Characters / Clawing at Glass

A list of characters from Clawing at Glass. Characters from Mirror World can be found here.

Be aware of spoilers.

House Dawn

Wydel

"I hope we stay safe here forever."

The younger sister of Sprucequeen Ahandi.

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• Authority in Name Only: Being the 'second in command' to House Dawn really only means she's their leader's sister. Wydel has no real experience or authority with the seed-fangs.
• Cynicism Catalyst: The prospect of losing Ahandi destroys a lot of Wyde's goodness and optimism.
• Face–Heel Turn: By virtue of siding with Ahandi-Jack, Wydel puts herself on the side of the White Queen and Red King.
• Fatal Flaw: Her dependence on Ahandi is Wydel's greatest weakness, disallowing her from standing on her own two feet and leading to an agonizing mutation when she tries to save Ahandi-Jack, even when it's clear they're lost and not even Ahandi anymore.
• Foregone Conclusion: Whatever happens, it's inevitable that Wydel will turn out to become the vicious leader of House Dawn by the time of Mirrorworld.
• Green Thumb: As part of House Dawn, she's got control over plants.
• The Load: Wydel has no combat ability, and when the House descends into chaos in the past, Wydel simply hides while Ahandi finishes everything. She's loved and protected by House Dawn, but Wydel feels patronized by this and acts to help her House instead of just hiding at the sidelines.
• Major Injury Underreaction: With her Healing Factor, as oon as she's healing up, being stabbed in the chest is no big deal.
• Morality Chain: It's no exaggeration to say Wydel keeps Ahandi tethered to morality.
• Morality Pet: She functions as one to Ahandi, being someone Ahandi truly adores.
• Nice Girl: Back then, Wydel was a sweet kid.
• Plant Person: She's House Dawn, and a seed-fang, which means she's basically a walking set of roots, flowers and vines.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: She's unable to let go of Ahandi, even when Ahandi is truly dead, trying desperately to save Ahandi-Jack past the point of all hope.
• The Pollyanna: she's House Dawn, always looking forward happily.
• Shrinking Violet: Extremely timid and reticent around anyone who isn't her sister, hiding behind Ahandi's throne whenever there's other company in the room.
• Taking the Bullet: She throws herself between Zada and Avis's blade to save the treacherous wing-sage.
• This Cannot Be!: Wydel is horrified and shattered by Zada's betrayal, unable to believe what's happening before her.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Wydel has some darker sides underneath her pleasant, childlike nature. She's shown to be fully aware of Ahandi's darker acts and has no hesitation killing anyone she sees as a threat to Ahandi-Jack.
• Turn The Othercheek: She forgives Avis for stabbing her remarkably quickly. After all, she's Dawn, always looking to the future.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: This is the 'used to be,' as those who have read the main story will remember Wydel only as the brutal, hateful seed-ghoul she becomes.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: Wydel's greatest wish is to prove herself to her sister Ahandi.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Wydel is really, really idealistic and hopeful for the future.

Ahandi

The Sprucequeen, the lord of House Dawn and the ruler of Inoptica.

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• The Ace: Noble, refined, plus an amazing fighter and diplomat who won the throne of Sprucequeen from a great deal of rivals. It's also the image she projects, to hide how stressed, tired and worried she is under it.
• Affectionate Nickname: She nicknames her beloved sister Wydel 'twiglet.'
• Assimilation Backfire: Draining Trick-Jack does not go as planned, and results in her personality becoming something new.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Not just the queen of House Dawn, she's possibly the best warrior in Inoptica.
• Beware the Nice Ones: The nicest ruler of Inoptica, at least outwardly, but she is a very dangerous foe to have.
• Big Sister Instinct: Protecting Wydel is as much her priority as the safety and security of House Dawn.
• Broken Ace: Ahandi is in truth guilt-ridden, devastated, weary and tired from her crown, not helped by having devoured the lives of her subjects to achieve it.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Ahandi seemingly manages to kill Trick-Jack by sucking out all the blood in its body, but the subsequent effect it has on her horribly twists her body and essentially erases her identity.
• The Chains of Commanding: Ahandi feels extremely bound by the laws of House Dawn. It doesn't always matter what's 'right' when you have such responsibilities as queen.
• Cool Big Sis: As big a deal as being the Sprucequeen is, Ahandi first and foremost is Wydel's protective, loving big sister.
• Declaration of Protection: Ahandi's ultimate vow is to defend Wydel.
• Eating the Enemy: She devours Trick-Jack's life and blood in their fight.
• Hidden Depths: Ahandi projects an ethereal mystique. Under it, she's a caring sister, and a just, if stressed and overworked, ruler.
• The High Queen: Ahandi is a wise, just ruler of House Dawn, and carries herself with great elegance.
• I Am a Humanitarian: Ahandi drains the lifeforce of seed-fangs in a manner likened to cannibalism, and does it well past the point of necessity.
• My Greatest Failure: She's quite guilty for all the seed-fangs she killed.
• Nerves of Steel: Ahandi presents as unflappable, even in the worst of situations.
• No Hero to His Valet: To everyone else in the Houses, Ahandi is viewed with an inscrutable mystique and reverence. To Wydel, she's merely her overworked sister, and Ahandi doesn't even bother to keep up the queenly facade when she's alone with Wydel.
• Only Sane Man: Ahandi is the wisest of the Inoptica House leaders and the one to put her foot down about peace.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: She leads the efforts to restore sanity to Inoptica and throws down with Trick-Jack itself.
• Tough Leader Façade: Ahandi is established early as anxious and nowhere near as unflappable as she makes herself out to be, but she only reveals these feelings to Wydel. To everyone else, Ahandi has all the power and grace expected out of the Sprucequeen.

House Noon

Avis

(Credit)

A mysterious, stoic soldier in the Scorch who is secretly advancing the agenda of the "whispering darkness" for his own purposes.

