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What can be said about the '''Black Company''' series? That the first book in the series manages to subvert ''[[Black and Grey Morality]]'', and end up going somewhere far more interesting than it, [[Grey and Grey Morality]], or any of the other standard options? That the best way to explain the first book is "It's as if a typical fantasy epic is propaganda from the winning 'good' side, and this is the reality"?
▲What can be said about the Black Company series? That the first book in the series manages to subvert ''[[Black and Grey Morality]]'', and end up going somewhere far more interesting than it, [[Grey and Grey Morality]], or any of the other standard options? That the best way to explain the first book is "It's as if a typical fantasy epic is propaganda from the winning 'good' side, and this is the reality"?
The verisimilitude is incredibly high - [[Glen Cook]] served as a soldier, and the books form a very honest look at a band of mercenaries who find themselves in service to an apparent [[Big Bad]]. However, while "the Lady" may have the evil magic behind her, the rebels are, if anything, far more ruthless in their tactics, and some of them are incredibly nasty pieces of work.
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''The Books of the South''
* Shadow Games
* Dreams of Steel
* The Silver Spike (set between ''Dreams of Steel'' and ''Bleak Seasons'', but not part of either collection)
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* Bleak Seasons
* She Is The Darkness
* Water Sleeps
* Soldiers Live
Now complete with a [[Black Company/Characters|character page]].
{{franchisetropes}}
* [[Absent Aliens]] - No elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs, or other fantasy species. There are some ''very'' weird nonhuman creatures in the Plain of Fear, but they've got a very minor role in the plot.
* [[A Day in
* [[Anti-Magic]] - {{spoiler|The White Rose.}}
* [[Anyone Can Die]] - Anyone can, and most do.
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* [[Badass Normal]] - Damned near every member of the Company, save the Lady and the various mages.
** Though in comparison to their more powerful brethren, the Company mages still qualify.
* [[Bait and Switch Boss]]: In ''She is the Darkness'', Longshadow is built up as the [[Big Bad]] {{spoiler|only to have Soulcatcher show up in his inner sanctum and take him down, though he does enough damage to her that she's not really able to savor her victory much}}.
* [[Beige Prose]]
* [[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 camaderie with Croaker. {{spoiler|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...}}
* [[Big Bad]] - Played with and often subverted - the protagonists are often seen to be serving the [[Big Bad]]. But there's a lot of candidates for the role.
** Both The Dominator and in later books Kina play this completely straight, though.
** [[Big Bad Wannabe]]: The Shadowmasters, most obviously Longshadow.
* [[Bittersweet Ending]] - The last chapter of Soldiers Live. - which is still much better than you would expect from the rest of the saga.
* [[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.
* [[Break the Cutie]] - Though Croaker hardly qualifies as a "cutie", the events of the series gradually transform him into a [[Shoot the Dog|pragmatic]], [[Manipulative Bastard|crafty]] soldier who [[Implacable Man|will not be stopped]] from reaching Khatovar and [[Necessarily Evil|will do whatever he must]] to protect {{spoiler|Lady}}.
** [[Being Tortured Makes You Evil]] - Averted with {{spoiler|Croaker}}, who survives {{spoiler|being enslaved to Soulcatcher}} without turning evil.
** Subverted with {{spoiler|Murgen when he wakes up and finds that he had been tortured, but remembers none of it}} Of course this may not have happened, who the hell knows with that guy.
* [[Card Games]] - The life of a soldier is one of tedium punctuated by short periods of terror, and the Black Company old-timers fill that tedium with endless games of Tonk, an Afro-American version of rummy. The rules are on the Internet, and are playable with standard playing cards. Played for money, but the money's not really as much of the point as it seems.
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* [[Cute and Psycho]] - {{spoiler|Soulcatcher, again. Oh, is she ever...}}
* [[Deus Ex Machina]] - quite literally at the end of {{spoiler|''Water Sleeps''}}.
