Line #33 Literature/TheAdversaryCycle


1	[[quoteright:309:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_adversary_cycle.jpg]]
2
3	''The Adversary Cycle'' is a seven-novel horror series by Creator/FPaulWilson. It runs parallel to the ''Literature/RepairmanJack'' series. It contains the following books:
4	# ''The Keep''
5	** This was made into a (poorly received) [[Film/TheKeep movie]] in 1983.
6	# ''The Tomb'' (Also a ''Repairman Jack'' novel)
7	# ''The Touch''
8	# ''Reborn''
9	# ''Reprisal''
10	# ''Signalz''
11	# ''Nightworld''
12	----
13	!!The Adversary Cycle series contains examples of:
14	* ActuallyNotAVampire: The main antagonist in ''The Keep'' is an Atlantean sorcerer/antichrist, but he pretends to be a Wallachian nationalist vampire in order to persuade an old professor to help him, and fakes a set of weaknesses different from his real ones.
15	* AllGermansAreNazis: Averted by Captain Klaus Woermann, a grumpy anti-Nazi German officer.
16	* AndIMustScream: In ''The Keep'', this is implied to be the fate of [[spoiler:Rasalom's victims. He can control the bodies of those he kills, and we see that Woermann is still conscious and thinking after being killed by Rasalom. Woermann even frantically tries to do something, anything, to stop the way Rasalom is using him but is helpless to so. As such, when Rasalom goes all NightOfTheLivingMooks toward the end of the book, there's a chance that every single dead soldier is desperately trying to resist being forced to kill their friends and fellow soldiers and is completely helpless to stop what they see themselves doing.]]
17	%%** Lampshaded when [[spoiler:Hank Thompson]] gets a FaceFullOfAlienWingWong.
18	%%* AndThisIsFor
19	* TheAntichrist: Rasalom is actually much worse than this, but religious people often mistake him for it. Also, in ''Reborn'', a group of religious people think [[spoiler: Jim]] is the Antichrist after learning that [[spoiler:he's a clone]].
20	* ApocalypseHow: Rasalom's goal is to achieve a Class 6, wiping out all indigenous life on Earth and replacing it with Otherness creatures. [[spoiler: The actual outcome is a ''severe'' Class 1 (human die-back) to Class 2 (civilization collapse), with total annihilation for Hawaii.]]
21	* BigNo: Subverted as Rasalom is only pretending he's been defeated to MindScrew his ArchNemesis.
22	* BlackAndGreyMorality: In ''The Keep'', it's Rasalom vs. Nazis. Guess who's worse. Also, the Otherness vs. the Ally in general. The Ally isn't evil for the sake of being evil, but it certainly does horrible things. However, Earth needs the Ally to win because the Otherness would be much, much worse.
23	* BodyHorror: Many cases, but one of the most notable ones occurred with Danny Gordon in ''Reprisal''.
24	* BuriedAlive: [[spoiler:Danny Gordon]] in ''Reprisal''.
25	* CollapsingLair: Explained as being due to the BigBad using his magic to counteract the laws of physics. When he dies, nature reasserts itself and the underground cavern starts to collapse due to the weight of the ground above.
26	* CosmicHorrorStory: The Ally doesn't care about humanity; it protects Earth simply because the Otherness wants the planet, which is just another piece in their endless struggle for some unknown cause.
27	* DisproportionateRetribution: The entire plot of the appropriately named ''Reprisal'' is [[spoiler:Rasalom's revenge on Bill for almost causing Carol to have a miscarriage when she was pregnant with him by refusing to have an affair with her. The goodness of him refusing to break his vows as a priest did this, so it wasn't like Bill almost killed him on purpose. Rasalom responds by ruining Bill's life, mostly by committing horrible atrocities on the people close to him. Rasalom seems to do this a lot.]]
28	* DystopiaJustifiesTheMeans: With the Otherness.
29	* EldritchAbomination: The Otherness, whose sheer scale (Earth is at most [[InsignificantLittleBluePlanet a tiny secondary backdrop]] to its greater conflict with the Ally) puts the "Cosmic" back in CosmicHorror; some of the things spawned from it also qualify.
30	%%* EmotionEater: Rasalom
31	%%* EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: In ''Nightworld''. Also, just in general, the Otherness and Rasalom's ultimate goal.
32	%%* EvilGloating: Rasalom enjoys this.
33	* FetchQuest: In ''Nightworld'' the protagonists have to assemble a sword of the kind used to defeat Rasalom in ''The Keep'', using the [[PlotCoupon broken parts of prior magic artifacts]]. This is made more difficult than usual given that TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt is happening and giant flesh-eating monsters are roaming the earth gobbling up anything that moves, [[GiantFlyer including aircraft]].
34	* FoldSpindleMutilation: The death of [[spoiler: Alan]] in ''Nightworld'', jammed into the gap under a door so the Otherness vermin can't get in.
35	* GiantFlyer: Literature/RepairmanJack is flying through an ash cloud over the Pacific Ocean when he suddenly thinks they're flying too close to the ground, only to see a GiantEyeOfDoom staring back at him from a titanic flying leviathan several miles in diameter. Another protagonist heading over the Atlantic has a leviathan swoop down on their jet, [[spoiler:which escapes by flying close to the water then banking hard at the last second. The creature's huge wingspan causes it to clip the water and crash as it tries to follow.]]
