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The Black Company

1232 statements
242 feature instances
122 referencing feature instances

The Black Company	type	TVTItem
The Black Company	label	The Black Company
The Black Company	page	TheBlackCompany
The Black Company	comment	The Black Company is a series of Dark Fantasy books by Glen Cook, and chronicles an ancient mercenary company — the titular Black Company, last of the Free Companies of Khatovar — as it plies its trade across the world and tries to find its lost roots. The series is notable for its unusual choice of protagonists in a fantasy setting: being a group of mercenaries, the Black Company does not turn down potential employers, and it prides itself on its sense of professional honour.The series begins as the Company reluctantly accepts the commission of a northern sorceress tyrant known as "the Lady". A prophecy concerned with her downfall is about to be fulfilled, and the people are rising up in anticipation of the event. The Company has often been betrayed in the past by its employers, and the Lady is one of the least trustworthy ones it's had, but she pays well, and the Black Company goes where it is desired, so it commits to the contract.As time goes by, the Company struggles to survive and recover its past as it goes from employer to employer, drifts from conflict to conflict, and sees its fortunes wax and wane. It's favoured one moment and betrayed the next; it is one minute a legion, and the next nearly annihilated — yet this is not unusual, because while the people may come on and go, there will always be a Black Company.Glen Cook served as a soldier, and in writing the books desired to tell a story from the perspective of the grunts of a fantasy setting. The verisimilitude is held to be very high, with the mercenaries being very frankly portrayed, rarely heroic and occasionally unsympathetic. The Black Company is just one group, stuck on one side or the other of those conflicts where no side can be said to be completely in the right, and out of its depth when there can.The series has had a profound influence on subsequent fantasy authors, with Jim Butcher, Steven Erikson, Joe Abercrombie and many others citing it as direct influence on their own writing.The completed series currently consists of eleven books, divided into three smaller arcs plus two standalones:
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The Black Company / int_1235f055	type	Dirty Coward
The Black Company / int_1235f055	comment	Dirty Coward: One-Eye and Goblin (especially One-Eye) are rare sympathetic examples. They have a rather cowardly tendency to put themselves out of harm's way, even when they would be most effective in the thick of it.
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The Black Company / int_1237828f	type	Anyone Can Die
The Black Company / int_1237828f	comment	Anyone Can Die: Anyone can, and most will. Especially in last two books; their collective edition is not titled The Many Deaths of the Black Company for nothing. Gets started earlier than usual, for a series. In the first book, it appears that Tom-Tom is going to be a major character. He's dead before the real action of The Books of the North even gets started. By the end of the first trilogy, the major characters within the Black Company that have survived could be counted on one hand.
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The Black Company / int_13d7a65e	type	The Artifact
The Black Company / int_13d7a65e	comment	The Artifact: Used in-story. A monologue during She Is the Darkness recounts how the Company is still using Soulcatcher's sigil on their standard and badges, despite their contract with Soulcatcher having ended nearly twenty years previously and Soulcatcher being their second-biggest current enemy, superseded only by Longshadow. This becomes an even stronger Artifact in Water Sleeps, when it becomes the symbol of the Company directly rebelling against Soulcatcher herself. The Company's title as "last of the Free Companies of Khatovar" is this at the beginning of the series. They had completely forgotten what that means or where (and, for that matter, what) Khatovar is centuries previous.
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The Black Company / int_14908436	type	Never Given a Name
The Black Company / int_14908436	comment	Never Given a Name: "Tobo" can't be given a real name until his father is freed from the magical prison beneath the Plain of Glittering Stone. A handy state of affairs for someone as gifted with magic as "Tobo" is.
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The Black Company / int_14beeefd	type	Darker and Edgier
The Black Company / int_14beeefd	comment	Darker and Edgier: Bleak Seasons deals with much deeper, more personal tragedy than most other books in the series. Where the previous books were about combating various Evil Sorcerers through strength and guile, Bleak Seasons deals with a handful of Company mainstays struggling against famine, disease, and treachery from their traitorous commander.
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The Black Company / int_14ed6ab7	type	Does This Remind You of Anything?
The Black Company / int_14ed6ab7	comment	Does This Remind You of Anything?: Water Sleeps chronicles the Company fighting a guerrilla war against Soulcatcher's significantly more powerful force, with most of the fighting happening either in the city or the jungle. If that doesn't remind you of the Vietnam War, the monk who immolates himself in front of the Taglian Palace will or the Nyueng Bao as expies of the Vietnamese certainly will.
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The Black Company / int_1869b4b1	type	Unreliable Narrator
The Black Company / int_1869b4b1	comment	Unreliable Narrator: The tale is framed as excerpts from the annals of the Black Company, as laid down by various members. Most of the narration is by Croaker, the Company's doctor and eventual leader. In later books the pen is held by the standard bearer, Murgen, his understudy Sleepy, and Lady, the former tyrant. All of them are, by their own admission, less than totally reliable (though the last one only admits that grudgingly). One of the first things Murgen does is poke fun at the massive amount of Plot Hole between Croaker and Lady's Annals, while giving some plausible reasons for the differences (Lady and Croaker have different distances put down between cities, and according to Lady, it's because they used different units of measurements. It's not because they can't count properly... nope.) Sleepy seems to have a poor grasp of the timeline before the siege of Dejagore. Sleepy seems to think that Croaker was a twentysomething member of the rank-and-file of the Company who had only just become Annalist during the Company's time with the Syndic of Beryl. Croaker's own accounts in The Black Company imply (by omission of any of the uncertainty shown by Sleepy and Murgen) that he is well-established as Annalist, is in his mid-to-late thirties, is a Company specialist based on other skills (in this case, physician), and that he is an officer in everything but name. There's even a scene where the Captain reprimands Croaker for standing guard duty because any Company Brother can stand around keeping watch, but Croaker's medical skills are unique. Used in-story, as well. Uncle Doj and Tobo have radically different versions of the history of Nyueng-Bao that agree on very little beyond their point of origin. Croaker and Lady don't find either one to be particularly authentic. Port of Shadows has memory erasure play a significant role in its plot. We also see the Annalist being deliberately left out of the loop by the Captain because the Annals don't forget. The Lady's True Name is...messy, to say the least. There were at least four Senjak sisters, of whom the Lady is one. The Dominator thinks (incorrectly) that she's Ardath. The ritual of naming in The White Rose demonstrates that she's Dorotea. Port of Shadows claims that Dorotea was killed by the Dominator and Came Back Wrong, living into the present day as mentally unstable reanimated corpse. The same book claims that the woman it calls Creedence Senjak may in fact be the one who becomes the Lady. Lastly, it's mentioned at one point that Ardath and Dorotea switched names at some point, which may have been an Author's Saving Throw for why the Dominator thought the woman demonstrated to be Dorotea was named Ardath.
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The Black Company / int_187bddc1	type	Religion of Evil
The Black Company / int_187bddc1	comment	Religion of Evil: The cult of Kina. You know this is the case when the cult's adherents are called "deceivers" and "stranglers". The version practiced by the Nar involves human sacrifices and cannibalism, so it's hardly an improvement.
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The Black Company / int_18bf4326	type	Anti-Magic
The Black Company / int_18bf4326	comment	When the Company finally goes toe-to-toe with the Dominator, they have every possible advantage, including Darling's Null. They still have to dog-pile him and lose dozens of men before finally subduing him. Despite being being killed, his body burned, and his soul bound to a silver spike embedded in a young Physical God in the middle of nowhere he makes a nearly successful attempt at coming back in a matter of months.
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The Black Company / int_18d15922	type	Title Drop
The Black Company / int_18d15922	comment	Title Drop: Chapter 107 of Soldiers Live.
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The Black Company / int_19209d54	type	Sibling Rivalry
The Black Company / int_19209d54	comment	Sibling Rivalry: Lady and Soulcatcher. At Cain and Abel levels. To make things clearer: Lady is the Evil Overlord for the first section of the series. And she's the nice one.
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The Black Company / int_1b44c21	type	GrayAndGreyMorality
The Black Company / int_1b44c21	comment	Old Father Tree is probably the closest thing such a gray-and-grey setting will allow. See the Physical God entry for more details.
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The Black Company / int_1bf4581	type	Being Tortured Makes You Evil
The Black Company / int_1bf4581	comment	Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Averted with Croaker, who survives being enslaved to Soulcatcher without turning evil.
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The Black Company / int_1c445e86	type	Poor Communication Kills
The Black Company / int_1c445e86	comment	Poor Communication Kills: A lot of the mess of The Books of the Glittering Stone could have been averted by anyone actually checking the ancient histories and copies of the Company's first Annals in Taglios, instead of keeping secrets and planning betrayals driven by old fears from the (false) oral histories of the last time the Black Company was in the region. Everyone was being intentionally driven to paranoia, though.
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The Black Company / int_1e1afc1b	type	Framing Device
The Black Company / int_1e1afc1b	comment	Framing Device: The majority of the time, each book is presented as a record from one of the characters, called an Annalist. The original trilogy is supposed to be Croaker's section of the Annals of the Black Company. Sections in the second and third books contain narratively important events not told from Croaker's perspective (being told from the perspectives of Shed and Corbie, respectively), as he wasn't there to observe them, so they're presented in third-person perspective. How closely this is followed varies by narrator. Croaker includes chapters presented as reconstructions of events he heard of from the participants, while Lady does the same in her book for Croaker's part of it but also includes scenes with the villains alone that she has no way of knowing. The Silver Spike spends less than half it's time in the first person, and the bulk of the remaining time is spent with a group of criminals who explicitly never told anyone their story.
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The Black Company / int_1e7c47ab	type	Stealth Pun
The Black Company / int_1e7c47ab	comment	Stealth Pun: At one point, the Lady's forces come up with a way to bypass a magical null by taking their flying carpets above its reach and dropping perfectly mundane nonmagical explosives. In other words, carpet bombing.
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The Black Company / int_1edfa2c7	type	Royals Who Actually Do Something
The Black Company / int_1edfa2c7	comment	Royals Who Actually Do Something: The Prahbrindrah Drah and his sister, as this exchange illustrates:
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The Black Company / int_208c4494	type	With Great Power Comes Great Insanity
The Black Company / int_208c4494	comment	With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The more powerful a wizard is, the more dangerous their quirks are, usually including being power-drunk and always including a lot of paranoia (the Lady even acknowledges the latter). The setting's strong aversion to Squishy Wizard is a treatise on the notion of individual power and the corruption of morality it engenders. Almost without exception, the powerful wizards of the setting are shown to be self-important monsters who have lost the ability to empathize with normal mortals; (the exceptions being low-powered casters like Goblin, One-Eye, Silent, and perhaps even Bomans) many of them even conducted wholesale slaughter in ages past to prevent the loss of their powers through invocation of their true name. They use their magics to make themselves Nigh Invulnerable, and The Limper spends most of book 5 illustrating how just how badly a Not Quite Dead Omnicidal Maniac can ruin things when given actual supernatural power. The Lady's redemption is coupled to her loss of her magical powers as a contrast to The Limper's rampage. The Limper provides an early example. He raises hell throughout most of The Books of the North, tries to backstab the Lady during The White Rose, and kills thousands out of pure malice during The Silver Spike. He is particularly vicious in the latter, when he is the most powerful sorcerer left on the continent and thus does not fear a reckoning. Soulcatcher gets more and more unhinged as the story goes on. Like the Limper, she is at her worst when there are no other sorcerers to oppose her.
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The Black Company / int_21d70919	type	Crapsack World
The Black Company / int_21d70919	comment	Crapsack World: Although the setting itself is not much worse than any other setting, in-universe it is acknowledged that the empire known as the Domination, which covered all the northern lands for several hundred years, was a terrible place to live in, and that the Dominator, its sorcerer tyrant, must not be allowed to return.
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The Black Company / int_22071825	type	I'm a Humanitarian
The Black Company / int_22071825	comment	I'm a Humanitarian: To his horror, Murgen learns that the Nar perform human sacrifices as part of their religion. They then drink the blood and eat the flesh of their victims.
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The Black Company / int_222dc873	type	Black Comedy
The Black Company / int_222dc873	comment	Black Comedy: All the time. It seems that as in most military works, that's the best way a soldier can cope with the horrors of war.
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The Black Company / int_234fa9ba	type	Mayâ€“December Romance
The Black Company / int_234fa9ba	comment	Mayâ€“December Romance: Played with in the relationship between Croaker and Lady. He looks older than she does, but she's Really 700 Years Old.
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The Black Company / int_25956bc1	type	Scary Impractical Armor
The Black Company / int_25956bc1	comment	Scary Impractical Armor: The Lifetaker and Widowmaker outfits. Justified in that the whole point is for the outfits to be scary and Lady has laid on the spellwork to make them protective in spite of their impracticality.
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The Black Company / int_2692393	type	The Women Are Safe with Us
The Black Company / int_2692393	comment	The Women Are Safe with Us: Averted, with the aversion lampshaded. After ambushing a female rebel unit in the first book the company commits a mass rape and massacre. Croaker outright states that such things are usually omitted from the chronicle (only mentioning this one because they also captured vital intelligence) and is common enough that the older members don't even bother to participate. Further averted in Port of Shadows, where the Company's female soldiers form an Amazon Brigade to protect female prisoners from the rest of the Company. It's noted that the Rebel didn't do this... and it shows.
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The Black Company / int_26c09c2b	type	The Antichrist
The Black Company / int_26c09c2b	comment	The Antichrist: The Daughter of Night is the "spiritual daughter" of Kina, the destroyer goddess of the Stranglers. Her entire life is devoted to bringing about the Year of the Skulls .
