Cike

"The Cike are just killers. They stab, kill, and poison. They don’t call down gods."

- Chen Kitay, Chapter 8, The Poppy War

The Cike are a secret assassins' guild made of Shamans.

General Information
"We at the Night Castle have practiced the weaponization of the gods to an art."

- Altan Trengsin, Chapter 13, ''The Poppy War

The members of the Cike work for the Empress and act as spies and assassins. Little to nothing is publicly known about them, even within the Nikara Imperial Militia. They are reviled as the worst, derided for fighting without honour and respecting no rules of combat. They function as the Thirteenth Division during wartime. They are also known as the Bizarre Children. Their headquarters is the Night Castle, located far up the Wudang mountain range.

The Cike began as some kind of experiment by the Naimad Kalagan Suren.

Fang Runin
Fang Runin is named Commander by Altan right before his sacrifice at the human experiment camp. She remains the leader until the Cike is hanged at the end of The Dragon Republic.

The Cike is partially and briefly revived when Rin trains Pipaji, Dulin, and Lianhua as shamans during her campaign against the Dragon Republic and the Hesperians. However, with the Pipaji's and Dulin's deaths during the attack on Arlong and later Rin's on Speer, the Cike is once again obliterated, presumably forever.

Altan Trengsin
After graduating from Sinegard Academy, Altan Trengsin is assigned to the Cike by the Empress Su Daji. He was lieutenant to Tyr and was slated to be commander.

Tyr
Tyr was murdered by the Empress. He received orders to infiltrate the Emperor Ryohai, a Federation ship, which were unusual as the Cike only operated within the Empire. Their assignments were generally assasinations of dissidents that the Empress found irksome and spying on political leaders. There had been only one attempted oversea assasination, on the young Federation Prince Ryohai. For example, two of Tyr's mentioned assignments involved hiding in the closet of the Dragon Warlord for a week; hiding beneath floorboards of the leaders of Hesperia for a month.

Tyr was possibly from the Hinterlands: he calls Chaghan "one of his people". However, this could also be referring to them both being shamans. He grew up with a sect of monks that worshipped a goddess of darkness. His shamanic line is said to be "pure and strong through the proven ability of its successors".

Feylen
Feylen was the commander before Tyr and is immured in the Chuluu Korikh. He was released by Altan and Rin during the Third Poppy War; possessed by a wind god, and becomes a destructive force before the Empress employs him in her service by unknown means. He is eventually defeated by Rin who buries him under an avalanche.

Notable Members
The Cike recruits from hidden cults all over the Empire as well as the Baghra prison. They mainly take in people with shamanic potential or who've demonstrated powers. Many initiates are sent in by cults to get the Empress to leave them alone. It is implied that Su Daji searches out shamans for the Cike and recruits them against their will; they function as her personal assassins' guild.

The Cike's uniform is black and designed to have no identifying marks.

Most of the Cike members are described to be in their late twenties. This is what gains them the nickname Bizarre Children.


 * Chaghan Suren is the Seer of the Cike and Altan's second.
 * Qara Suren is the Cike spy.
 * Ramsa is their munitions expert.
 * He wears an eyepatch over his left eye.
 * Enki is their medicine and drug expert. He is described as slightly dark-skinned, with a rich and velvety voice.
 * Baji is a shaman of a god of pigs. He was one of the four students Jiang trained at Sinegard; he was imprisoned in Baghra before the Cike.
 * He is thickly built, but handsome. He wields a nine-pointed rake.
 * Aratsha, also known as the Friar, is a water-god shaman. He stays in liquid form. He uses poisons as his weapon, in addition to his abilities.
 * Unegen is a shape-shifting shaman, primarily shapeshifting into a fox. He has a thin goatee.
 * Suni is a shaman of the Monkey God.
 * He is described as a giant man with a boyish face. He has golden hair and is very built and hairy.

End of Service
"The day would come soon when he would go mad if he left, and madder still if he didn't. But that was the fate that awaited the men and women of the Cike. To be an Empress's assassin meant early death or madness, or both."

- Chapter 10, The Poppy War

Shamans of the Cike draw their abilities from maintaining an affinity with a god. They hone and train with the purpose of using their shamanic abilities as weapons. As a result, the continued spiritual communication with a single god leads to the eventual loss of control over their mind and spirit. They end up possessed by a god, or else become an "unstoppable conduit for the gods, a gate to the spirit realm without a lock". In effect, they go insane and become highly dangerous.

It is also an inevitability for Cike shamans to get addicted to the drugs they use to help channel their abilities.

To prevent generations of uncontrollable possessed shamans from wreaking havoc, the Cike immure their members in the Chuluu Korikh and add their name to the Wheel. The mountain contains these half-deities and neutralizes them. It is an immortal sleep but is not death.