Sandbox / Characters A Practical Guide To Evil

Jul 16 2022

The Woe

"Lies and violence!"

—Battle cry of the Woe

The main characters of the series and Catherine's Band of Five. They consist of various Named whom Catherine managed to sway to her side around the time of the Arcadian Campaign, and were dubbed a "woe unto all [they] behold" by the Queen of Summer. The pseudonym was quickly ratified by the Ranger, and in time they came to live up to the Queen's apt description.

In General

• Appropriated Appellation: They got their group name after the Queen of Summer said that they were destined to bring woe.
• Deadpan Snarker: All of them are exceptionally witty individuals, and tend to lovngly bicker amongst themselves in their downtime—usually at Catherine's expense.

Catherine Foundling

Queen Catherine Foundling of Callow, The Warden (formerly Squire, Warden of the East), Lady of Marchford, Sovereign (formerly Duchess) of Moonless Nights, Queen of Winter, Queen of the Hunt, Queen in Callow, Arch-heretic of the East, Losara Queen (Queen of Lost and Found), First Under the Night

The Black Queen of Callow, Captain (formerly Lieutenant) Callow, Warlord, Countess of Marchford, Lately Queen, Mighty Losara

"Justifications only matter to the just."

The protagonist of A Practical Guide to Evil. Born in the years following the Praesi conquest of Callow and raised at the Imperial House for Tragically Orphaned Girls, Catherine was an excellent example of exactly what those facilities were designed to throttle in the crib. Stubborn, driven, and precociously clever and charismatic, Catherine had all the signs of a hero in the making. However, her ambitions laid in the opposite direction—rather than risking further destruction through rebellion, her plan was to enroll in the War College and rise up the ranks, reforming the system within the institutions of the empire. Fortunately for her, the Black Knight was working a longer game that was compatible with her goals: when they encounter each other one fateful night he offers her the name of Squire, and the power to make the changes she seeks. Catherine accepts, becoming one of the Empire's most powerful agents overnight.

Catherine's first Aspect was Learn, after her confrontation with Heiress on the Blessed Isle she gained a second Aspect: Struggle. During the Battle of Marchford her third Aspect, Seek was corrupted by the demon and had to be permanently removed by Masego.

Following the events of the Battle of Liesse in which her Name was stripped from her and she had to win it back from Chider, she lost all of her aspects while also regaining the empty slot that had been lost to the demon. The first new Aspect she gained was Take. The second Aspect was Break and the third was Fall

After the second Battle of Liesse Catherine loses her connection to the name of Squire, retaining only a shadow of her previous Aspects and her Mantle as the new Queen of Winter. She then gains the title (not Name) of 'The Black Queen'.

Then during her trip into the Everdark in an attempt to recruit the Drow as a fighting force she found herself locked in battle with a pair of nascent goddesses and despairing over how no one is willing to work together surrenders her Mantle as the Queen of Winter to them and after they interrogate her and find her to be true in her motives raise her from the dead and make her the head priestess of their religion.

Following the fall of the Tower, Cat finally receives her new Name: Warden of the East. However, both candidates for the role of her counterpart, the Warden of the West, refuse the title. As a result, Cat ascends to the Name of the Warden. The Aspects she gains are Silence, See, and Sentence.

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• Action Girl: Only two years after becoming Named, she already had two hero kills to her name, a third was done at her order and she won every battle she was involved in. She's a walking ball of death to anything she fights, from other Named to devils to demons.
• Action Survivor: During the Summerholm arc. Afterwards she develops her combat skills and becomes acclimated to her Name abilities so that she's more of a straightforward badass
• A God I Am Not: She is shocked and immediately denies it when The Dead King lists her as a fellow immortal, stating that all villains are ''technically'' immortal already, and even he can still be killed.
• Anti-Magic: Cat's Silence aspect allows her to silence even access to Night, presumably on the basis that it cuts off the mental communication of Willing Channelers.
• Anti-Villain: Somewhere between Well-Intentioned and In-Name-Only. She becomes more ruthless as time goes on but she still avoids clearly reprehensible practices like human sacrifice, torture, etc and does her best to preserve innocent life. Her villainy is almost entirely a factor of being aligned with the Evil side. This however changes when she does become more willing to sacrifice innocents by the thousands just to maintain her power.
  • This is remarked on in Kairos's internal monologue: By using his Aspect of Wish, he is able to see a person's most fervent desire, and has a laugh at Catherine's intense desire for peace in her country. Were circumstances different, she could easily have been a hero.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Zig-zagged. When she is first granted command of Rat Company it is in recognition of her achievement in taking command of the company and leading it to victory against truly ridiculous odds. In order to earn the command of the Legion, Catherine then has to come out victorious in a five-way melee commanding her own company, however she subverts this trope when she wins by cutting a deal with her most competent competitor rather than carrying the fight through to the bitter end. Once the Fifteenth Legion enters the field this becomes inverted: Although she's technically in charge, her physical power as The Squire forces her to focus on front line combat, and she delegates most tactical planning to Juniper, while still clearly being in command.
• Badass Creed: "Justifications only matter to the just."
• Badass Boast: She gets a few.
  • "I don't win fights because I'm the Squire – I win them because I'm Catherine Foundling. Watch them take a swing. See where it gets them."
  • "Whether they be gods or kings or all the armies in Creation."
• Black Comedy: Catherine has a distinctly dark sense of humour. Mind you, a cynical take on life with bonus Gallows Humor are par for the course with a job in the armed forces of anywhere.
• Broken Pedestal: Goes so far as to stab Black in the gut and banish him from Callow due to his manipulations.
• Brought Down to Badass: Repeatedly.
  • Covered in burns by Hellfire and a cut by an Absurdly Sharp Blade? Use your Necromatic abilities on yourself.
  • Have your Name ripped out of your soul? Deliver a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on the person who is now struggling to cope with the Super Senses they just stole.
  • Book Four takes this further. She willingly feeds her status as a Physical God to Sve Noc. Shocked by this, Sve Noc saves her life and makes Catherine her first priestess, and allies with Callow.
• Brutal Honesty: Cat tends to tell it to you in ways both blunt and straight. Why lie when truth can get the job done?
• Came Back Wrong: She's had part of her soul amputated due to demonic corruption, was killed by The Lone Swordsman (with her corpse's head cut off), and was turned into a Humanoid Abomination and had her literal heart ripped out by the Winter King. Several characters question how much of the original Catherine is actually left.
• Conveniently an Orphan: Catherine grows up without ever knowing her parents in an imperial orphanage, and thus can leave with no obligations, regrets or even a goodbye. Furthermore, in a universe that runs on stories, being an orphan is often an advantage: Cat uses it in Arcadia to wriggle herself in a story of a lost daughter tragically killing her unknown father as foretold by an ancient (read: written this evening) prophecy.
• Cool Horse: Later in the story, her mount is an undead murderous Pegasus that she killed and reanimated herself.
• Daddy's Girl / Daddy's Little Villain: Technically, she and Black aren't at all related. But, just you try telling all of his mates that, as most of them spend (or, in Catherine and Black's opinions, waste) time twitting both about how alike in attitude and humour they are. Down to mannerisms. The rest of the Calamities have a point, though — whatever their victims say.
• Deadpan Snarker: She has to be one just to keep up with her officers.
• Determinator: Woe betide foes who think that because she's bleeding out, she's got to be out for the count. It gets to the point where The Lone Swordsman repeatedly tries to warn others of what he's found out about her the hard way.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Has a bit of a habit of doing this, and has done it to angels, The Dead King, and Sve Noc.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: Her pleas for compromise to the First Prince and the Grey Pilgrim are both turned down. Unfortunately, this was her attempt at searching for an excuse not to pursue her third option: an invitation to Keter by the King of the Dead himself.
• The Dreaded: It takes some time, but Catherine eventually earns her reputation as the heir to the most successful tyrant on Calernia. By the time the Tenth Crusade rolls around, the Proceran commanders are clearly terrified of her.
• Eating The Eyecandy: Catherine is very fond of ogling attractive people around herself.
• Extra-Dimensional Shortcut: After becoming the new Queen of Winter, she and her forces can use these to dramatically, if unpredictably, shorten the time it takes to march somewhere with no risk of being attacked en route.
• Fisher Queen: After becoming the Queen in Callow, Grey Pilgrim claims this as the reason why negotiation is not an option. According to him, the people of Callow living under the rule of a Villain will be influenced into Evil themselves, regardless of her intentions.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: She starts as an orphan who works as a waitress, but raises fast to become The Dreaded.
• Frontline General: The power of Catherine's name means that she is frequently needed on the front lines, however she usually prefers to stay out of the fray as long as possible, only getting directly involved in combat at the most decisive point in a given engagement. Over time, she stops embracing this trope so whole-heartedly, as her new powers and roles require her to be more of The Chessmaster.
• Godzilla Threshold: The power of Winter. After the Arcadia arc, Catherine is the sole titled noble in the fae Winter Court. Pulling on its power in a controlled way is easy enough, but when she breaks the bindings that connect her soul to this raw power, watch out.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Uses a dragonbone pipe to smoke medicinal herbs.
• Hero Killer: She cripples the Hunter in the second Summerholm arc, then goes on to order the death of the Exiled Prince and then kills The Page in single combat at the battle of Three Hills. However, her credentials arguably aren't fully secure until she kills The Lone Swordsman in Liesse.
  • By the beginning of Book 4, she has killed at least half a dozen heroic incursions into Callow, cementing her place as this.
• Heroic Second Wind: Her second aspect, Struggle, gives her a boost of energy whenever she's outmatched, allowing her to briefly stand on equal footing with her opponent.
• High Priestess: Gets this position to Sve Noc.
• Honesty Is the Best Policy: When caught with her hand in the cookie jar, she tends to head for sheer audacity (and, at the very least, ~50+% truth, perhaps ~25% twisty omission and maybe 10-25% outright fib... give or take) over completely weaseling out of it. She owns both her faults and her strengths, thanks — including accepting the price of not being awesome enough to get out unscathed. And, she does get herself dinged; just, not as badly as you'd expect given the situations. This is mainly thanks to ducking the worst due to mostly going for this trope and combing with Crazy Is Cool.
• Humanoid Abomination: After breaking Masego's shackles that held her Mantle in check Catherine fully comes into her powers as the Queen of the Winter Fae. As a result becomes less a person than a person-shaped magical construct that can bend, exploit or flat-out ignore normal Creational Laws.
• Instant Expert: Her first aspect, Learn, allows her to retain any knowledge she gains so long as it's consciously taught to her.
• It's Personal: To Akua, one of her Nemeses: when Akua attacks the 15th legion and Marchford, Catherine takes it personally (instead of (as Praesi do) to see it as a part of the political game).
• Kid with the Leash: While certainly not helpless in her own right, she becomes this for the Wild Hunt after claiming the Mantle of Winter, and Akua after binding her Soul Jar to her cloak. Being the High Priest for Sve Noc also counts, as they (usually) listen to her advice, despite not being under her control.
• Lame Pun Reaction: She absolutely hates puns and is none too happy that she's recruited a lot of people who love them.
• Les Collaborateurs: Catherine is a Callowan who willingly works with the Dread Empire, albeit for the sympathetic reason of keeping Praes from ruining her nation any further.
• The Leader: She's mostly a mix of The Charismatic and The Headstrong but she's been known to pull some clever plans and manipulations in the mold of the Mastermind as well.
• Morality Chain: She's an odd version of this for Sve Noc. In large part, they keep her so that they can socialize with someone not their enemy or raised to worship them. This is so they won't get too detached from mortals and lose their Genre Savviness, as old gods like them often do.
• Pragmatic Villainy: She's still got L-plates on, but is well on the way to getting her license.
• Refusal of the Call: When the Hashmallim try to turn her into the heroic Queen of Callow in Liesse, she flatly refuses and calls them out for being hypocrites.
• Ruler Protagonist: Starting from Book 4, after she achieves her goal of becoming the queen of Callow.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: after getting the power of Winter, she creates swords out of ice whenever she loses or breaks her sword.
• Take a Third Option: At the end of Book Four, she's stuck in the middle of a pitched battle between Akua and Sve Noc over her soul's worthiness. Mortally wounded, missing a large part of her soul, and having just come out of a Villainous BSoD, she interrupts. Catherine freely offers her unconditional surrender to Sve Noc, and humbly begs for aid for her people from the new deity. Sve Noc decides to not only spare her, but allies with her against the Dead King, technically fulfilling Catherine's obligations to the Dwarves, and gaining the army she went there to gather in the first place.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: She tries to play nice and limit casualties during the Tenth Crusade's initial push into Callow. She refused a plan that would have crippled Procer in the first few months of the Crusade as well as the use of any large rituals out of hope that being cordial would enable peace talks. The House of Light promptly declares her Arch-heretic of the East. She then decides to take The Dead King up on his offer of negotiations.
• Throwing Down the Gauntlet: She challenges the Duke of Violent Squalls to a duel while on a party in his estate by stealing another guest's glove and throwing it against his head.
• Underestimating Badassery: People keep thinking she's a minor threat and paying a hard price for it. Even angels.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Cat and Akua go through this song-and-dance for most of the Tenth Crusade. Cat goes from being annoyed at how attractive she finds a person she hates, to being annoyed at how she's starting to like a reluctant ally, to considering her a close friend whose past crimes she can't overlook, to falling in (ill-fated) love with her.
• Villain Has a Point: Many of her criticisms of the Heroes are completely valid, seeing how at least some (read:William) tend to view Evil races (like, say, Orcs) as Always Chaotic Evil beings that deserve to be wiped out.
• Villains Never Lie: She certainly prefers to use truth, but isn't about to shackle herself to the practice. She tells the unvarnished truth most of the time — particularly if she knows her opponent is resistant to the idea that straightforward truth is even a thing. However, it just makes her lies harder to catch or refute when she does deploy them. Later on, her fae aspect makes any promise relatively binding. She can still be very specific with the wording though.
• Villain Protagonist: With everything she has done up to this point for her own selfish gain, as well as what "side" she's technically on, she definitely fits this.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: After getting the Mantle of Winter, its power makes her more "traditionally evil" the longer she uses it in a battle. When this is devoured by Sve Noc at the end of Book Four, Cat enters an on-and-off Villainous BSoD out of horror over her actions.

Hakram of the Howling Wolves

Lord Hakram of the Howling Wolves, The Warlord (formerly Adjutant)

Hakram Deadhand

Catherine's sergeant in the academy wargames, Hakram quickly proves himself indispensable with his quiet competence and uncanny encyclopedic knowledge of the social dynamics of the academy students. After she assumes command of the Fifteenth legion Catherine names Hakram her adjutant, which unexpectedly develops into a new Name, the first to appear among the orcs in generations.

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• An Arm and a Leg: A running trend in the series is his tendency to lose limbs. One of his hands is cut off by William's sword, he chops his other hand off to convince Vivienne not to leave the Woe, and half his body is later mutilated by the Mirror Knight to save him from demonic infection. Warlock, his own aspects, and Masego manage to provide him with replacement prosthetics each time.
• Affably Evil: Hakram is quite suave and sophisticated in a smoothly jovial way. And, not just in a case of "for an orc": for practically anybody. It doesn't change the fact that he will kill you if he thinks you're a threat, and his affability often times only serves to disturb people.
• Badass Bureaucrat: He wasn't what anybody would call bad at juggling the administration before he got his Name, but afterwards? He's one of the sole reasons Callow remains running under Catherine's rule, but remains an accomplished warlord able to battle even the fae.
• Battle Butler: Of a distinctly batman variety. He has a higher status than you'd expect, but he basically functions as this in his role as Adjunct to Catherine.
• Broken Ace: At first glance, Hakram is pretty much the ideal male orc — physically imposing, skilled at violence, stoic, and sexually successful. He doesn't let on to anyone except Catherine that he doesn't like that role — he never felt the bloodlust that normally defines his people and was essentially going through the motions until he ran into Catherine.
• Cultured Warrior: Has a love of Kharsum poetry, and occasionally recites poems when fighting a particularly difficult opponent.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: As Hakram tells it, this was where he was at the time he met Catherine. He'd been coasting through life on the back of others' expectations and his own competence without ever finding something he cared enough about to fight for. It was only when Catherine showed him both how truly messed up the imperial system was and that it was possible to change it that he truly dedicated himself to something for the first time in his life.
• Determinator: Meeting Catherine put a fire under him. So much so, he not only shrugged off a major injury for her, but wrestled a new, and appropriate, Name from Fate.
• The Dragon: Catherine's all-purpose right-hand man. His nascent Name seems to be built as a supporting role to the Squire.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: Book 7 sees his loyalty to Cat challenged when Hakram has the opportunity to become a claimant for the Warlord Name. Ultimately, he chooses the latter as it provides a chance to return the currently-subjugated orc race to their former strength.
• Implacable Man: His Rampage aspect gives him strength and regeneration that lasts for the entirety of a battle.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: His Stand aspect allows him to become immovable and indestructible when standing still, although it can only be used once per day.
• The Oath-Breaker: Regretfully breaks his oath of loyalty to Cat in order to take up leadership of the orc clans and the ancient Name of Warlord.
• Phrase Catcher: Among the former members of Rat Company: "Hakram, you gossipy bitch!"
  Hakram: I don't know why people keep telling me things.
• The Reliable One: Seems to have as large a part in running the Fifteenth as Catherine herself sometimes, and she's commented several times she lucked out majorly when she first got him as a sergeant. We see in the extra chapters that he's not above cleaning up messes before they ever get to her attention, including his own attempted assassination.
• Red Baron: Got nicknamed "Hakram Deadhand" after losing a hand to the Lone Swordsman in Summerholm and quickly proved the epithet right by strangling an enemy priest to death at the Battle of Three Hills.
• Skeletal Appendage: After Hakram lost a hand in a fight with the Lone Swordsman, Warlock creates a skeletal hand instead, granting Hakram the moniker Deadhand. The skeletal limb apparently makes him a hit with the orkish ladies and also helps him intimidate people (most notably Thief).
• Unstoppable Rage: [[spoiler:One of his aspects as the Warlord, Rage, lets him channel his anger into immense strength.

Masego

Masego, The Hierophant (formerly Apprentice)

Warlock's adopted son who joins the Fifteenth Legion after fighting with them in Summerholm. Masego is an extremely gifted mage who is largely apathetic about all non-magical matters, but he quickly proves himself indispensable. His Aspects are Glimpse and Deconstruct. His Aspects as The Hierophant are Witness, Ruin, and Wrest.

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• Badass Bookworm: Masego had reportedly never been in actual combat before he met Catherine. Despite this he wipes the floor with pretty much every mage he comes up against. This was, perhaps, only to be expected when he was up against the Bumbling Conjurer but he also sends Heiress running and goes several rounds against a Demon of Corruption.
• Brutal Honesty:
• De-power: Book 5 has him lose his magic after being possessed by the Dead King.
• Deity of Human Origin: Masego's overarching goal is to obtain sufficient knowledge to achieve apotheosis. Upon subsuming Neshamah's godhead, he succeeds.
• The Evil Genius: After he joins the Fifteenth he becomes their expert on all things supernatural. He provides most information on their opposition through a combination of background knowledge and divination magic.
• For Science!: Well, "for empirical thaumatic studies", at least. Poking at Creation to see how it ticks! Yay!
• Freudian Excuse: He wants to dissect Creation to see how it works. The reason? He was raised in a pocket dimension and at quite a tender age saw his world end.
• Friendless Background: Hinted at. Also hinted that both his dads have tried several times to socialise him in various ways with others around his own age, only to have it not stick until relatively recently.
• Glass Eye: Gets a pair of glass eyes during the Arcadia arc, made from his magic spectacles after they blew up in his original eyes due to seeing the Sun of Summer up close. He can see with them at least as well as he could with his original eyes, even through the blindfold he wears over them.
• Godhood Seeker: Becomes this after meeting the Dead King at the latest. What he hopes for is not power, no, but the understanding and knowledge it would bring.
• Goggles Do Something Unusual: His spectacles let him capture images and easily see spellwork, among other things.
• Grammar Nazi: He is obsessed with being exact when he talks. Catherine has theorized it's a weakness driven by his Name and he's literally incapable of letting imprecision go.
• Happily Adopted: At some point, Warlock bumped into a promising, very little lad with a propensity to learn magic. And, Tikoloshe promptly started a "we can adopt and train him — oh, go on, you know you could do a much better job as a real Daddy to your apprentice than your master did with the whole master-pupil thing!" campaign. It worked (ulterior motives or not): Apprentice wouldn't have it any other way.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: Heiress makes a brief attempt to Show Some Leg hoping to bring him over to her side. He responds by deadpanning about vivisecting her.
  • He does seem to be at least a little attracted to The Archer, however — or flummoxed: one of the two or both. And, Malicia can crack his chronic disinterest a little, too (but, she does that with everybody).
• Odd Friendship: He, Cat, and Hakram rub along surprisingly well, considering their various differences. It seems to surprise him a little, too. In Book 3, he is also the first of the Woe to befriend Archer.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Where Masego goes, the Fifteenth's enemies die.
• The Smart Guy: Just like his father, Masego is very clearly the researcher and resident genius of the Woe.
• Signature Move: Most of his magic spells are one-offs, but he has a signature binding ritual, "Seven pillars hold up the sky...", which he uses several times throughout the series.
• Variant Power Copying: The central ability of the Hierophant: almost any "miracle" (which seemingly encompasses most non-Aspect-based unique abilities) that Masego Witnesses can be reverse-engineered using magic, up to and including the smiting of an angelic choir.

Indrani

Indrani, The Ranger (formerly Archer)

The Lady

One of Ranger's minions, a young woman who is sent to retrieve The Hunter after the Empire agrees to return him to Refuge. By Book 3, she has decided to join Catherine's cause and has been bound as one of the Woe. Her Aspects are See, Flow, and Stride. During the fall of the Tower, Indrani decides to challenge Hye Sue, becoming a claimant to the Name Ranger. Partway through the final bsttle against the Dead King, she succeeds and transitions into the new Ranger.

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• Aloof Big Sister: Seems to be her relationship with Hunter, roughly.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Averted. In Book 5, she casually states that The Power of Love should help a plan, as she is in love with Masego.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Her version of saying 'hi' is to deliver a casual beat-down to Adjutant, Apprentice, and Squire while the latter is convalescing from a battle with devils.
• The Big Guy / The Brute: It's not evident right away, but Archer fills this role within the Woe as the most skilled fighter of the crew. She was trained by Ranger, after all.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Female version, an arrogant, hard-drinking badass who picks fights and takes passes at people left and right.
• Boom, Headshot!: As one would expect for someone Named Archer. Book 5 has her on the receiving end of one courtesy of a Dead King-possessed Masego.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: More of a long knife than a sword really (Legolas-style) but still fits the basic concept.
• Changed My Mind, Kid: At the last minute she and Hunter show up to help fight the Demon.
• Deadpan Snarker: OK, Tinkles really does deserve it, let's face it. The poor, dumb fool.
• Dual Wielding: in melee, she wields two longknives and is scarily competent with them.
• First-Name Basis: She tells Catherine to call her by her given name (Indrani) at the end of Book 3, as a sign of loyalty.
• Friends with Benefits: With Catherine in Book 4.
• The Hedonist: Indrani will hit on just about anyone. When quizzed she points out that Named tend to get more of everything, power and danger, which means she's likely not destined for old age and should enjoy life while she can.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: She once manages to shoot five running horses in the head from a mile away before the riders even comprehend what is happening.
  "When I can see it, I can shoot it."
• Master Archer: as befitting somebody with the Name Archer, her skill with a bow is supernaturally good.
• Odd Friendship: With Masego. They later have a Relationship Upgrade.
  "I know he's not interested in bedplay, Cat," Indrani snorted. "Come on. Last time he saw me shirtless he asked if I needed healing."
• Red Baron: Unintentionally picks up her mentor's title of "The Lady" through her mentorship of many young heroes and villains under the Truce and Terms.
• Reformed Bully: Archer's initial Social Darwinist ways meant he was a major bully to the other Refuge students as they grew up. A few years with the Woe largely remedies this, though her old tendencies sometimes pop up.
• Superior Successor: She successfully steals the Name of Ranger upon proving herself this to Hye Su. The latter, upon finding a monster that she couldn't defeat (an undead Drakon), immediately ditched her companions (including two of her students) to save herself. In contrast, Indrani pulled the mother of all Big Damn Heroes moments, claimed her master's Name, and proceeded to fight the Dracolich god to a standstill.