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The Black Company / int_2737c505	type	Shoot the Dog
The Black Company / int_2737c505	comment	Though Croaker hardly qualifies as a "cutie", the events of the series gradually transform him into a pragmatic, crafty soldier who will not be stopped from reaching Khatovar and will do whatever he must to protect his Love Interest, Lady.
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The Black Company / int_27ab0123	type	Offing the Offspring
The Black Company / int_27ab0123	comment	Offing the Offspring: Croaker kills his daughter with Lady when the girl strangled his wife. See Sadistic Choice below.
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The Black Company / int_2a02e5c9	type	Guile Hero
The Black Company / int_2a02e5c9	comment	Guile Hero: Croaker and the original Captain are certainly no slouches, but Sleepy is the master. Lacking Croaker's size and charisma, she focuses on using misdirection, deception, and crazy preparedness to exploit her enemies, usually by having multiple plots going at once. In Water Sleeps, she mentions that she feels this is a tendency that she relies too strongly and it makes her inflexible when improvisation is required.
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The Black Company / int_2a090d00	type	Lampshade Hanging
The Black Company / int_2a090d00	comment	Lampshaded in The Silver Spike, where a former Imperial soldier gets in a big argument with a former member of La RÃ©sistance about whether the Lady's rule was really any worse than the Kingdom that preceded it.
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The Black Company / int_2bdae2ae	type	Awesome, but Impractical
The Black Company / int_2bdae2ae	comment	Awesome, but Impractical: The flying poles when weaponized. A heavy-duty Flying Broomstick capable of transporting two people plus equipment, programmable and usable by non-wizards thanks to an internal power source... which just happens to be the strongest explosive known in the setting.
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The Black Company / int_2cd22076	type	Fantastic Drug
The Black Company / int_2cd22076	comment	Fantastic Drug: Shivetya's mushrooms.
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The Black Company / int_2f41cac1	type	Our Werebeasts Are Different
The Black Company / int_2f41cac1	comment	Our Werebeasts Are Different: The Forvalaka — terrifyingly deadly monsters, generally described as "undead were-leopards". Blindingly fast, horribly strong, and capable of healing nearly any wound in seconds, they require high order sorcery to have even a chance to defeat. Some wizards can take their forms to devastating effect, most notably Shapeshifter and his apprentice. Werewolves and werebears are also mentioned.
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The Black Company / int_309b8806	type	Cursed with Awesome
The Black Company / int_309b8806	comment	Cursed with Awesome: It is repeatedly mentioned that Silent, Goblin, and One-Eye have a power level orders of magnitude below that of the Taken. Which is why they haven't been enslaved by the Lady.
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The Black Company / int_30d1e0df	type	Full-Name Basis
The Black Company / int_30d1e0df	comment	Full-Name Basis: "Toadkiller Dog" only responds to being called "Toadkiller Dog". Any attempt to abbreviate it to "Toadkiller" or something similar is met with blank incomprehension.
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The Black Company / int_319e4a2f	type	Even Evil Has Standards
The Black Company / int_319e4a2f	comment	Even Evil Has Standards: While the Company as a whole has a tendency to take morally ambiguous contracts, they still have standards: they take exception to raping and/or killing unarmed women and children, even though one of their employers' lackeys doesn't share the same qualms. During Soulcatcher's stint as the Protector, it is mentioned that she has a particular dislike of those who sexually abuse children. And like Mogaba and the other outlanders coming to the South with the Company, she tries to combat the South's deep-rooted culture of corruption and looting of one's underlings. Murgen gets a monologue about this in Bleak Seasons. He mentions how members of the Company quickly come to terms with the violence of war, especially battlefield carnage and torture. He goes out of his way to say that these experiences let Company men face horrors, but does not make the horror lost to them. In this case, he's specifically talking about cannibalism.
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The Black Company / int_32c082ae	type	Bury Your Disabled
The Black Company / int_32c082ae	comment	Bury Your Disabled: Initially averted, but later played straight. One-Eye suffers a stroke toward the end of Water Sleeps, and while it does slow him down, it's not as bad as it could have been. However, as a direct result of the stroke, he finally loses his running vendetta with Lisa Bowalk early in Soldiers Live.
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The Black Company / int_34dd5f3	type	La RÃ©sistance
The Black Company / int_34dd5f3	comment	La RÃ©sistance: Subverted with the Rebel, whose leaders are actually worse than what they're rebelling against. Played straight when Darling and the Company take over the rebellion. Also played straight later with Sleepy and the rest of the Company against Soulcatcher's rule. The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Played perfectly straight by the original Rebels, who Kick the Dog on a routine basis.
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The Black Company / int_36135fb0	type	Official Couple
The Black Company / int_36135fb0	comment	Official Couple: Varies by book, starting with Shadow Games, depending on who the analyst is. In Croaker's books, he and Lady are the Official Couple with either Murgen/Sahra or Tobo/Shukrat as the Beta Couple. In Murgen and Sleepy's books, those roles are switched.
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The Black Company / int_372bc105	type	Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism
The Black Company / int_372bc105	comment	Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Waaaaay towards the cynical side. Lampshaded in The Silver Spike, where a former Imperial soldier gets in a big argument with a former member of La RÃ©sistance about whether the Lady's rule was really any worse than the Kingdom that preceded it. Lady herself claimed that for commoners their strong law enforcement was a boon, and Croaker (as a healer) noticed and mentioned the Empire's attention to the pharmacy. Of course, she also mentioned that it would be a good idea to just wipe out the whole town (for some necrolatric traditions) even if the Dominator hadn't messed with it all...
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The Black Company / int_37b5c1b0	type	Big Badass Battle Sequence
The Black Company / int_37b5c1b0	comment	Big Badass Battle Sequence: Pretty much every book features one. The first book ends with the Battle of Charm, featuring tens of thousands of rebels against the Lady, her smaller army, all ten of the Taken, and the Company. "Shadows Linger" has the Company's assault on the black castle.
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The Black Company / int_38047858	type	Squishy Wizard
The Black Company / int_38047858	comment	The more powerful a wizard is, the more dangerous their quirks are, usually including being power-drunk and always including a lot of paranoia (the Lady even acknowledges the latter). The setting's strong aversion to Squishy Wizard is a treatise on the notion of individual power and the corruption of morality it engenders. Almost without exception, the powerful wizards of the setting are shown to be self-important monsters who have lost the ability to empathize with normal mortals; (the exceptions being low-powered casters like Goblin, One-Eye, Silent, and perhaps even Bomans) many of them even conducted wholesale slaughter in ages past to prevent the loss of their powers through invocation of their true name. They use their magics to make themselves Nigh Invulnerable, and The Limper spends most of book 5 illustrating how just how badly a Not Quite Dead Omnicidal Maniac can ruin things when given actual supernatural power. The Lady's redemption is coupled to her loss of her magical powers as a contrast to The Limper's rampage.
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The Black Company / int_3a1c2171	type	The Man Behind the Man
The Black Company / int_3a1c2171	comment	The Man Behind the Man: The Dominator is this in the first book, before becoming the Big Bad of the next two. This trope is revisited in Dreams of Steel and She Is the Darkness, this time by Kina. Like the Dominator, she becomes the Big Bad later in the series, after the Shadowmasters are dealt with.
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The Black Company / int_3b5fcbb7	type	Artifact of Doom
The Black Company / int_3b5fcbb7	comment	Artifact of Doom: The Silver Spike. The Books of the Dead. The Lance of Passion, One-Eye's spear, the golden Deceiver artifact, or any of the keys—old and new—to the Shadowgates could also qualify.
The Black Company / int_3b5fcbb7	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_3bbecc8b	type	Hell-Bent for Leather
The Black Company / int_3bbecc8b	comment	Hell-Bent for Leather: Excluding the probably metal helmet, Soulcatcher is clad entirely in tight leather, from mask to boots.
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The Black Company / int_3bce9346	type	RagnarÃ¶k Proofing
The Black Company / int_3bce9346	comment	RagnarÃ¶k Proofing: Subverted and played straight in The White Rose. A lot of time is spent detailing how the defenses of the Barrow Land, designed to be permanently impregnable, were crumbling even almost a hundred years before the story proper starts (there is even a line about some of the spells have broken down, but the Eternal Guard lack any wizards of sufficient skill to restore them). In Croaker's time, it's even worse, with eleven of the twelve charges broken out. In contrast, Old Father Tree is still serving as an effective can for His much older sealed evil, and leads the Company to their eventual solution. In Soldiers Live, the same slow decay is revealed to be happening to the Plain of Glittering Stone.
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The Black Company / int_3d5377e5	type	First-Person Peripheral Narrator
The Black Company / int_3d5377e5	comment	First-Person Peripheral Narrator: Raven is at least as important a character as Croaker in The Black Company and Shadows Linger. An argument could be made for a number of different characters being the primary protagonist of The Silver Spike. Case, the narrator, really isn't one of them.
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The Black Company / int_3f11ef74	type	Parental Substitute
The Black Company / int_3f11ef74	comment	Parental Substitute: Raven for Darling, and Croaker for Shukrat and Arkana.
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The Black Company / int_40cc0c7e	type	Bittersweet Ending
The Black Company / int_40cc0c7e	comment	Bittersweet Ending: Most of the major arcs end like this, as do most individual books. The series as a whole also ends on one. In The Black Company, the Company has survived one of the biggest wars in history, the Rebellion all but broken. Croaker's realized Darling is the White Rose and the best shot at beating back the Lady; Raven is fleeing with her to protect her, with Croaker and Silent acting as the Secret Keepers, and Croaker is having serious doubts about further service with the lady. In Shadows Linger, the Dominator was beaten back, but only the core of the Company have survived, now as fugitive rebels. They've reunited with Darling, giving them a solid hope, no matter the dire straits. In The White Rose, the Dominator is finally dead, though his spirit remains; most of the Taken are dead or scattered; the Lady and Darling are both stripped of their powers. With the wars over and most antagonists gone, the Company and the North can live in relative peace. The Company is reduced to ten men, and four of them, including Silent, elect to leave. The Lady's empire remains the dominant political force, but a lack of leadership threatens long term stability. With nothing left for them there and still technically fugitive, though they have the Lady's protection, the remnants of the Company elect to return to Khatovar far to the South. Though it came with a steep price, this one is the closest thing to a peaceful ending the Company has gotten yet. Port of Shadows ends with the threat of the Port closed, but with the Company having their memory of their time in Aloe erased. This is especially hard for Croaker, as he loses memory of his wife and children. He mentions the after effects including a feeling of having woken from a dream, unable to remember its contents.
The Black Company / int_40cc0c7e	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_420081bf	type	Alien Sky
The Black Company / int_420081bf	comment	Alien Sky: The Land of Unknown Shadows has two moons. The sky above the Plain of Glittering Stone has different stars than in the normal world. There is a constellation called "the Noose" that is only visible there.
The Black Company / int_420081bf	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_434a6d40	type	Evil Sorcerer
The Black Company / int_434a6d40	comment	Evil Sorcerer: Lots! The Lady, the Dominator, the Ten Who Were Taken, and the Shadowmasters all qualify.
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The Black Company / int_43a045de	type	Dropped a Bridge on Him
The Black Company / int_43a045de	comment	Dropped a Bridge on Him: Very few characters actually go down in a particularly grand fashion; even important ones tend to die very suddenly. Large swaths of the cast introduced during The Books of the South and The Books of the Glittering Stone are unceremoniously killed off in Soldiers Live without regard for their role in the narrative before then.
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The Black Company / int_43b6fb56	type	Vain Sorceress
The Black Company / int_43b6fb56	comment	Vain Sorceress: The Lady really enjoyed eternal youth, but she begins to age after she's depowered. Twenty years later by Soldiers Live she has gone grey and put on some serious weight. Given her looks were the last remnants of her old identity she's unhappy about this to the point she avoids mirrors.
The Black Company / int_43b6fb56	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_45a01289	type	Angel Unaware
The Black Company / int_45a01289	comment	Angel Unaware: Old Father Tree is probably the closest thing such a gray-and-grey setting will allow. See the Physical God entry for more details. The Son of the Tree is even more so, lacking his father's characterization of general apathy.
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The Black Company / int_46e7492b	type	Comet of Doom
The Black Company / int_46e7492b	comment	Comet of Doom: The comet associated with the Dominator and his Empire, and later the Lady, which has a round trip of roughly 29 years. It first turned up when he established the Domination, and a few turns later was when he was brought down. Whenever it showed up again, it was seen as a portent that he would return, and one of them was when the Lady and the Taken escaped their barrows. Whenever it passes without incident, people settle down to play the long game. However, in another instance, the big battle starts up about 20 years early, and the comet shows up anyways.
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The Black Company / int_485eb589	type	Sealed Evil in a Can
The Black Company / int_485eb589	comment	Sealed Evil in a Can: The Barrowland could be considered to be an aisle in a supermarket for all the evils trapped there. Soulcatcher appears to be this, at the end of Soldiers Live. However, it's hinted that she may be released in the name of balance if Lady decides to become the Lady of Charm again. This seems to be standard procedure. The Barrowlands have a larger number of sealed evils, but Old Father Tree and the Plains of Fear and Kina both fit the bill as well, and Shivetya may count as Sealed Good in a Can, or at least Sealed Neutral.
