History Literature / TheNightsDawnTrilogy

* AGodAmI: Quinn Dexter, [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity total goddamn psychopath]]. Anette Ekelund also has a stab at it.

** While the Tyrathca vary greatly in appearance depending on caste, breeders resemble a cross between centaurs (four hooved feet and two arms, a horse-like mane of "Hair") and some kind of insect (Antenna, compound eyes, a "dust" like coating similar to that found on the wings of a moth). Female breeders also have [[SpareBodyParts multiple sets of ovaries]], each producing a different kind of egg, with a different chromosome count, that hatches into a different caste. Psychologically, Tyrathca breeders are phlegmatic, unimaginative and incapable of telling a lie. While Breeder children are known to show the entire human range of emotions, adult Breeders have only a few emotions, namely love for their children and monogamous breeding partner, Crippling suicidal depression over the death of their breeding partner, anger over territorial violations, and indifferent contentment over pretty much everything else. Other castes ([[SlaveRace excepting the Soldier Caste, which is almost as intelligent as the Breeders]]) are little more then beasts of burden, [[CripplingOverspecialization lacking the intelligence to do anything more then the tasks they evolved to do.]] Their entire society is shaped into a rigid hierarchical caste system with it's own social rules. For example, [[DoubleStandard Only Breeder children nurse from the Breeder Females]], the rest nurse from the males AND females of the "Nurse" caste, which the breeders use like a human would use a cow. It can't be over stated just how incredibly different the Tyrathca Breeder's way of thinking is from a human's. All the knowledge of the entire race is passed on, unchanged from one Tyrathca to another through chemical encoding, but often times they'll not make use of this knowledge, and act like they don't even have it until they feel it's needed. For example, even though they have knowledge of both nuclear fusion and computers from the time they spent on board the Arc Ships, they stopped using them once they settled on their new planet, only to start using them again almost immediately when they made contact with humans. [[spoiler: humans for centuries believed that the Tyrathca didn't have a religion because they were never observed taking part in religious activity. Turns out they've had religion all this time, they just never felt the need to pray to their God until the possession crisis.]]

* SlaveRace: All other Tyrathca castes are this to the Breeders. [[spoiler: The Mosdva were enslaved by other intelligent species from their home world on two separate occasions, first by the extinct Ridbat who were extremely warlike, and eventually killed themselves, and 70% of their planet's animal species through the use of nuclear and biological weapons, and more recently by the Tyrathca. This has instilled them with a species wide hatred of the Tyrathca so intense, that the first thing the Mosdva can think of to do with FTL drive is invade Tyrathca colonies and commit genocide on them. The only Tyrathca that still live on the Mosdva disk cities are only allowed to do so because [[TakingYouWithMe they posses weapons that could destroy the entire disk city, and wouldn't hesitate to use them if their territory near the center of the disk city is ever threatened]], [[MutuallyAssuredDestruction resulting in a fragile peace that has lasted thousands of years]].]]

* SchizoTech: The Modsva are less advanced than humans in some ways (being unable to travel FTL), and more advanced in others (being able to mine their Sun directly for hydrogen and transform it into any element.)
** It could be argued that each race has the technology it does because it didn't have the other, as both are in essence a different solution to the same problem of resource scarcity. The human solution to scarce resources was to go somewhere else and look for them, the Modsva solution was to stay where they were, but to more efficiently exploit the few resources that remain. Once this was solved in the short term, neither species had the need to develop the other technology. The humans, having FTL never needed to develop solar mining technology to acquire resources, as they could just jump to another system and set up mining colonies, whereas the Modsva, having solar mining technology never had as much of an immediate need to develop FTL drive because why go elsewhere when the local sun provides them with all the energy and matter, they need? (However, harvesting their sun is a slow and limited process which barely supplies their matter needs; hence Modsva's eagerness to obtain FTL technology from humans.)

* SlaveRace: All other Tyrathca castes are this to the Breeders. [[spoiler: The Modsva were enslaved by other intelligent species from their home world on two separate occasions, first by the extinct Ridbat who were extremely warlike, and eventually killed themselves, and 70% of their planet's animal species through the use of nuclear and biological weapons, and more recently by the Tyrathca. This has instilled them with a species wide hatred of the Tyrathca so intense, that the first thing the Modsva can think of to do with FTL drive is invade Tyrathca colonies and commit genocide on them. The only Tyrathca that still live on the Modsva disk cities are only allowed to do so because [[TakingYouWithMe they posses weapons that could destroy the entire disk city, and wouldn't hesitate to use them if their territory near the center of the disk city is ever threatened]], [[MutuallyAssuredDestruction resulting in a fragile peace that has lasted thousands of years]].]]