Vivienne Dartwick

Lady Vivienne Dartwick, The Princess (formerly Thief), Queen of Thieves

A Hero of Callowan origin that joins the Lone Swordsman's party for the rebellion in Callow. Although she is arguably the most effective member of the Swordsman's party (besides William himself) we know relatively little about her. She has an independent streak, tending to leave the party and operate solo for long stretches. This has continued in her role among the Woe as well. Her Aspects are Hold, Hide, and Steal.During the Tenth Crusade, wherein she spent more time as an unofficial spymistress and a diplomat than a thief, Vivienne lost her hold over the Name. However, over the same period, she gained the role of Cat's intended post-war successor as Queen of Callow. This eventually led her to gain a new Name: Princess.

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• Ascended Extra: She's a side character in the main plot of Book 2, with slightly more importance in William's Interludes. In Book 3 she steps up to face off with Cat directly, and becomes the last member of her Five-Man Band.
• Brought Down to Badass: She begins to fear she is losing her Name as her driving motivations change. This leads to some positive Character Development where she lets go of the anger that caused her to start stealing in the first place. This leads to her becoming the politician and diplomat of The Woe. She's skilled enough at this to be made heir apparent to the Crown.
• Combat Pragmatist: The Thief tends to avoid direct conflict, preferring to strike from surprise. In a stand-up fight, she isn't able to defeat Hakram even before he comes into his name.
• The Heart: The most idealistic and least villainous of the Woe.
• Hidden Depths: Quickly works out that the Wandering Bard isn't as spoony as she looks — and, starts surreptitiously sidling away from ground zero without drawing attention to it, beyond warning William he should think about getting out of dodge.
• Impossible Thief: She manages to steal a fleet of river galleys, somehow cramming them all into a Bag of Holding, then uses them to form a makeshift barricade at the battle of Liesse. She later one-ups herself when she steals the Sun from the Princess of High Noon.
• Incompatible Orientation: Despite Catherine's obvious attraction in Book 4, Vivienne remains "painfully straight," much to the Black Queen's begrudgement.
• Karmic Thief: The underground thieving community of Callow follows this general principle, with scams that rely on the mark's own greed being preferred, and scams that don't being expressly forbidden from being used on innocent Callowan citizens. Praesi are fair targets for anything, of course.
• King of Thieves: Becomes the "king" of the Callowan Thieves Guild, and later converts them into the kingdom's spy network.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Doesn't hesitate to steal from her teammates.
• Morality Chain: Catherine trusts Thief with several code phrases that could be used to control, contain, or even kill her because she believes Thief has the firmest moral compass of the Woe, and has an actual worldly goal that would cause her to be directly opposed to measures that are too Evil.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Thief is ultimately loyal to Callow itself. This is the very reason she joins the Woe, as she realizes that Catherine truly has the country's best interests at heart.
• Power Loss Makes You Strong: Prior to losing her name, Thief is one of the weakest Named in a straight fight that isn't a complete noncombatant like Scribe or the Wandering Bard. After losing her Perception Filter it becomes a lot more urgent that she be able to defend herself, so Vivienne ends training herself up to Weak, but Skilled territory.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Akua delivers a Breaking Speech about how Catherine's ambition would eventually drive her to become a new Empress in a bid to "fix" the world. Thief promptly retorts that Akua has gotten obsessed with justifying her defeat by convincing herself that Catherine was a Worthy Opponent who will succeed where she failed.
  • Later, she calls Akua out for intentionally losing arguments like this in order to become more personable to the Woe.
• Token Good Teammate: Of the Woe. Adjutant has Undying Loyalty to Cat, not any particular ideals. Maeago's a Mad Scientist with a total Lack of Empathy towards anyone who isn't a close friend or family member. Archer is an unapologetic Hedonist and Thrill Seeker. Cat has similar goals for saving Callow, but mentions several times that Vivienne is simply a better person than her.
• Unexpected Successor: Catherine declares her heir to the Crown of Callow.
• Utility Party Member: She's very useful for stealth, as a spy-mistress, and removing enemy supplies and trump cards from the equation, but, much to her frustration, is a very poor combatant for a Named.

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Amadeus of the Green Stretch

Amadeus of the Green Stretch, The Black Knight (formerly Squire)

The Carrion Lord, Black

The Empress Malicia's right-hand man and de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Callow since the Conquest.The son of a small freeholder in the Empire's Green Stretch (and one of the light-skinned Duni minority), Black spent decades rising to the pinnacle of the imperial hierarchy along with his allies, the Five Calamities and the Empress Malicia I (formerly an imperial concubine named Alaya). After leading Malicia's forces to victory in a brutal civil war, Black set about re-organizing the imperial legions of terror into a highly competent professional army loyal to him, a weapon which he then used to annex the Kingdom of Callow. The past twenty years have been spent consolidating these gains: Stomping on any hero that raises their head in Callow while managing the kingdom well enough to prevent widespread rebellious sentiment from spreading among the masses.As the story begins his efforts are beginning to fail as the narrative arc of the universe turns against the upstart empire. Heroes are popping up like mad- two or three a year at a rate that is only increasing and will soon overtake the calamities' capability to suppress. Meanwhile, the Decadent Court in Praes gets more mutinous by the day and the Principate of Procer is gathering its forces looking to finally drive the Praesi back to the wasteland. But Black has a plan. A plan to turn the rules of storytelling back against themselves. What he needs is an Anti-hero, a Callowan with a Praesi name who can change the story of Callow forever and bind the two nations together. Enter Catherine Foundling.

Black's Aspects are Lead, Conquer, and Destroy.

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• Affably Evil: Like all the Calamities, he's a reasonably pleasant guy to be around. But... there is a distinct limit: show your Stupid Evil, Bond Villain Stupidity or particularly egregious Stupid Good off near him, and he'll quickly show you how little he appreciates it. Graphically and geographically, if needed.
• Ambiguous Disorder: Even before he became the Squire (and then the Black Knight), his analytical, abstract and asocial approach to Evil differed widely from the norm. He's actually worried he'll go too far over the edge with it in time, as Black Knights have a habit of going too far into the deep end of madness.
• Black Comedy: His sense of humour is both dark and very, very cynical. Beware when he breaks out in some kind of smile. If somewhat lighter, kind of playful version, it's probably closer to a Cheshire Cat Grin. If playful in a completely different way, it's a disturbing Slasher Smile. In both cases... something is about to go very badly and ironically wrong for somebody he thinks deserves it.
• Big Bad Duumvirate:
• Big Bad Wannabe:
• Blood Knight: All his Aspects power up when he's brutally crushing his enemies in an open battle. Loathe though he is to openly admit it, it's a rush he can't avoid getting.
• Childhood Friends: Alaya the tavern-girl and Amadeus the farm-boy were friends long before Dread Empress Malacia and The Black Knight were allies.
• Cold Ham: He has a very cold and restrained affect but that doesn't cover up the fact that he loves his melodrama. He also is so careful not to act smug that it loops around and comes off as smugness.
• The Creon: After leading the rebellion to get control of the tower, Black is quite content to let his good friend Alaya have the throne and serves her faithfully as The Dragon for decades.
• Dangerous Deserter: Amadeus enlisted in the Legions of Terror, where he was so inconsequential that they even misspelled his name on the roster. He then deserted after his first battle out of disgust for how incompetently it was conducted. Alone and far away from home, this teenage boy decided he was going to fix things.
• Deuteragonist: It could even be argued that he's the true protagonist of the story and Catherine is the Deuteragonist, seeing as how it is his plan that Catherine is implementing.
• Doomed Hometown: Or rather, doomed homestead. A while after he becomes the Squire, the Heir has his remaining family back on his home farm killed. As Amadeus remarks at their burial, it was inevitable that something would kill them- Squires don't have a home to return to.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Malicia won the throne in large part due to his military skills, and both the standing armies and the most powerful Named in the empire are loyal to Malicia only through their connection to Black. In many ways Black is more powerful than his mistress.
• Evil Is Sterile: He lives to break this trope so hard that it dies a death. The cycle of fabulously pointless creative schemes that are doomed to end in big, empty nothing since Status Quo Is God must go.
• The Gadfly / Troll: If you know what's healthy for you, you don't mess up enough for him to come at you in fully remote Troll Mode. May all the Gods, those both Below and Above, help you if he's decided to hound you, because he will make a years-long campaign out of it to make a point, rather than just ending you quickly — those who wind up on the receiving end of this probably welcome Assassin eventually showing up. However, nothing stops him casually having a little subdued fun with you for the shared, companionable (if still somewhat spikey) giggles. Just ask Cat and Masego. And Malicia. And any other Calamity.
• Genre Savvy: Black knows all the genre cliches that run his universe, and he long ago worked out how best to exploit them-or simply avoid them. Just a few examples:
  • He knows that trying to recruit by deceit or threats will inevitably lead to betrayal and so is careful to always be honest, generous and polite to those he works with long-term.
  • He knows that it's pointless to try to pursue heroes after they flee a dramatic confrontation as it would clearly be too anticlimactic for them to be defeated that way and therefore the universe would not permit it.
  • His empire has a well-run and effective system of orphanages, ensuring that any disaffected orphans who might be inclined to become rebellious heroes can receive a good education and prospects in life without rebellions or, failing that, can be carefully monitored by his agents and suffocated in their sleep if they appear intractable.
  • It's also flat out stated that his actions and general lack of self-destructive tendencies has actually significantly limited the power of his Name. In terms of raw power he's probably the weakest Black Knight in centuries, but he views the trade-off as being worthwhile.
• Hero of Another Story: Oh, so played with. On the one hand, we do get some significant segments of his Villain Protagonist tale, from his own and others' perspectives, but our story is not his. On the other, he actively chose to be the Black Knight over becoming the White Knight, reasonably considering a White Knight to be incapable of changing anything in Praes' borked system permanently. On the gripping hand, willing to sacrifice all of yourself (and those around you) to improve a broken system of governance so it functions for those being governed and not just the crazy arseholes who get to the top isn't exactly a straightforwardly Villainous thing, now, is it? And, he's not that powerful a Black Knight, to boot. Cat may not be the only twisted, battered and self-mutilating almost-Hero- definitely-monster in this tale, Pilgrim, dearest.
  • An important thing to note is that Black's goal is NOT "to improve a broken system of governance so it functions for those being governed," that's a side effect. Black just wants Evil to win over Good. More precisely he wants Good to lose, just once, just to show it can be done. What makes Black far more villainous than his protege is that his goal is selfish and not good - he's just willing to do anything, good or evil, to accomplish it.
• Hero Killer: So often it's become routine, though Assassin has an even higher body count according to Word of God.
• Living Emotional Crutch: To Captain definitely, and possibly the other Calamities as well. When he is trapped in another Plane for a few days at one point Captain reacts by slaughtering an entire village in a fit of rage while Warlock mutilates the soul of an informant trying to locate him.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Parodied. Catherine is sure to ask him if she's his long-lost daughter the morning after they first meet. She's somewhat disappointed when he informs her that she is not.
• Mayfly–December Romance: When he started his relationship with Ranger he was in his twenties and she was several hundred years old. Of course since Black doesn't age either he's now pushing 60 so they're on somewhat more even footing.
• Morality Chain: To Wekesa. Has implemented explicit rules limiting how much he's allowed to go all-out, and it's his potential displeasure that Wekesa thinks of when pondering civilian casualties (and that appears to be the only reason Wekesa notices those at all).
• Moral Myopia:
  • Black has killed thousands of people, including many innocents, with a methodical detachment to achieve his goal of a successful Praes. Nevertheless, he despises the Grey Pilgrim and Wandering Bard for their respective roles in killing Marshall Ranker and Captain. This despite the fact that (in both cases) he had instigated the conflict by invading rival foreign powers in order to cause widespread disorder and destruction (killing many people in the process).
  • He similarly looks down on the concept of the Heroic Sacrifice as a cowardly attempt to avoid spending the time and effort to enact one’s goals. However, his own death is a sacrifice to save his closest friend, Alaya, from execution.
• Parental Substitute: While he and Catherine are not blood-related, by the fourth book she refers to him as her father, and he regards her as the closest thing to a daughter he's ever had.
• Perma-Shave: As the Squire and later the Black Knight, he does not see himself as someone who has facial hair. So his Name means that he doesn't grow a beard.
• Please Kill Me if It Satisfies You: After the Second Battle of Liesse, he offers this to Catherine to apologize for using her the way he did. The response is a non-lethal stab to the gut because she still sees him as her father, and he probably had a Xanatos Gambit set up anyway.
• Practical Joke: He's not above getting into a prank contest with his friends to blow off steam. Particularly Wekesa. Be afraid.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Most of his philosophy. This is especially apparent in the "One Sin, One Grace" principle he drills into the Legions of Terror
• Red Baron: said by Catherine to have a bunch of those. Most notable is "The Carrion Lord", usually used by his opponents.
• Single-Target Sexuality: The only person he's ever had sexual feelings for is apparently The Ranger.
• Sink or Swim Mentor: He does provide some basic swordsmanship lessons and plenty of books to read. However he has no idea how to teach Catherine to use powers of her Name and actually never intended to as it would stunt her growth. Invoked, when he sends Catherine to Imperial College, putting her into a lieutenant position in the company with the worst results... pitted against the company with best results. It works.
• So Proud of You: If Cat continues going the way she is, he might just start ambushing his friends with his subdued equivalent of videos and baby pictures... Slapping demons down a few pegs and mugging angels makes for a very Proud Papa — not that he'll ever gush about it, as such. His not-gushing is about as obvious as his not-smug.
  “She stabbed you, Black,” he growled. “Don’t wave that away as youthful enthusiasm, because we certainly haven’t.”
  “One who rears a tiger should not complain of stripes,” Amadeus quoted in Mtethwa.
  “Your tiger put on a crown and raised an army after stealing three legions,” Grem growled in Kharsum. “We’re past stripes.”
  “My tiger beat back an army twice the size of hers strengthened by the two most famous living heroes on Calernia,” the dark-haired man laughed.“Three legions, one of which was always hers, is a paltry price to pay for that.”
• Teacher/Student Romance: The love of his life is his mentor, The Ranger.
• The Unfettered: Amadeus has been demonstrated to be utterly ruthless in his pursuit of his objective, up to and including using himself and his allies as merely sacrificial playing pieces in a long-term gambit. The whole "ignore morality" aspect unusually swings both sides, however, since he's done arguably moral things as well as smothered children in their cribs.
• Villainous Friendship: With the Calamities, his Squire and the Dread Empress herself.

The Calamities

Black's personal Band of Five, and the hatchet men of the Dread Empire. Each is a legendary nightmare that play instrumental roles in overseeing the well-oiled machine Amadeus and Malicia have converted Praes into.

• Five-Man Band: They naturally fit the mold as Amadeus' Band of Five, if more villainous than usual.
  • The Leader: Amadeus assembled the group together through his charisma and grand goals. Malicia may be the Dread Empress, but it's their friendship and loyalty to Black that keeps them tied to Praes, and Scribe makes it clear that they only follow her out of respect for Amadeus' own Undying Loyalty to her.
  • The Dragon: Assassin is Black's most deadly, mysterious, and fanatically loyal supporter, though their lack of on-page presence makes it hard to see this in action. They're truly shown to be this once it's revealed that they're actually Scribe, Amadeus' ever-present secretary who has almost single-handidly kept him in control of Callow through her far-reaching spy network.
  • Evil Genius: Warlock is the Calamities' magical expert who spends most of his time designing wards and spells to locate or brutally assassinate heroes.
  • The Brute: Hye Su, the Ranger, is the most dangerous woman on the planet who was frequently brought in to restrain Sabah in her uncontrollable Cursed rampages. She's left the group by the start of the story, but whenever Black gets her to help again it's almost always to brutally murder whatever is in his way.
  • The Heart: While she would initially appear to just be The Dragon or The Brute, Sabah is really the emotional cornerstone of the group, and easily their friendliest, most down-to-earth member. Her death in the League of Free Cities hits them all hard, and precipitates their slow decline and gradual dissolution.
  • Sixth Ranger: Scribe is an unofficial member of the group but just as dangerous as the rest, with a powerful network of spies to keep Black in power. Once it's revealed that Eudokia is the brains behind Assassin, it becomes clear Malicia was the true unofficial sixth; she's the centerpiece they've fought to support and centered most of their operations around, but never truthfully accepted into the group. Malicia even compares herself as this to Akua with the Woe, remarking that they both came in too late to become one of them in full.

The Calamities

The Ranger (Hye Su)

For tropes relevant to The Ranger, see her entry in the Morally Ambiguous Names folder.

Sabah, The Captain (formerly Cursed)

The Black Knight's Right-hand woman and second in command of the Legions of Terror. An eight-foot-tall Taghreb woman who's disarmingly easy-going and friendly but capable of bouts of extreme violence. Captain originally held the name of The Cursed, as she had inherited a bloodline curse that turned her into a werewolf. For a long time Amadeus was the only one who could calm her down when she transformed but sometime after he took the Name of Black Knight and before the crowning of Empress Malicia she underwent an ordeal, taking the name of The Captain and learning to control her transformations.

Her first known Aspect, present from her days as the Cursed, is Obey which grants her more power when doing what Black tells her. Her second Aspect, Unleash, triggers her transformation into an unstoppable beast, and is likely another remnant of the Cursed.

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• The Big Guy / The Brute: Enormous for a human (over eight feet tall) to the extent that some people think she has ogre blood. As the largest and physically strongest melee combatant of the group, Sabah clearly fills this role in the Calamities.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: She is killed in an offscreen confrontation with Champion, which was engineered by Bard through story tropes to ensure her death.
• Evil Me Scares Me: Strictly speaking she's always evil but she certainly didn't appreciate being turned into a berserk killing machine back when she was The Cursed. Even today she shows signs of personality change when she is forced to transform several times during the Liesse rebellion and is clearly ashamed of it.
• Gentle Giant: Certainly a giant at over eight feet, and while she is evil, she is still the nicest of the Calamities: She is the only one who cares about innocents they kill, and can be quite motherly at times.
• Happily Married: To a mid-ranking imperial bureaucrat of all things.
• Impossibly Graceful Giant: She's far too agile and stealthy for an eight-foot-tall woman who's almost always decked out in full plate. Even Black is a little unnerved by how quiet she can be when she chooses to.
• Made of Iron: Very hard to hurt/kill. Especially when in werewolf form, where Ranger of notes she no-sells hits that would have dropped a stone golem.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Due to her curse, she turns into a gigantic, man-eating wolf at will or when agitated (especially when still the Cursed). However, as one character who fought against werewolves before notes, she isn't really a werewolf but something different and more dangerous.
• Undying Loyalty: To Black. An anecdote early in the story describes her slaughtering an entire village in rage when he goes missing.
• Unstoppable Rage: When she's in beast mode she's fully capable of slaughtering entire armies. Even the Silver Spears, with hundreds of Heavy Cavalry led by two heroes, fled rather than attempt to fight her.
• Super-Senses: Has an acute sense of smell as a werewolf and directly after, probably in addition to the heightened senses common for Named.
• Villainous Friendship: With the rest of the Calamities, but mostly with Black. It's telling that when she dies, Black becomes noticeably off-balance and loses his edge.
• Villain Respect: She is polite to the enemies she fights and mentally compliments their progress at their young ages.

Lord Wekesa, The Warlock (formerly Apprentice)

An extremely powerful mage, Wekesa was the first member of the Calamities to join Black (when Wekesa was still the Apprentice and Amadeus was still The Squire). A magical prodigy born to an uncultivated Soninke bloodline, Wekesa became a fugitive when his master, the previous Warlock, attempted to murder him and eliminate a threat to his name. Wekesa would later kill his master during the civil war to place Malicia on the throne and claim the Name of The Warlock for himself. As the Warlock, his Aspects are Link, Reflect, and Imbricate.

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• Character Death: He dies in Book 4 in order to protect his son from the unleashed miracles of the Ashurans attacking Thalassina.
• Colony Drop: Reasons not to piss him off... He can play cosmic, inter-dimensional, exhibition snooker aimed right at you, given enough prep time.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: If his son dies on your watch, he will outright end you. If you betray his friends, you won't be that lucky.
• Evil Sorcerer: Acts halfway between this and the Mad Scientist, running magical experiments and having apparently dissected gods in his basement at some point. Said to be massively powerful, and certainly wiped the floor with the heroes from the moment he started fighting them in Book II.
• Happily Married: He and Tikoloshe have a very close, harmonious pact together. To all intents and purposes, they're happily married with solid, mutual goals which also stretch to child-rearing. Being a fly in their ointment is not recommended, because if Wekesa doesn't get you, Tikoloshe probably will.
• Hero Killer: He took out The Wizard of the West in the backstory and he puts down the Bumbling Conjurer with a single gesture.
• Heroic Sacrifice: How he dies in Book 4: sacrificing himself to banish the power of a summoned entity in order to save Masego's life.
• Living MacGuffin: During the second Summerholm arc Catherine's objective is to prevent the heroes from killing him.
• Practical Joke: He has an almost pathological need to pull annoyingly petty pranks with high arcana when he's missing his husband or is just getting a bit bored or anxious. Nothing seriously deadly, mind you; particularly given the durability of his friends. Gets seriously silly when he and Amadeus start tit-for-tatting.
• Person of Mass Destruction: To the point that he's actually unable to avoid massive collateral damage when he uses combat magic. Presumably this is related to one of his Aspects though we don't know which one.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He could have kidnapped and forcefully raised the boy who grew to be Apprentice using standard Sith-like child-rearing tactics. But, he quickly said "screw that inevitable death by his hands, thank you" by knuckling down and learning how to be the joint Dad of the Year for successive years in a row. Sure, the mage-training is still tricky and tough, but he's made a point of it also being both fair and interesting. Evil: hard, but fun!
• Red Baron: The Sovereign of the Red Skies.
• Silver Fox: Catherine needs to remind herself rather forcefully that he's A) gay and B) more than 3 times her age. She still can't stop herself from staring even while telling herself to quit it.
• The Smart Guy: Wekesa's role in the Calamities is to be the researcher, and he's the one most knowledgeable about magic. With Ranger gone, however, his role in the present storyline is closer to The Dragon.

The Assassin

The most mysterious of the Calamities and the only one who has yet to be seen even in flashback (as far as we know...). They spend most of their time outside the country dealing with the empire's enemies or undercover in the Kingdom of Callow eliminating heroes before they can become a nuisance.

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• Genre Savvy: Assassin deliberately sets up a modus operandi in the way they kill, to throw the scent off of their other murders.
• Revenant Zombie: In Book Seven, they are revealed to be a manifestation of Scribe's Inscribe Aspect, which can be used to successfully revive corpses and impute them with overarching directives. After years of refining her Aspect, and upon finding corpses that were sufficiently powerful, Scribe was eventually able to use her directives to create a Named.
• Shape Dies, Shifter Survives: Black has been known to use Assassin as an impromptu body double, as the latter is near impossible to put down for good. When temporarily experiencing an Alternate Universe, Cat notably discovers that Goblinfire is capable of permanently killing them. It's later confirmed that Assassin only "survives" their deaths in a manner of speaking, and that their actual form is more Possessing a Dead Body.
• Shapeshifter: Highly implied to be one, skilled enough to fool Name sight. Confirmed in Book 3, where they briefly adopt Black's form to dupe Diabolist.
• Undignified Death: Their preferred method of operation. While the deaths appear natural, they're also unlikely and undignified enough to not be. For example, drowning in your own chamber pot.
  • It's later revealed that Assassin doesn't always kill this way: they set up a subtle pattern in their kills so that the rest of their murders would go unnoticed.
• Word of God: Apparently we've met them "on screen" by Book 2 Chapter 2.

