This is a subpage of Thorn Universe listing characters from Dora Wilk Series, Shaman Blues and The Girl from the Miracles District.
Magicals are supernatural beings that come from Earth rather than Heaven or Hell. Encompassing everything from paganic gods, witches, elves and dwarves to vampires and werewolves, they are by far the most diverse of the three groups, and most likely to manifest among regualar people. They mostly live in cities built in parallel realm, such as Thorn (perpendicular to Toruń) or Triple Alliance (perpendicular to Three-City).
For vampires and werewolves, see here.
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Magical creatures
Dora
Teodora "Dora" Wilk
"Don't believe all you've heard about me - unless you've heard I'm awesome. Then the rumours aren't exaggerated."
Nominally a half-Northern Witch, half-Fertility Witch, with a dash of werewolf, Dora is the main protagonist and narrator of her eponymous series. With both of her parents manifesting none of their supernatural genes, Dora was raised among humans, and continues to do so until the events of the first book force her to move to Thorn. Her experience as a police officer makes her a go-to person for the Thorn Council whenever supernatural trouble is about.
- Action Girl: Dora's a trained policewoman and kickboxer, and even discounting her magic, she's well-capable of punching most of physical obstacles in her way into submission.
- The Ageless: Her power-up, combined with near-death experience she has in Soul Thief, accidentally immortalized her body, rendering her this.
- All-Loving Hero: She has a knack for seeing the best in people, and thus makes new friends in the least expected places, like a den of werewolves or the court of Crimson Prince.
- All the Other Reindeer: How she felt in her own family, apparently. She's mentioned to have a fairly large family, but her magic powers, combined with unusual for her family looks brought about by them, alienated her from them.
- But Not Too Bi: Nevertheless, for most of the story pretty much all romantic interests of hers are men.
- The Cavalry: In Shaman Blues, she comes to the rescue when Witkacy and Katia have to face down an unusually powerful witch.
- Close to Home: Abuse in any form, but especially domestic abuse.
- Commitment Issues: It's implied very heavily that this is a huge problem for Dora. Being a fertility witch, she's used to one-night flings necessary for her to "charge up" to survive, and has a powerset necessary to obtain energy. This makes her afraid to engage in any sort of meaningful relationship with someone she's honestly attracted to, because she's worried that the other side's affection is nothing more than her subconsciously influencing them, and thus not actually true. It takes Miron time to work through this.
- Deadpan Snarker: Likes to point out stupidity and loves her deadpan comments.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: Part of her power package are precognitive dreams, often sent to her by Badb, Faoilinara or Mother Earth to warn her of something.
- Fiery Redhead: She's read, and has a short fuse.
- Fish out of Water: In supernatural world, to some extent. Before Soul Thief, her association with supernatural world was largely passing, and as a result, she knows nothing about political manoevuering, interracial relationships and other problems.
- Guile Hero: While powerful, she's nowhere near the top of the food chain. A lot of her Character Development, such as it is, centers on her morphing slowly into skilled politicial and manipulator.
- The Hero: Her position in the team.
- Hot Witch: As part-Feritility Witch, she's rather hot out of necessity.
- Hypocritical Humor: Claims to dislike shippers shortly before shipping Olaf and Inga.
- I Don't Want to Ruin Our Friendship: Her initial reasoning for why she doesn't want to get involved with Miron, as she's confident that it wouldn't work out and they'd be unable to remain friends afterwards.
- Indifferent Beauty: Being a woman of action, Dora doesn't care much for her looks, often putting practicality before showing off. She is a Hot Witch, though.
- Interspecies Romance: With Miron, full-blood devil.
- Lineage Comes from the Father: Underplayed - while her Fertility Witch heritage comes from her mother, her Northern Witch and Werewolf heritage both come from her father.
- Magnetic Hero: Thanks to her being a Naïve Newcomer and All-Loving Hero, and thus able to see past the cold exterior of many people, she slowly amasses a group of devoted friends and allies.
- Meaningful Name: Wilk, Polish for Wolf. It foreshadows her ties to werewolves. Characters in-universe speculate that her family name comes from one of the ancestors being husband of Faoilinara, werewolf goddess.
- Muggles Do It Better: She's actually using her gun more often than her spellcraft, and prefers a Beretta to a hex, as it's faster and less likely to be countered by enemy magical.
- Naïve Newcomer: In short story Devil's Primrose, she casually enters a hellians' pub, completely unaware that witches aren't well-met there, and continues to visit it to read, completely oblivious to other hellians feeling uncomfortable with her presence. She retains her total blindness to racial issues throughout the series, which often leads to others assuming she's naive.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: Over the course of the story, she gains (roughly in order): a Guardian bond with an angel, magic power-up, functional immortality, wolf heritagenote , telepathic bond with angel and devil, and cool swordfighting skills.
- Next Tier Power-Up: At the end of Soul Thief, she accidentally absorbed energy of Thief's victims, making her near-immortal, cutting off her need to charge herself up with magic and giving her tremendous power boost.
- The Nicknamer: She has nicknames for most people, and nicknames villains when she doesn't know their names.
- Nonhuman Humanoid Hybrid: She's a hybrid of two Mage Species with a dash of werewolf. Oddly enough, both of her parents were outwardly human - she only inherited the non-human genes.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: While in no way an experienced politician, Dora likes to play up her Naïve Newcomer qualities to get her opponents to lower their guard - and to get through legal and savour-vivre-related obstacles faster.
- Occult Detective: Works this way when still in human police, as she's the only one to know she's magical, and thus the only one to be capable of solving more supernatural issues.
- Official Couple: With Miron in the latter half of her series.
- Power Trio: With Miron as The Lancer and Joshua as The Heart.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red to Witkacy's Blue.
- Relative Button: Threatening her family is a surefire way for anyone to get wrecked.
- Shipper on Deck: Despite claiming to dislike shipping, Dora plain loves it, and delights in opportunity to help Olaf and Inga make things work, almost-blackmails Gabe into helping Joshua work things out with Laoise and starts to think of Bjorn and Alina as a couple when the two have known each other for less than an hour.
- Team Mom: The most motherly of the main cast, and taking care for her "charges" physical and spiritual well-being. A good shoulder to cry on, too.