* WorthlessYellowRocks: PlayedStraight and [[InvertedTrope inverted]] with the Modsva. The Modsva live in massive "disk cities" made out of old asteroids that survived their sun's expansion into a Red Supergiant. Since all the system's planets where destroyed, and every last bit of the original asteroids where mined out and used to build the disk cities, the only way the Modsva, lacking FTL travel, can gain new resources is to mine their sun for hydrogen and then use fusion to transform it into other elements. Since [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_peak Iron]] is the heaviest element that can be created without a supernova, it's considered the most valuable, with one character proclaiming that an FTL drive would be worth "more than the sun's mass in iron", or in other words "more valuable than a chunk of the most valuable material know to our civilization, the size of the largest object known to our civilization." However, since carbon is much easier to create through fussion, and the Modsva have the industrial capacity to convert it into diamond, it's commonly used in a number of Modsva technologies, with Iron being limited to upper-class bling, since apparently, the Modsva don't need it biologically the way humans do.

** It is revealed by the [[spoiler: Mosdva that both they and the Tyrathca evolved on the same planet. The Mosdva used to be slaves of a previous warlike species that exterminated itself, and they had a way with machinery and technology but were physically weak. The Tyrathca were strong herd animals that had only recently achieved sentience, and they enslaved the Mosdva themselves, forcing them to build the Arkships and leaving them to die on the planet when they were done. Bad move for the Tyrathca, because they couldn't repair their own vessels, and the Mosdva build [[SpaceStation massive diskcities]] around their dying star and survived]].

** Ashly Hanson (a member of Joshua’s crew) is a rather minor example of this. Being from the 23rd century, she spent the intervening 400 years in a [[HumanPopsicle zero-tau pod]]. Despite this, only rarely is she phased by the far future. It perhaps helps that she was allowed to wake up briefly every half a century to look around.

* IdiotBall: [[spoiler: It is established quite early on that the possessed are deadlier the more of them are grouped together. In spite of this, Jacqueline Couteur has her (obviously phony) request for a trial granted, along with two other possessed. In the same room. Without any precautions to prevent them from using their powers. With high-ranking military officers in attendance who have vital intelligence about The Organisation's next strategic target. This goes about as well as you'd expect.]]

** To be noted that particularly serious crime gets you sent to a penal colony, way worse than just a period of forced labour on a normal colony.

* AllPlanetsAreEarthLike: Played with. He describes how some terra-compatible planets are not Earth like. Of course, in this series Earth is not even Earth like, by our standards.
* {{Antimatter}} : One of the highest crimes possible is to possess or produce antimatter (via stations orbiting distant stars). Production stations are destroyed on sight, and possessing antimatter carries the death penalty, no exceptions.

* ArtificialGravity: Averted except for voidhawks & blackhawks; all space habitats rotate. The artificial gravity onboard bitek ships is induced by manipulating of the distortion field they generate for propulsion.

* {{Auction}}: How artifacts found by scavengers within the Ruin Ring (the remains of the Laymil habitats orbiting the gas giant Mirchusko) are distributed throughout Tranquility and the wider Confederacy. Tranquility holds the option to supersede any winning bet within its own auction houses if they think the artifact has any scientific merit worth studying.

* BalkaniseMe: After being granted independence from Earth, the colony on the planet Nyvan fell into a period of political and ethnic unrest escalating into civil war. By the time the period of war had ended, Nyvan had Balkanised into individual nation states.

* BeePeople: The Tyrathca are an alien race that evolved along a path convergently similar to both insects and mammals. A Tyrathca family consists of a monogamous pair of intelligent adult breeders, a couple breeder children...and a large number sterile, and unintelligent vassal castes that perform specialized tasks such as Hunter, Soldier, Farmer, Builder, etc.
* BiotechIsBetter: Edenist voidhawks are frequently mentioned to outperform adamist ships on maneuverability and speed. Not to mention their ArtificialGravity.

* BoardingParty: Done often through the trilogy. First by Confederation ships arresting suspected pirates and smugglers, then later by the [[spoiler: dead attacking the living]].

