CDT Adventure / Tropes A to K

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A

• Abnormal Ammo: Cormack wants to find a legendary musket that shoots Fantastic Fireworks and magic-infused bullets.
• Absolute Xenophobe: Oseru's has come to the conclusion that the only way to ensure humanity's survival is to strike first against aliens, both to prevent them from becoming a threat and to ensure humanity has access to all the resources it needs.
• Accent Adaptation: In-universe. Qorisayane from Yoth province get accents vaguely like those of the southern United States when their language is rendered into English. For rural hunters Koyel and Layi, it gravitates toward Good Ol' Boy, while a Clanwoman like Oseru leans more towards Southern Belle.
• Accent Slip-Up:
  • Rosalind suppresses her Texas drawl for fear of people figuring out where she's from and going there to stalk her, but does so imperfectly — she tends to revert when she's not paying close attention to what she says.
  • Varla knows Black Speech, and when she gets mad, the consonant-heavy accent from it slips into her voice.
• Accidental Kiss: Almost happened when Jann trips over Rosalind's backpack and into a Suggestive Collision with her. Their faces were one mere inch away from colliding.
• Accidental Pervert: Simultaneous mutual moment between Jann and Rosalind. Suspecting that Rosalind is a revenant, Jann the wizard focuses an eavesdropping spell on Rosalind's heart... which is directly behind her breasts in his line of sight. Meanwhile, Rosalind scratches an itch between her breasts right as Jann is staring and assumes her action drew his attention there. They both end up blushing awkwardly.
• Accidental Tickle Torture: Because the spaceship is currently an extension of Arilay's body, Shale fiddling with wires in Engineering accidentally tickles Arilay.
• Actually Not a Vampire:
  • Mayatans are telepathic, nocturnal (specifically sedated by enough yellow light), mostly off-white in color, and have unusual (specifically metallic) omnivore teeth. Mequoql and Nyorla curiously sampled blood from slaughtered moufretas, creeping out witnesses in the process. Most Mayatans, including Mequoql and Nyorla, are not vampires. The twins Aynara and Arnaya are the only two Mayatan vampires.
  • Akane is exceptionally strong, fast, and durable, drinks blood from time to time, and her fair skin burns easily in sunlight. She's a kyuuketsuki, a type of Oni.
• Affably Evil: The only immediate sign that Alice Winters is anything other than an ordinary (if curious) customer is magical items reacting to her presence.
• Age-Gap Algebra: Arnaya (Mayatan) mentions a mathematical formula for comparing interspecies lifespan and development when she tells Amy (human) that she's too straight to date Amy and slightly too old to date any of Amy's peers.
• Agony Beam: Oseru slams Aynara with a wave of raw pain from the Eyes and Teeth. Aynara spreads the misery through the specialized Mayatan scream designed to do just that.
• Ahem: John Smith, Security Service gets Sarquoql's attention with a loud throat-clearing to interrupt Sarquoql's attempt to remove posters warning the populace of dangerous individuals.
• Alice Allusion: Downplayed by Alice Winters — she had an old-fashioned dress sense, explores other worlds, and even knows Alice in Wonderland well enough that she could reference it if she had a good enough reason. But the resemblance ends there; Alice is a Corporate Samurai whose eccentricities are significantly more restrained than in previous appearances. She still can't help taking "Queen of Hearts" as a call-sign and naming her two squads "Carpenter" and "Walrus", though.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Rebecca Jane Walsh is hated in the forest by Mequoql. Zig-zagged, as she is liked, if not loved, by the others in the forest.
• The Alleged Car: Subverted. Julia and Lauren drive a 1993 Land Rover Discovery, a car known in Real Life for poor (but not lethal) reliability, yet for a 26-year-old vehicle, it still seems pretty reliable. Justified in that Lauren is a car enthusiast and chose the vehicle because it's good off-road.
• Alternate Self:
  • Ava Sharpe is not the one you know from Arrowverse 's Legends of Tomorrow, she just happens to have the same look, but very different personality.
  • Michelle has two versions within this universe, and it's a case of Alliance of Alternates.
  • Jenny has one Alternate Self, who is an Artificial Human.
  • Rebecca Jane Walsh, is an Alternate Self and not the actual one. The "real" Rebecca Jane Walsh has yet to appear, though, in this universe. Word of God is that the creator did not like the version he included, so Ret-Gone' d her out of the narrative.
• Alternative Number System: Many countries of the world of Aria utilize Base 12, which leads to Lily miscalculating a Mayatan's psychic radar range.
• Always Identical Twins:
  • Averted in the case of the Otterbein sisters, who are fraternal twins.
  • Averted again with Mayatan fraternal twin sisters Aynara and Arnaya.
• Ambiguous Gender: It is nigh impossible to discern Nui's gender from their appearance and voice, and they don't identify with a single gender anyway.
• Ambiguous Gender Identity: While Tovor Zaa is physically male, and not androgynous, Kykzavi tradition dictates that shamans are inherently outside of Kykzavi gender roles. (For their part, they won't be offended by strangers not understanding the implications of their shaman scars.)
• Amusing Injuries: Rosalind's Noodle Incident in the weapons shop leaves her disgruntled with superficial cuts, bruises and a sunburn.
• Anti-Magic: The trademark (and only) power Alice, the Ace of Spades, and Aseyu ul'Valmoth wield, a side effect of their native world's metaphysical infection. It causes quite a bit of consternation and horror, and is of limited use. Alice and the Ace of Spades are shrouded in a field; Aseyu, to avoid getting shot by a Mage Marksman, keeps her defensive field hidden, at the expense of having to be directly targeted by a spell or having to get her hands on a mage to disrupt them.
• Ancestral Weapon: Arnora's sword has been passed down for generations along a direct line of descent. It also is imbued with the souls of all its previous wielders, which can be summoned in the form of a blue glow that greatly enhances the damage dealt by the blade and the skill of the current wielder.
• And I Must Scream: Nyorla's backstory includes ten years locked inside her own unresponsive body. She's still celebrating its end.
• Angry Fist-Shake: Shale shakes her fist at the local who is whacking Arilay with a broom. The local doesn't notice.
• Angst? What Angst?: Contrary to Explorer of Unknowns' assumption, Nyorla is not upset at the prospect of staying a physical child for the rest of her life because Mayatan society knows how to handle such cases with dignity.
• Animal Eye Spy:
  • As part of telepathically "eavesdropping" on minds, Mayatans can look through others' eyes.
  • Seenarnha uses this talent to borrow Swanwhite the dragonhorse's eyes and ears, when Swanwhite hears something beyond Seenarnha's hearing.
  • Aynara uses a bandit's Angry Guard Dog to pick up Mael's scent trail.
  • Maequoql and Arnaya telepathically look through the eyes of a flock of birds to confirm that the truck that the spaceship's telescope is looking at is indeed David's truck.
• The Anticipator: Subverted when Nyorla guesses that the twins Aynara and Arnaya are going to mist through the air vents to get back into the kitchen that she just shooed them out of. They don't — instead they telekinetically yank away her knives while on the other side of the wall.
• Anti-Regeneration: Because of at least one Holy Hand Grenade, the Amusing Injuries Rosalind acquires offscreen persist until she's back onscreen again and for some time after that.
• Anti-Villain: Trine, the Filipino-Norwegian may be a very small-time Con Artist, but she's Only in It for the Money and makes a Heel–Face Turn, although she was never much of a villain anyway.
• Apathetic Citizens: Mequoql accuses the town citizens of not caring about an artistic performer's spectacle or a missing child.
• Are You Sure You Want to Do That?: Held at gunpoint, Murquoql responds to Wain's demand to commandeer the WFS Hummingbird thusly:
  Murquoql: Oh, I could bring you aboard my spaceship, but she's alive. And she doesn't take kindly to strangers, especially strangers that wave around things that could punch a hole in her hull. Are you sure you want to board her?
• Aroused by Their Voice: Jen Jara hears Alexa's monstrous voice enhanced with rumbling and blushes at the rumbling undercurrent hitting just the right frequencies to resonate in her skeleton. When Syrni Sandra returns and feels Alexa's rumbling voice for herself, she's reminded of her most recent time (ahem) enjoying music with pounding bass in CDT Space Liner.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • Nui's notice on the bulletin board contains the following:
    "Relics of advanced ancient technologies! The peculiarities of demonic entities and their effect on magic! Retrieving a powerful artifact from a subterranean society! A relaxing time at the beach!"
  • David asks Arnaya if she senses any traps in the vicinity of his truck, like landmines or booby traps or whoopee cushions.
• Artistic License – Cars: Averted, as the author has Shown Their Work - there actually was a 1993 Land Rover Discovery commercial vehicle in Ireland, but it was not developed by Land Rover.
• Artistic License – Physics: Lampshaded when the narration gleefully admits that the dragonhorses' ability to do vertical takeoffs into flight would leave physicists calling foul. Justified by draconic flight magic.
• Ask a Stupid Question...: Murquoql snarks at Farrah for asking where a lost kid was last seen, when the information could have easily been obtained by reading the notice right in front of them.
  Murquoql: The kid's last known location is posted right here, did you not read it?
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: According to Sindar, all fairies have this: an appearance that matches their domain.
  Sindar: A wood nymph might have leaves for ears. Flower fairies have petals growing out of all sorts of places. Likewise... (holds up his skeletal hands and wiggles his fingers) take a guess as to what my domain is.
• As You Know:
  • Arilay reminds Moquoql (for the readers' benefit) that the gas mask with the small el-kor patch is a prototype.
  • Ethani reminding Aseyu of the differences between Qorisayane and American nudity taboos; she only does so because she's intending a joke at the expense of the latter, but remembers her diplomatic mission and the Translator Microbes and changes course halfway through to a dry, redundant explanation.
• Asymmetric Dilemma: Moquoql doesn't turn an imperfect sound-muffling telekinetic bubble of air into a perfect silencing bubble, because then she'd get a telekinetic overextension headache and/or suffocate in an airtight bubble.
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: When the horse group is ambushed by a pack of d'voreem, most of the herd runs away from the first few attackers.
  (Pewter runs away while Thunder fights off the d'voreem)
  Amaranth: Come on Pew... ter... get... back... there... (tries in vain to turn her around to join Thunder)
  (Amaranth notices the d'voreem being really noisy and realizes they might be scaring the herd away into an ambush)
  Amaranth: Change of plans. Faster!
• Attack on One Is an Attack on All: Mael mind-controlling one member of the Web of Friendship causes the entire Web of Friendship to declare a personal vendetta against him.
• Attempted Rape: Varla boasts about lethally thwarting over ten years' worth of attempts to rape her.
  Nerea [inferring from the Unprovoked Pervert Payback incident]: Some-one hurt you, did they not?
  Varla: Ha! They tried, they died, starting right as I entered puberty and continuing for ten long years after puberty finished with me.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Parthenia's mental assessments of dangerous situations she often finds herself in are curt, very detailed, and to-the-point. She even goes as far as draw flowcharts in her mind, which horrifies Iragan to no end.