- Troll: She likes to snipe verbally at people she doesn't like when she knows they can't hurt her, and her way of dealing with Albin involves casting cutesy illusions in the middle of his own house.
- Will They or Won't They?: Played with her and Miron in the first three books, though readers with even cursory knowledge of literary romance will know the resolution from the outset.
- Mage Species: She's a half-blood of two witch species, a Northern Witch (with combat magic, fueled by sea breeze), and Fertility Witch (glamour and fertility magic, fueled by sex).
Witkacy
Piotr "Witkacy" Duszyński
"Deep down, we're all afraid that if we were to show our loved ones who we really are, they'd run away screaming."
A melancholic cop tired of life and past a wide variety of experiments with less-than-legal substances. Witkacy is Dora's partner in the police, and seems to be her Muggle Best Friend at first. However, he finds out that he is supernatural himself, being a shaman - something he was unaware of for the first forty years of his life. Protagonist and narrator of Shaman Blues.
- Amicable Exes:
- Him and Katia have a pretty good working relationship, and even frienship, with Katia - Witkacy is actually relieved when she tells him they're not a couple anymore, as being exes makes it easier for him to figure out how to interact with her.
- He grows into this with Konstancja for the sake of the children they save and his daughter.
- Aura Vision: He can see other people's auras.
- Beta Couple: With Katia for middle four books. They break up behind the scenes, too.
- Blessed with Suck: For the first forty years of his life, he's been raised among humans and thought of his powers this way. The only effects they had on him were the bad ones - the strange lights he couldn't explain, glimpses of ghosts, drive to try as many drugs as he possibly could without killing himself. By the time of the story, he's melancholic, and likely battling depression.
- Defective Detective: He's an expert on pretty much all psychodelic substances known to mankind from experience and has traits of severe depression.
- Does Not Like Magic: Even after over a year of knowing of Thorn and learning magic in it, he's still wary of it and dislikes more overt examples of magic powers, like the portal between Toruń and Thorn.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: Quick to note that for all his supposed usefulness - he's one of very few specialists in death magic in Poland - the Council treats him little better than a temp worker.
- Expy: To John Constantine, sharing somewhat the profession, affinity to magic and blonde hair. The author doesn't exactly hide it.
◊ - First-Person Smartass: While he rarely speaks and is rather melancholic when he does so, he's very much a Deadpan Snarker in his head.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: He gave up his car keys so that he woudln't kill anyone while driving, doesn't think highly of himself and considers himself unreliable, but he has an unwavering sense of justice and Dora trusts him to watch her back.
- Higher Understanding Through Drugs: Crossing over to the other side requires him to use various drugs.
- Incompletely Trained: After a year of training, which can't be fast thanks to his police work, he still lacks a lot of knowledge, and it's made even worse thanks to the fact that he might be the only shaman in Poland, so he lacks a proper mentor. He notes himself that if he was properly-trained, half of the mystery in Shaman Blues could be solved in minutes.
- The Insomniac: He rarely sleeps more than three hours. He attributes this to scores of sleeping pills he used to be taking.
- Living Lie Detector: His affinity to souls lets him know to some extent whether someone lies or not.
- Luke, You Are My Father: Turns out he has a daughter with Konstancja, and the woman sends the girl to tell him herself.
- I See Dead People: As a shaman, this is his main power.
- Magic Music: His tools of trade are bells and rattles, and he often hums to augment his magic.
- Magnetic Medium: Ghosts try to seek him out so that they can cross over to the afterlife.
- Men Can't Keep House: Inverted; his house is very well-kept and he gets annoyed when Vulture starts to turn it into a mess.
- Misplaced Wildlife: How he jokes about himself; what is an American-style shaman doing in Poland, anyway?
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Pretty much no-one refers to him as Piotr, with everyone calling him Witkacy.
- Platonic Life-Partners: With Dora. They're good friends and work partners, but it's clear there's no romantic or sexual tension between the two.
- Put on a Bus: In Dora Wilk Series, he's relegated to the background after book one, only coming back briefly in Exorcisms. Remedied by his own spin-off series.
- The Quiet One: He rarely speaks, preferring to observe, listen and brood.
- Secret-Keeper: Covers up for Dora several times when she has to leave on supernatural business even before he finds out what she - and he - truly is.
- Soul Power: His abilities relate to manipulating sounds.
- The Stoner: A dramatic example. He used to take a lot of drugs in subconscious attempts to connect with the spirit world, even giving Aneta his driving license and car keys, because he didn't trust himself. He straightens out thanks to Dora telling him what he really is.
- Tranquil Fury: When he's angry, he gives a Death Glare that makes supernatural spirits back off, but the most physical he gets when furious is clutching a glass so tight it shatters.
- Welcomed to the Masquerade: Dora introduces him to the world of magicals.
Nikita
Nikita
A daughter of a berserk and a human, Dora's once-girlfriend and a professional assassin working for a guild called Order of Shadows. She's emotionally cold and an expert killer, but her relationship with Dora is rather friendly, if spiced with a lot of vitriol. Protagonist and narrator of The Girl from the Miracles District.
- Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Dark-haired, with quite a reputation in the Order, and definitely aloof to everyone.
- Amicable Exes: With Dora, despite the interactions between the two having shades of Vitriolic Best Buds. When she finds out that her latest targets are Dora's best friend and his half-brother, she drops the hit.
- Animal Motifs: Associated with the praying mantis.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted; she's beaten up pretty badly in her first solo outing.
- The Berserker: Nikita is a berserk, granting her lust for battle, superhuman strength and the urge to murder everyone around her. She's not happy with that.
- Black Shirt: She's noted as hiring shapeshifters to act as this fairly often.
- Blood Lust: When she goes berserk, she has the urge to drink her enemies' blood.
- Big Little Sister: To Kosma, her half-brother. He's older than her by good five centuries, but Nikita seems to be the protective one.
- Church Militant: A strange case. The Order of Shadows was a Catholic Church-created organization, which would technically put Nikita in this category. But with the Order being created to fight magicals, and magicals being explicitly members of it in present day, it's unclear what its ties to Catholic Church are.
