While Early Years was somewhat a parody of swashbuckling adventure and Zenith was a parody of Dungeons & Dragons games until the story took a darker turn, Twilight is from the get go a Darker and Edgier story dealing with death and the End of the World as We Know It.
It contains examples of:
- All Species Are Sexually Compatible: Herbert's children are Mix-and-Match Creatures because of it (their mom was a cat named Iris.
- An Arm and a Leg: Marvin lost both his arms in his rematch with Hyrka. He was able to reattach them after a few adventures. Herbert does it to Fayez before killing him.
- Arm Cannon: Red Marvin gets two powerful ones with his armor. He can use it to leap away from problems and is the only thing that can hurt a troll like Elyacin. He taught the dragons to use it later in the story.
- Anachronic Order: The numbers start at 101 to show the Timeskip between Twillight and Zenith, but started a year before the third Zenith book
- Blind Weaponmaster: The furious beast, actually Hyrka after he got his eyes burned in Zenith, uses a Sinister Scythe with deadly accuracy. Averted with Marvin who prefers using his fists and is not good with his staff.
- Blood Knight: Bouboulou king of Olfs was more than happy to have a war with invisible Eldritch Abomination to celebrate his return. Red Marvin (pictured above) also enjoys battle as much as his namesake did.
- Brick Joke: A given since it is the era that conclude the whole series.
- Marvin made a promise to kill the children of the rabbits who insulted him (his religion forbids him to attack those who insults him so he found a way around it), Red Marvin is a red rabbit who is named and exiled as a memory of the massacre.
- Red Marvin explains he hangs head down from a tree as a tribute to Marvin who did it for a whole year, later Marvin reveals that it was due to a bad trip of whatever Gilberto gave him.
- Herbert said that in memory of his victory over the goblin king at cards he will add the socks he won on the coat of arms of his duchy. Once he is the Great Khan he did just that.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Gilberto is a shaman who smokes all sort of weeds for kicks. He is also the only shaman to not only go back in forth from the death realm, but does it often since he likes the trip. Also a great martial artist.
- Can't Bathe Without a Weapon: The Sword of Destiny is permanently attached to Herbert the Duck. Once he takes a bath with it his daughter ask him if it's a tradition in case someone tries to assassinate him. He tels her that it's not a tradition, and that no one would dare to kill him, but that he is stuck to the sworth for the rest of his life.
- Chubby Chaser: Red Marvin lust over Herbert's daughter Zakutu saying it feels like she is a giant made of white bread when he is fondling her.
- Demonic Possession: The Dark Entity. For Herbert it just influences some of his choices and gives him the feeling his body is being tightened by something stronger than him. But his children are being completely possessed and Pasukal's body is breaking apart from the Entity's power.
- Death Seeker: Marvin wants to make his trip to the dragon cemetery but once there the gods won't let him die from drowning until he he complete a quest. When he does complete the quest he gained immortality due to ending his dragon power cycle, given his state he tries to get rid of it quickly. Once he got rid of his immortality he realizes he has other things he wants to do before dying.Marvin: I got no arms, I'm blind, I didn't have an erection since the planet stopped moving and you want me to be like this for eternity!
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Herbert One-Hit Kill Absolute Evil
thanks to his skin turning green making him vulnerable to Herbert's technique. Soldiers all around renew allegiance to him after seeing the Great Khan kill the gargantuan beast. His son Elyacin was on his way to do it with brute strength alone. - End of the World as We Know It: The Dark Entity wants to destroy the barrier between the 3 worlds (Death, Living, Invisible) so time stops and it can rule forever. Also the story starts with the Dark Khan stopping the planet from spinning, which given the date the story was published in relation to the other series meant that it went from Herbert learning to fight well enough to keep his job, to possessed by a demon and ruling the world as the Big Bad, and we never really learn how we got there.
- Eye Scream: Marvin gouged his own eyes out to make amends after breaking the draconist rule about seeing your offsprings.
- Handicapped Badass: Marvin is blind and old but can still put up a fight.
- Hiding Behind Religion: Marvin thinks that the reason the draconists forbid the male to see their offsprings was that they didn't want to take care of their kids. He asks Orlondow, who is the ultimate shaman authority now, to change the rules.
- The Juggernaut: Elyacin is an unstoppable brute when he decides to fight. Even without oxygen it would take days before he suffocates due to his large troll's lungs.
- Mercy Kill: Noyeuse sees her friend being raped by one of the Great Khan's officer, since she can't blow her cover and can't fight every soldiers in the room she decided to kill her friend. The officer barely cared and just kept going.