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The Black Company / int_49b1fe0	type	Beige Prose
The Black Company / int_49b1fe0	comment	Beige Prose: Descriptions and dialogue are kept to a minimum. The Annalists often skip over large swaths of the narrative, and usually ignore parts they are uneasy with unless it's relevant to the cohesion of the Annals. For example, the description of the storming of one fortress during a military campaign is recorded by Croaker in a total of two sentences. He doesn't seem to think the episode is significant:
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The Black Company / int_49fb5ccb	type	Combat Pragmatist
The Black Company / int_49fb5ccb	comment	Combat Pragmatist: The Company's MO. They'll use whatever means necessary to win, and if they can win without ever fighting, all the better. Acknowledged in-universe; anybody who goes up against the Company develops a healthy amount of paranoia about what the Company might do next.
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The Black Company / int_4a4d6f7c	type	Comedic Sociopathy
The Black Company / int_4a4d6f7c	comment	Comedic Sociopathy: The Company's main source of entertainment is a "feud" between two of their wizards, One-Eye and Goblin. Mostly they'll just one-up each other with crafty illusions, but rile them up enough and they'll go for blood.
The Black Company / int_4a4d6f7c	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_4a6dda60	type	If We Survive This
The Black Company / int_4a6dda60	comment	If We Survive This: Croaker makes one to Lady before the big battle in The White Rose, which he actually comes through on. Another before they take Dejagore. Croaker tells Lady they're going to bang in Stormshadow/Stormbringer's bed that night. They do, to their own disbelief. Also, that's when the Daughter is conceived.
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The Black Company / int_4a6e9fd9	type	Obnoxious In-Laws
The Black Company / int_4a6e9fd9	comment	Obnoxious In-Laws: Murgen's mother-in-law is such a toxic creature that her own people refer to her as "the troll".
The Black Company / int_4a6e9fd9	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_4ac8b81f	type	Humans Are the Real Monsters
The Black Company / int_4ac8b81f	comment	Humans Are the Real Monsters: The vast majority of villains in series are humans, even if strongly removed by liberal amounts of sorcery (even Kina began as a human). In contrast, even the good guys aren't so good.
The Black Company / int_4ac8b81f	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_4b316d47	type	Break the Cutie
The Black Company / int_4b316d47	comment	Break the Cutie: Though Croaker hardly qualifies as a "cutie", the events of the series gradually transform him into a pragmatic, crafty soldier who will not be stopped from reaching Khatovar and will do whatever he must to protect his Love Interest, Lady. Darling. She was introduced being gangraped by the Limper's men with nearly everyone she knew having just been killed, and her grandfather dies shortly thereafter. Raven, not too long after, takes her from her friends into hiding, where he is overprotective to the point of domineering, and he fakes his death when Darling opens up about having feeling for him. Darling actually takes these matters with surprising toughness and wisdom, even for somebody as young as she is. Subverted with Murgen when he wakes up and finds that he had been tortured, but remembers none of it. Of course, this may not have happened — Murgen's hold on sanity is tenuous at best. Timmy Lokan in The Silver Spike is a straighter example. Initially described as always having a joke and being generally fun-loving, he returns home to learn that his entire family had been brutally murdered, finds himself infected with evil from the Spike, left in pain for weeks until his hand is amputated, and finally beaten to death during an interrogation gone wrong. Smeds and Fish agree that, of the four conspirators, he deserved what he got the least.
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The Black Company / int_4cb7f0d8	type	Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome
The Black Company / int_4cb7f0d8	comment	Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: One-Eye and Ky Gota both die suddenly at the beginning of Soldiers Live.
The Black Company / int_4cb7f0d8	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_4f62bde6	type	Kavorka Man
The Black Company / int_4f62bde6	comment	Kavorka Man: Croaker, who, despite being far from handsome, winds up married to former Evil Overlord Lady, and attracting the attentions of her sister, Soulcatcher. Largely stems from Because You Treated Me as an Actual Person. Interquel Port of Shadows adds yet another extremely powerful sorceress love interest for Croaker in Mischievous Rain.
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The Black Company / int_524f94d3	type	Rape as Backstory
The Black Company / int_524f94d3	comment	Rape as Backstory: Sleepy joined the Company at the tender age of 14 in order to escape sexual abuse at the hands of at least one uncle. Sleepy stayed with the Company after the Company's fortunes fell in the wake of the events of She Is the Darkness because the Company had become a surrogate family; it was either stay there, or return to those rapists. Played with in the case of Arkana. She is raped after she meets the Company, but has no characterization before that incident. Earlier in the series, this is how the Company discovers Darling, though her having been raped is rarely brought up.
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The Black Company / int_53224e46	type	Bookends
The Black Company / int_53224e46	comment	Bookends: The Black Company and Soldiers Live are both narrated by Croaker in his capacity as Annalist and Company physician and nothing more, as he abdicated the Captaincy between Water Sleeps and Soldiers Live. Likewise, both books have an early plot arc of the Company setting out to kill a forvalaka out of revenge for killing one of the Company's wizards, who were brothers.
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The Black Company / int_53f5119f	type	The Dragon
The Black Company / int_53f5119f	comment	The Dragon: Surprisingly many, sometimes more than one at a time, and most of them treacherous. The Lady was this and wife to the Dominator in her back story, and he also had the Ten who were Taken to act as his chief enforcers. The Lady, when she's released, takes charge and brings the Taken with her but leaves her husband because he was just that bad. The Lady didn't carry a clear second-in-command as the Taken prove to be less than reliable: most of them were plotting to overthrow her by releasing the Dominator; Soulcatcher was the strongest Taken, but she was the most treacherous as a Wild Card. At various times, this role would be taken up by the Black Company and eventually the Limper. In the later books, Mogaba serves as the Dragon to Longshadow and later to Soulcatcher.
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The Black Company / int_54a74b43	type	Who Needs Their Whole Body?
The Black Company / int_54a74b43	comment	Who Needs Their Whole Body?: By the end of The White Rose, the Limper is left as nothing more than a severed head, only able to speak in a whisper. And that severed head goes on raise complete hell in The Silver Spike, requiring the Lady's Empire and the rebels to team up in order to put him down for good.
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The Black Company / int_54eceae6	type	Magic Is Evil
The Black Company / int_54eceae6	comment	Magic Is Evil: Achieved because of the repercussions of I Know Your True Name, wherein the only wizards who can reach the loftiest heights of power without being cut down by their foes must be willing to do some very evil things.
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The Black Company / int_5526b660	type	Humans Are White
The Black Company / int_5526b660	comment	Humans Are White: Subverted. The Company's membership becomes darker-skinned as time goes on, eventually taking a Vedna (a Fantasy Counterpart Culture equivalent of an Indian Muslim) as a Captain. Croaker catches himself subverting this trope. He initially balks that the Voroshk are of an ethnicity similar to his own, when the only inhabitants he knew of on that world were the forefathers of the Nyueng-Bao. He realizes after a moment that there are many races on his own world, and it only makes sense that there would be on others, as well.
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The Black Company / int_556a4e20	type	The Empire
The Black Company / int_556a4e20	comment	The Empire: The Domination was a historical Empire that ended about 430 years before the beginning of the first book. It ended when the White Rose lead a rebellion which toppled the Dominator, and put him and his officers into magical stasis since they were too powerful to kill outright. The Dominator's wife, the Lady, and his top officers, the Taken, were freed and they started their own empire. The Lady's Empire in the North, which the Black Company works for for a while. While we don't quite see enough detail to suss out what life under the Empire was like, it seems less overwhelmingly evil than the Domination and a lot more dystopian — life inside it is stable and peaceful because the Lady and the Taken don't tolerate any evils that happen without their approval.
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The Black Company / int_57b80b45	type	Fantastic Racism
The Black Company / int_57b80b45	comment	Fantastic Racism: The Nyueng Bao don't seem to like non-Nyueng Bao very much.
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The Black Company / int_57d43e40	type	Fantasy Counterpart Culture
The Black Company / int_57d43e40	comment	Subverted. The Company's membership becomes darker-skinned as time goes on, eventually taking a Vedna (a Fantasy Counterpart Culture equivalent of an Indian Muslim) as a Captain.
The Black Company / int_57d43e40	featureApplicability	-0.3
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The Black Company / int_584417c2	type	Reforged into a Minion
The Black Company / int_584417c2	comment	Reforged into a Minion: The Taken. A Taking is a lengthy, bizarre, and horrible magical procedure, that may or may not kill the subject and bring them back to life as part of the process. What it does do is bring the subject wizard into the fold of the Dominator or the Lady, giving them control of the wizard, mutual telepathic access, and a power up to boot.
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The Black Company / int_588d766f	type	BlackAndGreyMorality
The Black Company / int_588d766f	comment	Black-and-Grey Morality: At the best of times. But only if you ignore the description of the trope and go a whole lot more subtle.
The Black Company / int_588d766f	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_5941d75	type	Beta Couple
The Black Company / int_5941d75	comment	Beta Couple: Depends on the Annalist, mostly due to their personal point of view. If Croaker is narrating, it's either Murgen/Sahra or Tobo/Shukrat. If Murgen or Sleepy are narrating, it's Croaker and Lady.
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The Black Company / int_5989e3b6	type	Enemy Mine
The Black Company / int_5989e3b6	comment	Enemy Mine: The climaxes of The White Rose and The Silver Spike see the Empire and White Rose's rebels teaming up against a more dangerous common enemy, first the Dominator and then the Limper (or "the Clay Man" as he's sometimes referred to at this point). Afterwards, realizing that nothing is actually left of the evil sorcerers who founded the Empire and who they were founded to defeat, the rebels leave the Imperials to their business and disband.
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The Black Company / int_5a3b8032	type	The Un-Reveal
The Black Company / int_5a3b8032	comment	The Unreveal: In Shadow Games, the Lady asks for Croaker's real name, to be put on his Commission as a General. He mentions that it takes him some time to remember it, but carefully avoids actually writing it in the Annals. Croaker's real name is again mentioned but not recorded in Port of Shadows, this time to indicate how deep Mischievous Rain has gotten into his head.
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The Black Company / int_5c5ac0e2	type	Really 700 Years Old
The Black Company / int_5c5ac0e2	comment	Really 700 Years Old: Lady and Soulcatcher both look to be in their early twenties, if not a little younger—but they were both sealed into the Barrow Lands 400 years before the story even started.
The Black Company / int_5c5ac0e2	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_5dd191ec	type	Wife Husbandry
The Black Company / int_5dd191ec	comment	Wife Husbandry: Subverted with Raven and Darling. He loves her and cares for her in place of the children he abandoned, but when she reaches puberty and begins to become sexually attracted to him, Raven fakes his own death and takes off.
The Black Company / int_5dd191ec	featureApplicability	-0.3
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The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_5dd191ec
The Black Company / int_5fcb9ad1	type	Time Skip
The Black Company / int_5fcb9ad1	comment	Time Skip: There are typically a few years between each novel, with the exception being that Dreams of Steel immediately follows the Cliffhanger ending of Shadow Games. The most noticeable one is the fifteen years that pass between She is the Darkness and Water Sleeps.
The Black Company / int_5fcb9ad1	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_5fcb9ad1	featureConfidence	1.0
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The Black Company / int_60fa92ac	type	Names to Run Away from Really Fast
The Black Company / int_60fa92ac	comment	Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Dominator, Longshadow, Shapeshifter, Soulcatcher, Stormshadow, Howler, Limper, the Hanged Man... Every villain worth remembering has a suitably intimidating name.
The Black Company / int_60fa92ac	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_60fa92ac	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_60fa92ac
The Black Company / int_617f0563	type	Heelâ€“Face Turn
The Black Company / int_617f0563	comment	Heelâ€“Face Turn: The Howler is given a choice between joining up with the Company or summary execution. He chooses the former.
The Black Company / int_617f0563	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_617f0563	featureConfidence	1.0
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The Black Company / int_61b8f9e2	type	Bunny-Ears Lawyer
The Black Company / int_61b8f9e2	comment	Bunny-Ears Lawyer: One-Eye and Goblin are thoroughly reprehensible human beings more interested in causing each other grief than doing their jobs. That said, they're also competent wizards who can be relied when the situation calls for it, and with enough power to be useful to the Company, but not so much power that they can't be controlled.
The Black Company / int_61b8f9e2	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_61b8f9e2	featureConfidence	1.0
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The Black Company / int_6331ba26	type	Plot Hole
The Black Company / int_6331ba26	comment	One of the first things Murgen does is poke fun at the massive amount of Plot Hole between Croaker and Lady's Annals, while giving some plausible reasons for the differences (Lady and Croaker have different distances put down between cities, and according to Lady, it's because they used different units of measurements. It's not because they can't count properly... nope.)
The Black Company / int_6331ba26	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_6366f900	type	Old Soldier
The Black Company / int_6366f900	comment	Old Soldier: Croaker, and the rest of the Old Guard after they're resurrected from a fifteen year magical imprisonment in Water Sleeps.
The Black Company / int_6366f900	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_6366f900	featureConfidence	1.0
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The Black Company / int_65163c3a	type	Evil Tower of Ominousness
The Black Company / int_65163c3a	comment	Evil Tower of Ominousness: The Black Castle in Juniper and nobody quite knows where it came from or what's inside. Legend holds that it started as a black stone found next to a dead man and it killed the first who touch it. It's been growing over the centuries, and nobody's quite sure why. It's a magical construct sent out by the Dominator, and it's built up with the bodies of the dead. It's fueling the illegal body trade in Juniper by buying up the dead, and the living for the particularly ruthless. If it reaches "critical mass", it'll act as a gateway which could let him out. The Lady's Tower. There are no viewpoint chapters inside it, but testimonies of those who went there are chilling. Mischievous Rain mentions that she's uncertain if she died there (or even how many times she died) and say that time can flow backwards inside.