- Cold Sniper: She's an Emotionless Girl with a sniper rifle.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Her father, Ernest, was a berserk nicknamed "The Mad" and an all-around abusive bastard. Nikita's mother, Liliana/Irena, eventually run away, taking Nikita with her, but the damage has already been done. Then, she's been kidnapped by Ernest and her mother decided she didn't give a damn, and she had to be rescued by Dora.
- Dark Secret: She hides the fact that she's a berserk from everyone, because if her mother knew, she'd turn Nikita into a living weapon.
- Early-Bird Cameo: She's mentioned as Kosma's sister and Dora's ex in book two, and only appears properly in book three.
- Emotionless Girl: She's emotionally cold and distant. Dora calls her incapable of compassion, fear or love, though her own perspective shows that she is - she just prefers not to show it.
- Experimented in College: She and Dora were an item during their magic training, and neither has been mentioned as having other girlfriends since.
- Fingore: She misses little fingers on both of her hands. She lost them when her father cut them off to send them to her mother.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Her father is a berserk, while her mother is a human, albeit one who's somehow made herself immortal.
- Hitman with a Heart: She drops the hit on Joshua and Nathaniel when she finds out why they were ordered and that Dora is involved.
- Hulking Out: When she goes berserk, she gains an extra feet of height, bulks up and grows More Teeth than the Osmond Family.
- Humanshifting: Her berserk powers let her change her facial features to some extent.
- I Have Many Names: She has several dozen false identities to use in her various hideouts.
- Innate Night Vision: She can see in the dark better than a regular human, and her night vision is near-perfect when she berserks.
- Involuntary Shapeshifting: She has very little control over her transformation, which is mostly controlled by her body heat and adrenaline levels.
- I Work Alone: Ever since her attempted hit on Dora, she's been working alone, and doesn't take well to her mother attempting to press partners on her; she mentions she got rid, one way or another, of seventeen of those before Robin came up.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: When she turns berserk, her jaw bones stretch to accomodate all of her fangs.
- Murder, Inc.: She works for Order of Shadows, who are pretty much an assassin's guild.
- Power Nullifier: She willingly wears one in form of a spinal implant that lowers her adrenaline levels, stunning her shift into a berserk.
- Professional Killer: She's a professional assassin.
- Properly Paranoid: She has multiple false identities, dozens of hideouts, and a mindset of a woman perpetually on the run, despite having a job, and living in one city all the time. This being said, the events of The Girl... prove her right.
- Red Baron: Her co-workers nicknamed her the Mantis after she blew the head off a guy who tried to force himself on her.
- Separated at Birth: With her twin brother Ture.
- Super-Strength: When in berserk form, Nikita is strong enough to smash a man's head open.
- Shout-Out: An assassin named Nikita? Hmmm... She hangs a lampshade over this when she mentions she picked the name for herself on purpose as a kid.
- Transformation Horror: Her shift into her berserk form is not pretty to look at.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Her flashbacks indicate she used to be much nicer before Ernest got his hands on her.
- You Dirty Rat!: She despises rats.
Katia
Katia
A powerful necromancer, as well as Dora's good friend and Witkacy's sometimes girlfriend. Katia is an expert on both fashion and death magic, and most of her job involves cleaning up other necromancers' messes.
- Action Fashionista: She kicks undead ass like it's no-one's business, but loves fashion cons and dresses elegantly even when she has to visit a Creepy Cemetery.
- All Women Love Shoes: She loves her shoes. In Didn't Momma Tell You..., she considers the greatest casualty of her encounter with a rogue necromancers to be her shoes.
- Amicable Exes: With Witkacy. They actually seem to be more comfortable around each other as exes rather than as a couple.
- Badass Adorable: She's cute and sweet, but if you're out of your grave when you shouldn't be, she'll put you back in with extreme predjudice.
- Bad Powers, Good People: Necromancy technically falls under Black Magic, as raising the dead upsets natural balance, but Katia is definitely an ally of the heroes and her self-appointed job is to bring the balance back.
- Beta Couple: With Witkacy for a while.
- Birds of a Feather: Part of why her and Witkacy got together is that as two death magicals, they understand each other more than someone like Dora could ever understand either.
- Damsel in Distress: The inciting incident of the whole series is the Soul Thief kidnapping her.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Her mother died in childbirth, and after finding out what kind of magical she is, her father started to subconsciously blame Katia for this, which didn't help matters. She seems to be over this by the time of the story, though.
- Girly Bruiser: She goes to fight the undead in designer clothes.
- Girly Girl: She loves fashion, nice clothes, manicures and makeover sessions.
- Magic Music: Like with Witkacy, her magic involves rythms and music.
- Necromancer: Her type of magical. She can raise the dead and put them back down.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: She's tiny, almost elfin in appearance, but very powerful.
- Really Gets Around: Before hooking up with Witkacy, she had a ton of boyfriends in quick succession.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Girly Girl to Dora's Tomboy.
- What Does She See in Him?: Katia has made a number of... questionable relationship choices, including a deity that tried to mummify her to keep her forever. Witkacy jokes self-depreciatingly that he's one of those questionable choices.
Katarzyna
Katarzyna, Lady of Fire and Water
The leader of Thorn's witches and witch-like beings, and representative thereof in the Council. She's an extremely powerful witch, noted for her proficiency with elements of fire and water, and also a mentor to Dora and her staunch ally in the Council. However, she has a Dark Secret - or what she sees as a Dark Secret.- Authority Equals Asskicking: She's the most powerful witch in Thorn, and the witch representative in the Council.
- Big Good: For most of the series, she's Dora's ally and mentor, helping her with smoothing out the matters with the Council.
- Boomerang Bigot: She hates half-bloods and other "mongrels" who flaunt their heritage, while being a half-witch herself and using the non-witch heritage to become expert in fire magic.
- Dark Secret: She's actually half-witch, half-fury. She hides it, because she finds the whole idea of hybrids to be distasteful.
- Evil Mentor: Turns into one in No Innocents At War. Dora's quick to cut the mentorship deal.
