Dropped A Bridge On Her: Murdered by two back alley thugs, Irilta and Meese. She says it to Paran herself: "Can't you see the irony? No glorious end for the Adjunct".
Reassignment Backfire: Laseen demoted him to Sergeant and put him in the front lines at Pale and Darujhistan in an attempt to get him killed. This leads to him and the entirety of Onearm's Host defecting to Brood's campaign against the Pannion Domin.
Blessed with Suck: How he sees the intervention of various gods in his life.
Can't Stay Normal: Whether it's falling for a mage, being used by the Adjunct, absorbing the blood of a Hound of Shadow, or becoming Master of the Deck Paran cannot seem to stay away from the supernatural.
The Chosen One: Becomes Master of the Deck of Dragons in Memories of Ice, a position he'd really rather avoid.
Cool Sword: For a while. His sword, Chance was blessed/cursed by Oponn.
The Smart Guy: For the Bridgeburners and the Malazan Army in general. It's been said that if Kruppe is one of the smartest people in the world, than Quick Ben is only a step behind him. A short one, mind you.
The Trickster: Definitely has some aspects of this trope. He alters his plans easily, and plays with mortals, Ascendants and gods with equal ease.
Underestimating Badassery: People and gods do this to Quick Ben a lot. It doesn't usually end well for them.
"He was Quick Ben. He thought outwitting gods was fun." (Dust of Dreams)
Taking You with Me: Quick Ben goes out in a literal blaze of glory in Dust of Dreams unleashing all his magic at once to eliminate part of a attacking Nah-ruk invasion force. It doesn't help the Bridgeburners much...
Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: After Quick Ben unleashes half of his warrens (sources of magical power) to blast Korbal Broach through a wall, Bauchelain, partner of the aforementioned Korbal Broach, notes that Quick Ben's power is most impressive, but that, in retrospect, he ought to have saved at least half his warrens.
Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Escorted 30,000 Malazan refugees across the worst desert in the world, under constant attack from dozens of different armies and in constant danger of starvation. His reward? To be abandoned by his superiors and crucified right outside the walls of Aren. Most of the refugees were Ungrateful Bastards as well.
Love Hurts/Love Martyr: His relationship with Apsalar, which was initially portrayed as kind of cute, is more or less poisoning his life. All attempts to move on have so far, failed.
Overshadowed by Awesome: Frequently. Against opponents in his own weight class, he's very capable. Against Ascendants and monsters, not so much.
Badass Normal: Unlike the various superpowered freaks present in the storey, Rallick relies entirely on his own skill (and a little magic-negating dust).
Career Killers: A member of Darujhistan's Guild of Assassins.
Informed Ability: We're often told that Murillio is extremely skilled with the rapier. Usually right before (or as) someone or something kicks his ass.
Stuffed In The Fridge: His death serves only to force Cutter to kill Gorlas Vidikas, which is in and of itself, completely irrelevant to the overall plot of both the entire series, and Toll the Hounds.
Coll
The Alcoholic: When the story begins he hasn't been sober since losing his land.
Drop the Hammer: His main weapon is a hammer that only he can lift. If swung, it can awaken Burn, the Sleeping Goddess of the Earth, though this will kill everything on the planet.
BFS: Not an extreme example, but Kallor's bastard sword is a two-hander and is repeatedly described as "huge", "enormous" and so on.
Commander Contrarian: Rarely agrees with the strategy suggested by the Alliance.
Cursed with Awesome: Subverted. Being cursed to live forever sounds great, but with the continuous aging, and Failure Is the Only Option subclause, it really, really appears to suck for him.
Determinator: Demonstrates some aspects of this in Toll The Hounds.
Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Three gods cursed Kallor to live forever and never Ascend. He cursed them back. And it worked.
Face Heel Turn: Betrays Brood to The Crippled God for a chance at killing Silverfox.
"If you call it a sudden reversal of strategy, the sting fades."
"Kallor Eiderann Tes'thesula each time you rise you shall than fall. All that you achieve shall turn to dust in your hands. As you have willfully done here, so shall it be visited upon you in all that you do."
Fridge Horror: Kallor was so evil that his people dropped the Crippled God on him to try and get rid of him. This means that he is indirectly responsible for every bad thing that happens in the series.