B

• Bakeneko and Nekomata: During the 2000 years she was gone, Felian became some sort of Nekomata. What that means hasn't been revealed yet.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Out of the Not Chaos Hunters (and their new companions in Web of Friendship and Lily, Bonnie, and Carol), Adam is the youngest, shortest, and the shyest of the group. As the result, the rest of the NCH are very protective of him (to be fair, they're protective to each other, but especially Adam).
• Bad Boss: Krakka'a is openly abusive towards Zarokh, verbally and occasionally physically. Zarokh only puts up with it because he believes his god has commanded him to serve Krakka'a.
• Bad Mood as an Excuse: Unable to help her sister get out of mind control, Nyorla displaces her frustration by slaughtering four unlucky moufretas who get too close.
• Bandage Mummy: Aynara invokes this trope when she covers herself head-to-toe in medical tape.
• The Baroness: She's a bit younger than it's usual for a Rosa Klebb version of this trope, but Parthenia is ruthless, shows almost complete disregard for human life (though she tries to be smart about it) and much is given about her unatractiveness.
• Barrier-Busting Blow: Wilhelmine is strong enough to drive an icy great sword through a wall to kill the bandit on the opposite side.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Chaudhari, a corporate security goon, pretending to be a representative of the town's government. Imperfectly; it doesn't take much from Parthenia to spook him into being unrealistically trusting to avoid a fight he's scared of losing.
• Berserk Button:
  • Justin really does not like being called a pet or a slave.
  • Glass objects send the nuckelavee into a blind rage.
  • Do not call Bonnie a "bunny girl" or a "bunny". She's a rabbit girl.
  • Varla hates being the target of flirting.
  • For NCH, attacking a friend unprovked. Arnaya's attack on David pretty much ruins what little good will they had towards her in the end.
• The Berserker: Rosalind has never entered combat in a lucid state of mind, because she's been led to believe that she can't fight at all without loosening her self-control over her Horror Hunger. Consequently, any memories she has of fighting, no matter how recent, are always a chaotic jumble of sensations saturated with whatever stressful emotion drove her to fight.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Krakka'a desperately wants to be the Big Bad of this story. Shame he's hopelessly outclassed by pretty much every other character. And as Osiris eventually reveals, he's not even the Big Bad of his own story.
• Big Brother Instinct: More like "Sister", but Valerie's two known siblings seem to adore her- but aren't fully convinced Valerie's group didn't mess up somehow.
• Big Eater:
  • Ozurr is capable of putting away a large amount of food in a very short amount of time. He eats an entire loaf of bread in one bite, and later does the same to an entire steak. Justified, as he is literally a giant.
  • Nora eats enough for several people at breakfast despite looking like a small, teenage girl. Also Justified as she consumes biomass (preferably "food") to fuel her shapeshifting capabilities.
  • Arnora proves to be just as much one as Ozurr (appropriate, given that they're of a comparable size), skeletonizing an entire moufreta in a matter of minutes.
  • Soryn packs roughly ten pounds' worth of moufreta-onion stir-fry into his roughly sixty-foot-long serpentine body. Apparently mixing warm-blooded and cold-blooded DNA into the same life-form makes for a wonky metabolism.
• Big Friendly Dog:
  • Arilay temporarily takes the form of a pudgy Golden Retriever in an attempt to appear more harmless to Valerie, Justin and Vindex.
  • Mist's wolf-steed Fog licks a farmer's hand.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • Mequoql's frantic Latin prayer of "Sanctificetur aquam!" translates to "May the water be sanctified!"
  • Varla's exasperated Latin prayer of "Salve me ab fatui nimii!" translates to "Save me from too many idiots!"
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Viporises need to breathe volcanic ash on a semiregular basis.
• Bizarre Alien Psychology: Shale has a separate brain for processing her emotions that she can temporarily disconnect from her other brain.
• Bizarre Alien Senses: Shale's antennae can pick up nearby cold spots and the distant Howling Void's melody.
• Blackmail: Sophia attempts to make Alice let Parthenia, her priestess, and Sa'ad go by threatening to either blabber Alice's secrets out or by cursing her to not be able to use any kind of technology for the rest of her life. No, the Shattered World gods don't know what "fair play" means, why do you ask?
• Black Eyes of Crazy:
  • As part of her Game Face, Rosalind the Friendly Neighborhood Vampire has the option of turning her sclerae black.
  • Using her xenophobic captors' spellcasting language temporarily turns Varla's sclerae black with equally black tendrils of fog streaming out at the corners.
• Blatant Lies: During the fight between Miron and UD Justin, Nui proclaims that they have some skill with necromancy and offers to help ease the situation with his souls. And later, begins to cast a spell that looks like it has some Soul Power. After the fight, when Nyceme asks them about their skills, Nui says that their earlier proclamation was just an act. It's a well-told lie (enough to fool Nyceme), but still blatant.
• Blinded by the Light: The equivalent of car horns on spaceships are flashing lights. A spaceship parked in a town square accidentally dazzled a few NPCs who happen to be looking directly at the spaceship when the owner unintentionally hit the button. John Smith, Security Service takes notice.
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: The reason Rosalind was covered in gore when she got teleported into this world was because she dove into a zombie horde and punched, kicked, and stomped them until the melee drenched her from head to toe. Regrettably, there were too many zombies and she was forced to retreat without the human she was trying to rescue.
• Blow You Away: Lily utilizes air magic to fly. Side effects include knocked off hats and stray pigeons to the face.
• Blunt "Yes": Parthenia's understated reaction when Farrah fairly accuses her of knocking her out, kidnapping her and having the nerve to ask her to fight for Parthenia after all of this.
• Body Horror: Leone splits her head open into a toothy maw to consume the remainder of her breakfast.
• Bolt of Divine Retribution: This is how Amaranth, Felicio, and Cormack leave the thread: they are zapped out of existence without warning. Amaranth does have a reason for being zapped though: alerting the d'voreem pack to the horses' presence, as pointed out by Flashfoot.
• Bond One-Liner: Non-lethal example. After groin attacking a lewd fisherman with her sword, Varla quips, "I'd see a rabbi now, if I were you."
• Booby Trap:
  • The Inquisitor spelled her saddlebags to zap anyone attempting to open them. Fiddler finds out about it the hard way.
  • She also gave the same treatment to her boots, if Farrah's inner monologue is anything to go by.
• Boring Insult: Syrni Sandra reacts to Alexa's Game Face by calling it boring, in a hare-brained and ultimately ineffective attempt to goad Alexa into a fight. Jen Jara delivers a Dope Slap to Syrni Sandra for saying it.
• Bounty Hunter: Parthenia is on a government mission to bring pirate Sa'ad to justice. A task she feels she's overqualified for.
• Brainwash Residue: Morpho scans Mequoql's brain and then sends her to Sick Bay for a more thorough scan, to confirm she's freed from Mael's mind-control. A mention of this type of brain scan being standard procedure implies that leftover conditioning from mind-control is an occupational hazard in their native story.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Deftly averted by Sindar when he introduces himself to Wolfe. First he says that he works with animals, then he says he also works with the dead... but he avoids mentioning that he works with dead animals (which he actually does, as he explained to Koyel, Layi, and Vrask earlier).
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: When Justin's demon approaches Nyceme and asks about her getting a new body:
  Nyceme: Do you have any idea how many poisssonsss, pressservativesss, and hemomancccy ssspellsss I keep applying to patch [my body] up?
• Breath Weapon: The genetically engineered dragonhorses inherited the dragons' ability to breathe fire.
• Bring Him to Me:
  • Mind-controlled Mequoql is under orders to bring the Not-Chaos Hunters to Mael.
  • A more benevolent example when Seenarnha sends one of her pet dragonhorses to bring back what she thinks is a hostile vampire^note actually a not-quite-so-hostile lamprey merfolk priestess in the jungle.
    Seenarnha: Plasma, fetch.
• Bring My Brown Pants: Rosalind imagines Krakka'a wetting himself in terror while his eyeballs pop out and fall into the puddle.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: When Aynara tries to get rid of the Eyes and Teeth's Teleport Interdiction over the Ghost town, she gets tortured by the Eyes and Teeth to the point of convulsing and foaming at the mouth; she peels off and nearly loses flaps of her skin by barging through a too-narrow door before it finishes opening; she becomes nauseated to the point of vomiting from drinking rotten corpse blood; a Bolt of Divine Retribution zaps her into unconsciousness as it passes through her on its way to the Eyes and Teeth; and she loses an eye, ear and most of her skin to burns from the fire started in the wake of the lightning bolts.
• Broomstick Quarterstaff: Poor Arilay is on the receiving end of a broom-whacking when a local mistakes her for a homunculus.
• Brown Note: Downplayed when Syrni Sandra's glimpse of the Howling Void Eldritch Abomination is described as merely "eye-watering".
• Bullet Dodges You: Thanks to her electromagnetic powers, Parthenia is able to stop the bullets Farrah shot at her mid-flight.
• Bullet Time: Rosalind perceives Jann falling onto her in slow-motion. Too bad her half-finished, tangled impulses only make the ensuing Suggestive Collision worse.
• Buried in a Pile of Corpses: Downplayed, Nyorla tries to hide from a humongous lanceros wyvern by flattening herself half-beside half-under one of four moufreta corpses that are each a little larger than herself. Pilot 0037 quickly followed suit using a different corpse.
• Burp of Finality: Time-delayed example due to the perpetrator's table manners: after killing the moufretas that ambushed him, Soryn takes some of their meat to the Purple Fez Tavern to cook into stir-fry and burps after eating at last ten pounds' worth of it.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday
  • The Not-Chaos-Hunters have their mind-controlling arch-enemy Mael out there somewhere plotting against them right now. Due to a time travel twist, their good friend Joseph has no idea who they are. Today is shaping up to be one of the worst days of their lives. The Web of Friendship has their mind-controlling arch-enemy Sarquoql out there somewhere plotting against them right now. Morpho summarized a tale of the time Sarquoql managed to win and seal away most of the Web members' memories of each other. Recovering from that setback was just another difficult Tuesday for the Web of Friendship.
  • Fighting hostile wildlife (including a wyvern), hunting a mind-controller, trying and failing to turn Joseph back into a human, and Mequoql collapsing in a near-Power-Strain Blackout from overuse of the Hunters' moonstones all add up to what Henry calls "just about gone to the dogs" and Bonnie calls a "stressful day" — but Morpho calls it "just the usual Monday slog".
• Butt Biter: As Guardian of the herd, one of Thunder's jobs is to motivate individual herd members to move faster by nipping them on the rump.
• Butt Sticker: Defied by Henry A. Safon II, who scrambles out of the way of Ozurr the giant's Dramatic Sit-Down.
• Buzzing the Deck: Krakka'a swoops low over Rosalind's mustang herd to send them running for his amusement.