- Mundane Afterlife: The Death realm is pretty much like the real world with only one thing different: Creative Sterility. The dead can't invent new things or even say sentences that they never used before and they seem conscious about it. We see the guardian changing to his Hyacinthe's appearance mid-conversation since he never used a specific sentence in his old age.
- No-Sell: The coat of Destiny, it looks like a bathrobe but swords breaks on it, fire and nitro gun powerful enough to knock towers get the Worf Barrage treatment and there is no fall damage if the person wearing it lands on a covered body part. Only the head is vulnerable.
- An Offer You Can't Refuse: The Dark Entity ends up with a billion plus army with a simple offer: pledge allegiance to him or suffocate when he removes the air from the territory (which he can do from his throne room). Only a few people possesses the Awesome, but Impractical alternative air source (wearing a special hat fueled by being drunk) to refuse the offer, but that means fighting the gigantic army while being wasted.
- Object-Shaped Landmass: One tribe of dragons has a sacred cave they call the Grandmother, because it very obviously looks like female genitals. On seeing a nearby outcrop of rock with a very phallic shape, Red Marvin snarkily asks if it's called the Grandfather.
- Older and Wiser: Marvin's bloodlust is gone after all the years he spent as a blind sage and Herbert is more careful than he ever was as a young duck.
- Old Soldier: Both Herbert and Marvin have children old enough to have child of their own and both are still able to keep up with the younger generation. Bonus points for Herbert who actually got more badass in his old age than he ever was in Zenith, even without the Dark Entity's empowerment.
- One-Man Army: Elyacin, Herbert's adopted son, is a gigantic troll who can't be harmed by simple swords. Not only that but when the Dark Entity removes the oxygen, he has enough air in his lungs to not only fight him but can maintain a small army by blowing air in a bag that can serves as oxygen tanks. He can supply and defeat armies on his own.
- Outliving One's Offspring: The Dust King blinded himself after the death of his eldest sons to a fever, thinking it was because he broke his religious law by laying eyes on them that they were taken away. Baal also dies protecting him.
- Poisoned Weapons: Fayez and his followers use poisoned needles that rot the victims and dissolve them in seconds.
- Puppet King: Early in the series Herbert separates himself from the Dark Entity. Fayez Ul-Rahman, the leader of the assassin's clan take advantage of this by being the strongest clan but leaves Herbert as the Great Khan to avoid infighting while making it clear to Herbert and his daughter that he is in charge.
- Red Baron: The Dust King, the name come from the time Marvin raised an army of skeletons when he gained a temporary power. Only a few friends calls him Marvin afterwards.
- Small Parent, Huge Child: Marvin's son Baal is enormous, being at least twice as tall and wide as either of his parents.
- Spotting the Thread: In the death realm every souls only uses sentences they used while they were alive, to the point of changing appearance to how they looked when they said that sentence. So when one appears and helpfully ready them for a plot exposition Hervert asks Gilberto why he can speak normally. It's revealed to be the Dark Entity in disguise.
- Thirsty Desert: The Always Day area is a desert where, as the name suggest, it's always day. The Great Khan punishes failure by dropping disgraced soldiers to die of exhaustion and they are crippled beforehand .
- Signature Move: Marvin's Tong Deum And Herbert's Finger Poke of Doom reached that status, as the Great Khan Herbert doesn't need his enemy to be green and can even do it from a distance.
- Small Parent, Huge Child: Marvin's son Baal is enormous, being at least twice as tall and wide as either of his parents.
- Spanner in the Works: The sword of Destiny was made with the idea that once the right wielder, the Dark Entity,possesses it, it can summon all the heralds who wielded the sword before to protect him. The only problem is that among the Badass Army there is the stable boy who died 12 seconds after equipping the sword and the Non-Action Big Bad from Zenith , it allows Red Marvin to pierce the defense by making short work of them.
- Villain Protagonist: Görk and Krag from the Dungeon Monster (basically a Day in the Limelight series) "Soldiers of honor". Görk is a Mook under the Great Khan who must execute his brother for failing to stop Marvin in the past. Both follow a strict code of honor and are OK with the sentence but they are horrible people who kill everyone weaker than them for no good reason.
- Wham Line: During the penultimate book where the Dust King says he is about to pull the Heroic Sacrifice the gods asked of him.Orlondow: Stop your bullshit Marvin it does not make sense, the gods don't talk.
- Zerg Rush: The Olfs are 3 millions of xenophobic creatures who swarm everyone who enter their kingdom. The Dark Entity ends up with a billion of conscripted soldiers that can crush any resistance.