Other Villains

Dread Empress Malicia (formerly Alaya of Satus)

"Power is mostly a matter of making the right corpses at the right time."

The current ruler of the Dread Empire of Praes. Alaya began her career as a barmaid in her father's inn, conscripted into the Harem of the Dread Emperor Nefarious for her beauty. Alaya was able to use her position at court and her friendship with the young Black Knight to accumulate influence and ultimately to arrange the murder of Nefarious herself. After the Emperor's death, Alaya claimed the throne with the assistance of Black Knight and the Calamities, defeating The Chancellor and would-be-emperor Baleful I in a civil war. Since then Malicia has ruled the empire in concert with Black, using her political skills to carefully manage the nobility while fear of Black's brutal reprisals keeps them in line. Her Aspects are Rule and Connect.

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• Big Bad Duumvirate:
  • Black
  • Neshamah
  • Bard
• Big Bad Wannabe
• Compelling Voice: Many Names have some of this capability but Malicia's is apparently so potent that any agent that has been in the same room as her must be assumed to be compromised.
• Childhood Friends: Alaya the tavern-girl and Amadeus the farm-boy were friends long before Dread Empress Malacia and The Black Knight were allies.
• Distracted by the Sexy: She's gorgeous in her own right but she uses glamoured dresses and some kind of Name shenanigans to accentuate the effect, ensuring that no one ever has their wits about them when dealing with her.
• Ermine Cape Effect: Played with. She sometimes shows up to private scrying sessions with her best friend in a court dress and crowned to signify that she is there in her capacity as the Dread Empress, not as Alaya.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: She was a waitress before she usurped the throne.
• Manipulative Bastard: No Empress can afford to be merely a pretty face relying on a group of heavies to keep alive at the top. And, she isn't: she's into chess — speedy or slow. Only the dimmest of Truebloods don't understand this.
• Non-Action Big Bad: She has no combat or military skills and does not seem to be a mage of any kind. Even her Name powers are geared towards politics and social manipulation rather than any kind of direct conflict.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Spent forty years slowly regulating the Truebloods into bankruptcy and irrelevance.
• Tough Leader Façade: Sort of an inversion since the image she projects is one of an insanely sexy and whimsically violent temptress when she's actually a fairly conservative, calculating and pragmatic policy geek. Essentially she's Hilary Clinton pretending to be Catherine the Great while looking like Nefertiti wished she looked.
• To Win Without Fighting: Her strategy in the Tenth Crusade has shades of this. She initially tries to steal Akua's Doomsday Device in order to stop the Good nations from invading and taking the risk of it being used. Her next strategy is to have the rebellious Callow and invading Crusaders wear each other down, while allying herself with The Dead King to split the Grand Alliance's forces against a bigger threat.
• World's Most Beautiful Woman: Quite possibly, her beauty certainly defies easy description and she outstrips the Heiress and the Baroness Dormer by a fair margin.

Akua Sahelian, The Diabolist (formerly Heiress), The Warlock

The Doom of Liesse, Advisor Kivule, The Empress in the City

The Heiress to the High Lordship of Wolof (the home city of Dread Empress Triumphant and the most fabled center of black magic and the old Praesi ways), Akua Sahelian was raised and educated in the Decadent Court of Praes. Heiress adheres to the old school of Praesi villainy, and uses tools as diverse as bribery, blood magic, assassination, demon-summoning, slave soldiers and good old-fashioned mean girl shenanigans in her seemingly open-ended quest for ultimate power. Heiress first comes on to Catherine's radar as a possible rival claimant for the title of Squire. After Catherine defies and defeats her, Heiress makes a point of undermining her at every turn.

Her motivations and drives have been expanded upon in Book 3, giving her both a morality pet in the form of her father to whom she would go to any length for and a wish to be free, from both her mother and the Empress. As the Diabolist, her Aspects are Bind, Claim, and Call.

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• Alpha Bitch: She always gets herself a posse of Betas to smug through, ASAP.
• Arch-Nemesis: One of two for Catherine, the other being the Lone Swordsman.
• Becoming the Mask: After she begins to act more genuinely loyal and friendly towards Catherine and the Woe, Catherine considers this to be inevitable.
  And I knew, of course, that she was not beyond such exquisite deception. That she might have been weaving that intricate web around me since the moment she saved my life in the Everdark. But it wouldn’t matter, I thought, watching Akua Sahelian letting out a snort of laughter at some pointed comment Indrani had made. It wouldn’t matter because she’d want it to be true
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Akua's final fate is to become the Evil Counterpart to the Wandering Bard in order to enforce the eternal Balance Between Good and Evil.
• Big Bad: For Book 1, seeing as how all the forces aligned against Catherine for most of the book are directed by her. In Book 2 she's more of a Big Bad Ensemble with The Lone Swordsman. She goes right back to being the central villain for Book 3, though it's mitigated by the fact that she's unknowingly being supported by Malicia.
• Consummate Liar: She can seem so genuine when she wishes to! She should: she's obviously practiced for years. The effectiveness of it is somewhat mitigated by the fact she does it so often, a lot of people quickly catch wise, though. It means she has to double down and produce a whole web of fibs and half-truths to back her lies up with.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: How does Catherine punish the ghost of one of her most ruthless and hated foes? She invites her to a pleasant, friendly get-together with Catherine's other friends. It's much crueler than it sounds, as it forces Akua to confront the fact that genuine companionship was what she truly needed and the only person she ever really cared about was sacrificed by her to attain power she now knows would not have truly made her happy. She now has to live with the knowledge that she could have had all of this years ago and it is entirely her own fault that she didn't.
  “The closest I have to match to last night is a girl I sent to die. You’ve devised a poison so sweet I will crave the taste of it.”
• Create Your Own Hero: Well, your own protagonist nemesis, at any rate. Had she not gone out of her way to make Cat an enemy, it's likely the Squire wouldn't have cared enough about her to spend time wondering what she's up to and trying to thwart her plots.
• Daddy's Little Villain: Oddly subverted. Akua is following in her scheming super-evil mother's footsteps but she doesn't have any real loyalty or affection for her and ultimately views her as a future enemy. It's actually her less-evil father who is her favorite parent.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Akua's only positive relationship seems to be with her father. It comes too little too late to humanize her much.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Her Fatal Flaw; she doesn't get how Pragmatic Villainy is often the smart option as well as the moral one.
• Evil Mentor: Becomes a political, magical, and historical adviser to Catherine of all people. Justified in that her shade is bound to Catherine's cloak and is only let out when she's useful. It is later revealed that she wants Cat to become her Superior Successor and one day seize the throne. This is justified by her Social Darwinist worldview rejecting the idea that she could be defeated by someone unimportant. However, she'll still escape and pursue her own ambitions if given a chance.
• Evil Genius: Surprisingly, Diabolist proves to be highly skilled at magic, showing off High Arcana and complex arrays that Wekesa marvels at. She clearly Took a Level in Badass between books. It's telling that after her 'death', Akua becomes Catherine's second advisor on magical phenomena as well her go-to girl on political maneuvering.
• Eye Scream: When Akua's shade seizes control of Catherine's unconscious body, Thief forces her to rip out her own constantly-regenerating left eye. Ten times.
• Fantastic Racism: She smugly reflects on how progressive and flexible she is, compared to many of her race and class. But, in reality, she's still got the Soninke blinkers and attitude in spades; she just doesn't realize it.
• Faux Affably Evil: After dying and having her shade trapped in Catherine's collar, Akua becomes a lot more pleasant and servile. It's an act, of course.
• Horrible Judge of Character: She's a finely-tuned political shark... as long as she's swimming in Praesi Trueblood waters. When dealing with others, though; not-so-much. She totally misread Catherine's threat-level because of her low birth, she disregards most of the Fifteenth's officers because of their status or species, she somehow thinks she can eventually wrap Black around her pinkie finger... and, writes Scribe and the Wandering Bard off as being fairly nonthreatening. These are not the hallmarks of good judgment.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: She's a very skilled mage, but keeps it largely under wraps so that her enemies will underestimate her.
• Magic Knight: She's trained in sword-fighting, but she considers it beneath her and it shows- Catherine trounces her with minimal effort when it comes to blows.
• Nominal Hero: Suprisingly, is interested in becoming this by the end of Book Four. More than anything, she wants to be influential and remembered. Literally citing The Power of Friendship when fighting a dark god helps accomplish that.
• Oh, Crap!!: Her reaction in a nutshell when Catherine breaks free of her Aspects by giving herself over fully to the power of Winter, which ends predictably with her demise.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Admittedly who could forget the sacrifice of a city of 100 thousand? Nevertheless, the first part of Cat's plan to facilitate Akua's atonement is to emphasize the sheer gravity of what her old foe had done. The second part is to make her realize that, even if Akua can't make up for her crimes, it's still worth the effort to try.
• Our Liches Are Different: She has herself a get-out-of-death-free card in the shape of a Soul Jar. Which... kind of makes her sort of a lich.
• Passed-Over Promotion: Become Catherine's enemy because Black chose Catherine to be his Squire instead of her, blocking a possible path for her plan to rise to power.
• Sixth Ranger: After she's been bound to Catherine's Mantle of Winter as a shade, she becomes a spiritual advisor on all things political to the Woe, eventually becoming a sort of pseudo-member.
• Smug Snake: Heiress is insufferably arrogant and almost all of her plans lean heavily on her family's wealth and connections to protect her from blowback. She's like a slightly more competent Draco Malfoy without any qualms about mass murder.
• Stupid Evil: She isn't stupid, but, if given a choice between Bond Villainy or "just get the job done", she'll go for the "convoluted acid pit full of demon-sharks with mandatory gloating" route every damn time.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Cat and Akua go through this song-and-dance for most of the Tenth Crusade. Akua goes from using her sexuality to manipulate Cat, to making a genuine pass at her, to performing a Face–Heel Turn when scorned, to falling in (ill-fated) love with her.
• We Have Reserves: She views all of her assets that are not Praesi nobles as completely expendable. (The Praesi nobles are only mostly expendable.)
• Wicked Cultured: She certainly has the bearing, breeding, and class. Even better, she prides herself on being this trope and goes out of her way to emphasize how tastefully, classically Evil she is. Catherine and Black just see Bond Villain Stupidity, though.

Eudokia, The Scribe

The Webweaver

The unofficial sixth Calamity, The Scribe is never far from Black Knight's side, serving as his chief administrator and Spymaster. Her Aspects are Fade and Inscribe.

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• Already Done for You: One of her signature tricks is carrying out a particular function before the person it's intended for can even think to ask. Need a messenger to deliver news to the capital? Already left two hours ago. Want a disguise so you can discreetly sneak into town? Folded and ready. Catherine is both impressed and a little annoyed by this.
  Black: What would I do without you, Scribe?
  Scribe: The same things. Just slower.
• Badass Bureaucrat: The Black Knight's rule of Callow is able to function effectively largely because he has Scribe serving as a compact, one-woman civil service, and intelligence agency.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: She's usually found in the corner with a lapdesk, quietly catching up on correspondence or whatever. Don't bug her by making her come over there herself to sort things out, though; it's scary.
• Friendly Rivalry: Seems to have something like this going on with Assassin, of all people.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: A few words in the right ears at the right time, the correct paperwork filled out and verified — [redacted] was, officially, never even a little problem to have managed existing.
• Hidden Depths: There are more than a few hints that she can be just as bad to get on the wrong side of as Black, Warlock or Assassin. So, annoy this mouse librarian-type at your own risk: she'll probably write you out of existence if she thinks it's worth the bother.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: To the Calamities, and by extension the entirety of Praes. She might not be a warrior, but her capacity to act as a tireless one-woman bureaucracy is one of the chief reasons the Empire runs as efficiently as it does.
• Ignored Enamored Underling: Lady Ime implies her loyalty to Amadeus goes beyond friendship, but he only has eyes for Ranger.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: Scribe is loyal to Black, not to the Empire and certainly not to the Empress.
• Non-Action Guy: She's not a warrior by any means (Black notes in the prologue that it's unusual to see her on a battlefield that's already mostly deserted), and her Name doesn't lend itself to fighting. Doesn't mean she isn't dangerous in her own way, though.
• Secretary of Evil: Scribe plays this role for the Calamities and later, the Woe, taking care of all their administrative needs.
• Sixth Ranger: Not an official member of the Calamities as far as the history books are concerned, but they all treat Scribe as one of their own, and her contributions were a key factor in the success of the Conquest and its fallout.
• The Spymaster: She runs a continent-spanning network of informants for Black.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Catherine spends time trying to work out how she can just turn up at your elbow unexpectedly from a starting position right across the room or the square. Teleportation?
• The Stoic: Almost constantly sports an emotionless demeanor. Catherine, who prides herself in her ability to get a rise out of others, can barely provoke a slight change in mood from Scribe at the best of times.

King Kairos Theodosian, The Tyrant of Helike

The Unbroken

"It appears someone will have to saddle my goat, for we now must ride out in glorious battle."

The Exiled Prince's precociously Evil Uncle who usurped the throne of the Free City of Helike from him three years before the events of the story (at the age of twelve). The young Tyrant quickly began what can only be described as a reign of terror, which apparently included making profanity and alcohol possession both capital offenses. He makes his debut in the story at the end of Book 2, murdering the emissaries of all the Good-aligned Free Cities to kickstart a massive Civil War within the League. Mass-murdering, treacherous, and completely insane, Kairos' unrepentant evil nonetheless belies a far deeper cunning than many of Calernia's major players are truly prepared for.

• His Aspects are Rule, Wish, and Rend.

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• Ax-Crazy: At first, he seems to have some kind of Moral Sociopathy what with his strange moralistic decrees... But, he's actually just gone all-in on the theme of being totally evil and appears to be having the time of his life with it.
• Berserk Button: Despite his normally unflappable attitude, he has two big ones: being compared to his abusive father, and having a fate or destiny imposed on him.
• Big Bad Duumvirate:
• The Caligula: Well, yeah. Seems to have decided on the old school Julio-Claudian model of tyranny as a template (poison included), so this is a natural byproduct.
• Cannot Tell a Lie: After betraying everyone involved in the battle for the shard of arcadia at least once, The Grey Pilgrim curses him with this.
• Card-Carrying Villain: To a tee. His whole philosophy seems to be that, if you're going to be evil, you might as well go all-out and enjoy it before your inevitable demise.
• Contractual Genre Blindness: In contrast to Amadeus's Genre Savvy, Kairos does all he can to play into every possible villain trope and is just as effective as a result. He primarily leans into You Can't Thwart Stage One, with multiple multi-step plans going on in parallel at all times.
  Kairos: Gods Below, act Evil for once in your life. It’s like it’s a hobby with you people…. We’re the villains, my friends. We’re the things out there in the night that they’re all afraid of, the reason they bar their doors and shutter their windows.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: At first he just looks like some kind of insane Royal Brat in the mold of a Joffrey Baratheon. It takes him less than a chapter to show how he earned his name. And, he keeps his foot on the accelerator.
• A Death in the Limelight: The chapter he dies in is one of the few set from his point of view, finally detailing how he survived the prophecy predicting his death and expanding on his motives.
• Disabled Snarker: Prior to ascending to the throne and gaining a Name he was a particularly bitter version of this. As Tyrant he's a flat-out Large Ham though he still retains his snarky sense of humor.
• Disc-One Final Boss:
• Enfante Terrible: He was 12 when he usurped the throne from his (older) nephew and 16 when he started what appears to be the first of the Uncivil Wars.
• Evil Uncle: Subverted. He's actually younger than the nephew whose throne he usurped, which rather goes against the idea of an experienced and powerful uncle usurping the throne from the virtuous, but young and vulnerable, true heir.
• For the Evulz: Roughly 60% of what he gets up to is spur-of-the-moment dog kicking for funsies. The rest is long-term dog kicking for funsies.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Downplayed. He's generally pretty direct in stating his meaning, but he avoids actual profanity and tends to beg pardon for any brusque language he uses.
• Large Ham
  I am Kairos Theodosian, Tyrant of Helike. And I say that my Rule extends even to the sky. Come servants of the heavens, the Age of Wonders is not dead yet. Not while I breathe.
• Like You Were Dying: When he was twelve, he received a prophecy saying he would die at the age of thirteen. This caused him to stop caring about the propriety expected of a royal spare and start doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, which has enabled him to live beyond his expected time of death.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: He sets up a banquet for the heroes in Delos with an extra helping of arsenic.
• One-Man Army: He routs Atalante's mercenary army single-handedly with the power of his Name.
• Pragmatic Evil: Surprised? This cackling font of ostentatiously Classic Evil is quite deliberately hiding a metric tonne of meta-awareness under all that ham, which means that he can sneak the pragmatically moral or steely rational in amidst all the flamboyant bonkers he throws around. For starters, he's actively using his appearance of being "just another nutso Tyrant" to hide the extent of what he's capable of not just from the Calamities, but the Wandering Bard as well. Every hard-core, very nasty trick he's pulled has been a shell game used to attain goals beyond the obvious ones, yet others have been slow to realise this thanks to the show he makes of juggling obvious villain balls. And, when he does pull something moral-looking, such as the decree to reduce inebriation and drunkenness in the population at large, it just looks... like an eccentricity of no real note.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: He brings back the old Praesi trick of mass human sacrifice to power flying fortresses. Cue the tutting of the Calamities; his outdated techniques work, but they're hideously inefficient, so it offends their sensibilities to see such a waste of that many victims. He could power so many other defenses or weapons with that!
• Red Right Hand / Red Eyes, Take Warning: Both. He has one seriously creepy red eye, rather than a clawed hand to tip you off that he's batting for Team Evil. And, it's not simply conjunctivitis.
• Screw Destiny: His motivation for going From Nobody to Nightmare. As The Un Favourite cripple child to his heroic relative, he desperately sought out his family's oracle temple for a source of hope. When he was informed that his destiny was to die within the year and not be remembered, he decided that if nothing he did would matter, he might as well have fun. Over four years later, he's still alive, and everyone knows of him.
  • In Book 5, Chapter 43, The Skein tried to use his Spool Aspect on him several times. The sudden influx of constantly shifting futures overwhelmed the Ratling.
  Tyrant: Fate is a tug of war, you raggedly old thing. Do you think that the wishes of the conquered matter more than the contenders?
  Skein: [You die laughing. Or. You flee. Or. I am broken. Or. Everything burns. Or. Or. Why does it keep changing?
• Screw the Rules, They're Not Real!: Tyrant believes in this so strongly that he despises anyone who would compromise or ignore their own desires in favor of adhering to some external rule. This includes the Exiled Prince's moral code, Adjutant oath of loyalty, and (especially) Black's commitment to pragmatic villainy.
• Slasher Smile: He never seems to stop smiling.
• Straight Edge Evil: He's not fond of profanity, or alcohol.
• Your Heart's Desire: Kairos's Wish Aspect gives him the ability to read a person's most intense desire.

King Neshamah Be-Iakim of Sephirah, The Dead King

Trismegistus King, The Hidden Horror, The Pale Crown, The Pale King, The Young King

A millennia-old lich overlord who rules over The Necrocracy of Keter in the north, and one of the most powerful people on Calernia. Thousands of years ago, he was known as Neshamah, the last Prince of Sephirah, before gradually sacrificing the lion's share of his kingdom in order to fuel his ascension to power. Today, he rules his kingdom from the Serenity, his own personal slice of Hell. His plans and motives are a great mystery for the first three books, but he becomes a major player in Book 4. His Aspects are Raise, Reign, and Return.

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• Arch-Enemy: The ancient enemy of the Procerans, although the fear and rancor is completely one-sided. His enmity with the Wandering Bard is more mutual.
• A God Am I: Believes himself to be a god due to his vast power and immortality. Notable in that his proclamation seems to imply that the difference between gods and mortals simply seems to be having true power and not being beholden to death.
• Big Bad Duumvirate
• Big Bad Ensemble: From the end of Book 4 onwards he becomes one part of this with someone, though the other antagonists change. Either way, he is the largest threat to Calernia and every character has to contend with his choice to wage war on the rest of the continent.
• Dimension Lord: He rules his own personal dimension of Hell (called 'the Serenity' by his followers).
• The Dragon: He was Dread Empress Triumphant's most powerful and reliable ally during her conquest of Calernia. While he was in no way considered her equal, it's also noted that he managed to avoid getting reduced to a mere vassal, suggesting a high degree of trust between the two of them (or, at the very least, he held enough power to make doing so not worth the effort).
• The Dreaded: The Dead King is one of - if not the- scariest Villains on Calernia.
• Genre Savvy: Neshamah is undoubtedly genre-savvy. There aren't many characters in the Guide-verse who can outmaneuver the Wandering Bard for as long as he has.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Flashbacks show Neshamah had a loving mother whom he deeply cared for. Although he denies her death being his Freudian Excuse, the event is still indicated to be a "messy affair" that didn't do any wonders for his psyche.
• Evil Sorcerer: A powerful mage with centuries of experience.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: For all that you could argue the Bard's constant hounding was what drove him to the extreme, omnicidal lengths he goes to in the present, Catherine has absolutely no sympathy for him, readily pointing out that wiping out an entire kingdom for any reason is nothing but pure madness. Neshamah, for his part, actively denies even needing a Freudian Excuse, looking upon his actions as merely the logical next step in his quest for freedom.
• Friendly Enemy: He and The Wandering Bard (aka: "The Intercessor", but that's not her ''real'' name either). They've been thwarting each other for centuries, and can still hold cordial conversations. She's one of the few people he considers to be a fellow immortal.
  • He and Ranger have... an understanding? A frenemyship? He treats her like a neighbourhood cat he's grown attached to and is training up? She's only a half-elf, so technically not immortal, but she could drop by to eat the food he puts out for her when she challenges the security systems for centuries, at least.
• Immortality Seeker: As a living man, he sacrificed his entire kingdom in order to ascend to undead lichdom. His real goal is being the only entity standing at the end of the world, escaping the game of the gods once and for all. In his own words:
  "When the Gods end it all, when the last soul passes and the last of Creation is unmade, then I will stride alone into a sky of cold and distant stars. And in that empty void between worlds, moving to no purpose but mine, I will at last know the taste of freedom."
• Land of One City: His kingdom of Keter is a subversion because while his foothold on Calernia is more or less one city, he also rules an entire dimension of Hell.
• More than Mind Control: He has conditioned entire generations of humans within the Serenity to more or less worship him.
• Mortality Phobia: At his heart, Neshamah fears his own death above all things. It is remarked several times in later chapters that for all his power, he is the greatest coward on Calernia. They don't call him the Hidden Horror for nothing.
• Necromancer: He's the necromancer.
• Our Liches Are Different: As an undead, millennia-old, being who seeks immortality, he's probably closer to an Archlich than an Archmage.
• Physical God: Considers himself to be an immortal of this calibre, and counts very few others to be in the same category; namely The Wandering Bard and, recently, Catherine.
• Rasputinian Death: Naturally, it takes one of these, performed through a Combination Attack by several of the most powerful living Named, to kill him. In order:
  • Cat's third Aspect, allows her to Sentence the Dead King to death, empowered with her Role as Warden and the narrative weight of being the lynchpin of the Grand Alliance against Neshamah;
  • The Mirror Knight, attacked with a rotting curse, uses a dying attack (with all the narrative weight that provides) to Reflect the curse back onto the Dead King;
  • As Christophe falls, the White Knight grabs the Severance (made with the power of the Saint of Swords) and uses his Aspect, Undo to reverse Neshamah's lichdom;
  • Cat uses her first Aspect, Silence, to negate Neshamah's attempted killing spell as Hanno cuts off the Dead King's head; and
  • Masego catches and eats the Dead King's fleeing soul.
• Self-Sacrifice Scheme: In Book 5, he willingly loses an unrecoverable piece of his soul to make his "defeat" against the Intercessor appear authentic, so that a smaller piece of his soul can get back to his main body with knowledge of her real plans.
• Soul Jar: As a lich, he has one. It's the entire city of Keter, which will bring his soul back to his body each time he is 'killed'.
• Time Abyss: It's unknown just exactly how old he is, but it's clear by the historical treatises that his original kingdom of Sephirah was destroyed at least several millennia ago.
• We Wait: The crux of his plan is to quietly build an army in his own personal hellscape while the rest of Calernia burns, until he's the only power left on the board. To quote Catherine:
  "He's not after the quickest or most effective way to rise... [he's after] the one that leaves no openings."