- Fantastic Racism: While she's not opposed to half-bloods per se and doesn't see anything wrong with various Mage Species mixing, she believes that all other types of hybrids should chose only one part of their heritage and go with it rather than flaunt their mixed ancestry, and finds Dora openly touting her werewolf heritage and associating with vampires to be disgusting. She starts to covertly act against Nisim's hybrids school because of that, and this is ultimately what puts her and Dora on opposite sides.
- Hypocrite: With all detailed above, it's curious that she'd use her fury - that is, non-witch - heritage to master more than one element. Pride, it would seem, overcomes prejudice.
- Making a Splash: She's master of water magic.
- Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid: She's half-Mage Species, half-fury, though she hides the latter.
- Playing with Fire: She's also a master of fire magic.
- Really 700 Years Old: She's several hundred years old, but looks like elegant forty.
- The Reveal: She's actually a racist bigot.
- Red Baron: Lady of Fire and Water.
- Silk Hiding Steel: She's elegant and poised, but also an experienced politician.
- Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome: In No Innocents At War, her bigotry boils over and she starts acting against Dora, being disgusted with Wilk not hiding her mixed heritage.
- Woman Of Wealth And Taste: She's rich and elegant, with house that shows off both qualities.
- You Are What You Hate: [She's actually a half-blood herself.
Gardiasz
Gardiasz, Lord of the Afterlife
An extremely powerful necromancer and Council representative of magicals dealing with the afterlife, effectively making him Witkacy's and Katia's boss. He's a gruff and stiff man who doesn't tolerate insubordination, so his relationship with both Dora and Witkacy doesn't go beyond semi-polite work arrangement.- Authority Equals Asskicking: He has dozens of souls bound to him and is Council's representative of afterlife magicals.
- The Cameo: He only appears briefly in one scene of Shaman Blues.
- Da Chief: Keeps close tabs on his agents and at one point warns Witkacy not to go beyond his competences.
- Deadpan Snarker: Professes very dry wit.
- Elephant in the Room: The dozens of souls that accompany him wherever he goes. When Witkacy tries asking, Gardiasz didn't answer, and atmosphere between the two soured.
- The Ghost: In Dora Wilk Series, he's barely doing anything besides being in all-Council scenes, but is menitoned fairly often.
- Jerkass: Acts this way towards Witkacy, though it's apparently a mix of Witkacy asking about the souls accompanying him and his own fear that with Dora upsetting Council's power balance, his own position may be precarious.
- Necromancer: His type of magical. He binds souls somehow.
- Wild Card: Dora having little contact with him, she doesn't really know on what he bases his decisions during Council votes. Sometimes he supports her, sometimes not.
Spoiler Character
Wiktoria
Witkacy's daughter with Konstancja, she's been living mere few streets from him, but didn't meet her father until Konstancja realizes that Wiktoria might've inherited something from Witkacy and decides to introduce the two. Wiktoria takes her father's existence in stride, although she's not nearly ready to call him "dad".
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: She's snarky, glued to her phone and very nonplussed with her father.
- Dark Secret:
- She is Konstancja's - she's the reason why her mother left Witkacy.
- She can see ghosts, but learned to hide it well.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Her mother calls her "baby chick". Wiktoria hates it and corrects Witkacy the first time he tries to use it.
- Half-Human Hybrid: She's half human, half shaman. It's unclear just what kind of magical she is, but she can interact with ghosts.
- I See Dead People: She can see and interact with ghosts.
- Little Miss Snarker: She's taken liking to snarking at her father and his car.
- Luke, You Are My Father: Arrives at Witkacy's doorstep to tell him she's his child. Konstancja gives Witkacy little warning.
- Muggle Born of Mages: Discussed when Witkacy and Katia wonder if she's just a normal person. She certainly acts like one, but ultimately, it's subverted.
- The Reveal:
- Konstancja had a child with Witkacy.
- She can, in fact, see ghosts.
- Walking Spoiler: "Baby chick" is implied to be Konstancja's husband or partner for the first half of the novel.
Spoiler Character
Robin
An assassin raised by the Order of Shadows' Rome branch, who's assigned to Nikita as her partner. Only his file is obviously fake, he's had his memories wiped out, and what little he has left in his mind paints a bit different picture. A Walking Spoiler kind of character.- Amnesia Missed a Spot: He remembers certain things from his past life, and has a recurring dream that refers to his previous identity.
- Animal Motifs: Deer.
- Blank Slate: His memory has been wiped out several times. This time, he's been equipped with a few (fake) memories to make him more stable.
- Cannot Talk to Women: Underplayed, but he's flabbergasted, blushes and turns back in embarassment when confronted with women in greater state of undress, like the dancers at a burlesque.
- Congruent Memory: He remembers a bit about his past when he smells Nikita's berserk.
- Deadpan Snarker: Comes out of him when he's increasingly annoyed at how little prep the Order gave him before sending him to Wars.Robin: I'm beginning to wonder if they've told me anything at all.
- Doorstop Baby: According to his "official" bio, he's been dumped on the doorstep of Order's headquarters in Rome as a little baby, and subsequently taken in.
- Fake Memories: To keep him stable, he's been implanted with some of Nikita's childhood memories.
- Friendly Sniper: The nicest guy to ever nice in Wars, and deadly with a crossbow.
- Healing Factor: He can heal from even most grave injuries.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: His memory of his time before coming to Wars has been wiped out apart form barest essentials. Apparently, it's the fifth time this has happened to him.
- Naïve Newcomer: He knows next to nothing about Wars and Sawa, and is way nicer and more trusting than any agent of the Order has any right to be.
- Nice Guy: A good shoulder to cry on, keeps secrets, pleasant to people, trusting, helpful and altruistic.
- Odd Friendship: The nice guy becomes friends with Aloof Dark-Haired Girl Nikita, AKA Miss "I Work Alone".
- Orphan's Plot Trinket/Memento MacGuffin: His deer's head pedant, an Amulet of Concentrated Awesome which lets him bypass magic shields and provides a shield of its own. He says it's been left with him when he was dropped on Order's doorstep, but the reveal that his memories have been fabricated suggests it's his only connection to his past life.
- Professional Killer: An assassin working for the Order of Shadows.
- Really 700 Years Old: If his feverish comment is anything to go by, he's at least two hundred years old.
- Resurrective Immortality: He's committed suicide four times, and yet continues to be alive.
