Dark One is a comic book, with the story premise and outline having been penned by fantasy author Brandon Sanderson, and with Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly credited as writers. The comic was released in May of 2021, as the first entry in a multimedia franchise taking place in the same Shared Universe, which includes a TV series with J. Michael Straczynski involved, an audiobook going over the history of the fantasy world Mirandus much of the story will take place in, and an audiobook styled after Serial following a journalist tracking down a serial killer.
Paul Tanasin has an interesting life. He has a loving mother who is a driven and successful defense attorney, and she's given him her blessing to move out at seventeen. He's also plagued with hallucinations of a strange and fantastic world, as well as a girl only he can hear and see who claims to be his sister.
Paul soon discovers that these hallucinations are actually visions of a world called Mirandus, governed by the Narrative. For as long as anyone can remember, the Narrative has dictated that a Dark One would rise to lead the people of the Blackened Lands and the Drull, and that a Destined One would arise to defend the Kingdoms of Light. And Paul is this cycle's Dark One.
Dark One contains examples of:
- Accidental Murder: The reason Paul is haunted by Nikka's ghost is because when they were kids, they visited Mirandus and Nikka accidentally stepped on a mine... so Paul, in his first use of his Dark One powers, instinctively killed her and bound her soul to his necklace before she could be killed by the explosion, so that her soul would stay with him instead of passing on to the afterlife. He didn't mean to do it, but he did it nonetheless. Realizing this is the last straw that pushes him into embracing being the Dark One.
- Action Girl: Feotora, a princess who spends all of one panel wearing a dress and virtually the rest of Volume 1 dressed in practical armor.
- Always Chaotic Evil: Deconstructed and explored with the Drull, who are treated as this by the Kingdoms of Light, but mostly only because it's the role that the Narrative assigned to them. The Drull themselves come off as less evil and more just depressed and worn down from centuries of having to play the part of the Dark One's henchmen that the Destined One kills.
- Bad Powers, Good People: Paul never uses his powers unprovoked, and in this cycle, the Kingdoms of Light attack him first, but his abilities are quite scary. He can bind the souls of people he's killed to physical objects, imbuing them with magic based on the emotions they felt upon their death. He awakens his full powers by using a cauldron full of blood. His eyes also turn red.
- Barred from the Afterlife: The souls the Dark One steals and imbues into objects are trapped in that object and unable to pass on. Predictably, most souls in question aren't pleased with this.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Drull have this, largely because their lives so thoroughly revolve around being nothing more than the Dark One's Mooks.
- The Chosen Wannabe: Feotora believes herself to be far better Destined One material than anybody that her father, mentor, or even the Narrative itself chooses. She is brutally disabused of this notion when she tries to take on Paul at the height of his newfound power and fares even worse than Kraisis, being forced into a humiliating retreat. She had already proven herself unworthy by murdering her father in an attempt to force herself into the role of hero.
- Cliffhanger: Thanks to Malmahan altering the Narrative, Paul is able to defeat the forces of Light. Unfortunately, he is teleported to the courtroom just as the police arrive. The police think Paul killed all the people there and arrest him.
- Dark Messiah: What the Drull perceive the Dark One as.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Ultimately, Paul isn't evil to any real degree despite being handed the role of Dark One.
- Death Seeker: Mr. Caligo wants the death penalty. Because dying will send him back to Mirandus.
- Determined Defeatist: The Drull have been getting crushed by the Kingdoms of Light for so many cycles of the Narrative that they have no real hope in their hearts of actually winning whenever a Dark One rises; they just serve out of loyalty and obligation. This changes when Paul manages to break the Narrative and, for the first time in centuries, gives them genuine hope for victory and a real fighting chance.
- The Dragon: Rastik and Nikka both play this role to Paul, advising him on how best to be a villain.
- Evil Lawyer Joke: Played surprisingly seriously and poignantly. Part of why Paul ultimately embraces his role as the Dark One is because he comes to mentally equate it with his mother Lin's career as a defense attorney, perceiving his helping the Drull destroy the Kingdoms of Light as the same kind of "loving the unlovable" that she does by giving criminals their right to legal defense.
- Evil Overlord: The Dark One is meant to be this in the Narrative, and the story goes to great lengths exploring and deconstructing this trope.