C

• Call-Back:
  • Iragan and Orain start their narration bickering about how they were Dragged Off to Hell the last time they escaped the Shattered World.
  • On seeing and recognising Amy and Maya, Sophia can't resist making a friendly jibe at Kaitlyn regarding the aftermath of the "Moonlight Picnic" in the desert and the possibility that Kaitlyn might meet up with Davey, again.
  • The 'Not-Chaos-Hunters' are so-named because that's what Teri dubbed them after a vocal argument about team names in Capital City.
  • Sophia and Gwion keep calling Henry A. Safon II 'Quickdraw' after their first encounter with him in CDT Frontier.
  • Syrni Sandra and Jen Jara entered the story with one empty stinger gland and one full stinger gland each from when they stung each other sparring in CDT Space Liner.
• Canary in a Coal Mine: To detect stealth and illusions, one kind of sensor the Web of Friendship has is designed with deliberate fragility — its job is to break dramatically and throw up error messages under any tampering no matter how subtle.
• Cannot Cross Running Water:
  • Rosalind trips over underground water pipes, leaps away from automatic flushing toilets, carefully adjusts sink faucets to release water no faster than a drip, and ended up dizzy and disoriented in a river when trying to stop a homunculus from drowning Jann.
  • During the briefing, Murquoql learns that the Fiendlord vampire who might be in the rainforest can't cross running water, and she could finish him off by exposing him to sunlight and tossing the resulting ashes into a swiftly-moving river.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Justified: The men's restroom in a tavern is no place for a polite lady like Rosalind to confess her attraction to a gentleman like Jann.
• Can't Believe I Said That: Rosalind thoroughly embarrasses herself when she specifies that her idea of stopping herself from acting on the demonic influence was getting tied up.
  Rosalind (whimpering): Why did I say all that?
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Arilay explains to Morpho why Mequoql raising her claws to her own throat was a bluff.
  Arilay: (Mr. White Suit) Mael can't kill Mequoql yet, he still needs her. She knows more about what we're going to do to get her back than he does.
• Can't You Read the Sign?: David's truck bears the sign "Property of David Harkness — steal at your own risk" so when Arnaya finds a thief in the truck, she berates the thief with "Your 'dibs' is invalid — this is David, the rightful owner of the truck. Did you not read the sign?"
• Captain Obvious:
  • Mequoql does not take kindly to Mael pointing out that her attempt at fundraising an expedition for a missing child didn't work.
    Mael: How unfortunate; it is a worry when a child disappears, is it not? However, I'm not sure performing arts like this will bring you any closer to your goal. I would suggest you take a more... active approach. Like actually looking for them.
    Mequoql: Gee, thanks, Captain Obvious!
  • Discussed by Syrni Sandra when pointing out why stinging a shriver to paralyze the shriver doesn't paralyze the shriver's digestive swarm.
    Syrni Sandra: At the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious, their digestive swarms exist independently of their circulation system...
  • Nerea points out that Lerna bit Varla. Varla, who is already singing a healing spell, rolls her eyes in exasperated Lampshade Hanging.
  • Joseph makes an obvious observation on where Arnaya's paranoia of bug bites comes from.
    Joseph: Sounds like you guys make a lot of enemies. Or maybe you've just got really bad luck with bugs.
    Arnaya: Of course we have a lot of enemies, Captain Obvious. Didn't you hear what I said about how I lost count of the necromancers? What's worse is they are far from the only kinds of enemies we face.
  • Arnaya thinks John Richman's suggestion of how to tactically use her telepathy is both obvious and belated.
    John: You can read minds, right? I, uh, am guessing you can, though I don't know if Nick and the others are that good...myself included. Anyway, this could help with communication. Maybe. Unless you have any other plans.
    Arnaya: Did it seriously take you that long to figure out telepathy's tactical usefulness and what I was already doing, Captain Obvious?
• Carnivore Confusion: On their home moon, Viporises regularly eat the alien equivalent to quetzalcoatlus, so when Jen Jara the Viporis meets Krakka'a the quetzalcoatlus, her first impression is that he's the largest prey she's ever seen. His sapience and speech comes as a surprise to her, and her stomach continues to growl at him even after she establishes that she can hold a conversation with him.
• Casting a Shadow: Rather unsurprisingly, Justin or more accurately his demon is associated with power over darkness- allowing, among other things, the power to manifest the demon as a shadowy sword and create mindless constructs.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Lerna, Nerea, Leto, and Maequoql casually discuss food and moons while watching Swanwhite driving off a lurking homunculus.
• Catch and Return: Done with bullets, by Parthenia. She stops the bullets shot by Farrah mid-flight and returns them back at her, with interest.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: Played with: Once Syrni Sandra picks her hiding place during a game of hide and seek, she takes a moment to deal with the consequences of forgetting to take her heat control pill. She tries to defy being interrupted by not starting to masturbate while awake, which would be too obvious, and instead sneaks a quick nap to start an Erotic Dream. She didn't count on Akane finding her faster than Alexa could — Akane finds Syrni Sandra still dreaming.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: The gate guards point out the moufretas stalking Soryn, sound the alarm, and rush to his aid. By the time backup arrives, the guards shot two and speared one, and Soryn killed the rest and is in the act of constricting the last one in his serpentine coils.
• Ceiling Cling:
  • When startled by an automatic flushing toilet, Rosalind jumps high enough to cling to the ceiling. Justified as an instinctive use of her vampiric powers.
  • Aynara clings to first the ceiling of the clock tower, then the underside of the spiral staircase, as she stalks the bandit she threatened into carrying a message to either Black Morgan or Mael, whichever one is in charge of the bandits by the time she finds them.
• Centrifugal Farce: While sparring, Morpho hoists Carol by the ankle and starts spinning her, but she gets loose and goes flying into a tree.
• Chain Lightning: The first thing Parthenia does upon encountering Chaudhari's men is to mark every one of them with a slightly negative electric potential. Dominic, seeing the electrical and magical hazard warnings on his helmet's display, instantly realizes what does this imply.
• Change the Uncomfortable Subject: After blurting out her embarrassing idea, Rosalind desperately changes the subject to the unexpected lack of hostility from her confession of being a vampire.
• Chase Scene: A hysterical local wielding a broom mistakes Arilay for a homunculus and starts chasing her around the town square.
• Chasing a Butterfly: Mind-controlled Mequoql attempts to invoke this by making firefly lights for the Not-Chaos Hunters to chase all the way to Mael, but the Not-Chaos Hunters are too suspicious to follow the pretty lights.
• Chastity Dagger: Varla has a chastity dagger with an ownership bond reinforcing her already considerable grip on it. The sheath for it is in Victoria's Secret Compartment. Unfortunately for those around her, she protects her chastity with too much aggression.
• Chef of Iron: Implied for Nyorla levitating multiple knives in a synchronized swarm to skin and butcher three moufreta corpses, and then pulling the knives into a defensive formation and scolding the twins Aynara and Arnaya for sneaking up on her.
  Nyorla: Don't you know better than to sneak up on a chef wielding this many knives in the kitchen?!
• Chekhov's Gunman: Sarquoql, mind-controlling arch-nemesis of the Web of Friendship, is first introduced as an innocuous bodyguard under the alias of Ren 4.
• Chill of Undeath:
  • As a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire, Rosalind is mesothermic. Most of her body (except for hot spots in her brain and belly) stays at air temperature unless she deliberately takes steps to warm herself up.
  • Same is true of Nyceme. However, when Kaitlyn's thermovision detects no body heat in her, she concludes that she is simply cold-blooded, due to being part snake.^note Disproved by Saen, a living lamia who is warm-blooded... hand-waved as that she must simply be a different type of lamia.
  • Miron's lower-than-usual body temperature was a clue as to his partially undead nature.
• Chimney Entry: Aynara lands on the roof of the building that Arilay is in, and speeds up the rendezvous by turning into Super Smoke so she can fit down the chimney.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome:
  • The Web of Friendship was founded to collect thrill seekers who wouldn't enjoy a peaceful life, but would rather fight tooth and claw to give others a peaceful life.
  • Maequoql is supposed to be giving Arilay heads-up warnings on what she picks up via Psychic Radar. Instead, she gets distracted by a stranger (Pilot 0037 Jack) getting knocked out by a wyvern, and dashes off to sick bay to retrieve a first-aid kit for him.
  • When David wonders why Varla rescued him from quicksand despite him offending her, Maequoql says it's because heroism is deeply imprinted into Varla's reflexes.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Enforced in the case of Allison, as she needed money back in her home universe. She wasn't as integral to the plot as when she first started out, so it became an Enforced Trope.
• Classified Information: The experimental technology on-board Pilot 0037's Panzerfaust, as well as details pertaining to the Mark III Panzerfaust's computer.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: The avatar of the Eyes and Teeth, compared to Oseru herself. Lashing out with Black Magic and raw animal strength isn't as reliably lethal as a magically guided and empowered high-caliber round.
• Clockwork Prediction: After Nyorla throws Aynara and Arnaya out of the kitchen, she tries to predict how and when they'll retaliate. She's wrong about what they did, but her countdown to the timing is still accurate.
• Clothing Damage: Soryn's shirt — and the skin underneath — gets shredded by biting and clawing moufretas.
• Clue, Evidence, and a Smoking Gun: After her first conclusion jumping upon hearing a sonic boom, Syrni Sandra backtracks and tries again to be more thorough about reasoning who boomed and why. A clue is that Jen Jara is the only source of sonic booms that Syrni Sandra knows is in earshot. Evidence is that Viporises (like Syrni Sandra and Jen Jara are) have safety features that prevent them from making accidental sonic booms. The inference is that, assuming that was indeed Jen Jara booming, she did that on purpose. Another clue is that Syrni Sandra and Jen Jara are participating in a game of hide and seek. More evidence is that obviously, sonic booming is the opposite of being sneaky. Another inference is that either the seeker needs a hint or the game is over. The "smoking gun" is Syrni Sandra asking Jen Jara over the comm-chips what happened and Jen Jara answering that she boomed because somebody interrupted the game of hide and seek and picked a fight.
• Cold Iron:
  • This is the reason why Sindar (a fairy) insists on the barkeep at the restaurant serving his ale in a non-metal glass.
  • One of many tools in Seenarnha's cursebreaking arsenal is cold iron tongs, for handling magical items (or snakes) that shouldn't be touched with bare hands.
• Come Alone: One of Mael's mind-controlled thralls tells Arilay to meet her alone in the Necropolis. Arilay deduces that the thrall is either plotting to ambush her or trying to be Captured on Purpose.
• Confusion Fu: Invoked by Arilay when she tells Morpho to "do something unexpected" to rescue Mequoql from Mael's mind control.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Moquoql retrieves the false zipper she abandoned in Sick Bay several pages ago.
  • On Page 31, Nyorla teaches Pilot 0037 what a tumor is by pointing out one on a slain moufreta's tongue. On Page 40, Nyorla's sister Moquoql eats that tongue raw in front of Pilot 0037.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Invoked by the spell Varla uses to gather high amounts of heat and channel it through her own heat-tolerant body — she specifically constructs the spell to insulate the heat to her own body except for whatever she aims the heat at.
• Cool Car: Julia and Lauren's 1993 Land Rover Discovery SUV commercial vehicle conversion, which was popular in The Republic of Ireland in the 1990s.
• Cooldown Hug: Inverted twice when Amy of the Not-Chaos-Hunters went around hugging Valerie, Justin, and his demon. Valerie freezes up in terror at being abruptly hugged, even internally screaming to be let go. Justin's demon, however, was initially calm- Before breaking out into uncontrollable laughter and spasms directly because of the hug.
• Cool Sword:
  • Justin's demon amusingly enough, who becomes a sword made of darkness bound together by flames when Justin wills it.
  • One of Lieutenant Wilhelmine's weapons that she can manifest is Zorn, an icy great sword with anti-wyvern and anti-dragon attributes.
• Cornered Rattlesnake: Horses usually flee from threats, but when they're boxed in at the bottom of a canyon and surrounded by predators, the mustang members of the herd have very little emotional problem with turning violent to fight their way out.
• The Corruption:
  • Rosalind feels the energy that Unchained Devil Justin emits as something calling her to go Drunk on the Dark Side.
  • The Eyes and Teeth has a tendency to drive its users insane — making them more like itself.
  • Aria's Chaos element can mutate its users' minds and bodies.
• Country Matters: Parthenia drops a c-bomb on Chaudhari. Non-verbally, of course, since that would unnecessarily escalate the situation in the Town Square.
• Coup de Grâce: When four juvenile moufreta leap off a cliff and splat in front of the herd of mustangs, four mustangs personally ensure the moufretas' deaths by rearing up and slamming their forehooves down on the exposed neck vertebrae.
• Covered in Gunge:
  • Rosalind gets teleported into the world while covered head-to-toe in plague zombie gore.
  • Arnora's...enthusiastic dispatching of a homunculus that attacks her causes its innards to splatter everywhere. She comments internally that she'll probably have to burn her clothes. The rest of the campsite where this happens is only spared this fate by Morpho quickly forming a barricade around them.
• Covered in Mud:
  • Mayatans tend to roll in mud for cheap camouflage.
  • Nyorla smears mud into her mostly off-white fur for camouflage in the Sun-Dry Sea.
  • Aynara, trying to impersonate Mequoql under mind control, uses medical tape (from the spaceship) and mud (from a disused well in Ghost Town) to obscure her spots that don't look a thing like Mequoql's spots.
• Covered in Scars:
  • Carol has numerous scars accumulated from getting into fights most of her life.
  • Tovor Zaa's face and torso are covered in symmetrical, ritually applied scars.
  • Jann of Grimmsford was sliced open to have warding runes carved onto any and every bone that was big enough. He still has the incision scars hidden under his clothes.
• Cower Power:
  • Faced with an imminent interrogation regarding her identity as a vampire, Rosalind hides behind Jann.
  • Spooked by the sudden pursuit of a demonic entity, Mequoql cowers next to a hastily sanctified fire hydrant gushing an improvised fountain of holy water.
  • Sindar has a tendency to do this. First he flees from UD Justin into a house plant (which he promptly kills), and then later he is spooked by Varg's presence and hides behind the window frame of Chitara's wagon.
  • Rosalind, under the mistaken impression that Nyceme exited the wagon to kill her, runs to hide behind Ozurr while screaming "Nonononononono! Don't let her get me!"
• Crazy-Prepared: Moquoql has no particular concrete reason to pack a fire extinguisher in the fix-it kit she puts together for Pilot 0037's crashed Panzerfaust, but she packs a fire extinguisher just in case anyway, and finds out she has to use it to extinguish the flaming after-effects of a magazine detonation.
• Crime After Crime: Discussed and averted when Sarquoql decides not to snatch Soryn out from under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s noses.
  Sarquoql [telepathically]: Well, so much for recruiting Soryn today. If we take him with us now while the gumshoes are watching, we'd have to mind-control anybody who protests, and then mind-control everybody sent to retrieve them, and then everybody sent to retrieve them... I've been in that snowball situation lots of times and it only worked once. The rest of the time, I ended up gift-wrapped for the scientists to use in their despair drug experiments.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Soryn's healing spells either work exclusively on him or are for aiding and abetting BDSM. So his spells are useless when he tries and fails to save the artificial human Jenny's life.
• Cross-Melting Aura: Inni warns Murquoql about a vampire lord who can poison holy magic.
• Cruel Mercy: Instead of killing the moufretas that tried to eat her on the spot, Murquoql lodges rocks into their noses and throats, which cripples their respiration without immediately stopping it.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • The albino lanceros thrashed Pilot 0037's Panzerfaust Mark III, a Spider Tank,in less than two minutes and as many attacks.
  • Parthenia quickly and without much effort incapacitates Farrah near the Notice Board.
  • A pack of D'voreem versus a dragonhorse genetically engineered as a Friendly Sniper: the D'voreem are all felled by Pretty Little Headshots before they can ambush Swanwhite and her proteges.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Mequoql's mental shields didn't stand a chance against Mael's initial mind-capturing assault, but they last for just the split-second she needs to send out a Distress Call.
• Curse Cut Short:
  • Varla's Groin Attack interrupts a randy fisherman saying "Suck my d—"
  • A bandit in the Ghost town was Killed Mid-Sentence after being startled by Wilhelmine.

• Cuteness Proximity:
  • At first, Moquoql stared fascinated at a feathered cat-like critter, while still participating in an intelligent conversation. As Felian approached and sniffed Murquoql, she started cooing baby talk at it and giving it ear scritchies.
  • Jobe Pearson is distracted from catching a bus to his farm when he goes to pet Mist's wolf-steed.
• Cyberpunk:
  • "Alpha"/Sophia is a cyborg that favours classic punk rock style - green mohawk, leopard-pattern cropped hair, numerous piercings and tattoos, silver studs and chains... Comes from a Post-Cyberpunk universe.
  • Oseru's native world has only theorized about artificial thinking machines, but she's from a Portal Fantasy that connects to a cyberpunk Earth. She was absolutely horrified when she saw the other side for herself.
• Cyborg Helmsman: Arilay the cyborg pilots the Web of Friendship Scouter Hummingbird by making it an extension of her body.

D

• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • When Maequoql turns off the Artificial Gravity, the Mayatan sisters instinctively try to glide before consciously switching over to the rather different movement skill needed for zero-gravity maneuvers.
  • Exhausted, sleep-deprived Parthenia unintentionally removes Rosalind's note about the missing mustang herd when a gust of wind tears it off the notice board and her training kicks in, catching it.
• Damsel in Distress: Mind-controlled by Mael and pursued by demonic Vindex, Mequoql is not having a good morning.
• Dare to Be Badass: After the Not-Chaos-Hunters panic over news of an approaching giantess, Morpho is not amused. He accuses them of forgetting their advantages and tells them to get a grip and act like they're as dangerous as their gems and paralytic orbs make them.
• Dark Action Girl: Parthenia the Keraunos, the ruthless government special agent, curb-stomps Farrah in their confrontation near the Notice Board.
• The Darkness Gazes Back:
  • Discussed when Sarquoql describes the perils of looking a Sleutrienn in the eye — Sleutrienn eyes are large and black, and according to his description, under the right conditions an Eldritch Abomination can be seen looking out of the Sleutrienn's eyes.
  Sarquoql: Have you ever looked into a Sleutrienn's eyes? Don't. If you're lucky, their eyes will just look like large wet orbs of polished obsidian. If you're not lucky, then behind the reflection, their eyes are pits of infinite blackness, and if you look too far you'll see the Howling Void staring back at you on the other side of the chasm.
  • Faked display to scare away wildlife. Zip's eyes don't glow, but he can hold flame in his muzzle. With his exact shape obscured by fog in twilight and only his large silhouette visible, he can make his nostrils look like glowing red eyes.
• Daywalking Vampire: Rosalind the vampire has been walking around in the sun almost all day with no ill effect. So far, the one time she got a sunburn was due to a side effect of a string of accidents in the weapons shop, and that sunburn quickly healed once the Anti-Regeneration side effect wore off.
• Deadly Gaze: One of Nyceme's abilities. Her gaze can kill if she really puts her mind to it; if she doesn't put as much mind to it, it just paralyzes the victim. Good thing the one fellow PC she uses it on is an incorporeal demon.
• Detect Evil: A deconstruction of sorts, Vindex was made from demonic energy that he's regularly mistaken as a true one. Only absurdly powerful individuals, like Felian, have successfully seen through that.
• Death Is Cheap: Michelle can keep coming Back from the Dead.
• Deceptively Human Robots: Luereyathane's Organic Technology Hive Drone looks entirely human, even displaying the emotions (such as they are) of the Dead God controlling it. However, this is literally skin-deep, with scent betraying it as more of a machine; additionally, the drone is literally mindless, remotely controlled by the Dead God herself.
• Defence Mechanism Superpower: Rosalind the Friendly Neighborhood Vampire underestimates her usefulness in combat because she doesn't operate with her vampiric powers at full capacity unless she's not lucid.
• Defensive "What?":
  • Nyorla mentions that she's still learning how to skin critters, Pilot 0037 gives her an incredulous look, which spurs Nyorla's defensive rant.
    Nyorla: What? Skinning for leather is a much different skill from, say, for example, harvesting skin tumors. Everyone on my planet knows how to do that. Do you know how to harvest skin tumors? How would you like it if I gawped and pointed at you for not knowing how to harvest skin tumors?
  • David takes issue with Arnaya investigating his truck without him, but she doesn't think she was "without him" because he was still in telepathic range.
    David: This running-off-without-a-word-thing is not going to work. There are a lot of toes around here to be stepped on. This is my truck, we're after my quarry, we—you and me—need an open line of communication.
    Arnaya [telepathically]: What? We do have an open line of communication. I overheard you thinking that I should investigate, so I investigated. It's not my fault that speech is slow and you decided to waste time saying what you were thinking.
• Defiant Captive:
  • Sa'ad will not let Parthenia break his spirit despite being chained, shackled and dragged on the ground face-first. Nor will he pass an opportunity at insulting his captor or making escape attempts. It's implied he's been doing this for several days.
  • Parthenia herself demonstrates a subdued version of this when confronted by the Carpenter squad. Sure, she will cooperate, but only to a certain point, and only as long as Chaudhari's group continues keeping appearances.
  • Rather impressively, if stupidly, Sa'ad continues to tell his captors to fuck off even when being in John Smith's custody. For the record, even Parthenia and Alice were intimidated by his mere presence.
  • Mequoql has multiple instances of this while under Mael's mind-control:
    • She finds out the hard way that her mental shields are too weak to do more than dent the mind-control, so she patiently bides her time waiting for more favorable circumstances to resume Fighting from the Inside. Mequoql put up a mental fight three times before getting freed.
    • During the initial capture, Mequoql tries to resist, but instead gets a Curb Stomp Cushion.
    • When she's given the (in her opinion, suicidally stupid) order to leave her holy water sanctuary while there's still a demon present, she puts a dent in the mind-control so she can stay put and tell the demon to go away first.
    • Her vow to get the other side of the story from the Not-Chaos Hunters loosens Mael's control enough for Mequoql to call for help in breaking free the rest of the way.
• Delaying the Rescue: After capturing several mind-controlled bandits, the Web of Friendship tries using them to triangulate their mind-controller's position before trying to free them from mind-control.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit:
  • Plasma downplays this as a deliberate vulnerable positioning gambit. She's been ordered to bring a lamprey priestess back to Seenarnha, but the lamprey priestess is considering fleeing. Plasma sizes up the lamprey priestess as a predator, then rears up and deliberately falls onto her back in an attempt to get the lamprey priestess to chase her instead.
  • Varla purposefully overpowers her Neck Snap to crack her own arm bones to ensure she has more than enough force to break the vertebrae she's aiming at. She knows her healing song will undo all the physical consequences.
  • Aynara takes Haydn's punch to her face so she can deploy a touch-based spell on him.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • When confronted with a person behaving in a childish manner, Pearl - originally from 1920s Earth - thinks that corporal punishment would be a suitable solution.
  • Oseru is a representative of the Qorisayane Empire's Moon Hawks and the Clans; both antagonistic, reactionary forces in her native work. A woman raised in a violent honor culture, she kills without hesitation or remorse, and is counter-productively obsessed with not looking "weak".