- Shout-Out: Nikita notes that his surname should be "Hood".
- The Straight and Arrow Path: He uses a crossbow, as it's quieter.
- Walking Spoiler: A lot of the abovementioned tropes are only non-spoilerish if one has read past The Reveal that his memories have been doctored.
The Soul Thief
Władysław "Vlad" Wrzozowski, "The Soul Thief"
The eponymous Soul Thief from the first novel and Dora's first full-fledged magical antagonist. Vlad is a magical of unknown type, who's been stripped of his powers some twenty years prior for gross misuse of them. He's kidnapping and killing magicals to regain them.- Beneath Notice: He works as a car park warden at the police station. Dora passes him on her way to and back from work several times a day and never realized he's the killer.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The car park warden Dora mentions several times turns out to be the killer.
- De-power: His motivation behind the murders is to regain powers that's been taken away from him twenty years earlier, when he stalked and mind-controlled a young magical girl.
- Emotion Control: His abilities apparently used to be about it, as he used them to make a young magical attracted to him.
- Evil All Along: The kindly car park warden Dora exchanges a hello and good-bye every day? The villain all along.
- Loophole Abuse: Dora utilizes this against him. Because he's been baptized, he doesn't go to a benevolent Afterlife like a magical ought to, but instead is thrown into hell.
- Serial Killer: His draining magical of power results in them dying more often than not.
- Starter Villain: The first antagonist Dora has to face, and a one-off villain before introduction of Big Bad, Raphael.
- Stalker with a Crush: Part of what he was depowered for was stalking a young woman.
- Stalker without a Crush: He starts to stalk Dora when he realizes she's on to him.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: Marks the end of Dora dealing with human criminals and petty magical problems and her entrance into the world of high power and magical politics.
- Worf Effect: He decks Katarzyna to show that he's not some run-of-the-mill killer.
- Your Soul Is Mine!: He sucks out other magicals' souls to power himself up.
Juliana
Julianna
A half-elf and an owner of Triple Alliance's premiere nightclub, also a leader of Alliance's magical community. She's a mentor of sorts to Dora, having overseen her training back in the day, and continues to care for her erstwhile student.- Chekhov's Gun: Her elven heritage comes in handy when Dora has to negotiate with full-blood elves.
- Coolest Club Ever: Her nightclub, a giant, sprawling mutli-floor construction, is something you're unlikely to see in real-life Poland.
- Cool Teacher: She's taught Dora pretty much everything the latter knows about magic, and Dora remembers her training very fondly.
- The Fair Folk: She's half-elf, in world where elves are more like fae. Some variety of magic powers and immortality come with this.
- Glamour: She can confound the minds of humans and make them obey her and forget about it.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: She faces it to some extent from other elves, who are infamous for despising half-breeds.
- Half-Human Hybrid: She's a half-elf.
- Keeping Secrets Sucks: She's been keeping Dora's werewolf genes for years, resulting in a bit of a mess the first time Dora has extended contact with wolves. She's visibly relieved when she can finally come clear with this, and apologizes profoundly.
- Loophole Abuse: Specializes in detecting those; apparently, this is all elves' hat.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: While she's not wild about cooperation with vampires and werewolves, she's quick to realize that they need to cooperate and proceeds accordingly, smoothing things immensely and working towards the common good.
- Secret Secret-Keeper: She's known of Dora's werewolf heritage, and kept it secret even from her.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: When Dora was tested for her magical heritage, Juliana deliberately covered up her werewolf genes, and is implied to have done similar things to other young witches. She does that because she believes that this will help them adjust - Fantastic Racism against hybrids is a huge thing in supernatural world - and because most of the time, those small bits and pieces never make a difference, so why further confuse often-scared young magicals?
Kaj and Lila
Kaj and Lila
A pair of pure-blood elven children from Toruń's cairn, who come to Dora after hearing of her trouble with Bruno, hoping that she might help them with a problem of their own.- Acting Your Intellectual Age: They're still kids, but can both negotiate like professional corporate lawyers and don't hide the fact.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Their cairn has been stolen by Brunon, which is why they come to Dora.
- Beneath the Mask: They're actually terrified of what Dora would negotiate with them, and scared for the fate of their kinsmen, but they won't show it as to not give her advantage.
- Big Eater: When Juliana and Dora take them to a confectionery, they eat some thirty-odd cakes and buns in the time it takes for negotiations to happen.
- Chekhov's Gunman: They appear briefly in the beginning of No Innocents..., asking for Dora's help (she's hesitant because of their kin's reputation), and Dora remembers about them much later when she's completely out of leads.
- Complexity Addiction: Like most elves, they love their complicated arrangements and contracts with dozens of small-print addendums and asterisks. Kaj is downright offended when Dora simplifies their arrangement to one-to-one exchange, and she notes that a contract on a single page of notebook is probably the shortest one they - or any other elf - has ever written.
- Deal with the Devil: Dora's worried that this is what any contract with them would end up being, with a loophole that would somehow doom her. Turns out they're worried about her doing the same to them.
- The Dividual: When Kaj is, Lila will be also. Subverted with Kaj's Heroic Sacrifice.
- The Fair Folk: They're elves, immortal, with glamour-like powers and tendency to lure mortals into unfavourable deals.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Kaj sacrifices himself so that the cairn would recognize the werewolves occupying it as an enemy, and let Dora and co. inside while shielding them from Bruno's forces.
- Magic Music: They can use their instruments to hide themselves, keep mortals away and lure Dora in.
- Really Royalty Reveal: Turns out their mother is not a random elf, but the queen of the cairn.
- Street Musician: They masquerade as such when forced to live on the streets. Thanks to their Magic Music, they have little trouble.
- Sole Survivor: Underplayed, but they're the only onces who managed to escape when Bruno took over their cairn.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Dora gets worried when she notices their proficiency with Magic Music and the fact that Kaj acts like a Law major.
- Vague Age: They look like kids in their early tweens, but Dora notes that with them being elves, they could just as well be several dozen years old.