Gone Horribly Right: Kallor's curse did exactly what it was supposed to do. It made him an even bigger SOB.
Hero Killer: Clearly has this status by Toll the Hounds.
Immortality: Type VI. And he hates it. He's still around though, which says a lot about him.
Lone Dalek: In Toll the Hounds, where the degree that Kallor's life has sucked becomes apparent. It's almost entirely his own fault, but you can still feel a certain amount of pity for him.
Misanthrope Supreme: Kallor is fully aware that he is a spiteful, vicious minded bastard, who takes out his frustrations on everyone around him. He also believes that Humans Are Bastards, and that as such, his tyranny and brutality are not only justified, but the norm.
Not So Harmless: Everybody mocked Kallor as a bullying braggart. Right up until he joins with the Crippled God and performs an epic backstab on Brood's forces. Averted in Toll the Hounds where he approaches near Hero Killer status.
Precision F-Strike: Twice during his duel with Spinnock Durav in Toll the Hounds.
Pride: Kallor is arrogant, prone to overestepping his bounds, and very touchy about insults to his person. And then there's the whole, "allowing a continent to die rather than relinquishing control of it" thing, and the obsession with power and becoming an Ascendant.
Really 700 Years Old: He's older than most Ascendants, despite being completely mortal. He was cursed over 120 000 years ago and is still alive and kicking.
Sanity Slippage: Seems to have suffered some between Memories of Ice and Toll the Hounds.
A Father to His Men: Several of the Tiste Andii are so tired of their own immortality they have more or less chosen to commit suicide. The only reason they are still alive is that Anomander Rake asks them to live.
Cool Sword: Not so much cool as terrifying. Anyone killed by it is trapped next to the Gates of the Warren of Darkness for all eternity. And it's black with smoking chains attached.
Who Wants to Live Forever??: The reason he sells the services of the Tiste Andii off as mercenaries is to pevent them from becoming suicidal over the boredom of their eternal life; in effect, he is trying to inspire them to fight and live for something bigger than themselves in defiance of this trope, though he fears it is a losing battle.
Your Soul Is Mine: Anyone killed by Dragnipur is sealed within the Warren inside it for all eternity.
Determinator: And a prime example at that. Despite being completely outmatched, he manages to duel Kallor for an entire night, lasting from dusk until dawn. He's cut to pieces in the attempt but never falls down. All because Rake asked him to stand between Kallor and Darujhistan.
Deliberate Injury Gambit: As a T'lan Imass, Tool can surive anything short of beheading or total dismemberment. It's not surprising, therefore, that these kind of tactics feature prominently in his playbook.
Good Thing You Can Heal: Like most of the T'lan Imass, Tool regularly shrugs off crippling injuries, just to remind us that, yes, he is undead.
Implacable Man: Comes with being a T'lan Imass, although even by their standards he's pretty damn hard to stop.
Loners Are Freaks: Tool is unbound, and unconnected to any clan. Other T'lan Imass tend to view him with a mix of suspicion and awe because of this.
Reincarnation: Of Tattersail, Nightchill, and Bellurdan.
Vampiric Draining: Is stealing her mother's life energy without even knowing it.
Younger than They Look: She's only a few years old, but has aged herself to her early twenties.
Jaghut
Raest
A God Am I: Like many Jaghut Tyrants, Raest took perverse delight in being percieved as a god by the Imass.
Armour Is Useless: You don't even find out he was wearing it until several books after the fight. To be fair, he was fighting Dragons, so it probably didn't make all that much difference.
Deadpan Snarker: Is evolving into one as the series progresses. His sense of humour is definitely an odd one though.
Morality Pet: Has several Malazan soldiers find him a dead cat. He brings it to life so that it can keep him company inside the House of Azath and names it Tufty.
My Species Doth Protest Too Much: The Jaghut loathed community and avoided it as though it were a disease, believing it led only to horror and violence. Raest is a tyrant, who gets his kicks out of enslaving weaker species.
Sealed Evil in a Can: Well, sealed in a barrow anyway, and by his own species no less. His Finnest, which contains most of his power, is also an example.
