A Practical Guide to Evil

by ErraticErrata

Catherine Foundling is orphaned by the Praesi Empire's occupation of Callow and offered an apprenticeship by the Black Knight. She accepts — not because she wants to be a villain, but because she wants to learn how the powerful stay powerful. The series deconstructs narrative tropes as an in-universe force: heroes and villains follow story patterns, and the smartest players manipulate the narrative itself.

68 characters, locations, and items in this world codex.

Characters

• Aisha Bishara — Catherine's Staff Tribune — Juniper's aide and the Fifteenth Legion's diplomatic brain, handling the politics that soldiers can't and soldiers won't.
• Akua Sahelian — The Doom of Liesse — a Praesi noblewoman who sacrificed a hundred thousand souls for a flying superweapon, was killed, bound as a shade in Catherine's
• Alaya of Satus — Dread Empress Malicia — an innkeeper's daughter who became the longest-reigning empress in Praes's history through mind control, manipulation, and the
• Amadeus of the Green Stretch — The Black Knight who tried to make Evil win through pragmatism instead of superweapons — a cold machine of strategy who loved exactly three people and
• Anaxares — The Hierarch — a bureaucrat from Bellerophon so devoted to procedure that he put the Gods themselves on trial for operating without a proper mandate.
• Assassin — The Calamity no one knows — male, murderous, capable of impersonating anyone, and possessed of a great personal love for killing people creatively. Th
• Catherine Foundling — An orphan who became the Black Queen — a villain who weaponized narrative itself to break the eternal cycle of Good and Evil, losing an eye, a hand, h
• Concocter — One of Ranger's five apprentices — an alchemist and poisoner trained at Refuge, whose talents run toward the subtle arts of brewing rather than the di
• Cordelia Hasenbach — The First Prince of Procer — a Lycaonese warrior's daughter who became the continent's most powerful diplomat, driving a Crusade and then building a p
• Dread Empress Triumphant — The only person to ever conquer all of Calernia — First and Only of Her Name, creator of Hell Eggs, gold standard of traditional Praesi Evil, dead for
• Eudokia — The Scribe — so forgettable that her Aspect erases her from memory, a spymaster and logistics genius devoted utterly to Amadeus, the invisible woman w
• Grem One-Eye — The orc marshal who helped Amadeus restructure the Legions of Terror — proof that the Reforms weren't just the Black Knight's idea but a collaborative
• Hakram Deadhand — The Adjutant who became Warlord — Catherine's right hand, an orc who found purpose not in battle-rage but in the quiet, relentless work of keeping a q
• Hanno of Arwad — The White Knight — a man who flips a coin to decide whether you live or die, connected to the Choir of Judgment, Catherine's rival and eventual counte
• Hye Su — The Ranger — a half-elf who hunts worthy opponents for sport, arguably the single deadliest individual combatant on Calernia, who left the man she lov
• Indrani — The Archer who became the Ranger — born a slave, trained by the deadliest woman alive, and determined to experience every pleasure and danger Creation
• Ivah — Catherine's drow guide and sigil second — a rylleh who lost almost all its Night and found something more valuable: purpose under a queen who doesn't
• Juniper of the Red Shields — Catherine's general — an orc military genius who turned the Fifteenth Legion into the Army of Callow, the daughter of a warlord who became something h
• Kairos Theodosian — The Tyrant of Helike — a twelve-year-old told he'd die at thirteen who decided that if time was short, he'd burn as brightly and chaotically as possib
• Kilian — Catherine's first love — a mage of the Fifteenth Legion whose relationship with the Squire ended over magical complications and the particular lonelin
• Larat — The Prince of Nightfall — a Winter Fae prince who served Catherine during her time as Sovereign and was rewarded with the Court of Twilight, because f
• Laurence de Montfort — The Saint of Swords — an old woman who IS a sword, whose Domain turned inward until she could cut souls, aspects, and the very fabric of stories. Unco
• Masego — The Hierophant — a sorcerer who wants to understand Creation so completely that the difference between man and god becomes academic, raised by two fat
• Nauk of the Waxing Moons — An orc commander who preferred aggression over subtlety — carried the red rage closer to the surface than most, fought with the ferocity his people pr
• Neshamah — The Dead King — an undead god-king who has ruled Keter for centuries, commanded armies of corpses and enslaved Named as Revenants, and treated millenn
• Pickler — The Fifteenth Legion's Senior Sapper — a goblin engineer devoted to her craft with the single-mindedness of someone who considers explosions an art fo
• Ranker — A goblin marshal of the Legions — tiny, vicious, brilliant, and utterly unwilling to let anyone forget that goblins earned their rank through competen
• Ratface — The Fifteenth Legion's Supply Tribune — the logistics genius who kept Catherine's army fed and equipped until Malicia's Night of Knives purged everyon
• Robber — A goblin special operations leader who loved explosives more than life — which is fortunate, because he traded one for the other at the Battle of Hain
• Roland — The Rogue Sorcerer — a hero who studies magic the way villains do, breaking the assumption that magical excellence belongs to Evil. Catherine's most u
• Rozala Malanza — The Princess of Aequitan — one of Procer's two foremost generals, who carried a personal grudge against Cordelia and a professional respect for Cather
• Rumena — One of the greatest of the Mighty — an ancient drow warrior-politician who serves as Catherine's chief drow commander, old enough to remember when the
• Sabah — The Captain — a Taghrebi woman over eight feet tall who transforms into a beast that trades sanity for power, kept human by the one man whose orders s
• Silver Huntress — One of Ranger's five apprentices — a heroic huntress who grew up in Refuge's shadow and had to define herself beyond her teacher's legacy.
• Sve Noc — The twin goddesses of the Drow — Andronike the sage and Komena the soldier, who bargained with the Gods Below for power and ascended when Catherine fe
• Tariq Isbili — The Grey Pilgrim — the most powerful healer alive, a grandfatherly hero who has killed children he foresaw would become threats, carrying the weight o
• The Wandering Bard — The Intercessor — an immortal narrative manipulator who has worn countless Names and bodies across millennia, steering stories like a drunk who someho
• Tikoloshe — An incubus married to the Warlock — Masego's other father, proof that love in Calernia doesn't care about species, gender, or the boundaries between C
• Vagrant Spear — A young Levantine hero — the next generation of Named warriors from a culture that produces heroes like Tariq, carrying a spear and the weight of divi
• Vivienne Dartwick — The Thief who became a Princess — Callow's conscience and Catherine's political heir, the woman who stole the Sun of Arcadia and used it to light a ki
• Wekesa — The Warlock — the greatest mage on Calernia, who married an incubus, adopted a son, and served a friend's vision of a better empire until it killed hi
• William of Greenbury — The Lone Swordsman — Catherine's first nemesis, a hero given his Name by an Angel of Contrition, who died in their pattern of three because that's how