* [[Did Not Do the Research]]- Cook describes Soulcatcher as wearing a morion which covers the Taken's face completely. Pretty much the defining characteristic of that kind of helmet in real life is that it's open-faced and doesn't conceal one's visage at all.
** Not exactly. There are variants of the basic morion that include cheek guards/face plates. Granted, the whole issue could be side-stepped by just picking a different helmet.
* [[The Dragon]] - The Lady ''was'' this to the Dominator in her backstory. She herself doesn't have a clear example- Soulcatcher is the strongest Taken, but she's also probably the most treacherous and unstable (and therefore unreliable). In the end, the best fit is probably Limper. In the later books, Mogaba serves as [[The Dragon]] to Longshadow and later {{spoiler|Soulcatcher}}.
* [[Dream Spying]]
* [[Dropped a Bridge
** With the sheer number of characters it is inevitable that some of them die anticlimactically or even without a proper death scene, simply found dead after a large battle.
* [[The Empire]] - The Lady's Empire in the North, which the Black Company works for for a while.
* [[The End of the World
* [[Enfant Terrible]] - {{spoiler|Lady and Croaker's}} daughter, who is {{spoiler|Kina, Goddess of Death}} reborn.
* [[Epic Fail]] - the attempt to capture {{spoiler|Mogaba}} culminates in the whole team rushing into a bedroom in the dark, setting off a trap and starting a wild shootout that kills nearly all the comandos, {{spoiler|Murgen}}, three company wizards {{spoiler|including Howler}} and putting {{spoiler|Lady}} in a coma. As a cherry on top, Croaker knocks himself out during evacuation, trying to ram his flying pole through a reinforced window.
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* [[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 killing women and children, even though one of their employers' lackeys doesn't have the same qualms.
* [[Evil Overlord]] - Played with in Lady {{spoiler|before she quits}}, who ''is'' ruthless, but genuinely tries to be the lesser of two evils.
* [[Evil Sorcerer]]: Lots! The Lady, the Dominator, the Ten Who Were Taken, and the Shadowmasters all qualify.
* [[Exactly What It Says
** Moonbiter will bite you on the ass?
*** It is mentioned that they sounded more scary in their native tongue so perhaps Moonbiter was [[Lost in Translation]]
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* [[Golem]] - Shivetya. {{spoiler|Also, the clay body of the Limper in ''The Silver Spike''.}}
* [[Hell-Bent for Leather]] - Excluding the probably metal helmet, Soulcatcher is clad entirely in tight leather, from mask to boots.
* [[Hijacked
* [[Ho Yay]] - Murgen tends to linger on descriptions of Mogaba and Willow Swan. May bleed into [[Foe Yay]] territory in places.
* [[Hub Level]] - The Plane of Glittering Stone; an artifact created by the gods in times long past to link sixteen worlds together.
** Which has some interesting [[Wild Mass Guessing]] opportunities mwhahahahahahahha.
* [[Humans Are
* [[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 {{spoiler|tells Lady they're gonna bang in Stormshadow/Stormbringer's bed that night. They do. Also that's when the Daughter is concieved}}
* [[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.
* [[Implacable Man]]: The most powerful wizards are all but impossbiel to kill. The Dominator only died once his body was completely destroyed, Limper kept coming {{spoiler|even when he was just an undead head controlling a golem body}}, and Soulcatcher {{spoiler|survived decapitation and carried her severed head around with her in a box for years before finally forcing Croaker to sew it back on}}.
* [[Infinity+1 Sword|Infinity Plus One Spear]] - In this case, two of them: the Lance of Passion, an artifact the Company has carried from its origins in Khatovar. Also One-Eye's spear, a magical weapon that was the masterpiece and legacy of one of the Company's mages, designed to kill archmages and magical beasts, it worked far better than advertised in the end. {{spoiler|It ends up killing a god, albeit with a bit of explosive help.}}
* [[Karma Houdini]] - {{spoiler|Despite having taken part in a scheme that caused the death of hundreds, and having personally killed several people, Smeds ends up owner of a brewery, with a pile of money hidden for tough days.}}
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* [[Literary Agent Hypothesis]] - The original trilogy is supposed to be Croaker's section of the Annals of the Black Company. Given his central role, his personal appearance in the right place at the right time to observe plot-essential points, and a little conversation in the third book about how his historical writing style is different from the Northern tradition in how much he puts himself into the history (i.e. write in first person), and it seems Glen Cook is trying to raise this idea.