Ernest
Ernest the Mad
A world-renowned berserk and Nikita's father. He's infamous among the supernatural community, but has seemingly dropped off the face of the Earth several years prior, after his daughter's kidnapping went wrong.- Abusive Parents: He's been abusing his children, as well as his partner. He actually wanted to murder Nikita, and would've murdered her if Irena didn't take her and run for the hills. Later, when he caught up to the girl, he kidnapped and tortured her.
- Archnemesis Dad: To Nikita.
- The Berserker: A berserk, like his daughter.
- Break the Cutie: Did this to Nikita.
- The Dreaded: Nikita and Kosma are terrified of him, and he was feared across the magical community before he vanished.
- The Ghost: In the first Nikita book he only appears as a hallucination on a bridge. Subverted in Midwife of Gods, where it seems like he's off doing his own thing, but Odin summons him so that Nikita can confront him.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Seems to be the true big bad behind Ture. Subverted when he becomes the main antagonist of The Girl from the Miracles District.
- Grim Up North: He's a norseman, and a villain.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Part of why he's so abusive is that he's quick to anger.
- Loves the Sound of Screaming: Tortured Nikita apparently simply so he can listen to his daughter's screams.
- The Magnificent: Nicknamed "The Mad".
- Really 700 Years Old: He's described as a Viking, and has children who are several hundred years old.
- The Spook: When Dora busted Nikita out of captivity, he vanished in the chaos of the fighting, and has completely disappeared since, with no-one able to pinpoint his whereabouts or whether he's even still alive.
- Unstoppable Rage: As a berserk, he'd often go into this state, which is how he got his nickname.
Karma
Karma
A teenage girl gifted with numbers magic and a knack for computers, making her, in essence, a supernatural hacker. She's working on tracking Ernest down for Nikita, and in the meantime takes on any challenge the assassin can give her.- Color Motif: She never wears anything that's not red, black and white.
- Elegant Gothic Lolita: She's a teenage girl always dressed in elegant Victorian frills and dresses.
- Formulaic Magic: Her magic is somehow based on numbers and lets her be a brilliant hacker.
- Good with Numbers: She's a maths prodigy.
- Hikikomori: She never leaves her fortress of a house, sending her caretaker Ilya out for everything, and rarely comes out of her "office".
- Implied Love Interest: It's never made exactly clear just what her relationship with Ilya is, but they bicker like an old married couple.
- Insufferable Genius: Has shades of this in her attitude towards other people's computer security.
- Knowledge Broker: She makes money prying information from the depths of the Web, and often provides data for Nikita.
- Mood-Swinger: She can swing from cheerful to aloof to angry and then back again over the course of a phone conversation.
- Playful Hacker: She can hack anywhere, but she only steals information. When she wanted to retaliate on a woman who tried to have her assassinated, she turned all of Irena's accounts to 6,66 in whatever currency they were in, and then turned it back to the previous value after twelve hours.
- Properly Paranoid: She takes the "my house is a fortress" maxim to the extreme - the entrance has more security systems than Fort Knox, the entire house is under surveillance, and she's capable of attacking interlopers with lethal force. But when the head of the Order of Shadows wants your head, this isn't overacting.
- Teen Genius: She's a teenager and an unstoppable hacker.
- Troll: Some of her antics go a bit beyond Playful Hacker.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: With her caretaker Ilya. Sometimes, an outside observer would be certain they hate each other, but they couldn't live without one another.
Spirits and gods
Faoiliarna
Faoiliarna, Queen of the Wolves
Faoiliarna is an esteemed wolf goddess and Dora's ancestor, who's been waiting for generations for a female descendant who'd inherit her powers so that she might start a great conquest and unite all werewolfkind under her family. Suffice to say, Dora isn't thrilled.- Affectionate Nickname: Dora calls her Fany.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: She takes on human form often, despite being a wolf goddess, as this makes conversations with Dora much easier.
- Badass in Distress: She's locked in a conflict with another god, Leib, throughout No Innocents At War, and though she's apparently victorious, it's clear that it wasn't a good fight for her.
- Blood Knight: She wants Dora to conquer all wolf packs in Europe for her mostly because... she wants it to happen.
- Cool Old Lady: She's Dora great-something-grandma and a powerful wolf goddess with tremendous powers.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: She's much more... savage and barbarian than Dora, noting calmly that she'd kill Badb if the latter insulted Dora, and enjoying visiting war zones with her Morrigan friends. She also sees nothing unseemly with watching two wolf spirits mate.
- Dirty Old Woman: She laughs at Dora and Varg when they turn away from watching two wolf spirits mate, and provides them running commentary.
- Divine Conflict: She has some sort of beef with another wolf god, Leib, and the two are in conflict throughout No Innocents At War.
- Divine Parentage: She's Dora's distant ancestor.
- God in Human Form: At some point in the past, she took on human body, became famous among werewolves and had children with Dora's ancestor.
- God Is Flawed: Varg notes that her acting like a (very) stereotypical woman, complete with Dirty Old Woman and I Want Grandkids, is sort of freaking him out.
- God's Hands Are Tied: Bruno's pack descends from Leib, not her, so she has to honor territorial borders and can't aid Dora.
- Grim Up North: A savage goddes from Scandinavia.
- Heroic Lineage: She's an ancestor to several wolf packs and, notably, Dora.
- Hero of Another Story: While Dora has her dramas with Bruno and missing Varg, Fany is fighting a war with another wolf god.
- It's All About Me: She once interrupts Witkacy in the middle of an interrogation because she doesn't want to wait ten more minutes to talk with her granddaughter.
- I Want Grandkids: Very adamant that she wants Dora to have descendants and carry the Wilk legacy - preferably with some wolf.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's savage, very self-centered and adamant about Europe-wide conquest, but cares deeply about Dora and tries to help as much as she can.
- Loophole Abuse:
- She can force change on any werewolf, which can be interpreted as "any creature capable of turning into a wolf", letting her force wolf forms on Badb and Loki and thus giving the former an advantage.
- She tries to use the fact that Varg's life is endangered to enter Bruno's territory and help Dora. Leib has none of it, though, even though by the law, what she does is completely legal.
- Meaningful Name: Faoiliarna is misspelt Irish for "Wolf Lord."
- Noble Wolf: Wolf goddess, and positively a saint in comparison to other deities.
- Odd Friendship: Best friends with Badb, a self-absorbed and careless war deity.