** Tyrathca vassel castes to an extent.

* BringThemAround: Quinn binds the rest of ivets to him and his new cult through increasingly dark means. Firstly, by offering items as simple as new shoes. Then up to abusing those hesitant with forced drugging and violence until they submit. The more resistant are broken by having them perform {{HumanSacrifice}} rituals on others.

* BrownNote: The [[spoiler: Anti-Memory device is basically a computer virus that deletes all memory.]] The "computer" here being ''the human brain''. [[spoiler: It is used as a soul-killer weapon against the possessed, killing both the possessing soul and the original host.]]

** Nyvan, both before and ''after'' Quinn Dexter has his way with it. Before it was divided into rabidly nationalistic and xenophobic nation states that where openly hostile to one another and went out of their way to destroy each other's economies, rendering the entire planet impoverished. About 50,000 people a year leave the planet with next to nobody immigrating to replace them, and since the only people who can afford to leave are middle class professionals, the planet as a whole also suffers from a constant brain drain, further retarding economic development. So intense is the mistrust between the different countries, that Nyvan doesn't even have a single global internet, with each nation maintaining its own communications network, and not even attempting link with their neighbors. There isn't even a pretense of planetary government, no UN type body, and only three of the planet's over 20 nations are even members of the Confederation, instead the planet is dominated by a complex and shifting system of alliances lead by the "big four" planetary powers, Tonala, (the wealthiest and most developed nation, officially a democracy, but [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny in actual fact a single party state dominated by wealthy industrialists]]) Isfahan, (A fundamentalist Muslim Theocracy that's already conquered three other nations) Nazareth, (A fundamentalist Christian Theocracy) and New Georgia, (A federal republic based on the model of the old United States, and the only one of the "big four" nations that's actually a full democracy.) The lack of a centralised planetary government, and the constant threat of war made the planet a magnet for [[WretchedHive organised crime, pirates, and mercenaries.]] Afterwards [[spoiler: it became literally uninhabitable.]]
** Earth is hell. Fusion reactors provide energy ''literally'' "too cheap to meter" -- priced by subscription instead of consumption -- and have annihilated atmospheric and water pollution, but the ''heat'' from forty billion humans living in first-world conditions have altered weather patterns to non-stop Cat-5 hurricanes. The population has sheltered themselves in a dozen or {{Arcolog|y}}es. They are so overpopulated that all activities are restricted to semi-functional schedules; basically low-security prisons where AllCrimesAreEqual; ''any'' conviction for ''any'' crime results in deportation at the individual's expense, to be repaid through IndenturedServitude on whatever terracompatible rock Govcentral decides to dump you on.

** In fact, ''all'' shipboard systmes are controlled this way, to the extent that someone without a set of implants of some sort is incapable of serving as crew of an Adamist ship. Edenist ships, of course, can only be crewed by people with Affinity, which basically leaves Adamists out.

* DomedHometown - All the cities on Earth are domed, to protect them from the raging 'Aramada storms'. Before they were domed, a farmer's pickup truck was found stuck in the 70th floor of the ''Sears tower''
* {{Doorstopper}} - About 3200 pages total, plus the 400 page "A Second Chance At Eden" short story collection.
* DoubleStandard The Tyrathca put a much higher value on the life of a breeder then any of the other castes. A Tyrathca Clan will fight to death to protect a breeder child, and a breeder will literally lose the will to live if his or her monogamous mating partner dies, but the loss of one their lower caste children will merely be seen as "regrettable."

* EldritchAbomination- The [[spoiler: Orgathe are creatures of the Dark Continuum, a realm of near-absolute entropy, where every soul becomes a ghost and everything eventually falls into a central mass of ectoplasm called the Melange, unable to gather enough energy to break loose. The Orgathe can only break free for a short time by forming out of multiple souls; they wander the empty realm, devouring any soul and shred of heat they might encounter until eventually falling back into the Melange]]. And [[DarkMessiah Dexter]] tried to bring them ''all'' to Earth.

* EnergyBeings: The Ly-cilph start life as small fish-like beings on a moon orbiting a humongous gas giant. In three years' time they grow to adult form, a cross between a snail and a deep-sea anemone. They venture on to the ground and eat the memory fruit left behind by the previous generation of Ly-ciplh; the nodes contain the memories of previous generations, elevating them to sentience. They spend the next 6 years learning and observing the world around them until the 9-year mark, when a periodic flux tube discharge from the gas giant dumps enough energy on the planet for them to AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence, free to roam the Universe forever, gathering knowledge.

