| 1 | [[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/occultservice.jpg]] |
| 2 | [[caption-width-right:300:Omnibus volume containing the first two novels and two short stories]] |
| 3 | |
| 4 | ->''Magic is applied mathematics. The many-angled ones live at the bottom of the Mandelbrot set. Demonology is right after debugging in the dictionary.'' |
| 5 | -->--'''Bob Howard''', "Pimpf" |
| 6 | |
| 7 | A series of CosmicHorrorStory novels and novellas by author Creator/CharlesStross. According to WordOfGod, the idea for the series originated from a realization that [[Creator/HPLovecraft Lovecraftian]] [[CosmicHorrorStory horror]] and the UsefulNotes/ColdWar are actually ''pretty darn similar'', and if there really ''were'' [[TheOldGods elder, tentacled horrors]] lurking around the edges of reality, [[GovernmentConspiracy the government would get involved]] and the departments they'd set up to do so would look very much like [[TrenchcoatBrigade Stale Beer flavored]] SpyFiction. |
| 8 | |
| 9 | The main protagonist of the series calls himself Bob Howard (not his real name), a DeskJockey who was forcibly recruited into "[[TheMenInBlack The Laundry]]" (Q-Division, {{UsefulNotes/SOE}} in official papers) after his graduate computer science work nearly summoned Nyarlathotep. Now he's charged with protecting Earth from incursions by the many-angled ones, who can be summoned all too easily with modern computer technology. Most of the job is attending meetings and filling out paperwork, but every so often there's a major incident that results in Laundry agents trying to fight off Cthulhu and his cronies with their Palm Pilots[[note]]Hey, the first novel was published in 2001 in serial form, before smartphones were big; later novels depict Bob [[TechnologyMarchesOn suitably upgrading to an iPhone]][[/note]], [[RitualMagic Monkey's Paw wards]], and the occasional [[NukeEm briefcase nuke]], while Bob has the misfortune to land right in the middle of it. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | The series is thus far composed of the following novels and short stories (in chronological order): |
| 12 | [[index]] |
| 13 | * ''Literature/TheAtrocityArchive'' |
| 14 | * "The Concrete Jungle" (published together with ''Archive'' as ''Archives'') |
| 15 | * ''Literature/TheJenniferMorgue'' |
| 16 | * "Pimpf" (included in ''Morgue'') |
| 17 | * "Down on the Farm" ([[http://www.tor.com/2008/07/20/down-on-the-farm/ available online]]) |
| 18 | * ''Equoid'' (winner of the 2014 Hugo Award for best novella; [[http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/09/equoid available online]]) |
| 19 | * ''The Fuller Memorandum'' |
| 20 | * "Overtime" ([[http://www.tor.com/2009/12/22/overtime/ available online]]) |
| 21 | * ''The Apocalypse Codex'' |
| 22 | * ''The Rhesus Chart'' |
| 23 | * ''The Annihilation Score'' |
| 24 | * ''Escape from Yokai Land'' (novella about what Bob did during the events of The Annihilation Score) |
| 25 | * ''The Nightmare Stacks'' |
| 26 | * [[/index]]''The Howard/O'Brien Relate Counseling Session Transcripts'' (cut section of ''Delirium Brief'', removed due to Brexit, [[https://archiveofourown.org/works/8921515?view_full_work=true published as fanfiction]])[[index]] |
| 27 | * ''The Delirium Brief'' |
| 28 | * ''The Labyrinth Index'' |
| 29 | * ''Dead Lies Dreaming'' |
| 30 | * ''Quantum of Nightmares'' |
| 31 | * ''Season of Skulls'' |
| 32 | [[/index]] |
| 33 | According to WordOfGod (on his blog), the series was planned in advance to be 9 books long (plus assorted side stories), with '''Case Nightmare Green''' beginning around book five or so. However, books 5-7 represent a detour from the original story arc. So there may be more than 9 books eventually if the author, his publishers, and his readers don't lose interest first. |
| 34 | |
| 35 | ''Literature/TheNewManagement'' is a spinoff series set in the same universe, after the events of ''The Delirium Brief''. The first book, ''Dead Lies Dreaming'', was released in 2020, with sequel ''Quantum of Nightmares'' released in 2022. |
| 36 | |
| 37 | [[index]] |
| 38 | * ''TabletopGame/TheLaundry'': A TabletopRPG adaptation published by Creator/Cubicle7, using the [[UniversalSystem Basic Roleplaying]] game system - the very same system used by ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' and its own Lovecraftian spy setting, ''TabletopGame/DeltaGreen''. |
| 39 | [[/index]] |
| 40 | ----- |
| 41 | !!This series contains examples of: |
| 42 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 43 | |
| 44 | [[folder:Tropes A - F]] |
| 45 | * AccentSlipUp: Johnny's gruff Cockney accent is just an act. When he's ''really'' nervous he lapses back into his Scottish accent. |
| 46 | * ActionGirl: |
| 47 | ** Ramona Random in ''The Jennifer Morgue''. |
| 48 | ** ''The Apocalypse Codex'' has Persephone Hazard. |
| 49 | ** White Mask [[spoiler:aka Mhari Murphy]] in ''The Annihilation Score''. |
| 50 | ** Cassie in ''The Nightmare Stacks''. |
| 51 | * AffablyEvil: |
| 52 | ** If you manage to get on Angleton's bad side, the friendlier he is to you, the more doomed you are. If you catch him ''chuckling'', you are already dead, [[FateWorseThanDeath or worse]]. |
| 53 | ** While [[spoiler:the Mandate]] is terrifying, when it gets down to business, he's unfailingly polite to the ones who do not oppose him or at least do it as a part of their legal job. He [[spoiler:stays in his prison]] just because he wants to look law -abiding. When questioned about his plans, he even swears on his true name to [[spoiler:protect Britain during star conjunction under his rule. At least, from threats other than him]]. |
| 54 | * AlienSky: |
| 55 | ** In ''The Fuller Memorandum'', the world on which [[spoiler: the dead plateau is found has a galactic core or supercluster visible in the sky.]] |
| 56 | ** The Host of Air and Darkness's homeworld has this, although the ring it has instead of a moon is only there because the Dead Gods (what they call the Great Old Ones) broke it when the cultists let them in. |
| 57 | * AllAccessibleMagic: Magic is just a branch of applied mathematics that happens to invoke extradimensional powers when you do the right calculations. One of [[TheMenInBlack the Laundry]]'s jobs is to [[WelcomedToTheMasquerade recruit]] or [[KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade dispose of]] people who stumble across the dangerous stuff -- the protagonist got hired after developing a fractal geometry algorithm that almost summoned an EldritchAbomination into Wolverhampton. |
| 58 | * AllTakeAndNoGive: Mhari and Bob's relationship. She sleeps around on him, hoping to trade up to a better boyfriend, and then comes sauntering back for a safe bet when that doesn't work out, and blows up at him when he gets mad about it. Of course, we only really get [[UnreliableNarrator Bob's bitter word about it]]. When she shows up in ''The Rhesus Chart'', it's clarified that she was alternately using him for sex and taking out her frustration at being trapped in a dead-end job in the Laundry on him, but now that she's got a job she likes and has grown up a bit, is actually a pretty okay person. [[spoiler:Apart from being a vampire]]. |
| 59 | * AllWomenHateEachOther: In ''The Apocalypse Codex'', Mo O'Brien meets Ramona Random, a woman with whom Mo's husband Bob had worked closely with while they were dating in ''The Jennifer Morgue'', at a diplomatic function. Mo takes an instant dislike to Ramona because of their history, but Ramona intuits that Mo is lashing out partly because her marriage is under strain from their jobs and the two end up spending the evening having a very pleasant talk. |
| 60 | * AllianceWithAnAbomination: |
| 61 | ** An entity known as the Eater Of Souls was summoned into a human MeatPuppet to serve as a LivingWeapon, but ended up in TheMenInBlack's management instead as [[spoiler:Mr. Angleton]]. It turned out that HumanityIsInfectious and the Eater picked up more of a sense of honour and fair play than its handlers ever had. |
| 62 | ** The Franchise/CthulhuMythos entities [[spoiler:Nyarl'ath'hotep and Dread Cthulhu itself]] pull an EnemyMine with the Laundry against the Cold Ones, who are even higher on the JustForFun/SuperWeight scale and [[HorrifyingTheHorror utterly terrifying to them]]. |
| 63 | * AnimateDead: The Laundry uses zombie security guards. [[spoiler:Of former employees.]] |
| 64 | * ApocalypseCult: A number of cults try to bring their EldritchAbomination deities to Earth which would result in the deaths of millions and EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. The Cult of the Black Pharaoh is among them. |
| 65 | ** Golden Promise is an evangelical front for the cult of the Sleeper in the Pyramid. |
| 66 | ** [[spoiler: Black Chamber was taken over by servants of Lord of Sleep - Dread Cthulhu. And Laundry now works for Black Pharaoh.]] |
| 67 | ** If Black Chamber's [=PowerPoint=] slide is accurate, the KGB is extensively infiltrated by Czernobog cultists. |
| 68 | * ApocalypseHow: |
| 69 | ** The Jotun Infovore is a high Class X-3, failing to enter Class X-4 only due to the difficulties inherent in consuming itself, and is actively gunning for a Class Z. |
| 70 | ** '''Case Nightmare Rainbow''' is a series of different Apocalypse conditions. |
| 71 | *** '''Case Nightmare Green''' is when the stars come right and magic becomes easy; [[spoiler: could be anywhere between a high Class 1 and a Class X-4, depending on how nasty what comes through turns out to be.]] |
| 72 | *** '''Case Nightmare Red''', is AlienInvasion from another universe, the subject of ''The Nightmare Stacks''. (It doesn't come up in earlier books, but that might be because the Laundry's been so focused on '''Case Nightmare Green''' that they dropped the ball on '''Red'''...) |
| 73 | *** '''Case Nightmare Yellow''' is a hard technical singularity when the toasters come alive and try to eat us. |
| 74 | *** A non-canon short posted only on the author's blog refers to Brexit as "Case Nightmare Tweed", though that was probably just Bob being flippant. |
| 75 | ** The Host of Air and Darkness are the last survivors of their own ''extremely nasty'' Apocalypse, which the Laundry would classify as [[spoiler:'''Case Nightmare Green''']]. Their only option is to open the "ghost roads" (some kind of interdimensional portal) and run ''here''. |
| 76 | * ApologeticAttacker: A vampire-turned [[spoiler:Pete]] apologizes before his thirst overtakes him and he bites [[spoiler:Derek's]] throat out. |
| 77 | * ArbitrarySkepticism: |
| 78 | ** Lots of this in ''Equoid''. Bob is not pleased when sent to investigate a report of unicorns, especially when it requires him to read background material by that old fraud Creator/HPLovecraft. Turns out, unicorns are a form of EldritchAbomination and Lovecraft was not entirely full of it. But Bob assures us that "[[Literature/TheCallOfCthulhu Old Bat-Wings]]" does ''not'' exist [[spoiler:which turns out to be "true" in ''The Labyrinth Index'', at least when it comes to Cthulhu's wings or tentacles. That's just Lovecraft's seafood phobia speaking. The real one is more exoskeleton, ovipositor, and mind-controlling maggots]]. |
| 79 | ** The first line of ''The Rhesus Chart'' is: |
| 80 | -->"Don't be silly, Bob," said Mo: "Everybody knows vampires don't exist." |
| 81 | ** Which is then repeated by various characters throughout the book, [[spoiler: because a vampire has geased the ''entire Laundry'' into becoming vampire skeptics.]] |
| 82 | ** ''The Delirium Brief'' has an aversion; the Senior Auditor starts to say that werewolves don't exist, then realizes the most he can say with certainty is that he really hopes they don't. |
| 83 | * ArcWords: ''The Rhesus Chart'' has "Everyone knows vampires don't exist." |
| 84 | * ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: [[spoiler:Iris]] is unhappy with Bob because he massacred her cult, prevented her from completing a summoning, and caused her to be imprisoned for six years. Also because he was consistently late turning in his time sheets. |
| 85 | * ArtifactOfDoom: Mo's violin is clearly an evil device that, in any other story, would be the subject of a quest to destroy it. In this universe, however, it's a useful tool for the good guys. [[spoiler:But it does seem to be able to override the will of its wielder.]] |
| 86 | ** They'd like to make more like it, but then, "just owning the necessary supplies probably puts you in breach of the Human Tissues Act of 2004, not to mention a raft of other legislation." as Bob flippantly puts it. The truth turns out to be worse--much, much worse. [[spoiler: The "necessary supplies" have to be harvested from more than a dozen victims while they are awake and screaming.]] |
| 87 | *** In fact, Mo tries to go out of her way to prove to her superiors that '''Case Nightmare Green''' won't require the production of more violins. |
| 88 | *** It gets worse in ''Annihilation Score''. It turns out that Mo's violin is aware and its consciousness is [[spoiler:a fragment or avatar of the King in Yellow]]. |
| 89 | *** As of ''The Labyrinth Index'', the New Management has apparently inquired about the construction of additional violins as well as some cellos and double basses along the same lines, but the National Transplant Service is currently balking on procuring the required materials. |
| 90 | * ArtisticLicensePhysics: Senior Auditor needs electro-conductive circle and uses table salt. The catch is, while the salt is an electrolyte, this property is true only for liquid forms - melted or water solution, not solid. Of course, it's a play on old "salt circle" superstition, but the mistake is pretty jarring. |
| 91 | * AssassinOutclassin: [[spoiler:The Black Pharaoh]] has thwarted at least two attempts on his life set up by the Black Chamber, in one case leaving the would-be assassin [[StrippedToTheBone "skeletonized"]]. After these conspicuous failures, no further credible killers are willing to accept this commission, even with an increase of several million dollars in the proposed fee. |
| 92 | * AssholeVictim: [[spoiler:Harriet and Bridget, at the very least.]] If you wind up on Angleton's desk, chances are you deserved it. |
| 93 | * BadassNormal: |
| 94 | ** The entire OCCULUS team. |
| 95 | ** The lone Spetsnaz soldier in ''The Fuller Memorandum'' who kills his way through a hell of a lot of zombies and cultists after the rest of his team is wiped out. |
| 96 | -->Grigori does not play paintball; Grigori kills people. |
| 97 | ** The boys of the 21st Territorial SAS are ready to do any form of mission in any conditions. In the first book they run a recon mission into a parallel dimension, and the jobs they are asked to do just get weirder from there, but they deal with it with calm, savvy, discipline and overwhelming firepower. |
| 98 | * BadassBookworm: Everyone in Laundry Active Ops, really. |
| 99 | ** Bob himself is an excellent example; for all his insistence that he's not some sort of super-spy and his dislike of guns, he's ''very'' competent, as noted by several characters. |
| 100 | * BadSanta: The Filler of Stockings; Lurker in Fireplaces, Bringer of Gifts, the King in Red (Pick your culture: prepare to die). |
| 101 | * BadToTheLastDrop: Institutional coffee is always terrible, and creatively described. |
| 102 | * BatmanGambit: |
| 103 | ** In ''The Apocalypse Codex'', [[spoiler:the BigBad's plan hinges on the Laundry sending an ''elder'' operative who can be used to help with the invocation.]] |
| 104 | ** ''The Rhesus Chart'' as a whole. [[spoiler:An ancient vampire who embedded himself in the Laundry used the Laundry itself as a tool to take down an even older vampire, by tempting the elder to create a "nest of baby vamps", then arranged for them to be snatched up by the Laundry and thereby blow away plausible deniability, then co-opting the elder vampire's pet vampire hunter, then manipulating the elder vampire to attack the Laundry personally. If the plan came of smoothly, the elder would be eliminated with prejudice by the Laundry, and even if it failed, both would be less one frustratingly effective government agency.]] |
| 105 | ** Lampshaded and Invoked by [[spoiler:Nyarlathothep]], saying that since true clairvoyance is probability-based, the best way to get it to go your way is to rely on this trope. It's why he had Mhari do the job, because the combination of her [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome Impostor syndrome]] and the ability to play XanatosSpeedChess is best way to fight ScryVsScry between the OPA and the new SOE. |
| 106 | * BattleaxeNurse: "Down On the Farm" has robot nurses, slaved to a 1960s minicomputer [[spoiler: with a demonic intelligence system]] |
| 107 | * BedlamHouse: The Funny Farm in "Down On the Farm". |
| 108 | * BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: |
| 109 | ** UsefulNotes/AlanTuring was also [[KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade murdered by]] the Laundry. Their regret over having wasted such a peerless mind heavily informs their latter-day approach to dealing with people on the outside who have happened upon knowledge only permissible to people on the inside. |
| 110 | ** And he's not the only famous person with skin in the game. Arthur Ransome (yes, [[Literature/SwallowsAndAmazons that]] Arthur Ransome) and Ian Fleming were both close correspondents of the first head of the Laundry (who was himself a prominent military historian and associate of [[Creator/AleisterCrowley Aleister Crowley]], and did a fair bit of occult field research for him). UsefulNotes/RomanVonUngernSternberg and the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogd_Khan Bogd Khan]] had a hand in [[spoiler: containing the Sleeper in the Pyramid, a potentially world-ending entity, through means best not dwelt upon]]. And yes, Lovecraft knew the truth, or at least enough of it to be dangerous, and his fiction is considered the occult equivalent of ''The Anarchist's Cookbook'' (more likely to produce results harmful for the reader). |
| 111 | ** Anthony Comstock founded the Occult Books Division of the US Postal Inspectorate after seeing copies of the Necronomicon sent via the US mail. |
