History Literature / TheLandoCalrissianAdventures

* WellIntentionedExtremist: The Renatasian Confederation is a ragtag army of surviving soldiers from a planet the Empire hit hard whose quest for vengeance and to rebuild is perfectly justified. It just happens that they think Vuffi Rea is the target of their vengeance. The moment they don't, they turn on the Imperials and help win the final battle.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: The Oswaft seem to simply disappear from the Star Wars universe after to this book, which seems rather absurd, particularly given they would come in handy during things like the Yuuzhan Vong war and you would think Lando would say something like "I know this race of creatures that live in outer space, grow as big as Star Destroyers, can naturally travel in hyperspace, and can blow up spaceships with their psychic powers, just thought you guys might want to know." And in the new canon they [[SchrodingersCanon may not even exist at all]].
* WhatMeasureIsAMook: Colonel Kenow is initially just a random assassin killed in an attempt on Lando's life. Then his friend Shanga gets an internal monologue about growing up with Kenos, enlisting in the military with him and surviving so many decades of conflict together only to have him shot by a man who he didn't (directly) bear any ill will towards. And that's before the revelations about the Renatasians as a whole.

** Local administrator Vett Fori and her assistant in the first book are quick to shut down another card player's attempts to frame Lando for cheating even after he took their money to.

* PyrrhicVictory: The Empire's Renatasia Campaign. 93% of their first wave of Naval attackers died, along with 87% of the second wave, 73% of the third wave and unspecified losses in the following waves (in spite of how each new wave came prepared, and facing a further weakened enemy). The Empire killed 2/3rds of Renatasian people, but in the process stye lost so many soldiers, and destroyed so much valuable infrastructure that they simply abandoned the planet and tried to pretend the whole affair never happened.

* NonIdleRich: Lob Doluff is one of the richest people in his system but still chooses to work in an administrative job. The narrative (which had just described Bassi Vobahs feelings of being one of the many who serves the few) calls Doluff one of the few who serves the other few, while making "an unusually honest" effort to serve the many as well.

* PoorCommunicationKills: Gepta's blockade of the the Oswaft is shrouded with secrecy, with the vast majority of the PunchClockVillain crewmen aboard the ships not knowing that Lando is a person of interest or about the Oswaft in general, and thus Lando is able to pas through almost the whole blockade, playing cards, selling luxury goods, making friends among the lower-ranking crewmen, and with plenty of garbage for the Oswaft to convert to valuables that none of the Imperials outside the command circle have any reason to be suspicious of.

** Lehesu the Oswaft is compared to a Portugese man-o'-war.

* MisplacedRetribution: Deliberately invoked. Vuffi was dressed up in an alien suit when his old master Osuno Whett took him to Renatasia to survey it for an Imperial invasion, while poising as a lowly secretary. This caused Vuffi to be mistaken for the traitor and war criminal by the populace while Whett (initially) escaped notice.

* AuthorAppeal: L. Neil Smith is quite famous in libertarian circles, so it's little surprise when the Rentasians turn up: a group of rugged starfighter aces, beaten in war but never defeated, who are all too happy to break into speeches about the self-defeating nature of large bureaucracies.

* FireForgedFriends: The Renastasian pilots have a close bond and are from scattered areas, with Shanga observing that one of them has an accent that once would have made him an enemy when they were fighting each other.

* MisplacedRetribution: Deliberately invoked. Vuffi was dressed up in an alien suit when his old master Osuno Whett took him to Renastia to survey it for an Imperial invasion, while poising as a lowly secretary. This caused Vuffi to be mistaken for the traitor and war criminal by the populace while Whett (initially) escaped notice.

* NumberTwo: Bern Nuladeg to Zero Squadron and the Renastasian Confederation in the third book, being the last of Shanga's pilots who knew him in the wars prior to the Empire attacking their homeworld.

* PyrrhicVictory: The Empire's Renatasia Campaign. 93% of their first wave of Naval attackers died, along with 87% of the second wave, 73% of the third wave and unspecified losses in the following waves (in spite of how each new wave came prepared, and facing a further weakened enemy). The Empire killed 2/3rds of Renastasian people, but in the process stye lost so many soldiers, and destroyed so much valuable infrastructure that they simply abandoned the planet and tried to pretend the whole affair never happened.