* FalseFlagOperation: The murder of Carter [=McBride=] by Laton’s compound is this. Carter’s body is strung upside down on a tree (to imitate an inverted crucifixion) so it will look like a victim of the ivet’s satanic rituals, then left for the villagers of Aberdale to find. It works very well.

*** The distortion field from biteks are also capable of cutting off other ships from their own wormwoles, making voidhawks a desired recruit amongst the Adamist-majority Confederacy wishing to sign ships up for anti-pirate tours.

* ForTheEvulz: There's really no other motivation to Quinn Dexter other than revenge against his former cult leader and pure, uncompromising suffering for everyone else in the Universe. He's actually ''offended'' by the existence of decent, selfless people, swearing that he'd rather kill their souls than share Hell with the likes of them.

** Similar to the Kulu Kingdom is the Oshanko Imperium, another interstellar empire, and another major Adamist power, but this time made up of Japanese Ethnic worlds (as opposed to Kulu's Christian/European Ethnic make up) and ruled by the Emperor of Oshanko, who's a descendent of the Japanese Imperial family on Earth, in much the same way as the Kulu royal family is descendent from the European royal families.

* HollywoodSatanism: The "Light Bringer" cults of Earth. Notably, [[spoiler:they're an InvokedTrope; sponsored by Govcentral to entrap [[TeensAreMonsters at-risk youths]] so a yearly quota can be ''[[SentencedToDownUnder deported]]'', they were '''purposefully designed''' to be ridiculously over-the-top sources of violent crime, so as to prevent courts from sympathizing with them. One of these indoctrinated is '''''[[BigBad Quinn Dexter]]''''' - and discovering that his faith was engineered by the government solely to give them the excuse to throw him off the planet pisses him off so much he dedicates all his efforts into not only yanking Earth out of reality, but ''[[RealityBreakingParadox breaking]]'' reality out of sheer nihilistic rage]].

* HotGypsyWoman: Romani travelers are said to live on Norfolk. In the book where EveryoneHasLotsOfSex, it shouldn’t be a surprise when one of these appears exactly for that reason.
* HumanPopsicle: Zero-tau pods are used for this. Unlike more common examples, they do not freeze a person, but rather bring their subjective time to a halt, preventing aging completely.

** Also, the Kiint have [[ShapeShifting polymorphic]] hands, that can take many shapes. When invited to shake hands with a human, she can't quite replicate the human hand, and asks said human to tell her how. She's mortified at the thought that human hands can't change shape.

* HyperspeedAmbush: Occurs right in the very first chapter. It is a common tactic used by blackhawks.
* IdiotBall: [[spoiler: It is established quite early on that the possessed are deadlier the more of them are grouped together. In spite of this, Jacqueline Couteur has her (obviously phony) request for a trial granted, along with two other possessed. In the same room. Without any precautions to prevent them using their powers. With high ranking military officers in attendance who have vital intelligence about The Organisation's next strategic target. This goes about as well as you'd expect.]]

** It is revealed by the [[spoiler: Mosdva that both them and the Tyrathca evolved on the same planet. The Mosdva used to be slaves of a previous warlike species that exterminated itself, and they had a way with machinery and technology, but were physically weak. The Tyrathca were strong herd animals that had only recently achieved sentience, and they enslaved the Mosdva themselves, forcing them to build the Arkships and leaving them to die on the planet when they were done. Bad move for the Tyrathca, because they couldn't repair their own vessels, and the Mosdva build [[SpaceStation massive diskcities]] around their dying star and survived]].

* LatexSpaceSuit : SII smart silicon space suits, which is a black ball of silicon which when activated, surround the user with the silicon and form as a spacesuit.

* MistakenForAliens: The reality dysfunction is initially mistaken for many things, the most prevalent theory being that it is an xenoc energy virus.

* NamingYourColonyWorld : There are a lot of "New ''[Insert-Area-Name-Here]''" planets, somewhat justified by most of the settlers all coming from said region. Many colonies have original names, as well.

* OneWorldOrder: The general rule is that every planet, including earth, has a single global government, with each continent getting its own parliment. There are exceptions, like Nyvan, which is divided into nation states...and is [[CrapsackWorld lesson well-learned]] because of it.

* OurWormholesAreDifferent: They're short-lived (0.005 seconds at most) and have a pitch-black event horizon. They come in spherical (for Adamist, technological ships) and portal-like (for Bitek starships) varieties, and God help you and your ship if you [[StuffBlowingUp touch the edges]].

* OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions: subverted, in that many characters are quite religious, practicing faiths more-or-less indistinguishable from modern religions, including pioneer-style Protestantism, Sunni Islam and, largely for purposes of [[KickTheDog kicking the dog]], HollywoodSatanism - [[spoiler:though ''that'' was invented by Earth's government to entrap at-risk youths so they can be SentencedToDownUnder]]. Edenists are overwhelmingly atheist, however. They don't enforce atheism - or any other beliefs for that matter - but hanging around GeniusLoci that offers provable immortality tends to screw with one's faith.

* PlanetOfHats: The Confederation practices what they call "Ethnic Streaming"; planets are specifically stated to be Christian-ethnic, Islamic-ethnic, Jewish-ethnic, Hindi-ethnic, etc. At first, Earth's government sponsored extrasolar colonization on a cosmopolitan basis; immigration was controlled so numerous ethnic groups were represented equally. This experiment came to a crashing end when these colonies erupted into religious conflicts, which were only solved when the minorities immigrated to planets where they were the majority. Nyvan -- the closest terracompatible world to Earth -- is the worst case; the planet has been ravaged by nonstop holy wars right up until the possessed showed up and conquered the whole planet. After those initial failures, colonies were sponsored by specific nations and corporations, which limited colonization to their own ethnic groups. These were much more successful, and by the time the trilogy begins it's commonly accepted that only an idiot would expect multiple ethnic groups to share a planet peacefully. A similar idea would be "separateness" AKA ''"[[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra Apartheid]]".''

* PosthumousCharacter: Wing-Tsit Chong, a biotechnologist and founder of the Edenism. He has been dead for centuries but is frequently mentioned throughout the trilogy because of his importance to the present.

* RightForTheWrongReasons: Power Manani and the mob are right: the ivets are child-killing satanists. But they never hurt Carter [=McBride=]: that was Camellia.

** It could be argued that each race has the technology it does because it didn't have the other, as both are in essence a different solution to the same problem of resources scarcity. The human solution to scarce resources was to go somewhere else and look for them, the Modsva solution was to stay where they were, but to more efficiently exploit the few resources that remain. Once this was solved in the short term, neither species had the need to develop the other technology. The humans, having FTL never needed to develop solar mining technology to acquire resources, as they could just jump to another system and set up mining colonies, whereas the Modsva, having solar mining technology never had as much of an immediate need to develop FTL drive, because why go elsewhere when the local sun provides them with all the energy and matter, they need? (However, harvesting their sun is a slow and limited process which barely supplies their matter needs; hence the Modsva's eagerness to obtain FTL technology from humans.)

* ShownTheirWork: The author put a lot of work into this series. As it happens, its also one of the most widely-acclaimed modern Space Operas.
* SlaveRace: All other Tyrathca castes are this to the Breeders. [[spoiler: The Modsva where enslaved by other intelligent species from their home world on two separate occasions, first by the extinct Ridbat who where extremely warlike, and eventually killed themselves, and 70% of their planet's animal species through the use of nuclear and biological weapons, and more recently by the Tyrathca. This has instilled them with a species wide hatred of the Tyrathca so intense, that the first thing the Modsva can think of to do with FTL drive is invade Tyrathca colonies and commit genocide on them. The only Tyrathca that still live on the Modsva disk cities are only allowed to do so because [[TakingYouWithMe they posses weapons that could destroy the entire disk city, and wouldn't hesitate to use them if their territory near the center of the disk city is ever threatened]], [[MutuallyAssuredDestruction resulting in a fragile peace that has lasted thousands of years]].]]

* SpeechImpairedAnimal: Sayce, an aboriginal cat-like animal from Laldone, have the intelligence and vocal chords to be taught earth-languages by human colonists. Despite this, they can only speak extremely short sentences with simplified grammar.

* SpheroidDropship: All Adamist FTL craft(e.g. ''The Lady Macbeth''), as the stardrive teleports objects as perfect spheres. They even retract all sensors and heat emission systems prior to jump, otherwise the drive will shear them right off.
* SufficientlyAdvancedAliens: The Kiint are the resident super-civilization, with [[spoiler: outposts in multiple galaxies, secret immortal spies in almost every known civilization]], [[CasualInterstellarTravel casual intergalactic teleportation]], and a home star system that has [[spoiler: a ''collar'' of inhabited planets sharing the same orbit]]. They can also [[spoiler: casually WalkOnWater]]. Their solution for their ''own'' possession crisis was to [[spoiler: clone ''trillions'' of mindless bodies for the returning souls to inhabit]]. The planet that the Confederation knows of is [[spoiler: just an outpost in our galaxy, and the accepted explanation for its almost complete ''lack'' of infrastructure is that the Kiint got so advanced that they grew bored with big technology]].