* [[Love Redeems]] - {{spoiler|Lady}}, thanks to Croaker.
* [[
* [[Morality Pet]] - Darling for Raven. Inverted in that it makes Raven overall worse, not better. As Croaker muses in ''Shadows Linger'', Raven "concentrates" all good in him for Darling, and so acts more evil to everyone else.
* [[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.
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* [[Old Soldier]] Croaker, and the rest of {{spoiler|the Old Guard}} after {{spoiler|they're resurrected from a decades-long magical}} imprisonment in {{spoiler|Water Sleeps}}.
* [[One-Winged Angel]] - {{spoiler|The Limper, just before the end.}}
* [[Only Known
** Played very straight when Croaker must record his actual name, and has trouble remembering it.
** This becomes a major plot point in ''The White Rose'', when {{spoiler|the Dominator, and everyone else tries to destroy Lady's powers by stating her name.}}
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* [[Parental Substitute]]: Raven for Darling, and Croaker for Shukrat and Arkana.
* [[Quirky Miniboss Squad]]: The Ten Who Were Taken. Much like if the [[The Wheel of Time|the Forsaken]] were actually badass, although prone to the same [[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.
* [[Redemption Equals Death]] - Often subverted interestingly, often averted, occasionally played straight.
* [[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.
* [[Royals Who Actually Do Something]] - The Prahbrindrah Drah and his sister, as this exchange illustrates:
{{quote|'''Swan''': He's the kind of guy who's got to check things for himself. [...] He's a pretty good old boy. First prince I ever seen that tries to do what a prince is supposed to do.
'''Croaker''': Rarer than frog hair, then. I'm sure.|''Shadow Games''}}
* [[Samus Is a Girl]] - Soulcatcher, though she's not a very good example, as it's hinted at before it's actually revealed, and {{spoiler|Sleepy.}}
* [[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.
* [[Scary Impractical Armor]] - The Lifetaker and Widowmaker outfits. [[Justified Trope|Justified]] in that the whole point is for the outfits to be scary {{spoiler|and Lady has laid on the spellwork to make them protective in spite of their impracticality.}}
* [[Sealed Evil in
** {{spoiler|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 {{spoiler|Old Father Tree and the Plains of Fear}} and {{spoiler|Kina}} both fit the bill as well, and {{spoiler|Shivetya}} may count as Sealed Good in a Can, or at least Sealed Neutral.
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* [[The Starscream]] - The Taken are basically a Starscream Squadron. Then there's {{spoiler|Mogaba and Narayan}}, who both stab their superiors in the back for their own ends. Subverted by {{spoiler|Blade}}, who betrays {{spoiler|his}} employers when {{spoiler|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}}.
* [[Sweet Polly Oliver]] - {{spoiler|Sleepy}}. The Company later finds out, but nobody cares beyond changing the pronouns.
* [[Took a Level
* [[Trying to Catch Me Fighting Dirty]] - Company military doctrine is based around the concept of fighting dirty. Closely connected with [[Combat Pragmatist]] above.
* [[Unfortunate Name]] - “My name is Case. Philodendron Case. Thanks to my Ma.”
* [[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 Croaker's love interest the Lady of Charm. All of them are, by their own admission, less than totally reliable (though Lady only admits that grudgingly).
* [[The Voiceless]] - Silent, [[Exactly What It Says
** Until he [[Took a Level
* [[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.)
* [[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.
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* [[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).
* [[Xanatos Gambit]] - So very many. Used by the Black Company themselves, as well as many other places. Often results in...
** [[Gambit Pileup]] - The series has
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