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The Black Company / int_659ef759	type	Implacable Man
The Black Company / int_659ef759	comment	Implacable Man: The most powerful wizards are all but impossible to kill. The Dominator only died once his body was completely destroyed and his soul locked into a silver spike, Limper kept coming even when he was just an undead head controlling a golem body, and Soulcatcher survived decapitation and carried her severed head around with her in a box for fifteen years before finally forcing Croaker to sew it back on. It didn't heal well, either.
The Black Company / int_659ef759	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_6b2b3b59	type	The Reveal
The Black Company / int_6b2b3b59	comment	The Reveal: Several The presence of Shapeshifter and the Howler in Shadow Games illustrates that some of the Ten Who Were Taken survived the Battle of Charm. Stormshadow is actually the Taken known as Stormbringer. Mogaba and the Nar secretly worship Kina. Kina is actually an incredibly powerful Evil Sorceror from historical antiquity. Longshadow and Shadowspinner are from a different world connected to the Plain of Glittering Stone.
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The Black Company / int_6d9bc945	type	Babies Ever After
The Black Company / int_6d9bc945	comment	Babies Ever After: Happens with Darling and Case. The narrator mentions their grandkids don't believe a word of their stories, but think they tell the best lies ever. Horribly subverted in Port of Shadows, with Precious' Frankenstein-esque copy girls.
The Black Company / int_6d9bc945	featureApplicability	-0.3
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The Black Company / int_70638525	type	Luke, You Are My Father
The Black Company / int_70638525	comment	Luke, You Are My Father: Daughter Of Night aka Booboo is spawn of Lady and Croaker. She was separated from her parents as soon she was born and only reunites with them at teenage years.
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The Black Company / int_7243f3cb	type	Dark Fantasy
The Black Company / int_7243f3cb	comment	Dark Fantasy: Owing mostly to its cynical outlook, subversion of Black-and-White Morality, and aversion to common fantasy tropes like Squishy Wizard. It's obviously less apparent given the medium, but the aesthetic is can be filled in if you take the cover art as a visual guide.
The Black Company / int_7243f3cb	featureApplicability	-1.0
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The Black Company / int_737394ab	type	Iconic Item
The Black Company / int_737394ab	comment	Iconic Item: The unsightly condition of One-Eye's hat is bound to come up at least once in each book. The Annals themselves are this for the Company as a whole. Even when the Company is reduced to just six members, it's still considered important to maintain the Annals. Many an Evil Sorceror has one. For example, Longshadow and Soulcatcher's masks and Mischievous Rain's black garment.
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The Black Company / int_7464705c	type	Arc Words
The Black Company / int_7464705c	comment	Arc Words: The titles of the last four books (The Books of the Glittering Stone) frequently crop up in their respective volumes, as do other phrases: "Bleak seasons" is used incidentally to refer to the Annalist's personal tragedies. "She is the darkness" is used by the comatose Smoke to describe certain women. "Water sleeps" is a shortened adage from Murgen's homeland, and relates to vengeance. The full adage is "Water sleeps, but Enemy never rests". "Soldiers live" is short for "Soldiers live, and wonder why". It is mentioned by the Annalist whenever someone in the Company dies, as an expression of weariness. "It is immortality of a sort" is used in certain third-person segues throughout most of Glittering Stone. It eventually becomes clear that it refers to people's names — specifically those of the Free Companies of Khatovar's members who die — being recorded for posterity, in this case by being magically engraved in enormous pillars. Port of Shadows adds, "When is the battlefield not a battlefield?" in the context of Medieval chemical weapons in the form of enchanted beetles.
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The Black Company / int_767ef8a0	type	Flying Seafood Special
The Black Company / int_767ef8a0	comment	Flying Seafood Special: The Plain of Fear is home to the gigantic, tentacled wind whales, flying, lightning spitting mantas.
The Black Company / int_767ef8a0	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_76c31ac8	type	Stranger Behind the Mask
The Black Company / int_76c31ac8	comment	Stranger Behind the Mask: After realizing that Stormshadow is the Company's former ally Stormbringer, Kroeger grows more and more certain that Longshadow is one of their old acquaintances as well. Nope. In fact, he's not even from the same planet.
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The Black Company / int_77f47fea	type	The Savage South
The Black Company / int_77f47fea	comment	The Savage South: The main characters spend most of the saga travelling from the north (which is the standard fantasy setting) to the south (India expy) down to their place of origin at the southernmost end of the continent... where things get really weird.
The Black Company / int_77f47fea	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_7abd339f	type	Black-and-White Morality
The Black Company / int_7abd339f	comment	The first book especially deconstructs the idea of Black-and-White Morality common to High Fantasy. Croaker occasionally notes that conflicts are are devoid of clear heroes and villains, and the historical narratives of good triumphing over evil are just the winners painting themselves as such. The leadership of the rebellion, noted for having members that are just as villainous as any of the Taken, are clearly banking on this. The Lady repeatedly seeks Croaker out so that he can make an impartial account of events, even if the Lady's actions wouldn't paint her in the most sympathetic light.
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The Black Company / int_7c0bfb83	type	Obviously Evil
The Black Company / int_7c0bfb83	comment	Obviously Evil: The three eyed "cat" Onku fools precisely no one into believing it isn't a demon.
The Black Company / int_7c0bfb83	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_7c0bfb83	featureConfidence	1.0
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The Black Company / int_7c862b8a	type	Chronic Backstabbing Disorder
The Black Company / int_7c862b8a	comment	The Ten Who Were Taken. Ten powerful sorcerer-kings and -queens pressed into service by the Dominator and later the Lady. Quite badass, although prone to Chronic Backstabbing Disorder.
The Black Company / int_7c862b8a	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_7ec94d53	type	Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds
The Black Company / int_7ec94d53	comment	Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The backstory of the killer shadows enslaved by the titular Shadowmasters is that they were created to block travel over the Plain of Glittering Stone. Each was once a human prisoner of war, tormented and changed through black magic until they came to hate all living things and want nothing more than an end to their constant pain.
The Black Company / int_7ec94d53	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_7f760614	type	The Silent Bob
The Black Company / int_7f760614	comment	The Silent Bob: Silent speaks exactly once in the whole series, and then only because no one else can say what needs to be said.
The Black Company / int_7f760614	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_7fbb2a3	type	Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!
The Black Company / int_7fbb2a3	comment	Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Croaker and the Lady almost inadvertently release a Sealed Evil in a Can from a long forgotten age by drawing Darling too close to Old Father Tree during the events of The White Rose.
The Black Company / int_7fbb2a3	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_7fbb2a3	featureConfidence	1.0
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The Black Company / int_808cbaeb	type	Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking
The Black Company / int_808cbaeb	comment	The attempt to capture Mogaba culminates in the whole team rushing into a bedroom in the dark, setting off a trap intended to ensnare a very powerful sorceress and starting a wild "shootout" that kills nearly all the commandos, Murgen, three company wizards including Howler and putting the Lady in a coma. To drive home the complete failure of the operation, Croaker comically knocks himself out during evacuation, trying to ram his flying pole through a reinforced window, which keeps slamming him against the window until someone manages to stop it.
The Black Company / int_808cbaeb	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_80cd1f62	type	God of Evil
The Black Company / int_80cd1f62	comment	God of Evil: Kina. This being The Black Company, she is also the only deity (except the extradimensional Old Father Tree) to show any evidence of actually existing.
The Black Company / int_80cd1f62	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_80cd1f62	featureConfidence	1.0
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The Black Company / int_829b958e	type	Embarrassing First Name
The Black Company / int_829b958e	comment	Embarrassing First Name: Case goes by his family name because he is ashamed of how his mother named her children, girls and boys — namely after flowers.
The Black Company / int_829b958e	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_829b958e	featureConfidence	1.0
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The Black Company / int_82a4fadc	type	Our Liches Are Different
The Black Company / int_82a4fadc	comment	Our Liches Are Different: The Ten Who Were Taken, and later the Shadowmasters. All of them are very powerful sorcerers. They are not referred to as liches in-universe, but they are described as undead many times. They lack proper phylacteries, but they are also very difficult to kill definitively. The Dominator deserves a special mention: his soul gets forced into a phylactery since there is no way to destroy it for good.
The Black Company / int_82a4fadc	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_82a4fadc	featureConfidence	1.0
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The Black Company / int_8313a744	type	Dark Lord on Life Support
The Black Company / int_8313a744	comment	The Limper is this before going into full-on Dark Lord on Life Support.
The Black Company / int_8313a744	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_8409a385	type	Exactly What It Says on the Tin
The Black Company / int_8409a385	comment	The Limper. While initially exhibiting a slight handicap as his name suggests, he keeps sustaining greater and greater injury without really slowing down. It's mentioned in the course of The Silver Spike that he is likely the single most powerful being in the North—despite being a severed head mounted onto an artificial body.
The Black Company / int_8409a385	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_8411ab92	type	Red Oni, Blue Oni
The Black Company / int_8411ab92	comment	Red Oni, Blue Oni: Soulcatcher, being capricious and more conventionally insane, is red to Lady's blue. It's mentioned that this makes Lady the more powerful of the two when she puts her mind to something, but on the whole it's hard to say which is more dangerous. Blade describes Swan (red) and Cordie (blue) this way.
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The Black Company / int_85162d49	type	Author's Saving Throw
The Black Company / int_85162d49	comment	Port of Shadows comments that the Dominator and the Senjak sisters are all aware that he is married to one of them, but none of them are certain which, including the woman who is his actual wife. This is likely an Author's Saving Throw for the Dominator infamously calling out the wrong name at the climax of The White Rose.
The Black Company / int_85162d49	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_889cff96	type	Quirky Miniboss Squad
The Black Company / int_889cff96	comment	Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Ten Who Were Taken. Ten powerful sorcerer-kings and -queens pressed into service by the Dominator and later the Lady. Quite badass, although prone to Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. In The Books of the South we get another, the Shadowmasters — less effective overall, both because there are only four of them and because their boss, Longshadow, is too erratic to be any kind of effective leader, so that the end result is that they're even more backstabby than the Taken. They're still a major headache, though.
The Black Company / int_889cff96	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_889cff96	featureConfidence	1.0
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The Black Company / int_89631688	type	The Chosen One
The Black Company / int_89631688	comment	The Chosen One: The White Rose is prophesied to reincarnate and return to defeat the Lady at the appearance of a certain comet in the sky. This trope is first deconstructed then used straight in the Books of the North The Rebelnote Croaker's way of writing "the rebellion", unable to find the real chosen one before the Battle at Charm, eventually just grabs a random kid to fill the role at the eleventh hour for a morale boost. Like the many of them, the kid dies a horrible death. The third book, The White Rose, deals with the real girl, who is a young girl found by the Black Company early in the first book, and the attempted fulfillment of the prophecy. She emits a magic null field, which doesn't do much to hurt mages by itself, but it can make the otherwise invincible vulnerable. Goblin mentions offhand once that there may be more nulls, but it's possible that the White Rose is just a more powerful null than any other. Tides Elba was this in Port of Shadows until the Company caught her and shipped her off to the Lady's Tower.
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The Black Company / int_898ff050	type	Villain Protagonist
The Black Company / int_898ff050	comment	Though "merely" a Villain Protagonist at this point, as the Company's employer and ally, Soulcatcher also shares some meals with Croaker and several others during the same stake-out that the Limper visits for tea. Soulcatcher is similarly taken aback but also subtly pleased the first time Croaker passes over a plate of scrambled eggs.
The Black Company / int_898ff050	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_8a451bc7	type	Mind Hive
The Black Company / int_8a451bc7	comment	Mind Hive: Implied for Soulcatcher. Her many voices are supposed to each originate from a soul she has absorbed. This would in turn explain her indiosyncrasies, unstability and unpredictability, as different souls could take over at different times.
The Black Company / int_8a451bc7	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_8a4988bb	type	Mind Rape
The Black Company / int_8a4988bb	comment	Mind Rape: Croaker considers telepathic communications from someone like Soulcatcher to be "a worse violation than rape" in the first book.
The Black Company / int_8a4988bb	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_8a817c2a	type	Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil
The Black Company / int_8a817c2a	comment	Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Croaker freely admits in The Black Company that "the gods know the Black Company are no cherubim. But there are limits." This is right before Raven puts arrows into two friendlies (part of the Lady's regular army) for gang-raping a nine-year-old girl. Later in the same book, the company itself commits the mass rape of female prisoners after a surprise raid on an enemy camp caught the local Amazon Brigade off guard.
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The Black Company / int_8ae880f7	type	Deconstruction
The Black Company / int_8ae880f7	comment	Deconstruction: The first book especially deconstructs the idea of Black-and-White Morality common to High Fantasy. Croaker occasionally notes that conflicts are are devoid of clear heroes and villains, and the historical narratives of good triumphing over evil are just the winners painting themselves as such. The leadership of the rebellion, noted for having members that are just as villainous as any of the Taken, are clearly banking on this. The Lady repeatedly seeks Croaker out so that he can make an impartial account of events, even if the Lady's actions wouldn't paint her in the most sympathetic light. The setting is renowned for strongly averting Squishy Wizard, but looking below the surface, this is because the trope is actually being deconstructed. While most wizards are seen or implied to be without it, armor doesn't inhibit magic. Second, a power-hungry individual with significant supernatural power and enough time becomes Properly Paranoid and uses his magic to make himself Nigh-Invulnerable. The series also illustrates how a world with I Know Your True Name in effect is doomed to be dominated by Evil Sorcerers. An invocation of a wizard's true name will permanently sever him from his powers, as illustrated in The White Rose. As a result, only wizards willing to ruthlessly destroy any record of their true name, including the people they knew before their rise to power, can wield significant magical strength. The only good wizard of any consequence in the series is able to rise to the heights he does because, as a result of unusual circumstances around the time of his birth and culture of his mother, he has no true name, only a nickname.