* SpaceAmish: Recently colonized worlds, and pastoral worlds such as Norfolk, where most technology past the 20st century is banned. (though there is a basic phone network and power grid)

** While the Tyrathca vary greatly in apearence depending on caste, breeders resemble a cross between centaurs (four hooved feet and two arms, a horse like mane of "Hair") and some kind of insect (Antenna, compound eyes, a "dust" like coating similar to that found on the wings of a moth). Female breeders also have [[SpareBodyParts mulitiple sets of ovaries]], each producing a different kind of egg, with a different chromosome count, that hatches into a different caste. Psychologicaly, Tyrathca breeders are phlegmatic, unimaginative and incapable of telling a lie. While Breeder children are known to show the entire human range of emotions, adult Breeders have only a few emotions, namely love for their children and monogamous breeding partner, Crippling suicidal depression over the death of their breeding partner, anger over territorial violations, and indifferent contentment over pretty much everything else. Other castes ([[SlaveRace excepting the Soldier Caste, which is almost as intelligent as the Breeders]]) are little more then beasts of burden, [[CripplingOverspecialization lacking the intelligence to do anything more then the tasks they evolved to do.]] Their entire society is shaped into a rigid hierarchical caste system with it's own social rules. For example, [[DoubleStandard Only Breeder children nurse from the Breeder Females]], the rest nurse from the males AND females of the "Nurse" caste, which the breeders use like a human would use a cow. It can't be over stated just how incredibly different the Tyrathca Breeder's way of thinking is from a human's. All the knowledge of the entire race is passed on, unchanged from one Tyrathca to another through chemical encoding, but often times they'll not make use of this knowledge, and act like they don't even have it until they feel it's needed. For example even though they have knowledge of both nuclear fusion and computers from the time they spent onboard the Arc Ships, they stopped using them once they settled on their new planet, only to start using them again almost immediately when they made contact with humans. [[spoiler: humans for centuries believed that the Tyrathca didn't have a religion because they where never observed taking part in religious activity. Turns out they've had a religion all this time, they just never felt the need to pray to their God until the possession crisis.]]
** The extinct Laymil are tri-symmetric, with 3 legs, 3 sensor heads and 3 arms, 3 "mouths" (one for breathing in, one for exhaling and speaking, and one for eatting); their society is a bit like a HiveMind. In a bizarre subversion, they also wear ''clothes''.

*** Averted with the Jiciro, which the Confederation handbook describes as being bipedial humanoids, [[UncannyValley But taller and thinner then humans, and having elongated limbs. They also have a higher vocal range, capable of producing sounds with pitches both above, and below the human ear's ability to perceive.]]

** Also the [[spoiler:Alchemist]] - the Confederation know very well they're not ready for it, and do their utmost to keep the knowledge bottled up.

* TidallyLockedPlanet: The Ly-cilph home planet is a hybrid case: it's a moon tidally locked to the planet it orbits; it thus experiences one solar day with respect to the primary star for every orbit around the planet. But it orbits a young, hot "super-Jupiter" (bordering on being a brown dwarf) which glows in the near infrared and red. This gives rise to a less extreme version of the climate duality experienced by planets that are tidally locked to their stars. The nearside biome is dominated by plants that exploit the always present red light of the planet; the farside has plants adapted to use just the yellow light of the primary star, with long nights.

*** Nyvan is a pretty crappy planet to live on too, mostly because it's one of the only planets divided into nation states instead of having a unified planetary government. Nation states that hate each other, war regularly, and do their best to get in the way of each other's economic development. Then Dexter came along and [[ColonyDrop had his way with it]].

* WorthlessYellowRocks: PlayedStraight and [[InvertedTrope inverted]] with the Modsva. The Modsva live in massive "disk cities" made out of old asteroids that survived their sun's expansion into a Red Supergiant. Since all the system's planets where destroyed, and every last bit of the original asteroids where mined out and used to build the disk cities, the only way the Modsva, lacking FTL travel, can gain new resources is to mine their sun for hydrogen and then use fusion to transform it into other elements. Since [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_peak Iron]] is the heaviest element that can be created without a supernova, it's considered the most valuable, with one character proclaiming that an FTL drive would be worth "more than the sun's mass in iron", or in other words "more valuable than a chunk of the most valuable material know to our civilization, the size of the largest object known to our civilization." However, since carbon is much easier to create through fussion, and the Modsva have the industrial capacity to convert it into diamond, it's commonly used in a number of Modsva technologies, with Iron being limited to upper class bling, since apparently the Modsva don't need it biologically the way humans do.

