The Black Company

"The company in those days being in the service of the Syndic of Beryl..."

– Croaker

The Black Company is Glen Cook's long running grim high fantasy series about a band of middling sellswords getting by in a world full of BBEGs.

The titular Black Company (last of the Free Companies of Khatovar as reads its full name) is a mercenary outfit which for the last several hundred years has cut a bloody trail generally northward, killing for whomever can afford them for as long as they can afford them. By the standards of sellswords, they're fairly elite, fighting as heavy infantry with a handful of wizards for support. Admission to their ranks is by vote, and a prospect is expected to give up all previous attachments.

After a particularly irritating few years killing people for money in the Jewel Cities, the company was approached by a mysterious envoy from the north seeking to hire them to suppress a rebellion. A proposal which the company (after closing out its previous commitments with owed interest) hesitantly accepts...

Grim High Fantasy?

Yes. The Black Company is GRIM high fantasy. So all the slavery and raping and arson you'd expect of a dark age sellsword mob, but now combined with sadistic wizardry. You've captured an enemy leader? Spend a week killing and resurrecting them until their will is broken. A rival immortal wizard is in your way? Bury him alive and make it look like someone else did it (cuz eventually he'll dig himself out). A hundred thousand rebels encircling your city? Issue magic plague pots to the trebuchet crews and gas them all when night falls.

This is a setting where all the dark perversity of men at war (and a Vietnam-like war at that) meets the dark potential of sorcery and the result is wagonloads of dead. And for a lot of it, you're not even sure you're killing the side that deserves it.

Personalities

It should be noted that nobody, NOBODY in this setting uses their given name. For the Company members, it's because they shed their past identity when they join. Their given nickname is all the identity they need. But for wizards it's much more important. This is a setting where truenames have power, so naturally any wizard is going to go to great lengths to erase their past.

• Croaker: The company's physician and annalist; serves as the narrator for most of the books.

• Goblin & One-Eye: Two of the company's wizards; both are well over a century old. They're more illusionists by trade but when they really get in the right mind they can get up to some pretty evil stuff. Most of the time they expend their energies on each other in a petty Gork & Mork style feud that's been running longer than most of the company's members have been alive.

• Silent: The company's most powerful wizard by far. Genuinely is a wizard unlike the previous two geezers. Never says anything; has his reasons.

• Raven: The Company's newest recruit, joining when they left Beryl to enter the service of Soulcatcher. Charisma is his dump stat.

• Darling: A camp follower of the company; a mute girl rescued by Raven shortly after joining. Under Silent's tutelage she eventually develops some power of her own, although more along the lines of holy nullification.

• Soulcatcher: An enigmatic, hermaphroditic undead wizard of obscene power, a member of the Ten Who Were Taken. Catcher hires the Black Company to come and fight against rebels for The Lady.

• The Lady: The somewhat immortal ruler of an empire in the north; the Ten Who Were Taken are her minions and rivals to power. Took an interest in Croaker after learning about the chronicles he maintains.

• The Limper: A particularly hapless member of the Ten who is constantly upstaged by the Black Company and repeatedly betrayed by Catcher.