| 112 | * BeneathTheEarth: Humanity shares the planet with at least two other sentient species. The [[FishPeople Deep Ones]], code-named '''Blue Hades''', live just beneath the seafloor and could [[CurbStompBattle curb stomp]] humanity if ever they're pissed off. Luckily for humanity they seem to be fairly reasonable folks, and the occult agencies liaise with them a semiregular basis. The '''Deep Seven''', creatures known in the Franchise/CthulhuMythos as Chthonians, live deep beneath the upper crust in the polar regions. Very little is known about them, save that they are polymorphous, and that the Deep Ones are ''terrified'' of them. Humanity's saving grace, as always, is that it's not really ''important'': Neither species feels threatened by us, and they don't want anything that we have, so there's no reason to leave their environments. |
| 113 | * BecomingTheMask: Agent First of Spies and Liars after she becomes Cassie Brewer, although she was already quite nice for an elf. |
| 114 | * BigBrotherIsWatching: The UK's omnipresent surveillance cameras, which are all accessible by Laundry management, are also part of the '''Scorpion Stare''' network, being equipped with re-programmable chipsets that can convert them from simple surveillance to being technological [[DeadlyGaze basilisks]]. So not only is Big Brother most likely watching you, if he can see you, he can kill you stone dead with the flick of a switch. |
| 115 | * BigDamnHeroes: In ''The Fuller Memorandum'', [[spoiler:they're set up for a repeat but [[AvertedTrope arrive too late]] to do more than clean up after Bob's giant summoning.]] In ''The Rhesus Chart'', [[spoiler:Bob and OCCULUS]] in the climax, albeit later than intended. [[spoiler:And then [[ZigZaggedTrope it turns out]] that while they successfully dispose of BigBad 1, the whole thing doubled as a diversion so Big Bad 2 could hit the New Annex.]] |
| 116 | * BlackAndGrayMorality: Set in a [[SpyFiction stale beer]]-flavored intelligence agency in a [[CosmicHorrorStory Lovecraftian Horror]] universe. It comes with the territory. |
| 117 | * BraveScot: Johnny [=McTavish=] from ''Codex'', who grew up in an isolated Scottish fishing village with rather disturbing theological practices before running away and vowing never to return to that church. |
| 118 | * BrickJoke: Bob keeps making references to "paperclip audits" through the series. It seems like a RunningGag, until we actually get to see the start of one. Shortly thereafter, we learn that [[spoiler:if you have a paperclip from the same batch as a classified document, you can use it to magically track said document]]. |
| 119 | * BrokenMasquerade: The way '''Case Nightmare Green''' works seems to imply that this is inevitable: |
| 120 | ** '''Case Nightmare Green''' is how magic is getting progressively easier, and the break is when everyone can do it and then the Great Old Ones might get through. |
| 121 | ** As of ''The Annihilation Score'', cracks are starting to show. By the time of ''The Nightmare Stacks'', someone suggests blaming a supervillain to distract people from the extradimensional invasion. [[spoiler:By the end of ''The Nightmare Stacks'', the Laundry and everything it's been covering up has been blown out of the water in the worst possible way.]] |
| 122 | *** ''The Delirium Brief'' starts with Bob on ''Series/{{Newsnight}}'' due to the events of the previous novel dealing with the broken masquerade. |
| 123 | * BrownNote: The music of Mo's violin. |
| 124 | * BuildingOfAdventure: the Laundry HQ often becomes this, due to the sheer amount of magical artifacts, powerful wizards and classified information present there and the cutthroat bureaucratic politics that surrounds them. |
| 125 | * BulletTime: one of [[spoiler:Persephone]]'s powers, via RitualMagic. |
| 126 | * BullyingADragon: An Iranian special forces officer makes the mistake of threatening Mo while she's holding her violin. She uses it to tear out his soul and [[AndIMustScream apply it as a Band-Aid across a crack in reality]]. |
| 127 | * TheBusCameBack: ''The Delirium Brief'' indeed brings back previously sidelined characters by the busload. |
| 128 | ** Bob is back to a viewpoint character after being out of the spotlight for the previous two installments. |
| 129 | ** Likewise, Mo has returned from her medical leave. |
| 130 | ** Persephone Hazard and Johnny [=McTavish=] have their first substantial appearances since ''The Apocalypse Codex'' (although they've had blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameos in several of the in-between novels). |
| 131 | ** [[spoiler:And most significantly, as for villains of prior installments, Raymond Schiller from ''The Apocalypse Codex'', Iris Carpenter from ''The Fuller Memorandum'' and Fabian Everyman aka The Mandate from ''The Annihilation Score'' are all back as well.]] |
| 132 | * ButtDialingMordor: Nearly happened in the backstory, when some fractal algorithms Bob was working on turned out to be the geometry curve invocation method for invoking Nyarlathotep; only the Laundry's intervention prevented the inadvertent destruction of Birmingham. They hastily recruited him, making it clear [[AnOfferYouCantRefuse rejecting the job wasn't an option]]. |
| 133 | * CallBack: In ''The Nightmare Stacks'', the Host of Air and Darkness use equoids as cavalry mounts (WordOfGod confirms they are the same species as the ones from the earlier novella). |
| 134 | * CameBackWrong / CameBackStrong: [[spoiler:Bob]] in the finale of ''The Fuller Memorandum'' |
| 135 | * CanonCharacterAllAlong: Franchise/CthulhuMythos-wise: |
| 136 | ** The entity inside Mo's violin is [[spoiler:a fragment of Literature/TheKingInYellow]]. |
| 137 | ** Mind-controlling supervillain Fabian Everyman aka the Mandate is also known as [[spoiler:Nyarlathotep]]. |
| 138 | ** The power behind the Black Chamber is [[spoiler:Cthulu himself]]. |
| 139 | * TheCaptain: Captain Alan Barnes of the Artists' Rifles. |
| 140 | * CaptainErsatz: Persephone Hazard and Johnny [=McTavish=] in ''The Apocalypse Codex'' are thinly disguised and slightly historically updated versions of Literature/ModestyBlaise and her sidekick Willie Garvin. Persephone's codename is even [[PunnyName Bashful Incendiary]]... |
| 141 | * CapturedSuperEntity: |
| 142 | ** The Laundry has control of TEAPOT, also known as the Eater of Souls. [[spoiler:Well, they ''think'' they have control of it. Turns out that it's here voluntarily]]. |
| 143 | ** The Sleeper in the Pyramid on the Dead Plateau is a more straightforward example; it's an unspecified EldritchAbomination that's being held inside a pyramid ''on a distant planet'' by observer effect magic. [[spoiler:The structure is surrounded by a Wall Of Pain of impaled victims that are just ''barely'' [[AndIMustScream alive enough]] to constantly observe it and collapse its wave function into a "captive in the pyramid and dormant" state. The RAF has a special wormhole airplane that does a flyby over the Plateau every once in a while, ''just in case'']]. Further details are revealed in ''Codex'': [[spoiler:first, the Wall of Pain is set to come to undeath and chase down any interlopers who try to awaken the Sleeper. Second, waking the Sleeper isn't the hard part. It's feeding him enough souls to open the Outer Gates that's the difficult bit.]] |
| 144 | * CardCarryingVillain: The Black Chamber actually includes operatives described as [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Nazgûl]] and called that. ''By other operatives''. |
| 145 | ** And signing on with them at all means "wearing the Dark Mark". And their Dark Mark is something [[Franchise/HarryPotter Voldemort]] only wished he'd been able to create. |
| 146 | * CartwrightCurse: Mhari's thinks about how her love interests keep dying, in response to a LoveConfession of "I love you, Mhari" in Chapter 8 of ''The Labyrinth Index'': |
| 147 | --> every other man who's ever said those words to me is dead. |
| 148 | * CastFromLifespan: |
| 149 | ** Magic in this setting works by interfacing with other dimensions. This means performing magical calculations in your head that opens microscopic portals inside your brain, letting in tiny demons that think human neural tissue makes a great brunch. The cumulative effect of too much spellcasting means irreversible brain damage that looks a lot like Mad Cow Disease. The only ways to avoid this is to either use a computer to cast the actual spell, which is very limiting, or to bond with an extradimensional entity, which has its own drawbacks. |
| 150 | ** Vampires cast from ''other people's'' lifespans via sympathetic link. A victim might last six months or so if the vampire isn't up to anything in particular, but a vampiric battle mage casting a bunch of flashy combat spells will go through a new victim hourly or even sooner. |
| 151 | ** Some of Persephone's more exotic abilities have this drawback. Bob implies Mo's violin might also do the same, though whether it's a short-term drain she can recover from or siphoning off her long-term lifespan is unsaid. [[spoiler: Though, as of ''The Annihilation Score'' and especially the end of ''The Delirium Brief'', this may be a moot point.]] |
| 152 | ** Casting spell macros bound to the user's body (like what Persephone did in ''The Apocalypse Codex'') causes damage to the body that shaved around an hour's worth of lifespan. |
| 153 | * CatchPhrase |
| 154 | ** "[[ButIDigress But I digress]]." for Bob. Also, the "crunchy and good with ketchup" stock phrase he seems to use once per story. |
| 155 | *** Lampshaded in ''The Annihilation Score'' (in which the narrator is Mo): "But, as Bob would say, I digress." |
| 156 | ** "I've always found loyalty to be a two-way street", apparently part of the Laundry initiation geas. |
| 157 | * CatsAreMean: Fluffy, a white Persian which is similar in appearance and attitude to Ernst Stavro Blofeld's [[spoiler:and is a vessel for the mind of an ancient Chthonian war-god. Spooky, Bob's and/or Mo's cat as of The Delirium Brief, probably is too but hasn't received enough time …]]. |
| 158 | * TheCavalry: Four novels in, none of them came down to Bob finishing off the BigBad all by himself. ([[spoiler:''The Fuller Memorandum'' came closest, but he still needed to be rescued afterwards.]]) |
| 159 | * CharacterNameAlias: The main character identifies himself to the reader as [[Creator/RobertEHoward Bob Howard]], but acknowledges that it's not his real name. |
| 160 | * CheekCopy: The short story "Overtime" deals with Bob pulling Christmas watch duty in the aftermath of the office party. The first sign that something's wrong is when he goes to the photocopier, finds a few cheek copies, and realizes [[GlamorFailure one of them shows the thorax of a giant cockroach...]] |
| 161 | * ChekhovsSkill: |
| 162 | ** Bob's offhand comment about Mo playing her violin at all hours seems like a typical relationship gripe, until you realize she was training to use her InstrumentOfMurder. |
| 163 | ** In ''The Apocalypse Codex'', when we see Persephone practicing [[spoiler:evasion and escape]] skills in the countryside, we know she'll be using them by the end of the book. |
| 164 | * ChineseLaunderer: The Laundry is so named because one of these once served as cover for its entrance. |
| 165 | * ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: |
| 166 | ** The various occult intelligence agencies can't seem to help it. Even when they're allied and want the same thing, they always end up double-crossing each other, trying to spin the situation to their advantage. |
| 167 | ** The career bureaucrats in the Laundry (particularly in Administration and HR) also seem to suffer from this, in addition to being [[ObstructiveBureaucrat obstructive bureaucrats]]. [[spoiler:To the point where you can be certain that if Bob's current manager is a character in the story, he/she ''will'' be involved with the Big Bad in some way.]] |
| 168 | ** In ''The Fuller Memorandum'', [[spoiler:Iris Carpenter]] is a DoubleSubversion. |
| 169 | * ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve: Usually, demon-summoning requires a fair bit of effort. However, when the stars are right, just believing in something will be enough to call it forth from the vasty deeps. Worse yet, in about a decade there is supposed to be a period when just about ''anything'' [[CosmicHorrorStory can walk right in]] [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt to our universe]] as long as people believe in it. Like, say, ''high-school witchcraft clubs''. [[spoiler: Worse worse yet, the latest novel suggests that this period has already begun.]] |
| 170 | ** ''Overtime'' shows exactly how this sort of thing can and will happen. [[spoiler: Belief in Santa Claus allows a monster that Bob snarkily names "The Bringer of Gifts" to enter the world at the focus of greatest belief in foreign-reality entities: The Laundry. Bob has to "complete the ritual" by mimicking the usual Santa Claus traditions; snack and milk in exchange for a gift and then leaving. If he failed to get the critter its snacks in time, the entity would be no longer bound to obey the ritual and can do as it pleases, which involves neither leaving the premises nor leaving Bob uneaten.]] |
| 171 | ** The central threat of ''Escape from Yokai Land'' revolves around the fact that years of adoration from countless children visiting Puroland, the Sanrio theme park, is about to cause a cosmic horror shaped like Hello Kitty to manifest. |
| 172 | %%* CleanUpCrew: The plumbers. |
| 173 | * CoaxThemOutOfTheCloset: Justified. In ''The Atrocity Archive'', Laundry regulations are said to require gay employees to be ''openly'' gay, to avoid them being vulnerable to {{blackmail}} as they were when they weren't allowed to serve openly in Her Majesty's Government. Which means Bob's CampGay roommate Pinky has to drag his StraightGay partner the Brain out to Pride every year to maintain his security clearance. |
| 174 | * ColdIron: The alfär call iron “the oldest countermeasure” because it grounds out magic — the foundation of their society and military — and slaves are forbidden from handling it on pain of death. It doesn’t have any other effect, however, and the Host of Air and Darkness regularly goes about in steel plate mail. Medieval folklore of cold iron being especially harmful to elves are the result of a long game of telephone started by people who misunderstood their aversion to it in the first place. |
| 175 | * CoolCar: While not exactly a car, the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SdKfz_2 Kettenkrad]] is cool enough to be salvaged from a bleak, airless alternate dimension where Axis has won WWII (And promptly caused an apocalypse), and lovingly restored by Pinky and Brains to working condition. It finally sees use in ''The Nightmare Stacks'', [[spoiler:playing a key role in the climax with the help of a pintle-mounted Gatling gun.]] |
| 176 | * CoolPlane: RAF 666 Squadron flies "White Elephants": ''Concordes.'' [[spoiler:The original nuclear-armed version, retrofitted to carry a setup to open a Gate to the Dead Plateau and a suite of reconnaissance sensors to keep watch on developments there. The nuke isn't normally carried, and it's for if the Sleeper in the Pyramid awakens: the Laundry is grimly aware that it probably won't be enough, but it's better than nothing.]] |
| 177 | * CoolVersusAwesome: ''The Nightmare Stacks'' has a mid-air battle between dragons and Tornado fighters. |
| 178 | * CosmicHorrorStory |
| 179 | * CowardlyLion: Bob is quite up front about hating being put into dangerous situations and yet every time he is performs beyond expectations. |
| 180 | * CrazyPrepared: No matter how outlandish the situation, no matter what [[ApocalypseHow earth-shattering crisis]] is imminent, there's a good chance The Laundry (and the British Army!) have a codeword-named contingency plan on file. |
| 181 | ** Cultists about to open a portal to the Sleeper in the Pyramid? It was bound to happen eventually. Invaders from Mars? They may not be sure ''how'', but they damn well know ''what'' to do. ''Apocalypse of St. John''? It may not be very likely, but it won't hurt to be prepared! Invasion by ''[[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings the armies of Middle-Earth?]]'' [[spoiler:Actually, this one happens. And it turns out the Laundry wasn't prepared ''enough''.]] |
| 182 | * CriticalFailure: During ''The Fuller Memorandom'' when [[spoiler:Iris tries to summon the story's monster of the week into Bob while he casts a summon of his own -- from inside his freaking head, even! -- Bob leaves his body and is PULLED RIGHT BACK IN thanks to her summon. NiceJobFixingItVillain.]] |
| 183 | * CuteMonsterGirl: It turns out that there's a reason why there's so much interbreeding between '''Blue Hades''' (the Deep Ones of Shadow over Innsmouth fame) and humanity - they're actually far more attractive than Lovecraft led his readers to believe. As Bob notes, the off-colour jokes about 'fishfuckers' shared around the Laundry become a lot less funny when you actually meet a Deep One woman. |
| 184 | * CuttingTheKnot: The problem Bob and Mo have where they can't sleep in the same bed post ''Rhesus Chart'' is unceremoniously solved by Mo asking Persephone to make her a ward [[spoiler:to keep her soul safe from the Eater of Souls]] halfway through ''Delirium Brief''. |
| 185 | * DarkerAndEdgier: ''The Fuller Memorandum'' is considerably darker in tone than previous stories in the series. Not to be taken as representing a trend--''The Apocalypse Codex'' is rather less bleak. |
| 186 | ** ''Equoid'' is outright disturbing and very dark, worse than Mo's description of CLUB ZERO in ''Fuller Memorandum'' or what Persephone stumbles over during her escape in ''The Apocalypse Codex''; the Laundry series hints at many horrors, but almost never describes them outright or in detail, and ''Equoid'' serves as an example of why we should all be grateful for that; many commenters on the story called for BrainBleach. WordOfGod, also mentioned in the comment section, is that it was for a unicorn story anthology Creator/JohnScalzi was trying to get going, and for which [[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/09/a-man-walks-into-a-bar.html Stross volunteered]]. |