- Face Death with Dignity: Rastik doesn't even bat an eye as Paul kills him as a blood sacrifice to power the Blackened City's siege weapons. He's just happy to serve.
- Faux Affably Evil: Caligo acts genial and playful with Lin, but he's still a serial killer and Dark One who has gleefully embraced being evil, and proves as much when he begins forcing people in the courtroom to kill themselves in order to strongarm Lin into shooting him.
- Genre Deconstruction: Of High Fantasy epics, exploring a world where the battle of good and evil is akin to the laws of physics and the forces of light and darkness are made to slaughter one another to senselessly act out this fairy tale Narrative, with The Hero and the Evil Overlord just being people thrust unwillingly into the roles regardless of how well they fit them. Many fantasy tropes and cliches are thoroughly explored and deconstructed.
- Gone Horribly Right: Illarion wants to alter the cycle of the Narrative by any means possible. He gets his wish, but the way things play out means that it's the Drull who benefit from the change rather than the Kingdoms like he hoped.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Feotora desperately wishes she were The Chosen One, and her jealousy towards those who come into the role is exploited by Illarion to manipulate her into serving his plans.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: For all that the Kingdoms of Light and Drull talk like they're the good guys and bad guys accordingly, it's made clear that outside of the Narrative assigning them those roles, neither side is universally good or evil in any inherent way.
- Hannibal Lecture: Twisted around, in that it's the supposed hero Kraisis who delivers such a monologue to Paul as the latter acts out the role of villain.
- How We Got Here: The story opens with Paul killing Rastik as the Kingdoms of Light lay siege to the Blackened City, then flashes back several days to show how this came to be.
- Immune to Fate: Malmahan reveals killing him would send him back to Mirandus but allow him to change the Narrative. However, suicide won't work hence why he forces Lin Yang-Tanasin to kill him.
- Kick the Dog: The assassin sent to kill Paul on Earth murders Dr. Marcus just for daring to help a Dark One in any way, even though there's no possibly way Marcus could have known what Paul was.
- Knight Templar: Illarion and Feotora take the attitudes of the Kingdoms of Light - ostensibly the good guys of the Narrative - so far that they become little better or even worse than the Dark One and Drull. They even murder their own king because he refuses to be as extreme as them.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: People on Earth seem to forget any supernatural actions by the denizens of Mirandus they witness, even murder.
- Mooks: The Drull are an entire species made to fulfill this role to the Dark One.
- Mordor: The Blackened City and it's surrounding environs look like this, implicitly because the land is constantly being scoured by the wars the locals are made to wage by the Narrative.
- My Death Is Just the Beginning: Whatever Mr. Caligo's plan is involves dying so he can return Mirandus and alter the Narrative.
- Not Quite Dead: The previous Dark One is actually Mr. Caligo, who is very much alive but stuck on Earth.
- Oh, Crap!: Illarion reacts with stunned horror when Paul manages to kill Kraisis in defiance of the Narrative, and is right to do so.
- Original Position Fallacy: Illarion doesn't consider until far too late that the alterations made to the Narrative may benefit his enemies rather than just himself.
- Our Goblins Are Different: Defied. While Paul call the Drull goblins, they don't consider themselves such.
- The Poorly Chosen One: Illarion tries to subvert the Narrative by grooming Kraisis, a native of Mirandus, to be the new Destined One instead of waiting for the proper one to arise. When Kraisis and Paul fight, Kraisis puts up a surprisingly good fight... but ultimately he's just a normal guy regardless of how well Illarion trained him and Paul is a superpowered Evil Overlord, so Kraisis loses and loses very badly.
- Portal Fantasy: Sanderson specifically set out to write a darker variation on this trope when first outlining the series. Rather than becoming the hero of another world, Paul is destined to become it's villain.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: Dark Ones have the power to bind the souls of people they kill to objects, and those objects are imprinted with the emotions the soul felt at the time of death. A sword bound to someone who was very mad becomes a very powerful weapon.
- Pragmatic Hero: Illarion wants to bend the Narrative to his will by acting like this instead of the paragon he's supposed to be, abandoning heroism for nasty realpolitik like trying to preemptively murder his enemy before they rise and arranging the death of his king when the latter refuses to condone his extremism.