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• Ambiguously Evil: Avis is aligned exclusively with malicious or at least untrustworthy people, but Avis himself showcases numerous standards and regrets about the dark business he's in with ambiguously well-intentioned motivations.
• Anti-Villain: Villain Protagonist or not, Avis is still unambiguously morally superior to the majority of House Noon, serving as the Token Good Teammate for Talvor's brigade in that he's the only day-vamp who wants to save Dusk—even if he's willing to do extremely unscrupulous things to do so.
• At Least I Admit It: Avis answers Zada's accusations of being similar by stating that at least he doesn't pretend he's 'above atrocity.'
• Berserk Button: The issue of "perspective" and racism in House Noon seems to be the only thing able to truly provoke him. When Visca accidentally presses this in an attempt to reassure him, Avis immediately flips from "calm and sociable" to "murderous wrath" and instantly turns on Visca to kill him.
• Big Brother Instinct: Not by blood, but Avis is an honorary brother to the night-claw children he could save from Talvor's genocides, and keeps them hidden and safe.
• Blood Knight: Downplayed, but there's more of Talvor's insane bloodlust for battle left in him he's reluctant to admit to. He's stoic and dignified on the outside, but he can be savagely violent and vindictive when killing people, and when he's assigned to kill Zada, he demands she "show me a real fight."
• Boomerang Bigot: One can hardly blame him, but Avis despises his own kind, particularly Talvor's breed which he seeks the extermination of after refusing to shatter like the rest of his "brothers."
• Byronic Hero: Avis is quiet, enigmatic, cold and distant to his fellow day-vamps, and his methods are ruthless and violent enough to the point the term "hero" barely applies to him, but Avis still holds a wealth of torture and insecurity revolving mostly around his backstory and retains a number of decent qualities, including being a Friend to All Children.
• The Chessmaster: Avis is playing House Noon with uses of 'martyrs' and his intelligence.
• Crazy-Prepared: Avis has a fallback for seemingly everything.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Avis was raised under Talvor for decades, enduring the brunt of Talvor's horrible torture and conditioning that's left him with scars both physical and mental long since. Unlike many of the others, Avis refused to break and now dedicates himself to wiping out Talvor's breed for good.
• Deadpan Snarker: Working with people like Kryce and Trick-Jack have left him with something of a sharp wit:
  Trick-Jack: You were dreaming.
  Avis: People tend to do that when they sleep.
• Devious Daggers: Fancies a crimson dagger, with which he is very apt to use to cut his enemies' throats.
• The Dog Bites Back: After all the abuse Talvor has given him, Avis returns the favor by carving open his throat.
• Even Evil Has Standards: While it's difficult to peg how "evil" he is, Avis is involved with dark things, yet still balks at the slaughter and torture he's forced to put up with daily.
• Friend to All Children: The one consistent standard Avis maintains is his refusal to hurt children. All throughout Talvor's conquest, Avis has saved dozens of night-claw children from butchery and takes care of them as his own brothers and sisters.
• Gone Horribly Right: He wanted to rouse House Noon to action and get Kryce on the road to getting the worst of them wiped out. Unfortunately, with a little nudging for Trick-Jack, it's not happening in a way he's happy with.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: After being healed by Jondi, Avis seems inclined to help the heroes, but has seemingly not repented of any of his old deeds and seems to be working to the same ends by different means.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Avis is a wildcard and besides Trick-Jack, the most villainous character in the story, but his goals and methods make sense only to him.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Hinted, deep, deep down to be one of his driving motivations. Milivia "gets him where it hurts" by digging into the fact he's completely alone in his own House. Turns out day-vamps are communal and can't survive on their own. He compensates with a host of night-claw children he loves and protects.
• Kick the Dog: Avis is almost never gratuitous with his violence, but violently backhanding the unarmed old wing-sage Jondi when he's in Avis' way was utterly unnecessary.
• Lean and Mean: Avis is small, thin, gaunt and ruthless in his goals and maneuvers.
• Manipulative Bastard: Due to him accurately predicting the nature of his Blood Knight companions, Avis is able to get away with the murder of Talvor in broad daylight.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He's horrified to find he stabbed Wydel when she took a hit for Zada.
• Nice Mean And In Between: Of the King and Queen's three agents—Kryce, Zada and himself—Kryce is the In-Between. Morally he's superior to both and he has a Hidden Heart of Gold, though buried very, very deep, but he's also blunt, nearly emotionless, callous, and sometimes just as sadistically violent as any of the other day-vamps in Talvor's brigade—albeit, he mostly keeps his violence targeted toward said brigade.
• Oh, Crap!: When he realizes Kryce destroyed the Lunatheneum, he's stunned and horrified.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Avis is normally chillingly relaxed and excellent at manipulating others through deception and trickery. The very rare moments he shows vulnerability or lets his guard down are a sign something is seriously urgent.
  • The first major instance is when Avis completely breaks his stoic demeanor when he stabs Wydel, resulting in him actually shedding tears in remorseful shock before Zada impales him from behind.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Murdering your leader is usually awful. But when your leader is an abusive, genocidal maniac like Talvor, it's far more understandable. Avis makes common practice of this with his fellow day-vamps, turning what would otherwise be awful team killing to this.
• Perpetual Frowner: Avis seems allergic to the concept of happiness, to the point where his only reaction to Trick-Jack taking his form to screw with him is only that he hates the image of himself smiling.
• Pet the Dog: Avis rescued two children from the slaughter at Dusk. Two of dozens, as it turns out, that he keeps safe and hidden from other day-vamps, who lovingly call him their big brother.
• Scars Are Forever: He bears quite a few scars thanks to Talvor's crazed abuse. It turns out his upper torso is little but a mass of savaged scar tissue from the insane Batlord.
• Shoot the Dog: How he viewed killing his brother day-vamp Ralvant, viewing him as too far gone after Talvor's horrific brainwashing.
• Signature Move: Avis really seems to like cutting open the throats of his enemies.
• Slashed Throat: Avis' preferred method of killing people with his crimson dagger, sometimes in conjunction with flat-out decapitation.
• The Stoic: Avis is quiet and perpetually calm on the surface, though inwardly he's a lot more emotive than he seems.
• Team Killer: Avis regularly butchers his fellow day-vamps without a second of hesitation, assassinating Talvor in broad daylight and murdering his way through most of the others. All of them deserve it, and the sole members on his own team that aren't bloodthirsty psychopaths or cringing cowards are the ones Avis reaches out to.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Avis doesn't seem to much like the vicious, wicked Trick-Jack, but he goes along with him for the greater good.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives Visca one of these before killing him:
  "Let me tell you about perspective, Visca. Your worldview is diseased. Your sense of normalcy has been twisted. You and every other accursed soul in Talvor's brigade are incurably insane."
• Tranquil Fury: Given how stoic Avis is, he hits this whenever he gets truly angry. When Visca provokes him, Avis doesn't raise his voice, but his entire demeanor becomes cold and murderous.
• The Unfettered: Creeds and rules mean nothing for Avis. He will succeed in his goals, no matter what. And nothing will stop him, least of all, Noon and its rules. He's not as ruthless as he makes himself out to be, and he stops entirely at one major line: hurting children.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Possibly. Avis' main agenda seems to be the extermination of Noon for their "injustice," and he's involved with the Red King and the White Queen to the fulfillment of this end.
• What You Are in the Dark: Avis will do dark things, but he won't hurt children. There are pieces of his soul he refuses to surrender in the course of his dark deeds, no matter who is or isn't watching.
• Wild Card: It's nearly impossible to guess what Avis will do at any given point. His goals, his thought processes and his actions often coincide in ways only he can understand and while he is clearly working to what he sees as a greater good, it's hard to tell who will be caught up in the crossfire.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: For all his ruthlessness, Avis has a soft spot to children, murdering a fellow day-vamp to save two night-claw children and refusing to harm young Wydel intentionally. This also extends to harboring a multitude of night-claw children from Talvor's purges.
• Villainous BSoD: Avis goes into shellshock when he accidentally stabs Wydel, violating his creed to never hurt a child. It paralyzes him long enough for Zada to get the drop on him.
• Villain Has a Point: Avis is not a good person but he is correct, fully, about the utter insanity of House Noon and Talvor's merry band of psychos.
• Villain Protagonist: He's one of the three POV characters, but complex standards or not, Avis is still an agent of the King and Queen. He's an unscrupulous, Machiavellian manipulator prone to fits of sudden, brutal violence who by his own account has filled "oceans" of blood in service to Noon.