| 187 | ** ''The Nightmare Stacks'' might be the darkest book yet, combining [[spoiler:a horrifically-destructive AlienInvasion with an unprepared Laundry, ending with a BrokenMasquerade and thousands (if not tens of thousands) of dead civilians, not all of whom were killed by the enemy.]] |
| 188 | ** ''The Delirium Brief'' tops all so far. [[spoiler:At Rev. Schiller's suggestion the Laundry is thoroughly disbanded by Parliament. He then proceeds to attempt a [[PuppeteerParasite hostile takeover]] of the British government through [[VaginaDentata particularly]] [[BodyHorror gruesome]] means, and is only thwarted by the remnants of Mahogany Row, who in turn ''[[DealWithTheDevil sold their collective souls to Nyar-lath-Hotep, the Black Pharaoh]]'', the only being with the capability to [[SummonBiggerFish stop the half-awakened Sleeper in his tracks]].]] |
| 189 | * DeadlyEuphemism: Mo seems to enjoy coming up with creative ways to say "dead", such as "metabolically incompetent". |
| 190 | * DeadlyUpgrade: The series' magic is a branch of mathematics, and can be executed essentially by solving math problems. This is easy and (relatively) safe if done by computer, but mathematically sophisticated sorcerers can do it mentally -- at the risk of ending up with Krantzberg syndrome: summoning microscopic and ''hungry'' {{Eldritch Abomination}}s into their own skulls, leading inevitably to a particularly nasty species of dementia. There is a risk of doing so accidentally. |
| 191 | * DecapitatedArmy: The älfar plan to conquer Earth by locating its current rulers, killing them, and assuming their places in the hierarchy. This plan has several flaws: in particular, Earth has no rulers of the sort they imagine, and even if it did they wouldn't be in Leeds. At the end of the book, Cassie and Alex end up doing exactly the same thing in reverse, defeating the invasion by killing the All-Highest and his current wife in order to make Cassie the new All-Highest. |
| 192 | * {{Deconstruction}}: Of various Spy Thriller tropes. Intelligence officers are [[DeskJockey desk jockeys]] on civil service salary, the Laundry aims to be the first fully ISO 9000 certified intelligence agency (with all the paperwork that implies), and even active field agents spend most of their time in briefings and committee meetings. Not to mention the permanent squabbling over the budget. All of which are more or less TruthInTelevision. |
| 193 | ** Parts of ''Annihilation Score'' can be read as an attempt to deconstruct superhero tropes, as well as the presentation of superpowered individuals by media. It does explore the varying (by country) social contracts involved in police and emergency services work and the role of questionably trained people in it, as well as the constraints involved in attempting to create a publicly credible "superteam" for national consumption. That said, the concept already conflicts enough with the cynical and nihilistic nature of the series' setting that its conclusions don't apply (well) to the main genre. |
| 194 | * DefectorFromDecadence: [[spoiler:Agent First of Spies and Liars]] in ''The Nightmare Stacks''. Unfortunately, the ''geasa'' she is under force her to take [[ExactWords a roundabout path]] to freedom. |
| 195 | * DemonicPossession: A common plot element. In particular, a botched summoning at the climax of ''The Fuller Memorandum'' causes [[spoiler:Bob to get possessed by ''himself''.]] |
| 196 | * DepletedPhlebotinumShells: |
| 197 | ** Standard ammunition for the Laundry takes the form of "banishment rounds"--silver-plated bullets with spells engraved onto them in 90-nanometer scale. Takes care of certain nasties being ImmuneToBullets very nicely, and it still works on other targets as well. |
| 198 | ** Beginning in ''The Labyrinth Index'', the Black Chamber deploys bullets enhanced with occult parasites - any wound from one will function just like a vampire bite. |
| 199 | * DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: [[spoiler:Done literally to (a proxy of) Cthulhu in ''The Labyrinth Index''.]] |
| 200 | * DieselPunk: The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex memex]], a [[BreakOutTheMuseumPiece WWII-technology]] hypertext database that uses kilometers of microfilm, millions of wristwatch-precision cams and gears and a very effective (and nasty) magical defense system. Angleton isn't stupid, and there's a perfectly good reason why he uses a machine so outdated that it shouldn't ''exist'': there's this procedure called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking Van Eck phreaking]] that you can use to eavesdrop in a CRT or LCD monitor and gain access to classified information. The memex uses microfiche readers, and is not vulnerable to this method. It also cleanly averts EverythingIsOnline and the myriad of Laundry network problems that Bob always complains about. |
| 201 | ** Bob observes that Angleton's office is already TEMPEST shielded, so Van Eck attacks would be impractical if the attacker wasn't in the same room as the ''deeply scary sorcerer''. The implication is that the memex is there to protect ''something else''. |
| 202 | * DisasterDominoes: Bob notes early in ''Memorandum'' that no disaster is a single event; instead, they're the result of a whole chain of small missteps that all add up in a spectacularly wrong fashion. This comes back as a BrickJoke [[spoiler:when Iris and the rest of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh try to sacrifice him to summon up the Eater of Souls. Unfortunately for them, they've made a chain of missteps and misunderstandings: nothing disastrous individually, but ''in toto...'']] |
| 203 | * DiscriminateAndSwitch: When Alex shows up to family dinner in ''The Nightmare Stacks'', his little sister Sarah has brought home her trans girlfriend, and his mother is crying... because Sarah also switched her major to history. Zig-zagged, however, in this his mother is implied to be just as upset about Sarah's coming out, more so because she expected that she ''wouldn't'' be. |
| 204 | * DissonantSerenity: Angleton in "The Concrete Jungle". |
| 205 | * DrivenToSuicide: There are very few vampires because most of them, upon realizing what they've become, kill themselves rather than survive via murder (it is impossible for a vampire ''not'' to kill their victims; drinking someone's blood allows the demonic entity that makes a person a vampire to [[BrainFood feed on the victim's brain]], which is always fatal). |
| 206 | * DugTooDeep: It is mentioned in passing that the British deep mining industry was shut down in the 1980s "ostensibly for economic reasons," but really to stop miners from finding relics of the ancient subterranean race '''Deep Seven'''. |
| 207 | * {{Eagleland}}: Um... is there a type three? Because while the Laundry and their European counterparts [[ShootTheDog aren't exactly]] [[GoodIsNotNice that good]], they're about as nice as an organization can be in a world where [[Creator/HPLovecraft Lovecraft Was Right]]. The Laundry's American counterpart, the [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Black Chamber]], on the other hand, is basically outright ''evil''. Basically the Supreme Court in the land of the free has taken WhatMeasureIsANonHuman to its most extreme conclusion, by declaring that the Constitution only applies to humans, and ''only'' pure humans at that. The Black Chamber, officially the Operational Phenomenology Agency and once memorably described by Bob as "not so much our sister agency as our psycho ex-girlfriend turned bunny boiler", loves taking the "human" out of "human intelligence", using lots of golems, zombies, Deep Ones, and the like, all of whom are said to have had no choice in becoming disposable tools for the organization. And the handlers of the various creatures are just brutal. Their handlers ''are'' human, but are apparently enchanted and geassed up to the eyeballs so hard that they don't have even the minor freedom that the nonhuman grunts have. The only difference is that the nonhuman grunts are conscripts, and the handlers are (implied to be) volunteers. As demonstrated in ''The Apocalypse Codex'', even death doesn't end employment with the Black Chamber. And not in a [[OurZombiesAreDifferent Residual Human Resources]] sense either. Indeed, they're ''proud'' of this; their motto is "Death is no escape." Admittedly, the same scene demonstrates what happens to those who break their oath to The Laundry, and it's not pretty. |
| 208 | ** The name, "the Black Chamber", originated as a sobriquet for the Cipher Bureau, which was the United States' first dedicated cryptanalysis bureau, and thus a spiritual, if not lineal, predecessor of the National Security Agency. |
| 209 | *** The purely human Americans who show up are a CorruptCorporateExecutive and a [[SinisterMinister crooked televangelist]], who are greedy, short-sighted, more than willing to [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness get rid of extraneous employees.]] Textbook type 2, in other words, at least once you get past the BodyHorror. |
| 210 | ** It's revealed in ''The Delirium Brief'' that not all American occult agencies buy completely into the Black Chamber's way of thinking, and ''The Labyrinth Index'' demonstrates that the President, the Comstock Office, a sizable portion of the military and many citizens at least try for type 1. Even if the setting makes it [[CrapsackWorld unlikely to work out well in the long run.]] |
| 211 | * EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Some aspects of ''The Atrocity Archives'' seem out of place compared with details from later in the series. For example, Bob says in AA that the reason he got drafted into the Laundry is because he almost summoned Nyarlathotep by accident. A couple books later, and this is basically stated to be impossible, at least not just by whipping up the right fractal algorithm. |
| 212 | --> '''Panin''': ... there is a hierarchy of horrors here, a ladder that must be climbed. But the thing in the pyramid can set the process in motion, starting a chain of events that will ultimately open the doors of uncreation and release the Black Pharaoh. |
| 213 | ** Also, in ''Down on the Farm'', a few possible explanations for Krantzberg syndrome are posited, and the text states that there isn't a definitive answer as to what the true cause is. In every other work in the series, it's taken as read that K-syndrome is caused by performing mental magic. |
| 214 | ** Maybe it's different degrees of them being summoned? After all, [[spoiler: Black Pharaoh's avatar in form of People's Mandate has shown up by himself without any assistance]], but it's only a fraction of Him. |
| 215 | * EldritchAbomination: As you can expect in a CosmicHorrorStory, there's a whole hierarchy of them, coming from the many branches of the Multiverse: there's your average ''preta'' zombie-maker, which is closer to a few lines of necrosymbolic code than an actual lifeform. There are also the Feeders in the Night, which possess multiple bodies at a time and can spread by ''touch''. Near the top of the ladder there are things like [[spoiler:TEAPOT]], which is as intelligent as, if not more so, than a human being, and very proficient in the occult disciplines. On the reality-altering level you have the Jotun Infovore and the Sleeper In The Pyramid On The Dead Plateau; having one of them summoned/awakened/released from captivity means you can pretty much kiss your ''universe'' goodbye. Above them still, you have The Black Pharaoh himself, Nyar lath'Hotep. Yes, ''[[Franchise/CthulhuMythos that one]]''. Then there's the Cold Ones, who's apparently even above the Black Pharaoh or Cthulhu, since they're fleeing them. |
| 216 | * EmpoweredBadassNormal: Bob starts as an ordinary, albeit very competent, human, but gains the ability to among other things eat souls thanks to the events of ''The Fuller Memorandum''. Persephone Hazard coaches him a little on it during ''The Apocalypse Codex''. |
| 217 | ** ''The Rhesus Chart'' has Bob upgraded into [[spoiler:''the'' Eater of Souls when Angleton dies, inheriting most of the powers (including the scary authority inherent in the position) and all the knowledge contained inside Angleton's memex.]] |
| 218 | * TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: '''Case Nightmare Green'''. In essence, [[spoiler: billions upon billions of humans doing what we do--thinking, imagining, calculating--is ''very bad'' for reality. Sufficient levels of belief in an entity, or calculations related to an entity, can summon it from one of the countless parallel (and... not so parallel...) universes where an iteration of it exists. In the best of times, the ability to do so is ''generally'' offset by the difficulty. However, a roughly 70-year period is coming very soon--and probably has already begun--during which... well, during which the stars are right. '''Case Nightmare Green''' is predicted to be bad enough that an all-out nuclear war was considered, in order to reduce the population and thus the chances of summoning something big and hungry. However, the sheer number of deaths would almost certainly attract equally unpleasant creatures--and that's assuming that nobody dedicates the deaths to their favorite gibbering horror.]] |
| 219 | ** Now it's officially begun with various alien gods popping here and there. [[spoiler: And they're afraid of the Cold Ones, who bring something even worse.]] |
| 220 | * EnemyMine: |
| 221 | ** The Black Chamber is, as discussed above, downright evil. They're still responsible for keeping {{Eldritch Abomination}}s from getting into the world (probably), though, so they have cooperated with The Laundry now and then. |
| 222 | ** Implied with Angleton [[spoiler:who turns out to be the kind of EldritchAbomination the Laundry was created to fight. Given that there are worse beings out there, Angleton is suspected of having joined the side of humanity because it's his only option to survive.]] |
| 223 | ** Subverted with [[spoiler: Nyarl'ath'Hotep and Dread Cthulhu - they're technically allies against Cold Ones, but that doesn't hamper their ChronicBackstabbingDisorder]]. |
| 224 | * EnergyBeings: Many summoned beings don't have their own bodies, and so must take possession of an existing one to exist in our universe. If it's a living body, it's often a case of DemonicPossession; otherwise, some beings--like the Feeders in the Night--will [[OurZombiesAreDifferent take hold of corpses.]] Since they're electrical creatures piggybacking the physical nervous system of a real body, though, it does mean they're vulnerable to electrical energy, like Tasers. |
| 225 | * EnslavedTongue: In ''The Apocalypse Codex'', the BigBad breeds supernatural {{Puppeteer Parasite}}s that eat and replace their victim's tongues. |
| 226 | * EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: The alfär are all known by their job titles--All-Highest, Agent First of Spies and Liars (Cassie), and so on--because their [[IKnowYourTrueName true names]] are used in the mind-control ''geasa'' that are the foundation of their society. |
| 227 | * EvilIsDeathlyCold: The "Jotun" Infovore and many lesser abominations suck heat out of the environment. Spells can have the similar effect. In fact, unnatural cold often serves as the most obvious warning that something is horribly wrong. |
| 228 | ** Specifically, following the mathematical rules of TheVerse, especially powerful Eldritch Abominations will absorb ''information'' from existing systems. In macroscopic terms, this tends to cause things to get deathly cold, as a complete absorption of information would maximize entropy and cause all matter and energy to eventually reach a universal equilibrium where all matter and energy stops doing anything. [[spoiler: This is why the Jotun Infovore was hoping to receive a nuclear explosion and therefore get a huge blast of fresh entropy to feed on, after having almost completely drained its entire ''universe''.]] |
| 229 | * EvilIsNotAToy: |
| 230 | ** The Nazis learned this the hard way after summoning up something they couldn't put back down. |
| 231 | ** [[spoiler: So did Billington]] in ''The Jennifer Morgue''. |
| 232 | ** As did the alfär, triggering their attempt to invade Earth. |
| 233 | * EverythingSensor: Bob's palmtop, progressively updated through the series. |
| 234 | * ExactWords: ''The Rhesus Chart'' has a character get mind controlled by an ancient vampire and ordered to guard a door and kill anyone who steps through it. While the vampire ''meant'' for him to kill heroes trying to get in, it occurs to him that this also applies to a mind-controlled minion trying to get ''out''. |
| 235 | * ExploitedTrope: When [[TheUnmasquedWorld ordinary people start getting superpowers]], the government creates the expected 'superhero team' as a means of controlling events; those who with magical abilities can be recruited by the government and used to capture those who prefer to use their powers for mischievous or criminal purposes. The public is used to the idea from superhero movies, so everything appears under control as opposed to this being the harbinger for [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt '''Case Nightmare Green''']]. |
| 236 | * ExtremophileLifeforms: The Chthonians, codenamed DEEP SEVEN, live in the upper regions of Earth's mantle. |
| 237 | * TheFaceless: Due to the incredibly powerful glamour surrounding [[spoiler:Fabian Everyman]], it's impossible for anyone to describe what he looks like besides a vague, constantly shifting impression of generic handsomeness. When Mo confronts him with wards over her eyes, she sees him as a [[ReptilianConspiracy reptilian humanoid]], but later considers that might have been a decoy and he [[TheBlank may not actually have a face at all]], just an endless series of glamours. |
| 238 | * FateWorseThanDeath: ''Extremely'' common throughout the series, including some quite creative ones. The consequence is that various characters quite willingly and casually risk their lives, since a violent death is seen as an unpleasant fate, but absolutely not as the worse thing that can happen. |
| 239 | ** One of the reasons that Bob and Mo don't have children is because they know that if '''Case Nightmare Green''' comes to pass, slitting their own children's throats might be the best option to save them from an even worse fate. |