- Princess Protagonist: Feotora is a dark deconstruction, as she's shown to be insecure and desperate to be an entirely different kind of protagonist, wishing she were the Destined One rather than the princess of the fable. It gets to the point that she murders her own father, the king, to try and make herself more important to the Narrative at Illarion's request.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: Deconstructed and called out by the Chronicler King, who notes that it is not enough for the Kingdoms of Light to merely be assigned the role of the heroes, they have to actually act like heroes. Unfortunately, the previous Destined One, Illarion, has fallen headfirst into this kind of thinking and come to believe that anything he does is justified, no matter how morally reprehensible, simply because he's on the "good guy" side. In general, a rather large theme of the story is how one's morality is decided by what they actually act like, not what they say they act like and certainly not what society says they act like.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Caligo/Malmahan uses magic to force people in the courtroom where his trial is taking place to kill themselves in order to pressure Lin into killing him.
- Real After All: Paul is dead certain that the visions he experiences of Mirandus and his dead sister's ghost haunting him are just the result of severe mental illness. Then a knight in armor casually bursts into his therapy session and chops off his therapist's head, confirming it's all very real.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The Chronicler King of the Kingdoms of Light, who fully lives up to his reputation as The Good King and wants the Kingdoms to actually behave like heroes rather than merely call themselves such. Sadly, it gets him killed, as Feotora and Illarion see him as an obstacle to doing the "necessary" dirty work.
- Screw Destiny: The still-living Destined One of the last cycle is actively trying to subvert the Narrative. Malmahan successfully pulls this off, but to what end is unclear.
- Serial Killer: Lin is tasked with defending one, Mr. Caligo, in Volume 1. He's actually Malmahan, the prior Dark One, and his murders are part of a scheme to return to Mirandus and manipulate the Narrative to his own ends.
- Soul Power: The main power of the Dark One is stealing the souls of others and imbuing them into objects to empower those things in magical ways.
- Spirit Advisor: What Nikka tries to be to Paul, which isn't easy at first given that he thinks she's a hallucination.
- Stop Worshipping Me: Paul's initial feelings towards the Drull and their fanatical, instinctual drive to serve him. By the end of the first volume, however, he's come to rather like being their god-king.
- Summon Everyman Hero: Every Destined One and Dark One were originally from Earth, but it's also played with. Every previous Destined One came from Earth, but Illarion has raised a native of Mirandus to act as his successor. It doesn't go well.
- Tempting Fate: Paul and Dr. Marcus are in the middle of a conversation dismissing the former's visions of Mirandus as nothing but delusion when an assassin from Mirandus shows up and proves that assumption incorrect by cleaving the latter's head off.
- Thanatos Gambit: Caligo deliberately acts in such a way as to force someone - ultimately Lin - to kill him, initiating the next part of his plan.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: Paul ultimately embraces the power of the Dark One and grows into the role... largely because of the people around him all telling him that's what he is and all he will be. In fact, he aspires to go much further than prior Dark Ones and outright defy the Narrative because of it.
- Tin Tyrant: A scary suit of dark armor is apparently the uniform of the Dark Ones. Paul agreeing to put it on marks the point where he fully embraces his destiny.
- Two Aliases, One Character: Malmahan, the previous Dark One, is actually Mr. Caligo.
- War Is Hell: For the Drull, who always lose to the Kingdoms of Light because of the Narrative. While the latter gets glory and heroism, the former get nothing but slaughter in the mud.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: The Chronicler King rejects Illarion's suggestion that they kill Paul before he realizes his Dark One powers not just because of wishing to follow the Narrative, but because Paul is still only seventeen and the King refuses to kill a child, even one who is days away from becoming an adult. Unfortunately, Illarion is not so principled.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Illarion spends much of Volume 1 trying to change the cycle, going as far as sending an assassin to Earth to murder Paul. While things do play out very differently this cycle, it doesn't wind up the way he wanted.
- Paul himself decides it would be best to tell his therapist everything about his hallucinations. That's the moment when the above-mentioned assassin busts in and proves to him that he was seeing visions, not hallucinations.
- Undying Loyalty: The Drull are so loyal to the Dark One that they'll gladly give their own lives at the slightest order.
