaguely humanoid shapes.
* ThePowerOfHate: The most reliable way out of the Drains is clawing their way out through pure hatred and grit, especially if they died or were lost in a really gruesome way. Sometimes they get lucky and get out by other ways, however.
* SerialKiller: Rose describes them as "loner Others with a penchant for terror or murder". When you look at their powers you see why.
* ResurrectiveImmortality: If strong or clever enough, they'll bubble back up from Limbo again and again -- even if you thought you'd killed them. The problem with inflicting enough damage on them to end them is that they can bungee back to the Drains generally faster than most can inflict critical damage on them. Getting back out, however: that's the neat and difficult trick.
* ThingsThatGoBumpInTheNight: See above.
* WasOnceAMan: Most were human at some point, until they fell into Limbo. But, as the Drains take anything and everything that falls into obscurity (be it Other, a place or just some unlucky sod), breaks it down and reassembles it in various different configurations, most are not just made ''of'' human, any more.
* WrongContextMagic: Due to being relatively young as a group compared to most other Others, bogeymen are not automatically under the jurisdiction of the Seal of Solomon and can attack who they please, though as a consequence they have to get energy through other means.

!!! Joseph's Familiar

A bogeyman who served as Joseph Attwell's familiar.
----

* DittoFighter: WordOfGod on the subject is that, when the bogeyman takes a face, he becomes skilled at whatever weapon his victim would favor if they happened to be inclined towards brutal murder.
* FaceStealer: This particular Bogeyman had the ability to cut the faces off of people and wear them as a mask. Depending on how long ago it was done, it can appear as that person flawlessly.
* KillAndReplace: Since it needs to carve off faces of others to get its disguise, they usually die.
* KnifeNut: After killing a manservant and taking his face he displays some affinity with knives.
* MadeOfIron: Took several shotgun rounds and got back up.
* ReplicantSnatching: When Joseph Attwell found him, he had killed and taken the role of a factory worker so perfectly that even his family couldn't tell the difference.

!!! James Corvidae

A bogeyman who has existed since the arrival of Europeans in the New World, it stirs up conflict by rearranging connections to be inconvenient. It is literally an [[DiscordTropes embodiment of discord]] and currently serves Rose Thorburn Jr.
----