** Osuno Whett during the ''very'' rare moments he allows himself to feel introspective about Renastasia.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: The Renastasian Confederation is a ragtag army of surviving soldiers from a planet the Empire hit hard whose quest for vengeance and to rebuild is perfectly justified. It just happens that they think Vuffi Rea is the target of their vengeance. The moment they don't, they turn on the Imperials and help win the final battle.

* WhatMeasureIsAMook: Colonel Kenow is initially just a random assassin killed in an attempt on Lando's life. Then his friend Shanga gets an internal monologue about growing up with Kenos, enlisting in the military with him and surviving so many decades of conflict together only to have him shot by a man who he didn't (directly) bear any ill will towards. And that's before the revelations about the Renastasians as a whole.
* WorldOfBadass: Renastasi, partially due to its long states of war. The casualties the Imperial invasion force took were so high that they just called off the project and Whent recalls descriptions of hordes of people meeting them armed with anything from blasters to cleavers.

* DidYouJustFlipOffCthulhu: Klyn Shanga constantly speaks frankly and insultingly towards Gepta during their EnemyMine situation to the point where Gepta is imaging ways to spend centuries torturing him to death.

* InternalReveal: Fybot being TheMole for Gepta is implied quite quickly given how a cloaked figure meeting one of Geptas men leaves behind a feather, but from Lando's point of view abrupt and sudden when Fybot turns on him and Bassi.

** Gepta seeks revenge on Lando due to blaming him for Geptas failure to take the Mindharp of Sharu for himself and use it, never mind that doing so would have killed him.

* LargeAndInCharge: A literal version with the Oswaft, as they make their eldest numbers their leaders and the older an Oswaft is the the bigger they get in size.

Lando Calrissian is a gambler, con artist and all-around rogue who has recently become the sole owner and captain of the ''Millennium Falcon.'' Which he has no idea how to pilot, or even maintain, so when he wins a piloting droid called Vuffi Raa in a card game, he leaps at the chance. There's only one problem: Vuffi Raa is the Rafa system, a brutal penal colony where prisoners have their intellect and vitality sucked out and transferred into life-crystals, which quadruple human life expectancy when worn regularly. Rafa is also home to the ruins of an ancient and vanished civilization advanced far beyond the Republic/Empire, the Sharu. It is whispered that the Sharu hid a great treasure in Rafa, a mystery Lando must solve when he comes to the attention of the system governor and a terrifying sorcerer.

** Gepta seeks revenge on Lando due to blaming him for Geptas failure to take the Mindharp of Sharu for himself and use it, never mind that doing somwould have killed him.

* OrphanedEtymology: In the first book, an anthropologist remarks that the Toka natives of Rafa claim in legend to have served the Sharu, but the two coexisting would be like humans and dinosaurs. Another character immediately comments that they've seen dinosaurs, on Trammis III. Lando comments when meeting Vuffi Raa that someone has clearly forgotten that 'droid' is short for 'android' meaning 'man-like' despite the lack of Greek. Finally, Lehesu the Oswaft is compared to a Portugese man-o'-war.

[[quoteright:305:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lando.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:305:Take a chance. What's the [[SchmuckBait worst that could happen?]]]]

* AlienGeometries: The inside of a Sharu pyramid is something of a trip; entering it causes Lando to grow to enormous size, hundreds of meters tall, without realizing.

** Local administrator Vett Fori and her assistant in the first book are quick to shut down another card players attempts to frame Lando for cheating even after he took their money to.

* {{Conscription}}: The empire drafted Wyola Fybot, a culinary student, as a result of a treaty causing his home world to be required to give them a certain number of peopl.

* DidYouJustFlipOffCthulhu: Klyn Shanga constantly speaks frankly and insultingly towards Gepta during their EnemyMine situation to the point where Gepta is imaging ways to spend centuries torturign him to death.

* InternalReveal: Fybot being TheMole for Gepta is implied quite quickly given how a cloaked figure meeting one of Geptas men leaves behind a feather, but from Landon point of view abrupt and sudden when Fybot turns on him and Bassi.

* NonIdleRich: Lob Doluff is one of the richest people in his system but still chooses to work in an administrative job. The narrative (which had just described Bassi Vobahs feelings of being one of the few who serves the many) calls Doluff one of the few who serves the other few, while making "an unusually honest" effort to serve the many as well.

* WorldOfBadass: Renastasi, partially due to its long states of war. The casualties the Imperial invasion force took were so high that they just called off the project and When recalls descriptions of hordes of people meeting them armed with anything form blasters to cleavers.