| 240 | * TheFettered: [[spoiler:Angleton]]. Looking at the ''TabletopGame/TheLaundry'' RPG, it's mentioned that whereas other [=PCs=] roll Sanity checks when confronted with danger, he rolls Etiquette. And when it reaches zero... [[OhCrap it isn't good for anyone]]. |
| 241 | * FetusTerrible: [[spoiler:Implied with Mo in ''Delirium Brief''. Bob and Mo have sex, the condom breaks and later in the same book she survives a duel between the Mandate and the Sleeper taking direct control over a host, something InUniverse acknowledged to be non-survivable. So either the offspring of the Eater of Souls is this trope or her link with the King in Yellow wasn't as thoroughly broken as she thinks it was.]] |
| 242 | * FirstPersonSmartass: Bob throws a great deal of wry humor into his narration |
| 243 | * FishPeople: '''Blue Hades''' are an extremely advanced species, living on and below the deep sea floor, that have been around for millions of years. The various occult spy agencies stay in semiregular contact with them via HalfHumanHybrid go-betweens. To their credit, they aren't hostile towards humanity (mainly because they've little use for the regions that mankind populates), which is just as well considering that they could wipe out much of us surface-dwellers via volcanoes and tsunamis. Angleton speculates that they have even more advanced weapons that humans cannot comprehend, comparing it to a soldier pointing a bayonet-tipped assault rifle towards a headhunter (who would only see a polearm.) |
| 244 | * {{Foreshadowing}}: Early in ''Codex'', Bob is sent off to a training course whose purpose is to identify talented administrators and managers from other government agencies, in case the Laundry needs to suddenly conscript them to fight [[spoiler:'''Nightmare Green''']]. By the end of the book, [[spoiler:Bob himself has passed his "test" with flying colors, and is conscripted into the secret-beyond-secret core of sorcerers and administrators who actually run the Laundry: Mahogany Row.]] |
| 245 | ** Also, the things beyond reality are referred to as "the many-angled ones", referencing Lovecraft. [[spoiler:Bob's boss is named Angleton. Turns out he's one of 'em. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Jesus_Angleton He's named after a CIA counterintelligence head]].]] |
| 246 | ** In ''The Fuller Memorandum'', the fact that the lead cultist is named [[spoiler:Jonquil]] is a clue that "Mummy" is [[spoiler:Iris]]. |
| 247 | ** In ''The Delirium Brief'' The Laundry, as SOE, Q-Division was founded by Winston Churchill. But the Invisible College was founded by Royal Prerogative. |
| 248 | * ForTheEvulz: Not all of the [[EldritchAbomination eldritch abominations]] in the series, are driven by simple HorrorHunger. And this will be really ''unfortunate'' for humanity if one of them breaks into our universe. Cultists of the Black Pharaoh have shades of this as well. |
| 249 | * FromBadToWorse: ''The Fuller Memorandum'' has this in spades. It starts with an utterly bleak prologue, then lightens a bit in the first chapter, but things go rapidly downhill from there. ([[spoiler:That said, the ending turns out to be not quite as bleak as the prologue implied.]]) |
| 250 | ** ''The Apocalypse Codex'' starts with '''Case Nightmare Green''' officially underway and Bob barely recovered from the events of ''The Fuller Memorandum''. This time, [[spoiler:a different band of cultists is at it, and they succeed in waking the Sleeper in the Pyramid - although they do not manage to feed it the millions of souls it requires.]] |
| 251 | ** ''The Rhesus Chart'' starts with a bad quarrel between Bob and Mo, and ''ends'' with [[spoiler:the death of Angleton and several important side characters, and Bob separating from Mo.]] |
| 252 | ** ''The Annihilation Score'' segues from the ending of ''The Rhesus Chart'' right into a series of escalating crises for Mo (both professional and personal). [[spoiler:By the end, thousands are dead, the Erich Zahn violin is gone, Mo's cover is blown, her marriage is in dire straits and Mo herself has a full-on nervous breakdown.]] |
| 253 | ** ''The Nightmare Stacks'' begins with a breather as Alex works on Pete's '''Magic Circle of Safety''' material while continuing to adapt to his vampiric condition and job at the Laundry. [[spoiler: It ends with '''CASE NIGHTMARE RED''', a full-on extradimensional invasion, tens of thousands dead, and the entire Laundry now exposed in the public eye.]] |
| 254 | ** ''The Delerium Brief'' begins with the Laundry cleaning up the fallout of ''The Nightmare Stacks'', now under the gaze of a hostile public and scheming politicians. [[spoiler: A third of the way through, the Laundry is disbanded by Parliament, with no replacement organization or support for vital ongoing operations, and arrest warrants on almost all of the characters.]] [[spoiler: By the end, the Sleeper in the Pyramid no longer has any influence in Britain, and the new Prime Minister will reinstate the Laundry... and all it cost was the Senior Auditor selling his soul to ''Nyar lat-Hotep itself'', binding all the protagonists to service to the same, and Mo possibly having become the host to something extradimensional (the same way Bob is now the Eater of Souls).]] |
| 255 | * FunWithAcronyms: The Free Church of the Universal Kingdom (FCUK) is only a slightly scrambled version of what they plan to do to humanity... |
| 256 | ** From "Equoid": Enhanced-Mobility Operational Capability Upgrade Mounts (EMOCUM) |
| 257 | ** [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] with the information campaign for '''Case Nightmare Green'''. It is classified as '''KGB.2.YA''', which doesn't sound too bad until you realize it's short for "Kiss Good-Bye 2 Your Ass". |
| 258 | ** ''The Rhesus Chart'' has PHANG for vampires. Clearly a backronym; there are multiple explanations given for what it might stand for, changing [[RunningGag at least once per book]]. |
| 259 | ** OCCULUS is the Occult Control Coordination Unit Liaison, Unconventional Situations. |
| 260 | ** DSS officially stands for "Deputy Special Secretary". However, especially when applied to Angleton, a meaning of "Deeply Scary Sorcerer" often seems more appropriate. |
| 261 | ** ''The Annihilation Score'' gives us Mo's proposed name for her new superpower unit, the Transhuman Law Enforcement Assistance Force (TLEAF). She says it'll ''probably'' get slapped down, but until then, they'll brew up strong. |
| 262 | * [[FunWithAcronyms Fun with Codewords]]: In ''The Rhesus Chart'', Bob is annoyed when the DRESDEN RICE working group is assigned a name that is too apropos, but in fact there are several examples throughout the series of code word choices that allude to the contents: |
| 263 | ** Basilisk guns are classified '''Scorpion Stare'''. |
| 264 | ** In ''The Jennifer Morgue'', '''Case [[Franchise/JamesBond Broccoli Goldeneye]]''' involves a wanna-be Bond villain. |
| 265 | ** ''The Apocalypse Codex'' has investigations involving Christian sects coded '''God Game''. |
| 266 | ** In ''The Rhesus Chart'', the aforementioned '''[[Literature/TheDresdenFiles Dresden]] [[Creator/AnneRice Rice]]''' working group dealing with vampires. Likewise, information about vampires is classified '''Opera Cape'''. |
| 267 | * FunWithHomophones: In ''Delirium Brief'', Jeremy Paxman asks [[spoiler:Bob]] where he got the nickname "Eater of Souls". He replies it's because early on in his career he couldn't stop putting his foot in his mouth and the name stuck. So, in other words, an Eater of Soles. |
| 268 | [[/folder]] |
| 269 | |
| 270 | [[folder:Tropes G - L]] |
| 271 | * GambitPileup: The whole plot of ''The Rhesus Chart''. [[spoiler: It turns out that two very old vampires have been playing cat and mouse for centuries trying to get each other killed. One is inside the Laundry, one isn't. By the end of the book, one is definitely dead and one is presumed dead, and so are dozens of people inside the Laundry.]] |
| 272 | * {{Geas}}: |
| 273 | ** Small ones to ensure secrecy are thrown around all the time. |
| 274 | ** In the second book the protagonist is put under a geas that essentially turns him into James Bond. [[spoiler:Too bad it's a trick by the Big Bad; a good thing at least one of the Big Bad's opponents figured out an exploit of it...]] |
| 275 | ** TEAPOT, [[spoiler:also known as Angleton]], is controlled by one. [[spoiler:It wore off decades ago.]] |
| 276 | ** Alfär society runs entirely on these. Everybody is mind-controlled by ''somebody'', except for All-Highest. |
| 277 | * GeometricMagic: Various bits of magic in the series involves "Dho-Nha" curves, easily derived by proving Turing's last theorem. These curves amplify through space-time, tearing through reality and causing magic to happen. Bob's experimenting with unusual fractals comes dangerously close to generating a Dho-Nha function and summoning an EldritchAbomination to destroy Wolverhampton. |
| 278 | * {{Glamour}}: Both objects and people can be imbued with glamours of varying strength and purpose. Some examples: |
| 279 | ** Most supernatural organisations use glamoured ID, which cuts out the middleman of actual credentials and directly convinces anyone interested that you're meant to be here, wherever 'here' is. |
| 280 | ** Ramona Random, a Black Chamber agent introduced in ''The Jennifer Morgue'', has a very powerful glamour that makes her supernaturally, irresistibly beautiful. [[spoiler:Or, at least, that's the cover story. It turns out that she's exactly as beautiful without it, but [[CuteMonsterGirl far less human]].]] |
| 281 | ** The People's Mandate is introduced during the early days of '''CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN''' when ordinary people across the world are starting to randomly get access to serious magic. In his case, he ended up with the most powerful glamour on record, described as a "you-gotta-believe-me field" that makes him seem unbelievably charismatic and trustworthy, and decided to run for Prime Minister of the UK. [[spoiler:Later, it turns out that the reason he's so powerful is that he's not human, but the Elder God Nyarlathotep, the Black Pharaoh. Ironically, this makes him a much more tempting prospect as prime minister for the powers that be in Britain.]] |
| 282 | * GlowingEyelightsOfUndeath: If someone's eye sockets are full of glowing worms, that's a good sign to start running. |
| 283 | * GodzillaThreshold: |
| 284 | |
| 285 | ** The SCORPION STARE protocol is the first sign the series loves to cross these. In the event of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, the government is willing to subject any area in the CCTV network to an area-denial attack that utterly destroys anyone in its gaze and mildly irradiates the area if it will put whatever ''thing'' is in visual range down. |
| 286 | ** In ''The Jennifer Morgue'', Mo is told she has access to "a big white one" in case the operation to put down the resurrecting DEEP SEVEN doesn't go according to plan. She isn't thrilled to find out "a big white one" means a tactical nuke, which will land just off of Saint Martin. |
| 287 | ** ''The Fuller Memorandum'' has Bob, on the verge of being sacrificed by a cannibal cult to bring something very nasty into our universe, decide [[spoiler:triggering a localized ZombieApocalypse]] couldn't possibly make things worse. |
| 288 | ** All of the various NIGHTMARE cases are "when the unthinkable becomes thinkable." |
| 289 | ** Well and truly crossed by the midpoint of ''The Delirium Brief''. [[spoiler:The Black Chamber has turned hostile, it's implied the US government has been taken over, a similar plot is underway in the UK, the Laundry has been officially disbanded, and most of their senior personnel are wanted on various charges.]] |
| 290 | ** And at the end of ''The Delirium Brief'' the senior members of the Laundry decide that the only way to deal with the threat posed by the Sleeper is to [[spoiler:swear binding loyalty to the Black Pharaoh and acquiesce as it (prepares to) assume(s) absolute control of the UK.]] |
| 291 | * GoingNative: ''The Fuller Memorandum'' reveals that this is [[spoiler:Angleton]]'s backstory. Bob suspects that he might be just siding with humanity because it gives him the best chances of survival during '''Case Nightmare Green''', though. |
| 292 | * GoneHorriblyRight: A mild version of it. [[spoiler:Angleton, a.k.a. TEAPOT,]] was originally trained to be a weapon, an Eater of Souls under the command of the Laundry's predecessor. Unfortunately for J.F.C. Fuller and the rest, when it was trained/indoctrinated to pass for human, it absorbed the British ideals--fair play and honour and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking a very sharp sense of humor]]--more than its cynical human masters did, rendering it useless in its original purpose of a hungry ghost. Instead, the SOE assigned it to [[spoiler:management]], where it performs stellar service as [[spoiler:Angleton.]] |
| 293 | * GoodAllAlong: As we learn in ''Delirium Brief'', [[spoiler:Iris Carpenter was [[TheMole a mole]] and her entire involvement in the events of ''Fuller Memorandum'' was an inside job on order of the Senior Auditor.]] |
| 294 | * GoodIsNotNice: The Laundry will generally try fairly hard to avoid unnecessary deaths, which is about as good as it gets in the CrapsackWorld they inhabit. But they're still an intelligence agency, and thus incredibly cynical, pragmatic, and prone to squeezing their assets to the last drop - and beyond. |
| 295 | * GoodShepherd: Pete Wilson, [[TheVicar a local vicar]] and a friend of the Howards, shows up in ''Codex''. Even though Bob claims to be an atheist (actually, closer to a NayTheist, but he couldn't well reveal the truth about betentacled Elder Gods and the like), he respects him for genuinely taking care of his flock's spiritual needs. [[spoiler:Doubles as a ChekhovsGunman when Bob needs a theological scholar to analyze the Apocalypse Codex of Saint Enoch, which Pete quickly deciphers as a guide to a ritual, not to mention deeply disturbing: Bob has to reassure him that, no, he hasn't gone batshit crazy and joined that particular church. Bob, naturally, feels really guilty about dragging him into it. Pete shows up in ''The Nightmare Stacks'' as a BadassPreacher; driving the Kettenkrad all over the place, saving Alex and Cassie, and generally helping to save the day.]] However, [[spoiler:he got turned into Black Chamber vampire in ''The Labyrinth Index''. While Mhari thinks she'll be able to override the vampire strain with hers instead of Black Chamber's, there's a good possibility that he'll end up committing suicide after that due to his GoodShepherd nature. At least, after he gets to say goodbye to his family.]] |
| 296 | * HalfHumanHybrid: [[spoiler:Ramona Random]] is half [[FishPeople Deep One]]. Bob notes that there's quite a lot more interbreeding between Deep Ones (or '''BLUE HADES''', as they're codenamed) and humans than you might reasonably expect - it turns out that if you don't have Lovecraft's phobia of marine life, some of them are actually very attractive. |
| 297 | * HappilyMarried: Following the events of ''Jennifer Morgue'', Bob and Mo seem to have a healthy relationship, despite the looming specter of '''Case Nightmare Green'''. [[spoiler:Things start deteriorating around ''The Fuller Memorandum''; by ''The Annihilation Score'', their marriage is on the ropes and they are living separated (although the separation is at least half because Bob's shiny new powers clash badly with Mo's violin).]] |
| 298 | * HellishHorse: The eponymous "equoids" in ''Equoid'' are large, bad-tempered, have sharp teeth, and eat meat (raw, and, for preference, alive). They're equipped with saddles that are pretty much cages, as much to protect the riders from their mounts as much as from whatever they might be riding toward. They also only look like horses during one period in their life-cycle, and the finer details of their BizarreAlienBiology are ''extremely'' unpleasant. |
| 299 | * HeroicSacrifice: The Laundryverse is pretty bleak so there aren't many where it makes much difference to the outcome, however a couple do their best. |
| 300 | ** In The Rhesus Chart, [[spoiler:Andy is the second person to meet Old George as the latter begins his assault on the Laundry, and the first person to actively offer resistance. He dies immediately, but incredibly bravely given his own pathetic magical knowledge thus far shown, and his efforts alert the rest of the Laundry personnel that something is up.]] |
| 301 | ** Similarly, in the same book, [[spoiler:the Senior Auditor takes on Old George next, forewarned by the noise made by Andy's attempt. She disables his most potent magical protections and even all-but takes off ones of his hands, dying after giving Angleton enough time to take his own shot.]] |
| 302 | ** And finally, [[spoiler:Angleton takes down Old George in what appears to be mutually-assured destruction, displaying what might be the single most powerful magic spell in the series so far and permanently erasing a section of building from reality - with them inside it.]] |
| 303 | * HeterosexualLifePartners: Persephone and Johnny in ''Codex'', despite both of them being attractive people and Johnny at least liking women. Despite their clear close friendship, there's basically no romantic interest between them at all. |
| 304 | * HigherTechSpecies: Most of the known nonhuman/alien species are significantly more advanced than humanity: |
| 305 | ** '''Blue Hades''', the [[FishPeople Deep Ones]], can ''sink'' most coastal nations and islands, and are apt at both genetic engineering and sorcery. Technically we've signed the Benthic Treaty which prohibits them from attacking signatory nations without a good reason, but the wording is more along the lines of "unless they feel like it" than anything else. They're at war with '''Deep Seven'''. |
| 306 | ** '''AC:Deep Seven''', also known as the Chthonians, can tectonically destabilize almost any land area on the planet, and a single one can lay waste to a whole city. It's unclear how much of it is technology and how much is their innate FastTunnelling. |