Lord Ishaq Rabia of the Barrow's Blood, The Barrow Sword

Ishaq Deathless

A crafty Levantine villain that joins the truce against the Dead King in the hopes of winning renown.

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• Bastard Understudy: Subverted, upon joining the truce, he initially seeks a Klingon Promotion by assassinating Cat (she takes it in stride as an inevitable result of dealing with Villains). After she kicks his butt, he becomes a fairly reliable subordinate (and even expresses relief that he doesn't have to deal with all the responsibility Cat does).
• Glory Seeker: His primary motivation is to be added to "the Rolls," a Levantine record of achievements historically reserved for nobles and Heroes.
• Grave Robbing: Ishaq got his name upon finding the magical, Soul Eating blade Pinon buried in a barrow.
• The Reliable One: Among the Villains facing the Dead King, Ishaq is one of the few that isn't Ax-Crazy, Stupid Evil, or a Non-Action Guy, so Cat makes him her primary lieutenant during battles.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: Using his Aspect, Drink, his sword collects souls and uses them to heal Ishaq's otherwise mortal injuries.

The Scorched Apostate (Tancred)

An untrained Proceran mage that becomes a villain and uses his newfound power to burn down the town of Marserac. Cat recruits him to the crusade against the Dead King.

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• Black Mage: He's a young mage who's only shown an affinity for Playing with Fire spells.
• Birds of a Feather: With Cat, as another young person who fell into Evil out of the belief that Holding Out for a Hero or hoping for a miracle would only cause undue suffering. She feels more than a little kinship with him as a result.
• Final Solution: Tancred got his Name when he chose to burn down a town killing almost every man, woman, and child within, to prevent them from spreading a Mystical Plague created by the Dead King.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars Two-thirds of his face is covered in harsh and unhealing burns. Tancred views them as divine punishment for his actions.
• Holy Hand Grenade: He wields a mixture of flame and light, useful only for smiting.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Only hours after meeting one of the only Named that could sympathize with his choices, and even obtaining the chance to be formally trained in magic, one of the Dead King's assassins kills him. Cat ends up having to put her zombified charge out of his misery.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Scorched Apostate's act of mass-murder was done only to prevent the deaths that would result from a plague spreading through an already war-torn Procer. He believes the villagers' refusal to wait for a priest that could provide a cure (before leaving to seek refuge in neighboring cities) forced his hand. Cat agrees, as he likely saved tens of thousands in the process.

Marshal Nim Mardottir, The Black Knight'

An Ogress that is one of the only remaining Marshalls of Praes following a mass desertion. Afterward, the Dread Empress Malicia appoints Nim High Marshall of Praes and she takes on the Name of The Black Knight. Her Aspects include Survey and Delegate.

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• The Brute: In contrast to Amadeus, Malicia ensures Nim is kept in the dark regarding her political maneuvering as well as the finer points of Namelore. As a result, she's only really used for combat and military strategy.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: The only reason Nim continues to work for Malicia is loyalty to the stability of Praes. Specifically, she subscribes to Amadeus's belief that a standing army loyal exclusively to the position of Dread Emperor/Empress would curb the civil wars that break out each time a noble wants to play The Starscream.
• The Rival: To Arthur, as Cat purposefully manipulates the Squire into a Pattern of Three with the Black Knight. On a military level she serves as this to Juniper, handing the Marshall of Callow multiple defeats during the Praes campaign.
• Skilled, but Naive: She's a capable fighter and excellent strategist, but her ignorance regarding the Law Of Narrative Causality bites her repeatedly.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: With Malicia and Akua given that their Manipulative Bastardry encapsulates everything she hates about the governance of Praes.

The Tyrants of the Wasteland. The Arch-heretics of the East. These Dread Emperors and Empresses are the Named rulers of Praes, each more megalomaniacal and insidious than the last.

Only those who have held the Dread Emperor Name will be listed here. Claimants will be on the general Praes page.

Past Dread Emperors and Empresses

The Villains who have ruled Praes in the centuries before Malicia. Many have fleshed-out histories but some are known only by their page-quotes at the beginning of the Serial's chapters — only Dread Emperors and Empresses with a greater impact on the setting or the story will be listed here, those that are only known by their quotations are listed on the Quotes page.

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Dread Empress Maleficent I

The Founder of the Dread Empire. A Taghreb who united the Orcs, Goblins, Taghreb, and Soninke tribes after the Miezan empire withdrew. Assassinated by an ancestor of the Sahelians who became the second Dread Empress.

Dread Empress Triumphant (MAY SHE NEVER RETURN)

The Greatest and most Terrible of all the Tyrants of Praes and perhaps of all Calernia's Villains. Conquered the entire continent of Calernia 700 years prior to the story only to be defeated by the combined might of the First Crusade and an invasion of the Yan Tei Empire from across the sea. Following her death most of Praes was annexed into crusader states and the Empire would not regain its original borders until Dread Emperor Terribilis II drove out the crusaders a generation later.Liked to summon demons, which she generally bound to the standards of her Legions, some of which are still lying around. Also made a habit of crucifying people or better yet, forcing people to crucify their own loved ones which led to the cross being used as the Crusader symbol in Calernia (though not the symbol of any religion).

• Classic Villain: She was Pride all the way.
• Escaped from Hell: Whenever her name is mentioned most Praesi will make a prayer that she never return in order to ward off this possibility. Since a different Villain has actually managed to pull off something like this at least once in Calernia's history it may not be as improbable as it sounds.

Dread Emperor Terribilis II

Probably the best ruler the Empire had before Malicia. He took power a generation after Triumphant's fall and succeeded in reconquering the home territory of the empire and annexing part of Callow, reducing the kingdom to a Proceran client state. The only ruler prior to Black and Malicia to come close to solving the demographic problems that forced Praes into repeated, self-destructive invasions of Callow but he was assassinated before his plan could be fully implemented and the empire contracted back to its prior borders afterwards.

• Big Book of War: He wrote one of the setting's two best-regarded books on warcraft.
• Expy: As the Emperor who united his people to drive out the crusader states, he resembles the real-life Egyptian King Saladin.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Calernia's Ur-example. Black is arguably his Spiritual Successor.
• Villainous Valor: His story was one of reconquering his homeland from the occupying crusader states, despite being firmly on the side of evil.

Dread Emperor Tenebrous

The Emperor who built the Imperial Road. Had a promising early reign but is now mostly remembered for coming to hold the belief that he was actually a Giant Spider in a human body and using magic to physically transform himself into such a form before taking up residence in Ater's sewers. Rumored to still be alive down there.

• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Believed that he was one, and took steps to make physical reality conform to this belief.
• Never Live It Down: Weirdly enough nobody seems to remember his infrastructure projects, impressive though they were.
• Mother Of Monsters: May be the ancestor of the Giant Spiders that still infest the sewers of the Empire's capital.
• Never Found the Body

Dread Emperor Malignant II

One of the less impressive Dread Emperors. Best known for creating a subspecies of aquatic orcs for a failed invasion of Callow.

Dread Emperor Nefarious

The Dread Emperor prior to Malicia. Notable mostly for his skill with magic, his incompetence in most other matters, and his venality. Attempted an invasion of Callow 20 years before Black's conquest that resulted in disaster when he was defeated by the Wizard of the West on the Field of Streges. After limping back from that defeat he spent the remainder of his reign abusing his concubines one of whom, a woman named Alaya, murdered him in order to ascend as Dread Empress Malicia.

• Asshole Victim: Let's just say few politically minded people were all that surprised when a member of his harem was involved in his downfall. And, just as many mourned his loss. If that. Not generally considered a high point of Praesi style, this guy.
• Dirty Old Man: After his invasion of Callow was defeated he spent the remainder of his reign indulging his lechery with whatever attractive women his soldiers could bring him.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Murdered by one of the women he abducted and raped, who would then go on to become a far greater ruler than he.
• Sorcerous Overlord: Nefarious was apparently an unusually skilled mage, though not as skilled as the contemporary Wizard of the West.

Dread Emperor Traitorous

One of the more colorful Dread Emperors, he has ended up as something of a historical folk hero for the people of Praes. Most commonly known for his habit of double-crossing just about everybody.

• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: He named himself Traitorous for a reason. He performed over a hundred different acts of treachery over the course of his reign. Most notably, he successfully betrayed a Villain whose Name was Betrayer.
• Full-Circle Revolution: On at least one occasion, rebels who managed to overthrow the Dread Emperor Treacherous found too late that their leader was the Dread Emperor Traitorous in disguise.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Once managed to disguise himself as his (female) Chancellor using a wig and falsies made from a pair of melons.
• Refuge in Audacity: Openly announced to the world that he was an untrustworthy backstabber with his choice of reign name, and yet still managed to successfully betray over a hundred different people and groups over the course of his reign. The fact that he was somehow able to pull this off is a major factor in why he is so fondly remembered by the people of Praes.
• Thanatos Gambit: In his final betrayal, he committed suicide while framing over a hundred different people for his murder.

Heroes

The Lone Swordsman and his Party

William of Greenbury, The Lone Swordsman

The first Callowan hero to rise to any significance since the conquest. A gritty avenger type who flies under the radar by operating independently (as the name implies) rather than gathering an army or party of heroes.

When Catherine arrives in Summerholm She attempts to hunt him down in order to prove herself worthy of the name of Squire. After she defeats him and the other claimants she sets him free, allowing him to start a rebellion against the empire and creating the chaos she believes is necessary to rise in the ranks. He becomes her recurring foe throughout the first two books.

The Lone Swordsmen's Aspects are: Rise, Triumph, and Swing

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• Alas, Poor Villain: Yup. William was once a bad boy. He then started trying to atone for what he'd done, but... Frankly, getting mind-raped into a heroic Name, knowing you're always heading to the Fire Below whatever you do and getting very grim smiles painted on your soul enough that putting thousands of people through a similarly enforced turn to heroism like you're going through feels like a good idea? That's a bit excessive for a sentence for selfishly killing your sister in a bid to survive the militant crackdown her actions would cause, don't you think?
• Anti-Hero: Unscrupulous Hero verging on Designated Hero. He's a racist Jerkass who sadistically tortures prisoners and doesn't really care about the impacts of his actions on ordinary people. He's also willing to Bring an Angel of Contrition into Creation in the City of Liesse, essentially brainwashing every man, woman, and child in the city into joining a Death or Glory crusade against evil.
• Arch-Nemesis: To Catherine, shares the role with Heiress.
• Arc Villain:
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good: He may have been a victim of this when he first encountered the Hashmalim, and he tries to impose it on the entire city of Liesse.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Let's just say it's grim. Plenty for Freud to get to grips with, here.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: After his humiliation in the second Summerholm arc, he starts to learn a bit more humility and humanity under pressure from his comrades, though this doesn't stop him from pulling his summoning gambit in Liesse.
• Fantastic Racism: Explicitly does not believe that Goblins and Orcs qualify as people, believing them to be simply Always Chaotic Evil monsters (Note: This is very much not the case in the Practical Guideverse). While he has his reasons (the Orcs have been subjecting Callow to Rape, Pillage, and Burn for almost two thousand years), it’s pretty clear that he wants to enact a Final Solution on them to stop this.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: He was fated to Win against Catherine in Liesse to the point that he literally got back up and stabbed her while she was ramming a knife through his throat. Unfortunately, she planned for this and turned it around on her in their next fight.
• Jerkass: He's like the anthropomorphic personification of sandpaper. By both intentionally and unintentionally grating on companions' and enemies' nerves alike, he wears most of them down until they stay as far away from him as possible... or, enjoy the thought of strangling him. Might be a Name thing. You can't do "Lone" if people easily flock to your sunny, gregarious personality, after all.
• One-Man Army: The Lone Swordsman is hands down one of the most physically dangerous people in the series to date and is shown mowing through Humans, Orcs, and Devils with equal ease.
• Took a Level in Badass: After his first defeat by Catherine he spends a year in Arcadia being pursued by the Wild Hunt and other otherworldly dangers, which toughens him up and gives him his last two Aspects.

The Thief (Vivienne Dartwick)

For tropes relevant to The Thief, see her entry in the Woe folder.

The Hunter (John)

One of Ranger's people in Refuge, he violates Ranger's rules in order to interfere in the Callowan rebellion beside the Lone Swordsman. Succinctly described as a "Streetwalker with a Spear" The Hunter wears minimal clothing and is covered in 'tribal' tattoos.

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• An Arm and a Leg: Catherine cuts one of his hands off in their second fight in Summerholm.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: It's so bad, even his ally, Archer, continually takes the piss out of him for his crimes against both fashion and hubris.
• Bling of War: Well, more "Ringing Of War". Lots of little, tinkling, very silver hawkbells in his hair to be "tribal". Along with pointless tats he goes shirtless to show off. Why?!
• Chainmail Bikini: Well, the male equivalent thereof. Leather pants, bells and eternally shirtless. He learns the hard way why skin-covering armour is a good thing in a fight.
• Cliché Storm: His dialogue consists mostly of bombastic boasts and overwrought condemnations of the depravity of his opponents. This gets even sillier after Catherine breaks his nose. A whole new meaning to Purple Prose, right there.
• Enemy Mine: Reluctantly agrees to help the Legion against the Demon of Corruption when it gets loose in Marchford.
• Stealth Expert: He's a Rogue-type. Somehow. Despite the pomposity and those stupid bells, he's still good at the sneak.
• Stripperiffic: He wears as little clothing as he can get away with, yet this doesn't impede him much when he can rely on the power of his name to slaughter Red Shirts. It's a pretty serious disadvantage when he gets in a slugging match with a heavily-armored Catherine and her equally martial Name, however.

The Bumbling Conjurer (Symeon)

The last and least of the Lone Swordsman's party, a comically inept mage whose name allows him to succeed through fortuitous incompetence. When the heroes infiltrate Summerholm he bumbles through a few fights with the Apprentice before being abruptly put down by The Warlock. And There Was Much Rejoicing.

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• Achievements in Ignorance: His entire Name is apparently built around this. It has a rather large downside that makes him worse than inconsistent: the minute he gets a handle on whatever magic feat he's pulling, it fizzles out on him. Often at an awkward time, too.
• Crazy Enough to Work: When it works, it really, really works (well beyond established norms, even). But, when it does not, it goes really badly.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: He starts getting Curb Stomped the second Apprentice walks into the room and then gets stomped a few more times over the course of the evening. He refuses to stay down until Warlock shows up, however.
• Indy Ploy: Magic flavour. There's only so much prepping his Name will let him get away with, so he has to be all about the seat-of-pants, stabs-in-the-dark "plans".

The Wandering Bard (Almorava of Smyrna)

For tropes relevant to The Wandering Bard see their entry in the Other Morally Ambiguous Named folder.

The White Knight's Party

Hanno of Arwad, The White Knight

The Sword of Judgement, Prince White

A half-Soninke hero from the Thalassocracy of Ashur who joins the war in the Free Cities upon completing training in the Titanomachy, bringing him into conflict with the Calamities. Though a Hero aligned with the Choir of Judgement, he abrogates the right to judge anyone himself, instead carrying out the judgment of the Heavens on those who engage in Evil. His Aspects include Ride and Recall.

Hanno later becomes the representative of Heroes, opposite Catherine Foundling, for the Truce & Terms in the war against the Dead King. Over that period he briefly gives up and regains the Name of White Knight, receiving a second set of Aspects that consists of Recall, Save, and Undo.

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• Brought Down to Badass: He loses his ability to call on Judgement in Book 5, but he's still an incredibly skilled fighter with the ability to use Light.
• Cool Horse: One of his Aspects is Ride and along with presumably granting riding skills, it allows him to summon a horse made from holy light. Black thinks he massively under-utilises this Aspect, since he could conceivably do far, far more with a light-based mount than just use a lance or sword while riding it jouster-style. Think "laser", "flight", "drone" and way, way more.
• Creative Sterility: Black accuses him of this — because Hanno refuses to include his own opinions or personality in whatever he does, he cannot be original and is not that good at learning.
• Ghost Memory: He spent his time in the Titanomachy accessing the memories of past White Knights. He had never been in combat before Delos but had the memories of hundreds of battles. The downside: he cuts-and-pastes skills without really getting to the heart of the tactics and strategies he uses them with.
• Heads or Tails?: He uses a coin flip to divine the judgment of the seraphim in a disturbingly Harvey Dent-ish fashion.
• I've Never Seen Anything Like This Before: Provokes this kind of reaction from the Wandering Bard with his... idiosyncratic... take on what it means to be affiliated with Judgment without personally judging. And, when she practically sits up and leans forward to get a better look at the trope playing out in front of her, you know it's not a run-of-the-mill iteration.
• Jack of All Trades: His Recall ability makes him an expert with any weapon and gives him a huge variety of tricks with Light. Fight scenes often mention how the technique he's using is borrowed from a past Hero.
• Light 'em Up: In opposition to the Black Knight's Casting a Shadow powers, Hanno has the standard beams of damaging light attack.
• Skilled, but Naive: While outclassing the current Black Knight in every way when it comes to pure raw power, he turns out not to be very effective when it comes to actually fighting him. It is explained the first time we meet him that he was trained in seclusion by the Titans his whole life in order to become an unstoppable force of Good and to dedicate himself to the Heavens...but this ironically only hinders him since he lacks actual worldly experience when it comes to fighting flesh and blood Villains and because of that he expects every Villain to be like the ones in stories (something that Black clearly is not). Plus the Choir he draws his power from gives him Creative Sterility and an inability to learn leaving him to be nothing but a plaything to Black schemes the three times he fights him despite all of his power.
• The Smurfette Principle: Inverted, he's the only male member of his Five-Man Band.
• Summon Magic: As mentioned above, he can summon a horse made of light as part of his Ride Aspect.

The Valiant Champion (Rafaella)

A hero from Levant that teams up with joins a band with the White Knight. Her Aspects include Oppose, Rally, and Exalt.

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• Achievements in Ignorance: She takes absolutely no damage from the Tyrant's ghost army, with her explanation being: "Ghosts no real, can't hurt". That is not how ghosts work in the Guideverse.
• The Big Guy: Functions as this. When you want the bold-and-simple solution to a knotty combat problem, she's got you covered.
• Blood Knight: Quite openly takes joy in getting into Evil's face by trying to slice as many of the poor mooks as she can.
• Boisterous Bruiser: See above. She's a sunny person to be around in a tight corner. As long as you're on the same side.
• Hulk Speak: Although this is due to not being completely fluent in the other members of her party's native language rather than lack of intelligence
• Innocently Insensitive: Rafaela flaying Captain's transformed corpse to obtain a wolf pelt. In Champion's mind, that was the honorable and logical option, partly because of the importance that Levantine culture puts on post-mortem tributes (as a show of respect for loved ones and powerful enemies); partly because Captain's beast form was Nigh-Invulnerable, allowing for one hell of a Cloak of Defense. Neither helps mitigate Cat's burning hatred for Champion skinning her Honorary Aunt.
• Nemean Skinning: She is fond of taking trophies, and takes to wearing a self-made fur cloak after killing Sabah.

The Ashen Priestess (Irene)

A stern priest Named in the White Knight's team, and sister to Alkmene, the Hedge Wizard. From Delos. Her Aspects include Ignite, Heal, and Begone.

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• Disintegrator Ray: At least one of her powers allows her to cause enemies to disintegrate.
• Killed Offscreen: The Calamities thwart a ritual to kill Captain and replace the catalyst for the spell with a lock of her hair. The narration from Black puts emphasis on how the killing method of the ritual wasn't something quick and she probably died screaming. She becomes the first heroic casualty of her party as well.
• Properly Paranoid: Out of the four lines she speaks in their introductory chapter, three of them are her warning the rest of the party about imminent danger.
• Shoot the Medic First: The main reason why the Calamities kill her first, and ironically this end up backfiring on them.
• The Quiet One: She speaks four short sentences in the chapter that introduces the White Knight and the rest of the party, far fewer than any of the others.

The Hedge Wizard (Alkmene)

An argumentative mage Named in the White Knight's band of five, sister to Irene, the Ashen Priestess, hails from Delos. Her Aspects are Learn, Repurpose and Reiterate.

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• Jack of All Trades: Her whole name revolves around this. She has a spell for every school of sorcery that there is but she'll never become master of one of them and she can never use the same spell twice in a day.
• Killed Off for Real: She is defeated by the Warlock and to ensure that she doesn't return he burns her body to a crisp.
• The Red Mage: Described as having an 'eclectic' bag of magic tricks, rather than any one discipline.
• Squishy Wizard: Very powerful mage, but besides that, she doesn't have very much to show.
• The Smart Guy: The teams resident magical expert
• Voluntary Shapeshifter: Can at the very least assume the shape of a giant eagle.

The Wandering Bard (Aoede of Nicae)

For tropes relevant to The Wandering Bard see their entry in the Other Morally Ambiguous Named folder.

The Tenth Crusade

When Cordelia Hasenbach calls the Tenth Crusade against Procer and Callow, dozens of Heroes from across Calernia answer the call.

Tariq Isbili, The Grey Pilgrim

The Peregrine, Tariq Fleetfoot

A hero from Levant who has been active for at least 60 years. He generally acts as The Mentor for other Heroes from the Dominion, and is widely respected and beloved there, to the point that he could claim the Tattered Throne without contest. He accompanies Prince Amadis' invasion of northern Callow, and later serves as the mouthpiece and de facto leader of Calernia's assembled Heroes, coming into contact and clashing with Cat several times.

As the Grey Pilgrim, his Aspects are Behold, Forgive, and Shine.