Talvor

(Credit)

The violent Batlord whose death kicks off the plot.

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• 0% Approval Rating: Outside House Noon, Talvor is hated and despised by all others, and universally seen as a lunatic.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: In a world fraught with violent Fantastic Racism, Talvor is the absolute nadir: a genocidal, supremacist sadist who preached the day-vamps as the Master Race and loathed Dusk with such a passion he decreed his only solution to be a "holocaust dream" to exterminate them. To draw even more parallels, Talvor filled up literal body pits of his victims and purged his own House to root out any inferiors—like the children and the sickly.
• Asshole Victim: Virtually no one outside his circle of psychotic followers mourns Talvor's "unfortunate" death in the Red Dawn.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Talvor's strategies involved throwing day-vamps at the enemy until they're extinct.
• Bad Boss: Talvor mutilated his day-vamps, convinced them they deserved it, and forged them into savage killers. Even the psychotic Kryce is only as monstrous as he is because of Talvor's sadistic abuse.
• Big Brother Mentor: Talvor considers his soldiers like his younger siblings. In a horrific subversion, Talvor's view of being a 'brother' is to abuse, torture and brainwash them.
• Black-and-White Insanity: Anything that isn't a day-vamp is to be subject to slaughter or subjugation in Talvor's eyes.
• The Caligula: Talvor was a nutcase tyrant whose hold on Noon was based off fear and force, without which the House collapses into chaos. While his reign never extended beyond Noon, Kryce picking up his dormant Conflagration plan heavily implied Talvor wasn't just satisfied with just ruling Noon.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Talvor frequently and horribly tortured the day-vamps under his command to condition them into his genocidal little puppets.
• Dissonant Serenity: Talvor is calm, relaxed and soft-spoken in a scene of mass slaughter he's just orchestrated, gently chiding Avis for his revulsion as a father would a child.
• The Dreaded: Talvor is despised and feared as 'the lunatic Batlord' outside of Noon.
• Fantastic Racism: The ultimate extreme of it in Inoptica; Talvor's answer to the night-claws' existence is a Final Solution, and he and his inner circle of day-vamps are fanatical sadists who take horrible pleasure in their racist massacres.
• Final Solution: Talvor, Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence, has shaped in motion a plan he calls the "Red Dawn," wherein Noon will exterminate House Dusk to the absolute last. He also had backup plans to exterminate every other House save House Noon.
• Karmic Death: Killed with the war he began used as cover, by one of the day-vamps he so abused.
• Mask of Sanity: Emphasis on mask. Talvor can act superficially pleasant as he demonstrates in his only scene, but he's a psychopathic Nazi under it.
• Minor Major Character: Talvor receives a scarce few lines of dialogue before being axed in the opening scene. Despite this, his influence persists long after his own demise, as his prior abuse is instrumental to the motivations of Avis and Kryce and his murderous disciples continue to fight for his message well after his death.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Everything that transpires does so at the event of his death when he kickstarts the Red Dawn.
• Posthumous Character: Talvor dies right at the start, but his shadow hangs over the story even as the increasingly-complicated plan of the King and Queen becomes clear.
• The Purge: The Red Dawn is a brutal attempt to annihilate everything in House Dusk, and who knows if Talvor planned to even stop there.
• Slashed Throat: How Avis dispatches him, right in the center of his own battlefield.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Talvor dies right away, but the genocide he's initiated lingers long after he dies.
• The Unfettered: Talvor lets nothing stop him. Not rules, not morals, nothing. Everything will be destroyed or bow to him.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: The story opens with Talvor, and he sticks around for a few paragraphs before Avis cuts his throat.
• Would Hurt a Child: The children of House Noon were subject to savage purges, the same as any other "weakling" in his House, and night-claw children are emphatically not spared in his massacres.

Kryce

A commander in the Scorch and one of Talvor's understudies.