| 307 | ** '''Anning Blue Skull''', the [[StarfishAliens Antarctic Crinoids]] or Elder Things, are pretty much everyone's {{Precursors}}, at least in terms of biology. The ''TabletopGame/TheLaundry'' RPG book describes them as either genetically engineered or evolved to a staggering degree of adaptability: in addition to their [[Literature/AtTheMountainsOfMadness fabled resistance]] to everything from hard vacuum to crushing pressures, their manipulators have fingers that subdivide into bundles of five all the way down to the nanoscopic scale, allowing them to manipulate cells and DNA ''by hand''. All of their surviving technology is impossibly advanced, with something as mundane as a ''heater'' making use of another universe for power. Moreover, their cities and ruins [[PsychicPowers get into your head]], dumping an understanding of their culture and society into the brain of everyone who spends a few hours exploring them. |
| 308 | ** '''Pluto Kobold''', otherwise known as the [[StarfishAliens Fungi from Yuggoth]] or the [[Literature/TheWhispererInDarkness Mi-Go]], have apparently been running mining colonies all over the planet, in near-complete secrecy, for millions of years. Apart from their hobby of snatching up [[BrainInAJar the brains]] of people and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking random sheep]], not much known about them. The Laundry has [[OracularHead the head]] of one as a captive, but its responses are ''just'' {{Mind Screw}}y enough that we don't know if it's real of a Black Chamber [[IncrediblyLamePun plant]]. |
| 309 | ** '''Old Dreamer''' is the Great Race of Yith. Again, not much has been said about them so far, except for one account in the ''TabletopGame/TheLaundry'' RPG Rulebooks referring to a 19th-century bloke who got snatched away by them. |
| 310 | ** The alfär is a HumanSubspecies from an AlternateUniverse and the root of all elf mythology; specifically, everything regarding TheFairFolk. They're evolutionarily adapted for magic use, which means that wards and tools that the Laundry considers specialist equipment are ''standard-issue'' for them (though on the other hand, their magic is wildly unoptimized and inefficient). They never got past the Iron Age, but their knights are so thaumaturgically beefy that each one fields the same destructive power as a main battle tank. |
| 311 | * HijackingCthulhu: Attempted in several books [[EvilIsNotAToy with varying degrees of success]]. |
| 312 | * HistoricalCharacterConfusion: In "Pimpf," Peter-Fred Young thinking that UsefulNotes/AlanTuring worked for Creator/JohnCarmack. Which Bob lampshades. |
| 313 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: Several pop up in the archives of the Laundry; Creator/HPLovecraft ironically enough is only regarded as a hack writer (though it appears he had one genuine encounter with an EldritchAbomination). |
| 314 | * {{Homage}}: ''Archive'' for Creator/LenDeighton, ''Morgue'' for Film/JamesBond. ''Fuller'' sounds like a Literature/{{Quiller}} title, but [[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2008/07/back_home_part_29.html Word of God]] is that it ended up more of a Creator/AnthonyPrice homage. ''The Apocalypse Codex'' is a Literature/ModestyBlaise homage. ''Dead Lies Dreaming'' is stated to be one to Literature/PeterPan. ''Quantum of Nightmares'' is Literature/MaryPoppins. |
| 315 | * HoistByHisOwnPetard: at the end of ''The Apocalypse Codex'', [[spoiler:Pastor Schiller is left in the Pyramid with the newly-awakened Sleeper, whom he awakened, and who is hungry for souls to eat. Too bad this ends up getting subverted when it's revealed that Schiller became the Sleeper's host in ''The Delirium Brief''.]] |
| 316 | * HollywoodAtheist: Bob, who undergoes a unique form of HeelFaithTurn in ''The Fuller Memorandum''. As he puts it... |
| 317 | -->'''Bob:''' Like I said, the only God ''I'' believe in is coming back, and when He arrives, I'll be waiting--with a shotgun. |
| 318 | * HorrorHunger: Why most of the [[EldritchAbomination Eldritch Abominations]] appearing in the series are [[ToServeMan interested in humanity]]. Lots of them feed by increasing entropy (including the destruction of information), so killing intelligent beings and (for more powerful ones) sucking out their souls gives them excellent nutrition. |
| 319 | * [[spoiler: HorrifyingTheHorror: whatever the Cold Ones are, even Dread Cthulhu and Black Pharaoh are afraid of them.]] |
| 320 | * HumanoidAbomination: |
| 321 | ** [[spoiler:Angleton]] |
| 322 | ** [[spoiler: Bob after the events of ''The Fuller Memorandum'']] |
| 323 | ** The ending of ''The Delirium Brief'' implies that [[spoiler: Mo may have become one as well]] |
| 324 | ** [[spoiler: Fabian Everyman, introduced in ''The Annihilation Score'' and revealed as an avatar of Nyarlathotep in ''The Delirium Brief''.]] |
| 325 | * HumansAreNotTheDominantSpecies: Humans are still the most populous species on the Earth, but are only the third-most powerful after the Deep Ones (who live in the depths of the oceans) and Chthonians (who live in Earth's mantle). |
| 326 | * HumansAreSpecial: Unfortunately, only in terms of danger the humanity unwittingly poses to itself, the Earth and the Universe. Other races don't seem to have quite the same potential for summoning malevolent soul-sucking {{Physical God}}s by accident or stupidity, as evidenced by the world not being reduced to a toy of said gods yet. |
| 327 | * ICallItVera: Pinky and Brains dub the Kettenkrad "Ilsa". |
| 328 | * IHaveManyNames: James Jesus Angleton, a.k.a. TEAPOT, a.k.a. "The Eater of Souls". |
| 329 | * INeedAFreakingDrink: A so common occurence among Laundry operatives that the Laundry operates its own pub, where they can ensure that all the staff has the right security clearances to hear people ramble about things with too many angles and tentacles. |
| 330 | * IdiotBall: By the end of ''Annihilation Score'', Mo is making sweet sweet love to it. Possibly justified by her approaching stress-related breakdown, but still, let's review the facts. [[spoiler:She knows that Professor Freudstein has stolen a copy of the musical "The King in Yellow" that her violin is tremendously interested in and tries to force her to play it ''multiple times''. The magic in this manuscript is placed in a ''violin solo''. Also, she has already been tipped off that Professor Freudstein may or may not be a front for a rogue government agency and that ACPO got dangerously close to going rogue once before. She also knows that ''some'' organization within the police is plotting against her. ''And'' by this point she already knows that "Freudstein" wants her violin. And yet she still takes her violin with her when Jim invites her to a musical event AND she doesn't run away the moment she hears that they have a "last minute program change".]] This is all rather embarrassing for a character who is usually the smartest person in the room. |
| 331 | * InsaneTrollLogic: The Laundry's response to a committee in TheSeventies which suggested using the MotherOfAThousandYoung as a Weapon of Mass Destruction -- even to develop such a system would invite a preemptive strike from the Soviets or ''the destruction of mankind'' by '''Blue Hades'''. The Laundry recommended that all the members of this committee be forced into early retirement and "denied access to sharp objects." |
| 332 | * InvadingRefugees: The Earth of the alfär has undergone its own '''Case Nightmare Green''', accelerated by some deranged cultists blowing up the moon. Civilization has been wiped out by a combination of lunar debris, the Many-Angled Ones overrunning the planet, and infrastructural collapse. The last survivors are a few thousand soldiers hibernating in a remote bunker, trying to sleep out the apocalypse, but supplies have run critically low. Their only hope is to invade and conquer an alternate Earth, thus jumpstarting the plot of ''The Nightmare Stacks''. [[spoiler:In the end, Cassie requests asylum and refugee status from the UN for all the surviving alfär.]] |
| 333 | ** Surprisingly, [[spoiler: elder gods are this - they're fleeing Cold Ones, from some indescribable facet of reality to Earth. And want to use it as a raw material in their war.]] |
| 334 | * IKnowYourTrueName: The alfär use true names to create their ''geasas'', and as a consequence guard theirs very closely. Cassie's gobsmacked when Alex just gives her his. |
| 335 | ** Inverted with Mo's violin. If you find out Lecter's real name, ''it'' gains influence over ''you''. |
| 336 | * InnocentBigot: Since Cassie is from a society that basically forbids personal expression and regularly castrates its mages, she, unfortunately, assumes that Mack, a trans woman who is dating Alex's little sister, is a eunuch. Luckily, it's also pretty obvious she's just clueless, so Mack's feelings aren't that hurt. |
| 337 | * IShouldWriteABookAboutThis: At the start of ''The Apocalypse Codex'', Bob mentions that he has been encouraged to document his experiences in the field to serve as a (highly classified) resource to assist in training new Laundry agents. |
| 338 | * ItCanThink: In ''Equoid'' the EldritchAbomination gains sentience [[MotherOfAThousandYoung towards the end of its life cycle]], and can make defensive moves like arranging for the delivery of a ton of ammonium nitrate, enough to blow up anyone who tried to KillItWithFire before it spawns. At first, Bob assumes this is due to it forming a HiveMind with its young, but apparently it's due to {{reincarnation}}. |
| 339 | ** Mo's violin has a mind and will of its own. ''She'' always knew; it took a serious eldritch upgrade and the violin trying to kill Mhari for Bob to realize. |
| 340 | * IWantMyJetPack: It's explained in the books that some "future" concepts are possible but are suppressed due to supernatural consequences (certain forms of computing open portals to hell-dimensions, underwater human bases would really piss off '''Blue Hades''', etc) |
| 341 | * IfYoureSoEvilEatThisKitten: If you're really a HumanoidAbomination, eat this baby. [[spoiler: Bob manages to pass as an Eater of Souls. Rather, he's forced to drink the baby's blood as part of a binding ritual for the Eater, and his resistance is accepted by the cultists as the Eater not wanting to be bound. He does find the taste of blood worryingly delightful during this time, though.]] |
| 342 | * ImAHumanitarian: The cultists in ''The Fuller Memorandum''. Nom nom nom! |
| 343 | * IncompetenceInc: The Laundry finds it easiest to deal with people who can't be let go by simply giving them a pointless paper-pushing job until they can retire with a pension. It's cheaper in some ways, and it avoids a ''lot'' of nasty legal and PR issues. |
| 344 | ** The root of the matter is that they hire as an alternative to killing random civilians, and this is almost the only way anybody comes to work for them. Unlike a standard setup where people are KickedUpstairs, all of the ''lowest''-level jobs are sinecures. |
| 345 | * InSeriesNickname: The Black Chamber's omnipresence and sinister air lead to them being called [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings the Nazgûl]] by the British characters. They also refer to the binding on volunteers as "[[Literature/HarryPotter The Dark Mark]]". |
| 346 | * InstrumentOfMurder: Bob's girlfriend, Mo, carries a Zahn-model violin that she wields like a weapon. In an amusing ShoutOut to Woody Guthrie, the violin has "THIS MACHINE KILLS DEMONS" written on it. The violin itself is a shout out to the Lovecraft short, "The Music of Erich Zahn". |
| 347 | * InspirationNod: Persephone Hazard, the {{expy}} of Literature/ModestyBlaise, is referred to in the Laundry's internal files by the code name '''Bashful Incindeary'''. |
| 348 | * InTheBlood: Johnny [=McTavish=] carries the bloodline of Lilith, which carries supernatural properties and is needed in a ritual. [[spoiler:[=McTavish=] is an escaped member of one of the half-Deep One churches, knows exactly what the purpose entails, and has no intention of letting it come to pass.]] |
| 349 | ** Whether Lilith existed or not is hard to say, but his ancestors presumably engaged in a little bit of hanky-panky with the Deep Ones so he isn't quite like a normal human. |
| 350 | * ItCameFromTheFridge: [[NoodleIncident the reason temporal multiplexers are no longer allowed in the Howard residence.]] Cricket bats are involved. |
| 351 | * JustTrainWrong: A number of statements are made about the British railway system which wouldn't be true of the real one -- for example, that East Grinstead is on the London to Brighton line. This has led to {{fanon}} that in the Laundryverse, the railway builders had a lot of trouble with DugTooDeep, causing lines to be rerouted. |
| 352 | * {{Kaiju}}: In ''The Delirium Brief'', Bob mentioned that an 80-meter tall kaiju attacked Yokohama and fought against the JSDF as a result of his mission at Puroland. Even then the event isn't as headline-hitting as alfär incursion in Leeds. |
| 353 | * KilledOffForReal: [[spoiler:By the end of ''The Rhesus Chart'', OCCULUS trooper Steve Howe, Andy Newstrom, and Angleton, who have been around since the first book, are all killed or presumed dead.]] |
| 354 | * KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade: Deconstructed; the predecessors to the Laundry did this to UsefulNotes/AlanTuring. Since he was, you know, Alan Turing, this merely meant that they lost a potentially really useful resource when they could have achieved the same basic effect ''and'' made use of his skills and intelligence by simply drafting him into the service and making him sign the Official Secrets Act. After kicking themselves thoroughly, the Laundry went on to make averting this a matter of policy. |
| 355 | ** An EnforcedTrope with vampires, who kill off any other vampire they encounter, as even a small increase in the death rate in Britain would risk compromising them. |
| 356 | * LaserGuidedKarma: In a rare occurrence for the series, [[spoiler:Rev. Schiller]] gets his just deserts by the end of ''The Delirium Brief''. This is [[InvokedTrope explicitly facilitated]] by [[spoiler:The Mandate]] leaving the keys in the Jaguar earlier. |
| 357 | * LeaningOnTheFourthWall: In ''The Delirium Brief'', Mo has a brief conversation with a BBC showrunner whose physical description suggests he bears a strong resemblance to [[AuthorAvatar Stross himself]]. He says he's "part of the comic relief" at the party they're at, and claims that the network can't figure out whether they want to hire him to do a sitcom about government bureaucracy or a horror series. |
| 358 | * LighterAndSofter: Compared to Stross's two earlier UsefulNotes/ColdWar short cosmic horror stories "A Colder War" and "Missile Gap", in which [[spoiler: humanity is brought to extinction by an all-out war and in one case, the remnants escape only to die of cold and starvation in an alternate dimension]], the Laundryverse is downright optimistic about humanity's chances. |
| 359 | * ALighterShadeOfBlack: This is at least the hope regarding [[spoiler:the Black Pharoah]] - he likes human sacrifice, demands worship, and doesn't particularly care about any individual human lives or believe that people have any rights he should respect. At the same time, he does have a personal interest in making sure that at least ''some'' humans continue to survive, whereas many of his [[EldritchAbomination peers]] are just planning to kill everybody. |
| 360 | * LovecraftLite: For the most part, as long as '''Case Nightmare Green''' isn't involved. |
| 361 | [[/folder]] |
| 362 | |
| 363 | [[folder:Tropes M - S]] |
| 364 | %%* MadLibThrillerTitle: Some of the novels. |
| 365 | * MagicalLibrary: Each occult organization has one of these: Laundry has the Stacks with its 50 kilometer of shelf space, the Black Chamber has considerably larger Orne Libary in Miskatonic University, and the Thirteenth Directorate has one that utterly dwarfed everyone else's, which help compensate for their general backwardness of their occult program. |
| 366 | * TheMagicComesBack: [[spoiler:'''Case Nightmare Green''']]. |
| 367 | * MagicFromTechnology: Forms the premise of the series' magical system. It is possible to cast magic without technology. Certain symbols and patterns of thought can summon entities from other dimensions or do minor magic. Otherworldly entities aren't that picky about exactly how well they're summoned or what they're called so long as the message is dinner (human souls) is ready. Computers can make these symbols precisely and certain mathematical theorems explain how symbols work, so computers and a good knowledge of computational science lets you reliably and efficiently cast spells. |
| 368 | * ManchurianAgent: In ''The Labyrinth Index'', [[spoiler:Pete and Derek (who was infected by Pete) was turned into this when Pete was infected by Black Chamber's strain of vampire parasite, which were bred to be able to force the host to do anything the Black Chamber wants. Jim was too, but Mhari managed to override the vampire strain with hers. She also plans to fix Pete after mission (Derek was abandoned).]] |
| 369 | * ManicPixieDreamGirl: Cassie is a [[DeconstructedTrope deconstruction]]. Her antics during her second date with Alex are wholly inappropriate for the situation (read: disastrous family dinner) and only serve to alienate both further from Alex's parents and sister. It’s also worth noting that Cassie is a trained spy and infiltrator; when Bob meets her in ''Delirium Brief'' he thinks that she’s [[ObfuscatingStupidity acting more ditzy than she really is so she comes off as less of a threat.]] |
| 370 | * MayContainEvil: {{Downplayed}} and played for laughs, then subverted. Apparently Apple puts mild glamours on its products to make people want to buy them. Early in ''The Fuller Memorandum'', Bob ends up falling for the glamour and buying an iPhone. [[spoiler:It ends up saving his life after Brains installs anti-monster apps on it without permission.]] |
| 371 | * TheMenInBlack: Most major powers in the setting maintain their own occult intelligence services. So far, we've seen the Laundry for the British, the Black Chamber and Comstock Office for America, the Faust Force for Germany, and the Thirteenth Directorate for Russia. |
| 372 | * MentorOccupationalHazard: [[spoiler: Angleton]] seems not to have made it out of ''The Rhesus Chart''. On the one hand, they NeverFoundTheBody; on the other, [[spoiler: it wasn't originally his anyway...]] |
