History Literature / TheLockedTomb

* BecauseYouWereNiceToMe: The reason that Gideon is so upset by [[spoiler: Magnus the Fifth's]] death. He was practically a stranger, but he is the first person in her life to treat her kindly without any sort of ulterior motive.

* BrainsAndBrawn: Pretty much all necromancer and cavalier pairs, though cavaliers are often more down-to-earth and practical than unintelligent; it's basically part of the job description to be part bodyguard and part minder.

* EarthThatWas: The First is Earth, all 10 billion killed by runaway nuclear fission reactions and the rising seas of global warming. [[spoiler:At least, that's the simple answer; although the Earth was on life support with constant climate disasters, she didn't die until John, in a fit of power madness and fury, triggered global thermonuclear war in his attempt to stop the ultra-wealthy and their token refugees from abandoning the rest of them to die.]]

# ''Literature/AlectoTheNinth'' (2023)

* TrilogyCreep: Originally dubbed "The Locked Tomb Trilogy," the announcement of ''Nona the Ninth'' (taking ''Alecto'''s place as the third book and pushing it to the fourth place) makes it "The Locked Tomb Series."

** Later books turn this UpToEleven in regards to souls residing in bodies that they did not originate in. Many of the [[spoiler: Lyctors]] have a body of one sex inhabited by a soul of each. [[spoiler: Pyrrha]] is a female soul inhabiting a male body but referred to with female pronouns. [[spoiler: Camilla and Palamedes]] both inhabit a female body, but the narration changes their pronouns based on who's driving it.

* SwordAndSorcerer: Cavaliers and Necromancers are paired specifically to cover each-others weaknesses.

Gideon Nav is a [[DoorstopBaby foundling]] who was taken in by the Ninth, and has tried to escape the decrepit and abusive House since she was four years old. Holding her back is the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus, an exceptionally powerful {{necromancer}} and Gideon's lifelong tormentor. When a summons comes from their Emperor and God, they get bound up in the greater conflicts of the Empire and are forced to confront the tangled and broken relationship between the two of them.

* AerithAndBob: Normal and common names like Abigail and Camilla exist alongside some unusual names from mythology, like Palamedes or Protesilaus, and a few invented ones, like the majority of the Ninth House, who get names like Harrowhark and Aiglamene.
* TheAgeless: [[spoiler:The body of a Lyctor is preserved at the exact point in time they achieved Lyctorhood, meaning they don't get older and can't die from old age, but can from sufficient trauma. Certain experiments that were also created at Canaan House also have this apply, such as Teacher and the preserved skeletons.]]

** The Second House specializes in draining thanergy from their dying enemies and using it to bolster the life energy of their cavaliers; getting drained of either your thanergy or thalergy is supposed to be an agonizing process.

* MartyrdomCulture: The Empire as a whole, with particularly revered heroes taken to the Emperor's Mithraeum to be hallowed for eternity. Usually, it's reserved for the heroes of their endless of wars of conquest, but notable academics and politicians sometimes get honors from the Emperor as well. [[spoiler:It proves an element where the Empire is distinctly fascist, as those within the Emperor's inner circle show very little respect for said martyrs, and view it as an aggravating means to preserve the Empire at best.]]

** The body sealed inside the Locked Tomb is this, at least according to Empire religion. Supposedly, it is the Emperor's greatest foe, an enemy so great that God could defeat it once, but not twice. The Ninth House considers the Tomb opening to be synonymous with the apocalypse. [[spoiler:Harrow opened the Tomb years ago, to see that the body is a breathtakingly beautiful young woman. The reason her parents committed suicide is because they found]].

* SealedEvilInACan: The body [[spoiler:(who/which looks like a girl)]] sealed inside the Locked Tomb is this, at least according to Empire religion.

# ''Alecto The Ninth'' (2023)

* AntiMagicalFaction: The goal of Blood of Eden is to undo and wipe out necromancy completely. [[spoiler: Even several of the Emperor's own Lyctors agree with them, wanting to see the end of Nine Houses and John's endless campaign of revenge.]]

* TrilogyCreep: Originally dubbed "The Locked Tomb Trilogy," the announcement of ''Nona the Ninth'' makes it "The Locked Tomb Series."

* BecauseYouWereNiceToMe: The reason that Gideon is so upset by [[spoiler: Magnus the Fifth's]] death. He was practically a stranger, but he's the first person in her life to treat her kindly without any sort of ulterior motive.
* BrainsAndBrawn: Pretty much all necromancer and cavalier pairs, though cavaliers are often more down to earth and practical than unintelligent; it's basically part of the job description to be part bodyguard and part minder.

* GrayAndGrayMorality: The greater-scope conflict of the series. The Empire is a fascist, conquering force that literally kills the souls of the planets they invade in order to practice their necromantic powers. The terrorists that oppose them, Blood of Eden, are fragmented into independent cells that at their worst practice torture, publicly throw suspected necromancers in cages and set them on fire, and are in general brutally violent. Both sides freely use child soldiers.

** It's also discussed in-universe that it might only be an AfterlifeAntechamber: beyond whatever lies beyond the stoma, a once-popular heresy proposes the existence of a “River beyond”, a true afterlife instead of just a sea of insane ghosts, and postulates that the current state of the River is the result of something gone very wrong.

** ''Nona the Ninth'' is told from the perspective of a KindheartedSimpleton focused on [[TeenDrama the antics of her school mates]], despite [[WrongGenreSavvy being set in a city on the brink of chaos]] and [[CrapsackWorld just days away from multiple conflicting invasions]].
%% ** ''As Yet Unsent'' is a [i don't know what genre to call this]

* MartyrdomCulture: The Empire as a whole, with particularly revered heroes taken to the Emperor's Mithraeum to be hallowed for eternity. Usually, it's reserved for the heroes of their endless of wars of conquest, but notable academics and politicians sometimes get honors from the Emperor as well. [[spoiler:It proves element where the Empire is distinctly fascist, as those within the Emperor's inner circle show very little respect for said martyrs, and view it as an aggravating means to preserve the Empire at best.]]