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• Back from the Dead: His "Forgive" Aspect undoes people's deaths. This is limited by the stipulations that it can only be done once a day, requires the person's corpse, can only be done once per person, the death must have been somehow natural or willing, and the people it's used on are ''different'' somehow. In Book 5, Chapter 51, Cat steals this Aspect from his corpse so she can use it to revive him with it.
• Cry for the Devil: He tells Catherine that he views her this way.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Tariq holds no official position of leadership amongst the Tenth Crusade, but his status as the oldest hero on the continent inevitably leads to him becoming the face of their forces whom Catherine primarily focuses on outwitting.
• Good is Not Nice: He is the first hero that Catherine has met who somewhat averts this.
  • Played Straight. His Name allows him to create diseases just as easily as he can heal. He infects an unaware, Proceran fishing village with a deadly plague just before Black and several Legions arrive. Every single Proceran citizen and Praes Legionary in the area died, leaving Amadeus, the sole survivor, alone and cornered by six Heroes.
• Genre Savvy: This is one of the main reasons that makes him such a dangerous foe to Catherine and the Woe. Not only he is powerful but, he also knows how to manipulate the countless histories about Heroes and Villains to produce a result. He tries to use this to steer Cat to a path of redemption that will probably end up in her death. as a way of defeating her, and is pretty much the reason how he avoided the Mentor Occupational Hazard form below.
• The Good Chancellor: In his backstory, Tariq ends up effectively reigning over Levant as its regent after his sister is assassinated, while his nephew Izil grows up to inherit the Tattered Throne.
• Heroic Suicide: In Book 5, chapter 50, he pulls this. It's later reversed.
• Kinslaying Is a Special Kind of Evil: Subverted. Tariq winds up being forced to murder Izil, because it is clear to him that Izil plans on starting a continent-wide war between Levant and Procer.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: He's somehow avoided ever falling into this despite being The Obi-Wan for decades. This is what leads Cat to take him seriously.
• The Needs of the Many: This is the driving force behind the Grey Pilgrim. At every turn, the Role he plays as an agent of Above is fundamentally about reducing suffering to the people of Calernia, no matter the cost.
• Old Superhero: The oldest Named Hero encountered in the story so far, and he is capable of truly awesome feats like calling entire pieces of heavenly firmament (read: stars) onto the battlefield. This is later revealed to be driven by Shine, his third Aspect.
• Royal Blood: He is from the Isbili family, and thus the direct descendant of the first Grey Pilgrim, founder and first holy Seljun of Levante. In the Dominion, he is seen as royalty among royalty for being of the Blood of the first Pilgrim and also sharing the Name.
• Senseless Sacrifice: At the climax of Boox Six, Tariq reduces himself and his entire bloodline to ash to drop a star on the dead army invading the city Hainaut. Unfortunately, this gives the Dead King the narrative license to open three hellgates over the province, forcing further sacrifices on the Gigantes' part to seal the gates and buy the Alliance time.
  • Not quite senseless since even though his sacrifice did let the Dead King open the hellgates, not committing the sacrifice would have meant giving him access to the Twilight Ways, which would basically mean losing the war entirely.
• Shout-Out: His Name 'The Grey Pilgrim' is one of Gandalf's nicknames (The English translation of 'Mithrandir').
• Technical Pacifist: Pilgrim does not kill his enemies directly - most of his on-screen appearances have featured him healing teammates as opposed to wielding his Light to kill. Furthermore, when he does use lethal means (see the example above), it's always as a last resort and for what he believes is a higher purpose.

Laurence de Montfort, The Saint of Swords (formerly Wanderer)

Regicide

An old Proceran Hero who joins Amadis' invasion of northern Callow. Her Aspects are Sever, Listen, and Decree.

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• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Apparently she can cut through magic and miracles. Unknown whether there's anything special about her sword or if it's all in the way she wields it. As of Book 5, it's been revealed that her sword is a completely normal longsword. It's all in her skills and the fact that she's a living domain embodying the concept of "sword".
• Good is Not Nice: Unlike her companion, Laurence is abrasive, ruthless, and utterly uncompromising in the face of any opposition. She has nothing but contempt for most of Prince Amadis' faction among the Tenth Crusade.
• Jerkass: To put it simply she's an old and wrinkly asshole that seems to take pleasure in making constant death threats to everyone, even her allies, and her go-to action to solve a problem is to insult it and try to kill it even when there may be a better solution. Catherine calls her a bully, and considering all of Cat's conversations with her and her overall personality she may be right.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Her main method to everything.
• Knight Templar: She doesn't seem to be one at first but in the final extra chapter of Cordelia Hassenbach, Fatalism III, she leaves pretty clear that she is more than willing to sacrifice the entirety of the Proceran Empire to defeat the Death King and Evil under the justification of: Good always wins . When Hassebanch confronts her about this she shrugs it off leaving it clear that she doesn't give a fuck about the countless dead Procerans and instead just tells her to focus on how a new thing will be born out of the massive destruction of her country.
• Not Afraid to Die: She's well aware that she's old and her time is running out against an enemy like the Dead King, but she has accepted that she's probably going to die and is okay with it as long she gets to take some undead with her.
• Old Master: She is old, but she has constantly refined her skills as a swordswoman to the point she can cut through armies.
• One-Man Army: This seems to be her shtick, along with Absurdly Sharp Blade.
• Red Baron: Regicide.
• Shout-Out: Her surname is probably a reference to Simon de Montfort the elder, one of the leaders of the Albigensian crusade.

The Rogue Sorcerer (Roland de Beaumarais, né Olivier de Beaumarais)

A Proceran Hero and mage who is part of the Tenth Crusade. He first accompanies Amadis' Exploration Force, and advises Rozala Malanza in her strategy against Praesi/Callowan sorceries. His Aspects are Confiscate and Use.

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• Artifact of Power: He owns and uses a broad variety of artifacts when fighting.
• Badass Longcoat: He has a leather one with many pockets.
• Cain and Abel: Olivier was the Abel to Roland's Cain. Olivier having greater cunning, the gratitude of Beaumarais, and the love of Alisanne led to Roland's desire to distinguish himself. When things go horribly wrong, Olivier is forced to turn on his younger brother, becoming the Rogue Sorcerer in the process.
• Friendly Enemy: Considering Cat's enmity with Heroes like the Saint of Swords and Mirror Knight, it's fairly surprising that Roland and the Woe get along so well after the Prince's Graveyard.
• Klingon Scientists Get No Respect: In his hometown, Beaumarais, his family is ostracized for their use of magic, although they help people with their skills.
• Magic Eater: Has the ability to siphon off the magic of other mages, manipulate it, and imbue it in artifacts.
• Magical Society: He made great strides in creating a safe haven for mages in a town full of Fantastic Racism.
• Muggle Born of Mages: He was the The Unfavorite son of his parents for not (initially) having access to "The Gift."
• My Sibling Will Live Through Me: Olivier de Beaumarais took the face, name, and magic of his brother Roland shortly after the latter died during a failed attempt at Staged Heroics.
• Self-Made Man: While in Beaumarais, he first started copying and selling books, then he opens a refuge for mages that sells their products... practically singlehandedly making his hometown prosperous.
• Sibling Triangle: He and his brother shared affections for Alisanne Lassier, a noblewoman sent to the village of Beaumarais to learn from their House of Light. The Rogue Sorcerer eventually entering into a relationship with her led to his brother Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
• The Unfavorite: His parents preferred his younger brother over him to pass on the family legacy.
• Weak, but Skilled: Compared to some other sorcerous Named such as Warlock, Hierophant, or the Witch of the Woods, the Rogue Sorcerer is weak as he can't use High Arcana. He makes it up in cunning, common sense, and the use of artifacts.

The Mirror Knight (Christophe de Pavanie)

A young Proceran Hero who is part of the Tenth Crusade. His Aspects include Dawn and Reflect.

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• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Gains custody of the Severance, an artifact made from the Saint of Sword's Aspect that has the ability to cut almost anything. The only reason he was chosen is that the Mirror Knight's Nigh-Invulnerability means he won't accidentally lose a limb just by swinging it.
• Fastball Special: To his chagrin, his Super-Toughness means a predominant heroic strategy against the Dead King is "throw Christophe at it."
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Among Good-aligned Named, who already tend towards Headbutting Heroes status, Christophe's obnoxious smugness does him no favors. Basically, no one but the Blade of Mercy can stand him.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Beneath his arrogance and Innocent Bigotry, the Mirror Knight is very aware that his leadership position is purely the result of Asskicking Leads to Leadership. Christophe acknowledges that he lacks the ability to bring out the best in those under his command like Hanno can.
• The Lancer: To the White Knight as leaders of the new generation of Heroes. Christophe's Honor Before Reason tends to clash with Hanno's Pragmatic Heroism. Ideological differences eventually cause them to come to blows.
• Mighty Glacier: After obtaining the Severance, the Mirror Knight arguably has the strongest close-range offense and defense on the side of Good. Nevertheless, his mobility leaves a lot to be desired, a weakness that allows the White Knight to get the better of him.
• Stronger with Age: Every morning he becomes stronger than the day before, to the point that the Saint of Swords predicts that he will surpass her in a few years.
• Took a Level in Kindness: After several months serving under the Grey Pilgrim, he becomes much less of a dick.

Antigone, The Witch of the Woods

Antigone Drakonslayer

A mage Heroine from the Titanomachy who is part of the Tenth Crusade. Her Aspects are Gather, Cradle, and Sing.

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• Divine Parentage: In a manner of speaking, as she's the adoptive daughter of Kreios Maker-of-Riddles, the oldest living thing on the continent and a deity to the giants.
• From Zero to Hero: Started out as a Stygian slave and ended up probably the strongest mage Hero on Calernia.
• Just Friends: She's implied to have romantic feelings for the White Knight, but Hanno only seems to view her as a close comrade.
• Nature Hero: Antigone has the ability to speak all languages, including those of animals, and is the protector of the forest where she grew up.
• Our Mages Are Different: Despite Hierophant and Warlock's science-based approach, Antigone equals them through viewing magic as a means of communicating with Creation itself.
• Solitary Sorceress: She was raised in near-total isolation by Kreios and her Name suggests that Antigone remained a recluse in adulthood.
• Wizard Duel: Nearly wins one with Warlock at the start of the Crusade and nearly destroys the Red Flower Vales in the process.

Other Heroes

The Exiled Prince (Dorian Theodosian)

The rightful heir to the throne of the Free City of Helike, exiled by his Evil Uncle who usurped the throne from him. The Exiled Prince and his loyal band of mercenaries, the Silver Spears, join the Liesse rebellion early on, providing most of the Rebellion's professional soldiers.

After some initial success raiding the Legion's supply lines, the Prince is forced to retreat after an encounter with The Captain. After driving off the Exiled Prince in Summerholm the Fifteenth Legion's first field assignment is to hunt down the Silver Spears. The Silver Spears meet them in battle at one of the crossings of the Left Fork, and the Exiled Prince is treacherously and hilariously killed in the act of trying to challenge the Squire to single combat.

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• Combat Pragmatist: He's a competent and ruthless commander, the circumstances leading to his death were actually a result of his pragmatism because he believed that The Squire would not be a match for him in single combat. His downfall was in underestimating the pragmatism of his opponent.
• Flat Character: Kairos outright calls him this to his face.
• Good Is Dumb: Did not apparently realize he needed to wear the helmet for his armor to turn away arrows from his face.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: His adherence to this trope hilariously leads to his demise.
• Pet the Dog: He (rightfully) calls the Lone Swordsman out on his blatant racism.
• Prince Charming: Even by heroic standards, he's considered handsome. He also fits the personality portion of this trope since he's definitely not as much of a Jerkass as the Lone Swordsman, though he's willing to be ruthless in battle.
• Warrior Prince: It's kind of in the job description...

The Page (Semia)

The Exiled Prince's (very) devoted sidekick, an androgynous young woman skilled with the rapier.

After the death of her master she leads the Silver Spears into battle against the fifteenth legion. Catherine grants her the single combat that was denied to the Exiled Prince and The Page becomes the first Hero to fall to the Squire.

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• Ambiguous Gender: Seems to be a Name thing. Like a tarot Page or a cartomanic Jack, it seems like the Role wants to be two-for-the-price-of-one in person. Every character commenting on her looks rethinks her gender at some point. No exceptions.
• Designated Girl Fight: Catherine's first single combat against a Named is also against another woman.
• Everyone Can See It: Everyone can tell that she's totally in love with The Exiled Prince, except him... (possibly).
• Foe-Tossing Charge: She uses some sort of name trick to tear a path through the stakes laid down by the Fifteenth's sappers and then cuts her way through their ranks until Catherine intervenes.
• Fragile Speedster: She's very quick with a rapier but she eschews heavy armor, making her vulnerable to Catherine's brutally straightforward tactics.
• Ignored Enamored Underling: Admittedly, it's unclear whether the Exiled Prince is playing dumb or actually that oblivious.

The Augur (Agnes Hasenbach)

The cousin of the current First Prince of Procer who assumed the Name of The Augur during that country's civil war. Her Name allows her to foretell the future and learn of distant events by observing the flight of birds.

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• Go Mad from the Revelation: Is worried about this happening to her if she looks too deeply into the wrong things. The Bard says that this is not an uncommon end for seers.
  There would be a day where she went too deep, glimpsed things so far beyond her understanding, that there would be no coming back. Not whole, not even close to it.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Ornithomancy is her main method of getting her very detailed omens. With a huge side of aeromancy — predictions from weather.
• The Ophelia: She wears a skimpy sundress at court, has a pale, waifish appearance and spends long periods of time staring directly into the sun. Everyone at court just rolls with it because Names are weird that way.
• Oracular Urchin: She's locked into being this for as long as she lives. With exceptionally obtuse word salad into the bargain. She only misses Waif Prophet because she's got Blue Blood, decent health and personal status. She only looks spindly and pale enough to not survive a stiff breeze in full sunshine.

The Kingfisher Prince (Frederic Goethal)

The prince of the Proceran principality of Brus. His Aspects include Aid.

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• Agent Peacock: The Kingfisher Prince is known for being a Long-Haired Pretty Boy and a Cultured Warrior Prince.
• Friends with Benefits: With Cat, although their encounters require mutual discretion, since a Proceran Prince/Hero can't really be seen sleeping with a Callowan Queen/Villain.
• Knight in Shining Armor: His valor in battle led to his Name, while he is shown to be both kind and chivalrous; Frederic is near-unanimously respected as a result.
• Odd Friendship: With Otto Redcrown, a morose Lycaonese noble. Years fighting the Dead King (and Frederic's dedication to protecting Otto's subjects) see them go from Fire-Forged Friends to Heterosexual Life-Partners.
• Prince Charming: Cat certainly thinks so and she's hardly the only one.
• Undying Loyalty: To Cordelia Hasenbach, for foiling his cousin's coup attempt and reinstating him as Prince in the principality of Brus.

The Blessed Artificer (Adanna of Smyrna)

An Ashuran White Mage Heroine that has mutual enmity with the Hierophant.

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• Defector from Decadence: Her family are Soninke immigrants (a Praesi ethnicity) to Ashur, yet she despises the nation of Praes and everything it stands for.
• Gadgeteer Genius: She's the mystical equivalent, applying the miracles she perceives and the Light she wields to make artifacts.
• Good Counterpart: To Hierophant as another Soninke using the scientific method to apply miracles to supernatural power sources. However, while Masego uses normal magic (and the Drow equivalent, Night), Adanna (as a Hero) uses Light, the weapon of the Gods Above, for her work.
• Insufferable Genius: Yet another reason why she and Hierophant are Too Much Alike. Admittedly, Masego tends to be more Innocently Insensitive, while Adanna is a bit more of a Commander Contrarian.
• Science Foils: She and Hierophant have slightly different approaches to Sufficiently Advanced Magic: while Masego usually focuses on spells and rituals, Adanna (as evidenced by her Name) creates Artifacts of Power.

The Stalwart Apostle (Pascale)

A Proceran Heroine whose bestowal was marked by successfully destroying a plague crafted by the Dead King.

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• Divine Intervention: Upon discovering the Dead King's plague, but being ignored by the townspeople, Pascale prayed to the Gods Above for guidance. She was "rewarded" for her faith by being made a Hero.
• Good Counterpart: To Tancred, another Child Mage whose power allowed them to perceive the Dead King's Mystical Plague, only to be ignored by those around them. Unlike Tancred, whose desperation drove him to remove the threat by any means possible, she was blessed with the ability to cure the sickness.
• Light 'em Up: Upon becoming the Apostle, Pascale's magic was converted into Light, the weapon of priests, giving her the ability to heal and destroy evil constructs.
• Moral Luck: Cat lampshades the fact that Pascale's choice to pray in a life or death situation should have logically resulted in every person for miles around dying. Instead, she was all but handed an Everybody Lives ending and the cosmic protection of young Heroes. Meanwhile, Tancred would've been left with lifelong guilt if he hadn't already died a violent death, solely because he made the tough call.
• Nice Girl: She's only ever shown to be a devout and kind-hearted young lady.
• White Mage: Another parallel with Tancred, her bestowal gave her healing abilities, allowing her to cure the Dead King's plague.
• You Should Have Died Instead: Still reeling from Tancred's death, Cat ends up denigrating Pascale for relying on prayer when 99.9% of the time, she should have been absolutely screwed. Hanno later calls her out for implicitly blaming a kid for a death she had nothing to do with because of personal beef with her religion.

The Squire/The Knight Errant (Arthur Foundling)

A Callowan orphan serving in Catherine's forces. He becomes the Squire during a battle in the war against the Dead King. He later transitions into the Knight Errant during the Fall of the Tower. His first Aspect is Wound.

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• Good Counterpart: Arthur is an invoked one to Cat, as a headstrong Callowan orphan born in Laure that becomes the Squire and, nonetheless, is shaping up to be a Hero. Cat intentionally keeps her distance to avoid the high number of death flags in a story about the Hero's Evil Predecessor.
• Plot-Triggering Death: He became the Squire shortly after the man he loved was killed in battle.
• The Rival: Arthur is manipulated by Cat into a Pattern of Three with Marshall Nim that was supposed to end with him killing her. He chooses to Take a Third Option upon concluding he has no reason besides nationality to want Nim dead in the first place, initiating his transition to the Knight Errant in the process.
• The Squire: Up until he transitions into his full Name.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Played with. The climax of Praes campaign sees Arthur put this situation in completing his pattern of three against Marshall Nim. On the one hand, Cat, his superior, has ordered him to kill Nim (Lawful). On the other hand, under the pattern of three, because she is a villain and he is a hero, providence also demands he kill Nim (Good). On the third hand, he has no actual reason to want her dead outside of their countries being enemies (good). In the end, the Squire chooses lowercase-g good, and in the process, transitions into the Knight Errant.

Sapan, The Mage (formerly Apprentice)

An Ashuran Heroine that works as the Hierophant's assistant in exchange for training.

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• The Apprentice: Her name as well as her role to Hierophant (the prior Apprentice), in that she operates as an unpaid assistant in exchange for the chance to learn from one of the most skilled mages on the continent.
• Merlin and Nimue: Hierophant ends up the older, male mentor to the young, female Sapan.
• Minored in Ass-Kicking: Is very capable in a direct fight and was briefly made bodyguard for a crippled Adjutant.
• Red Mage: She becomes this well before transitioning into the Mage. Rather than following the Mutually Exclusive Magic system of Ashur (by becoming the Black Mage, the White Mage, or The Navigator) the training she receives from the Hierophant allows her to go beyond those limits.
• Sword and Sorcerer: In combat, she has this dynamic with Arthur, just as Masego did with Cat and Wekesa did with Amadeus once upon a time.
• White Mage: Defied. While growing in Ashur she initially trained to be a healer until her master was killed. Afterward she begins training to become more combat-capable and shows enough affinity to become the Apprentice.

Morally Ambiguous Names

Refuge

Hye Su, The Ranger

The Lady of the Lake

The fifth Calamity and Black's lover. The offspring of an exiled admiral from across the Tyrian Sea and one of the few elves on the continent ever to leave the Golden Bloom, Hye Su was several centuries old by the time she met the Calamities. The Ranger doesn't fit neatly into the role of either Hero or Villain and prefers to go her own way, which she is able to do quite successfully both through her friendship with the Calamities and the fact that she is quite possibly the most dangerous fighter on the continent of Calernia. The Ranger fought with the Calamities to place Malicia on the throne of Praes but left the empire forever after the second Field of Streges, apparently out of disgust for the Empress. She now rules the woodland settlement of Refuge as The Lady of The Lake. Her Aspects are Learn, Perfect, and Transcend.

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• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Although she takes pride in not living up to the whole Jerkass Elf package, she is still way better than most when it comes to stealth and combat. And, she will let you know that with depressing ease.
• Badass Normal: Subverted hilariously. She has a Name but where other Named get a raw power boost or spectacular and destructive abilities her Aspects just make her really *really* good. Throw 200 years of training and fighting the strongest opponents she can find on top for good measure and you have the strongest fighter on the continent who breaks into the City of the Dead for *fun*.
• Challenge Seeker: The Bonus Chapter focusing on her implies that this is basically what she lived for before meeting Black and joining the Calamities.

  “I am the Ranger,” she said. “I hunt those worth hunting. Rejoice, you qualify.”

• Friend Versus Lover: She was the lover to Malicia's friend and when Black ultimately chose his friend she left.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: Gets the standard fantasy elf package.
• Really 700 Years Old: Well, at least two hundred.
• Renowned Selective Mentor: A few years back, Hye Su took in five young Named with the intent to train them. As one of the greatest fighters on the continent, she had somewhat high standards for her charges.
• Strong Girl, Smart Guy: She has this dynamic with Amadeus, as Ranger is probably the strongest close-quarters fighter on Calernia. Meanwhile, Black (while a skilled fighter) is one of the weakest Black Knights in recent history, relying more on tactical intelligence and Genre Savvy than martial power.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With the Dead King, of all people.

The Archer (Indrani)

For tropes relevant to The Archer, see her entry in the Woe folder.

The Hunter (John)

For tropes relevant to The Hunter, see his entry in the Lone Swordsman folder.

The Silver Huntress (Alexis the Argent)

A Heroine from Refuge with a grudge against the Archer who fights in the Tenth Crusade.

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• Fiery Redhead: She's the most Hot-Blooded of the Refuge students and has the hair to match.
• Good Counterpart: To Indrani as a combative archer Heroine trained by The Ranger. The two naturally despise each other.
• Hates Their Parent: Huntress hates Ranger, who's effectively her adoptive mother, for the dog-eat-dog dynamic she constantly fostered in her pupils.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Nearly as good as Archer with a bow.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Is the serious and straightlaced rival to the more laid back and irreverent Archer. It is implied that their dynamic in the past was closer to Cain and Abel.
• Token Good Teammate: Following Hunter's death, she's the only Hero out of Refuge.

The Beastmaster (Lysander)

A Named from Refuge that joins the Truce & Terms as a Villain after the Ranger withdraws her patronage to ally with Amadeus. His Aspects include Master.

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• Animal Eye Spy: Beastmaster has the ability to co-opt his creatures' senses when needed.
• The Beastmaster: Obviously. His Aspect gives him the ability to turn various creatures into his servants.
• Ineffectual Loner: He's a bit of an isolationist jerk and has limited social skills.
• Killed Off for Real: Dies in the war against the Dead King.
• Mountain Man. Has this aesthetic, being burly, unhygienic, and caustic, having a Vague Age and race, and covering himself in animal pelts.
• The Pig-Pen: Rarely bathes and has a constant layer of dirt on him.
• The Social Darwinist: Has taken this lesson from Ranger, being even less empathetic than Archer was upon joining the Woe.

The Concoctor (Constanza)

A Named from Refuge that joins the Truce & Terms as a Villain after the Ranger withdraws her patronage to ally with Amadeus.

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• Clandestine Chemist: The magical equivalent, being a master of potions.
• Doomed Hometown: Her family was slaughtered by bandits before she was taken in by Ranger. Its suggested Ranger could have stopped it, but her insistence on neutrality meant she couldn't be bothered.
• Kaleidoscope Hair: Regularly dyes her hair in different colors.
• Minored In Ass Kicking: Isn't a fighter-type, but she's capable of scrapping with non-Named at least.
• Withholding Their Name: She keeps her birth name a secret, going exclusively by her "Name," The Concoctor, or Cocky among those she grew up with.

Other Morally Ambiguous Named (Spoilers Unmarked!)

Yara of Nowhere, The Intercessor(?)

The Wandering Bard, Almorava of Symra, Aoede of Nicae, Marguerite of Baillons

An Ashuran Hero who joins The Lone Swordsman's party before the rebellion begins in southern Callow. Ridiculously dressed, constantly throwing back enough alcohol to kill a herd of livestock and a less-than-competent musician and singer, The Bard at first appears to be little more than comic relief. The jury's still out on how much of her silliness is an act, but there's certainly more to Almorava of Smyrna than meets the eye. She has the Genre Savvy that is the hallmark of her profession, with an understanding of the workings of fate rivaled only by the Black Knight. She has a tendency to appear (literally) whenever anything particularly plot-relevant is going on; no matter how much violence is directed her way she always manages to escape just in time; she seems to know intimate details of events she should be far too young to have witnessed and if nothing else, her liver must be superhuman.