| 373 | * MistakenForRacist: In ''The Labyrinth Index'', [[spoiler:Fabian Everyman]] was thought to be an anti-Semite by his subordinates when he said he want the Jewish problem to be dealt with. He then proceeds to list the problems he have with them: [[UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}} Good Samaritan, Sermon of the Mount]], [[UsefulNotes/{{Islam}} suicide bombing, can't eat bacon]]...turns out he actually has problem with all Abrahamic religions (which he considers to be all Jewish) because they're not worshipping ''him''. |
| 374 | * TheMole: [[spoiler:Iris Carpenter]] in ''The Fuller Memorandum''. |
| 375 | * MoralEventHorizon: For the Laundry as a whole, the [[spoiler:[[DealWithTheDevil deal]] with [[SatanicArchetype Nyarlathotep]]]] in ''The Delirium Brief'' |
| 376 | * MoreDakka: Laundry agents are discouraged from carrying guns around; they tend to be much more trouble than they're worth. On the other hand, when they ''do'' get authorization they get all kinds of fun toys. Like the Atchisson AA-12 that Harry the Horse offers Bob, who thinks it'd be great for clearing unwelcome visitors off their front step--and the sidewalk, and the street, ''and'' the neighbors across the street, [[RunningGag and anyone in the neighbors' backyard as well...]] |
| 377 | * MortonsFork: '''Case Nightmare Green''' will be caused by the large number of people and computer processing cycles existing on Earth, which will grab the attention of various Lovecraftian horrors. Attempts to avoid '''Case Nightmare Green''' by killing off some of the population will cause a spike in local entropy, which will grab the attention of various Lovecraftian horrors. Attempts to avoid '''Case Nightmare Green''' by reducing technological complexity on Earth will unfortunately result in mass deaths due to reduction in agriculture, leading to a spike in local entropy, etc. In short, it's unavoidable. |
| 378 | * MusicalAssassin: [[spoiler:Dominique]] in ''The Jennifer Morgue'' and ''The Fuller Memorandum''. |
| 379 | * MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch: By human standards, the alfär are callous sociopaths without any regard for others of their own kind or any other creatures. Cassie, on the other hand, possesses a much more human-like ability to empathize. [[AlternativeCharacterInterpretation This claim also conveniently happens to serve her personal interests.]] |
| 380 | * {{Naytheist}}: As of ''The Fuller Memorandum'', Bob is absolutely certain that there is a God, [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos which god is the true God]], and that the true God is coming back. Bob will be waiting for Him with a shotgun. |
| 381 | ** As noted in ''Jennifer Morgue'', he did not believe in God, but he ''did'' believe in Hell. |
| 382 | * NarrativeProfanityFilter: gleefully subverted on one occasion. |
| 383 | --> I start swearing: not my [[ClusterFBomb usual "shit-fuck-piss-cunt-bugger" litany]], but ''really'' [[BlackSpeech rude words.]] |
| 384 | * {{Necromancy}}: Bob is good at this. |
| 385 | * NiceJobBreakingItHero: See HoistByHisOwnPetard example - [[spoiler:Schiller instead becomes the Sleeper's host, setting off the events of ''The Delirium Brief'']] |
| 386 | * NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: The politicians that appear in ''The Apocalypse Codex'', ''The Annihilation Score'', and ''The Delirium Brief'' are ''very'' clearly based on real life counterparts: Jeremy Michaels, the upper-middle-class Prime Minister and MP for Witney, is UsefulNotes/DavidCameron; Barry Jennings, the Justice Secretary and party elder is Ken Clarke; Jessica Greene, the Home Secretary and "pin-up girl for the hanging's-too-good-for-them crowd" is UsefulNotes/TheresaMay; and the unnamed Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the junior party in coalition with Michaels is UsefulNotes/NickClegg. UsefulNotes/BorisJohnson (as a coiffured Mayor of London and frenemy to Michaels, who gets pantsed in Trafalgar Square) and UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump (who takes a demotion to Ambassador to the UK) also make unnamed cameos. |
| 387 | * ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: Billington's first response to discovering the computer security on his warship-turned-yacht has been compromised? Sink the entire ship. |
| 388 | * NoodleIncident: Fairly frequent. Done to especially good effect by combination with the '''Classified Code Word''' naming scheme. |
| 389 | ** Whatever Bob did the one time he succumbed to the urge to respond to a FourOneNineScam. All he'll say is that Laundry Internal Security waxed sarcastic at him for half an hour, and them made him give the scammers back their bank. |
| 390 | * NoOneCouldSurviveThat: In ''The Apocalypse Codex'', [[spoiler: Schiller's fate at the end]]. In ''The Delirium Brief'', [[spoiler: Mo]] apparently survives being in immediate vicinity of two class six horrors duking it out - something that's in-universe acknowledged to be impossible. |
| 391 | * NoSuchAgency: The Laundry and equivalents in other countries (Black Chamber, Thirteenth Directorate, and so on). |
| 392 | * NoSuchThingAsHR: Averted. [[PointyHairedBoss They're not]] [[ObstructiveBureaucrat particularly helpful]], though. HR is often the ''cause'' of the problems that in RealLife they'd be expected to solve. This is partly just because of RuleOfFunny, partly because of the spy setting, partly because no one chose to be there and so they may take it out on each other, also partly because of the UltimateJobSecurity - they can't lose their job until they screw up big enough to get killed. And even then, that doesn't get one out of being [[OurZombiesAreDifferent Residual Human Resources]]. |
| 393 | * NoSuchThingAsSpaceJesus: There are various cults that identify Jesus with any one of a number of horrors, not realizing that calling him back would certainly not result in rapture (although the apocalypse is almost certain should they succeed). Most of the Laundry is skeptical about him; Johnny [=McTavish=] sums up the main issue with associating him with a soul-eating horror: |
| 394 | --> ... he grew up with this deviant theology, although he doesn't hold with it himself--the doctrine that Jesus was a supernatural vessel for the Gatekeeper is inner doctrine, but he considers the idea that the Sermon on the Mount was delivered by a sockpuppet for the Sleeper in the Pyramid to be somewhere between implausible and hilarious. |
| 395 | * NothingIsScarier: In universe, Bob considers his boss, Angleton, ''less'' scary upon learning [[spoiler:he's a "hungry ghost" named the Eater of Souls bound to the body of a convicted murderer]], because now he has something ''concrete'' to be scared of. |
| 396 | * NotWhatItLooksLike: Bob has a serious OhCrap moment when Mo comes home from assignment with her killer violin and finds Bob's ex-girlfriend Mhari in a stake of undress in their house. Bob successfully convinces his wife that Mhari is only there because she needs protection [[spoiler:whereupon the violin tries to take control of Mo and force her to kill Mhari and then Bob when he intervenes. Fortunately Bob's newfound power is enough to restrain the violin. For now.]] |
| 397 | * ObfuscatingInsanity: The residents of the [[BedlamHouse Funny Farm's]] Secure Wing turns out to be a long-term research team sequestered within an asylum on the grounds that it's the most secure place for them. |
| 398 | ** In ''The Rhesus Chart'' [[spoiler:Basil appears to be a slightly senile archivist, always rambling on about the good old days of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. Turns out he's the ancient vampire sorcerer they're searching for.]] |
| 399 | * ObstructiveBureaucrat: Bridget, Harriet, pretty much the entire Human Resources department. Some of them aren't above using [[TheStarscream ruthless methods to clear a spot on the promotion ladder]] either. |
| 400 | * OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: In ''The Rhesus Chart'' we have [[spoiler: a two hundred year old vampire with extensive necromantic power]] fighting ''[[spoiler: one of the [[TheDreaded Auditors]]]]'' and then [[spoiler: going toe to toe with ''[[EldritchAbomination Angleton]]]]'' which appears to have ended in a [[spoiler: mutual kill]]. And it's relayed to the reader after the fact because [[spoiler: everyone who witnessed it is dead and Bob's writing up a committee's post-mortem of what happened]]. |
| 401 | * OhCrap: Or as it's known in the trade, an Unscheduled Reality Excursion. |
| 402 | * OneSteveLimit: Broken quite a bit in more recent entries. Readers might get confused at the start of ''Delirium Brief'', which starts with Bob being interviewed by someone named Jeremy, who is referred to as "the big guy". This is a bit awkward since the Prime Minister of the Laundryverse is ''also'' named Jeremy. Similarly, Derek the accountant from ''Atrocity Archive'' is most definitely not the same Derek as the Dungeons and Dragons-obsessed Duty Officer called Derek introduced in ''Nightmare Stacks''. And the Alison who works for Pastor Schiller is ''hopefully'' not the same as the Alison who works in the Laundry's HR department. |
| 403 | * OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Used quite a bit, starting with the "Laundry" itself. They are only called this because their original headquarters was above a Chinese laundry. [[spoiler:Technically, it's Q Division of the Special Operations Executive, which is part of the Ministry of Defense]]. |
| 404 | ** Within the Laundry, "Mahogany Row" is generally thought to be the offices of the Director and the senior staff ([[TheUnseen who are never seen]]). But the real power rests with "the Invisible College", the elite corps of highly secretive "wizards" who really run the Laundry. |
| 405 | ** "The Dustbin"; the Laundry's nickname for [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MI5 MI5]]. Probably because of envy, because they have a cool HomeBase and the Laundry doesn't. |
| 406 | ** The American equivalent, known as the "Black Chamber" or the "[[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Nazgûl]]". They are known to rely heavily on nonhuman assets and employ extremely brutal tactics. |
| 407 | *** Also within the US is the Comstock Office also known as the Occult Text Division of the United States Postal Inspectorate. |
| 408 | ** The Russians are usually called the "Thirteenth Directorate" (not to be confused with the [[UsefulNotes/MoscowCentre KGB]]). |
| 409 | ** A weird example is in ''Annihilation Score'', where Persephone Hazard is consistently referred to as Seph, a nickname absolutely nobody used during ''Apocalypse Codex'', the book she first appeared in. |
| 410 | * OopNorth: ''The Nightmare Stacks'' is set in Stross's home town of Leeds, with the imposing government building of Quarry House (in real life, the headquarters for the NHS) being touted as a new HQ for the Laundry after Dansey House is permanently taken out of commission as a result of the events of ''The Rhesus Chart''. The [[spoiler:effective destruction of Leeds]] at the end of the novel was described by Stross on his blog as "revenge being best served cold". |
| 411 | * OrganicTechnology: The various war machines of the Host of Air and Darkness are living creatures, stolen from [[DeathWorld amazingly lethal]] alternate Earths and tamed for alfär use. Dragon vs. fighter jet seems like a laughable matchup until Stross reveals that his dragons spit ''[[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time chlorine trifluoride]]''. |
| 412 | * OurElvesAreDifferent: Well, they're certainly scarier. The alfär are a HumanSubspecies from an AlternateUniverse that have much greater command of magic than most humans. They're also the source of most legends of TheFairFolk around the world. |
| 413 | * OurMermaidsAreDifferent: The [[HalfHumanHybrid half-Deep Ones]] are aquatic lifeforms but not half-fish, avoiding the MermaidProblem. It's explicitly mentioned that some Laundry employees "start spending too much time skinny-dipping with a snorkel". They actually look passably human as long as they don't spend too much time in salt water. Otherwise they eventually change into Deep Ones, Innsmouth-style. [[spoiler: Ramona Random]] says that those like herself are intended to look good and associate with humans more, while the "bumpkin cousins" sporting the ugly half-transformed "Innsmouth look" are decidedly more common. |
| 414 | ** It's also stated that most of the "Innsmouth" communities are isolated and pretty heavily inbred, and that most of them wouldn't look any less unsettling without the Deep One genes. |
| 415 | * OurMinotaursAreDifferent: One of the prospective superheroes Mo and Mhari interview in ''The Annihilation Score'' is a minotaur-like fellow who calls himself "The Human Cowboy". He's reasonably even-tempered, but unfortunately, he's also dumb as a bag of hammers and unsuitable for the team Mo's putting together. |
| 416 | * OurPresidentsAreDifferent: |
| 417 | ** In ''The Labyrinth Index'', US President Arthur Savage is a mix between President Personable and President Target, while the Black Chamber is targeting him in order to install their own PresidentEvil, [[spoiler:President Cthulhu]]. |
| 418 | ** UK has Prime Minister Jeremy Michaels, who best fit into President Buffoon: caring more about how the Leeds invasion will affect his re-election than anything else, and put way too much trust into Schiller, including basically outsourcing the country's occult defense to Schiller's company in ''The Delirium Brief'' (the action that is described, by one of Laundry's Board of Director as "outsourcing the Army to Russia"). Later, after Michael's death due to his stupidity in trusting Schiller, the UK has [[spoiler:Prime Minister Nyarlathotep]], who fits PresidentEvil with a dash of President Lunatic, although more than many times he deliberately plays up the latter angle just to single out YesMan. |
| 419 | * OurSoulsAreDifferent: They're the informational echoes of a person's consciousness; although these echoes can occasionally haunt a spot as a ghost, souls are of more significance as food for various otherworldly abominations. |
| 420 | * OurVampiresAreDifferent: They're symbiotically fused with extra-dimensional entities. This makes them immune to the brain damage which can affect ritual magicians, and have centuries to hone their skills, making them potentially very powerful. However, the symbiotes [[BrainFood feed on the information content in sentient brains]] via a sympathetic link formed by drinking the victim's blood, and always result in death - vampires are required to kill several people per year to avoid becoming food for the symbiotes themselves, even if they aren't using their powers; nonfatal chomping is impossible. (Laundry-sanctioned vampires get their blood from people on death row.) If they exert themselves, the symbiotes need more frequent feeding. Laundryverse vampires aren't susceptible to holy symbols, but will quickly burn to death in sunlight. These vampires cannot spread vampirism by any physical means, but an unlucky magician or mathematician can end up turning themselves into a vampire completely by accident just by thinking about the wrong sorts of things. |
| 421 | * OurZombiesAreDifferent: They're [[PossessingADeadBody demons bound into reanimated corpses]]. The garden-variety are not very clever, and are apparently programmable if you know the [[BlackSpeech right language]]. However, there are many types of demons, and accidentally summoning the ''wrong'' kind gives rise to a possessed corpse that can steal souls ''by touch''. Oh, and make all the BoomHeadshot[=s=] you want. It won't help. They are vulnerable to tasers or electric weapons, however, at least the weaker ones. |
| 422 | * OutsideGenreFoe: Elves, to us. And ''us'' to elves. Both sides expected an enemy who fought the same way as they. Human militaries and cities are virtually defenseless against the magical firepower of an alfär army on the march, whose war paradigm is ''if you can be seen, you are dead''. The alfär, meanwhile, were totally blindsided by modern technology; to them, our aircraft move at impossible speeds, and the projectiles our weapons shoot are unaccountably mindless, immune to mind-clouding magical defenses. And on a larger scale, the alfär war plan is to kill the Britannic sorcerer-queen and hijack her ''geasa'' network, granting them unquestioned control of the British empire. This is how things work in alfär warfare. It wouldn't have worked ''here'' for many, many reasons. |
| 423 | * PaintingTheMedium: ''Codex'' switches between first and third person narration, all written by Bob. His idiosyncratic narration bleeds over into the third-person sections, such as when the decidedly non-geeky Johnny makes an "all your base" reference during a phone conversation. |
| 424 | ** Though admittedly, it is mentioned that Johnny plays [[VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft WoW]], so he might be more geeky than people give him credit for. |
| 425 | ** Also in that book, a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_P90 P90]] is described variously as a machine pistol, a submachine gun, a "big gun", and a machine gun, all within a few pages. None of those are technically correct; it's a "Personal Defense Weapon", though SMG comes closest. Bob mentioned earlier - and shows during the sequence in question - that he's crap with guns. Hence his problem identifying it. |
| 426 | * PersonOfMassDestruction: Any ritual magician can be one, but with the threat of K-syndrome looming over them, they try their hardest not to cut loose. But when they do, bad things happen. |
| 427 | ** Special mention here goes to [[spoiler:Old George, the elder vampire. Clad in a coat with the rough defensive properties of a tank and having an [[TouchOfDeath anti-pattern to life woven into his touch]] he goes on a killing spree and is then attacked by an Auditor who, with just two spells, unravels the defensive spells on his coat and gives his hand bone-deep burns. And he still kills her.]] |