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• A Real Man Is a Killer: Kryce believes the truest leaders should be violent, savage killers like his mentor and idol Talvor.
• Alas, Poor Villain: For all his monstrosity, Kryce is a broken man under it all who was tortured into being a monster by Talvor. Even Avis pities him at the end when Kryce just sadly wants his pain to stop and embraces his demise.
• Ax-Crazy: Kryce is insane and will slaughter everything he finds with little provocation.
• Bastard Understudy: Worked under Talvor and inherited much of his ferocity and cruelty.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Like Avis, he's been savagely scarred by Talvor, tortured into his ways. Unlike Avis, he's embraced the savage violence that Talvor wanted him to.
• Big Brother Worship: Talvor wasn't his blood-brother, but Kryce worships the lunatic former Batlord all the same.
• Blood Knight: One of the most violent day-vamps out there, only outdone by Talvor himself—whom Kryce greatly admires and pledges his life to. He gets so into his work he accidentally burns the prisoner he was "interrogating" to death when he's already running out of captives, before ordering another prisoner set up for torture regardless.
• Blood Is the New Black: Kryce walks around in blood so much it might as well be a fashion statement.
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: A very dark example: Kryce is constantly soaked in blood, and he's as savage a fighter as anyone in Noon.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Kryce tortures the shit out of any night-claw unfortunate enough to fall into his talons.
• Devil in Plain Sight: Other Noon day-vamps underestimate Kryce and don't get how insane he truly is as he moves to take over.
• Dragon Ascendant: Once the right-hand of Talvor, after his death Kryce is the closest thing to a leader that Noon has, and he plans on carrying out Talvor's 'holocaust dreams.'
• Fantastic Racism: Anything not a day-vamp is to be tolerated at best, or exterminated preferably.
• Fighting from the Inside: He manages to even overpower the Red King and trap the monster within him to harness his power.
• Final Solution: Kryce intends on following in the footsteps of Talvor, aiming for nothing less than a straight up holocaust of other Houses.
• General Ripper: Kryce is a savage military leader in House Noon who will throw his soldiers into the meat grinder to slaughter his enemies.
• Kill It with Fire: When wielding the power of the Conflagration, Kryce's powers are incredibly potent flames.
• Mask of Sanity: Kryce is capable of conducting himself with rationality, but he's a broken savage under it, with no capacity to function if he's not hurting something else.
• Nice Mean And In Between: Of the King and Queen's three agents—Avis, Zada and himself—Kryce is the Mean. Despite having a significantly more sympathetic backstory than Zada, Kryce is a feral, insane brute who slaughters night-claw and day-vamp alike with horrific relish and eventually turns to trying to annihilate all life within Inoptica on Trick-Jack's manipulation.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Trick-Jack, in Talvor's form, gets into Kryce's head and pushes him into using the Conflagration to consume all life in Inoptica, even House Noon.
• The Purge: Kryce is savagely dedicated to exterminating anyone and anything that isn't on board with continuing Talvor's dreams of genocide. Even other day-vamps. Especially other day-vamps.
• Slasher Smile: Kryce wears some nasty grins, to say the least.
• Torture Technician: Kryce is a refined torturer and murderer, with his chosen craft being innocent night-claws.
• Tragic Villain: As much a monster as Kryce is, he was shaped into one: tortured and conditioned by the monstrous Talvor until he was nothing more than a cruel shell of himself.
• Undying Loyalty: His loyalty to Talvor is absolute, thanks to Talvor's savage conditioning of him.
• Unwitting Pawn: Kryce is pitifully simple to manipulate for Trick-Jack, who assumes the form of Talvor to sway him into chaotic violence against others.
• Would Hurt a Child: Kryce has no compunction seeing the weak slaughtered, even kids.

Visca

One of Talvor's soldiers, and the day-vamp who accompanies Avis as a delegate to Dawn.

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• Affably Evil: Visca's a genocidal Blood Knight like all the others who is cheerfully upfront about Talvor's genocidal intentions, which contrasts with how perfectly pleasant he seems outside of that and how chummy he is with Avis.
• Fed to the Beast: He's given to the hag-dogs by Avis, who despises seeing what he's become.
• Innocently Insensitive: What leads to his death. Visca, seeing Avis clearly distraught, reassures him by telling him that "brothers do what brothers do"... and then follows that up with a well-intentioned but horribly insensitive comment about the "perspective" that comes with slaughtering the night-claws, which prompts Avis to drag him off to Trick-Jack.
• Insistent Terminology: He corrects Hypraith in his disparaging reference to the day-vamps as "genocidal lunatics." They're genocidal radicals.
• Nothing Is Scarier: We don't quite see what Trick-Jack or the hag-dogs do to him when Avis hands him over.

Ralvant

One of Talvor's soldiers.

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• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: He suffered hideous, horrific abuse at the hands of Talvor, which turned him into a killing machine.
• Blood Knight: He's as savage and vicious as any of Talvor's other soldiers.
• Death by Flashback: The only time he appears is the first of Avis' flashbacks, and Avis is shown killing him quickly after.
• Ignored Epiphany: Ralvant suffered the monstrous abuse Talvor inflicted on his "brothers" just the same as Avis, and Avis pleads with Ralvant to stop by trying to appeal to this fact. Ralvant is affected for all of a second before continuing on with trying to kill Avis, resulting in Avis killing him.
• Off with His Head!: Avis dispatches him this way.
• Would Hurt a Child: The only time Ralvant is seen is when he's about to slaughter two night-claw children caught up in one of Talvor's attacks. Avis kills him to protect them.

Milivia

One of Noon's day-vamps, leader of the faction opposed to Kryce.

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• A Mother to Her Men: Milivia truly cares for the day-vamps under her command.
• Action Girl: The only female day-vamp glimpsed so far and a warrior to boot.
• Deadpan Snarker: She tends to react to the unexpected with dry wit about her.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Milivia goes out in a literal blaze of glory to protect Avis and Raphandas before they face Kryce.
• Enemy Mine: She does not like Avis at all, but working with him is necessary to prevent an apocalypse.
• Good Is Not Nice: She's the most moral day-vamp seen, but it doesn't mean she's pleasant about it.
• Only Sane Man: One of the few to reject Talvor's savagery and try to find more peaceful solutions.

House Dusk

Raphandas

The Pitchwraith, known informally as the Thief-King, and the lord of House Dusk.