• Delirious Misidentification: Maequoql (alien) urges a (human) bandit drained by a vampire to go to sleep. The bandit, with not enough blood to sustain his agitation, answers "Yes, mommy," before fainting.
• Demonic Possession:
  • To those who don't understand what is actually going on, Unchained Devil Justin would seem like a straight example. In actuality it would be more of an inversion, as Justin forced his demon to fuse with him. There's also how neither personality is truly in control, and instead an artificial third persona is the one acting in their stead.
  • Iragan and Orain, incorporeal entities as they are, can "embrace the mind" of an individual whose actions they want to narrate, but they can't control their body or influence their actions in any way.
• Our Demons Are Different: Leads to some confusion between worlds.
  • The Web of Friendship knows demons as Always Chaotic Evil and extremely powerful, powers not to be dealt with in any circumstances. Web member Varla specifically warns that as professional liars, demons do their most damage when, instead of looking monstrous, They Look Just Like Everyone Else! or as Divinely Appearing Demons.
  • To Gabriel and Hajnal, demons are almost always evil, with rare exceptions like Hajnal herself. Mostly, they're either mindless beasts which are dangerous to mortals, but which Gabriel slaughters by the hundreds, or cowardly (though sometimes dangerously cunning) bureaucrats who lack even Evil Virtues and have to manipulate humans to get anything done.
  • Where Lulu comes from, demons like her are not intrinsically evil, though they do possess significant magical powers. This doesn't protect them from Van Helsing Hate Crimes.
• Determinator: Downplayed example: Most horses would have left a booby-trapped saddlebag alone after the first zap. Fiddler tried three times to get into the booby-trapped saddlebags — not because she was stupid, but because she wanted to find out if the zapping was a coincidence or a pattern.
• Developing Doomed Characters: Angus gets nearly three paragraphs worth of backstory...before being killed and eaten in his introductory post.
• The Devil Is a Loser:
  • The Eyes and Teeth is a spiteful Almighty Idiot that has to borrow the minds of mortals. While most mortals who bargain with it find out its animal cunning is just enough to screw them over, Moon Hawks can keep their sanity intact through extreme mental discipline and physical conditioning, established before they connect with it.
  • From a different world (by the same writer), the demons Gabriel and Hajnal know are either powerful automoatons or smart, but cowardly, greedy, and prone to betraying one another. They're also distinct from Knight Templar Fallen Angels, which are much scarier because they still possess some twisted virtues.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?:
  • Rosalind blurts out that she had her own idea of countering the demonic influence, and embarrasses herself further when asked to elaborate on what that idea was.
  • Jen Jara reacts to Alexa's Game Face by thinking of a line of poetry and then realizing she murmured it.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • During a game of hide and seek, Alexa starts as the seeker, and Syrni Sandra (as well as a few other characters) go to hide. Syrni Sandra picks her hiding place, guesses how much time it would take for Alexa to find her, and uses that time to sneak in a quick Erotic Dream in her hiding place. Syrni Sandra didn't anticipate Akane a) forgoing hiding to investigate Syrni Sandra's hiding spot and b) arriving faster than Alexa could — so Akane finds Syrni Sandra still dreaming.
  • Soryn has plans to seduce Jenny, but he didn't expect her to get high and laughing off of her own drugged chocolates. Surprised and amused, he rolls with it, using the excuse of steadying her to slip his arm around her waist.
• Didn't Think This Through: Mequoql did not anticipate the probability of her telepathic Rickroll prank on Carol being misinterpreted as a crush. Given that Never Gonna Give You Up is a love song, the consequence should have occurred to Mequoql before she picked that specific song to play.
• Dirty Mind-Reading: As part of his mind-control, Sarquoql alters Ellya-Salaen's mental shields to leak her thoughts to him. When Ellya-Salaenl learns that Nora can shapeshift, she starts imagining lewd uses, which prompts Sarquoql to say "Get your mind out of the gutter..."
• Disapproving Look: Rosalind (Friendly Neighborhood Vampire) nearly glares at Ozurr (Secret-Keeper) for his Revealing Cover-Up, but she reminds herself that it's not his fault that Nyceme and Sindar's magic either busted the secret already or is about to bust it in the next few seconds.
• Disaster Dominoes: Offscreen in the weapons shop, Rosalind suffered through a string of accidents that spiraled out of control.
• Dissonant Serenity: Nyorla is entirely too calm about being shot at.
• Distracted by the Sexy:
  • Rosalind is distracted from panicking as she clings to Jann and gets a faceful of his scent at point-blank range.
  • Zelena had ambitions of finding some artifacts to take back to her homeworld, but then she ogles Soryn and decides she might as well have a quick fling with him at the same time.
• Distress Call: When Mael puts Mequoql under mind control, her psychic shields last just long enough for her to alert the entire Web of Friendship before she succumbs.
• Does Not Like Spam: Arnaya does not like cherry flavor, she thinks it tastes like a halfhearted knockoff of Camelian heartfruit.
• Does That Sound Like Fun to You?: Arnaya's telepathy registers a "cord" leading away from the carnivorous blob and deeper into the ocean. She surmises there's a greater intelligence controlling the blob and asks Nerea if honking off that intelligence by terminating the blob sounds like fun to her.
• Doesn't Like Guns: Murquoql is a fanatic for a lot of different types of weapons. Guns, however, aren't one of those types.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Arilay deliberately phrases her description of the sudden appearance of a stranger in her ship to obliquely reference rape.
  Arilay: Excuse me, stranger who just teleported onto this spaceship. This is the pilot Arilay speaking. In case you didn't know, I am a cyborg and the WFS Hummingbird is an extension of my body. As such, it is bad manners to enter the body of a fair maiden with neither warning nor permission. I'll forgive you this time, but please try to avoid doing it again. Thank you.
• Dog Pile of Doom: Adam's white blood cells dogpile the microscopic piece of spinel injected into him. Acne removal nanobots from the Web of Friendship are directed to join the dogpile.
• Don't Look At Me: Arilay doesn't want people watching when she swaps out her eyeballs. Justified, as she's accidentally grossed out witnessing strangers with that action before.
• Don't Sneak Up on Me Like That!:
  • Nyorla scolds the twins Aynara and Arnaya for startling her while she's levitating multiple knives in a synchronized swarm in the kitchen.
    Nyorla: Don't you know better than to sneak up on a chef wielding this many knives in the kitchen?!
  • Mael teleports Sarquoql to him. Spooked by the unexpected teleport, Sarquoql panics and draws his taser, then belatedly realizes he didn't just get teleported into the Web of Friendship spaceship.
    Sarquoql: Who are you? What do you want? And how dare you spook a guy with an unexpected teleport?
  • Michelle's teleporting arrival in the Forest is too close to Mequoql, who bares her claws and teeth in a combat stance.
    Mequoql: Watch where you teleport, I nearly tore your throat out in surprise!
  • Teleporting via gemstone, Nick tries to barge onto the Web of Friendship's spaceship. Because it was already on Red Alert and didn't expect him, the automatic defenses on the spaceship's teleporter pad ejected him.
    Arnaya: You suddenly barged onto a spaceship that was already in Red Alert. What did you expect would happen, a welcome wagon with flowers? The automatic defenses nearly mistook you for Mael. You were lucky to be ejected instead of gunned down where you stood.
• Don't Touch It, You Idiot!: Oseru uses a dead bandit's heart and her Lovecraftian Superpowers to get an Eldritch Abomination to intercept incoming teleports. Later, another bandit's dog comes across the heart and smells something wrong with it. Based on telepathically eavesdropping on what the dog smelled, Aynara guesses it's a bad idea to mess with the heart. Later she does just that in an attempt to get rid of the Teleport Interdiction and gets brutally injured in the process, confirming her suspicions.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!:
  • Parthenia rather bluntly tells Brimoda to keep up the formalities when the latter expresses concern for the former's state of health.
  • Oseru reacts poorly at first to Mael's offered help, though ultimately downplayed. As a Qorisayane Clanswoman, she does not like people from outsider her Clan — even allies — treating her as weak in any way, but she realizes that Mael couldn't have fully understood the implications of his actions.
• Dope Slap:
  • Lead Mare Flashfoot whaps the back of Amaranth's head with her muzzle after Amaranth made enough noise to cause a bunch of predators to show up.
  • Maequoql uses her telekinesis to lightly bounce a pebble off the back of Nasur's head after he accuses her of either being a hallucination or trying to toy with his hopes.
    Maequoql [via telepathy]: Excuse me sir, but that was no way to talk to the lady whose hands are on the controls of the machine holding the carnivorous blob back from entering this building.
  • Mequoql slaps the back of Morpho's head after he fails to stop inserting his foot in his mouth over the subject of the Not-Chaos-Hunters' inexperience with giants.
  • When Alexa shows off her Game Face, Syrni Sandra starts goading Alexa by calling her Game Face boring. Jen Jara shows her disapproval by aiming a slap at the back of Syrni Sandra's head and saying "Be nice!" But Syrni Sandra uses her Super-Reflexes to deflect the slap.
  • When Aynara is drinking out of a bandit's arm and she tries to talk with her mouth full, incidentally creeping out Cynthia and Diantha, Shale makes the ASL sign for "melon" and taps Aynara's forehead with it.
• Double Take:
  • In the Sun-Dry Sea, Nyorla gives a surprised second look at the coral on the boulder she uses as cover.
  • When Finn mistakenly points at Varg (a haugr) when he guesses who's the vampire, Rosalind does a double take upon realizing she's not the one being pointed at.
  • Soryn the snake man flicks out his serpentine tongue for one purpose, takes a few seconds to realize his vomeronasal organ detected drugs, and flicks his tongue out again to confirm his finding.
  • Nyorla's power sees no signs of life in Arnaya and Amy, so she does a surprised second look before realizing they're illusions and Arnaya is hiding Amy elsewhere in the room.
• Double Tap: Standard procedure for Oseru (and Moon Hawks in general) is to put an extra round through the brains of anyone they down.
• Dramatic Irony: Arnora trips over a set of wheel ruts, but decides not to think about it, as she needs to find Ozurr. She then sets off to where Mequoql had told her Ozurr was, unaware that the wheel ruts were left by the truck Ozurr was riding on, traveling in the other direction.
• Dramatic Sit-Down: Once Ozurr the giant realizes he's not in Hromstgard anymore, he sits down, hard, with an audible "THUD!" He nearly squashes Henry A. Safon II who scrambles out of the way.
• Draw Aggro:
  • When a D'voreem targets a limping Red Shirt gelding, Guardian Thunder makes a pest of himself by viciously biting the D'voreem.
  • Mind-controlled Mequoql attempts to distract Morpho from tackling Mael by smashing a rock into Morpho's eye. Morpho ignores the smashed rock.
  • Syrni Sandra taunts and teleport spams, trying to keep the shrivers' digestive swarms busy chasing her while Jen Jara tries to sneak up behind the shrivers so she can sting one. After that, they switch roles and do it again for the other shriver.
  • Jen Jara tries to get Krakka'a's attention off of Cody by getting between them and responding to Krakka'a's rudeness with more rudeness.
• Dreadful Musician: Naiolo is not very good at the harp, mostly because he is still learning how to play the insturment.
• Dream Reality Check: Thinking that she might be dreaming or in the Simulacra, Caroline looks twice at the bulletin board to see if an advertisement changed while she was looking away. Then she presses the pointy end of a nail against herself. Soryn notices and points out that he and at least one other person has felt pain in dreams before, so one of her dream tests is faulty.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Discussed when Mequoql accuses Morpho of being too harsh on the Not-Chaos-Hunters in his Dare to Be Badass speech.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Maequoql doesn't think it's funny for Arilay to implicitly compare a stranger unexpectedly entering her spaceship to the act of rape.