* AffablyEvil: Just because he's working against most people is no reason to be openly ''rude'' about it. He's always polite, seemingly helpful and will even offer up genuine, workable advice if asked. While he's also carefully moving people into checkmate [[spoiler: and earmarking precious things to steal for himself that'll cause knock-on harm down the line--not necessarily just for those who have summoned him.]]
* AmbiguouslyEvil: Hero or Villain; Good or Evil? Depends entirely on which side of the fence you are looking at him from, really. If you settle for "goodish", then he's certainly [[GoodIsNotNice Not Nice]], at the very least and one of the darker strains of AntiHero for sure. BestServedCold is most ''definitely'' in effect. Otherwise, we're in AntiVillain territory--it's hard to think that the probable embodiment of the resentment of those slowly and excruciatingly watching their way of life dying through colonial expansion is totally ''wrong'' in doing what he does, however nasty. It is, at the very least, understandable.
* AnthropomorphicPersonification:
** Thought by most practitioners to be a curse bestowed onto settlers from the First Nations, over some slight. Backed up when it is stated that said curse preferably targets powerful men, mainly ''white men'', and only appeared when the settlers did. Which is his MO when left to his own devices. Further backed up by the fact that Mara and he seem to know each other enough to be nodding acquaintances. And, have a modicum of respect for each other, too.
** His creator was an Algonquin shaman, according to Histories 11. [[spoiler: But, he's not exactly a ''curse'', as much as an evolving greater-spirit with a mission who's been a bit battered and altered by time, but who is still ticking along. All this means that he's rather more than "a curse", and maybe not really a standard Bogeyman at all (if there is such a thing).]]
* AnimalisticAbomination: When originally created, he took the form of a crow [[spoiler: greater-]]spirit, [[spoiler: making him what amounts to a lesser ''god.'']] He has since taken on more human traits to appear as a HumanoidAbomination most of the time, though he can still take on the crow form if needed. However, that corvid-like MorphicResonance stays with him, regardless.
* AppleOfDiscord: Causes situations to occur where conflicts emerge by manipulating emotional connections so that what belonged to one person now belongs to another, thus causing them to fight over it. [[spoiler:Histories 11 ''loosely'' implies that he was responsible for the creation of the Thorburn family in the first place, and is using them in a century long plot to get back at the descendants of the settlers. But it's not confirmed.]]
* BestServedCold: He had a mission given to him upon his creation: to repay the settlers who took what became Jacob's Bell from those who it originally belonged to... [[spoiler: with three times the interest in pain and suffering they gave those they supplanted. He's not exactly in any great rush to do so, given that he's been working for over 200 years on this task using whatever he can get hold of.]]
* BestialityIsDepraved: He gets his revenge on the priests who bound him to the Seal of Solomon by rearranging connections so that they'd be found with their privates inside cattle, but it cost him a lot of power to do so.
* TheChessmaster: Yup. Has a number of people in and around Jacob's Bell he routinely moves in his own game. Over generations. [[spoiler: Including the Thorburns.]]
* ConflictBall: Creates one between the Sisters of the Torch and the Astrologer [[spoiler:by having their fire spirit decide it likes to reside in one of the Astrologer's properties, making it hers and robbing them of their power unless she gives it up, which she won't as the property belongs to her predecessors.]]
* DeaderThanDead: [[spoiler:Seemingly dies upon Blake stabbing him with the Hyena.]]
* DisasterDominoes: When he's not inflating the ConflictBall for others to play with, he's patiently setting dominoes in place to fall in dramatically bloody patterns with just a little ''push'' in the right place triggering the whole mess. [[spoiler:He pretty much took the powder keg situation with the Duchamps and made it go off, dividing the family and leaving them useless for whatever plans Blake had.]]
* IHaveManyNames[=/=]MeaningfulName: James Crow, Jamie the Rook, Jay Chough, and so on. When Rose summons him, he goes by "John Pica." Spot the corvid connection...
* LetsYouAndHimFight: His stock in trade.
* ManipulativeBastard: Who'd've thunk that the relationship manipulator would be playing with the summoners who use him [[spoiler: for his own, hundred-years-long plan?]] Just about anybody who realises how sodding dangerous his powers are: including many of the summoners, like Rose. However, he knows they think they know how much and to what extent he does this... He's not compared to summoning a demon for nothing.
* MorphicResonance: All his humanoid forms have a slouch, black hair that's carefully slicked back, a hook-nose, skin that marks him as heavily Native American in background and nice, dark clothes that have seen too much use. He also sports a harsh, fairly croaky voice when he speaks and his laugh is... distinctively unique. For a human.
* RavensAndCrows: He seems a grab-bag mix of the various corvid tropes. Emphasis on CreepyCrows, but not exclusively so. His ability to take connections and mess with them certainly alludes to the [[ThievingMagpie magpie]] [[MagpiesAsPortents myths]]. He also originally took the form of a [[TheTrickster crow-spirit]]. Traditionally, raven- and crow-spirits are seen as ChaoticNeutral bordering on ChaoticGood and often linked to renewal and creation as a well as destructive, status quo upending messes. Corvidae, has, however, been been given an agenda, put through the Solomon Seal mill and had time to build up personal resentments as well as hit the Abyss: so all bets are off as to his closest appropriate alignment.
* SarcasticDevotee: At best and if you're lucky. If you're not lucky, he may be your dangerously TreacherousAdvisor under the cover of being a Sarcastic Devotee, instead. He has barely-concealed contempt for most who summon him, for all he ''does'' tend to seemingly [[AffablyEvil stick to the spirit of the rules]] in front of others rather more than many practitioners do (not much of a recommendation, that). About the only person he has any real respect for is... Crone Mara.
* ShootTheDangerousMinion: More like Banish the Dangerous Minion back to Limbo, because Rose did not trust him with her while she was unconscious...which is probably a good reason.
* TooCleverByHalf: What summoners are basically warned about him being in all literature that deals with him. He's not in it for ''them'', after all. Arguably, what you have to be to even think about summoning him in the first place. Or, just really desperate.
* TheTrickster: [[CleverCrows Crow-based]]. Messes with people's relationships to others and things for a living. Gets a power-boost from doing this... [[spoiler: Has his own agenda which involves a lot of [[{{Troll}} trolling]] off his own bat and getting around rules in inventive ways.]] Yeah, he counts.