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• A Father to His Men: In contrast to Talvor, Raphandas truly cares for Dusk and his night-claws.
• The Atoner: Much of what he's done is in response to the horrible tragedy and death he caused Dusk to go through in response to accept Trick-Jack's monstrous price in their Deal with the Devil.
• Berserk Button: Raphandas is calm and level with Jondi, until Jondi calls him "Thief-King" to his face, prompting Raphandas to seem to consider killing him as retribution.
• Body Horror: As a result of his punishment for reneging on dealings with Trick-Jack and the King and Queen, Raphandas has a series of red, visceral tendrils erupting from his chest and encircling his body.
• Deal with the Devil: Made one with Trick-Jack in the past to become human again. Trick-Jack's increasing demands, which climaxed at ordering the destruction of the other Houses, became too much, and Trick-Jack viciously punished him for it and now seeks to destroy him and Dusk utterly in revenge.
• Everyone Has Standards: What Talvor did to the day-vamps under his control absolutely horrifies and revolts him, enough to be talked out of killing Avis on the spot.
• My God, What Have I Done?: His past experiences with Trick-Jack have caused him no end of remorse.
• Only Sane Man: One of the most level headed and intelligent in the cast, who sees the stakes they are gambling with.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Raphandas is often level and calm, easily one of the more rational of the cast. However, when he sees Avis or any day-vamp, he goes flat out ballistic and it becomes clear that he's liable to snap at any moment.
• What the Hell, Hero?: A minor one to Jondi. While Raphandas recognizes he's not at fault for the evils of others, Raphandas states Jondi has done entirely too good a job at being a puppet.

Rook

The second-in-command of House Dusk, and the leader of the Bishops of the Night.

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• Eye Scream: In place of his eyes, he has purple diamonds thrust into his sockets.
• Malevolent Masked Men: Subverted. He and the Bishops certainly seem like this at first, but the only reason they wear their odd garb is to hide the effects of Trick-Jack's revenge on them, and Rook even gently chides Zyde and Rhett for not elucidating the reasons why earlier so not to rattle Jondi.
• Number Two: The "second-in-claw" of House Dusk, and Raphandas' loyal companion.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Much more pleasant and straight-on to Jondi than Raphandas is.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: Chapter 19 opens on him, making it seem as though he'll be the POV character. Then Trick-Jack kills him.

Zyde

One of the Bishops of the Night.

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• Those Two Guys: Serves as this with Rhett.

Rhett

One of the Bishops of the Night.

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• Those Two Guys: Serves as this with Zyde.

House Midnight

Jondi

An alcoholic former brood-surgeon who is given another chance to regain his old glory.

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• The Alcoholic: A miserable, washed-up wreck whose alcoholic habits got him kicked out of his position to begin with. Zada notes that walking away from the bar even half-drunk is more progress than he's ever had in ages.
• Broken Ace: Once one of the best of the best among the brood-surgeons—until his downfall into drug-addicted depression. His old skills and suggestion of minor improvement are enough for Hypraith to put him back on the field.
• Brutal Honesty: Jondi does not sugarcoat things, as hard as the truth may be at points.
• Cool Old Guy: When you get to know Jondi better, he's a pretty damn awesome guy, as old as he is.
• Dr. Jerk: Jondi is firmly committed to his practice and the salvation of lives, but he's blunt, unpleasant, and joyless, and he doesn't make an effort to tone down that behavior in front of anyone.
• Drowning My Sorrows: One of the main reason Jondi went down as hard as he did. His life being filled with such awful, constant death eventually prompted him to escape the chaos through diamond-lotus and alcohol.
• The Eeyore: Need some cheer and optimism? Too bad, you won't find it with the relentless pessimist Jondi.
• Good Is Not Nice: He's stodgy and grumpy, but he has a good heart under all of it.
• Grumpy Old Man: Jondi is an older guy, and decidedly very grumpy with little friendliness or open affection for others.
• Hidden Depths: Jondi is a much more contemplative, sad fellow under his jerk persona and he's revealed to truly value Zada, her optimism and her care of him.
• Insistent Terminology: He's pretty fond of calling Avis 'kid.'
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Jondi is not a nice guy, but he cares about others, particularly Zada, deep down.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Jondi has saved many lives, but his bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired.
• Living Macguffin: People are after Jondi for a reason, with the White Queen hinting he holds the key to worlds entire.
• Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: Jondi is gruff and isolates himself from others, but he's a good person and a caring doctor.
• Morality Pet: Zada is the one who brings out the best in the abrasive Jondi.
• Older Hero Versus Younger Villain: Jondi is referred to as 'old' at times, and when Zada is revealed as the villain, she's clearly his junior.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: All he's seen have left Jondi with a horrible bedside manner.
• Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter: When Jondi is taken in the moon-attack, he dares his abductor to just take him and get it over with, to no avail.
• What You Are in the Dark: With Wydel and Avis dying in front of him, Jondi resolves to save them, even though they're of Houses Dawn and Noon with Avis having done little to justify Jondi's devotion to saving him.

Zada (MAJOR UNMARKED SPOILERS)

(Credit)

An auditor in House Midnight, and the aide to Jondi. She's revealed in chapter 17 to be the champion of the White Queen.