- Our Gods Are Different: She mostly exists on spiritual plane and her domain extends over any creature that turns into wolf - including other gods.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: She's by far the most level-headed and helpful of all gods, even given her It's All About Me attitude.
- Savage Wolves: She loves hunting, craves continent-wide conquest and promises to kill Badb if the Morrigan offends Dora.
- Shipper on Deck: Ships Dora with Varg hard, despite both of them declaring that they're not intersted.
- When I Was Your Age...: Likes to mock Dora's "softness", which often means "not killing them on sight".
Vulture
Vulture
A vulture spirit who doesn't divulge his name, he becomes Witkacy's patron guide in the spirit realm, somewhat against Witkacy's wishes. An oft-loathsome presence, he's nevertheless extremely powerful and helpful - when he feels like it, that is.- Always Chaotic Evil: Discussed; Witkacy notes that this is the reputation all vulture spirits have, but Vulture claims that's just a nasty stereotype. It's easy to see where it comes from, though.
- Big Damn Heroes: Shows up twice to rescue Witkacy, first from getting lost in the afterlife, then from the Old Ones.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: He's an extremely powerful spirit, but rarely feels like doing anything.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He's an oft-disgusting slob who watches MTV and seems to take all his knowledge of the world from there, but is also extremely powerful and can easily threaten several extremely powerful shaman spirits, who are essentially afraid to pick a fight with him.
- A Dog Named "Dog": He tells Witkacy to jus call him Vulture, and he's a vulture spirit - one of many, at that.
- Genius Slob: Extremely powerfu, no personal hygiene.
- Graceful in Their Element: In his spirit form, he's very graceful in the air, but moves like a dizzy duck on the ground.
- Guardian Entity: His job is to guard Witkacy from perils of the spirit world.
- God in Human Form: Takes a form of a homeless bum/metal affictionado-looking type when he's on Earth.
- Hidden Depths: Despite acting like a vulgar low-life, he's extremely rich - he's capable of paying for another man moving, furniture and all, into a Mediterrean country and buying his flat - and very powerful.
- Horrifying the Horror: The Old Ones are a cabal of extremely powerful, long-dead shamans with command over ancient beasts, who's essentially made the spirit realm their playground. Vulture manages to scare them off just by appearing.
- Lower-Class Lout: Certainly acts the part - he's dirty, vulgar, distasteful and glued to the TV.
- The Pig-Pen: He's dirty and unwashed.
- Really 700 Years Old: He could be several thousand years old for all we know. When he doesn't look like an imposing, tattooed figure or a vulture, he appears as a low-life metalhead in his thirties.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Swears more than the rest of the characters combined, but his swears are usually lower-level than theirs.
- Spirit Advisor: He's supposed to be one for Witkacy, but doesn't seem to know a lot - and doesn't care, for that matter.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: Manages to get this status just after few hours in Witkacy's house, and when Witkacy finally gets rid of him, Vulture moves to a flat next over.
- Trash of the Titans: Despite Witkacy being a Neat Freak, Vulture manages to turn his house into a mess of unwashed plates, dirty clothes and trash in just a few hours.
- Worf Effect: Just as the Old Ones are built up to be a formidable threat, Vulture appears and scares them into running away.
- Your Normal Is Our Taboo: He sees nothing wrong in talking about seducing a fifteen-year-old girl.
Badb
Badb Catha, the War Crow
One of the Morrigans, a group of three Irish goddesses associated with war, death, and sexuality. Badb has little regard for human life, but is best friends with Faoiliarna and the two often go hunting together. She forcefully enlists Dora to help her finish a centuries-long conflict with Loki.
- Animal Motifs: Crows.
- Animorphism: She can take a shape of any animal she wishes, and of any size.
- Arch-Enemy: Of Loki. The two have been playing dice with human lives for centuries in what's pretty much a one-upmanship contest.
- The Chooser of the One: Picks up Dora to be her ace up the sleeve.
- Clever Crows: She's a smart crow deity, recruiting mortals to play her game and using tricks against Loki - not that he doesn't do the same.
- Cosmic Chess Game: She plays dice with human lives and fate against Loki for fun.
- Creepy Crows: She sends Dora multiple creepy visions, looks scary and is a war goddess.
- Divine Conflict: Locked in one against Loki. She recruits Dora to end it.
- Dream Weaver: She creates elaborate nightmares to convince Dora to cooperate with her.
- Good Is Not Nice: She tries to stop Loki, which puts her on good guys' side, but she's a self-absorbed, barbarian jerkass.
- Good Is Not Soft: She's a war deity, after all.
- Got Volunteered: Does this to Dora, who never has a say in whether she wants to participate in her and Loki's Cosmic Chess Game.
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Often hunts on battlefields with Faoiliarna.
- It's All About Me: She fails to notice that her Cosmic Chess Game is ruining lives, doesn't care if Dora agrees to participating in it, and doesn't care for anyting besides her beef with Loki and her hunts with Fany.
- Jerkass Gods: A war goddess with It's All About Me complex, who belittles Dora and sends her visions of all her friends dying.
- Odd Friendship: With Faoiliarna, who's by far he nicest of all gods.
- Red Baron: War Crow.
- Shapeshifter Default Form: She usually takes the form of a giant crow.
- Shapeshifter Showdown: Has one with Loki.
- Talking in Your Dreams: How she communicates with Dora most of the time.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: With Faoiliarna, it would seem, as the two see nothing unusual in promising to murder each other over small slights.
Loki
Loki
Norse god of mischief and fire, and Badb's arch-enemy in their cosmic game of dice. He schemes to bring about an open war between three factions of the Alliance as part of his never-ending competition with the War Crow.- Animorphism: As in myth, he can take on forms of various animals.
- Arch-Enemy: To Badb - they've been locked in their game for thousands of years.
- Big Bad: He's behind the entire Triple Alliance conflict, manipulating the participants behind the scenes.
- Cosmic Chess Game: Plays it with Badb, and cares even less for the pieces.
- Divine Conflict: Him and Badb have been locked in their game for millennia, and are both pretty adamant about winning.