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The Black Company / int_8e20979	type	Wham Episode
The Black Company / int_8e20979	comment	Wham Episode: Several major battles change the course of the series. The big ones are Charm, the Barrow Lands, and Dejagore.
The Black Company / int_8e20979	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_8ec0abf	type	The Voiceless
The Black Company / int_8ec0abf	comment	The Voiceless: Silent, one of the Company's mages, is, well, silent. Although the "why" is unclear, he took a vow of silence in his youth, and only ever breaks it once, when nobody else can say what needs to be said.
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The Black Company / int_901dbf9a	type	Cliff Hanger
The Black Company / int_901dbf9a	comment	Cliffhanger: Shadow Games ends on one. It and Dreams of Steel are the only novels that take place back-to-back without a Time Skip in between (though Bleak Seasons initially looks concurrent with Dreams of Steel, it's shortly revealed to actually be taking place roughly four years later).
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The Black Company / int_916ecb1	type	But I Can't Be Pregnant!
The Black Company / int_916ecb1	comment	But I Can't Be Pregnant!: More like "But my sister's reanimated corpse can't be pregnant!" The details of how this is possible are slowly worked out, and it was no accident.
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The Black Company / int_970c790a	type	Big Bad
The Black Company / int_970c790a	comment	This trope is revisited in Dreams of Steel and She Is the Darkness, this time by Kina. Like the Dominator, she becomes the Big Bad later in the series, after the Shadowmasters are dealt with.
The Black Company / int_970c790a	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_97522514	type	Heel–Face Revolving Door
The Black Company / int_97522514	comment	Heelâ€“Face Revolving Door: The relationship between the Company and the Radisha in the Books of Glittering Stone is malleable, to say the least.
The Black Company / int_97522514	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_97522514	featureConfidence	1.0
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The Black Company / int_9853e107	type	Elective Mute
The Black Company / int_9853e107	comment	Elective Mute: The aptly named wizard Silent certainly qualifies. The circumstances leading to his vow of silence are speculated on by the narrator and other members of the company but are ultimately never revealed (everyone leaves their past and their real name behind when they sign up.) Refusing to utter a word doesn't make him any less badass a soldier or competent a wizard. Indeed, his speaking in sign language is eventually adopted by other members of company as for use as military hand signals.
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The Black Company / int_9bcd82c0	type	Took a Level in Badass
The Black Company / int_9bcd82c0	comment	Took a Level in Badass: Suvrin is introduced as a timid little fat guy leading a poorly trained group of soldiers, who quickly surrenders to the Company because he knows he doesn't have a hope for beating them. By the end of the series, he becomes the new Captain. Darling is an earlier example. Initially found as a child who was deaf, dumb, and raped, she eventually becomes a grand general and the greatest threat to the Lady's Empire. Even after being De Powered she is still an effective tactician and soldier in her own right. Port of Shadows adds mild-mannered temple orphan Tides Elba, come back the Taken known as Mischievous Rain.
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The Black Company / int_9bee1a7f	type	Eldritch Location
The Black Company / int_9bee1a7f	comment	Eldritch Location: As a result of Old Father Tree's presence, the Plain of Fear sports walking trees, talking and ambulatory menhirs, coral reefs in the middle of the desert, wind-whales and flying mantas that can spit lightning, and storms that temporarily distort reality. The Plain of Glittering Stone is a much more malevolent example. The fortress at its center is yet worse. Port of Shadows implies the Lady's Tower to be one of these. No one who enters it fully remembers their time there, and Mischievous Rain claims that the Lady can alter the flow of time inside it.
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The Black Company / int_9c8701b5	type	A Day in the Limelight
The Black Company / int_9c8701b5	comment	A Day in the Limelight: The Silver Spike follows the travels of Case, a minor character from The White Rose, and the adventures of the Black Company deserters.
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The Black Company / int_9d12bbc1	type	Foreshadowing
The Black Company / int_9d12bbc1	comment	Foreshadowing: A chapter toward the end of Shadow Games is told from Lady's point of view. Guess who narrates the next book. Likewise, Croaker mentions that he's training Murgen as an understudy before Murgen becomes Annalist. Murgen then covers that he is training Sleepy as an understudy before Sleepy takes on the role. While traveling with Croaker to the White Rose's hideout in order to secretly assist with translating documents that bear the Dominator's true name, the Lady mentions that she won't be able to cast any spells while under the influence of null. However, some spells that were cast on someone or something before entering the null, such as the transformation of one living being into another form, would remain in effect. Croaker uses the example of a frog; it may as well be applicable to a dog or a man, however.
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The Black Company / int_9d725e12	type	FanFic
The Black Company / int_9d725e12	comment	Fan Fic: In-universe. Croaker writes them about the Lady. He has a hard time living it down when the rest of the company gets a whiff of that. It looks like an affect she has on men who become infatuated with her.
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The Black Company / int_9de2bf95	type	Filler
The Black Company / int_9de2bf95	comment	Filler: The Silver Spike, a spin-off story detailing what happened to Silent, Raven, and Darling, was released between Shadow Games and Dreams of Steel, the only two novels that have a Cliffhanger ending without a Time Skip between them.
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The Black Company / int_9eb11fac	type	Weak, but Skilled
The Black Company / int_9eb11fac	comment	Weak, but Skilled: The Company mages are several orders of magnitude weaker than the weakest Evil Sorcerer they find themselves pitted against, but they are more effective at applying what skills they do have.
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The Black Company / int_9f970427	type	Secret-Keeper
The Black Company / int_9f970427	comment	In The Black Company, the Company has survived one of the biggest wars in history, the Rebellion all but broken. Croaker's realized Darling is the White Rose and the best shot at beating back the Lady; Raven is fleeing with her to protect her, with Croaker and Silent acting as the Secret Keepers, and Croaker is having serious doubts about further service with the lady.
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The Black Company / int_a01f88a7	type	General Failure
The Black Company / int_a01f88a7	comment	General Failure: The Limper has a record of embarrassing defeats through the war with the Rebel. Part of it appears to be that he was able to succeed by brute forcing most of his problems and has difficulty in transitioning to a role that requires careful thought. Another part of it was that Soulcatcher, a much more subtle and crafty individual, was working behind the scenes to undermine him.
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The Black Company / int_a0c55654	type	The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized
The Black Company / int_a0c55654	comment	The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Played perfectly straight by the original Rebels, who Kick the Dog on a routine basis.
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The Black Company / int_a18d407b	type	Samus Is a Girl
The Black Company / int_a18d407b	comment	Samus Is a Girl: Soulcatcher, though it's hinted at before it's actually revealed, and Sleepy.
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The Black Company / int_a24670a4	type	Benevolent Boss
The Black Company / int_a24670a4	comment	Benevolent Boss: Soulcatcher, of all people, in the first book treats the Black Company well for a Taken, generally being helpful and even building up a (limited) level of camaraderie with Croaker. She even spares Croaker and Raven after they witness part of her plot against the Lady. Of course, none of this stops her from repeatedly trying to off the Company once they get in her way...
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The Black Company / int_a2e96d18	type	Just the First Citizen
The Black Company / int_a2e96d18	comment	Just the First Citizen: The Shadowmasters all take pompous titles, to the point that the literal translation of the Shadowlands' Taglian name is "the Land of Many Kings." In contrast, the sorcerous tyrant who rules an entire continent simply calls herself, "the Lady".
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The Black Company / int_a3a6fdb2	type	Room 101
The Black Company / int_a3a6fdb2	comment	Room 101: The Lady's Tower. Doubles as an Eldritch Location, judging by reports that she can alter the flow of time within it.
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The Black Company / int_a4f2570d	type	Muggles
The Black Company / int_a4f2570d	comment	Lady herself claimed that for commoners their strong law enforcement was a boon, and Croaker (as a healer) noticed and mentioned the Empire's attention to the pharmacy. Of course, she also mentioned that it would be a good idea to just wipe out the whole town (for some necrolatric traditions) even if the Dominator hadn't messed with it all...
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The Black Company / int_a5e02e9e	type	Infinity +1 Sword
The Black Company / int_a5e02e9e	comment	Infinity +1 Sword: Or +1 Spear in this case. Two of them: The Lance of Passion, an artifact the Company has carried from its origins in Khatovar. One-Eye's spear, a magical weapon that is the masterpiece and legacy of one of the Company's mages, designed to kill archmages and magical beasts, and which works far better than advertised in the end. It ends up killing a god, albeit with a bit of explosive help.
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The Black Company / int_a60f7120	type	Physical God
The Black Company / int_a60f7120	comment	Physical God: Oddly enough, Old Father Tree. He was summoned in an age long forgotten to serve as the can for a now-forgotten Sealed Evil in a Can. From what the Lady remembers, his summoning required such a price that it killed thousands. In the Books of Glittering Stone, Kina. This turns out in the Company's favor, considering that her having a physical body means that she can be physically killed, for good.
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The Black Company / int_a6123b72	type	Enfant Terrible
The Black Company / int_a6123b72	comment	Enfant Terrible: Lady and Croaker's daughter, Daughter of Night, who is Kina, Goddess of Death reborn.
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The Black Company / int_a65288e2	type	Ascended Extra
The Black Company / int_a65288e2	comment	Ascended Extra: A few of the Taken who turn up in the South have their appearances and personalities created more or less out of whole cloth, due to being little more than names in the Books of the North. The Reveal that Stormshadow is actually Stormbringer has to be articulated by one of the Company Brothers calling out her name, as her physical description in earlier books was a single line buried in the first book. The Howler was briefly described in the Books of the North, but his personality is extrapolated from the few traits revealed about him there.
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The Black Company / int_a6e8221e	type	Status Quo Is God
The Black Company / int_a6e8221e	comment	Status Quo Is God: Thoroughly averted. Very few books end with the Company in the same shape as when they started. Characters rising through the ranks, switching sides, or being Killed Off for Real are all commonplace. Over the course of the series, the Company numbers from 6 to over 8000. On top of all this, no single character appears in all ten books (mostly owing to The Silver Spike being what amounts to a spinoff), though a few series stalwarts (namely Croaker, One-Eye, Goblin, and the Lady) appear in all nine books in the linear story.
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The Black Company / int_a70223	type	Karma Houdini
The Black Company / int_a70223	comment	Karma Houdini: Despite having taken part in a scheme that caused the death of hundreds, having personally killed several people, as well as being a paedophile, Smeds ends up owner of a brewery, with a pile of money hidden for tough days.
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The Black Company / int_a7850fbf	type	Only Known by Their Nickname
The Black Company / int_a7850fbf	comment	Only Known by Their Nickname: Everyone who's important in this series goes by a nickname of some sort based vaguely on their character, frequently ironically. For example: the company doc is named Croaker, and its nastiest platoon leader is named Mercy. It's a rule in the Company, because everyone enlisted must leave whatever past they have behind them. Played very straight when Croaker must record his actual name, and has trouble remembering it. Most wizards, on the other hand, use a nickname because their true name is the source of the powers. This becomes a major plot point in The White Rose, when the Dominator, and everyone else tries to destroy Lady's powers by stating her name. Stormshadow goes by Stormshadow in the South, which is itself a cover for Stormbringer, a different nickname she was known by in the North when she was one of the Ten Who Were Taken. Tobo and the Daughter of Night take this to a different extreme in that they only have nicknames, not real names. She Is the Darkness explicitly states that "Tobo" is a nickname given to him by his mother until they can reunite with Murgen and give him a proper name. As for the Daughter, Croaker and Lady start referring to her as "Booboo" after Goblin suggests it. The Company rule is relaxed in the latter half of the series as they start to pick up a large number of Taglian recruits. Some, like Sleepy, take on nicknames, but by the end many have kept their own names because they were originally survivors of a larger army that stayed loyal to the Company when things went to hell, so they were already well known by their real names before they became Company members. The first and second in command in the first two books are always referred to by their ranks, the Captain and the Lieutenant. The necromancer from outside Dusk who forms the B-plot of Port of Shadows only ever identifies himself as "Papa." He also only knows Bathdek as "Kitten," owing to being a bit nuts.
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The Black Company / int_a7b324e	type	Handicapped Badass
The Black Company / int_a7b324e	comment	Handicapped Badass: The White Rose doesn't let being deaf and mute hold her back. The Limper. While initially exhibiting a slight handicap as his name suggests, he keeps sustaining greater and greater injury without really slowing down. It's mentioned in the course of The Silver Spike that he is likely the single most powerful being in the North—despite being a severed head mounted onto an artificial body. Croaker becomes a shade of this in Soldiers Live. After being injured early in the novel, he's left with reduced range of motion in his arm and a slight but permanent blur to the vision of one eye. He still manages to injure the Khadidas badly enough that it runs away in terror.
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The Black Company / int_a8217606	type	Sweet Polly Oliver
The Black Company / int_a8217606	comment	Sweet Polly Oliver: Sleepy. The Company later finds out, but nobody cares beyond changing the pronouns.