E

• Ear Worm:
  • Discussed when Shale rickrolls Justin. She does so to demonstrate that a catchy tune being that much more contagious is one of the lesser downsides of telepathy in its various forms.
  • Mequoql gets the song "Never Split the Party" stuck in her head after the Not-Chaos Hunters assert their inseparability one too many times.
  • A staple of Mayatan mischief involves invoking this trope, telepathically playing a catchy song in someone else's mind.
• Eating the Eye Candy: Zelena had ambitions of finding some artifacts to take back to her homeworld, but got distracted by Soryn. He notices her watching him and signals that he likes the attention.
• Effortless Amazonian Lift: Aynara displays her vampiric strength by quickly scooping up a bandit she stunned and sprinting with him down a flight of stairs to a turning point in the staircase.
• Electronic Eyes: Arilay the cyborg owns a wide variety of interchangeable electronic eyeballs to replace her missing organic ones.
• Elephant in the Living Room: When Murquoql finds the Woman in Room 444 to discuss the matter of the missing child, Murquoql's nudity is noticed, but prominently not discussed.
• Emotion Eater: Varla is from a sub-species of mermaid that can use lust to harvest magical energy, though the process requires an investment of seduction and magical energy to kickstart it. Varla's willingness to use that talent of hers has been irreversibly soured by her Dark and Troubled Past, and she prefers digesting her own rage instead.
• Emotionless Girl: Despite her humanoid appearance, many mortal emotions just don't apply to Tecia. She was made to serve the Laws of Death, and emotions would be a hindrance to the dispassionate application of those Laws. A stand-out exception is the fanatical anger she feels against those who defy those Laws.
• Empty Piles of Clothing: Aynara discards her coat of mud and medical tape by turning into Super Smoke when a bunch of mind-controlled bandits aim Five Rounds Rapid at her.
• Enemy Mine: Under ordinary circumstances, Aynara would start a Mook Horror Show on Black Morgan and his bandit gang. But when hunting Mael the mind-controller, Aynara arranges for one of Black Morgan's minions to warn Black Morgan about a probable imminent usurpation.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • The horses don't understand what a teleport is, so they call the resulting flash and bang Sabertooth Lightning. Furthermore, they assume Rosalind got eaten by it when they notice she's missing.
  • Saen and Nyceme are lamia, but Sarquoql's only experience with snake people is via the genetically engineered Soryn, whose genetic-vat-grown sibling-equivalents all died in the vats. So when Sarquoql learns through the archaeologist's Psychometry vision that Nyceme is a lich, Sarquoql imagines that Saen and Nyceme were reanimated by a necrophile necromancer and grosses himself out. For the record, neither Saen nor Nyceme were grown in vats like Soryn was.
• Entropy and Chaos Magic: The Eyes and Teeth is made of the stuff, and the Moon Hawks that channel it wield it by extension. Maelys notes that it could have interesting effects when combined with nenro, which is used to decrease entropy.
• Equippable Ally: Justin can, seemingly at will, cause his demon to take on the form of a sword he can wield.
• Erotic Dream: Once Syrni Sandra picks her hiding place during a game of hide and seek, she takes a moment to deal with the consequences of forgetting to take her heat control pill by sneaking in a quick nap and dreaming. Predictably, the dream is about the sex she's craving.
• Establishing Character Music: Varla the mermaid's introductory post comes with a link to Take a Hint as she reacts with hostility to Horny Sailors who deliberately got in her way while making lewd comments and whistles.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Sarquoql, a mind-controlling villain, pooh-poohs cuss words.
  • Soryn is a Punch-Clock Villain genetically engineered for seduction, but he draws the line at children. Whether on or off the clock, he will drop what he's doing to go make sure that even strangers' kids are safe. For example, Soryn saw a green van with a chocolate logo, thought that it looked ambiguously like a pedophile's tool, and decided to investigate.
  • Mael, another mind-controlling villain, does not use his ability to go messing with peoples' sexualities.
• Everybody Hates Hades: Sindar is not exactly well-liked compared to the rest of The Fair Folk, owing to his decay-related powers and dominion over the dead.
• Every Scar Has a Story: Jann of Grimmsford was sliced open to have warding runes carved onto any and every bone that was big enough. He still has the surgical incision scars.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Rosalind states that she's accustomed to darned near everyone trying to kill her back home.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: More like Eldritch Abomination-detecting dog: Oseru uses a dead bandit's heart and her Lovecraftian Superpowers to get an Eldritch Abomination to intercept incoming teleports. Later, another bandit's dog comes across the heart and smells something wrong with it. Based on telepathically eavesdropping on what the dog smelled, Aynara guesses it's a bad idea to mess with the heart. She turns out to be right when she goes through a torturous ordeal trying to stop the abomination from intercepting incoming teleports.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The first time Ozurr hears about an "airship", he was only familiar with ships that traveled along the surface of the water, so he wonders if an airship is what it sounded like: a ship that travels in the air.
• Exact Words: Morpho, on Mequoql's orders, is planning to prevent Henry from using potentially unsafe magic gems to wish himself home. Morpho says "I'll help you look for the gem that Carol threw" but deliberately doesn't say his help ends once the gem is actually found.
• Exorcist Head: Justified as part of Morpho the robot's shapeshifting ability. He is oblivious to how creepy he looks whenever he twists his head further than biological capacity to see what's going on behind him.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!:
  • Rosalind starts optimistically thinking about how her newfound friends will help her find her missing herd of horses... until she realizes the horses would run away from Ozurr the giant. Well, fiddlesticks.
  • Varla explains that a side effect of her crystallized heart is the loss of certain specific emotions, which puts a handicap on her social skills. Hearing herself speak on that subject makes her realize she's just been rude to David, by having No Sympathy for him freaking out over her healing cantrip.
  • Unit 09, aka Novia, produces a plug so she can be plugged into a machine to help fix the Panzerfaust. Moquoql has gathered multiple machines to fix the Panzerfaust with. As she tries to choose which machine to plug Novia into, she realizes that no matter which one she plugs Novia into, the others will be missing out on Novia as a guide. But as the engineer, Moquoql is responsible for coordinating all the machines, and she's got a communication microchip in her head that counts as a machine. When she realizes she'll have to poke a hole through her flesh all the way down to her skull in order to plug Novia into her communcation microchip, Moquoql groans, "Oh, This Is Gonna Suck."
  • When Arnaya laughs at Claire imagining her hurting herself attempting to copy Claire's magical techniques, Varla starts explaining to Claire why mentioning pain will not deter Arnaya from doing it anyway. As Varla explains that Arnaya can get a boost from masochistic endorphins, Varla realizes it's happening as she speaks because her sword is still impaling Arnaya. Varla has to quickly start using her Emotion Eater powers to keep Arnaya too exhausted to rampage.
• Exposed Extraterrestrials: Justified for Mayatan aliens, who prefer to keep their gliding membranes free from the constraints of clothes.
• Exposition Beam: Maequoql's telepathy, over the span of a few seconds, informs her four younger sisters of everything that's been going on while they were asleep.
• Expospeak Gag:
  • Nui calls the gadget on their right arm a "solar-lunar-powered electromagic projector". In other words, a magitek gun.
  • Moquoql tries to censor the fact that there's diamond in the Spheroid Dropship hull by calling it "carbon arranged into its sturdiest molecular formation".
• Expy:
  • Cormack is a very obvious one of Link. Boisterous elfin boy who carries a sword and shield, collects odd items, and has a Fairy Companion... sound familiar?
  • Farrah's appearance and general demeanor (the latter — as far as the her limited characterization in the original allows us to tell) is based on the Hellion from Darkest Dungeon.
  • John Smith, Security Service has a lot of common with his namesake from The Matrix trilogy.
• Extra Eyes: Arilay can zig-zag this trope, she owns multiple pairs of Electronic Eyes and switches which ones she uses according to the situation. For example, while disguised as a pile of dirt, Arilay brings out multiple pairs of Electronic Eyes disguised as rocks to see in a lot of different directions around herself at once. When she switches to a dog disguise, she puts the previous eyeballs away and switches to a single pair built and colored appropriately.
• Extreme Omnivore: Arilay's digestive tract was replaced with an atomic manipulator that can use even mundane poisons and radioactive materials as fuel.
• Eye Am Watching You:
  • Ozurr and Krakka'a exchange gestures, pointing first at their own eyes and then at each other, as the truck drives off.
  • Shale's equivalent gesture, used to forestall the unspoken mischief that fellow Web members Aynara and Arnaya were planning on her, substitutes waggling her antennae (a different sensory organ) and pointing them at the twins.
• Eye Pop: Rosalind imagines Krakka'a wetting himself in terror while his eyeballs pop out and fall into the puddle.
• Eye Scream:
  • Mind-controlled Mequoql smashes a pointy rock into Morpho's mechanical eyeball. There's a Sickening "Crunch!"... as the force-fielded eyeball shatters the rock instead.
  • Played straight when Soryn kills most of the moufretas attacking him by shoving a blade of Hard Light through their eyes and into their brains. Before he gets the chance to summon the aforementioned blade on one end of his staff, first he pokes a moufreta in the eye with the other end of his staff, blinding that eye.
  • Aynara temporarily loses an eye to a fire.