| 428 | * PointyHairedBoss: The woman from the Laundry's cover-organisation who doesn't have a clue what Bob actually ''does'' but, thanks to matrix-management, somehow has a say in how he does it. This is thanks to the fact that Bob basically has two jobs in the Laundry. The important one is as a field operative, which involves doing things that are very classified and even being in the Laundry doesn't get you the information without being cleared for it. His second job, during all the extended periods where he's not fending off colors out of space, is as a network technician keeping a section of the Laundry's computers running smoothly. [[TooDumbToLive The boss for his second job considers the entire field work division to be unimportant compared to the bureaucratic busywork,]] and constantly rode Bob's ass over it until [[AndIMustScream Angleton dealt with her.]] |
| 429 | * PowerLevels: The Laundry ranks supernatural entities and occult parasites on a logarithmic scale based on their power and potential threat. Basic demons and feeders are class one. Vampires start at class two, but can get much stronger over time. The Eater of Souls is at minimum a class four. ''Really'' scary entities like [[EldritchAbomination the Sleeper in the Pyramid, the Black Pharaoh and Cthulhu]] are class six. Out in the interstellar voids dwell the "Cold Ones" who are [[AlwaysABiggerFish terrifying even to these cosmic horrors.]] |
| 430 | * PoweredByAForsakenChild: Pale Grace Skin Hydromax cream. Made from "100% natural ingredients". There are also various other rituals and artifacts requiring human sacrifices. |
| 431 | ** The "Erich Zahn original" violin owned by the Laundry (and in the possession of Mo for much of the series) was made by a series of tortures performed on innocent prisoners. Its body is composed of human bones which were extracted while the victims were conscious - the remainder is so bad that no one will willingly discuss it. |
| 432 | * PrecisionFStrike: Bob is generally gleefully profane in his narration; on the other hand, when Angleton curses, you know things have really gone to shit. Whereas, when Angleton says "Oh ''dear''", you know the situation has... gone significantly outside anticipated operational parameters. |
| 433 | --> The end of Rhesus Chart seems to imply that a magical equivalent is what [[spoiler: Angleton used to put down the Ancient Elder Vampire that was leaving a trail of bodies through the facilities]]. "like Old Enochian, but different and much scarier--Old Enochian with Tourette's syndrome, perhaps" |
| 434 | * {{Precursors}}: '''Anning Blue Skull''', the Elder Things, created life on Earth before being wiped out by their creations, '''Anning Black''' (the Shoggoths). Everyone from the Nazis to the Black Chamber and Laundry is always eager to locate and study their technology (which is both deceptively simple and impossibly dangerous), because all evidence points to their having both encountered and ''survived'' a '''Case Nightmare Green'''-like scenario in their deep past. Since there's none of them ''left'' on Earth to ask, recent efforts have concentrated on the capture, containment and control/interrogation of [[ItCanThink Shoggoths]]. |
| 435 | * PunchPackingPistol: 'Basilisk guns', the weapons for the Laundry's nerdier operatives, are really digital cameras loaded with a very special software package that explosively petrifies anything in the viewfinder, but function in all regards like a particularly powerful and well-disguised version of this trope. If a Laundryman wants to take your photo, ''run''. Later version miniaturized the system from a dedicated handheld camera with flashed firmware to an app for a smartphone with camera. |
| 436 | * PunkInTheTrunk: Bob gets stuffed in the trunk of a car by cultists in ''The Fuller Memorandum''. With a badly injured arm, so he's in tremendous pain the whole ride. |
| 437 | * PunnyName: Check the quote at the top of the page. Remember the [[spoiler: "many-angled ones"]]? Think of what [[spoiler: Angleton]] breaks down into. |
| 438 | * PuppeteerParasite / OrificeInvasion: The tongue-eating cymothoans in ''The Apocalypse Codex''. The alfär use psychic leeches to control their dragons in ''The Nightmare Stacks''. |
| 439 | ** And ''The Delirium Brief'' tops ''The Apocalypse Codex'' with a new variant that installs itself in [[spoiler: their host's [[NauseaFuel genitals]] ]] |
| 440 | * PutOnABus: As of ''The Nightmare Stacks'', both Bob and Mo--in Japan and on medical leave, respectively. |
| 441 | * RankUp: Ever since ''The Atrocity Archives'', Bob has been fast-tracked for promotion and is steadily rising through the ranks of the Laundry. [[spoiler:The [[WhamLine last lines]] of ''Codex'': "welcome to Mahogany Row."]] Mo gets a rather sudden one in ''The Annihilation Score'' [[spoiler: and is offered another at the end of the book.]] |
| 442 | * ReasonableAuthorityFigure: |
| 443 | ** Angleton. Not ''[[GoodIsNotNice nice]]'', but reasonable. He'll make fun of his subordinates if he feels they deserve it ("Go away, before I mock you," when Bob did something dumb in ''Archive'') and does not suffer fools gladly (reference [[AndIMustScream the fate of the late, unlamented Bridget]]), but if you're competent and make the effort he will back you all the way. |
| 444 | ** In ''The Fuller Memorandum'', Iris. In contrast to his previous line managers Bob thinks she's the type who acquired her management skills shepherding a large, unruly family rather than in business school. [[spoiler:Horrifyingly subverted when it turns out she's TheMole and head of a cult of Nyarlathotep.]] |
| 445 | ** The Senior Auditor in ''The Apocalypse Codex''. |
| 446 | ** Chief Superintendent Jim Grey in ''The Annihilation Score''. |
| 447 | * RecursiveCreators: [[spoiler:OPA/Black Chamber's '''Project Godwaker''' involves these to make invocation nodes in order to wake Cthulhu, because it needs so much raw materials it'll involve deconstructing the whole inner Solar System to make [[DysonSphere Matrioshka brain]] for the project, ''Literature/{{Accelerando}}''-style.]] |
| 448 | * RedemptionEqualsDeath: [[spoiler:Throughout the books, Andy is depicted as a well-meaning, but ultimately incompatant middle-manager with virtually no magical aptitude, and whose amateur fumbling at one point directly risks the safety of himself, Bob and the laundry. Several times he's called upon to help Bob but ultimately doesn't have the skill to do so, or otherwise makes matters worse. Still, when the chips are down and Old George begins his assault on the laundry building, Andy is the second person he meets, and the first one to actively stand in his way despite knowing the danger. He dies immediately, but incredibly bravely under the circumstances.]] |
| 449 | * RefugeInAudacity: Cassie, at a loss what to wear when meeting her boyfriends' parents for the first time, decides to go for broke and show up as... an Elven princess. |
| 450 | -->'''Cassie''': I'm a high-born lady of the Host of Air and Darkness! A child of the All-Highest of the hidden people, a courtier at the Unseelie throne! [..] It's very ''me'' isn't it? [[VerbalTic YesYes]]? |
| 451 | * {{Reincarnation}}: In ''Equoid'' the MotherOfAThousandYoung encounters Creator/HPLovecraft who manages to KillItWithFire, but not before the dying creature tells him WeWillMeetAgain. [[spoiler:When Bob Howard encounters the creature in contemporary times, it implies that he's the reincarnation of Lovecraft -- ironic as Bob had earlier dismissed HPL as an unreliable hack writer with a bent for PurpleProse.]] |
| 452 | * ReligionOfEvil: Some of the bigger cults to various Things Which Should Not Be, including one masquerading as an evangelical megachurch in ''Apocalypse Codex'', whose leader believes the Sleeper in the Pyramid to be Christ come again--and that it is his job to bring Him back via mass sacrifice. |
| 453 | * RetGone: The 'Forecasting Operations Department' is a bizarre variant. It's a department of the Laundry that tries to predict the future, passing on (highly obtuse) warnings to the rest of the organization when necessary... unless they predict that the department's own existence will lead to disaster, in which case it ceases to exist because they decided never to form it, only to pop up again once the threat is past, or something happening that's bad enough to force them to form again. Alex, at least, has ''no idea'' how this works. |
| 454 | * RevealingCoverup: Averted. The Laundry only uses assassination as an absolute last resort for this very reason. They find it much more useful to recruit people who find out instead. This also doubles as punishment, since the job tends to force people to retire early. |
| 455 | * RitualMagic: It's almost exactly opposed to the Laundry's branch of [[FunctionalMagic Computational]] [[GeometricMagic Demonology]], in that it requires innate talent, a lot of it, to use properly without frying your own brain. It's also hinted to be just as powerful, if not more, than its more mathematical counterpart. Persephone Hazard turns out to be a practitioner. |
| 456 | * RunningGag: Whenever Bob gets annoyed at the Laundry's bureaucratic excesses, he brings up the regular ''paperclip audits''. [[spoiler:Then they crop up again in the middle of ''The Fuller Memorandum'' and it turns out there's a very good reason for them: a ChekhovsGun set up 5 stories ago. Whew.]] |
| 457 | * {{Main/Scotireland}}: When Bob first meets Mo he mistakes her Scottish accent for Irish. |
| 458 | * SealedEvilInADuel: [[spoiler:In The Rhesus Chart'', a powerful vampire sorcerer attacks the Laundry and Angleton apparently performs a HeroicSacrifice to stop him, but they NeverFoundTheBody as they're sealed inside a dome-shaped protection ward too powerful to even approach. Earlier another vampire had demonstrated the use of such a ward to keep his victims alive so they can be fed upon.]] |
| 459 | %% * ScrewDestiny: "Overtime" also does this in its climax. |
| 460 | * SecretTestOfCharacter: Specifically invoked in ''The Apocalypse Codex'' when Bob is not told about his mission just to see how far his loyalty goes. It tends to surprise even his testers. (But not Angleton.) |
| 461 | * SelfFulfillingProphecy: When Dr. Kringle prophesies that there will be no Christmas party next year, everyone assumes that it's because the Laundry will be overrun by gibbering squamous horrors by then. When Bob asks if they couldn't avert that by just canceling the party themselves, Andy derides the idea as ridiculous. (The rest of Dr. Kringle's news was that they'd done the math wrong and the apocalypse was coming early -- and in fact had already started to warm up. Bob's suggestion was that they delay the apocalypse indefinitely by canceling the Christmas party so it can't be disrupted.) [[spoiler:Dr. Kringle's morbid pronouncement kills the appetite at the office party, resulting in leftover pies which [[ItMakesSenseInContext allowed Bob to banish Santa Claus]]. Otherwise, the horror would have taken up residence in the Laundry building and eaten everybody]], thus making this a rare case of a Self-Averting Prophecy. |
| 462 | * SerialKillerKiller: In ''The Rhesus Chart'', Bob has a low opinion of vampire hunters for this reason. He notes that vampires are serial killers by necessity (they can't go more than six months between victims lest the extra-dimensional parasites that empower them start feeding on their brains), but "A VampireHunter is a serial killer who hunts serial killers." He even compares them to [[Series/{{Dexter}} Dexter Morgan]]. |
| 463 | * SexForSolace: Despite Mhari being portrayed as AllTakeAndNoGive, she turns up to comfort Bob after he has to kill a man after a bungled summoning. It's not so comforting when she offers sex at the end of ''The Rhesus Chart'', as he's HappilyMarried by that point. |
| 464 | * ShootEverythingThatMoves: '''Scorpion Stare''' is activated to defend Quarry House from '''Case Nightmare Red'''. Unfortunately an invading army of elven warriors advances through the same area as a cosplay festival, and its target discrimination software fails to distinguish the InnocentBystanders from the invading aliens. |
| 465 | * ShoutOut: [[ShoutOut/TheLaundryFiles Now has its own page.]] |
| 466 | * ShroudedInMyth: |
| 467 | ** Angleton, at first; [[spoiler:we learn more about him in ''Memorandum''.]] |
| 468 | ** Persephone Hazard; the Laundry only has brief, tantalizing glimpses of her past lives--a war refugee from the Balkans, murdered adoptive parents followed by the sudden demise of some local cultists, suddenly-stellar university grades in various arcane subjects, et cetera. |
| 469 | ** "Mahogany Row" qualifies in spades, as to "The Auditors". As of the latest book both have received at best glancing explanations beyond "do not mess with". |
| 470 | * ShrunkenHead: At the end of short story "Pimpf", Bob's boss Angleton is seen playing with a Newton's cradle. Upon closer inspection the balls turn out to be the shrunken heads of the story's BigBadDuumvirate, [[AndIMustScream implied to be still alive and aware despite the treatment]]. |
| 471 | * SignedUpForTheDental: One of the Black Chamber's minions in ''The Apocalypse Codex'' explains to Johnny that he signed up with them because he had no other way to pay his wife's medical bills. It's PlayedForDrama; he's well aware of what the Black Chamber's work entails, and that joining them was a bad choice, but it was the only choice he had. |
| 472 | * SoulEating: Surprisingly common; it's the reason most of the [[EldritchAbomination otherworldly threats]] even want to visit the Earth. On the Laundry's side, [[spoiler:Angleton]] is able to do this. Following the events of ''The Fuller Memorandum'', [[spoiler:Bob gains this ability as well, and it becomes much stronger after Angleton is lost.]] It hasn't been established if [[spoiler:Angleton and Bob]] actually ''need'' to eat souls or if they just ''can''. Having one's soul eaten results in instant death. |
| 473 | * SovietSuperscience: Inverted: the USSR is consistently behind the West when it comes to magical development due to the combination of state atheism making them hard to accept ideas of EldritchAbomination, and the suppression of their nascent IT industry (due to their view of computers being the tools of capitalists) means high grade computers for spellcasting isn't developed. The modern Russia is catching up, but the ''TabletopGame/TheLaundry'' RPG notes that their agency, Thirteenth Directorate, is still behind, due to them still largely utilizing old ways of spellcasting instead of modern computer-casting. |
| 474 | * SpaceElves: The Host of Air and Darkness |
| 475 | * StarfishAliens: ''All'' of the aliens are patently bizarre, but '''Genoa Fractal''', aka the Flying Polyps, are more akin to a sentient ''infection'' than a race: they develop as a "Stage-V metastasis" of cancer, where the tumor bursts out of the patient and starts floating around and killing people. Apparently a MadScientist has been making them via cloning; it's unclear how the ancient variety from Australia relates to them. |
| 476 | * StealthPun: Bob is eventually revealed to have the middle names Oliver Francis, at the same time as he is reluctantly given an apprentice; Peter-Fred Young. So that's [[Literature/BastardOperatorFromHell BOFH]] and PFY... |
| 477 | ** In ''The Fuller Memorandum'', Bob refers to the Eater of Souls at one point as "the ''preta manger''", in reference to the sandwich shop chain with a similar spelling. |
| 478 | ** In ''The Rhesus Chart'' the only time a Vampire is mentioned to [[Literature/{{Twilight}} sparkle]] is when [[spoiler:Bob blasts the Vampire that's infiltrated the Laundry with a Basilisk Gun]] and literally blows him apart. |
| 479 | ** As Bob is writing all of the books and likely using code names (confirmed in ''The Apocalypse Codex''), all of the acronyms may be 100% intentional. |
| 480 | * SummonBiggerFish: In ''The Delirium Brief'', when [[spoiler:the Sleeper's primary agent]] is about to [[spoiler:take over the British parliament using {{Puppeteer Parasite}}s]], the former Laundry operatives have only one card left to play: [[DealWithTheDevil make a deal with]] [[spoiler:[[SatanicArchetype Nyarlathotep]]]] |
| 481 | * SupernaturalPhone: Magic is advanced maths, and is therefore easier for computers to do than people. When Bob gets an [=iPhone=], Brain gimmicks it to have the usual array of Laundry Agent spells as apps. |
| 482 | [[/folder]] |
| 483 | |
| 484 | [[folder:Tropes T - Z]] |
| 485 | * TakenForGranite: The basilisk effect, which converts carbon to silicon via spooky observer-effect magic. Then blows it apart thanks to the wildly unstable molecular configurations that result. Originally formed by a particular kind of brain tumour, '''Scorpion Stare''' is the result of the Laundry producing a chip that can duplicate the effect with a camera, allowing its use as a weapon. Any camera with the chip can be activated through an Internet connection, and this includes just about [[ParanoiaFuel every CCTV, webcam, and digital camera in Great Britain.]] And you know those DRM chips Hollywood wants installed in all new cameras? Guess what those are. |
| 486 | ** They're actually just DRM chips: the in-universe point of the DCMA is that ''any'' chip capable of functioning as compliant DRM has both the computational power to emulate the appropriate cluster of nerve cells and the capacity to have its firmware updated to do just that, usually over the Internet. Neither the Laundry nor Black Chamber - as a whole - are stupid enough to consider actually globally deploying '''Scorpon Stare''' until the GodzillaThreshold is passed. |
| 487 | ** The Nazis were implied to have been working on forcibly creating human basilisks as terror weapons. The Allies considered this to be crossing the MoralEventHorizon [[invoked]] and threatened use of chemical weapons on German cities if the project was not shut down. |
| 488 | ** The alfär has heavy duty basilisks for anti-air duty. At least one use of it ends up heavily damaging an airliner. |
| 489 | * TakeThat: UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump, as US Ambassador to Britain, was broken by [[spoiler:Prime Minister Nyarlathotep]] after trying to personally lobby for tax break for his golf course. While he wasn't named in the book, [[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/09/the-labyrinth-index-sneak-prev.html#comment-2053622 Stross confirmed]] that it was him. |