The epilogue of Book 2 reveals that The Wandering Bard is actually some kind of body-hopping immortal entity that has lived since long before elves arrived on Calernia. The precise nature of this entity is still mysterious but it seems to always exist as a storytelling-based Name and although it switches bodies and identities it retains all of its memories. It's also apparently scary enough to bully the Forever King. Her Aspects are Narrate, Wander, and Guide.

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• The Alcoholic: You'd be forgiven for thinking her powers simply have to be fuelled by the sheer amount of ethanol she chugs. The Lone Swordsman is pretty disgusted by this trait; Thief, not so much, no — she picks up on some of the undertones to this habit. Almorava dies, likely partially due to the effects of substance abuse as much as the plot demanding the Name get a new face at that dramatic instant. Short may live the next dying liver of the Wandering Bard: Aoede Edition — depending on how you map that continuity snarl of a "life".
• Balance Between Good and Evil: The Intercessor's true purpose is to act as a tool of the Gods and maintain the balance of power on Calernia. However, since the Dead King's rise to power as Calernia's greatest evil, she's been forced into the role of his Good Counterpart.
  Tariq: I know that across the faces she has worn she has warred against Keter wherever there was war to be had, and ever done good over evil whenever the choice was given to her.
• Beware the Silly Ones: That weaving-drunk, toppling-off-furniture-or-rooftop-shingles, totally random strummer and quipper? She can tell holier-than-thou, xenophobic Elves to eff off out of her business... and, have them to do it, too. Not. Harmless.
  • We later learn why the elves fear her. She manipulated them into a war with the Dead King leading to the Elf King's son being killed and turned into an undead servant. All because she thought both the Dead King and the elves were getting too uppity.
• Body Backup Drive: The Intercessor's form of immortality: whenever she dies, her spirit moves to a new body.
• Big Bad: As the story progresses we get hints that the Bard is playing a much bigger game than anyone else with the possible exception of the Dead King, manipulating events, toppling kingdoms, causing empires to fall into madness and bloodshed all for some nebulous goal that would turn everyone Good or Evil against her if they knew it according to the Dead King once he discovers it. Turns out it's destroying the continent.
• The Cynic: She might be fighting the Good fight (or something like it), but she holds absolutely no illusions about how clean and tidy it all is.
• Death Seeker: Being forced to live again and again to oversee a Wager she's come to view as pointless has driven her to insane despair, and now she wands any excuse to have the story end, and make the gods let her finally die.
• Default to Good: Surprisingly, this turns out to be the downfall of her plan. The fact that, whenever given the option, the Intercessor helps the side of Good allows Akua to convince the Gods that their "Wager" was never fair. In doing so, she gets them to make her the Bard's counterpart (and the counterbalance to Yara's power).
• Didn't See That Coming: For all her Genre Savvy, she can, very occasionally, get hit with this when people subvert the heck out of expected norms — or, absolutely insist on deconstructive Surprisingly Realistic Outcome. Hierarch calling her out using statecraft and legal means and, thereby, dismissing her existence until, presumably, she gets a date and time to pitch up for her court appearance... kind of hit her like a bucket of ice-cold water from nowhere. That's on top of Tyrant basically setting her up for that little stunt in the first place.
• Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: Apparently, the Wandering Bard performed this on the Gods to achieve her current immortality, only to find that spending eternity in the Void Between the Worlds until intermittently called forth to manipulate Named as the Gods' mouthpiece is kind of a shitty existence.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Who would have guessed that the bard of the Lone Swordsman's band was the architect of most of Calernia's turmoil? Nevertheless, if there is a major Pivot to be had, she will influence it in some way.
  Neshamah: Fortune and misfortune both draw you like carrion.
• Drowning My Sorrows: This seems to be a very significant part of why she drinks, well beyond the whole "bards get sloshed a lot" expectations heaped on the Role. Although, there are strong hints that she often plays this up for effect, too, by not nearly being as inebriated as her blood-alcohol number should suggest. It's clear that being the Wandering Bard is a horrible existence to have to endure, either sober or drunk.
• The Fettered: There are apparently hard rules about what she can and cannot do. One of them is that she cannot directly involve herself in the affairs of people without Names unless invited to.
• Friendly Enemy: Is surprisingly very cordial with The Dead King. They have been thwarting each other for so long that both appear to not take it personally anymore.
• Genre Savvy: Unquestionably the most savvy character in an entire cast full of them. That's including Black.
• Great Gazoo: She certainly functions as a seedy, cut-price model of the breed, which makes her easy to both write-off or to try to teeth-clenchingly "ignore" as she ambles through doing or saying whatever. Only Black (and possibly Scribe) seems able to squelch her random show-ups and "charm". Other Calamities may also be able to trump her effects, but most people aren't as able to.
• Historical Rap Sheet: The Wandering Bard has done a fair amount of harm to Calernia on the behalf of the Gods Below over the centuries. For one, it was her who gifted Night to the Drow (admittedly that was in an Evil Versus Oblivion Sadistic Choice scenario). For another, she encouraged the mass-sacrifice of the Kingship of Sephirah that turned Neshamah into the Dead King.
  Cat: Was there a single horror in this continent’s history the Wandering Bard did not have a hand in?
• Invisible to Normals: She can only influence the actions of Named or entities at or above that power level.
• Logical Weakness: As the Intercessor’s primary M.O. is to achieve her objectives through inducing other Named to act, there are three main ways to fight back against her:
  • Like Anaxares, have such an iron-clad ideal that you cannot be made to bend on it for any reason;
  • Like Amadeus, either kill or otherwise silence her before she can get her offer out; or
  • Like Kairos or Cat, out-do her in manipulation and genre-savviness.
• Manipulative Bastard: Thanks to her weaponized genre-savviness and ability to be wherever the plot needs her to go, she is uniquely placed to manipulate the destinies of Villains and Heroes alike to great effect.
• Master Actor: It's almost impossible to tell when she's being truthful, especially when it comes to her Villainous Breakdowns. No matter how badly she's been foiled, she's always able to either plan around it or reveal it was part of her plan all along. Catherine stealing the Evil stories is a notable example; while Yara begins ranting and screaming about how they've ruined everything, the climax shows Sve Noc slipping the noose was always intended as part of her final Xanatos Gambit, which casts many of her previous defeats in doubt as to whether they were genuine or just more of her subtle machinations.
• Mysterious Backer: She's been indirectly influencing Creation for so long that even The Dead King himself considers her ancient.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Less new powers and more new locations as the plot demands. Black notes that she probably blinks out of Creation when she's not needed anywhere. Seems to be able to, among other things, peek at the 'script' and somehow even scares the Elves. Seems to be specifically able to follow the threads of the Story (and even tweak it indirectly) by showing up at anything particularly important or relevant... though this is not without limits.
• Older Than They Look: Played with. Although it's initially implied to just be a personality quirk, the end of Book 2 reveals that she's essentially a body-hopping immortal entity that predates the arrival of the Elves or the Miezans on the continent of Calerina. Her body is exactly as old as it looks, her mind on the other hand...
• Reality Warper: Amadeus is of the opinion it's actually inverted: reality warps her more than she does it. He's 100%, horrifically right about this. The Wandering Bard wears a lot of unfortunate faces, but she still isn't free to do as she pleases.
• Seen It All: Has this attitude, just to add to her general air of unreliable cynicism. Little, if anything, is ever going to be totally novel for a Bard in a world running on narrative. Let alone one as old as she is.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: She has the least conspicuous Name of any we've seen. The only one sensitive enough to notice her presence with Name-Sense, so far, is Black Knight. She also regularly pulls this trope on her teammates, not just the Villains.
• Spoony Bard: In spades. She contributes little, if anything in terms of obviously useful skills to her party. Unless you count snark, terrible humour, drunken stupors or random, barely applicable general knowledge "useful" when trying to, e.g. hunt Calamities. She's a Lethal Joke Character who happens to be juggling a whole drawer full of bigger picture spoons.
• Stepford Snarker: She's snarky, alright. But, it's as much of a defense mechanism as it is part of the job description.
• Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum: Yara reveals that this is her end goal: specifically, she hopes to cause a situation in which the power of an angel can be co-opted to extinguish nearly all life on the continent. She does this in the hopes that, without a need for the Balance Between Good and Evil, the Gods Above and Below will finally end her Purpose-Driven Immortality.
• Time Abyss: She's one of the oldest beings on the continent, having spent millennia in her role. In fact, she may have been one of the first humans on Calernia.
• Torture Is Ineffective: The Dead King once dissected her to try to figure out how her powers work. Not only did he find nothing, but she snarked at him through the entire process.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Not exactly unwitting, but she seems to literally only be able to give advice, not control people's actions. She can nudge the rock, but there are inevitably going to be paths down the mountain that take it places she'd rather not see it go.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: The only thing that's known about her personal objectives is that she really doesn't want to be immortal. In fact, she expends a good amount of time trying to find someone to take over the spot.
• Wild Card: Although always on Team Good, how she goes about it looks pretty random to outsiders. She does things her way and for what she deems the greater good, even if it screws herself and her teammates over in some capacity.

The Hierarch (Anaxares of Bellerophon)

One of the diplomats of Bellerophon, a member state of the League of Free Cities. By virtue of his position, Anaxares has had a shrunken boulder implanted into his body which will expand and brutally kill him if he acts against the Will of the People. He first meets Kairos Theodosian, the Tyrant of Helike at a meeting of representatives, wherein Kairos declares a war against the remainder of the Free Cities by killing each of the diplomats in attendance (sparing Anaxares for an unknown reason and forcibly conscripting him as an advisor). Once he wins the resulting civil war, Kairos decides against taking power himself. Instead, the Tyrant of Helike has Anaxares elected the Hierarch of the Free Cities in a gambit that ends with the former diplomat becoming the second person in history to be granted the corresponding Name. Hierarch's Aspects are Mend, Receive, and Indict.

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• Achievements in Ignorance: Probably the most extreme example to date given that Hierarch's complete faith in the law allows him to consistently warp reality to enforce it.
  • First he holds a trial for the physical embodiment of divine mandate on the basis that, as elected Hierarch, there's no conceivable reason for why he wouldn't have jurisdiction over them.
  • Shortly after, he reconstructs his body after being hit four times by an attack that should've left him Deader than Dead^*keep in mind the full power of a single Seraphim is capable of vaporizing the left half of the continent. Simply because there's no way he can render a verdict if he's been turned into a pink mist.
  • Finally, as Hierarch cannot enforce his sentence against a Choir if his power can't reach it, he fully Ascends to a Higher Plane of Existence to track them down.
• Awakening the Sleeping Giant: After becoming the Hierarch against his will, seeing the city he loves bend its ideals in response to danger, and being forbidden from taking his own life, Anaxares officially hits the Despair Event Horizon. After living as an aimless beggar for several months, he's approached by the Wandering Bard, who demands he chooses an Alignment/Role/Objective (as manipulating him would be too much of a hassle otherwise). At this point, after constant behind-the-scenes manipulation by Named, tyrannical monarchs, Gods, and whatever the hell the Bard is, Anaxares loses his shit, decides that this system will not stand, picks the side of justice and endeavors to force them all (yes, Gods included) before a tribunal of the People. Nicely done, Bard.
• Badass Creed: One the Hierarch believes in so strongly it gives him the will to face down a choir of angels.
  All are free, or none. Suffer no compromise in this.
• Berserk Button: He has two, (1) the claim that one person can have more worth than another; and (2) attempting to manipulate or otherwise subvert the law for any reason.
• Dramatic Irony: A pre-bestowal Anaxares briefly expresses surprise that the Ax-Crazy Tyrant of Helike can somehow inspire the same Undying Loyalty from General Basilia, as the Free City of Bellerophon does from him.
• The Dreaded: Pretty much the only two things every Named that meets him acknowledge are (1) He is all the way out of his entire godsdamned mind; and (2) getting his attention is terrible for your health.
• Hate Plague: Hierarch's Indict Aspect will cause a slightly more guided version to people caught in its wake. Specifically, it amplifies social unrest and induces citizens to be overcome with the intense desire to judge and punish authority figures who abuse their power.
• Hijacking Cthulhu: To enforce his sentence against the Seraphim, Anaxares enters into a battle of wills on the astral plane, pitting the faith of the Hierarch (and, by extension, the people of Bellerophon) in man-made laws against the Choir for whom passing judgment is their reason for existence. Even years after the fact, the clash remains unresolved, putting both the Seraphim and Hierarch out of commission for the foreseeable future.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Originally, at least, he recognizes both his own brainwashing and the absurd system of governance that Bellerophon has. However, he is such a strong believer in its guiding principle of democracy, that the city has his perpetual loyalty regardless.
• Neutral No Longer: Played with. At first, Anaxares is ostensibly neutral because, despite being a Named and an elected monarch, he refuses to exercise power wrongfully obtained. However, even after Anaxares takes a more active role, he does so in unaligned support for the laws of men.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Rather than actually ruling the League, Anaxares chooses to use the position of Hierarch to unerringly enforce each and every law in the Free Cities with their full power without exception.
• Please Kill Me if It Satisfies You: Upon coming face to face with the kanenas, bound to execute any government official who acts against the Will of the People, Anaxares makes a full confession of every violation he's performed since being forcibly made Kairos's advisor. Only to find that, due to the Tyrant's machinations, not only has he received a stay of execution but he's been given the title "Person of Value." Anaxares ends up literally begging the kanenas to execute him rather than compromise the ideal of equality that operates as their city's foundation.
• Power Born of Madness: Somehow, one brainwashed diplomat's extreme patriotism turned him into a Reality Warper.
  A madman thinks the world other than what it is, and in a mortal that is a harmless thing. Not so in one who moulds Creation to their will, as all Named do.
  — King Edmund of Callow, the Inkhand
• Principles Zealot: He's this for the laws of Bellerophon even before his ascension to the Name Hierarch. Unfortunately said laws consist of 50% Doublethink and 50% Insane Troll Logic.
• Rage Against the Heavens: The White Knight's trial (for killing citizens of the League of Free Cities) hinges on Hanno's belief that the Seraphim give him the jurisdiction to enact justice on their behalf. Anaxares proceeds to castigate literal angels for the assumption that their word supersedes the law, before holding the Choir of Judgement guilty of despotism, illegal foreign intervention, attempted regicide (of Kairos), and attempted murder (of him) as the Choir attempts to smite him four separate times for his insolence.
  Hierarch: Given the overwhelming evidence the verdict cannot be in doubt. I pronounce you guilty and sentence you to... death.
• Reluctant Ruler: Exaggerated, as Anaxares's refusal to be a pawn means he would rather live in Barefoot Poverty than enforce his power as Hierarch.
• Villain Respect: Upon watching Anaxares vanish from Creation to Rage Against the Heavens indefinitely, the Tyrant of Helike expresses his admiration thusly:
  Kairos: Gods Below keep you, Anaxares of Bellerophon, and it is a pride to call you Hierarch of the Free Cities. Die as you lived, my friend, without peer in your madness.
• Wrong Context Magic: According to the Wandering Bard, even the Powers That Be can't parse what his deal is. Despite being a Named, he doesn't follow the Role of either receiving power to improve the lives of others (Good) or cultivating power to achieve personal goals (Evil). Instead, he, like almost every Bellerophon citizen, puts his faith in the Will of the People. As the Tyrant of Helike puts it, as the first Named from Bellerophon, his power is "a thousand years of fury and madness poured into a single man."

Characters Without Names

Lesser Gods and Ancient Beings (Spoilers Unmarked!)

The King of Winter/The Prince of Bleak Solstice

Sovereign of the Winter Fae Court. In response to the Black Knight’s seemingly successful attempts at averting the Evil Is Sterile nature of Praes, the King of Winter attempts to take advantage of the cascading effects to avoid the Eternal Recurrence of Fae existence. This ends up leading him to declare war on Callow.

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• An Ice Person: As the leader of the Winter Fae, he has the ability to control ice on a broad scale.
• Batman Gambit: The war that he masterminds is shown to be an attempt to forcibly mimic the alliance between Praes and Callow. In the process, the King hopes to be able to break out of the Winter Fae’s Forever War with the Summer Court. By using Cat as an Unwitting Pawn he succeeds.
• Casting a Shadow: The King of Winter uses this ability on occasion. Cat naturally shows an affinity for it upon becoming Sovereign of Moonless Nights.
• God Couple: The King of Winter’s alliance with the Queen of Summer is sealed with their marriage.
• Immortal Ruler: Of the Winter Fae in the form of Resurrective Immortality.
• Patron God: He becomes this to Cat once she takes the role of Duchess of Moonless Nights, granting her power over ice, illusion, and shadow.
• Screw Destiny: The reason for his machinations is to piggyback off the Black Knight’s plans to break the eternal process of defeating and being defeated by the Summer Fae, all while being psychologically forced into Contractual Genre Blindness.
• Strong Girl, Smart Guy: The Smart Guy to the Queen of Summer’s Strong Girl as a Manipulative Bastard and Master of Illusion who is never shown to fight directly.

The Queen of Summer/The Princess of the Morning Star

Sovereign of the Summer Fae Court. Following the Winter Court’s invasion of Callow, she, as his counterpart, is forced to do the same.

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• Always a Bigger Fish: Despite the Ranger’s confidence in hunting her, the Queen of Summer turns out to be a bit more than the Calamity can handle. The next time Ranger is seen, she’s been afflicted with a few nasty burns while the Fae Sovereign is no worse for wear.
• And Now You Must Marry Me: The climax of Book Three sees her essentially forced into marrying the King of Winter due to his schemes.
• Green Thumb: Implied, as control over flora is the second most common Summer Fae ability.
• Immortal Ruler: Of the Summer Fae in the form of Resurrective Immortality.
• Little Miss Almighty: According to Cat, she looks like a fourteen-year-old, golden-haired farm girl despite being a Physical God and borderline Time Abyss.
• Out-Gambitted: She is forced into the alliance with the Winter Fae due to her three duties as Summer Fae sovereign leaving no other option:
  • Destroy the Winter Court: An alliance between the Winter and Summer Courts would destroy both and create a new Faerie Court in its wake.
  • Protect the capital of the Summer Court (Aine): During the negotiation, the Winter Court is engaging in a siege on Aine and an alliance would prevent this.
  • See the Sun victorious: Thanks to the Thief, Cat is in possession of the Sun and gives the Summer Sovereign an ultimatum – she agrees to the Winter King’s plan or Cat uses her Aspect to engage in some Star Killing.
• The Power of the Sun: The Summer Fae’s manipulation of flame stems from the Sun, which is under her control.
• Strong Girl, Smart Guy: She seems more overtly powerful than the King of Winter, having several high-level magical feats, including obliterating hundreds of soldiers in an instant, burning out Masego’s eyes, and defeating the Ranger.

Sve Noc (Komena and Andronike)

Drow sisters who, in a plea to save their race from extinction, made a deal with the Gods Below that turned them into quasi-deities. After besting Catherine Foundling, the Sovereign of Moonless Nights, in a battle, they ingest the power of Winter, complete their apotheosis, and make a deal with the Black Queen to become her Patron God.

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• Always a Bigger Fish: Sve Noc ends up handing the Sovereign of Moonless Nights one of her most substantial defeats, despite the power of Winter making her a Physical God at that point.
• Anarcho-Tyranny: Their pre-godhood rulership of the Drow has hints of this. As the Priestesses of Night, Sve Noc’s authority is absolute; however, their only mandate is to follow the Tenets of Night. These rules essentially boil down to The worthy take, the worthy rise. As a result, the Drow are complete Social Darwinists, and the only law is the will of the strong.
• Artificial God: They started out as normal Drow with a standard lifespan and after gaining the power of Night and Winter, they became gods.
• Creepy Crows: Sve Noc’s physical manifestation is of a pair of crows after assimilating the Winter godhead. However, they also tend to be a Supernatural Fear Inducer to most mortals who look directly at them for more than a second at a time.
• Deal with the Devil: Sve Noc has been on both sides of this deal:
  • Upon making a plea to the Gods to save the Drow from extinction, the Wandering Bard arrived giving them the ability to manipulate Night.
  • After absorbing the Winter godhead, they enter into an agreement with Catherine, making her their prophet, the "First Under the Night," as well as their representative to the human nations, in exchange for power over Night. Later they begin offering power over Night to other non-Drow.
• Domain Holder: The Drow homeland is surrounded by an invisible boundary making the tunnels to the Empire Everdark inaccessible to outsiders and leading intruders down dead ends. It’s implied that this boundary, termed "the Gloom," is their domain as even Named as strong as the Ranger can’t bypass it.
• Eldritch Abomination: Looking into their feathers is enough for the Grey Pilgrim to hear distant screams and begin to smell blood, while Robber was given some of the most horrifying nightmares of his life just by being near them.
• Modernized God: They invoke this in making Cat "First Under the Night"; regularly interacting with a (relatively) normal human is intended to keep them more tuned into the state of their society and less set in their ways.
• Reasoning with God: The climax of Book Four has Cat not only convincing them not to kill her but getting them to make her their prophet.
• Religion of Evil: Considering they tend to be informally referred to as the goddesses of theft and murder and their society is built on the tenets of forcibly taking all the power you can, it’s no surprise that Heroes aren’t huge fans of them.
• The Sacred Darkness: After experiencing their second apotheosis, Sve Noc begins to move into this role while Night advances from being the clear inferior to Light and the quintessential Power at a Price (exclusive and essential to the Drow), to being Light’s equal and opposite and being the Shared Life Energy of all believers in Sve Noc (capable of use by anyone).
• Sibling Yin-Yang: The siblings have a Red Oni, Blue Oni dynamic with Komena being an aggressive warrior and Andronike being a reserved priest.
• Sword and Sorcerer: Andronike, a former Twilight Sage (Drow mage-priest) is the sorcerer to Komena, a former member of the Empire Everdark’s warrior caste.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: They aren’t exactly happy about watching the Drow devolve into a pack of squabbling sigils, wherein 90% of the population are actively subjugated; however, the alternative was total extinction, so they have no real choice.

Kreois Maker-of-Riddles

The last living Titan and an ancestor of the Gigantes that live in what is currently called the Titanomachy.

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• All-Powerful Bystander: He mostly sits out the war against the Dead King despite Antigote’s requests.
• The Archmage: Kreois is the greatest living practitioner of the Ligurian magic, the first school of magic on the continent.
• Ethnic God: He is considered a god by the Giant race.
• Great Offscreen War: He and the Titans won one such war millennia ago against an ancient race called the Drakoi, saving Calernia in the process.
• My Greatest Failure: A ritual undergone by the eight remaining Titans led to an apocalyptic event that Kreios refers to as "the Fall." The event wiped several cities from existence and left Kreios the sole survivor of his race.
• Parental Substitute: He adopts and names Antigone, The Witch of the Woods, when she comes upon his home (seemingly by divine providence).
• Precursors: He’s the direct precursor of the Gigantes and predates most of the Calernian races.
• The Right of a Superior Species: After defeating the Drakoi he, and all but one of the Titans, originally planned to bring the entirety of the continent under their dominion.
• Self-Imposed Exile: He seems to have lived in near-complete isolation out of shame over his responsibility for "the Fall" up until meeting Antigone.
• Time Abyss: He’s lived for millennia and is the oldest being on Calernia, even older than the Wandering Bard.
• Time Master: This is suggested to be his specialty as the Warlock indicates that a spell of Antigone’s called the Riddle of Kreois is based on Time magic. Word of God implies that the destruction of the Titans resulted from an attempt by him to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.