- The Ghost: Despite being the Big Bad of Gods Must Be Crazy, he's only shown twice, and one of those is a dream sequence. He's nevertheless the driving force behind half the novel's plot.
- Hate Plague: His influence on Triple Alliance makes everyone much less willing to cooperate and pushes them towards an all-out war.
- Irony: His most famous child is a giant wolf - which is the form in which he's beaten.
- Jerkass Gods: He wants to incite an all-out war just to win the current roound of his game against Badb.
- Large and in Charge: He's described as being huge, fittingly for a half-giant, and is a god.
- Norse Mythology: Yes, it's the same Loki.
- Physical God: An enormous humanoid who comes down to Hell to beat up Badb.
- Shapeshifter Showdown: Has one with Badb, and would've won if Faoiliarna didn't enforce wolf form on everyone.
- The Voiceless: He's never seen speaking on-page.
Mother Earth
Mother Earth
The Nature deity, and the highest goddess of them all, worshipped by all magicals regardless of their culture. She's honestly kind and caring, but it appears she can only act through mortals - which doesn't stop her from influencing events in the story.- Ambiguous Situation: Her relation to Judeo-Christianic God. They seem to work in concert, as both Dora and Miron with Joshua had very similar Talking in Your Dreams sessions on the same night, but if both are the ultimate creator deities, are they really a divine partnership, two facets of the same being, or something weirder?
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Of Nature and Earth.
- The Cameo: She appears only in one scene in the entire hexalogy.
- Charm Person: She has a divine aura that makes Dora accept her words unquestioningly.
- The Chooser of the One: Picks Dora to be her champion because of her inter-system and inter-species ties.
- The Ghost: She's oft mentioned, with various magicals praying to her and swearing by her, but only appears in one dream.
- God Is Good: Honestly wants the best for the world, but isn't above micromanaging as well, helping Dora In Mysterious Ways and healing Miron.
- God's Hands Are Tied: Apparently, she has to have champions like Dora to carry out her will.
- In Mysterious Ways: In the first three novels, she gives Dora various runes that both grant her some (minuscule) ability and bring severe limitations with them, like the one that doesn't let Dora lie. In the end, they turn out to be beneficial in a way that Dora didn't forsee - for example, the aforementioned rune makes her trustworthy to the Alliance leaders, enabling her to negotiate easily.
- Mother Earth: Uhm, yes. She's the ultimate paganic deity.
- Talking in Your Dreams: She visits Dora in her dreams once.
- Top God: Of the "god of gods" variety. She's so far above other paganic deities, she's a different category altogether.
- The Voiceless: While Dora recounts a conversation with her, Mother doesn't have any lines in the text itself.
The Old Ones
The Old Ones
A cabal of ancient shamans (and their pet smilodon) who currently prowl the spirit realm and who's made it their job to painfully initiate any new shaman to bring out the most of him. They find it rather annoying that Witkacy doesn't wish to participate in their rituals.
- Body Horror: What they want to do to Witkacy. Highlights involve divining future from his own bones, boiling him alive (while he mixes the pot) and tearing his body apart bit by tiny bit.
- Cats Are Mean: Their pet sabre-toothed tiger likes to toy with Witkacy before dragging him to them. Consider it weights more than Witkacy himself.
- Humanoid Abomination: They used to be human, but are now powerful spirits capable of enhancing other shamans' powers.
- Know When to Fold Them: They wisely decide to back off when Vulture appears.
- Loves the Sound of Screaming: They're positively giddy at the prospect of initiating Witkacy.
- Necessarily Evil: Inasmuch as they torture shamans and enjoy every moment of it, their methods does work in turning shamans' potential into full-fledged abilities.
- Old Master: They are ancient shamans, and more powerful than any modern one.
- Pelts of the Barbarian: Coming from the Stone Age, they wear lots of animal pelts and skulls.
- Pet Monstrosity: They have a pet smilodon that does their bidding and hunts for them.
- Quirky Miniboss Squad: They all revel in what they want to do to Witkacy, but so far, this is the height of their involvement with the plot.
- Super-Persistent Predator: They are determined to catch Witkacy, and he risks being found every time he dives into the spirit world.
- Time Abyss: They've been around since the Ice Ages.
- Torture Technician: How Witkacy thinks of them. Not too far off the mark, considering they're in charge of initiation by Body Horror.
- Was Once a Man: Before turning into extremely powerful spirits, they were human.
- Worf Effect: They're shown to be a very credible threat to Witkacy, taking him down with barely lifting a finger... and then Vulture shows up and scares them away, establishing his own badass credentials.
The Wraith
Anna Dzwon
A young girl who's been murdering children back in the heyday of the Cold War to grant herself a form of immortality - after death, she became a wraith, a particularly nasty and powerful ghost. Now, decades later, she returns to perform the same ritual again.
- Creepy Child: She was a child killer as a little girl and reportedly unnerved her fellow kids. She once brought another girl to tears by describing the rather gruesome state the other child's brother was found in.
- Enfant Terrible: A child killer who's a child herself.
- Guardian Entity: She's been forced to become one for her brother, and is murdering on his behalf to grant him immortality as well.
- Haunted Fetter: The scissors she's been using to kill as a mortal are her focus object binding her to the mortal plane.
- Immortality Immorality: She's been killing children to become "immortal" as a wraith.
- Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: Her journal, containing detailed descriptions and pictures of her murders.
- Serial Killer: She's killed nine children.
- Shout-Out: To real-life case of Mary Bell (Dzwon is Polish for Bell), a woman who strangled two boys as a child. The author admits to having researched Mary Bell case before writing the book, so similarity is deliberate.
- Taking You with Me: Tries to do this to Witkacy when the latter banishes her to the spirit realm. Vulture saves him, though.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: She was killing people, covering up evidence and psychologically torturing the parents of murdered children when she was ten.
- The Unfavorite: Claims she's always been her mother's least favorite child. Considering her mother put the Curse of Cain on her, essentially turning her into her brother's Guardian Entity, it might be a justified sentiment.
- Would Hurt a Child: Her victims are children. She has been murdering them even at that age. It gets even worse after her death, when the parents can't defend themselves against her because they can't even see her.
- Your Soul Is Mine!: As a wraith, she can suck out souls of others to fuel herself.