| 490 | * TheoryOfNarrativeCausality: Powers Billington's Hero-trap geas. He casts himself as the villain in a James Bond plot, limiting his opposition to one hero archetype, and at the critical moment plans to destroy the geas, leaving himself ascendant and unopposed. [[spoiler:Of course, that would only work if he captured the true Bond figure, instead of the designated [[BondGirl love interest]] -- at which time, [[WrongGenreSavvy the plot becomes one of the variations.]]]] |
| 491 | ** He also failed to consider [[spoiler: that BondVillainStupidity inflicted on him by the geas will also influence his attempts to shut down the geas. And that the last step of his plan ''while under the geas'' was 'turn off the geas at the right moment'... and the final step of Bond villain plans ''never'' succeed.]] |
| 492 | * ThereAreNoTherapists: Funnily enough, since the Laundry seems to hoover people up from every walk of life, but, no, the people who punch out Cthulhu on a daily basis are expected to make do with alcohol, comfort foods and each other. When Pete decides to put his experience dealing with parishioners in emotional distress to use, the effects are considered revelatory, though they really shouldn't have been. |
| 493 | * TooDumbToLive: Fred the Accountant. |
| 494 | * TookALevelInBadass: [[spoiler:Dominique, as a result of the Hero-trap geas.]] Bob himself steadily levels through the series, and is acknowledged as a good operative even in the first book. By book three, Mo herself has apparently kept the several levels of badass that she's taken, primarily due to her skills with the [[ArtifactOfDoom Erich Zahn-model violin]], that the OCCULUS special forces team willingly accepts her presence on missions. |
| 495 | ** She even warrants her own codename now, CANDID. Single-word codenames are exceptionally unusual, but whether this implies she is unusually important or not has not yet been revealed. Another such entity, TEAPOT, has a history dating back hundreds of years and the disappearance of its summoning ritual was enough to cause an international incident and be the cornerstone of a plan to usher in the end of the world ahead of schedule. |
| 496 | ** Bob himself. [[spoiler:As a result of having his soul ripped out, then being summoned in place of the Eater of Souls at the end of book three]]; in book four, he has gained, among others, the ability to consume souls, and command certain types of undead. Then in book five he [[spoiler:fully becomes the Eater of Souls after Angleton died]]. |
| 497 | * TrappedInAnotherWorld: In "Pimpf", Bob's new intern, PlayfulHacker Peter-Fred Young, doesn't listen to him and manages to trap himself inside the heavily modded ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights'' scenario Bob was building to catch people who might summon {{Eldritch Abomination}}s with [[LevelEditor the Toolset]]. Bob has to go in after him with Pinky running the DM Client from outside. |
| 498 | * TraumaCongaLine: ''The Fuller Memorandum'', made clear from the onset (in the prologue). In order, [[spoiler:Bob performs an exorcism that goes bad and ends up killing a civilian (although she turns out to be a GRU sleeper agent, which is a slight mitigating factor). The next day, Mo gets an even more traumatizing job and returns on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Then Bob gets attacked by a zombie, shot, attacked by Cthulhu cultists and narrowly escapes, his office is broken in, he gets an internal investigation set on him, gets suspended, attacked by the cultists again, kidnapped, gets part of his right arm carved up ''and eaten'' while he's fully conscious, and is very nearly possessed by the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Eater of Souls]]. The latter ritual involving, among other things, the cultists killing a baby and making Bob drink its blood.]] Mind that the whole ordeal happens within a two-week period. At the end of it, [[spoiler:Bob is a wreck both physically and psychically, as alluded to by both the prologue and epilogue. Though ''Overtime'' suggests that he does recover eventually.]] |
| 499 | ** ''The Annihilation Score'' does the same for Mo. [[spoiler:She already starts out on the verge of a nervous breakdown, comes home from a job to find a half-naked Mhari, tries to kill her and then her violin tries to kill Bob, who decides he has to move out. The same day, her cover gets blown on live television and she gets promoted to lead a new department that, it later turns out, is set up to fail by the Home Office. She is assigned Mhari and Ramona as executive assistants, not ideal given Mo's insecurities about growing older and her jealousy about Bob, and it turns out her "middle-aged invisibility" is pretty literal. There's crazy amounts of stress, the Home Office is breathing down her neck, several messy ops, patching up things with Bob backfires badly, it turns out the "good guy" liaison officer that she starts falling for is a honeypot, the Senior Auditor set her up as bait, and Mo, under geas, ends up killing several thousand people with her violin (or unable to prevent it at any rate) and then losing said violin. And after all of this, her request to quit is denied. She's not having a good time.]] |
| 500 | * {{Tuckerization}}: Dr Mike Ford, the Laundry researcher with the implausible eyebrows who appears in ''The Fuller Memorandum'', is a tuckerization of author and fan personality Creator/JohnMFord, to whom the novel is dedicated. |
| 501 | * UltimateJobSecurity: Everyone in the Laundry has it. They can get themselves killed through treason, failed coups or their own innocent stupidity, but no one is ever fired. This is because Laundry policy is to made dangerous people safe by employing them. To keep people quiet, in most cases they are given jobs in the Laundry (and MindControl to make them incapable of discussing it with people without the proper clearance). Once, early in his employment, Bob outright refused to come in to work for a week out of spite, but got bored and decided to make the best of the situation. He also has quite a few problems early on with managers who think the make-work given to people the Laundry "recruits" who don't have any useful skills is the agency's actual purpose (such managers usually being such deadwood themselves). |
| 502 | * UnexpectedSuccessor: The All-Highest of the älfar only has that title because everyone in the empire who was higher-ranking than him already got killed in various flavors of apocalypse. At the end of the book, Alex engineers a further unexpected succession, with Agent First of Spies and Liars as the eventual beneficiary. |
| 503 | * UnexpectedlyRealMagic: Supernatural events can happen to people who take Creator/HPLovecraft too seriously. When [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt '''Case Nightmare Green''']] gets going, ''any'' kind of ritual could do this. |
| 504 | * TheUnmasquedWorld: Partially gone as of ''The Annihilation Score''. Because '''Nightmare Green''' is getting close roughly one person in every thousand is starting to develop some kind of power and about one in every million developing a major superpower, forcing the governments to react to this. However the ''real'' truth about what the world's facing is still kept under wraps. |
| 505 | ** Completely gone by the end of ''The Nightmare Stacks''; even The Laundry can't cover up [[spoiler:an invasion of SpaceElves and the resulting mass casualties in Leeds]]. |
| 506 | * UnexplainedRecovery: The last time we see [[spoiler:Capt. Alan Barnes]] in ''The Atrocity Archive'', [[spoiler:he's on a hospital bed being treated for 500 rems of radiation poisoning]]. Then in ''The Jennifer Morgue'', [[spoiler:he shows up with TheCavalry, looking like a recovered radiation-therapy patient but otherwise fine]]. Bob lampshades it in the ''TabletopGame/TheLaundry'' RPG by wondering what the Laundry had to promise to whom to get this effect. |
| 507 | * {{Unicorn}}: [[EldritchAbomination It's not all]] Franchise/MyLittlePony, [[ShoutOut except for the]] [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic magic]]. |
| 508 | * UnreliableNarrator: |
| 509 | ** For one thing, his name isn't "Bob Howard", for IKnowYourTrueName reasons. Also, the characters sound slightly different when he's narrating in first person compared to the independent/"reconstruction"/speculation third-person bits. Details of Bob's past, like what exact disaster he almost caused unwittingly before The Laundry found him, or the length of time he's worked for them also may vary. Lampshaded repeatedly during parts of the books Bob was not around for, despite apparently having dialogue-perfect accounts. It's also Played with, in that since the books are (mostly) couched as Bob's organizational Memoirs he often annotates events as being the start of something nasty and/or labels things that happen or go wrong as being his fault. The fact that things would probably have been infinitely worse if not for Bob's actions is generally glossed over at best or ignored at worst. |
| 510 | ** In Mhari Murphy's case, from Chapter 8 of ''The Labyrinth Index'', she gets direct about it, BreakingTheFourthWall, and talking of unreliable "guesswork": |
| 511 | ---> I'm about to break the fourth wall again, dear reader. So sorry (not sorry).\ |
| 512 | [...]\ |
| 513 | Now, you may well have other questions, concerning my methods. Such as, “How does she know what happened in that meeting of aerospace and tech-sector executives? Surely she wasn't there?"\ |
| 514 | [...]\ |
| 515 | in some cases I just have to make do with educated guesswork. |
| 516 | * TheUnSmile: |
| 517 | ** Angleton's smile is ''traumatizing''. Bob compares it to "seeing an atom bomb go off over your hometown and getting to watch all your pets and lovers and children die simultaneously." |
| 518 | ---> Angleton smiles at her, and she freezes. (...)"We will leave now," he says, and steps past her. I follow him, and try to ignore the [[SingleTear solitary tear]] overflowing her left eyelid and trickling under her surgical mask." |
| 519 | ** The Senior Auditor's smile is often noted to be exceptionally ambiguous and scary. |
| 520 | * UnspokenPlanGuarantee: The Audit Committee has a plan called "Extended Continuity Operations", which may be intended to defeat the New Management or merely to survive it. As of ''The Labyrinth Index'' no actual details of this plan have been disclosed - except that it's apparently the only thing that is keeping several characters from just killing themselves in despair. |
| 521 | * VampireHunter: Deconstructed; anyone willing to track down and kill vampires must by definition be insane -- given that vampires are essentially serial killers with SuperStrength, MindControl and are (usually) powerful sorcerers. As vampire numbers must be kept low to maintain TheMasquerade, the more cunning and long-lived vampires utilize these psychotics to kill off their rivals. In ''The Rhesus Chart'', the vampire hunter is a woman with a '[[RomanticVampireBoy fang fetish]]' who assassinates vampires by seducing them, breaking their neck, [[ComingAndGoing having sex with their paralyzed body]], then [[AndIMustScream leaving them next to an open window so they'll be burnt up come dawn]]. And you thought [[Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer Spike and Buffy]] got up to some twisted shit. |
| 522 | * VancianMagic: Spell macros are similar to VancianMagic where ritual casters can nearly completely cast a spell and bind it somewhere (to an object, fetish, or even their own brain) for quick access later on. |
| 523 | * VastBureaucracy: The Laundry. The Laundry has a policy of offering everyone who [[HeKnowsTooMuch knows too much]] a job (killing them is too conspicuous and messy). As a result, they're completely overstaffed by incompetent (or at least untrained) drones with UltimateJobSecurity. All the bureaucracy is just a way of keeping them busy. |
| 524 | * ViewersAreGeniuses: Lots of references to Mandelbrot sets, P-complete and NP-complete equations, the Church-Turing thesis, etc. If you're not a geek, a ''lot'' of ShownTheirWork will be lost on you; fortunately, the real meat of the story still scans if you just read it as [[{{Technobabble}} "burble burble jargon burble"]]. |
| 525 | * VillainousRescue: In ''The Delirium Brief'', Fabian Everyman aka The Mandate aka [[spoiler:an avatar of [[SatanicArchetype Nyarlathotep]]]] gets one in the finale when he walked up to the avatar of the Sleeper and killed the latter with a finger snap. |
| 526 | * TheVirus: [[spoiler:The Infovore]] of ''The Atrocity Archives'', along with numerous other Lovecraftian beasties. Demons in the setting spread along electrical circuits, and skin is conductive... |
| 527 | * WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Some plot elements in ''The Annihilation Score'' don't get properly resolved. |
| 528 | ** [[spoiler:It's never confirmed whether Officer Friendly's powers are giving him K-syndrome or not -- it's ''probable'', but also possible that they aren't.]] ''The Labyrinth Index'' resolves that, [[spoiler:confirming that they do]]. |
| 529 | ** [[spoiler:Stanwick and her subordinates are seemingly possessed by prolonged exposure to Lecter (having obtained the signature GlowingEyesOfDoom), but they act and speak completely normally. After an abrupt TimeSkip thanks to Mo passing out, all we hear about them is that Stanwick is now an ''Ex''-Assistant Commissioner]]. |
| 530 | * WhatWouldXDo: In ''Codex'', Persephone has a "WWLJD" bracelet. When she's trying to infiltrate Schiller's compound, everyone naturally assumes it stands for "What would Lord Jesus do?" Actually, it's "What would ''LeeroyJenkins'' do?" |
| 531 | * WouldHurtAChild: And quite possibly eat them afterwards. This even applies to our heroes; Bob and Mo refuse to have children on the basis that in a couple years, murder might be the [[MercyKill best parenting decision]] they can make. |
| 532 | * WrongGenreSavvy: When random civilians start to gain the ability to unconsciously use ritual magic, what do they do? Why, put on a [[{{Superhero}} cape and spandex]], of course! |
| 533 | * XanatosGambit: |
| 534 | ** It's revealed late in ''The Apocalypse Codex'' that [[spoiler:Schiller's security chief is an operative for the Black Chamber. Persephone figures it out in time: if Schiller succeeds, the Black Chamber could potentially grab control of a powerful supernatural entity, and if he fails, they would be rid of a dangerous madman. Whether the operative was running a officially sanctioned or a rogue operation is left worryingly unanswered]]. |
| 535 | ** In ''Jennifer Morgue'', with the reasoning behind their actions left equally unanswered. |
| 536 | ** Likewise, in ''The Rhesus Chart'': [[spoiler:the master vampire within the Laundry manipulated another master into an all-out attack on the Laundry. Either the Laundry would kill the master and rid the planner of a rival, or the master would destroy the Laundry and remove an organization that was aware of vampires and capable of hunting them down.]] |
| 537 | * YouCantMakeAnOmelette: Pinky and Brain try to prove this is in fact possible. Their results are somewhat dubious, [[spoiler:but it proves to be a ChekhovsGun when Bob uses their technique to disrupt the detonation of a nuclear device.]] |
| 538 | * YouCanNeverLeave: You ''can'' leave the Laundry, just as long as you don't take a job in any area that might get you into trouble, like computing. Which rules out any job that Bob might be interested in. However by ''The Rhesus Chart'' this policy has changed due to the number of people who now know about TheMasquerade; instead those who are useful to society are inducted, trained, then let back into the workplace as a reserve force to be drawn on in emergencies, as well as providing useful contacts throughout society. Officially their absence is explained by their working part-time for the Territorial Army (the UK's equivalent of the Army Reserve). |
| 539 | * YourSoulIsMine: Type [=2/2B=]. Certain eldritch beasties, as well as machines designed for the role, can kill someone and then destroy their soul. Since many abominations feed by increasing entropy, the destruction of ordered data (like a soul) works well for summoning or feeding them. |
| 540 | * WhamEpisode: ''The Rhesus Chart''. [[spoiler: Vampires exist and get recruited into the Laundry, including Bob's ex Mhari, there was one inside the Laundry all along, his feud with another old vampire gets dozens of people in the Laundry killed ''including Angleton'' (although they NeverFoundTheBody), so Bob inherits Angleton's full powers, and he and Mo split up.]] |
| 541 | * WhamLine: |
| 542 | ** ''The Apocalypse Codex'': |
| 543 | *** Earlier in the same book we have Persephone Hazard telling Bob: [[spoiler:"I am not outside your ''agency'', Mr. Howard, I am outside your ''organization chart''"]], a sentence that fundamentally changes Bob's (and the readers') perception of the Laundry. |
| 544 | *** The very last line: [[spoiler:"[[RankUp Welcome to Mahogany Row]], Mr. Howard. And may whichever god you choose to believe in have mercy on your soul."]] |
| 545 | ** And then ''The Rhesus Chart'', which has Bob's line: [[spoiler:"Code Red."]] |
| 546 | ** ''The Nightmare Stacks'' has Alex's laconic text message: [[spoiler:"BUNKER GEO NODE COMPROMISED CODE RED '''Case Nightmare Red'''"]] |
| 547 | ** ''The Delirium Brief'': [[spoiler:“—the Black Pharaoh?” “I said I made a deal with the devil, didn’t I?” The SA shrugs. “It was Him, or the Sleeper: who would you rather work for?”]] |
| 548 | * ZerothLawRebellion: Members of the Laundry are incapable of refusing orders from the Crown. As of ''The Delirium Brief'', [[spoiler:the senior members of the Laundry utilize ambiguity in what exactly that means in order to facilitate the Black Pharaoh's coup against the UK]]. |
| 549 | ** ''The Labyrinth Index'' indicates that [[spoiler: they're doing this again, in the form of Long-Term Continuity Operations and the Resistance - whatever those stand for]]. |
| 550 | [[/folder]] |
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