The Forever King

The ruler of the Elves of Calernia, living in the Golden Bloom.

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• Arch-Enemy: Ranger is implied to be his. Specifically, the half-elf Hye Su is the daughter of one of the few Elves to ever leave the fiercely isolationist Golden Bloom. The Forever King’s Half-Breed Discrimination has led him to repeatedly send the Emerald Swords to assassinate her for years without success.
• Fantastic Racism: Like all Calernian Elves, he maintains that Humans Are Insects and has any non-Named human that even approaches the Elf homeland killed.
• God-Emperor: Despite, or presumably because of, their traditional arrogance, the Elves treat the Forever King with a reverence that has religious undertones.
• The Ghost: He has yet to directly appear and seems to exclusively operate through proxies like the Emerald Swords.
• Immortal Ruler: He has ruled his people since before they arrived on Calernia and shows no signs of abdicating (especially given that his only heir is dead).
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Repeatedly:
  • First, when the Dread Empress Triumphant conquered the rest of Calernia, he chose to cut his losses and phase the Golden Bloom into Arcadia.
  • When Akua Sahelian shows signs of taking the Name of Diabolist (the first person since Triumphant to take the role) the Forever King sends two Emerald Swords to kill her before History Repeats. The Wandering Bard intercepts them and gives them a message to pass on: screwing around with fate is her schtick and a second attempt by him will not be tolerated. He takes the hint.
  • Apparently the reason for his wariness around the Intercessor is well-founded. When he last got on her bad side, she manipulated him into a war with the Dead King (ending with his son, the Spellblade being killed and turned into a Revenant Zombie by the latter). The Elf king makes the logical choice not to mess with either again.
• The Older Immortal: All Elves are The Ageless, but the Forever King is suggested to be the oldest one alive.
• Reality Warper: The Elf species is described as adding "more weight to their presence in the Pattern the longer they live" to the extent that older Elves can ignore one rule of Creation and (according to Warlock) even become living domains. Since Elves become Stronger with Age and he is the oldest of them, it’s safe to say he’s one of the most powerful magic practitioners on the continent.
• Seers: He is alleged to have the ability to see the threads of fate but the Wandering Bard derides him as a rank amateur.

Unnamed Orc god/"The Other"

A being that is only accessible from the holy grounds of the Broken Antler Horde. The Calamities are informed that he guides Orcs to master the Red Rage, so they visit him in the hopes that Sabah can learn to control her abilities as the Cursed.

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• Animate Dead: To push Sabah to the point of exhaustion, he uses an army of Orc corpses as a continuous Zerg Rush.
• Arrogant God vs. Raging Monster: He ends up the arrogant god to the Captain’s raging monster. It goes poorly for him.
  Sabah: You’re going to need another god. I broke this one.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Technically "Did you just punch out Cthulhu, rip open their chest cavity, and eat their tasty heart?" but close enough.
• Ethnic God: He’s suggested to be a god of the Orc people, but it is unconfirmed if he is the sole god.
• Death of the Old Gods: Given the subjugation of Orcs over centuries, first by Miezans, then by Praesi, this god is suggested to be a shadow of his former self.
• Patron God: Subverted, he makes the offer, implying he can give her the power needed to destroy Praes, lead an army of Named, and obtain eternal glory. Sabah refuses, as she only takes orders from one person.
• Tame His Anger: His immediate purpose is to teach Orcs to control themselves in the Red Rage. Although he dies in the process, he also ends up teaching Sabah to control her beast state (and facilitating her gaining the Name Captain).
• War God: In his own words:
  I am war…I am blood and bronze and glory. I am the horde that was and will be.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: He dies in the only interlude he appears in.

The Dread Empire of Praes

Nobles

• Aristocrats Are Evil: They are the top dogs in an evil empire for a reason. They treat murder as an often practiced artform and make deals with demons and devils.
• The Beautiful Elite: Nobles in the Wasteland breed for looks, as well as longevity, magic power, and intelligence. As a result, members of the old families such as the High Lords are often incredibly handsome/beautiful and can afford to dress accordingly.
• Decadent Court: At the imperial court in Ater, nobles dress like peacocks, chairs are inlaid with gold and fist-sized rubies, murder is completely acceptable when done the right way, and all the wine and food is poisoned: definitively as deadly as decadent.

Barika Unonti

The heiress to a minor Praesi holding and one of Akua Sahelian's retinue, as well as a mediocre mage. Barika is valued by Akua more for loyalty than connections or competence.

Catherine murders Barika during the first battle of Liesse.

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• Butt-Monkey: Barika gets the shit kicked out of her quite a bit. On her first meeting with Catherine the Squire breaks her fingers just to make a point. Ultimately culminates in Catherine executing Barika with a crossbow after finally getting completely fed up with her bullshit.
• Deader than Dead: After killing her Catherine goes the extra mile by having her buried in some nearby consecrated ground to make sure she won't be coming back.
• Fin Gore: Catherine breaks one of her fingers the first time they meet.
• Smug Snake: Contributes very little to Team Heiress besides smugness.
• Villainous Friendship: Akua seems to have been closer with Barika than her other flunkies, though this didn't stop Akua from using her as a decoy in a manner that ultimately got her killed.

The Legions of Terror

The Legions of Terror

The Empire's standing army. Previously considered expendable cannon fodder by the Dread Emperors and their Noble peers, the Legions underwent major reforms overseen by The Black Knight after Malicia I gained the throne. The legions now incorporate non-humans as both regular troopers and officers rather than solely as auxiliaries and are now one of the highest-quality professional armies on Calernia, with a particular focus on magical support and siege warfare utilizing goblin alchemy. Their philosophy has changed as well organized around the Black Knight's Maxim of 'One Sin (Defeat), One Grace (victory)'.

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• Combat Pragmatist: One Sin, One Grace.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Key to the philosophy of the reformed legions. All of the empire's species and cultures are represented among the Legion's officers and their upper ranks include even stranger creatures such as a Dragon and a Vampire as generals.
• Magic Knight: Magical support is an area of particular focus for them. Magic is the only area where the modern legions emphasize quantity over quality however.

Marshall Grem One-Eye

The first Orc Chieftain to pledge his support to Empress Malicia's rebellion. Now commands the Imperial armies defending the Red Flower Vales.

Marshall Ranker

A goblin matron whose tribe supported Black and Malicia in the civil war. Now commands the Legions responsible for keeping the Duchy of Daoine subdued.

General Istrid Knightsbane

The second Orc Chieftain to join Malicia's rebellion. Now commands the Sixth Legion, one of the two stationed in Summerholm at the start of the story. General Juniper is Istrid's daughter.

• Boisterous Bruiser

The Fifteenth Legion

The Fifteenth Legion

The newest of the Legions of Terror, formed just as the Liesse rebellion begins and drawn almost entirely from new recruits and war college graduates. Catherine wins the command over the legion in the melee at the end of book one, and leads it into battle in book two.

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• Mildly Military: Dating back to the academy, the former officers of Rat Company don't take very well to things like "military decorum," while Cat tends to undervalue advice from higher-ranked subordinates if they aren't her True Companions. She occasionally clashes with Juniper on both and later realizes the value of an explicit chain of command.
• Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits: Much of the officer pool is drawn from Rat Company, which was the worst company at the war college with a years-long losing streak. Furthermore about half of the rank-and-file are Callowan, largely recruited from criminals. Fortunately the XO is the War College's most successful graduate in living memory, and she's eager to whip it into shape. Also, the Rat Company officers, for all their endearing flaws, are generally competent within their own areas of expertise as long as they are well-managed. Perhaps most importantly the Legion has a charismatic Callowan leader to bring them all together, and a small but growing group of Named to lead the charge.

Juniper of the Red Shields, Marshal of the Army of Callow, General (formerly Legate) of the Fifteenth Legion, Captain of First Company

The leader of the most successful company at the Praesi war college. Catherine's company is pitted against her in Catherine's first battle, which Catherine barely manages to turn into a victory. After the wargame Catherine discovers that Juniper is the daughter of famous general Istrid Knightsbane, but determined to make a name for herself without special treatment. In the great melee ordered by Empress Malicia, Catherine and Juniper are pitted against each other a second time, but Catherine manages to bring Juniper to terms, agreeing to a draw in exchange for naming Juniper her Legate (Second-in-command) when she takes command of the Fifteenth Legion.

In recognition of her role in Catherine's victories at Three Hills, Marchford and Liesse, Juniper is made the youngest Praesi General since the reforms after the end of the Liesse Rebellion.

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• Blood Knight: A more subtle version of this than is typical for orcs: there's nothing Juniper loves more than war and crushing her enemies, albeit with superior tactics instead of bloody melee. She blames her her mother for it.
• Climax Boss: She's the climactic enemy of book one.
• Colonel Badass:
  • The nearest approximation of her rank, a legate is supposed to command a roughly regiment-sized unit of 2000 troops. In the idiosyncratic organization of the Fifteenth she's effectively the Legion's Executive Officer with Catherine as CO.
  • Later a Four-Star Badass.
• Commander Contrarian: When she puts her foot down, there's no budging her without a lot of work.
• Odd Friendship: She and Aisha rub along surprisingly well, given their respective species. The common denominator being "smart women who like things ship shape and Bristol fashion, yet are surrounded by chronically riotous mess pups".
• Overranked Soldier: Appointed as Legate straight out of the War College (as part of a quid pro quo with Cat, who received a generalship straight out of the college for political and/or Named reasons). Gets promoted to General within a year as a reward for her extreme competence in the field.
• The Straight Man: Has a regulation-approved stick up her ass.
• The Strategist: Since the moment she was introduced as a student in the War College, Juniper has lost exactly once — to Catherine, who used a Name to scrape by with a technical win. She's been in two battles since she joined the Fifteenth, commanding a pure infantry force against an army that outnumbered it two to one (with cavalry) and a horrifying force of devils and corrupted mercenaries. Both were a Curb-Stomp Battle due to her superior tactics. Later battles continued this trend.

Commander Nauk of the Waxing Moons

A lieutenant in Rat company and the only officer besides Catherine to escape the rout at the beginning of the war games. Nauk is an aggressive and somewhat headstrong orc but he is not too proud to recognize Catherine's leadership when she directs the survivors to safety. With Hakram he becomes the first of her core of support within Rat Company and is rewarded with command of a Kabili in the newly-formed Fifteenth legion.

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• The Berserker: Noted specifically not to be this, as Berserker Orcs can at least somewhat control and direct it. He has the "Red Rage" and will attack anything, including allies, if he gets significant emotional or physical trauma.
• Book Dumb: Relatively. He's hopeless with the paperwork, being far more an active and enthusiastic coal-face kind of people-person.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: By orc standards, Nauk is actually a big ol' softy, especially with his emotional reaction to Nilin's death.
• Came Back Wrong: After a Summer Court fae burns over half his head, the healing mages were initially going to leave him to die, but Catherine refused. Eventually brought back by Warlock, but his perspective in the Battle of the Camps shows he now has severe anger issues, difficulty remembering things, and a profoundly warped view of the world.
• A Father to His Men: A gruff and liable to growl at them when his lads and lasses fluff it one, sure — but, he'll slog through the worst with them and defend them to the hilt if they're wronged.

Commander Hune

The ogre Commander of the Legion's second Kabili, Hune was the commander of a company at War College (though not one of the top five). Fairly introverted and a stickler for rules, we otherwise know fairly little about Hune.

• Genius Bruiser
• Punch-Clock Villain: She does her job, and she does it well. That doesn't mean she likes it.
• The Quiet One

Staff Tribune Aisha Bishara

The Commander of one of the War College's top five companies, Aisha is a Taghreb noblewoman who has nevertheless completely assimilated into the culture of the Legions of Terror. Ratface's Ex-girlfriend and Juniper's best friend, Aisha nevertheless allies with Catherine during the melee, and subsequently betrays and is betrayed by her. When Catherine assumes command of the Fifteenth she brings Aisha into her general staff at Juniper's insistence, making Aisha the legion's only highborn senior officer.

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• A Day in the Limelight: Along with Ratface she gets a lot more than her usual amount of focus during the Conspiracy short story. Hakram and Robber too, but it's less noticeable since they already get more screentime.
• Blue Blood: Her bloodline is one of the oldest and most powerful ones native to the Tarhgreb — for all it isn't one of the, currently, more important ones. She doesn't like to highlight this, even though she knows her way around Tower politics.
• Playing with Fire: Downplayed, as she's got no active flame-throwing magic to her. However, there is a djinn in her family tree. She never gets sunburnt, and good luck trying to burn her at the stake without assistance...
• Odd Friendship: She and Juniper, being often the calm voices of sweet reason, get along surprisingly well, considering their backgrounds.
• Good-Looking Privates: She's the Tarhgreb equivalent of a bombshell (think every last over-sensualised version of Sheherazade, ever). And, an Ice Queen.
• Spare to the Throne: She's the spare- third in line to a minor lordship.
• The Spymaster: She gets assigned this role near the end of the Liesse campaign.

Supply Tribune Ratface (Hasan Qara)

The Captain of Rat Company, to which Catherine is assigned when she arrives at War College. After suffering a twelfth humiliating defeat, barely redeemed by Catherine leading a small remnant of the company to victory, he graciously surrenders command of the Company to Catherine and continues to serve as one of her lieutenants.

The bastard son of a Taghreb noble, Ratface (real name Hasan Qara) fled from his father's holdings when his father attempted to have him murdered to tidy up the line of succession. He stole enough money on his way out to fund his first year at war college, then turned to smuggling arms and drugs into Ater in order to fund the remainder of his education.

Although his tactical skills leave something to be desired, Ratface's 'unusual' background makes him well suited to a role as Quartermaster and his underworld connections also come in useful for intelligence gathering on campaign. Catherine recruits him into the Fifteenth as Supply Tribune.

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• Archnemesis Dad: Let's just say their relationship is a little fraught and involves attempted murder on both sides...
• Bastard Bastard: Sure, he's our bastard, but still. When he's having a great day, somebody else generally isn't.
• Butt-Monkey: Oh yeah. He gets his ass handed to him in the first wargame, then gets abandoned to the enemy halfway through the second. Not to mention his continued, unrequited love for Aisha. He does get several chances to shine in Book Two and the Conspiracy short story.
• Killed Offscreen: A knife to the back of the neck courtesy of Malacia's assassination campaign against the new Kingdom of Callow.
• Corrupt Quartermaster: He'll find a way to get anything. Just... don't ask questions you don't want answers to about how.
• High-School Hustler: Was this... continues the hustle after he leaves.
• The Scrounger: Getting things is his thing.

Senior Mage Killian

The Lieutenant commanding Rat Company's mage line, Killian is captured early in the first war game, but is rescued halfway through and helps Catherine to pull off a win. A Duni from the Green Stretch, Killian's magical ability is handicapped by her Fey ancestry which causes her to lose consciousness if she draws too much power. It also doesn't help with the discrimination she already suffers for being Duni. Nevertheless Killian is a skilled mage, and her power proves critically important in the final battle of the second war game. After assuming command of the Fifteenth legion, Catherine names Killian to her general staff as Senior Mage.

Catherine starts to nurse a crush on the redheaded mage during the second war game and sexual tension builds during the march from Ater to Summerholm. After the confrontation with the Lone Swordsman there the two begin a relationship that becomes increasingly adorable even as the campaign gets more dark and brutal and Catherine's actions become increasingly ruthless. Killian also forms a friendship with Masego.

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• Ambiguously Bi: Like Catherine, there are hints that she swings predominantly girl-wards, though not exclusively so.
• Evil Redhead: Technically. She is an officer in the Legions of Terror after all.
• Fiery Redhead: Again, in the sense that she can literally set you on fire.
• Healing Hands: One of her skills lies in having decent healing magic.
• The Heart: Oh yeah. Killian is gentle, sensitive, supportive, and seemingly almost everyone's friend, notwithstanding her ability to set people on fire. In the first book, she could arguably share The Evil Genius role with Pickler, but in book two this role is taken by The Apprentice.
• Playing with Fire: Although, she's a little better than throwing fireballs about.
• Shock and Awe: Her Signature Move.
• Understanding Boyfriend: To Catherine as of shortly into the second book.
• Weak, but Skilled: Her Fey blood gives her increased control when using magic but if she tries to draw power above a certain threshold it tries to modify her body to reflect her Fey heritage (growing wings, etc.). It's possible that if she could overcome this handicap she might be capable of high arcana but obviously that's never going to happen...

Senior Sapper Pickler

The last of Rat company's lieutenants, in command of the Sapper line. Like the rest of Rat Company's officers Pickler has a quirk that prevents her from advancing above her rank, in her case she's obsessed with the technical aspect of her craft and has minimal competence and less skill in the tactical or strategic aspects of officer training. That said, as long as she has competent subordinates to manage her unit on the battlefield she is an ingenious siege engineer, capable of innovations that can turn entire battles around. Consequently she is recruited into the Fifteenth's General Staff as senior sapper.

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• Blue Blood: Well, technically her blood is black like most goblins but she is a matron's daughter.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Think a greener, smaller, madder and female Q...
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: can utter colourful threats for mishandling her "lovelies", i. e. siege engines.
• Dude Magnet: She's the object of affection of both Nauk and Robber, this has her somewhat bemused as Goblins generally only mate as part of a highly structured breeding program.
• The Evil Genius: She is to technology what Apprentice is to magic.
• Skewed Priorities: Pickler may perversely enjoy the attention she's getting, but neither lad chasing her (although both have charms) meets her own, personal standards. Neither can build a trebuchet from scratch to save their lives. Still, mother would not approve: a trebuchet is not as good a sign of dependability as a sound dam or some other form of structural engineering. Pickler feels vaguely guilty for not finding things that aren't tactical or chemical engineering all that thrilling in a potential mate.

Senior Tribune Nilin

Nauk's sergeant in Rat Company, a mild-mannered Soninke boy with an interest in architecture. Drafted into the Fifteenth legion as second-in-command of Nauk's Kabili.

Nilin is killed fighting the Silver Spears at the Battle of Three Hills. Several weeks later, Ratface discovers by investigating his effects that he was a spy for the Truebloods since before he entered the War College.

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• Black Dude Dies First: Downplayed, as most of Praes, and the Fifteenth, are dark-skinned, but he's notable as the only prominent black male.
• Nice Guy: Nilin is so universally liked that the revelation that he was a traitor does serious damage to morale even weeks after his death.
• Punch-Clock Villain: It's implied it was working for Akua's house or never graduating the academy for him.

Special Tribune Robber of the Rock Breakers, Lord of the House of Lesser Footrest

Best described as the sentient equivalent of a walking sack of razor blades, Robber is a Goblin's Goblin's Goblin. Irreverent, homicidal and so infuriatingly clever that a council of goblin matrons opted to let him join the Legions pretty much just to make him somebody else's problem. Catherine first enters the story of Tribune Robber when she stumbles into a last-minute appointment as a lieutenant in Rat Company on the eve of a war game against Juniper's First company. Ambushed and surrounded on the first night of the games, Callow and her desperate troopers are rescued from certain defeat by then-Sergeant Robber and his bold tenth of goblin scouts, who lead them to safety in the night. Robber later inadvertently provides Catherine with the idea for the Suicide Goats as well as leading the group that provides the necessary corpses. He is later appointed a Tribune in the newly formed 15th Legion under Senior Sapper Pickler. He is later given command of a detached goblin cohort dedicated to reconnaissance, sabotage, assassination, and all forms of irregular warfare.

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• Casual Danger Dialogue: Always has a witty remark even in the middle of a pitched fight.
• Collector of the Strange: Repeated references are made to his jar of eyeballs, though it's never clearly stated whether this is an exaggeration or not.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Cat is eternally grateful he's pointed at her enemies rather than her.
• Mad Bomber: Few things in life cheer him up quite like a large explosion.
• Mildly Military: Has a 'unique' approach to military courtesy.
• Pungeon Master: When he starts pun chains, the conversation runs downhill fast.

Claimants to the Name of Squire

Claimants to the Name of Squire

When Black Knight chooses Catherine as his Squire there are already several candidates vying for the role. When Black and Catherine pass through Summerholm on the way to Praes she meets the other claimants and they compete for the Name by hunting the Lone Swordsman. Catherine is the only survivor.

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• Disc-One Final Boss: Along with William the Claimants are the main antagonists of the first arc of the story.
• Five-Token Band: Between the three of them and Catherine, they have one of each of the empire's major human ethnic groups (Soninke, Taghreb, and Callowan, though no Duni or Deoraithe unless Catherine counts as a Twofer Token Minority) plus a goblin to represent the non-humans.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad

Chider (The Squire)

The first goblin ever to claim the name of Squire, Chider is the one to suggest the claimants form a truce and agree to settle their claims by competing to capture the Lone Swordsman. She takes a bribe from Heiress to kill Catherine, but fails and she is killed by the Lone Swordsman.

The Heiress reanimates Chider's corpse for later use as a weapon against Catherine. During the First Battle of Liesse Heiress is able to trap Catherine and strip her name from her, causing the name to revert to the Undead Chider. However Chider does not have time to develop her power as the Squire before she is destroyed permanently by Catherine.

As the Squire Chider's first aspect would have been Survive except that Catherine destroyed her before she could finish saying the word.

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• Death Is Cheap: Heiress uses necromancy to raise Chider from the dead at the end of book 1. Catherine makes sure to kill the goblin permanently during the climax of book 2.
• The Dragon: Serves this role for Heiress in the climax of book 2.
• Kill It with Fire: First character in the series to use Goblinfire.
• Red Right Hand: She's entirely red, unlike most goblins who are generally green or yellow.
• Shadow Archetype: She becomes this to Catherine after she takes up the mantle of Squire- Catherine has to defeat her without the use of her name, and in doing so she heals the damage that the Demon of Corruption did to her Name.

Tamika

A Soninke girl who wears a white veil and fights with a spear. Also another Soninke girl who wears black and fights with a crossbow. It isn't clear whether they're sisters or duplicates or what, but it probably doesn't matter because both are killed in Summerholm- one by Catherine and the other by The Lone Swordsman. Oh well.

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• Fantastic Racism: Very racist. Even for a Soninke.
• Me's a Crowd: In-universe, it's unclear why there were two of her but name powers seemed to be involved somehow.
• Sibling Team: Word of God is the two are twin sisters and that they would have shared the Name of Squire if they defeated all of the other claimants.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Unceremoniously so, too.

Rashid

A Taghreb boy who wears robes and a clay mask and fights with a scimitar.

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• Jerkass: Would it kill him to not speak Bigot for five minutes? Well, indirectly, it did kill him by alienating every last candidate, so there's that.
• Malevolent Masked Man: He tries ever so hard. All the other candidates for the Name find it rather more annoying than the intended scary, however.
• Smug Snake: It actually seems to have been one of his aspects- he became more powerful when he was taunting and tormenting a wounded Catherine.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Welp, he earned it...

The Kingdom of Callow

Rulers and Nobles

Elizabeth Talbot, The Countess of Marchford

The best commander among the surviving Callowan nobles. She becomes the de facto leader of the first Liesse Rebellion.

Marchford is betrayed by her peasant levies, who surrender her to Black Knight in exchange for mercy. She is executed along with the Marchioness of Vale after both refuse to serve the Empire.

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• Action Girl: Supposedly. She ends up being a Faux Action Girl due to Black manipulating the rebellion to make her an Anti-Climax Boss so that Catherine will have the narrative spotlight.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Invoked. Black manipulates events so that the defeat of her main Rebel army becomes a total Anti-Climax, which means that the narrative weight shifts to Catherine's confrontation with the Lone Swordsman and Heiress in Liesse.
• Face Death with Dignity: She's willing to hang rather than submit to Black and the Empress, Black lets her die painlessly from poison instead.
• Lady of War: She's got the decorum to be one, though she never gets a chance to bare her teeth.
• Supporting Leader: She leads the military side of the Liesse Rebellion, the Aragorn to the Lone Swordsman's Frodo.