* MergerOfSouls: [[spoiler:Lyctorhood boils down to this, requiring the necromancer to extract, consume, and successfully integrate the soul of their cavalier, killing the cavalier in the process, but retaining their fighting ability. However, this turns out to be an oversimplification; by the same process with a more difficult approach, it is possible to preserve the cavalier's soul and mind.]]

* OrphanedEtymology: A conscious aversion. Gideon's sword is referred to as a longsword or a two-hander, avoiding the German "Zweihander" entirely except for Muir's comments in the afterword.

** Necromancy itself is heavily implied to be artificial in origin, though the circumstances of its creation remain unclear.

* SubspaceOrHyperspace: The Empire's FasterThanLightTravel operates by dropping into [[TheUnderworld The River]] and being spit back out. Most people require specific anchor points (obelisks) traveled to by steles, which are fed with oxygenated blood, as only Lyctors and the Emperor can survive prolonged exposure to The River. Mercy and the Emperor even mention that it's the second form of [=FTL=] discovered; the first form destroyed time and distance and turned out to be impractical.

* ArtisticLicenseSpace: As ''The Locked Tomb'' is primarily ScienceFantasy, a lot of smaller details of physics are brushed past to avoid getting too bogged down in details.
** AllGravityIsTheSame holds true for the series, as the Nine Houses consisting of ColonizedSolarSystem and the effects different planetary gravity would have on human biology (particularly in regards to height) is never brought up, though some form of ArtificialGravity does seem to exist in the setting.
** Several Houses [[note]] The Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth respectively [[/note]] appear to be gas giant planets, but their environments are never discussed to avoid clarifying what life on them looks like, while the remaining Houses all get described at least briefly.
** There is also a notable, but short, aversion late in ''Gideon the Ninth'' as characters from the Sixth and Ninth (both small sealed colonies on otherwise uninhabitable planets) instinctively react to a fire alarm as an immediate crisis that could kill everyone, while the other Houses do not.

* ColorCodedEyes: Character eye colors are specifically noticed and mentioned for major characters, and often reflect their personality or background in some way. It even extends to entire houses; the most common eye color on the Ninth is black. [[spoiler: Achieving Lyctorhood, either Perfect or Imperfect, will cause the eye colors of the necromancer and champion involved to switch.]]

* EarthAllAlong: The Nine Houses are a very far future version of the Solar System, with the First House being Earth, but there are gaps in what is shown about the system (such as the First lacking a moon) to obscure this fact. [[spoiler:The fact that the Emperor extensively quotes from Earth culture and Commander Wake refering to Dominicus as "MY LONG-LOST NATAL SUN" make it more explicit.]]
* EarthThatWas: The First is Earth, all 10 billion killed by runaway nuclear fission reactions and the rising seas of global warming. [[spoiler:Or so says the Emperor; Commander Wake believes it was an act of murder by him instead, while he believes that Blood of Eden abandoned it. Certainly “runaway nuclear fission reactions” would be one way to put a full-scale nuclear war.]]

** Necromancy is strongly connected to water, often explicitly saltwater, which obviously ties it in further to blood, sweat and tears. This association crops up all over the place, from Canaan House being surrounded by the sea, to Harrow's family traditions, and [[TheUnderworld the River]]. In ''Harrow the Ninth'', it's expanded upon, and cheekily extended to include soup. [[spoiler:Alecto is described as the "saltwater creature", and Gideon compares the MindHive of Harrow's Lyctorhood to existing within a dark well.]]

* EveryoneIsBi: Downplayed. While some people do have preferences (neither Harrow nor Gideon ever expresses interest in men at all, for example), the majority of the Empire seems to form relationships without any regard to gender.
* EyeColourChange: [[spoiler:The Lyctorhood process has a side effect of granting a necromancer the eye color of the cavalier they consumed, which seems to range from total replacement to a subtle merging of eye color depending on the Lyctor. ''Perfect'' Lyctorhood causes a swapping of eye color that indicates which soul is currently active.]]

* FasterThanLightTravel: Wouldn't be a galaxy spanning Empire without it. Average people are limited to [[OurWormholesAreDifferent Steletic travel]], while Lyctors and the Emperor can travel directly by dropping into [[SubspaceOrHyperspace The]] [[TheUnderworld River]]. The latter is far more dangerous but isn't bound to specific obelisks, and is ''way'' faster, capable of crossing 40 billion light years — almost the radial distance of the entire universe — in a matter of minutes. [[spoiler:The civilization represented by Blood of Eden also has [=FTL=] capable of crossing the entire universe without relying on necromancy]].

* TheUnderworld: The River; a vast liminal thanergetic space that exists everywhere, and is full of starving ghosts driven mad with hunger. Entering it while alive is immediately deadly, and even the immortal Lyctors can only withstand it for a matter of minutes, all while experiencing hellish hallucinations. And even then, it might only be an AfterlifeAntechamber, as Resurrection Beasts dragged to its bottom (and the occasional Lyctor doing the dragging) get swallowed up by stoma, building sized holes full of human teeth and tongues that lead... somewhere else. A once-popular heresy also proposes the existence of a “River beyond”, a true afterlife instead of just a sea of insane ghosts, and postulates that the current state of the River is the result of something gone very wrong.

* WeirdSun: Domincus also died and was reborn in the Resurrection, and is now a thanergy star, kept from imploding into a black hole by the power of the Emperor. And necromancers can only be born while in the system it's at the heart of.