F

• Face, Nod, Action: When Morpho arrives to assist Moquoql with freeing her sister from mind control, they face each other, nod simultaneously, and Moquoql moves into position to teleport Morpho down to the planet's surface.
• Facepalm:
  • When Arilay acts like a disobedient dog begging for Cynthia and Moobly's biscuits, Shale facepalms at Arilay's antics twice.
  • Mark's reaction to Farrah's little introductory speech near the notice board that embarrasses pretty much everyone.
  • Mequoql facepalms when Nick, in a bad mood, verbally lashes out at a poor innocent hiker who did nothing to deserve it.
  • Mequoql censors Morpho dismembering a moufreta corpse with a curtain of green light, then lowers her forehead into her palm as she realizes it won't stop the sounds.
• Face Fault: Aynara overrides the Translator Microbes for Teasing from Behind the Language Barrier at Haydn. Arilay (who knows the language) hears Aynara's "Do You Want to Copulate?" shout, and falls flat on her face when she turns to gawk at Aynara. Justified because Arilay stepped in a pothole and tripped.
• Face Plant: Mequoql falls face-first into the ground after her mind-controlled sister pinches the back of her neck.
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • Rosalind fails to notice the door sign and the urinals that indicate she entered the men's restroom by mistake.
  • The entire town somehow fails to notice an adult Deinosuchus walking around until he stops to talk to somebody.
  • A group of Horny Sailors fail to notice Varla's sword because they're too busy ogling her breasts.
  • Zarokh fails to feel that Saen's healing spell fixed the wound on his head until Rosalind points it out to him.
• Failed Dramatic Exit: Wain loses his temper at the Web of Friendship and storms into the twisty turny corridors, only to sheepishly return and ask where the exit is.
• Fainting:
  • Rosalind faints, loses her grip on the horse she was riding bareback, and falls off, which separates her from her herd of horses.
  • Parthenia finally loses consciousness when her lack of proper sleep catches up to her after the battle with the d'voreem.
• False Reassurance: Morpho, on Mequoql's orders, is planning to prevent Henry from using potentially unsafe magic gems to wish himself home. He uses Exact Words to promise to help Henry look for the magic gem that Carol threw, but deliberately doesn't say his help ends once the gem is actually found.
• Familiar: Valerie and Justin have this type of bond, with Justin dressed like a fanciful butler. The two of them seem capable of sensing what the other does and feeling their emotions, though Valerie is also fully capable of moderating how much information is sent via their bond. Valerie also verbally assumed Nyceme is Sindar's master, though he didn't react to her doing so.
• Famous, Famous, Fictional: Inverted when Sarquoql in disguise lists novelists who use the ideas of game theory in their works. He lists some alien (i.e. fictional in Real Life) authors before concluding the list with Jane Austen.
• Fantastically Indifferent:
  • Played up by Alice after the mess with Unchained Demon Justin. She's selling items to allow mundies to protect themselves from magical attack. She maintains an air of cool detachment to demonstrate experience in these matters, and by extension, that the defenses she sells are thoroughly field-tested.
    [Alice] turned up beside [Wolfe] and struck up a conversation in a casual voice — like witnessing the unholy lovechild of H.R. Giger and H.P. Lovecraft's laudanum-fueled union was an everyday occurrence for her. And from what she said, it seemed it was.
  • Upon seeing a self-proclaimed deity spontaneously create a feathery cat-like creature, Maequoql and Moquoql blink in astonishment, then glance at each other and shrug.
• Fantastic Arousal: Viporises are living seismic detectors, with their bones and exoskeletal leg plates set up to resonate with incoming bass and infrasound. Infrasound is what alerts them to natural disasters and is not this trope, while bass resonates in a different way that can feel pleasurable, depending on exactly how sensitive the individual Viporis is. Syrni Sandra and Jen Jara are inadvertently aroused when Alexa switches from her human voice to her monstrous voice with a rumbling undercurrent in an attempt to scare Akane.
• Fantastic Racism: In a sense. Maya, already not a fan of Valarie for calling her injuries icky, also isn't a fan of her familar, calling Justin a "slave." Neither Valarie or Justin approve.
• Fascinating Eyebrow:
  • Maequoql stares befuddled with her eyebrows tilted at the unexpected stranger on Arilay's spaceship.
  • Mequoql briefly twiches an eyebrow up in surprise when her telepathic Rickroll prank on Carol is misinterpreted as a crush.
  • Soryn notices an invisible being leaving subtle footprints and raises an eyebrow.
  • John Smith, Security Service arches an eyebrow when he sees the mind-controlled archaeologist set off spaceship lights that dazzle a handful of his civilians.
• Fastball Special: Carol throws Bonnie in an attempt to have the latter use a close-range healing spell on a tree-bound Mequoql. Too bad Morpho got in the way.
• Faux Affably Evil: Mael seems like a polite man...but as Henry Bensen and the second traveler quickly find out (though already suspected), he's actually far more dangerous and sadistic.
• Faux Flame: Mequoql and the tropical Mayatan twins copying her power are capable of using light to simulate the appearance of fire.
• Fearless Undead:
  • Being undead has made Nyceme all too keen on rushing right into situations many mortals would fear. First she responds to an "unchained devil" summoning dangerous things by rushing right up to him and challenging him, and/or taking notes on said dangerous things. Later, when she discovers that a group she encounters contains a vampire, she insists on being the one to greet them, and is unfazed by the weapons they draw (due to, ironically, said vampire being spooked by her presence). Nyceme is even puzzled by Rosalind's reaction, since she knows herself that undead typically do not experience fear.
  • Tecia is an angel of death, not an undead, but she's a similar case. She does not feel fear in the same way a human does. She is capable of knowing, intellectually, when Fear Is the Appropriate Response, but the actual sensation is entirely alien to her.
• Feed It with Fire: Varla knows how to use her captors' spellcasting language and her own species' spellcasting songs as Improvised Lightning Rods, which she puts to good use when Sallara's hunters start a storm and send in additional lightning trying to fry Varla.
• Fee Fi Faux Pas:
  • Defied by Rosalind. Despite her curiosity, she refuses to ask Ozurr the giant whether he eats his prey raw and bloody or discards the blood, cooks the body, and then eats it. She doesn't know whether such a question is offensive, but she assumes it is because that assumption is safer than assuming otherwise.
  • Subverted and lampshaded by Rosalind when Jann starts rolling up his sleeve to show her the scars on his arm — for a brief moment before Jann spoke, Rosalind was confused on what he was doing and nearly jumped to the conclusion that he was about to donate his blood to her, when that wasn't his intention at all. When Rosalind is (coincidentally) corrected, she notes that it's a good thing she had her hand over her mouth to stop herself from acting on the mistaken assumption.
  • Rosalind herself is on the receiving end of a straight example. Ozurr casually mentions having betrayed his own father, who has been implied (out of Rosalind's hearing) to be a real piece of work and not somebody deserving of loyalty. Unfortunately, betrayal turns out to be a massive sore spot for Rosalind.
    Ozurr (quietly to himself, after Rosalind launches into a rant and then runs off): And I'm an asshole.
• Feel No Pain: Downplayed in Varla's case, thanks to her Training from Hell she can feel pain but she doesn't care about it.
• Fell Asleep Standing Up: As natives of a volcanic Death World, Viporises can sleep on their feet in case of volcanic interruption. Syrni Sandra takes a nap in a bell tower while standing balanced on the large bell's support beam during a game of hide and seek.
• Feral Vampires: Zig-zagged with Rosalind's Jekyll-and-Hyde-like status as both a timid Friendly Neighborhood Vampire and The Berserker. She used to be a Southern Belle before she got turned into a vampire, and is still capable of remembering those manners and carrying civilized conversations. But after over a century's worth of surviving among animals in the wilderness to escape Van Helsing Hate Crimes, she learned and adapted to animal body language too well. Despite her attempts to cling to her language and manners, when she panics or gets exposed to blood or battle, her status as The Berserker comes with a regression to hissing and other animalistic body language.
• Fighting from the Inside: Mequoql tries and fails to resist the initial assault that puts her under mind-control. The second time she fights is when she's ordered to leave her holy water sanctuary while there's still a demon present, she doesn't feel safe enough to do so. Instead, she puts a dent in the mind control so she can stay put and try to talk the demon into leaving. The third time, her vow to get the other side of the story from the Not-Chaos Hunters loosens Mael's control enough for Mequoql to call for help in breaking free the rest of the way.
• Fights Like a Normal: Oseru was an elite soldier before obtaining her magical powers, and still prefers to trust in her assault rifle and sword, using her magic to enhancer her potent martial abilities.
• Figure It Out Yourself: Nyorla is bound by an intergalactic clause, "Any civilization that had already achieved interplanetary travel or teleportation could not teach any civilization that had yet to figure either out."
• Finger Poke of Doom:
  • During Morpho's Dare to Be Badass speech to the Not-Chaos-Hunters, he holds back most of his ten-man-equivalent strength when forcefully poking Nick in the chest.
  • Varla knows how to use a well-timed finger poke to stop someone's heart. She's not guaranteed to get the timing right each time, but she can up the odds by tuning into the target heart's rhythm.
• Finger Wag: Parthenia gets a disapproving finger wag from John Smith, Security Service, for fighting in his town. And then he teleports her out.
• Fish out of Water: Rosalind is seeking to defy this trope by updating her wilderness survival skills to this strange new world as fast as possible. Too bad she's still a Fish out of Water within civilization, where plumbing infrastructure causes problems for her.
• Five Rounds Rapid: Mael orders a small group of bandits to kill Aynara. The first thing they try is pumping a volley of bullets into her, but she turns into Super Smoke.
• Flash Step: One of the manifestations of a Viporis's Super-Reflexes is the ability to go from a crouch in the middle of a corridor to standing with their backs to the wall at a speed that nearly breaks the sound barrier.
• Flat Character: John Smith, Security Service. Lampshaded, by himself, no less:
  Parthenia: What are you?
  John Smith: I've already told you what I am. I am John Smith, Security Service. Pleasure doing business with you.
• Flat "What":
  • It's flat 'How', but the spirit of the trope is there. Farrah had some trouble composing a coherent response to seeing a fully grown Deinosuchus that talks.
  • Pilot 0037 has two instances of this in response to Unit 09 telling him that they're not on Aria anymore.
  • Unit 09 gives one upon finding out that Pilot 0037 does not know how to read.
  • Arnora's initial response to hearing that Hromstgard (her homeland) is nowhere to be found.
• Flipping the Bird:
  • Farrah rather subtly shows Mark her middle finger when the latter in the same manner implied that she needs to take a bath.
  • Carol flipped off Bonnie after the latter snarked about the former's response to everything.
  • Horses don't have fingers, so their equivalent of flipping the bird is flipping their muzzle forward and up.
• Flourish Cape in Front of Face: Overwhelmed by Nyceme's perfume, Rosalind shields her nose and mouth in her elbow and briefly muses on what the pose would look like if she had a cape.
• Foreboding Fleeing Flock: During the mind-control debacle, a Mayatan scream of agony spooks a bunch of locals into fleeing past the Not-Chaos Hunters, alerting them that there's something fishy going on.
• Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: The Web of Friendship forgives Wain for pointing a gun at Murquoql, but they'll be watching him closely in case he tries a stunt like that again.
• Forgot About His Powers: Discussed when Morpho accuses the Not-Chaos-Hunters of failing to remember their gems and paralytic orbs after news of an approaching giantess sends them into a panic.
• Forgot I Couldn't Swim: Four juvenile moufreta leap off a cliff trying to fly and intercept Iolana, forgetting that they're too young to fly. They splat.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With:
  • Arilay thinks that Valerie, Justin and Vindex are misanthropes, so she initially takes the form of a pudgy golden retriever to interact with them, before eventually getting busted and shapeshifting into her usual human simulation.
  • It is clear to anyone who's passed at least a second in his company that John Smith's appearance of a very unremarkable human is not his true form.
• Fowl-Mouthed Parrot: In this case, a raven - the raven that followed the Mad Bastards and their companions has picked up a few "choice words" - such as 'never-fuckin'-more' - and has even 'weaponised' them: using a shout of "fuckit!" to startle someone into dropping some food.
• Freak Out: Discussed and implied when Rosalind says that she "wasn't exactly sane enough to communicate" during the offscreen incident in the weapons shop.
• Freudian Threat: Krakka'a, after his threat to eat the truck riders' organs one at a time doesn't have the desired results, announces his intention to start with Ozurr's "tes-" before he's cut off by Ozurr grabbing him by the throat.
• Friend to Bugs: Luereyathane. "Friend" is a bit strong, she has no qualms about dissecting them to further her knowledge, but insects absolutely fascinate Luereyathane. They're the first thing she asks about, and when she hears about mechanical ones in the area, she immediately wants to know more about them.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Rosalind is a vampire who prefers pacifistic ways of getting blood. She tries to keep the fact that she's a vampire a secret, but Jann of Grimmsford figured out enough for her to confess to him. Later at brunch, she entrusted her secret to Ozurr and Varg as well.
• From Bad to Worse: A homunculus attacks Varla. Ten seconds after a significant amount of blood is spilled, sharks show up. Fortunately, Varla is able to use the sharks to her advantage by getting them to eat the homunculus first, and then fleeing before they get the chance to eat her.
• Funetik Aksent: Finn, Teri ('...a gnarled speech came from one, distorted and oafish but an important word came through the quagmire...' - Slysheen) and any of the "Kiwis" (Kris, Sophia, Kaitlyn, Gwion and Wolfe).
• Furo Scene: Farrah provides one. She soaks in the 'tub, checking out the scars on her body, old and new, all while getting unpleasant flashbacks to her past.
• Fusion Dance: By condensing his demon into a sword and impaling himself, Justin & his demon can combine together into a dark-haired form. Though rather peculiarly, their combined form's personality acts noticeably different from their individual personalities.

G

• The Gadfly: Farrah's teasing way of talking, at least according to herself. Others might say that she's simply a rude person.
• Game Face: Rosalind alters her appearance to look scarier and more unappetizing to Krakka'a and Zarokh when they aggressively get in the way of the truck. She combines black sclerae and glowing yellow irises with undeathly almost-white gray flesh, and her skeleton becomes visible through her flesh with the black inverse of a glow.
• Gem Heart: Varla's heart was crystallized, extracted from her chest, cloned and replaced in her backstory. Now her original amethyst-rendered heart is a personal Power Crystal, among a few other functions.
• Genius Bonus: Literal clockweights tend to be cylindrical. "Clockweights" is also an Unusual Euphemism for testicles. Anyone familiar with male snake anatomy is likely to note that snake testicles are elongated cylinders — not roughly spherical like in other species — which is why Jobe Pearson, seeing Soryn is serpentine from the waist down, picked "clockweights" as his Unusual Euphemism.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man:
  • Varla nearly slaps David when he panics over her healing cantrip twisting his insides.
  • Whisper, a domestic horse, panics at the sight of fire. Fiddler, second-in-command of the feral herd and already familiar with fire, bumps and shoves Whisper to the nearest source of water instead of letting Whisper run off in a stupid direction blind with panic.
• Get It Over With: Rosalind snaps under the stress of trying and failing to hide her vampirism from everyone around Chitara's wagon.
  Rosalind [shouting]: Oh, what's the use? I can't hide it from Nyceme, let's just get it over with! I'm the vampire! If anyone has a problem with that, say it to my face!
• Getting the Boot: Parthenia is forcibly teleported out of town when John Smith, Security Service, catches her fighting in it after he told her not to.
• Get Out!: Nyorla throws the vampiric Mayatan twins Aynara and Arnaya out of the kitchen for startling her.
  Nyorla: Argh! Get Out! Out! Out! Out! Shoo! Shoo! Begone, vultures!
• Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter: Certain characters have had to silently tell themselves to stop thinking in the gutter, and one had to be told by someone else:
  • After Rosalind embarrasses herself outlining her idea of Kind Restraints in case of her potential vampiric feeding frenzy, Jann is involuntarily reminded of a certain... creative lady from the less reputable parts of Brightcliff that he'd once known.
    Jann [thinking to himself]: That is clearly not the sort of thing [Rosalind is] referring to, you buffoon!
  • After Rosalind described her Game Face as "unappetizing", Jann is distracted by her choice of words...
    Jann [thinking to himself]: Good gods... keep your mind out of the gutter.
  • After seeing a tsukumogami lantern with a long tongue, Syrni Sandra and Jen Jara think of what a long tongue could do, blush, and have to haul their minds out of the gutter.
  • When Nora mentions she can shapeshift, Ellya-Salaenl is distracted by imagining lewd uses. Sarquoql, telepathically overhearing, sighs "Get your mind out of the gutter..."
• The Ghost: Emperess Asatura III of Qorisa is aware of this world and quite interested in its potential, but is in no condition to visit it personally. In her stead, Oseru and Ethani carry out her will.
• Gilligan Cut: Once she's informed of Sophia starting to bargain with Alice, Partenia hopes her superiors will not tell that the Technocracy is a slave-owning society. Cue Sophia doing the exact opposite of that.
• Glad He's On Our Side: Matiu witnesses Morpho engulf and dissect a moufreta corpse with quick and brutal efficiency, and is glad that Morpho's on their side and not the enemy's.
• Glamour Failure:
  • John Smith has done a rather poor job of passing himself for an ordinary human. For one, his shadow sometimes points at the wrong direction.
  • Defied by Sarquoql, whose draconic disguise is powered by Mael's magical spinel. Sarquoql keeps his distance from Aseyu and her Anti-Magic so that it doesn't make his disguise fall apart.
• Gonna Need More X: Maya presents Henry with a baseball bat ("three feet of aluminum fury"), then Mequoql remarks there's a giantess approaching. Henry asks Maya, "Uh... Got anything bigger?"
• Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: Parthenia's pale gray gaze, full of murderous intent.
• Good Guns, Bad Guns:
  • Averted by the Mad Bastards, who all carry Eastern Bloc AKM variants (even Pearl and Aubrey carry copies of them).
  • ZigZagged with Jane Westinghouse, antiquarian, who is armed with a Walther P38 and an M1911.
• Good News, Bad News: Good news, the 'Canary in a Coal Mine' sensor in the medical pod did what it was supposed to do when it broke. Bad news, that means that something in Adam's neck is tampering with the rest of the sensors of the medical pod in a suspicious effort to not be detected, and now Adam and his friends, old and new, have to figure out who arranged to inject it into Adam and why.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Justin, in his fused "Unchained Devil" form, has three scars diagonally across his face that are an unnatural white color.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Ethani smokes a pipe when waiting for the rest of her group to finish talking and get on the bus. Neutral, in her case; indicating both a culture where tobacco use is more prevalent and Ethani's expectation that she'll die a soldier's death long before the tobacco has a significant effect on her.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: The biggest reason why Varla is so cavalier about snapping other peoples' necks is because she knows her healing song can reverse it with no lasting physical effects.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Invoked In-Universe when Mequoql conjures a curtain of green light to shield the butchering site from the rest of the camp.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Rosalind minces an oath when she's surprised by an automatic flushing toilet.
  Rosalind: ACK! Gol-durnit!
• Gotta Get Your Head Together: Rosalind clutches the sides of her head while in the throes of her Heroic BSoD.
• Greek Chorus: Iragan and Orain, while independent characters on their own right, serve only as the narrators of the Parthenia and Sa'ad's story, occasionally commenting on them
• Green Around the Gills: Discussed when Rosalind runs off to the restroom to barf up the mutton that, as a vampire, she can no longer digest.
  Waitress: Was it just me, or did the poor dear look green around the gills to you?
• The Greys: Shale's skin is gray and her eyes are large and all-black, but she has pseudo-hair, fluffy white antennae, and (instead of humanoid legs) a gastropod.
• Groin Attack: Varla's Establishing Character Moment has her react to a group of Horny Sailors by landing a light laceration on one of their groins with her sword.
• Growling Gut: Syrni Sandra and Jen Jara happen to be hungry when they encounter Krakka'a, who is the oversized sapient talking counterpart to the animals they prey on at their home planet. The result is their stomachs growling at him despite their principles to avoid Sapient Eat Sapient.
• Guns Are Useless: With their telepathy for pre-dodging and telekinesis for quick sabotage, Mayatans in general hold the opinion that guns are too easily countered to be worth using.