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The Black Company / int_a8a04f6f	type	And I Must Scream
The Black Company / int_a8a04f6f	comment	And I Must Scream: Murgen's spirit is able to leave his body while dreaming. This talent continues during the fifteen years that he and rest of the Command Roster are imprisoned beneath the Plain of Glittering Stone, implying that everyone involved is conscious, but paralyzed. The experience is harrowing enough that Croaker and Lady abdicate their positions in the Company leadership, with Croaker falling back on his role as physician and Annalist. Now remember that there have been men suffering that same fate for so long that no one even remembers the civilization that put them there.
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The Black Company / int_a9c7258a	type	Absent Aliens
The Black Company / int_a9c7258a	comment	Absent Aliens: No elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs, or other fantasy species. There are some very weird nonhuman creatures in the Plain of Fear and a few bizarre creature in the dominator's service, but they've got a very minor role in the plot. Some of those creatures show up in a short story set in his SF Starfishers universe, but it's unknown if there's a connection between the two or if he just re-used an idea. Later in the series, a character mentions dwarves that like to go underground and work as miners, but explicitly identified them as "mythical creatures", making it seem like a Shout-Out at best. Even the gods of the story are uncertain in their existence and the lone exception, Kina, is revealed to actually have been a Sorcerer of immense power from a time so long ago that her history has turned to myth.
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The Black Company / int_a9de87d2	type	Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass
The Black Company / int_a9de87d2	comment	Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Shed. Everyone, Croaker and Raven included, are amazed at the feats of cunning, skill, and general badassery the cowardly, self-pitying, unassuming innkeeper is capable of when pressed. Also Narayan Singh. A scrawny fruit-selling peddler who belongs to the smallest and least respected of the three major religions in Taglios, and also the Living Saint of the Cult of the Deceivers. He is good enough to be able to snap his opponents necks with his strangling cloth.
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The Black Company / int_aa7dc8ce	type	Luke Nounverber
The Black Company / int_aa7dc8ce	comment	Luke Nounverber: Some Taken and Shadowmasters: Soulcatcher, Shapeshifter, Stormbringer, Moonbiter, Shadowspinner...
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The Black Company / int_aa8d0ef0	type	Spell My Name with a "The"
The Black Company / int_aa8d0ef0	comment	Spell My Name with a "The": The Limper, the Howler, the Hanged Man, the Tree, the Son of The Tree, the Dominator, the Daughter of Night, and the Khadidas.
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The Black Company / int_af3ea0e3	type	Faceâ€“Heel Turn
The Black Company / int_af3ea0e3	comment	Faceâ€“Heel Turn: Several in The Books of the South. By the end of Bleak Seasons, the Shadowlands are run by a single Shadowmaster and a collection of Croaker and Lady's former allies.
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The Black Company / int_b032e4ed	type	Ms. Fanservice
The Black Company / int_b032e4ed	comment	Ms. Fanservice: Once she reaches adulthood, the Daughter of Night seems to spend a lot of time naked. In fairness, this is mostly because she is so universally distrusted that anyone who captures her considers it the only way to be sure she isn't hiding a weapon on her person.
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The Black Company / int_b352e864	type	Sexless Marriage
The Black Company / int_b352e864	comment	Sexless Marriage: When first becoming intimate with Croaker, Lady replies to some awkwardness by saying that she's never done this before. Much later, Soulcatcher corroborates this by angrily referring to her as the Dominator's virgin wife. Clearly, her wedding to the Dominator was one purely of political convenience, uniting the two most powerful wizards in the world under the same banner, not one of love or even attraction. Port of Shadows comments that the Dominator and the Senjak sisters are all aware that he is married to one of them, but none of them are certain which, including the woman who is his actual wife. This is likely an Author's Saving Throw for the Dominator infamously calling out the wrong name at the climax of The White Rose. Port of Shadows also puts Croaker in one of these. The other Company men don't realize the "sexless" bit and give him no end of grief about it.
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The Black Company / int_b35e77ee	type	Fake Defector
The Black Company / int_b35e77ee	comment	Fake Defector: Croaker's masterstroke against Longshadow is to convince him that Blade has switched sides. This allows the "traitor" to lead the Shadowlanders against the priest-lead armies that the Company finds politically inconvenient and then surrender to the Company at their first confrontation, removing a full quarter of the Shadowlander military from the battle at its very onset.
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The Black Company / int_b36123ce	type	The Cycle of Empires
The Black Company / int_b36123ce	comment	The Cycle of Empires: A big part of The Silver Spike is characters realizing that The Empire has moved from Expansion to Stabilization, and that the excesses of its original masters are no longer tolerated. This causes Toadkiller Dog to switch allegiances from the Limper to the new regime, and finally convinces the rebels to call it a win and go home after helping them finish him off.
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The Black Company / int_b4eff8a8	type	Epic Fail
The Black Company / int_b4eff8a8	comment	Epic Fail: Almost all of Dreams of Steel and large portions of Bleak Seasons are entirely devoted to the aftermath of the botched siege of the city of Dejagore that occurs at the end of Shadow Games, wherein the Company is split into pieces and Croaker is kidnapped and presumed dead. First Father, setting off the Self-Destruct Mechanism in the pole the Company stole, only to realize the Company left with a fake and set the real one under the portal that protected his world from being swarmed by millions of murderous shadows. The attempt to capture Mogaba culminates in the whole team rushing into a bedroom in the dark, setting off a trap intended to ensnare a very powerful sorceress and starting a wild "shootout" that kills nearly all the commandos, Murgen, three company wizards including Howler and putting the Lady in a coma. To drive home the complete failure of the operation, Croaker comically knocks himself out during evacuation, trying to ram his flying pole through a reinforced window, which keeps slamming him against the window until someone manages to stop it.
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The Black Company / int_b6203862	type	Interquel
The Black Company / int_b6203862	comment	Interquel Port of Shadows adds yet another extremely powerful sorceress love interest for Croaker in Mischievous Rain.
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The Black Company / int_b7042372	type	Cycle of Revenge
The Black Company / int_b7042372	comment	Cycle of Revenge: A major plot point in Soldiers Live is Croaker leading an expedition to kill Lisa in vengeance for One-Eye's death. She only killed him because he killed her master, Shapeshifter and got her stuck in the form of the forvalaka before he could teach her how to change back. That killing, in turn, was a revenge killing for murdering One-Eye's brother at the start of the first book.
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The Black Company / int_b8dde2	type	Evil Overlord
The Black Company / int_b8dde2	comment	Croaker, who, despite being far from handsome, winds up married to former Evil Overlord Lady, and attracting the attentions of her sister, Soulcatcher. Largely stems from Because You Treated Me as an Actual Person.
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The Black Company / int_b983a56b	type	Came Back Wrong
The Black Company / int_b983a56b	comment	The Lady's True Name is...messy, to say the least. There were at least four Senjak sisters, of whom the Lady is one. The Dominator thinks (incorrectly) that she's Ardath. The ritual of naming in The White Rose demonstrates that she's Dorotea. Port of Shadows claims that Dorotea was killed by the Dominator and Came Back Wrong, living into the present day as mentally unstable reanimated corpse. The same book claims that the woman it calls Creedence Senjak may in fact be the one who becomes the Lady. Lastly, it's mentioned at one point that Ardath and Dorotea switched names at some point, which may have been an Author's Saving Throw for why the Dominator thought the woman demonstrated to be Dorotea was named Ardath.
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The Black Company / int_ba014235	type	Cryonics Failure
The Black Company / int_ba014235	comment	Cryonics Failure: Not everyone imprisoned beneath the Plain of Glittering Stone lives until they can be rescued. It is implied that this is a result of Cordie Mather trying to release them without knowing the proper procedure to do so.
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The Black Company / int_babc974	type	Sadistic Choice
The Black Company / int_babc974	comment	Sadistic Choice: Kina's revenge is to use the Daughter of Night to strangle Lady, forcing Croaker to choose whether to save his wife or his daughter. He chooses Lady, but hesitates long enough that she's left in critical condition.
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The Black Company / int_bb5126ec	type	Prophecy Twist
The Black Company / int_bb5126ec	comment	Prophecy Twist: There is a prophecy that all the major events in the rule of the Dominator and the Lady will be presaged by the arrival of a certain comet which appears at regular intervals, so when it isn't due for a while everyone tends to calm down and play the long game. When the final battle sparks up unexpectedly twenty years before the comet is due again, the damn thing shows up anyway.
The Black Company / int_bb5126ec	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_bbf11c0	type	Genius Bruiser
The Black Company / int_bbf11c0	comment	Genius Bruiser: The Lieutenant runs the siege of the Black Castle like he's conducting an orchestra. Just a few scenes earlier, he goes toe-to-toe with some of the castle monsters by muscling an enormous, two-handed sword that Croaker notes is the most effective weapon among them for the task at hand. Raven shows shades of this after being rediscovered by Croaker in The White Rose, attempting (and nearly succeeding) some difficult magic that even leaves One-Eye impressed.
The Black Company / int_bbf11c0	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_c0afd51a	type	Evil Cripple
The Black Company / int_c0afd51a	comment	Evil Cripple: The Limper is this before going into full-on Dark Lord on Life Support. The Howler seems to be so good with flying carpets because he has trouble walking, in addition to his tic of frequently screaming.
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The Black Company / int_c145f69b	type	Subverted Trope
The Black Company / int_c145f69b	comment	Darling. She was introduced being gangraped by the Limper's men with nearly everyone she knew having just been killed, and her grandfather dies shortly thereafter. Raven, not too long after, takes her from her friends into hiding, where he is overprotective to the point of domineering, and he fakes his death when Darling opens up about having feeling for him. Darling actually takes these matters with surprising toughness and wisdom, even for somebody as young as she is.
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The Black Company / int_c26e2b1	type	New Powers as the Plot Demands
The Black Company / int_c26e2b1	comment	New Powers as the Plot Demands: Mogaba, approaching middle age, learns to read just in time for the Company to send him a threatening letter.
The Black Company / int_c26e2b1	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_c2c9748c	type	Standard Fantasy Setting
The Black Company / int_c2c9748c	comment	Standard Fantasy Setting: Minus the classic nonhuman intelligent races, The Books of the North take place here. Starting with Shadow Games, the setting switches to a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Africa and then India.
The Black Company / int_c2c9748c	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_c2c9748c	featureConfidence	1.0
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The Black Company / int_c2cd384	type	Dream Spying
The Black Company / int_c2cd384	comment	Dream Spying: A major plot point in The Books of the Glittering Stone involves the discovery that Smoke's comatose mind can be "ridden", allowing exploration of the world in a dream-like fashion, but leaving the rider's body unconscious. Murgen also develops a more limited version which functions when he's asleep, and requires his incorporeal body to "move" between each location physically. Both versions are notably used as a plot device to explain why third person accounts are given in a first person narrative, as it is far less restricting than having the Annalist be forced to interview everyone.
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The Black Company / int_c2ef5a3d	type	Druid
The Black Company / int_c2ef5a3d	comment	Druid: While not explicedly stated, Shapeshifter the taken shares a lot of traits in common with the typical druid. In his human form he is large (fat) and beardy. He has powers over nature (such as directing fog in the Battle of Goja Fjord), Healing Hands, and can transform into an animal (his choice of which is a were-panther). Heck, up until he fell in love with Lisa Bowalk the duffer even smelled of nature.
The Black Company / int_c2ef5a3d	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_c3182167	type	Golem
The Black Company / int_c3182167	comment	Golem: Shivetya. Also, the clay body of the Limper in The Silver Spike.
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The Black Company / int_c3478f1d	type	Badass Bookworm
The Black Company / int_c3478f1d	comment	Badass Bookworm: Most of the Taken. They receive the "honor" of being claimed by the Dominator or his wife as a result of their magical talent. That said, the setting averts Squishy Wizard, hard. The Taken are noted multiple times as being nearly impossible to kill (one of them was clearly hanged at one point and is barely the worse for wear). At one point, the Limper has a building collapsed on him without sustaining any permanent damage. Later, he treats the severing of his right arm as little more than an annoyance. To a less extreme extent, Croaker. He is introduced as a doctor and historian who is fluent (both spoken and written) in several languages (Murgen asserts that Croaker is fluent in twenty languages, though this assertion is made about fifteen years later) in an age where literacy in even one language is not the norm. He demonstrates the ability to hold his own in combat multiple times thereafter, and is even considered worthy enough for a two-man assassination mission alongside stone-cold badass Raven. Raven. He's introduced as a coldhearted hardass who looks to be the Black Company's ace, but he later shows himself to be highly educated and knows a few tricks that weren't initially apparent.
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The Black Company / int_c660bc15	type	Fan Disservice
The Black Company / int_c660bc15	comment	Fan Disservice: Lady is always referred to as being a beauty without compare. She has to strip completely naked for a rite during Dreams of Steel... while malnourished, unwashed, and ungroomed from weeks of campaigning and with a visibly distended (and presumably stretch-mark-ridden) belly from being several months pregnant.
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The Black Company / int_c6655b23	type	Fallen Hero
The Black Company / int_c6655b23	comment	Fallen Hero: Mogaba.
The Black Company / int_c6655b23	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_c67af1b0	type	Big Bad Wannabe
The Black Company / int_c67af1b0	comment	Big Bad Wannabe: The Shadowmasters, most obviously Longshadow. Soulcatcher had been hinted at being far more ambitious than anybody realized. She had apparently intended at taking out both the Lady and the Dominator, and taking over from there.
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The Black Company / int_c69ae9b2	type	Self-Destruct Mechanism
The Black Company / int_c69ae9b2	comment	First Father, setting off the Self-Destruct Mechanism in the pole the Company stole, only to realize the Company left with a fake and set the real one under the portal that protected his world from being swarmed by millions of murderous shadows.