36	* GravityScrew: The "gravity holes" in ''Nightworld'', which cause anything within them to float upward inexorably. They first affect humans, then cars, then buildings, then an entire city bridge.
37	%%* HealingHands: In ''The Touch''.
38	%%* HumanoidAbomination: Rasalom.
39	* {{Joisey}}: Apparently, New Jersey is an annex of LovecraftCountry.
40	* LaserGuidedKarma: Hank Thompson decides to wait out the end of the world in a secure location, only for his van to be stopped at a roadblock run by members of his own Kicker cult. He's shot, robbed of everything he has and abandoned for the night creatures.
41	* LethalHarmlessPowers: The Dat-tay-vao in ''The Touch'', while normally a healing power, can work in reverse if someone gets in the way of the person who has it.
42	%%* TheMedic: Dr. Alan Bulmer in ''The Touch''.
43	%%* MouthOfSauron: Rasolom is this for the Otherness.
44	%%* TheNeidermeyer: Kaempffer in ''The Keep''. Not as much as in [[Film/TheKeep the movie]] though.
45	* TheNightThatNeverEnds: ''Nightworld'' has the threat of this trope, as every day the sun inexplicably rises later and sets earlier than the last.
46	* NightOfTheLivingMooks: In ''The Keep'' [[spoiler:Rasolom controls the corpses of the dead soldiers, and at one point uses them to slaughter all of the Germans still alive in The Keep]].
47	* OnlyTheChosenMayWield: In ''Nightworld'' the protagonists reforge a magic sword that's their last chance to defeat the Rasalom. Literature/RepairmanJack is the obvious candidate to replace the aging Glaeken who's wielded it in the past, but Jack balks at an eternity of servitude to the Ally, and so offers everyone else in the room a chance. [[spoiler:The sword fails to respond to them, so Jack bites the bullet and grasps it...only for it to fail to respond to him either. Turn out only the original hero (who hasn't died and therefore can't expect Jack to TakeUpMySword) is acceptable. After a millennium or so of service Glaeken definitely doesn't want to start all over again, but the sword rejuvenates him as the young warrior he was, and so Glaeken gets a chance to take out his frustrations on the BigBad.]]
48	* OurVampiresAreDifferent: Subverted. Rasalom isn't a vampire, but he's happy to pretend to be one in ''The Keep''. That said, he is described as an AbstractEater[=/=]EmotionEater who feeds on war, death, pain, misery, and all such negative things, so he's not that different from being a "psychic vampire" as such creatures are sometimes called.
49	* PerpetualMotionMonster: Sealing Rasalom up for five hundred years doesn't seem to have diminished his power in the slightest, although he does wake up hungry for victims' pain.
50	* ReligiousHorror: In ''The Keep'', Dr. Cuza discovers that Molasar is afraid of crosses and of the name of Jesus, but ignores the Judaic prayer. This hits Cuza hard, as he takes it as a suggestion that Christianity is right, while his own Judaic faith is wrong. [[spoiler:Actually, the trope is intentionally [[InvokedTrope invoked]] by Molasar. He doesn't fear Christian holy symbols either, he just fakes it to shake Cuza's faith and subvert him to Molasar's cause.]]
51	* SeaSinkhole: Played for horror in ''Nightworld'' where portals to AnotherDimension open, sending nightmare creatures swarming across the Earth. Some of them open in the open ocean, swallowing ships and creating vast whirlpools during the day and reversing at night into mile-high fountains of water, littering islands with dead fish and... other things.
52	* ShootTheHostageTaker: Jack in ''Nightworld'' when a kicker has a knife by Gia's throat.
53	* SdrawkcabName: [[spoiler:Molasar's surname is actually "Rasalom" backwards. No word on whether this also applies to his given first name, Radu, in which case his ''really'' real name would be "Udar Rasalom."]]
54	* SignificantAnagram: [[spoiler:Rasalom]] is cursed to only be able to identify himself with his True Name, or failing that, anagrams of it.
55	%%* ToCreateAPlaygroundForEvil
56	%%* TouchOfDeath:
57	* TheUnmasquedWorld: ''Nightworld'' has a global revelation of the reality of the supernatural. Having the sun nearly go dark forever, releasing godawful monsters to stalk the increasingly-long nights, while bottomless pits open up and start eating the landscape, would sure convince me.
58	* WalkingWasteland: Carol in ''Reborn'' when she is [[spoiler:pregnant with the reincarnation of Rasalom]].
59	* WaterfallIntoTheAbyss: Played for horror in ''Nightworld''. Portals to AnotherDimension have opened sending nightmare creatures swarming across the Earth. Some of them [[SeaSinkhole open in mid-ocean]], creating vast whirlpools during the day and reversing at night into mile-high fountains of water, littering the ground with dead fish and...[[TheSwarm other things]].
60	* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: During the holocaust in ''Nightworld'' Rasalom protects the building Glaeken is living in because he wants his ArchNemesis to witness the full horror of his failure (the destruction of civilisation, and the sight of Rasalom at his full strength) before inflicting a long and painful death. He's so confident he actually lets them assemble the SwordOfPlotAdvancement despite knowing all about their FetchQuest.
61	* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Rasalom tells his minions that if things go according to plan he won't be contacting them. They all get killed by the creatures he unleashes on the world.

Context Literature / TheAdversaryCycle