Soul Jar: The Finnest has most of Raest's power in it.
The Undead: He's not Undead like the Imass are, but it's clear that Raest and his body no longer share a particularly intimate connection, and the destruction of the latter causes him few difficulties. A straight example now that he's inside the Azath House.
Break the Cutie: His backstory. His mother was killed by the T'Lan Imass and he was shoved through a rent and into the arms of the K'Chain Che'Malle Matron. This has had a rather negative impact on his sanity.
Big Bad: About as close to one as the series gets. Arguably subverted in that he's treated with considerable sympathy, particularly in the later books, and in the end the protagonists end up having to save him when his plots get Hijacked by the Forkrul Assail.
Black Cloak: Of sorts. He usually covers himself in dark-colored rags, rather than an actual cloak, but the look is very similar.
The Corrupter: The Crippled God specialises in bringing out the worst in people, typically offering them exactly what they want in exchange for their inclusion in his House of Chains. He seems to like driving his followers/victims mad.
Dysfunction Junction: His followers. It's entirely deliberate too. The Crippled God desires every member of his House to be as flawed, mentally and/or physically as he is.
Evil Cripple: Evil due to crippling. The Fall destroyed his mind.
Freudian Excuse: The Fall did not do good things to his sanity. The fact that most of the pantheon has periodically gotten together and chained him up for, from his perspective, no real reason didn't help either.
God of Evil: Deconstructed. He's more like a god of suffering, and that suffering includes his own. While he's initially presented as causing it, in the end after the Bonehunters risk everything to save him from the Assail and succeed, he ends up becoming the god who has sympathy for those who suffer.
well at least up until the point Cotillion kills him with a surprise backstab.
Omnicidal Maniac: He's slowly poisoning Burn. Whether he genuinely wants her dead, or is hoping that someone will free him in order to prevent this isn't known for most of the series. It's the latter.
Sadistic Choice: See Xanatos Gambit below. The best case scneario is his freedom, and the end of civilisation as they know it. The worst case scenario is the slow death of the entire world.
Sealed Evil in a Can: Chained in place, to the sleeping goddess Burn, though his spirit can move around inside a Warren and has appeared in several places around the world.
Start of Darkness: He was just a foreign god who fell to earth as the result of a trap meant for Kallor. And went stark raving mad as a result.
Vader Breath: Has to constantly inhale incense in order to keep his lungs clear. Even then, his breathing is still ragged and wheezing.
Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The Fall left him crippled, agonised and totally insane. He seems to be out to destroy the world in order to make the pain go away. It's very hard not to feel bad for him on some level.
After his plans get taken over by the Forkrul Assail, who are basically using his heart as an Artifact of Doom, he turns into more of a straight-up Woobie.
Wound That Will Not Heal: None of the injuries from the Fall have healed. Not one in a hundred thousand years.
Xanatos Gambit: If they don't loose him, Burn dies and he gets his revenge. If they do, he's free to wreak havoc and get his revenge via other means. Kind of a win-win situation for him.
Immortality Hurts: Between getting tortured by the Crippled God in the afterlife, the Body Horror from his funeral, his bride committing suicide rather than bear his child, and his enroaching insanity, yeah.
Pet the Dog: His attempt at returning Mayen, his wife, to his brother, Fear, whom she genuinely loves. Also, his forcing Mayen to stop beating her slave, Feather Witch.
Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Averted. He forces his brother's wife to marry him, and has his way with her, and somehow, it just makes him all the more pathetic and pitiable.
Sanity Slippage: Gradually loses his mind as each new resurrection takes its toll on him.
Trauma Conga Line: His brother is murdered by Karsa, his bride kills herself, his parents are drowned in his dungeon, his people are scheming against him, he's slowly going mad, and that's without getting into the horror show that is his curse.
Wound That Will Not Heal: No matter how many times he dies, the wounds from his first death will not heal. And then there's those damn coins from his first funeral.
He-Man Woman Hater: Not a straight example as he doesn't hate women, but he does believe them to be inferior, and holds them in deep contempt, believing that rape is totally okay. His interactions with Samar Dev and various other women may be improving him for the better, although it's hard to tell.
Heroic Sociopath: And the "heroic" part is sort of questionable.