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• A Million Is a Statistic: Don't sweat the small stuff. Even when the small stuff is countless members of her own House and others ending up as corpses.
• Affably Evil: A wicked Lack of Empathy or not, Zada is still as sincerely pleasant and cheerful as she is when she's holding up the mask. She doesn't even seem to bear Avis, who attempts to murder her, any ill will.
• All-Loving Hero: Subverted. Zada presents herself as being the most heroic character seen yet, feigning empathy and compassion (which she doesn't actually have) for everyone in Inoptica.
• Assassin Outclassin': Trick-Jack dismisses her use when Avis proves more convenient to him and orders him to kill Zada. Zada nearly kills him instead, leading to her accepted back while Avis is left to die.
• Animal Lover: A very unorthodox example, but Zada is the Inoptican equivalent of a zoologist, raising and caring for its native fauna (which are eldritch abominations called the Brood) in her laboratory. They all seem to love her back.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Zada is nice. She's pleasant, friendly and incapable of genuine malice. She's aso capable of murdering thousands without any emotion whatsoever.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Played with. Zada really is Affably Evil, doesn't behave drastically different from the straight-edged, perky Nice Girl she appears to be when she reveals her treachery, and she doesn't even seem to bear the concept of any genuine malice or evil. It's just that the Lack of Empathy she's griped with with all her life has left her, after a point, uncaring to the "little things"—even if those little things are hundreds of fellow wing-sages.
• Break the Cutie: The attack of the Brood does a horrible number on her, reducing her to tears at the mere memory of it, though it's possible there never really was much to break, as Zada remarks she's felt "wrong" inside ever since she crossed into Inoptica.
• Broken Tears: Upon her exile from Inoptica, Zada can only weep sadly, even without eyes.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: A completely platonic example, but Zada is the cheerful foil to Jondi's perpetual glumness.
• Character Tics: Zada has a tendency to brush locks of hair out of her eyes when she's feeling sheepish.
• The Chessmaster: Zada is as least a good as manipulator as Avis, and has outplayed everyone, even Avis being caught off guard to a degree by her.
• Combat Pragmatist: She's lightning-fast, but she doesn't have the stamina to keep up in prolonged combat with people like Avis. To accommodate, Zada has a tendency to strike when her opponents are distracted, no matter why, using Avis' moment of paralyzed horror when he accidentally strikes Wydel to get him In the Back. The next time Zada encounters him, Zada simply light-bends Wydel out of Avis' reach without ever giving away her position to Avis himself.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Razmin from Mirrorworld. Both are spies for the antagonists subject to reveals concerning their true loyalty around halfway, but the contrasts are numerous. Aesthetically, Razmin is a night-claw associated with darkness, whereas Zada is a wing-sage associated with blinding white light; character-wise, Razmin was a Regretful Traitor suffocated by her own guilt for the amount of death her treachery inadvertently caused while doing everything she can for a good cause, particularly House Dusk, whereas Zada simply can't care about the lives she expends, arranging for the death of hundreds of her own people for her own goals.
• Dark Action Girl: Zada puts up the image of being a docile wing-sage with no combat training whatsoever. Turns out she's good enough to keep up and beat Avis.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: She befriends the Watcher itself, making it her partner in her scheming.
• Even Evil Has Standards: For everything she's lied about, Zada's distaste for the Red Dawn seems to be entirely sincere. Her entire plot for the King and Queen seems to be her own scheme meant to prove the Red Dawn and all the death that goes with it as unnecessary.
• Evil All Along: Zada spends the first half of the story as a good guy and Jondi's closest friend, until it's revealed that not only is she aligned with Trick-Jack, she's responsible for the botched moon-strike in chapter four.
• The Exile: Her final fate is permanent exile from Inoptica, to Earth.
• Eye Scream: Jondi takes out her right eye, and it's covered by a white, moon-shaped eyepatch from then on.
• The Extremist Was Right: A twisted instance: Zada puts the person she's fascinated with, Jondi—a formerly great brood-surgeon who collapsed into ineffectual alcoholism and drug abuse to become a shell of his former self—through absolute hell to try and really prove he has what it takes to reach greatness again. Jondi ruminates it worked.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Zada outwardly is pleasant, smiley, and has a cute-as-a-button face. Behind it, Zada is a calculating, amoral mass murderer incapable of feeling anything but detached regret for the hundreds of lives she destroys and the hell she puts her own charge Jondi through in attempting to "better" him.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Among the auditors, Zada is seen as weird and creepy. Looking closer reveals exactly why they think that.
• Genki Girl: Perky and upbeat as Jondi is downcast. Which is to say, very. She's only slightly more somber when she reveals herself as a villain and generally remains a Perky Female Minion.
• Hidden Depths: At her core, Zada is far, far more than the giggly, perky wing-sage she appears to be on the outside.
• Lack of Empathy: Zada's moral compass is defunct by her own admission and has been for as long as she's been in Inoptica. Dubbing herself a "researcher" of those sorts of emotions, years of seeing people die and suffer without being able to foster proper emotional connections to them have left her unable to care for her fellows, instead focusing on the one thing that's become closest thing she's reached to a truly good thing in her life.
• Loners Are Freaks: Zada is seen as isolated and creepy by others. Turns out this is accurate. Zada is a maladjusted sociopath who can kill hundreds of people just as easily as she can shake someone's hand.
• Mad Scientist: Styles herself as a "researcher" and even has a decked-out laboratory beneath the bowels of the White Queen's castle. She's the pioneer of the devoiding technique, a process that involves robbing an individual of everything but their sheer will, which will have greater repercussions in the future.
• Morality Pet: Initially appears to be this to Jondi, who isn't even but is a self-loathing, alcoholic jerkass with his glory days long behind him. Zada's influence helps to get him back on track as a brood-surgeon, and she directly gives him the opportunity to join the moon-strike. It turns out it's the exact opposite way around; Jondi is the only truly positive aspect Zada has in the present day, and she utterly refuses to hurt him even when he attacks her.
• Moral Sociopathy: She can't understand what makes good people "good" but she's dedicated her life to researching it—in this case, Jondi. In-between arranging mass murder in the name of the White Queen, Zada peppers her atrocities with small bits of "frivolity" and stresses she wants to see the world preserved and bettered as opposed to torched to the ground.
• My Greatest Failure: She takes the attack hard, especially losing her charge Jondi to capture.
• Nice Mean And In Between: Of the King and Queen's three primary agents—Avis, Kryce and herself—Zada is the Nice. She lacks Avis' conscience and she's a dedicated agent of the King and Queen who ruthlessly manipulates the death of hundreds of her own kind, but she's also sincerely Affably Evil incapable of genuine malice as she is incapable of genuine benevolence, and unlike Kryce's savagery and eventual attempts at killing all life in Inoptica, is actively working so at least some of Inoptica's population will survive.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Growls this at Avis when he attempts to decry her actions: "I won't say I did anything worse than you have."
• Perky Female Minion: To the Red King and White Queen. None of her cheerful nature is really a farce and she's by far the most Affably Evil of the King and Queen's servitors, even if that doesn't place her on any higher moral standing than them.
• Perpetual Smiler: It's rare Zada doesn't have a big grin on her face. Even when she's a villain, it takes nothing short of harming Jondi directly to get her to drop the smile.
• Pet the Dog: Much of it appears to be her attempts at aping Jondi and his buried All-Loving Hero tendencies, but she peppers her dark plans with small acts of benevolence:
  • While she's not above attacking Avis with young Wydel in the center of the fray, Zada clearly doesn't want to involve Wydel in the battle, urges her to get out and is nothing but patient with Wydel when Wydel ends up captured and brought to the Pane.
  • Zada dismisses it as "frivolity"—and given who she is, it probably was—but there's an uncharacteristically selfless motive in sparing Keane from the attack on Midnight.
  • Zada cares for and raises Brood in her laboratory, so many of them her laboratory is described as an "eldritch zoo."
• Photographic Memory: Zada's keen wing-sage mind allow her to remember things to the minute details.
• Red Right Hand: Once she's ousted a villain, Jondi takes her right eye out, forcing her to cover it under an eyepatch.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: She's the perky, cheery, energetic foil to Jondi's savvy, glum persona.
• Servile Snarker: She'll listen to Jondi. She'll still insult him doing it, however.
• The Sociopath: Played for drama. Zada doesn't seem capable of deep emotions and can't care for others beyond superficial levels. She seems aware of this, but it doesn't seem to change it.
• Tragic Villain: Her predicament isn't on the same level as Kryce, but Zada's status as The Sociopath anguishes her as much as it does others. She's attempted in the past numerous times to mitigate her damage (and she still does in the present day) with no success, and she's long given up on any real notion of overcoming her nature because she knows nobody's ever going to save her from it.
• Uncanny Valley Girl: Zada's pleasant, seemingly well-meaning and docile, and looks adorable, but there's mentioned to be something off and creepy about her. She seems to be the perfect kind of girl to lift Jondi out of his rut and back into greatness, and in a roundabout way she does, but Zada is secretly a broken sociopath willing to annihilate the majority of her own race.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Zada "rationalizes" her actions as this, seeing a few-hundred lives snuffed out as irrelevant to Jondi whom she believes will change everything—though it's unlikely this is out of any genuine benevolent intent given who she is. On another note, she flip-flops between serving the wishes of decidedly not well-intentioned deities and attempting to mitigate their long-term damage when their alternative is to butcher everything.
• Would Hurt a Child: Downplayed. Zada views Wydel as nothing but an Unwitting Pawn for most of the story, but is still adamant alongside Avis that Wydel stay out of their battle. It's Wydel's repeated insistence on stepping in the way that makes her a target to Zada; pushed to her limit at the very end, Zada gleefully attempts to cut Wydel down to get a free shot on Ahandi-Jack, but still states beforehand in any other case killing a child "wouldn't be my first option. Or my second. Or my hundredth."
• Walking Spoiler: Her being a villain isn't revealed until seventeen chapters into the story, and her presence changes a lot about the game until then.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: She's on both ends of this:
  • Trick-Jack admonishes her for not doing her task quite as well as Avis has, and attempts to have her killed by Avis for having become a liability. Zada ends up turning the tables on Avis and nearly killing him instead.
  • More implicitly, but Zada pulls this on Hypraith, whom she's been playing the entire story, killing him just as he's decided to have seconds thoughts on ruling the House.
• You Will Be Spared: Though she's working to ensure greater populations of Inoptica stay alive (as opposed as to what would happen in Kryce's Conflagration plan) Zada singles out Keane before she initiates the destruction of the Lunatheneum. It's based more on arbitrary "frivolity" more than anything given Zada's lack of a conscience, but Zada does single her out because she was one of the few auditors who didn't mock her.