Gaston Caen, Duke of Liesse

The exiled Duke of Liesse and the figurehead of the First Liesse Rebellion. A generally shiftless and incompetent leader, remarkable only for his foresight in fleeing Callow before Laure had fallen to the Empire in the Conquest.

The Duke is killed by Assassin outside Vale, precipitating the collapse of the Rebel army.

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• Know When to Fold 'Em: The reason why he's the only Callowan Duke outside of Daoine to survive the conquest.
• Upper-Class Twit: He prioritizes many trivial affairs over actually winning the rebellion.

Anne Kendal, the Baroness Dormer

One of the mid-ranking nobles among the Liesse Rebels (and the only one to survive the war.), The Heiress invades Callow with her mercenaries and sacks Dormer early in the war, forcing the baroness to spend most of the war defending her own lands. When the Fifteenth reaches Liesse she is in command of the Callowans in the garrison.

After the Legion breaches her walls, Catherine offers terms to the Baroness (which she accepts), bringing the rebellion to its final conclusion. After the war, Catherine arranges for the Baroness' life to be spared and she is the first Callowan, after the Squire, to be offered a seat on the new Ruling Council of Callow.

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• Celeb Crush: Catherine's gotten over it, but a brief glimpse of the baroness as a child was what taught Catherine that she was into girls.
• Les Collaborateurs: She becomes one after the rebellion fails as a member of the Empire's ruling council.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: She surrenders to the Squire rather than condemn her men to death.
• Laser-Guided Karma: She was the only major leader of the rebellion who wasn't in it for her own political gain, and ends up being the only one who gets the opportunity to surrender to the Squire and thereby survive the war.
• Last of His Kind: She's the only Callowan noble in the rebellion to survive, as she has the grace to Know When to Fold 'Em.
• Pragmatic Hero: Although not a Named, officially official "Hero", she's actually this. She always keeps a level head. As a result, although Good to her toenails, she bows her head to the reality of Evil being currently far too entrenched in Callow to defeat directly without destroying not just the sociopolitical entity that is Callow, but the people and countryside, too. Would that more official Heroes thought that way. She's working to mitigate the effects of Evil running things as much as possible, in the hope of Good prevailing down the line and Callow still being there to save.
• World's Most Beautiful Woman: At least the most beautiful woman in Callow. Whenever Catherine has to formulate a list of the hottest women she's ever seen, Dormer is the first one she thinks of. However she admits that even the Baroness has nothing on the Empress.

The Duchy of Daoine

The Duchy of Daoine

An ethnically distinct, autonomous region in the north of Callow, bordering the elven kingdom in the Golden Bloom. The Deoraithe (as its people are called) are the descendants of the original human inhabitants of the Golden Bloom, who were driven from their land centuries ago by the elves. They guard Callow's border with the orcs of the steppes while making plans to return to their homeland one day.

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• Badass Army: The Watch uses some unknown magical means to grant themselves superhuman abilities. In addition to ludicrous amounts of training.
  • It's eventually revealed that the source of the Watch's power is a necromantic construct made from the spirits of all the Deoraithe that have died since the loss of the Golden Bloom to the elves.
• Combat Pragmatist: The Deoraithe, and especially The Watch are known for a brutally efficient approach to war and politics.

Duchess Kegan

The ruler of Daoine since before the conquest. Kegan was able to negotiate a fair amount of autonomy in her relationship with the Praes and has so far been reluctant to compromise that by involving herself in any rebellion or other mischief.

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• Lady of War
• Les Collaborateurs: In some ways. She fought against the empire (and lost) during the initial conquest but since then has been content to rule her Duchy with minimal interference from the tower.

The Principate of Procer

Rulers and Nobles

First Prince Cordelia Hasenbach, Prince of Rhenia, Princess of Salia, Warden of the West(-claimant), Seneschal of Cardinal

The ruler of the Principate of Procer, the ranking great power of Calernia and the most powerful nation aligned with the side of Good. The ruler of one of the Principate's Northern principalities, Hassenbach ascended to the throne of the Principate in the wake of a long and bloody civil war and has spent the time sense engaged in a cold war against the Empress Malicia's agents across the continent.

The First Prince believes that the Praesi cannot be permitted to hold Callow, and is plotting to launch a tenth crusade in order to drive them back to the wasteland and unite the forces of Good behind herself.

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• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When faced with the impossible task of turning back the undead armies of the Dead King, Cordelia gets on her knees and begs Catherine, the same woman whose country she declared a Crusade on and had routinely underestimated and talked down to, for help in saving Procer from annihilation. It works.
• Arch-Nemesis: To Empress Malicia.
• Badass Normal: Cordelia might not be a Named or even a competent warrior in her own right, but she's still a ruthless and capable politician who can play Xanatos Speed Chess with the best of them.
• Good is Not Nice: Governing Procer is a balancing act, and she's definitely not afraid to chop bits of it off or up to stabilise it.
• Mirror Character: Cordelia and Malicia are really very similar, both being political pragmatists in similar political situations. Her dedication to her country is also comparable to Catherine's.
• Refusal of the Call: In Book 5 Interlude: And Yet We Stand, Cordelia refuses the opportunity to gain a heroic Name, and refuses a villainous one as well mere moments later.
  Cordelia: "This land will know no queen, no empress, no pale-clad warden to stand above all others."
• She Is the King: That's First Prince to you, peasant.
• Tough Leader Façade: An inversion, much like her nemesis Malicia in that she's a ruthless and determined political operator playing the role of The High Queen.

Prince Klaus Papenheim of Hannoven

The Iron Prince

The Prince of Hannoven and Cordelia Hasenbach's main general. Prince Klaus grew up defending the Lycaonese Principalities from the Ratmen and the Kingdom of the Dead, then went on to lead his niece, Cordelia's forces to victory in the Proceran Civil War.

With the inauguration of the 10th Crusade, Klaus is placed in command of the Proceran forces sent into the Red Flower Vales.

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• Warrior Prince: He leaves the political niceties to his niece and focuses on the military side of things

Prince Amadis Millenan

The Prince of Iserre. He kept his principality largely out of the Civil War and became the main leader of the opposition after Cordelia Hasenbach rose to power. Amadis supports an expansionist policy for the Principate, against the directives of the First Prince.

Prince Amadis is placed in command of the Proceran army that invades Callow by way of the Staircase at the start of the 10th crusade.

Princess Rozala Malanza of Aequitan, First Princess of Procer, Princess of Salia

The princess of the principality of Aequitan. In the Highest Assembly, she belongs to the opposition against Cordelia Hasenbach because the First Prince had her mother, the former princess of Aequitan, commit suicide. Malanza stems from a long line of military commanders and is one of the finest generals in Procer. She is the field commander of the army that invades Callow in the 10th crusade.

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• Royals Who Actually Do Something: she is an accomplished general.
• Warrior Princess: She grew up during the civil war in Procer and leads her mother's armies. As a result she is one of the finest generals of the country, but less adept than other princes(ses) at the "Ebb and Flow."
• Worthy Opponent: As a general for for Catherine and Juniper. She is the only royal in the invading army that takes the Callowan army seriously, and she implements smart measures to counter their strengths, like their field engines and mages.

Species

Drow

The Empire Ever Dark

• Ambiguous Gender: Drow consider the powerful ("The Mighty") to be above such concepts as gender. Referring to powerful Drow with anything other than a gender-neutral term is seen as an insult.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: When you gain another Drow's life force/magical energy/knowledge by killing them and harvesting the "Night" from their corpse, and your society is based around Asskicking Leads to Leadership, the concept of loyalty or swearing oaths seems rather odd.
• Combat by Champion: Their society emphasizes the powerful tribal chief (Sigil-Holders), lieutenants (Rylleh), and other "Mighty" in the hierarchy over the "cattle" of the rest of the citizens and soldiers in a Sigil. As a result, if the Sigil-Holder and Lieutenants are killed, the majority of a Sigil will surrender.
• Fantastic Rank System: The Drow under the leadership of Sve Noc and ideal of Asskicking Leads to Leadership roughly follow this. As such, in a given Sigil (~tribe), the ranks from least to most Night are:
  • Nisi: The lowest class of drow, meaning "meat" in the language of Crepuscular. This refers to a drow that has had most-to-all of their Night taken. They can be killed for roughly any reason and often leave the Everdark to avoid this fate. Their lifespan is around 60 years.
  • Dzulu: "Person" in Crepusucular, generally denoting they have the same amount of Night they had at birth.
  • Ipse: The lowest class of Mighty, drow warriors. They have a handful of interesting tricks but none of the dangerous Secrets. Roughly as dangerous in a fight as the average fae soldier.
  • Pravnat: Drow that hold one or two dangerous Secrets; essentially, ipse that show promise.
  • Jawor: The middle ranks of Mighty with the most variance in ability. Pretty much the "officer" tier of a Sigil.
  • Rylleh: A sigil-holder's most powerful subordinates and their inner circle. Must have twelve Secrets to their name and kill an existing rylleh to advance here. They also tend to pull a starscream at some point to take over the Sigil. As a result, they have a very high turnover rate.
  • Sigil-holder: The chief of their own independent Sigil whose word is law. They can live for thousands of years.
• Klingon Promotion: Drow can only gain status by harvesting the Night from the bodies of others. The more powerful, the more Night a Drow has. This makes it very tempting to take out one's leader and absorb his power.
• Shadow Walker: One of the more common tricks for drow to use Night is to turn into/slink into a puddle of darkness and re-emerge later — for example to dodge an attack. Some drow, like the Longstrider-Cabal, take this one step further and use the Night for long-distance travel.
• Soldier vs. Warrior: Firmly on the "Warrior" side, much to their detriment when the organized, better equipped "Soldier" Dwarves invade.
• Vestigial Empire: They live in the ruins of the massive Underground Cities carved with ancient poetry and the defaced art of their once-great civilization.

Dwarves

The Kingdom Under

• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: They make the best weaponry, and siege engines known in this world. They definitely do not sell those to surface-dwellers though. Instead, they sell cheaper, less-powerful models, and keep the good stuff for their own armies. This is the main reason the Praesans value Gobinsteel and Goblin-made siege engines so much.
  • They also have a habit of stealing magical artifacts, and then selling them back to surface-dwellers as "miracles of dwarven blacksmithing" a couple of decades later.
• Dug Too Deep: Usually the cause of this. They claim rights to anything below a certain depth. A mine belonging to another species going too deep is seen as theft, and isn't taken well.
• One-Gender Race: Implied to be this, as no one is really sure how they reproduce. There are rumors that they can swallow a stone and spit up a dwarven baby a few months later though.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Slightly below average human height, rock-like skin, ambiguously long lifespans, rather secretive, and sporting beards.
• Fantastic Racism: They generally view their short-lived, technologically-backwards upstairs neighbors as inherently inferior, in an Innocently Insensitive way. They don't consider humans sentient enough to actually hold property, and are visibly bemused when Catherine claims someone is her subordinate. To them, all humans are so primitive that the idea of them having a hierarchy within themselves is amusing.
• Guilt-Free Extermination War: Against the Drow, who occupy the underground territories of the North-East. They hold no real ill-will towards the Drow, but want the territory and view Drow as nothing more than pests.
• Higher-Tech Species: Much more advanced in this aspect than any known society, except of course the mysterious Gnomes.
• The Need for Mead: They consider it poor form to drink liquor while negotiating... because it's too light. They have harder stuff to drink over business.
• Sticky Fingers: Since other species can't own property in their eyes, anything on the surface is free game. Since resisting can be met with entire cities being sunk into the ground and the survivors slaughtered, surface-dwellers allow it.
  • One notable example is a Human Nobleman almost becoming completely bankrupt after having to buy back his own family jewels from a Dwarf.

Elves

The Golden Bloom

• Ambiguous Gender: Their marble-like skin, slim physiques, and generally inhuman appearance make them appear rather androgynous.
• Absolute Xenophobe: Elves on other continents actually live alongside other species and semi-often interbreed. The Golden Bloom Elves are an extremely racist splinter group.
• Childless Dystopia: No elf has been born on the Calernia since they arrived.
• Fantastic Racism: They view all non-elves, and non-Heroes as vermin, and will kill any who approach The Golden Bloom.
• Genocide Backfire: When they arrived on Calernia, they slaughtered all of the previous inhabitants of their forest. This earned the absolute hatred of the surviving Deoraithe, and accidentally cursed the land into a Childless Dystopia.
• Good is Not Nice: Technically are considered Good-aligned, but definitely not friendly.
• Half-Human Hybrid: These are rare, with the only known one being Ranger. The Elves of The Golden Bloom view them as an insult to their Master Race and try to kill them.
• Our Elves Are Different: They are relatively immortal, impossibly fast and strong, and better at magic than any other race.
• Sacred Language: If they have to interact with non-Elves for some reason, they use supernatural body language or mental projections of concepts. Using "inferior" tongues is seen as degrading. The idea of a Human speaking the Elvish Tongue, however, is seen as absolutely horrifying blasphemy.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Their reaction to Dread Empress Triumphant's Conquest and the Tenth Crusade was to phase The Golden Bloom out of Creation so they wouldn't have to get involved.

Fae

Seasonal Courts

• Blue-and-Orange Morality: They run on tropes, not morals. Unless a very specific trope they have as their embodiment lets them, of course. In a highly specific way that must be tailored by the story being played out.
• Born-Again Immortality: Fae are reborn when their Seasonal Court is reformed in an ever-repeating cycle.
• Cold Iron: Iron weaponry causes them immense, often debilitating pain.
• The Fair Folk: Boy, howdy. They're rather more ideas and themes than they are actual personalities. Very powerful, very extreme ideas.
• Physical God: The more powerful Fae nobles are more or less this. Especially true of the King and Queen.
• Seasonal Baggage: The two Courts of Fae present at any one time always represent two opposing seasons in a continuous cycle. The Summer Court Fae generally have fire or nature powers, while the Winter Court Fae often have darkness, ice, or wind powers. They really don't like each other.

The Wild Hunt

• Carnival of Killers: They are sociopaths who will watch happily as one of their own is tortured and humiliated in front of them. They have no stake in mortal conflicts or moral codes. They just really like to kill.
• Doom Troops: For Catherine. They'd been sadistically hunting humans and other creatures in the Waning Woods for millennia. Humanity's recent wars are just an opportunity to hunt more entertaining game.
• Mook Lieutenant: Larat, a former Prince of the Winter Court, is their current leader. He holds no love for the others, but keeps them in line to avoid punishment on himself. Catherine actually refers to him as her "Treacherous Lieutenant".
• Mounted Combat / Lightning Bruiser: Their specialty due to their surprisingly vicious Unicorns and ability to use portals between dimensions.
• Seasonal Baggage: Seemingly Inverted. They are made up of Fae from both the Summer and Winter Court, and show no internal division along these lines. Masego wants to dissect some to figure out just what it is that sets them apart from other Fae.

Giants

The Titanomachy

• Body Language: Giants are implied to have a complex and meaningful system of nonverbal communication. The White Knight and The Witch of the Woods, two Heroes trained by Giants, can use it to communicate.
• Great Offscreen War: Procer apparently attacked the Titanomachy in a particularly brutal or unexpected way a few generations ago. Whatever happened, The First Prince was not at all surprised when the Giants did not show up to join the Proceran-centered Tenth Crusade.
• Magic Music: The Witch of the Woods is a spellsinger taught by the Giants. This form of magic can become so powerful that a practitioner once created a large lake (now named The Titan's Pond) as collateral damage from a battle.
• The Nose Knows: When The White Knight was ship-wrecked on the shores of the Titanomachy, the first Giant to find him could immediately smell the lingering scent of the Seraphim on him.
• Only Friend: The Dominion of Levant is the only country they tend to interact with. Others, they tend to attack on sight.

Gnomes

Unknown

• Bungling Inventor: Heavily Inverted. They are scarily competent.
• The Dreaded: Their location, territory, and government are all entirely unknown. They are apparently watching everything everyone is doing, including underground, secluded Goblin researchers. They are the ones responsible for utterly destroying this world's version of Atlantis in one day. No one wants to cross them.
  • The Black Knight immediately hurried off to destroy the Goblin Tribe responsible for earning a red letter to Praes, only to find out upon arriving that the tribe had already killed all of their researchers and destroyed the findings.
• Higher-Tech Species: They have flying machines and civilization-eradicating weaponry, while all other species are still mastering siege weaponry and medieval warfare.
• Medieval Stasis / Enforced Technology Levels: Their sole apparent reason to interact with other species is to prevent any civilization from getting too technologically advanced.
• Rule of Three: They send a red letter of warning the first time a country is progressing too much in a given field of technology. The second time, they send a more strongly-worded red letter. The third time? They Leave No Survivors.
• Shrouded in Myth: Most of the population thinks that they are a make-believe race of tinkerers. Those in power know nothing about them except the danger they pose.

Goblins

The Tribes

• Boisterous Weakling: As a rule, they are smaller and weaker than humans or orcs, but make up for it with agility, tenacity, and generally over-the-top personalities.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Their culture holds secrecy, ruthlessness and opportunism as core virtues, and generally do not fit into Human concepts of morality.
• Fantastic Racism: Humans outside of Praes often believe them to be corrupted Dwarves and therefore inherently Evil abominations.
• Humans Are Ugly: Due to their blunt teeth, odd morals, and apparently gangly appearance, humans are considered unattractive by Goblins.
• Matriarchy: Goblin Tribes are led by Matrons. Females are given "important" duties such as leadership, and raising children, while hard labor and warfare are reserved for the subservient males.
• The Migration: An unspecifically long time ago, the Goblins were evicted from their subterranean homeland and forced to their current, shallower homes and mines. The dwarves saw the act of not killing all the Goblins before taking their land to be very generous.
• Pyromaniac: Their alchemy-manufactured explosives make them very valuable to The Empire of Praes. They come in four main kinds: poisonous gas, general explosives, flash grenades, and Goblinfire: a supernatural green fire that burns for seven days and will consume anything, including magic, in a kind of combination between Hellfire and Anti-Magic.
• Sacred Language: Goblins refuse to share their language "stone-tongue" with outsiders. Any Goblin who speaks it where outsiders can hear is killed, and the compromised words are soon changed to prevent any attempts at translation.
  • The Matrons have their own, even more secret dialect that uses the same words, but draws slightly different meanings from them.
• The Sneaky Guy: Due to their small size, night-vision, and generally cunning nature, they are the Praes' go-to troops for scouting, harassment of enemy forces, and infiltrating enemy strongholds.
• We Are as Mayflies: Goblins have shorter natural lifespans than most other species. Living into one's thirties is seen as ancient, and some Goblins are sent to the War College at the fairly mature age of ten.
  • Partly Inverted by the Matrons and their immediate descendants, who are somehow usually larger and live longer than the average Goblin (through means apparently only known to the matrons). Marshal Ranker takes this further by living into her sixties through some unknown alchemical procedures.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Played with. Goblins have a different view of romance than most sentient species. Physical affection is alien to their culture, and two Goblins can be considered "together" romantically while breeding with others and never breeding with each other. One's fangs are considered a prominent sign of beauty to them.

Ogres

Non-Specified Settlements

• The Juggernaut: Much larger than Orcs (though presumably smaller than the Giants) at over ten feet tall, soldiers from this species always act as Heavies. While very hard to put down, they are vulnerable to being overrun by superior numbers, so are usually used as shock troops.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Due to their small population and foreign origin, it is implied that they generally have no real stake in Praes. Still, they have a quota of soldiers to send to the Legions of Terror, and they do their job well.
• Slave Race: They were one of these for The Miezan Empire. A small number were brought over to Calernia after The War of Chains, where they were absorbed into The Empire of Praes after the occupier's empire collapsed.

Orcs

The Tribes

• Always Chaotic Evil: Played with. They are a human-eating race that glorifies war, but also possess human-level intelligence, often have a Noble Demon nature, and are usually quite friendly to comrades-in-arms, regardless of species.
• The Berserker: Some orcs are prone to entering a state of euphoric fury in battle. Those with the condition of "Blood Rage" have similar symptoms, only so uncontrollably triggered by taking enough physical damage or a great enough emotional shock. An Orc in a Blood Rage is unable to distinguish friend from foe, and is almost impossible to put down non-lethally.
• A Father to His Men: Orcs as a whole hold The Black Knight Amadeus in very high regard for his military reforms which prevented Orc soldiers from being used as Cannon Fodder, allowed all races into the War College, and led them to great victories.
• Fantastic Racism: Usually viewed as illiterate brutes by the Praesan nobility, and as outright monsters by the rest of the continent.
• Humans Are Ugly: Orcs see sharp and large fangs as attractive, and are generally put-off by humanity's comparatively frail bodies and "cow teeth".
• Hungry Menace: Long ago, The Empire of Praes learned exactly the amount of meat that needs to be given to Orc troops to prevent starvation, but enough for them to be too bloodthirsty to question how they were being used as cannon-fodder and meat-shields for the rest of the army.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Orcs are largely carnivorous and usually prefer their meat raw. They also instinctively view any living thing as a possible meal, including Humans, Goblins, and other Orcs. Since the Reforms by The Black Knight, they're only allowed to eat enemy corpses to supplement their rations.
• Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair: The Orc warbands used to Rape, Pillage, and Burn across the Steppes and surrounding areas, with all of their human neighbors living in terror and subjugation. When the Mezian Empire invaded in The War of Chains, many peoples were subjugated, but none hit harder than the Orcs. Their population was decimated, their warbands destroyed, their warrior-priest Shamans wiped out to the point that magical ability was almost entirely removed from the gene pool, and they became a slave/warrior race.
  • Things weren't much better under The Empire of Praes. For millennia, they didn't even develop Named due to their decimated culture.
• Soldier vs. Warrior: Before the Military Reforms of The Black Knight, Orcs were "warriors" wielding broadswords and battle-axes. After The Black Knight's Reforms, they immediately started adopting "soldier" tactics, with a corresponding dramatic increase in life-span and effectiveness.

Ratlings

The Chain of Hunger

• Always Chaotic Evil: They have no concept of morality, society, or mercy: only hunger.
• Evolution Power-Up: Ratlings grow throughout their entire lives due to their unique biology. The bipedal Ratlings who last long enough grow into larger quadrupedal Ancient Ones. Ancient Ones who last long enough turn into the near-mythical Horned Lords: bipedal rats that are over sixty feet tall and capable of human speech.
• Horde of Alien Locusts: Are sentient, but have no concept of anything except feeding their hunger.
• Horror Hunger: Their characterizing trait is always being on the verge of starvation due to their unique biology. They'll eat literally anything, often leading to Monstrous Cannibalism, and Humans being Devoured by the Horde.
• Large and in Charge: The bigger a Ratling, the older they are, and smarter.
• Leave No Survivors: They have no concept of giving or receiving surrender. Dread Empress Triumphant famously killed over ninety percent of their population, and they would still not stop attacking.
• Monster Lord: The last known stage of Ratling growth is the mysterious Horned Lords. They have human-equivalent intelligence, the capability for human speech, and are over sixty feet tall. The scariest part about them though? They can become Named.
• Poisoned Weapons: They often coat their primitive, barbed weaponry in poison.
• Rat Men: Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Ratlings are a savage, bipedal, semi-intelligent species of rodent-like humanoids.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: The average Ratling is already larger than any rodent found on earth, but those who survive long enough evolve into Ancient Ones, which are large enough to act as siege engines.
• The Swarm: Constantly on the verge of starvation, these semi-intelligent beings often surge southwards on a murderous search for food. Because of this, they're often referred to as "The Ratling Plague".
• Zerg Rush: Their main tactic. Considering their attacks are due to chronic overpopulation and comparative lack of food, the huge death toll that this usually results in only helps matters.

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