H

• Had to Be Sharp: The justification for why the Ace of Spades is so preternaturally able to vanish between posts despite being theoretically normal and knows what nanites smell like. He grew up in a hunter-gatherer tribe that ekes a living in the remains of Abusive Precursor Eldritch Starships.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Rosalind worries about accidentally provoking Ozurr the giant into chopping her in half with his axe.
• Hammerspace: Moquoql has a limited ability to tap into cartoon physics. One way she can do so is making folds and pockets in space in order to teleport small objects, but she can only transfer one small object at a time and has to wait a while before trying again, otherwise she gets telekinetic-overextension headaches.
• Hammerspace Hair: Downplayed when Shale briefly holds a single sheet of paper in her pseudo-hair.
• A Handful for an Eye: After crunching a rock against Morpho's eye didn't work, mind-controlled Mequoql flings mud instead, blinding Morpho much more effectively.
• Hand Gagging: Trying to stop Mequoql from screaming out her death-witnessing-induced headache, Morpho holds out his morphing metal for Mequoql to bite down on.
• Hands Off My Fluffy!: Cynthia and Diantha have some bad memories of dragons, so when they see the Web of Friendship's dragonhorses, they defensively draw their weapons, exciting the dragonhorses. While Blackthorn's rider holds the dragonhorses back, Arilay gets in the way and points out the saddles to Cynthia and Diantha.
• Hanlon's Razor: Moquoql and Nyorla are easily Enraged by Idiocy, especially the kind of idiocy described in the corollary to Hanlon's Razor known as Grey's Law: Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. So when they hear that Pilot 0037 was never taught to read and yet his superior officers expected him to read a user manual, Moquoql and Nyorla become outraged at how Pilot 0037 was set up for failure.
• Hard Head: Downplayed for realism. Compared to horse skulls, genetically engineered dragonhorses have thicker and slightly domed foreheads. It reduces the risk of self-inflicted brain damage from head-butting, but the risk isn't completely eliminated.
• Harping on About Harpies : Chitara and Naiolo's species is known as 'harpid'. They are flightless and can be male or female.
• Head Desk: Aynara overrides the Translator Microbes for Teasing from Behind the Language Barrier at Haydn. Shale (who knows the language) hears Aynara's "Do You Want to Copulate?" shout, and drops her forehead down to her hoverboard scooter's dashboard.
• Healing Factor:
  • Rosalind's regeneration recovers from the weapons shop incident Just in Time for a confrontation with Krakka'a and Zarokh.
  • Arnaya slices her own cheek open with her claws to demonstrate that she doesn't need Amy's moonstones.
• Healing Hands: More like Healing Hug (though, as Nick admits, hugs are completely optional), but when Amy uses her moonstones, this what she does.
• Held Gaze: Rosalind nearly loses herself in Jann's yellow eyes.
• Hellish Horse:
  • The nuckelavee, full stop. A grotesque, skinless fusion of horse and rider who hates humanity with a passion.
  • If horses could be Uncanny Valley Girls, then Iolana has definitely taken a form of one. A smaller-than-average unnaturally yellow horse with nonsensical body language who smiles like a human, showing More Teeth than the Osmond Family.
• Hell Is That Noise: A Mayatan scream of agony consists of their double set of vocal cords resonating in binaural beats coupled with instinctively sending out an Emotion Bomb of fear.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Aseyu inspires attraction in both Mist and Soryn, and flirtatiously teases the former for it.
• Help Mistaken for Attack: When Chitara's wagon approaches the group containing Rosalind, Jann, Varg, Ozurr, and Zarokh, it is Nyceme who decides to (peacefully) interact with them first. She does so because she knows Rosalind is a vampire, so sending someone who doesn't have living blood to talk with her seems like a safe bet, just in case the vampire is hostile. Unfortunately, Rosalind mistakes Nyceme's "then obviousssly thisss isss a job for me" as a statement of intent to kill her.
• Heroic BSoD: Seeing a giant was scary enough, but when Rosalind first sensed Jann the wizard's magic, she was convinced that she was about to die.
• Heroic Willpower: When demonic energy radiates from a fight and starts affecting Rosalind, instead of going Drunk on the Dark Side, she claps one hand over her mouth and uses the other hand to anchor herself to a banister.
• Hiss Before Fleeing: When Morag first sees for herself that Rosalind is a vampire, Rosalind is stuck in a feral mindset exsanguinating some recently killed moufretas. Rosalind hisses possessively as she guards the moufreta corpse she's drinking from, but when Morag keeps approaching anyway, Rosalind drops the corpse and runs to drink from another recently killed moufreta further away from Morag.
• Historical Domain Character: Sorta. When setting out on her bike with Aubrey and Finn, Pearl reminisces about touring Europe with her friend 'Marjorie' and wonders what she would make of this new adventure.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: Syrni Sandra and Jen Jara figure out how to teleport in, hit a shriver, and teleport out again to stay one step ahead of the shriver's digestive swarms.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard:
  • Defied by Moquoql, who wises up and puts on a gas mask so she doesn't fall victim to her own chloroform packets.
  • Pilot 0037 starts flashing back to being surrounded by cloaked figures all wielding painsticks and striking him. Nyorla's telepathic interruption consists of curling her simulated body around his and manipulating the mindscape so that as each painstick strikes her, it rebounds with enough force to strike its wielder.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: There is the dismissive saying "c'est la vie" (meaning "that's life"). When Nyceme, a lich, uses that saying while speaking to Pearl, it's "c'est la non-vie" ("that's unlife").
• Holy Burns Evil:
  • Arilay's aborted plan to "deal with" Unchained Demon Justin included sanctifying a fire hydrant and aiming the resulting holy water at him. Arilay doesn't go through with it, as her plan is interrupted by Valerie regaining control and forcing Unchained Demon Justin to defuse.
  • Spooked by Vindex, Mequoql hastily sanctifies a fire hydrant and makes an improvised fountain of holy water as a shield. Vindex warns that he'd go berserk with pain if he tried to reach into it.
  • Holy magic is one of the few hard counters to Chaos magic on Aria.
• Holy Hand Grenade: Rosalind mentions holy hand grenades as one of the Noodle Implements that prevented her Amusing Injuries from healing right off the bat and contributed to her getting banned from the weapons shop.
• Horny Sailors: Varla the mermaid's presence at the harbor causes a randy group of fishermen to make lewd comments and whistles.
• Hover Board: Shale has a hoverboard that is powered by wing-shaped solar panels. She doesn't use it often, preferring to keep her gastropod muscles fit, but makes an exception to avoid delaying Valerie any further than already happened and also because a mind-controller is on the loose.
• How Many Fingers?: Parthenia flashes a light in Farrah's eyes to check if she has serious brain damage after getting knocked out. By herself, no less.
• How Much Did You Hear?: First Rosalind embarrasses herself, then desperately changes the subject to ask why Jann hasn't tried to kill her like most of everyone else who found out she was a vampire. Ozurr and Varg show up, prompting Rosalind to ask how much of that they heard.
• Human Furniture Is a Pain in the Tail: A seat in a very bumpy truck is not comfortable for Bonnie's bunny tail.

• Humanshifting:
  • Rebecca Jane Walsh is capable of changing her face and gender-bending, apparently in response to otherwise-fatal injuries.
  • Soryn is genetically engineered for shapeshifting seduction, but his shapeshifting is limited — he can't alter his serpentine length or become anything other than a snake man.
• Hurl It into the Sun: Discussed and averted when Murquoql mentions portals to the sun. Amelia is eager at the thought of hurling the Fiendlord into the sun, but Murquoql clarifies that's not what the portals are for. The portals are too sealed-up to throw anybody through, they just make super-sunlight flashlights.
• Hyper-Awareness: Parthenia's quite perceptive for supposedly an exhausted sleep-deprived person. She keeps in mind not only the position and the relative strength of her opposition, but her surroundings and her place in the society she's visiting, which can affect the outcome of the confrontation. Constantly registers the events going on around her with no direct relation to her. Still, her awareness is not superhuman: Ace of Spades was able to sneak up on her without much effort.
• Hypnotic Eyes:
  • Mael's power (in actuality it's the gem that's powering him) is to look at someone in the eye and brainwash them into obeying his command. He nearly succeeds with Henry Bensen, until the second traveler quickly intervenes and throws him off.
  • Likewise, Sarquoql the Mayatan's mind-control telepathic specialty is dependant on eye contact to be initiated. The eye contact limit is considered a disability by Mayatan standards of telepathic performance.

I

• I Am Not a Gun: Varla resents her former captors turning her into a living sex weapon.
• I Am Not My Father: The reason Ozurr decides to investigate Rosalind's sudden appearance is because abandoning someone in the middle of nowhere to die sounds like something his father would do, and he refuses to be like him.
• I Am X, Son of Y: Downplayed, since she doesn't the matronym usually included in her culture, but Aseyu introduces herself as "Aseyu ul'Valmoth vash'Suela Keyaris". (Aseyu from Valmoth, follower of Suela, the Jeweler.)
• I Can Explain: After getting caught in the act of trying and failing to capture Mael, Moquoql dashes off leaving Morpho behind to explain everything.
  Morpho: Okay, I can explain everything. [pointing to mind-controlled Mequoql] AFTER we free her.
• I Didn't Mean to Turn You On:
  • Varla didn't intend to turn Lerna on when she was trying to accumulate seductive bonuses for hacking into Mael's mind-control of John Richman.
  • Alexa tries to scare Akane by enhancing her voice with a rumbling growl. The rumble accidentally arouses Syrni Sandra and Jen Jara, who are Viporises and thus are (ahem) sensitive to bass.