!!! The Faceless Woman

One of the top five horrors in Jacob's Bell before the battle for lordship began, described as extremely territorial. She came from a manifestation of Limbo known as "The Forest".

----

* TheBlank: [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Shockingly enough, she lacks a face.]]
* BodyHorror: Can trap someone in their own skin by knitting it together with a mere touch.
* HairTriggerTemper: She needs holding back from going with her first instinct in practically every scene she's been in. Said first instinct is always to cause havoc after becoming quickly annoyed by somebody either 1) encroaching on space that she's deemed hers or 2) even looking like they're thinking about thinking about it.
* GoodSmokingEvilSmoking: Carries around a cigarette. Although, how she can even hope to smoke it is anybody's guess.
* MoralityChain: The Pizza Man revenant pretty much keeps her behavior in check when it will endanger her and she does drop a fight to make sure he lives.
* PetTheDog: [[spoiler:After part of Green Eyes' face is scraped off, the faceless woman helps her rearrange her hair to hide the injury.]]
* TheVoiceless: Can't talk, presumably due to her lack of a face including the lack of a mouth.


!!! Green Eyes

A bogeyman/mermaid who Blake met in The Drains, he later frees her.
----
* BewareMyStingerTail: Her tail is sharp enough to cut people in half.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: She's a genuinely nice girl...mermaid...thing, but she has teeth sharp enough to tear out a giant's spine and claws that can cut through thick hides, and she has no hesitation in using them if asked by Blake. And if you think not being near water would stop her, you're wrong.
* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Has a very distinctively different take on the concepts of "friendship" and "reciprocation" and "food" than most. Mind you, she's not as extremely odd as you'd expect. By Drains standards.
* CasualDangerDialogue: She and Blake mostly talk about relationships when they're about to kill something.
* CuteMonsterGirl: Despite her description being less than attractive, her personality and quirks mark her as this.
* DesperatelyLookingForAPurposeInLife: Lacking one is part of the reason she fell into the Drains, and she remarks that she's a little sad that she doesn't have anything that she ''wants'' badly enough to drive her as a bogeywoman.
* EagleEyeDetection: Don't knock her ability to see tiny details: her eyes are as good as Evan's in bird-mode. She's also able to draw conclusions from what she senses in jig time. Even if whatever she suggests sounds like coming right out of left-field, it usually winds up having a good basis in fact.
* EyeScream: [[spoiler:She gets half her face scraped off to save her from a dragon's undying flames. Her eye goes with it.]]
* GreenEyes: When Blake first meets her, her eyes are reflecting green in dim light. When the lights come on, they become pale white.
* ImAHumanitarian: She doesn't ''need'' to eat people, but she did ask Blake when she was in The Drains if she could when he died and, to be fair, just about everything ate anything there. She even refers to Evan as bird-morsel in her head when summoned.
* InLoveWithYourCarnage: She ''really'' likes it when Blake goes Bogeyman on other people.
* InterspeciesRomance: Had a thing with an Other in "The Drains" after it saved her in the water and kept her alive. He got eaten at some point. Seems to have a thing for Blake at present and is open to a relationship.
* TheNoseKnows: She has an incredibly good sense of smell, being able to gauge ''how often somebody resorts to drink and drugs'', even.
* OurMermaidsAreDifferent: She's a human who turned into a predatory mermaid because her skin was rubbed off and then scarred over, and she mostly eats fish but humans are good too. Or really anything meat.
* ScaryTeeth: She's a carnivore, and has about the teeth that you'd expect. The fact that ''her lips are transparent'' only adds to the effect. And those teeth can tear out the spine of a giant.
* TranshumanTreachery: PlayedForLaughs. She's shockingly ''bad'' at trying to hide her desire to eat Evan. Although it never quite goes away, she also seems to genuinely quite like the lad for himself over time, and not just because Blake likes him (and won't let her eat him). At the very least, she won't let anybody else eat this nugget.
* UndyingLoyalty: To Blake for bringing her out of the Drains.
* ViolentlyProtectiveGirlfriend: Blake and Green Eyes aren't an item ''per se'', but she's quite willing to destroy anyone who wants to harm him.