Hypraith

The Farseer, and the lord of House Midnight.

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• Bystander Syndrome: Hypraith promotes this as a House ideology: he's fully capable of stepping into intervene with the Red Dawn, but chooses not to to promote Midnight keeping to its own affairs.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Turned to glass from the inside-out by Zada's needle, and turned afterward into Trick-Jack's soulless puppet.
• Dirty Coward: It's hinted the major reason he takes such a distant approach to the conflict of the other Houses and why he gets so stirred up over Ahandi's failure to control the Red Dawn is because he's worried about his own neck ending up on the line.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Hypraith seems to become cognizant of how much harm his self-serving rule has caused, but before he can act to even begin to fix them, Zada plants the White Queen's needle in his heart to turn him into glass.
• Heel Realization: Hypraith has one of these shortly before Zada kills him, realizing his cowardice and ineptitude may have cost hundreds of his own soldiers needlessly on top of the already-botched moon-strike and considering simply acceding to another to stop himself from damaging the House any more.
• Jerkass: Snide, confrontational, and disrepectful even toward Ahandi.
• Hypocrite: Chews out Ahandi for mismanaging the Red Dawn crisis, only for Avis to bring up Hypraith's own persistent case of Bystander Syndrome and how he's done even less than she has, enraging him.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Hypraith is unreasonably against the prospect of working with Dawn even with the potential of all-out war sparking, and applies a "not my problem" mentality to not only himself but the House as a whole.
• Pet the Dog: Coarse as he is, his temperament doesn't seem to extend to other wing-sages, and he drops the contemptuousness entirely to gently excuse Zada when she breaks down in tears in the middle of the debate.
• Unwitting Pawn: Of Zada, who specifically got him to trust her to play him like a fiddle. Once he's done with, Zada executes him with a smile on her face.

Vinn

A recent addition to the brood-surgeons, and a wing-sage Jondi saved years ago during a moon-strike.

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• Birds of a Feather: The pun aside, Vinn is like a male Zada: chirpy, energetic, friendly, and capable of talking and laughing for immense amounts of time, a situation that annoys the living hell out of Jondi when both Zada and Vinn start talking each other's ears off.
• Naïve Newcomer: To the brood-surgeons. He had practice in the field with the Moonguard, but by the time Jondi meets Vinn on the field, he's only been a brood-surgeon for twelve days.
• Nice Guy: Cheerful, gracious, and full of nothing but praise for Jondi for having inspired him long ago.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Vinn is the first named character with over a chapter of page-time to die in the story to illustrate the threat of the conspiracy.

Others

Trick-Jack

The strange Humanoid Abomination serving as the emissary to the Red King and the White Queen.