** When it hits Norfolk, it is similarly mistaken for a reemergence of a communist uprising that happened ten years ago. The militias sent to contain the “uprising” are only added to the growing ranks of the [[spoiler: dead]].

* BanishingRitual: Father Horst Ewles [[spoiler: manages to perform one of these]. Later, Joshua [[spoiler: does too]].

* MeanBoss: Power Manani comes across as this, especially to the ivets. When Carter McBride is murdered, it becomes clear he’s more of a JerkWithAHeartOfGold.

* HumanPopsicle: Zero-tau pods are used for this. Unlike more common examples, they do not freeze a person, but rather slow their subjective time to halt, preventing aging completely.

--> ‘’’Shaun Wallace’’’: [[spoiler: ''[after creating a butterfly]'']] “There, you see? We don’t always destroy.”

* OneWorldOrder: The general rule is that every planet, including earth, has a single global government, with each continent getting it's own parliment. There are exceptions, like Nyvan, which is divided into nation states...and is [[CrapsackWorld lesson well-learned]] because of it.

%%* SpaceIsAnOcean: Played with.

* TheSvengali: Quinn Dexter is a particularly dark version of this. Wherever he goes, he is able to effortlessly recruit an enthusiastic following to his [[HollywoodSatanism depraved religion]], often singling one individual out as a protege. However his disciples are utterly disposable to him, and he thinks nothing of murdering or betraying them when [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness it suits him to do so]].

* FalseFlagOperation: The murder of Carter McBride by Laton’s compound is this. Carter’s body is strung upside down on a tree (to imitate an inverted crucifixion) so it will look like a victim of the ivet’s satanic rituals, then left for the villagers of Aberdale to find. It works very well.

** After the reality dysfunction, [[spoiler: he becomes this properly, with the help of [[NotAlwaysEvil: Ingrid Veenkamp]]. Abstaining from alcohol and working hard to keep a growing community of orphaned children alive in the savannah as they await rescue]].

* Banishing Ritual: Father Horst Ewles [[spoiler: manages to perform one of these]. Later, Joshua [[spoiler: does too]].

* {{Auction}}: How artifacts found by scavengers within the Ruin Ring (the remains of the Laymil habitats orbiting the gas giant Mirchusko) are distributed throughout Tranquility and the wider Confederacy. Tranquility holds the option to supersede any winning bet within its own auction houses if they think the artifact has any scientific merit worth researching.

* BanishingRitual: Father Horst Ewles manages to perform one of these.

* CentrifugalGravity: The most common form of gravity. Even the edenist bitek habitats rotate, being shaped into giant, hollow cylinders.

* CoolStarship - The ''Lady Theatre/{{Macbeth}}'', and ''Oenone''.

* EnergyBeings: The Ly-cilph start life as small fish-like beings on a moon orbiting a humongous gas giant. In three years' time they grow to adult form, a cross between a snail and a deep-sea anemone. They venture on to the ground, and eat the memory fruit left behind by the previous generation of Ly-ciplh; the nodes contain the memories of previous generations, elevating them to sentience. They spend the next 6 years learning and observing the world around them until the 9-year mark, when a periodic flux tube discharge from the gas giant dumps enough energy on the planet for them to AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence, free to roam the Universe forever, gathering knowledge.

** After the reality dysfunction, [[spoiler: he becomes this properly, with the help of Ingrid Veenkamp. Abstaining from alcohol and working hard to keep a growing community of orphaned children alive in the savannah as they await rescue]].

* MatterReplicator: [[spoiler: The kiint]] have created these.

* MulticulturalAlienPlanet: Lalonde was an attempt at this. Firstly, being a Eurochristian-ethnic colony, they recruited colonists from all across Europe (and apparently North America too, since Quinn Dexter is from Edmonton, Canada), unlike the English-ethnic Norfolk and Polish-ethnic Mazowiecki. Secondly, Lalonde was also an attempt to produce a joint colony between humanity and the Tyrathca, the latter species desiring to settle on the planet to farm its native rygar bushes.

