History Literature / TheShadowCampaigns

* ActionGirl: Loads: Winter, Jane, Bobby, Sothe, and the entire company of the Girls' Own for Vordan, the entire force of "bone women" Trans-Batarai who fight for Murnsk.

* TheDragon: The GreaterScopeVillain's host. [[spoiler:It's Mad Jane, which nearly gives Winter a HeroicBSOD.]]

* GreaterScopeVillain: [[spoiler:The Beast of Judgement]].

* GunpowderFantasy

* LaResistance: Several, including Raesinia's own band of students, as well as the Leatherbacks and the Docksiders.
* LadyAndKnight: Raesinia Orboan and Marcus d'Ivoire.

* LittleNo: This is Marcus' first answer to [[spoiler:Raesinia's marriage proposal.]]

* RedEyesTakeWarning: Anyone possessed by [[spoiler:the Beast.]]

* SecretSecretKeeper: Bobby and Feor know that Winter is a woman from the start, but only reveal that they know when Winter tries to reveal this to them.
** Likewise, [[spoiler: Janus and Raesinia's father]] knew about Raesinia's demon, as the latter had his own intelligence agents, and asked the former to try to find a way to get it out of her without killing her. Sadly, Raesinia only finds out after [[spoiler: her father dies.]]

* SergeantRock: Winter, after her FieldPromotion in the beginning of ''The Thousand Names.''

* SweetPollyOliver: Winter, as well as [[spoiler: Bobby.]] It's implied they're not the only ones, either.

* TheSquad: The Colonials, as befits a military series.

* VillainousBreakdown: Orlanko's sanity deteriorates a lot between ''The Shadow Throne'' and ''Guns of Empire''.

A "Flintlock fantasy" series by Django Wexler, covering five full-length novels thus far (''The Thousand Names,'' ''The Shadow Throne,'' ''The Price of Valor'', ''The Guns of Empire'', and ''The Infernal Battalion'') and three novellas (''The Penitent Damned'', ''The Shadow of Elysium'', and ''The First Kill'').

* NotGoodWithPeople: While Janus is very personable, he has trouble gauging other people's emotional reactions, which kicks him in the arse several times over the course of the story.

* NewPowersAsTePlotDemands: Cayatrid's wings show up out of nowhere, with no previous indications that they are even a thing. Partly justified by this being the demon's OneWingedAngel transformation.

"Flintlock fantasy" series by Django Wexler, covering five full-length novels thus far (''The Thousand Names,'' ''The Shadow Throne,'' ''The Price of Valor'', ''The Guns of Empire'', and ''The Infernal Battalion'') and three novellas (''The Penitent Damned'', ''The Shadow of Elysium'', and ''The First Kill'').

* WingPull: Cayatrid's wings show up out of nowhere, with no previous indications that they are even a thing. Partly justified by this being the demon's OneWingedAngel transformation.

* TheCaptain: Captain Marcus d'Ivoire, CO of the First Battalion. Probably the series' most LawfulGood character; he's repeatedly characterized as a knight born into the wrong era.

* SinisterMinister: Any priest of the Sworn Church has a decent chance of being this. Taken UpToEleven with the Obsidian Order.

* FatalAttraction: d'Ivoire winds up falling victim to this in ''The Thousand Names.'' The woman he falls for turns out to be a spy and assassin, and bound to a demon to boot.

** Marcus started the first book as de facto commander of the First Colonial because their Colonel was dead and he had seven minutes seniority over the next ranking Captain (the difference in time it took to get from d'Ivoire, Marcus to Roston, Adrecht when reading out the names at the Academy graduation ceremony). Then Janus arrives and relieves him.

* ExtraordinarilyEmpoweredGirl: Winter, once she binds the Infernivore. All it does is eat other demons--which is pretty useful and important, but doesn't kick in until she makes physical contact, meaning she fights like an ordinary human badass 99% of the time.

* TheDragon: The BiggerBad's host. [[spoiler:It's Mad Jane, which nearly gives Winter a HeroicBSOD.]]

* DeadlyDecadentCourt: Which actually manages to co-exist with a PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny in ''The Price of Valor.''

* TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized: Massively understated; the Deputies General, ostensibly elected to provide a counterweight to the Vordanai DeadlyDecadentCourt, quickly sets its leader up as RegentForLife and kicks off a ReignOfTerror.

** Adrecht is drinking heavily throughout the ''The Thousand Names''.

* BadDreams: Winter keeps having nightmares about various things that went wrong in her life, the precise nature of them changing as the plot develops.

* BadassGay: Nearly every gay character in the series (and there are quite a few) is deserving of the title of "Badass". Notable examples include:
** Winter Ihernglass is a lesbian who is also an exceptional officer, a skilled and utterly badass fighter and [[spoiler: host to one of the most powerful demons in the series.]]
** "Mad" Jane Verity, Winter's old lover, is equally badass and leads an all female gang that takes no dirt from anyone.
** Bisexual Abby also qualifies, and as revealed in book 4, so do [[spoiler:Fitz]] and [[spoiler:Cyte]].

** Marcus started the first book as de facto commander of the First Colonial because their Colonel was dead and he had ten minutes seniority over the next ranking Captain (the difference in time it took to get from D to R when reading out the names at the Academy graduation ceremony). Then Janus arrives and relieves him.

* CastFromHitPoints: The demon Caryatid does this. The host gains a supernatural HealingFactor, SuperStrength and [[WingedHumanoid angel-like flight]], but at a cost: using the power progressively turns the host into a marble-like substance, until s/he eventually winds up [[TakenForGranite turning into a statue.]]

* KnownOnlyByHisNickname: Captains Stokes and Vahkerson are almost exclusively thought of as Give-Em-Hell and The Preacher.

* ReligiousBruiser: Captain "Preacher" Vahkerson of the artillery battalion, who has the entire Wisdoms of Karis the Savior (this universe's version of TheBible) memorized, names each of his cannons for a passage out of the Wisdoms (said passages then being engraved on the cannons), forbids drinking, smoking, swearing, gambling and wenching in his battalion. Write him off as a pious kook at your peril; he's a frighteningly competent artillery officer (and later an instructor turning out even ''more'' frighteningly competent artillerymen).

* ReassignedToAntarctica: For any Vordanai soldier, a posting to Khandar is this. Officers get there by means of screwing up their careers just short of being cashiered, while enlisted are sent there on punishment tours. End result: the First Colonials are very much an ArmyOfThievesAndWhores, until Vhalnich cleans them up.

* TheExile: [[spoiler:Janus]] at the end of the series. Everyone in the know about what was really going on knew that he didn't deserve it, as he had been instrumental in stopping the war, but since he had been the face of the enemy while simultaneously undermining it, he had to be visibly punished, so it was exile or execution and they didn't want to kill him.

** The Thousand Names are engraved on steel plates that are eight feet high and roughly six feet wide, which would weigh about one ton each. The fact that moving that much weight is not a trivial exercise gets mentioned on multiple occasions. In fact, part of the reason ''why'' they were engraved on steel plates in the first place was to make them too heavy to easily steal.