The Black Company / int_c69ae9b2	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_c75df49a	type	Shout-Out
The Black Company / int_c75df49a	comment	Shout-Out: In She Is the Darkness, Croaker tells Murgen, ''Fear is the mind-killer."
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The Black Company / int_c7f294da	type	Large and in Charge
The Black Company / int_c7f294da	comment	Large and in Charge: The series is typically light on physical description, but Croaker is described as being a big man. The Widowmaker armor makes him seem even larger and more menacing. Silent is the most independent and competent of the Company mages, and is only ever described as "tall and dark." In contrast Goblin, One-Eye, and the Howler are all noted to be both physically small and more comfortable in subservient roles. Subverted by Sleepy, who is repeatedly mentioned to be competent, capable, and very short. Also subverted by the Limper, who is described as a runt and is also the premier Lightning Bruiser of the series.
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The Black Company / int_cc4d190a	type	Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?
The Black Company / int_cc4d190a	comment	Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: It happens a few times, but nowhere near as much as...
The Black Company / int_cc4d190a	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_cc4d190a	featureConfidence	1.0
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The Black Company / int_ce104b8e	type	Serial Escalation
The Black Company / int_ce104b8e	comment	Serial Escalation: The first book has the Company pitted against well-equipped rebels. By the third, the Company is facing down The Empire and then forced into an Enemy Mine scenario with the same against The Dominator. By the end of the fourth book, the Company is building a national army to clash against another national army. By the end of the series, the Company is engaged in a three-way battle with the world's most powerful sorcerer (who has both of the aforementioned nation's militaries at her side, if somewhat reluctantly) and a Physical God.
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The Black Company / int_ceed5759	type	Villain Over for Dinner
The Black Company / int_ceed5759	comment	Villain Over for Dinner: Croaker makes tea for the Limper, who is so taken aback that he actually sits down and drinks it rather than just blasting everyone. Though "merely" a Villain Protagonist at this point, as the Company's employer and ally, Soulcatcher also shares some meals with Croaker and several others during the same stake-out that the Limper visits for tea. Soulcatcher is similarly taken aback but also subtly pleased the first time Croaker passes over a plate of scrambled eggs.
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The Black Company / int_d397657d	type	Hoist by His Own Petard
The Black Company / int_d397657d	comment	Hoist by His Own Petard: The Voroshk attempt to destroy the Company by detonating one of the flying poles they believe that Company has captured. The pole that they saw was a decoy Croaker had rigged, suspecting just such a capability. The real pole had been hidden under the Voroshk Shadowgate, and the explosion disabled its ability to keep out the murderous shadows native to the other side, making a shadow invasion inevitable by nightfall.
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The Black Company / int_d39e327f	type	What the Hell, Hero?
The Black Company / int_d39e327f	comment	What the Hell, Hero?: Croaker arranges so that an entire world is invaded by more than a million killer shadows, because he doesn't like the dictators controlling it — although to be fair it is as much the result of their reckless arrogance as his bait and switch. Afterwards, he wonders why he isn't asking himself this question, but decides he is too old and bitter to care anymore. This is the common response to Lady's solution to Taglios' problem of being paralyzed by three religions' worth of antagonistic priests. This is also Murgen's response to learning that Lady has removed the Shadowlanders from outside the city he and sixty other Company men have been besieged and starving in, but has made no attempt to inform them of this fact because of a political struggle with Mogaba.
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The Black Company / int_d3b02ffb	type	I Know Your True Name
The Black Company / int_d3b02ffb	comment	I Know Your True Name: The true name of a wizard can be used to destroy their power. Thus, many wizards go to great lengths to make sure that nobody knows it, such as killing everyone who knew them before, and leaving complex misdirections as to their origins. The series' biggest Plot Holes revolve around why more wizards weren't Named when it would have been expedient. Possible explanations include it being implied that using one is somewhat (strangely) taboo amongst sorcerers, that preparing a ceremony for it is time-consuming, and that there usually isn't time for it when necessary, but they are all quite weak.
The Black Company / int_d3b02ffb	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_d41832cc	type	Written by the Winners
The Black Company / int_d41832cc	comment	Written by the Winners: Glen Cook's novels have a lot to say about warfare and human nature, particularly as depicted in High Fantasy. The first book strongly implies that most Black-and-White Morality shown in High Fantasy is actually the result of history being written by the winners (who them portray themselves as the purest light, and their foes as blackest darkness). The Lady is a story of redemption, but also of Grey-and-Gray Morality, as it is repeatedly emphasized that, while she may be evil, she is not nearly as evil as her husband.
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The Black Company / int_d4efe0d	type	Character Narrator
The Black Company / int_d4efe0d	comment	Even though Lady knows the True Names of Howler, Shapeshifter and Soulcatcher, she never uses them, even though doing so would solve literally every single Company's problem. This problem gets acknowledged once, when she is still de-powered and Goblin says that she won't ever tell him or One-Eye True Names of their enemies. After she gets her powers back... Well, she still does nothing. And gets sealed under the Glittering Plain, along with the majority of the Company for her troubles. Made worse when you realize a lot more people than just Lady knew Soulcatcher's True Name and still did not use it. The Lady not using Soulcatcher's true name is explained much earlier in the series (they're bound by some sort of powerful sorcerous agreement to never use each other's names.) Why nobody else used it even though many major characters (including Croaker) discovered it in the process of researching the Lady's name is still not explained. The issue is that even if the Lady won't use Soulcatcher's true name against her, the Company also knows her name because of their research in The White Rose. Even if everyone forgot it, Croaker wrote it in the Annals, which Sleepy's narration in Water Sleeps makes clear that the Company is still in possession of.
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The Black Company / int_d5b3df2d	type	Dark Action Girl
The Black Company / int_d5b3df2d	comment	Dark Action Girl: Nominally, the Daughter of Night as of Water Sleeps. In practice, she spend enough time captured, restrained, or hiding behind magic to be more of a Faux Action Girl.
The Black Company / int_d5b3df2d	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_d62dd556	type	The Chessmaster
The Black Company / int_d62dd556	comment	The Chessmaster: In order of severity, Croaker, Sleepy, and Kina. Kina has been doing it for so long that she has difficulty dealing with scenarios that last hours, rather than decades.
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The Black Company / int_d6514291	type	Named After First Installment
The Black Company / int_d6514291	comment	Named After First Installment: Group Protagonist Title for series and first book.
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The Black Company / int_d71d51fd	type	The End of the World as We Know It
The Black Company / int_d71d51fd	comment	The End of the World as We Know It: The Year of the Skulls. actually happens to one of the worlds linked to the one most of the story takes place in due to a combination of the arrogance of the local overlords and the cunning of the Company.
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The Black Company / int_d7b34c31	type	Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"
The Black Company / int_d7b34c31	comment	Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": In the Books of the North, the Captain and the Lieutenant. In the Books of the South, the Prabrindrah-Drah and Radisha-Drah.
The Black Company / int_d7b34c31	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Black Company / int_d7f6f486	type	The Other Darrin
The Black Company / int_d7f6f486	comment	The Other Darrin: Port of Shadows was written and released more than a decade after the rest of the books. This trope strikes as a result, with the audiobook read by a different actor than the other five books told from Croaker's perspective.
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The Black Company / int_d7fc9fd0	type	Vitriolic Best Buds
The Black Company / int_d7fc9fd0	comment	Vitriolic Best Buds: Goblin and One-Eye act like an old married couple. Most of the time, they squabble and play various pranks on one another, however, they always pull together when the chips are down (even building an impromptu brewery when besieged in Dejagore). Murgen and Croaker both point out that Goblin and One-Eye have stopped feuding when they want to underscore just just how bad the situation is. In She Is the Darkness, Goblin even mentions that he misses One-Eye... but only when he's certain that no-one can hear him.
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The Black Company / int_d842e380	type	Love Redeems
The Black Company / int_d842e380	comment	Love Redeems: Lady, thanks to Croaker. Possibly averted; even in the last book of the series, Croaker admits that Lady did not regret anything she did as the Lady and that she still has plenty of evil left in her.
The Black Company / int_d842e380	featureApplicability	-1.0
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The Black Company / int_d848560f	type	Unusual Euphemism
The Black Company / int_d848560f	comment	Unusual Euphemism: Subverted in Port of Shadows. Bathdek assumes that Leysa refers to sex as "being made warm," because her imperfect resurrection has left her with a childish demeanor. She later realizes Leysa is describing the act literally, as she perceives; the procreative act fills her with life energy that she has no other access to.
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The Black Company / int_d99d9918	type	The Captain
The Black Company / int_d99d9918	comment	The Captain: The Captain, initially. The Lieutenant takes over for the third book, but doesn't take the title. Croaker takes this role at the very end of The White Rose, because no one else wants it. Sleepy takes the role in spirit during Water Sleeps and then officially in Soldiers Live, after his time in Plain of Glittering Stone makes her predecessor doubt his competence. Suvrin takes over after she is killed by a trap in the Battle of Taglios.
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The Black Company / int_d9d2c40b	type	Amazon Brigade
The Black Company / int_d9d2c40b	comment	Further averted in Port of Shadows, where the Company's female soldiers form an Amazon Brigade to protect female prisoners from the rest of the Company. It's noted that the Rebel didn't do this... and it shows.
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The Black Company / int_da03a529	type	Bait-and-Switch Boss
The Black Company / int_da03a529	comment	Bait-and-Switch Boss: In She is the Darkness, Longshadow is built up as the Big Bad only to have Soulcatcher show up in his inner sanctum and take him down.
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The Black Company / int_da76b18	type	Hijacked by Ganon
The Black Company / int_da76b18	comment	Hijacked by Ganon: Subverted rather amusingly with Longshadow. Given his habit of dressing in robes and a mask and not letting anyone see his face, along with the fact that one of the other Shadowmasters, Stormshadow, turned out to be a renegade Taken, Lady and Croaker assume he's someone they've faced before, probably another Taken. Once they get the mask off, nobody recognizes him. Turns out he is an Outside-Context Problem.
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The Black Company / int_dae5c997	type	Action Girl
The Black Company / int_dae5c997	comment	Action Girl: Lady. Once an Episode in the Books of the North and much more frequently in the Books of the South.
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The Black Company / int_db6230b7	type	Lightning Bruiser
The Black Company / int_db6230b7	comment	Lightning Bruiser: Most major wizards. Weaker wizards like those in the employ of the Company live for a long time but reap few other benefits. A wizard on the Taken's power level is very nearly a Physical God... and Kina literally is.
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The Black Company / int_dbea254f	type	ChosenOne
The Black Company / int_dbea254f	comment	Tides Elba returns as the Taken Mischievous Rain early in Port of Shadows. What with her being the local Chosen One, this causes friction with the townsfolk.
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The Black Company / int_dc1761bd	type	A God Am I
The Black Company / int_dc1761bd	comment	A God Am I: Kina began as a sorcerer of power comparable to the Dominator, but continued to grow until her ambitions stretched to the conquering of worlds beyond her own. This behavior is what eventually led to her being sealed in a can, with the history of events being corrupted into the Deceiver religion over time.
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The Black Company / int_dc1c7647	type	Voice of the Legion
The Black Company / int_dc1c7647	comment	Voice of the Legion: Soulcatcher — but serial, not parallel. She only uses one voice at a time, but she's got a lot of them, and switches every sentence or two unless things get deadly seriously. At one point, Croaker sits in a room while Soulcatcher argues with themself. He mentions it being eerie when two of the voices talk over each other.
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The Black Company / int_dca70c44	type	Reasonable Authority Figure
The Black Company / int_dca70c44	comment	Reasonable Authority Figure: The Prabrindrah-drah and Croaker's Liberator persona. Croaker and Swan both note how proactive the prince is about the Shadowmaster threat, and he even takes to leading armies himself. Croaker and Murgen both make a point of noting how much opulence Croaker is entitled to as military dictator, but that he prefers a small, spartan living arrangement instead.
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The Black Company / int_dcebff1	type	Command Roster
The Black Company / int_dcebff1	comment	Command Roster: It changes a little bit every book, but the narration always centers on the Company's Captain, his retinue, and his most trusted commandos. Justified in that Company tradition often sees the Annalist eventually become Captain, so it makes sense that the story's narrator hangs around with the brass. The justification is even stronger in Croaker's case, as his medical training makes him a valued specialist.
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The Black Company / int_de9047ac	type	Gambit Pileup
The Black Company / int_de9047ac	comment	Gambit Pileup: The series has several — in the Books of the North the Dominator's plan slams headlong into the Lady's; in the Books of the South the Company's plans crash into Longshadow's, and everyone's plans get derailed by Soulcatcher while Kina works in the background.
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The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_de9047ac
The Black Company / int_e16d7741	type	No Immortal Inertia
The Black Company / int_e16d7741	comment	No Immortal Inertia: Averted. After the Lady loses her powers, she begins to age normally.
The Black Company / int_e16d7741	featureApplicability	-1.0
The Black Company / int_e16d7741	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_e16d7741
The Black Company / int_e26f04b4	type	Last of His Kind
The Black Company / int_e26f04b4	comment	Last of His Kind: The Limper is able to cut a swathe through the Empire during The Silver Spike because, as the last of the Taken (well, as far as anyone in the North knows), no one has the raw power to stand up to him. Exile ultimately relies on traps and deception to deal with him.