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• A Million Is a Statistic: Trick-Jack views the extermination of House Dusk as simply a method of 'sacrificing pawns.'
• Badass Boast: "The corpses I've left behind would fill empires."
• Big Sister Instinct: After Ahandi drains Trick-Jack's blood, Trick-Jack dies, but incarnates within Ahandi, erasing her as an individual but taking on aspects of her personality and memories, but becomes just as protective of Wydel.
• Break Them by Talking: Trick-Jack loves using cold manipulation to shatter people.
• Conflict Ball: Trick-Jack weaponizes it, creating conflicts or stoking them and handing off the ball to its agents to cause even more chaos.
• Death of Personality: After the fight with Wydel, the wicked and sadistic Trick-Jack is gone, replaced by some strange blend of Ahandi and the original without the latter's cruelty.
• Divide and Conquer: Trick-Jack is keeping the Houses divided, stoking conflicts to keep them at one another's throats.
• Doppelgänger: Referred to as one numerous times, due to its tendency to shapeshift into a double of the person it's talking with.
• The Dragon: To the King and Queen, loyally enacting their bidding and ensuring their servants are acting within the "rules of the game."
• Eldritch Abomination: Trick-Jack's true nature appears to be a shifting, monstrous, maddening shape; a perfect representation of its vicious, chaotic nature.
• Faux Affably Evil: Strange and sinister, but pleasantly-spoken, amicable, and with a liking for "games." All this seems to be to further screw with people, as it's a cunning sadist who doesn't appreciate backtalk underneath that.
• The Gadfly: A much, much darker version that usual; Trick-Jack wears the form of other people in order to unnerve and scare them, delighting itself in their reactions and adding personal, petty details—such as trailing Avis' scars in Talvor's forms with its claws—to get deeper under their skin.
• Glass Cannon: Under the trickery and horrific imagery, Trick-Jack turns out to be this—at least, on a bodily level, as Ahandi destroys its physical body with relative ease when she catches it.
• The Heavy: With the Red King and White Queen largely offscreen, Trick-Jack serves as the main antagonistic force in the story proper.
• Humanoid Abomination: It looks humanoid, but from it constantly shapeshifting into other people and the hints of Glamour Failure we get from it showcase it most certainly isn't.
• Kick the Dog: Trick-Jack uses Jondi's form to order Zada's death, knowing it will be very painful for her to see.
• Manipulative Bastard: Trick-Jack is setting up a lot of pieces to go where it wants.
• Mouth of Sauron: Serves as this to the as-of yet unseen King and Queen, relaying their orders directly.
• Not Quite Dead: Ahandi appears to kill it at the end of chapter nineteen. Its essence instead overwhelms her.
• Sadist: It's fairly understated about it, but for all the talk of everything it does being in the name of the King and Queen, it sure does seem to love salting the wounds it deals.
• Shapeshifter Guilt Trip: Trick-Jack loves using forms to tug at heartstrings, notably using Wydel's form against Ahandi.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Trick-Jack is quiet and soft-spoken, but a devious killer who relishes the chaos it causes.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Trick-Jack adjusts its long-running plans on the seeming fly, happily discarding pawns and placing new ones into the new 'positions' when need be. When it tries to pull off You Have Outlived Your Usefulness on Zada, Zada turns the tables on her aggressor, resulting in Trick-Jack immediately welcoming her back as a replacement.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Trick-Jack does this on grand and small scales alike. An entire House can be discarded and dispatched, or individual pawns. When their use runs out, they kick.

The Red King & White Queen (unmarked spoilers)

"Heretic."

The mysterious, godlike rulers of Mid.

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• Alice Allusion: Their names are references to the same-titled characters in Through the Looking Glass—who were, appropriately enough, the head pieces on a chessboard.
• Apocalypse How: They intend to exterminate most of Inoptica, and possibly even Earth.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: They're the ones behind the Red Dawn, Zada's schemes, and all the misery in the plot.
• Eldritch Abomination: They're very, very heavily hinted to be this; they're godly, nearly inconceivable entities that Jondi only sees a few terrifying glimpses of, rulers of another dimension, beings that were too powerful for the krylyrk—a fellow godlike horror—to handle, and best of all, they're the parents of the horrific monsters known as the Brood, and Trick-Jack, itself a Humanoid Abomination.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: They're most aggrieved over the children they've lost.
• Evil Versus Oblivion: Either the Red King scorches all in his red fires, or everything in the White Queen's diamond light shall lose all free will. Both are horrible.
• Kaiju: From the glimpse of its true form, they're gigantic. The White Queen is over a thousand feet high, and that's coiled around her throne.
• Monster Progenitor: The original generation of Brood, as well as Trick-Jack, are all their kids.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: The krylyrk was dangerous enough, and nearly godlike, but the King and Queen are at least able to rival the Watcher themselves, and may even be stronger.
• Unholy Matrimony: They're an item, with Trick-Jack as their first child, and they're certainly wicked.
• The Worf Effect: The krylyrk, the Big Bad of the original Mirrorworld, is noted to have tried to colonize Mid first. The King and Queen did not take kindly to this.

Tropes exclusive to the White Queen

"there is little better to unearth than your own repressed darkness, is there not?"

• all lowercase letters: How her dialogue is written, which gives it a peculiar dissonance compared to her massive size.
• Breaking Speech: The White Queen gives a devastating one to Jondi when he sees her, making it clear how little he means to her.
• Faux Affably Evil: Like parent, like child. The White Queen is pleasant, but sinister and callous when she speaks to Jondi.
• Light Is Not Good: The White Queen embodies lustrous diamond light, rules over a city made of diamonds and mirror, and every single part of her is blinding white. She's decidedly not anywhere near benevolent in spite of that.
• Mama Bear: She loves her children and woe betide anyone who may harm them.
• Mind Rape: The White Queen specializes in bathing her victims in diamond light, removing their free will until all that remains is the service to her.
• Person of Mass Destruction: She's incredibly powerful, capable of wiping out entire armies of Inoptican Houses against her without much by way of effort.
• Portal Cut: when she's lured to earth in the fight against Jondi and the Watcher, the latter cuts off the portal when she's partially through it. Enough to even cut diamond.
• Snakes Are Sinister: The White Queen looks like a leviathan-sized serpent from the glimpse we see of her.

Tropes exclusive to the Red King

"CINDERS AND ASHES I AND MY BELOVED HAVE LEFT OF YOUR WORLD AND COUNTLESS OTHERS, LITTLE UPLIFTED PRIMITIVE. ARE YOU IMPRESSED WITH MY COLLECTION? GO AHEAD AND BASK!"

• And I Must Scream: His victims are taken in his flames to burn and scream forever, within a macabre 'collection.'
• Face Death with Dignity: He takes his demise pretty well, congratulating Avis on destroying him.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He underestimates Kryce, his new champion, when he takes his body to manifest and Kryce ends up overwhelming him within.
• Hot Wings: Many wings, all burning with blazing flame.
• Kill It with Fire: The Red King's choice of attack is to bathe everything in pure flame.
• Papa Wolf: Evil verion, but he's highly protective of his dark brood.
• The Phoenix: He resembles a mighty phoenix.