• I Gave My Word: Mael gave Mequoql a story about the Not-Chaos Hunters being runaway teens. Mequoql privately made a vow to get the other side of the story from the Not-Chaos Hunters, but then she was put under mind-control and ordered to bring them to Mael. This vow prompts her a couple of times to start Fighting from the Inside.
• I Kiss Your Hand: Soryn's default greeting includes attempting to kiss the hands of the ladies he meets. Defied by Caroline, who yanks her hand out of Soryn's grasp, and by Michelle, who uses downward pressure on Soryn's hand to turn the attempt into just a handshake.
• I Knew There Was Something About You: When Thunder gets his hoof stuck in between two logs, the accident alone initiates the usual equine paranoia about Sabertooth logs^note mundane logs that merely trap horses' hooves by sheer accident of position are dangerous enough to be regarded as Sabertooth. When Fiddler sniffs his trapped hoof, she smells sawdust and non-equine flesh, which strikes her as odd, no mundane Sabertooth log would smell like that, so the log might be even more Sabertooth. Sure enough, one of the logs was replaced by a homunculus, which tries and fails to Kill and Replace Thunder. As the herd escapes across the river, Thunder and Fiddler triumphantly note that the log was indeed Sabertooth as they suspected.
• I Need a Freaking Drink:
  • Overwhelmed by the sight of teleporting people, a genetically engineered snake man wizard, and hovering robots asking who's got a spaceship blocking a hyperlane, Caroline becomes unsure of whether or not she's in the Simulacra and wanders into the Purple Fez Tavern for a drink.
  • Mael the mind-controller is used to being the bigger fish to the Not-Chaos-Hunters. When Sarquoql's description of the Web of Friendship paints enough of a picture of the Web being the bigger fish to Mael, Mael orders his mind-controlled minion to pour him a rosé.
• I Was Having Such a Nice Dream: Downplayed when Akane finds Syrni Sandra's hiding spot — Syrni Sandra was already starting to wake up from the (ahem) climax of her Erotic Dream, sensing Akane's presence causes Syrni Sandra to wake up faster.
• If I Had a Nickel...: If Varla had a clam for every time she heard "I meant it as a compliment," she could open her own clam chowder restaurant.
• If I Wanted You Dead...:
  • Arnaya corrects Nerea's misconception that she's completely immortal by saying that if Varla wanted Arnaya dead, Varla would have run her sword through Arnaya's heart instead of stunning it with a Finger Poke of Doom.
  • Arnaya doesn't need Nerea's hydrokinetic help terminating the carnivorous blob. Arnaya could make the spaceship's Tractor Beam either drop the blob to splatter on rocks or lift it out of the atmosphere until it bursts, but she has a reason to refrain (aside from the Web of Friendship's Thou Shalt Not Kill policy).
  • Varla points out on incapacitated Arnaya's behalf that if Arnaya wanted David dead, she would have bitten into his carotid artery instead of into his neck muscle where the blood flows slowly and clots easily.
• If Only You Knew: David gratefully calls Varla a jewel, with no way of knowing her heart got crystallized and replaced. She has the crystal hidden within her hair.
• I'm Not Doing That Again:
  • Three times, Fiddler attempted to open the Inquisitor's saddlebags. Three times, she was thwarted with an electric shock. After the third time, she gives up and nurses her sore muzzle.
  • After what happened the last time, Ira and Ora smother any attempts at freeing them from where they are before Murquoql even thinks of doing it.
• I'm Okay!:
  • Mequoql is knocked out of a tree and falls onto the fresh corpse of a moufreta that broke its neck falling out of the same tree. Fortunately, she was able to twist midair, slow her fall with her gliding membranes, and land flat on her back.
    Mequoql: I'm okay! Well, mostly okay.
  • Arnaya does a silent version of this trope when she waits to dispell the transparency on her chest until everyone has gotten a chance to see for themselves that her heart is beating again after Varla's Finger Poke of Doom temporarily stopped it.
  • Jen Jara nearly gets a degloving injury (or worse) from a shriver's digestive swarm. After teleporting into the spaceship's decontamination shower and frantically rinsing off her abraded skin, she reports with relief, "I'm fine."
• Iaijutsu Practitioner: In one smooth motion, Varla draws her sword, leaves a shallow cut on a lewd fisherman's groin, and sheaths her sword again.
• Ignoring by Singing: Discussed when Aynara the telepath states "You think loudly enough to where I'd have to do the equivalent of sticking my fingers in my ears and yelling 'la la la la la'."
• Imagine Spot:
  • Rosalind imagines Krakka'a wetting himself in terror while his eyeballs pop out and fall into the puddle.
  • Sarquoql grosses himself out when he imagines a necrophile necromancer turning Nyceme into a lich.
• Imminent Danger Clue: Varla notices what seems to be an octopus charging at her for no good reason, she's instantly suspicious. It turns out to be a homunculus trying to Kill and Replace her.
• Immortality Hurts: Just because Arnaya can survive Commotio Cordis and restart her heart doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.
• Immortal Life Is Cheap:
  • Varla picks Arnaya's heart to stop because she knows Arnaya can restart it as long as it's intact.
  • Nerea isn't aghast at Varla breaking Lerna's neck because Lerna is immortal.
• Impairment Shot: While nauseated and running to the bathroom to throw up, Rosalind's vision is described as blurred, with black fog dancing at the edges.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Seenarnha muses that Lectri the dragonhorse's aim with her Breath Weapon is terrible enough to probably set the rainforest on fire, but this has yet to be demonstrated.
• Implausible Deniability: If anyone asks, Soryn plans to claim that he just slipped his arm around Jenny's waist to help steady her after she ate her own drugged chocolate, but it's pretty obvious from his shameless flirting that that's not the only reason he's doing so.
• Implied Death Threat: In his anger at the fact that his thrall (John) was freed too soon before at least one of the Web Of Friendship was dead or the NCH captured, he tells Varla, under no uncertain terms, that if she wants to see tomorrow, she'll have to sleep with one eye opened.
• Improvised Lightning Rod: Varla uses the magic she was born with and the magic she learned in tandem to sap energy from lightning bolts and mark targets for them to hit.
• Incoming!:
  • After a loitering helicopter-sized jellyfish gives away Nyorla and Pilot 0037's location to the Lanceros wyvern, Nyorla is alerted via spaceship satellite image and relays the warning to Pilot 0037.
    Nyorla: Wyvern incoming, hide!
  • Moquoql deadpans "Incoming" right before Aynara barrels through Sick Bay on her way to the transporter room.
  • Aynara leaves Haydn and Wilhelmina behind at the scene of the ruckus that she deliberately caused while entering Ghost Town, but at least she telepathically warns them about the bandits she baited into closing in on the ruckus's location.
• Inconvenient Itch: Horses have a limited capacity to scratch their own itches, so they usually buddy up and scratch each other's itches.
• Indifferent Beauty: Varla is aware that her baseline appearance synergizes well with the seductive things she can do with her magic, but her attitude zig-zags this trope. She's sworn off taking advantage of it... unless she's hacking someone else's mind control.
• In Harm's Way: Parthenia has a minor existential crisis once she's temporarily relieved of her position.
  Parthenia (thinking): [Perishing in the wilderness while looking for her horse is] better than living even a moment without a purpose.
• Inherently Funny Words: Maequoql giggles at the word "burgled".
• Inhuman Emotion: Sleutrienn brains are physically organized to not let emotions affect the rest of their bodies without filtering them through conscious decisions first. Sleutrienns can even physically disconnect the secondary brain that lets them feel emotions.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Mayatan aliens have no need for clothes. Mayatans can hide their naughty bits behind skin folds, clothes interfere with their gliding membranes, and most Mayatans have some type of fur that covers their bodies. In order to disguise their fur and extra skin as clothes and thus dodge around other cultures' nudity taboo, the Mayatans attach false zippers to their fronts.
• Instant Soprano: One of the Horny Sailors Screams Like a Little Girl in the wake of Varla's sword leaving a shallow cut on his groin.
• Insufferable Genius: Sophia will not pass an opportunity to let you know that she's The Omniscient goddess of Knowledge. Obnoxiously so.
• Insult to Rocks:
  Carol: Moufretas are dumb as bricks...
  Bonnie: That would be insulting the bricks.
• ...In That Order:
  • The mustangs plan to get Krakka'a off their tails while he's distracted by first getting far enough away to get out of sight, then changing directions.
  • As an engineer, Moquoql knows that linking a bio-nenro sapper, a bio-to-generic nenro converter, and a nenro battery in any order but that will only lead to failure.
• Intrinsic Vow: When Mael first told Mequoql about the Not-Chaos Hunters and fed her a story about them being runaway teens, Mequoql silently vowed to get the other side of the story from the Not-Chaos Hunters. Then Mael mind-controlled Mequoql and ordered her to bring them to him. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts and some much-needed help, Mequoql finally busts free of Mael's mind-control orders so she can try to fulfill her vow.
• Ironic Echo: Smith greets Alice Winters using the exact same phrasing her goon, Chaudhari's used when he was apprehending Parthenia on Alice's orders. Sadly (or thankfully), the irony is lost on her.
• Is That a Threat?: Murquoql is met with unexpected hostility from a crashed stranger.
  Wain: Listen to me carefully. I'm packing heat. So if you try anything, you're gonna wish you hadn't. If you have any way off this planet, you'll bring it to me so that I get outta here. Do I make myself perfectly clear?
  Murquoql [raising her hands in surrender]: Whoa, buddy, it should be obvious I'm already trying to help. Are you threatening me?
• "It" Is Dehumanizing:
  • Seems to be what Justin's demon calls people who he even assumes were going to lethally harm Valerie.
  • Parthenia asks "What are you?" from John Smith, Security Service at the end of her interrogation. Smith points out that "what" is used for inanimate objects, slightly scolds the Inquisitor for it, and immediately uses it himself when answering what he is.
  • Approximately how Oseru speaks of Aynara; she deeply mistrusts non-human entities after a run of unpleasant encounters with such, and uses the pronouns and verb conjugations Qorisayane uses for animals when speaking of them.
• It Is Not Your Time: Nao Ranay Nokt Mayatans have a talent and duty to undo premature deaths for individuals scheduled by the Celestial Bureaucracy to die in a specific time and place.
• It's a Long Story: Murquoql doesn't mention the concepts of the Fourth Wall and narrators because they would take too long to explain when there's a missing kid to find.
• It's Quiet… Too Quiet: Zing's first clue that D'voreem are approaching is the ambient sounds of the jungle quieting.
• It Works Better with Bullets: Arnaya tries to telekinetically steal bullets from one of Mael's mind-control victims while his attention is focused on asking Varla where the Not-Chaos-Hunters are.
• I Warned You:
  • Rosalind tried to warn her traveling companion that she doesn't do well around weapons, but one Disaster Dominoes Noodle Incident later, she ends up banned from the weapons shop and saddled with Amusing Injuries.
    Rosalind [Suddenly Shouting]: Varg, I warned ya that weapons and I don't mix!
  • Wain insists on boarding a potentially hostile spaceship. When he gets trapped behind a force field, Murquoql sighs...
    Murquoql: Buddy, I tried to warn you this would happen if you threatened your way on board.
  • A bug bites Adam on board the Web of Friendship's spaceship, drawing Arnaya's suspicion because a) bugs don't survive long on board the spaceship due to the cleaning nanobots and b) too many of the Web's previous experiences with bug bites involved necromancers weaponizing them with zombie germs. Adam and his friends dismiss Arnaya's concerns. A few minutes later, Arnaya notices Adam's thoughts are shielded from her telepathy and the shields are way beyond human capacity, so she telepathically reports this to his friends, ending her alert with "I warned you that bug did something fishy to him!"

J-K

• Jaw Drop:
  • Ozurr's reaction to seeing Justin's Unchained Devil summon giant pillars of shadow, flame, and random appendages. He doesn't realize he's doing it until the steak he's eating falls out of his mouth.
  • Maequoql stares befuddled with her jaw hanging open at the unexpected stranger on Arilay's spaceship.
• Jerkass: Sa'ad is consistently verbally abusive towards his peers. It's sort of understandable when the abuse is aimed at Parthenia, who's often mistreating her prisoner (though not all mistreatment is unprovoked), but when he hurls insults at Chaudhari and his group, who are attempting to free him? Not so much.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Parthenia notes to herself that while Sa'ad's remark about how the situation was unfolding at the Town Square served only to taunt Chaudhari, it was also strikingly accurate: the SWAT team leader was too cooperative for the amount of information she presented to him, and she remained suspicious of him as a result of this remark.
  • Henry A. Safon II cusses Ozurr out for nearly accidentally sitting on him. Poor Ozurr was overwhelmed with realizing he was a long way from home and didn't quite deserve all those cuss words, but then again, Ozurr is a giant among comparatively small people and he could have seriously hurt Henry.
• The Jinx: Sa'ad's curse manifests itself this way. According to Parthenia, it's nonlethal, its range is about thirty feet, it makes no more than three accidents per day, one less accident each time Sa'ad hurts himself deliberately.
• Just Keep Driving: Just before Rosalind exits the moving truck to return to the roof, she preemptively tells Varg that the stunt is not worth stopping the truck for.
• Just Take the Poster:
  • Parthenia catches Rosalind's note about her missing mustang herd mid-flight when a gust of wind tears it off and has no intention of putting it back on the board.
  • When Sarquoql tries to remove specific posters that warn the public of dangerous individuals, John Smith, Security Service stops him and hands him copies instead.
• Karmic Trickster: Aynara and Arnaya eavesdrop on Wain lying that he has experience with breaking curses. Between their instinctive urge to challenge cursebreakers and their concern that such a lie would endanger Murquoql's life, the twins decide to curse Wain's pants with an illusion of fire.
• Kick Them While They Are Down:
  • The "battle" between Parthenia and Farrah near the Notice Board ends with the former knocking out the latter with a punch. After Farrah was already incapacitated by Parthenia's electric attack.
  • Defied by Moquoql, who signals the spaceship to teleport her away before mind-controlled Mequoql can repeat the telekinetic Pressure Point pinch that incapacitated Moquoql.
• Kill and Replace: Homunculi standard procedure is to destroy whatever they imitate. They prefer to imitate humanoids, but they will take any living species they can in a pinch, and if all else fails, they will destroy and imitate an inanimate object.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Defied: A deadly mirage attempts to rip apart Syrni Sandra in mid-sentence when she walks into it, but her Super-Reflexes enable her to teleport out Just in Time, losing nothing more than a chunk of chitin from her exoskeletal leg. Her talking is still interrupted.
• Killing Intent:
  • Nyorla's Psychic Radar alerts her to Pilot 0037's intent to shoot her a split second before he reaches for his gun.
  • Both Chaudhari and Farrah notice Parthenia's lack of concern for human life in their respective confrontations.
• Kinda Busy Here: Arilay can't split her attention between a conversation on board her spaceship and keeping her eye on a demon.
• Kind Restraints: Discussed by Rosalind, who mentions that the protective amulet Jann gave her was a better idea than tying her up to stop her from acting on the demonic influence.
• Kiss of Life: Discussed when Varla accuses David of fetishizing rescue breaths.
• Kiss of the Vampire: While Aynara's first bite on a bandit's bruising arm was too painful to count, by the time she bites his other (also bruising) arm, the drugs she injected through her fangs the first time have started to affect him, so he observes, "Whoa, suddenly this bite doesn't feel so bad!"
• Klatchian Coffee:
  • An exasperated local teenager name-drops Klatchian coffee, implying that an overdose of it is responsible for the teen's mother making a spectacle of herself (via screaming and chasing and broom-whacking Arilay).
    Teen: Mooom! Did you drink twelve cups of Klatchian Coffee again?
  • Under its pleasantly floral scent and taste, Suela's High Yothic tea is powerful stuff.
• Know When to Fold 'Em:
  • Stripped of her powers, taken by surprise by the Ace of Spades and facing her imminent death, Parthenia decides that it's not worth to be bullheaded about letting Alice's men interrogate Sa'ad if it means she'll live to fight another day.
  • Alice, for her part, has a theoretical plan to immunize herself to the wrath of a god, and possibly even send said god to join the rest of Qorisa's dead gods... but swallows her pride and agrees to Sophia's terms rather than gamble on mere theory.
• Kubrick Stare: Nyorla keeps her head lowered and glares as she slaughters four moufretas.
• Kung-Fu Wizard:
  • Soryn's first fight with a group of moufreta highlights the use of his serpentine coils alongside his Magic Staff with a blade of Hard Light.
  • As per her culture's traditions, Oseru started learning martial arts about as soon as she could walk. Learning magic didn't make her forget it.