The Black Company / int_e26f04b4	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_e26f04b4	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_e26f04b4
The Black Company / int_e3b0cd87	type	Morality Pet
The Black Company / int_e3b0cd87	comment	Morality Pet: Darling for Raven. Inverted in that it makes Raven overall worse, not better. As Croaker muses in Shadows Linger, Raven "concentrates" all the good in him for Darling, and so acts more evil to everyone else. At the same time, it is played straight with Croaker for the Lady. Croaker compares the two situations.
The Black Company / int_e3b0cd87	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_e3b0cd87	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_e3b0cd87
The Black Company / int_e431c24c	type	Not Quite Dead
The Black Company / int_e431c24c	comment	Not Quite Dead: Half of the original Taken, although the Limper in particular simply revels in this trope. Croaker also joins the club after Dreams of Steel. In fact, all the magic users count to some degree; the more powerful, the more this trope fits, to the point where they need to be diced up, cremated, and their ashes scattered to prevent their revival. For the most powerful that still isn't enough.
The Black Company / int_e431c24c	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_e431c24c	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_e431c24c
The Black Company / int_e543a655	type	Light Is Not Good
The Black Company / int_e543a655	comment	Light Is Not Good: Overlook, and by extension, Longshadow. Murgen even compares Overlook to "some religion's idea of heaven."
The Black Company / int_e543a655	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_e543a655	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_e543a655
The Black Company / int_e563bf09	type	Insistent Terminology
The Black Company / int_e563bf09	comment	Insistent Terminology: Toadkiller dog. Not just Toadkiller.
The Black Company / int_e563bf09	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_e563bf09	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_e563bf09
The Black Company / int_e5e5d228	type	Abusive Offspring
The Black Company / int_e5e5d228	comment	Abusive Offspring: The Daughter of Night is an apocalyptic figure who dearly wants to kill her parents, Croaker and Lady. She is killed by her father to stop her from assassinating her mother.
The Black Company / int_e5e5d228	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_e5e5d228	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_e5e5d228
The Black Company / int_e68b72	type	The Load
The Black Company / int_e68b72	comment	The Load: Gromovol is nothing but trouble, to the point that Croaker tries to return him to his family to gain their cooperation as much as to simply be rid of him.
The Black Company / int_e68b72	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_e68b72	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_e68b72
The Black Company / int_e7b0229a	type	Laser-Guided Amnesia
The Black Company / int_e7b0229a	comment	Laser-Guided Amnesia: A Justified Trope in explaining why the events of Interquel Port of Shadows aren't mentioned in the books written before but taking place after it.
The Black Company / int_e7b0229a	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_e7b0229a	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_e7b0229a
The Black Company / int_e7eb0474	type	Hub Level
The Black Company / int_e7eb0474	comment	Hub Level: The Plane of Glittering Stone; an artifact created by the gods in times long past to link sixteen worlds together.
The Black Company / int_e7eb0474	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_e7eb0474	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_e7eb0474
The Black Company / int_e851b5	type	The Plan
The Black Company / int_e851b5	comment	The Plan: So very many. Used by the Black Company themselves, as well as many other places. Often results in Gambit Pileups.
The Black Company / int_e851b5	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_e851b5	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_e851b5
The Black Company / int_ea39d156	type	Who Wants to Live Forever?
The Black Company / int_ea39d156	comment	Who Wants to Live Forever?: Shivetya, the Eternal Guardian, aids the Company in their quest to kill Kina so that, his duties discharged, he can finally die.
The Black Company / int_ea39d156	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_ea39d156	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_ea39d156
The Black Company / int_ed68bcc9	type	Dwindling Party
The Black Company / int_ed68bcc9	comment	Dwindling Party: The Captain dies toward the end of Shadows Linger, starting off a trend of named characters dying. By the end of The White Rose, the Black Company is composed of just six members.
The Black Company / int_ed68bcc9	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_ed68bcc9	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_ed68bcc9
The Black Company / int_ee8807f9	type	LawOfConservationOfDetail
The Black Company / int_ee8807f9	comment	The Lady's Empire in the North, which the Black Company works for for a while. While we don't quite see enough detail to suss out what life under the Empire was like, it seems less overwhelmingly evil than the Domination and a lot more dystopian — life inside it is stable and peaceful because the Lady and the Taken don't tolerate any evils that happen without their approval.
The Black Company / int_ee8807f9	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_ee8807f9	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_ee8807f9
The Black Company / int_eedee4d	type	The Starscream
The Black Company / int_eedee4d	comment	The Starscream: The Taken are basically a Starscream Squadron. Then there's Mogaba and Narayan, who both stab their superiors in the back for their own ends. Subverted by Blade, who betrays his employers when Croaker comes back from the dead...but later it's revealed to be part of a grand military maneuver by none other than Croaker himself.
The Black Company / int_eedee4d	featureApplicability	-0.3
The Black Company / int_eedee4d	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_eedee4d
The Black Company / int_ef0a5ce	type	Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?
The Black Company / int_ef0a5ce	comment	Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: Frequently. The Black Company relies heavily on their cunning, to say the least.
The Black Company / int_ef0a5ce	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_ef0a5ce	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_ef0a5ce
The Black Company / int_f1492605	type	Redemption Equals Death
The Black Company / int_f1492605	comment	Redemption Equals Death: Often subverted interestingly, often averted, occasionally played straight.
The Black Company / int_f1492605	featureApplicability	-0.3
The Black Company / int_f1492605	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_f1492605
The Black Company / int_f1d6144a	type	War Is Hell
The Black Company / int_f1d6144a	comment	War Is Hell: In the world where Might Makes Right and even Grey-and-Grey Morality cases rarely come without booby traps attached, it's to be expected.
The Black Company / int_f1d6144a	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_f1d6144a	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_f1d6144a
The Black Company / int_f1e6402d	type	Suddenly Speaking
The Black Company / int_f1e6402d	comment	Suddenly Speaking: Ky Sahra doesn't actually have any lines in Bleak Seasons, owing mostly to her characterization of fragility. She takes a few levels in Badass by Water Sleeps, where she has more dialogue than practically anyone else.
The Black Company / int_f1e6402d	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_f1e6402d	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_f1e6402d
The Black Company / int_f210d3d7	type	Magnum Opus
The Black Company / int_f210d3d7	comment	Magnum Opus: One Eye spends most of his approximately two centuries of life working on an enchanted spear. He passes it on shortly before his death in Soldiers Live. It's eventually used to kill a sorceror far, far out of One Eye's weight class.
The Black Company / int_f210d3d7	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_f210d3d7	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_f210d3d7
The Black Company / int_f247d841	type	Intoxication Ensues
The Black Company / int_f247d841	comment	Intoxication Ensues: Mushrooms growing on Shivetya's body have an euphoric effect. The consumers start singing or laughing for no reason, and stop being tired or hungry.
The Black Company / int_f247d841	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_f247d841	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_f247d841
The Black Company / int_f4f3252e	type	Law of Inverse Fertility
The Black Company / int_f4f3252e	comment	Law of Inverse Fertility: Croaker and Lady have sex once before being separated for more than a year. Their daughter is born and kidnapped before he even learns Lady was pregnant.
The Black Company / int_f4f3252e	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_f4f3252e	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_f4f3252e
The Black Company / int_f516f938	type	Never Found the Body
The Black Company / int_f516f938	comment	Never Found the Body: Soldiers Live opens on One-Eye warning Croaker about this, relevant to Goblin. It's deliberately vague on whether One-Eye has gone senile or is Properly Paranoid.
The Black Company / int_f516f938	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_f516f938	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_f516f938
The Black Company / int_f56aeb67	type	Alien Invasion
The Black Company / int_f56aeb67	comment	Alien Invasion: The original mission of the Free Companies of Khatovar was to infiltrate the Lady's world and set in motion the events that would resurrect Kina. Most of them return to their home worlds in defeat, one lost sight of its mission, and another decided to stay permanently.
The Black Company / int_f56aeb67	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_f56aeb67	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_f56aeb67
The Black Company / int_f91d1d4f	type	Darkest Hour
The Black Company / int_f91d1d4f	comment	Darkest Hour: Either the end of the The White Rose, when the Company is reduced to just six men, or during the course of Water Sleeps, when the Company is undermanned and hiding from Soulcatcher, with the Command Roster entombed under the Plain of Glittering stone for the past fifteen years.
The Black Company / int_f91d1d4f	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_f91d1d4f	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_f91d1d4f
The Black Company / int_fb8b5014	type	Talking to Themself
The Black Company / int_fb8b5014	comment	Talking to Themself: Soulcatcher, when under pressure.
The Black Company / int_fb8b5014	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_fb8b5014	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_fb8b5014
The Black Company / int_fc33ff16	type	One-Winged Angel
The Black Company / int_fc33ff16	comment	One-Winged Angel: The Limper, just before the end.
The Black Company / int_fc33ff16	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_fc33ff16	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_fc33ff16
The Black Company / int_fe614133	type	Beauty Is Never Tarnished
The Black Company / int_fe614133	comment	Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Played straight and averted. Lady winds up quite the worse for wear by the end of Dreams of Steel, and has begun an ungraceful aging process by Soldiers Live. Soulcatcher and the Daughter of Night, on the other hand, sustain various injuries without any particular marring of their features (even if Soulcatcher walks with a limp by the end of the series.).
The Black Company / int_fe614133	featureApplicability	-1.0
The Black Company / int_fe614133	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_fe614133
The Black Company / int_fe964db5	type	Monster from Beyond the Veil
The Black Company / int_fe964db5	comment	Monster from Beyond the Veil: The Khadidas. Right after Croaker injures it, he can see a tiny piece of Goblin inside its eyes.
The Black Company / int_fe964db5	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_fe964db5	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_fe964db5
The Black Company / int_feaf12e8	type	Survivor Guilt
The Black Company / int_feaf12e8	comment	Survivor Guilt: Croaker has issues with it. He notes it explicitly as early as The White Rose, when the Company is reduced to six men, and the dead include his best friend and sponsor, Elmo. It later goes on to be one of the central concepts of Soldiers Live. The title is a shortening of a saying; the whole thing is "Soldiers live, and wonder why."
The Black Company / int_feaf12e8	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_feaf12e8	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_feaf12e8
The Black Company / int_name	type	ItemName
The Black Company / int_name	comment
The Black Company / int_name	featureApplicability	1.0
The Black Company / int_name	featureConfidence	1.0
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Black Company / int_name
The Black Company / int_name	itemName	The Black Company

The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

The Black Company	hasFeature	Absent Aliens / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	American Literature (# to D) / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Antagonistic Offspring / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Anti-Magic / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Armies Are Evil / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Army of Thieves and Whores / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Badass Army / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Band of Brothers / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Better Living Through Evil / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Big Badass Battle Sequence / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Black Knight / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Blood for Mortar / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Cadre of Foreign Bodyguards / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Camp Follower / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Changing of the Guard / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Comet of Doom / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Cryonics Failure / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Dark Fantasy / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Dark Lord on Life Support / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Deader than Dead / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Deadly Euphemism / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu? / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Dream Spying / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	El Cid Ploy / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Elective Mute / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Elites Are More Glamorous / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Embarrassing First Name / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Ethnic Magician / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Evil Cripple / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Fake Defector / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Family Theme Naming / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Fantastic Drug / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Feminine Women Can Cook / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Feminist Fantasy / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Filler / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	First-Person Peripheral Narrator / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	First-Person Smartass / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Flying Seafood Special / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Force Feeding / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Full-Name Basis / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	General Failure / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Genre Blindness / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Grimmification / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Happy Place / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Harmful to Touch / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Hearing Voices / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Hero Killer / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Heroic Fantasy / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Hijacked by Ganon / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Iconic Item / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Impersonation Gambit / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Inferred Survival / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Intoxication Ensues / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Joker Immunity / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Just the First Citizen / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Kung-Fu Wizard / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Large and in Charge / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Little Hero, Big War / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Long-Running Book Series / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Losing Your Head / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Low Fantasy / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Luke Nounverber / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Magic Carpet / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Magic Is Evil / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Magnum Opus / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Mana Burn / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Miles to Go Before I Sleep / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Military Mage / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Mind Hive / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Monster Progenitor / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Mordor / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Murder, Inc. / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Named After First Installment / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Never Accepted in His Hometown / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Never Given a Name / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Nom de Guerre / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Noun Verber / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Ominous Mundanity / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Omniglot / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Once Done, Never Forgotten / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Our Liches Are Different / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Quickly-Demoted Leader / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Quirky Miniboss Squad / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Rape as Backstory / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Rasputinian Death / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Reality Is Out to Lunch / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Redemption Demotion / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Reforged into a Minion / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Scary Impractical Armor / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Sealed Evil in a Six Pack / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Self-Immolation / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Sensor Character / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Sorcerous Overlord / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Squishy Wizard / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Standard Fantasy Setting / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Suddenly Speaking / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Surprisingly Happy Ending / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Surrounded by Idiots / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Survivor Guilt / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Conqueror / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Cycle of Empires / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Dead Have Names / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	The End of the World as We Know It / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Insomniac / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Man They Couldn't Hang / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Quiet One / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Role-Playing Game / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Siege / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Silent Bob / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Voiceless / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	The Women Are Safe with Us / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Token Minority / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Unspoken Plan Guarantee / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Virginity Flag / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Voice of the Legion / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Where I Was Born and Razed / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Who Needs Their Whole Body? / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Wife Husbandry / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Wizards Live Longer / int_73f5b8e2
The Black Company	hasFeature	Written by the Winners / int_73f5b8e2
theblackcompany	sameAs	The Black Company

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