!!! The Diary Girl

-->''"E-X-S-A-N-G-U-I-N-A-T-E"''

A bogeyman that takes the form of a young woman in 40s attire made of paper clutching a diary. Has a quirk of spelling out certain words.
----
* DeathOfAThousandCuts: She kills by flaying people alive with paper cuts.
* GenuineHumanHide: Her book is bound in human skin.
* IGaveMyWord: [[spoiler:Blake defeats her in their second confrontation by getting her to agree to never harm another soul in return for not destroying her diary with the Hyena.]]
* SoulJar: Her diary appears to contain her soul.
* PaperMaster: She controls the pages that make up her body, letting her levitate and shapeshift for both offensive and defensive purposes.
* ToThePain: Asks [[spoiler:Blake]] to join her in cutting the group in numerous places to sip on their fear in a way that he thinks is almost seductive in how she breathes the words out.
* TurnedAgainstTheirMasters: Andy and Eva manage to bounce her back at the group during the invasion of the Thorburn house.
* VerbalTic: Likes spelling out certain words.

!!! The Chain Man

A bogeyman who takes the form of a thin but powerfully built man wearing a kilt and not much else. His name comes from the numerous chains and hooks which sprout from his exposed flesh. Spawned from a variant of the Abyss known as the Machine and shows a keen interest in feeding others to it.
----
* ChainsawGood: A number of the chains attached to him are clearly teeth from a chainsaw.
* ChainPain: His main method of attack is to ensnare his victims in his chains, many of which have hooks and barbs attached to the ends.
* EvilDebtCollector: One of his potential motivations for casting Practitioners into the Machine, assuming Blake's musings about his victim's bad karma is correct.
* LeanAndMean: He's thin and an EvilDebtCollector from the Abyss.
* ManInAKilt: Wears a kilt [[WalkingShirtlessScene and not much else]].

!!! Bristles

A bogeyman taking the form of a dog summoned by Rose.

----

* NoSell: Resists [[spoiler:Johannes' pipes due to what Blake theorizes as it not truly being a dog but a human who took on doglike traits in the Abyss, or conversely a dog that took on human-like traits.]]
* PintSizedPowerhouse: Small, but Blake describes it as being like a squirming child with a pitbull's bite. [[spoiler:It even manages to hold off Barbatorem for quite some time.]]

!!! The Nurse of Darnby

A bogeyman who sought to put others out of their misery so much she crawled out of the abyss to keep doing it
----
* ImpromptuTracheotomy: Gets her throat ripped out by the demon-possessed Lawyer.
* PlayingWithFire: Her touch burns you.

!!! Gunter Veit aka The Welder

A bogeyman called out by Rose during the final arc
----
* FeedItWithFire: He grew larger from being engulfed in flames.
* ImpromptuTracheotomy: Also gets his throat ripped out by the demon-possessed Lawyer.
* PlayingWithFire: Carries a torch around in one hand.

!!! Defenestration Bogeyman

A boegyman met in the Tenements, he's set loose during the Lordship battle as part of a deal.
----
* BoringYetPractical: His power breaks down to pushing people out of openings, but that makes him incredibly dangerous.
* ChekhovsGunman: Blake released him from the Tentements and he disappears [[spoiler:only to pop back up and kick Barbatorem out of the opening, damaging Johannes' body enough to sever his claim to his demesne.]]


[[/folder]]

[[folder:Angels]]

!! General Tropes

* OurAngelsAreDifferent: They're an antithesis to demons whose purpose is to be the enemies of all those who mess with the natural order of creation or bend the rules a bit too much. Like demons, they come in choirs. (Only the third, Structure, is named in the text, but the other 6 are inferred from Structure's opposition to the third demonic choir, Ruin)
* ShapeShifter: Histories 14 shows that angels can change their form at will.
* YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm: If Faysal Anwar is any indication, angels tend to take on more comprehensible forms when dealing with mortals. When Blake sees his true form he describes it as impossible to look it due to space distorting around it.