Refusal of The Call: Sort of. He has no problem with going on adventures and raping and pillaging and whatnot. He just really resents doing it on the Crippled God's orders.
Tattooed Thug: The broken-glass tattoos on his face that denote his past as a slave.
Values Dissonance: Both in-universe (with the rest of the cast that is) and with the fans.
Parental Substitute: Seems to be trying to become one to Sorry/Apsalar, as a means of making up for what he put her through.
Pet the Dog: Has a minor one with Sorry right before he possesses her, reassuring her that the experience won't be that bad. Has had many more since than; see Parental Substitute, above.
Shipper on Deck: He seems to want Cutter and Apsalar to be happy. It's just that, well, try as he might to be a kind father figure, he's not the god of happy endings, he's the god of murdering people in the face. It's not working.
Sorry/Apsalar
Amnesiac Dissonance: Has been gradually remembering the things she did while controlled by The Rope.
Badass: She danced with the Claw. All of the Claw. When she was done, all of her dancing partners lay dead.
Break the Cutie: Twice. After Cotillion's posession she seemed to go back to normal...right up until she started recovering her skills and plunging into whole new depths of Wangst. She's now abandoned Cutter, the one person who really gives a damn about her in order to go off and do god knows what, excusing it by claiming that he'd only get hurt.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: Loses all her memories of The Rope's actions, post-posession.
Loss of Identity: She remembers quite a bit of her life pre-possession, but clearly isn't that girl anymore. Not to mention that she still doesn't know her name.
Maybe Ever After: One of the Epilogues of the Crippled God has Cutter finally tracking down Apsalar, at the ruins of the fishing town she originally came from.
Psycho for Hire: Poses as one while infiltrating the Malazan Army. She scares Quick Ben, Whiskeyjack, and Kalam she's so damn creepy.
Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: At times, Pust has been known to make comments like "she's falling for my clever scheme" to the person he is trying to manipulate.
Evil Genius: The only reason Shadowthrone keeps him around.
Obfuscating Insanity: Maybe. It's really hard to tell if Pust is faking it, or if he just happens to be both rather bright and totally nuts.
Smarter Than You Look: Despite his craziness, tendency towards accidentally stabbing himself in the foot, and an ego the size of some small countries, Pust is actually quite bright, and at times, suprisingly effective.
Talkative Loon: Trying to shut him up would likely take an act of god. Or several gods.
Action Survivor: Feels like one alongside Envy, Tool, Baaljaag, Gareth and the Seguleh.
The Archer: Although his missing eye has seriously screwed with his aim.
Can't Stay Normal: Or dead. He's been attacked by Hairlock and thrown into a rent, accompanied Lady Envy, Body Snatched Anaster and become Mortal Sword of Togg and Fanderay, been killed again, and now serves Hood. Phew!
Death Is Cheap: How many times has he come back from the dead now?
Grand Theft Me: Following His death, Toc's soul is transplanted into that of Anaster in order to give them both a second chance at life.
Mok, Thurule, and Senu
Asskicking Equals Authority: Seguleh hierarchy is modelled on combat ability. As the Third, Mok can and does kick a lot of ass.
Badass: All three of them. To the point where their fellow Seguleh class them as a "punitive army" and expect them to carve their way through the Pannion Domin on their own. They don't dissapoint.
Badass Army: They're "the punative army of the Seguleh", themselves as Badass Army of the first order.
Mask Power: All Seguleh go masked, and the markings on their mask indicate their rank (Mok is the third-ranked Seguleh, his mask has two slashes on it).
Although its never really specified which one, or if its yet a different Seguleh, Felash's handmaiden is revealed in The Crippled God to be a Seguleh who the 14th daughter 'took forever to train to get rid of her silly mask.'
Enfante Terrible: Played with. She's a creepy, Undead Child with a penchant towards murder, but she's also one of the few things standing between a dying Azath's denizens and the rest of Lether.
Pay Evil unto Evil: She tries to kill only evil people to feed the Azath.
Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Harlest comes off as rather goofy, with all his talk of "fangs and claws" and his desire to scare people. Then he actually uses said claws in an attack on five Toblakai Ascendents.