* NoBiochemicalBarriers: Humans will frequently eat alien plants and animals, whilst aliens will frequently eat earth plants, such as lettuce. Zigzagged with the rygar bushes, which are said to taste extremely bitter to humans, but likened to a sweet chocolate-analogue for Tyrathca.

* NoodleIncident: Whatever happened to the ''Lady Macbeth'' to leave it in its inoperable state. Joshua tells several contradictory stories about its last flight, but never the actual one.
** The actual one is revealed in ''A Second Chance at Eden''.

* [[spoiler: UsefulNotes/AlCapone]]...[[RecycledInSPACE IN SPACE!]].

* [[spoiler: BodySurf]]: Edenists achieve "immortality" by downloading their minds into bitek habitats via affinity on death; they spend a few centuries as disembodied minds before gradually merging with the habitat personality. [[spoiler: The B7 people do a body-to-body version, incinerating the old body when they download to a new one]].

* [[spoiler:FearlessUndead]]: [[spoiler: Inverted strongly. Having already died once, most of the possessed colonists are terrified of going back to the TheNothingAfterDeath]].

* FishOutOfTemporalWater: [[spoiler: Many of the Possessed suffer this, being ignorant of both technology and cultural customs in the 27th century. Most notably occurs with the two Possessed that attack the Valisk habitat, unaware that without Dariat’s interference, [[BigBrotherIsWatching the living habitat would have been able to see them wherever they went]]]].

* GrayAndGrayMorality: Abandoning planets to the Possessed make sense, given the scale of things. Also, the returning spirits aren't universally evil, but most are driven AxeCrazy with lust for life.

* GreenAesop: A CentralTheme, although it's only implied until the very end; Earth has become uninhabitable outside domed cities. It's not even due to air or water pollution; fusion reactors have made fissionables -- let alone burning carbon fuels -- as quaint as knapping flint, and purifying water is just a matter of energy. The catch is that there's no solution for ''heat'' pollution save to ''not'' use energy. Between choosing to live in picturesque squalor and maintaining an industrial lifestyle, humans decided to move to cities and fortify them against HostileWeather that has become so fierce it is capable of stripping topsoil down to bedrock. This process is repeating itself on every world humans colonize. Eventually, [[spoiler:the Kiint point out that this is part of the reason they are refusing to aid in the possession crisis; ''they'' cracked {{Matter Replicator}}s ''millennia'' ago, enabling them to return their blighted homeworld to pastoral splendor while maintaining their quality of life, terraform barren worlds to their desires and basically live a "post urban" existence wherever they please. As a result, their encounter with the Beyond was as simple as cloning new bodies for their Possessed to live in until they were psychologically stable enough to GoIntoTheLight. Calvert - realizing that humans would never do the same as long as there are terracompatible planets to exploit - thus uses the powers of the Sleeping God to teleport every human planet and habitat to an isolated area in intergalactic space, forcing them to make the discovery themselves or die trying]].

* PlanetOfHats: The Confederation practices what they call "Ethnic Streaming"; planets are specifically stated to be Christian-ethnic, Islamic-ethnic, Jewish-ethnic, Hindi-ethnic, etc. At first, Earth's government sponsored extrasolar colonization on a cosmopolitan basis; immigration was controlled so numerous ethnic groups were represented equally. This experiment came to a crashing end when these colonies erupted into religious conflicts, which were only solved when the minorities immigrated to planets where they were the majority. Nyvan -- the closest terracompatible world to Earth -- is the worst case; the planet has been ravaged by nonstop holy wars right up until the Possessed showed up and conquered the whole planet. After those initial failures, colonies were sponsored by specific nations and corporations, which limited colonization to their own ethnic groups. These were much more successful, and by the time the trilogy begins it's commonly accepted that only an idiot would expect multiple ethnic groups to share a planet peacefully. A similar idea would be "separateness" AKA ''"[[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra Apartheid]]".''

* [[spoiler:TheNothingAfterDeath]]: At first. Then it became ''overpopulated''.
* TakingYouWithMe: [[spoiler: How [[ShaggyDogStory Chas Paske's story ends]]. With him finally reaching Durringham, injured in his boat, and being tormented by a crowd of Possessed from the nearby riverbank, he detonates the atomic bomb he had been carrying throughout his entire journey, killing himself and everyone in the city.]]

* EarthThatUsedtoBeBetter: Overpopulated and polluted by the time of the trilogy's present.