Locations

• Arcadia — The parallel realm of the Fae — a world of living stories where Winter and Summer courts cycle endlessly, until Catherine broke the cycle and made the
• Ater — The capital of Praes — a city of half a million built in the Wasteland's heart, dominated by the Tower that has been the seat of Evil power for centur
• Dominion of Levant — The warrior nation that breeds heroes like wheat — where bloodlines carry divine favor, and the Grey Pilgrim's family has been producing champions for
• Dread Empire of Praes — The Evil empire — a nation of diabolists, scheming nobility, and reformed legions, where being Dread Emperor means following in the footsteps of peopl
• Empire Ever Dark — The underground drow kingdom — a realm of eternal darkness where the Mighty kill each other for Night, ruled by twin goddesses who turned murder into
• Helike — The city-state that produces Tyrants — where the Theodosian line has ruled with spectacle and chaos, and where Kairos proved that a dying boy with sto
• Keter — The Dead King's fortress — a near-impregnable citadel of undead that has withstood five crusades, surrounded by poisonous miasma and corpse-filled wat
• Kingdom of Callow — The conquered kingdom Catherine fights to save — an agricultural heartland occupied by Praes for twenty years, whose people learned to hate quietly an
• Laure — Callow's capital — the city where Catherine grew up as an orphan, fought in the pits for coin, and decided to become the villain because the heroes we
• League of Free Cities — A fractious collection of city-states that can't agree on anything — Helike, Nicae, Penthes, Stygia, Atalante, Bellerophon, Delos — united only by the
• Liesse — Callow's destroyed second city — turned into a flying doomsday weapon by Akua Sahelian, who sacrificed a hundred thousand souls to power it. The name
• Principate of Procer — The biggest nation on Calernia — a principate of warring princes united only when something scares them enough, which the Dead King and Catherine both
• Refuge — Ranger's training ground — a small village under dwarven protection where the deadliest woman alive trained five Named apprentices in the art of hunti
• Salia — Procer's capital — where the First Prince holds court, the Grand Alliance was forged, and the continent's fate was decided in rooms full of people who
• Thalassocracy of Ashur — A naval power with tiered citizenship — Hanno's homeland, where your place in society is determined by your caste and the sea is both border and ident
• The Tower — The seat of the Dread Empire — a spire of dark stone two hundred stories tall, crowned by perpetual storm clouds, where every ruler since Maleficent I
• The Wasteland — The barren heart of Praes — created when Dread Empress Sinistra tried to steal Callow's weather and the backlash destroyed her own land. A monument to

Items

• Army of Callow — Catherine's military — evolved from the Fifteenth Legion into an independent fighting force, commanded by Juniper, the professional army that proved C
• Legions of Terror — Praes's military — named for Triumphant's Hell Eggs, reformed by Amadeus and Grem into a professional fighting force, the army that conquered Callow a
• Mantle of Woe — Catherine's cloak — stitched from the banners of defeated enemies, once containing Akua Sahelian's bound soul, the physical symbol of everything the B
• Names — The power system of Calernia — supernatural mantles granted by Creation to those who embody archetypal Roles, turning narrative tropes into literal po
• Night — The Drow's stolen divinity — power bargained from the Gods Below, gathered through murder, wielded by the Mighty, and eventually reformed when Sve Noc
• The Calamities — Amadeus's band of five — the Black Knight, the Warlock, the Ranger, the Captain, and the Assassin. Five Named who conquered Callow, held it for twenty
• The Grand Alliance — The coalition that defeated the Dead King — Callow, Procer, Levant, Ashur, and the Drow, united by Catherine and Cordelia in an alliance that required
• The Liesse Accords — Catherine's life work — a treaty framework governing how Named behave across Calernia, enforced by the Warden and the White Knight, named for the wors
• The Woe — Catherine's band of five — the Black Queen, the Hierophant, the Archer, the Thief, and the Adjutant. The next generation of Named who tried to break t

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