Location from The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
The Nikara Empire's shaman special operations unit — a squad of god-touched outcasts who do the Empire's dirtiest work and are feared by the people they protect almost as much as by the enemy.
The Cike are the Nikara military's shamanic special operations unit — a collection of shamans who channel various Pantheon gods, deployed for missions that conventional forces can't handle. Under Altan's command, they are the Empire's most effective and most expendable weapon: sent into impossible situations, expected to solve them with divine power, and kept at arm's length by the military establishment that needs them but doesn't trust them. The Cike are simultaneously a family and a suicide squad. They eat together, fight together, lose members together. Altan leads from the front, burning himself alive to set the standard. The unit's dynamics — Baji's warmth, Chaghan's irritability, Qara's quiet competence, Ramsa's manic enthusiasm — create a found-family structure that makes their losses devastating. After Altan's sacrifice, Rin inherits command and reshapes the Cike into her personal army. The unit's transformation from special ops squad to instrument of Rin's will mirrors her own transformation from soldier to warlord.
Not a location but a military unit — the Cike operate from wherever the war takes them, with no fixed base. They move as a small, tight squad: mismatched, ragged, carrying weapons and abilities that don't fit standard military classification. They look wrong next to regular soldiers — too strange, too intense, the way a loaded weapon looks different from an empty one.
Also known as: The Cike, Cike, The Shaman Unit