!!! Faysal Anwar

Johannes' familiar, an angel of the seventh choir. Takes the form of a white Afghan Hound.

----

* AffablyEvil: Like Johannes, he's far too polite and courteous for someone that auctions off the suffering of others for profit. Blake feels compelled to address him as "sir," which he says "just feels right" and the deal he offers to Blake in exchange for the safe release of an Other that attacked him is more than generous.
* CanineCompanion: To Johannes while in familiar form.
* TheChessmaster: [[spoiler:He anticipated and planned for Johannes' fall, using him as a pawn to remove Barbatorem.]]
* DemonicPossession: [[spoiler:Or rather, ''angelic'' possession. His Histories reveals that he and Johannes are basically analogous to the Briar Girl and her familiar in terms of power differential, meaning that he can usurp control of Johannes effectively at will.]]
* TheDogWasTheMastermind: [[spoiler:Quite literally. He manipulates Johannes into sending the town into the Abyss so that he can permanently bind the Barber there, and cooperates with the Barber by offering him the Thorburns in order to keep him there.]]
* FallenAngel: Mags seems to consider him this, with Johannes being Lucifer. Whether he ''is'' is up for debate, as Johannes has mentioned that his current position is closer to a sabbatical than a defection. [[spoiler:In fact, he is nothing of the sort. He has been furthering angelic ends the entire time.]]
* {{Familiar}}: To Johannes, taking the form of an Afghan hound.
* HazyFeelTurn: Was originally sent to destroy Johannes before joining him.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: [[spoiler: Faysal's plan to send the Thorburn house and Barbatorem into the Abyss ends up backfiring when two things happen. First, Johannes [[HeroicSacrifice allows himself]] to be possessed by Barbatorem in order to trap the demon in the Abyss. Second, the lawyers bring Barbatorem, still in Johannes's body, out of the Abyss. The familiar connection, plus Johannes's pipes, means that Faysal is now enslaved by the Barber.]]
* ManipulativeBastard: [[spoiler:As an angel of the seventh choir, opposing the Choir of Unrest, this is his main MO.]]
* MeaningfulName: His name is transliterated from Arabic-Faysal, also spelled Faisal, meaning "separator of good and evil" and interpreted as both "judge" and "sword," while "Anwar" means "luminous."
* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Is more than fair in dealing with Blake, even allowing him an extra favor "in payment for what you have lost fighting demons."
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: [[spoiler:Upon being freed from his binding by the lawyers, he immediately hightails it out of the area.]]
* TheStoic: He remains calm and reasonable in every situation that comes up, be it hostage negotiations, hostile negotiations, or [[spoiler:briefly explaining how he's cooperated with a demon before setting it loose on everyone in the building]].
* ThinkingUpPortals: His role in the universe is to create paths, including rivers and natural paths, which lets him open gateways anywhere he wishes. He can even make pathways into places like "The Drains" and allow free passage, or free Blake from the mirror-world.
* TimeAbyss: He mentions that sometimes, when his labors were finished, he would do nothing beyond sit on a mountaintop and ''watch'' for centuries at a time.
* WellIntentionedExtremist: He believes that what Johannes is doing is for the best. [[spoiler:However, he considers it small potatoes next to the opportunity to permanently bind a moderate demon, for which he sacrifices Johannes without remorse.]]

!!! Harith

An angel of the third choir of structure, who informed Faysal Anwar of Johannes' plans.

----


[[/folder]]

[[folder:Djinn]]

!! General Tropes

* {{Foil}}: To Sphinxes, both being Others of Balance, the difference being that genies work on a macro scale and are naturally created, as opposed to Sphinxes who work on a micro-scale and are artificially created.
* OurGeniesAreDifferent: Born of elements and divine fragments, they are similar to sphinxes as Others of Balance but work on a macro-scale in power.
* RealityWarper: Can do this on a macro scale due to their knowledge of the cosmic makeup of reality.

!!! Eblis

A djinn currently in the service of Johannes.

----

* EliteMook: Serves this purpose amongst the numerous Others in Johannes' service.
* MundaneUtility: Reality warper on a macro-scale? Try "emergency glazier of many, many broken windows".

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Trolls]]

!! General Tropes

* DishingOutDirt: They have a strong connection to the element of Earth.
* DumbMuscle: Their main use for practitioners if bound.
* HadToBeSharp: The remaining trolls are those who were too strong or too smart for most practitioners to kill or bind. Hildr happened to be the latter.
* OurTrollsAreDifferent: A species of Other native to the mountains of Scandinavia, most of them are either dead or bound due to their general lack of subtlety.

!!! Hildr

Sandra Duchamp's familiar who she captured and bound over the course of ten months, who takes on the form of a stoat. While smaller than most trolls, though still pretty large, she possesses great cunning.
----

* BloodKnight: Like most trolls, she loves fighting and violence.
* BraidsOfBarbarism: Has her hair done in braids about as thick as the average human arm.
* {{Familiar}}: To Sandra Duchamp.
* GeniusBruiser: Hildr is about as smart as she is strong, which is very.
* LightningBruiser: She's pretty fast as well.
* TheSilentBob: While Hidr ''can'' speak, she prefers gestures and grunts.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Dragons]]

!! Greneral Tropes

* DragonsAreDemonic: While they aren't ''literally'' demonic since they lack the presence of rot, there's no doubt most of them are malevolent beings, though most lack rational thought.
* DragonsAreDivine: Some dragons are formed from gods.
* InstantAwesomeJustAddDragons: Why yes, [[OurDragonsAreDifferent dragons]] ''do'' exist. And, this is pretty awesome... in the full sense of "shock and awesomely terrifyingly: wow". But, you ''cannot'' find a cooler pet/friend/whatever-is-going-on-there with which to terrorise the neighbourhood.
* OurDragonsAreDifferent: Dragons are beings formed from something feeding into itself when the stars align just right, such as a lesser god that worships itself or an elemental that takes in more than it puts out. They can be fully or partially [[ElementalEmbodiment elemental]], spiritual, or even [[DragonsAreDivine deific]]. They're believed to mostly take reptilian forms mainly due to the world remembering the dinosaurs, giving them elements of DragonsAreDinosaurs. They also lack any real weaknesses, with the only real way to defeat them being either backing from a god, or being overwhelmed in whatever element that embody. ie. A poison dragon getting outpoisoned, or a mountain dragon getting hit by a bigger mountain.
* WrongContextMagic: Most types of Others have some sort of easily exploitable weakness they all have in common, taking the form of a polar opposite to their being. Dragons ''don't'' as a result of being snarls in reality, often comprised of a number of different things. so the only way to defeat them is through brute force.

!! Johannes' Dragon

A massive dragon in the service of Johannes, Blake and company fight it and a giant while invading his desmense.
----

* AsteroidsMonster: Not normally, but when [[spoiler:Barbatorem]] slices it in two, the two portions become two separate dragons.
* DualBoss: Said dragon is fought alongside a ''giant''.
* PlayingWithFire: This particular dragon is a firebreather.

[[/folder]]

* DangerouslyGenreSavvy: Shuts down Blake's AppleOfDiscord ploy with ease.
** To say nothing of how he simply [[NeverRecycleYourSchemes recycles his plan]] of slowing down time around the Hillsglade estate.

* DangerouslyGenreSavvy: Just like his uncle. [[spoiler: He takes advantage of TheMasquerade and the fact Blake CannotTellALie to force him to admit to [[CassandraTruth seeing ghosts and monsters]] to make him look insane.]]

* DangerouslyGenreSavvy: Pipes blocking your way into a town? Build bone bridges to cross them.

* DangerouslyGenreSavvy: Knew that Johannes likely had methods of dealing with angels of his choir, so he sent Faysal in his stead as subtlety is the seventh choir's specialty.

* NoNameGiven: We know Blake's father is named Bradley, but never learn his mother's name over the course of the story.

* WhyCouldntyouBeDifferent: In Blake's case: "Why couldn't you be born a girl?". In Rose's: "Why can't you be ''better''?". Net result: equally awful parenting, if in slightly different ways.

* BlondesAreEvil: Often have blond hair, and often happen to be horrible individuals.

* BlondesAreEvil: From Blake's perspective, since they're all blondes and trying to get him run out of Jacob's Bell or killed.