Dungeon Keeper Ami / Tropes A to D

Tropes A to D | Tropes E to P | Tropes Q to Z

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A

• Abandoned Area: The habit of Ami leaving places while taking her Dungeon Hearts with her, results in this trope, repeatedly, because she doesn't need to leave troops anywhere, they either come with her or are fired, and she travels with her heart, so her former dungeons are abandoned.
• Abandoned Mine: In "A Hairy Situation", Ami is expanding an abandoned gold mine for the habitation of over 8000 people.
• Abandoned Playground: In "Making an Entrance", there's one, well, it's a sandbox, and it has a brief Empathy Doll Shot:
  Her gaze slid over the fake pillars and support structures that defined the basic design of a façade, skipped over the engravings beside the door, and came to rest on the rectangular depression that seemed to serve as a front yard. In a sandbox littered with hastily-abandoned children’s toys, she spotted a half-finished wooden figurine and a carving knife. Its grip was just the right size for the tiny hands of a toddler.
• Abhorrent Admirer: A downplayed but amusing example when Camilla has a hard time ending a conversation with a dwarf who seems intent on talking to her more — until Ami approaches and the dwarf hastily makes an exit.
  Bagozkal: I would be more than happy to elaborate on the details during—during… excuse me please something really urgent came up I must go!
• Ability Mixing: Ami uses a Portal Network and a storage ability that's both not made to work with it and holding a frozen enemy to disintegrate the frozen enemy:
  if Taleth, [...] left the effective range of her Keeper powers, he would by necessity be shunted out of the transport. The fastest way for this to happen would be for Ami to activate the portal and move through. She picked a random, deserted destination and did so rather gleefully. The feeling in the back of her mind that she associated with her Keeper powers hiccuped, alerting her that something unfortunate had just happened.
  She flew back through the portal and saw that Taleth and his icy prison had reappeared, smeared out over an area of roughly ten square metres.
• Absurd Altitude: Ami ascends into space to use the great distance to delay her banishment into the Dark Gods' realm.
• Accidental Good Outcome: Ami accidentally created her minion "Tiger" due to magical healing not working as intended, but in doing so, Tiger had personality traits that complemented Ami's more than most other minions and cares more about Ami's survival too, so was really good for Ami, since Tiger has been the main reason for Ami's survival twice over.
• Accidental Pervert: Despite being, well, herself, Ami somehow manages to end up with a reputation for perversion, depravity, and raping REAPERS.
• Acid-Trip Dimension: When a Dark Kingdom expedition is navigating the space between dimensions, things get weird, with tunnels shifting and changing as they watch, the ground made of a fog that logically shouldn't hold their weight, and paths twisting and crossing with no apparent pattern to them. One youma tries to take an ill-advised shortcut, and her body is bent like a pretzel before vanishing (though she's narrowly rescued).
  Kaliki: What happened? What did you see?
  Zandu: The inside of my eyes.
• Adapted Out: Minako/Sailor Venus is removed because the author believed she and Usagi were so interchangeable, they were basically the same character.
• Adjective Noun Fred: Dungeon Keeper Ami. It's about the Keeper of a Dungeon, named Ami.
• Adorable Evil Minions: Features both the goblins and the Imps. Both provide comic relief and are, usually, very mischievous. Occasionally, they can, in fact, act with cruelty, but it seems to stem mostly from the way they are themselves treated. Later on, Ami gets new, youma-empowered imps (basically baby youma); they come with overalls and tiny hard-hats...
• Advancing Boss of Doom: Ami faces two on Avatar Isle; first Keeper Alphel, and not much later The Avatar. The former cuts her off from any resources she could use to harm it, while the latter is just that good.
  • Ami herself is one at times, notably when breaching Salthalls to meet with its Duke.
• Affably Evil:
  • Keeper Mukrezar, oh so much. He's quite polite to everyone, and hilarious, while being just as sadistic and ambitious as any other Keeper, with the cunning and creativity to back it up, from slowly roasting enemies alive, to besieging cities until the inhabitants eat each other.
    Mukrezar languished on his throne with a glass of wine in his hand, flanked by two loyal mistresses who were moving large, feather-covered fans up and down. He had put the half-starved former leader of the Underworld city to good use dancing for him. That would teach the silly orc chief to drag out the inevitable capitulation for so long. It was a shame that the lesson wouldn't have any lasting impact, since the 'dance' involved a floor of glowing coals and severed vocal chords.
    Mukrezar regretted the necessity, he really did. The screams were the most relaxing part, but they would have interfered with his current business.
  • Keeper Midori sells information to all sides of a conflict, Ami included. He has no vendetta against her, but he is entirely self-serving.
  • The Unraveller of Mysteries is very impressed with Ami, protects her to an extent from Azzathra's influence, and would like to take her on as a worshipper. Or dissect her brain to learn all her secrets and put it back together again afterward. Whatever works.
• The Ageless: The light gods have the power to make individuals unaging, but they no longer use it, because they can't provide it to everyone and it tends to make others envious. Plus, watching one's friends and relatives age and die is not pleasant. For much the same reasons, the dark gods do offer agelessness to their servants, notably Keepers. Keepers absolutely can be killed, but they don't die of old age.
• A Glass in the Hand: In A New Home, Mukrezar had the wine glass in his hand shatter, "as he suddenly clenched his fist" after learning the lethal amount of magic that Ami used, and he basically has no way of matching to one-up her.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: For the sake of saving the lives of her friends and everyone she's responsible for, Ami is willing to apologize to and appease the dark pantheon.
  If eating crow was what it took to save those who depended on her, then that she would do.
• Air Quotes: From Magic Lesson, Jadeite uses air quotes to make a point about being careful in teleportation lessons:
  "I believe -that-," Jadeite lectured, smirking behind the force-bubble that protected him like a red-smeared windscreen, "is a sufficient demonstration of why we don't just ignore the baby steps and skip ahead." He was talking to the hazy black column of energy that crackling in the centre of the bare room, signing mock quotation marks with his fingers at the last part.
• All-Accessible Magic: From the spellbooks and other written forms of spells that have been seen, the only limit on most spellcasting is how much Mana can be gathered and how good the user is at pronuncing the words that make up spells and performing the right Magical Gestures. If they have access to enough mana, and pronounce and perform correctly, the spell happens.
• All According to Plan: Mukrezar claims this while chained upside down and being tortured.
  Sinistra: I said that I am surprised that a former Keeper of your reputation would be stupid enough to show up in person! What did you expect would happen?
  Mukrezar: This, pretty much.
• Alliterative List: In Surface Battle, Part 1 Used when an enemy leader was giving orders:
  To his credit, her opponent didn't flinch at her approach. His horned helmet only covered his face from the nose up, and she could see him press his lips together in determination. "Split, scatter, surround!" he instructed as he took a wide-legged stance, the six braids hanging off his chin bobbing.
• Alliterative Name: The 'Beastly Beard Booster' spell.
• Alliterative Title: Several chapters, such as "Frenzied Fortification" or "Dungeon Discoveries."
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Alphel goes on a joyride in a dragon, in Ami's iceberg base, during the Avatar Islands Arc.
• Altar Diplomacy: In "Moving In", not a marriage to seal an agreement, but to allow one to take place. But, Ami's jumping to conclusions. The real plan is for Duke Libasheshtan to become her regent, since she's a teen empress:
  To get around her diplomatic obstacles, she needed someone who didn't work for her and wasn't her subject, but who could still negotiate in her name...
  Cheeks burning, she jumped to her feet. "I- I’m not marrying anyone!"
• Alternative-Self Name-Change: What's effectively a clone of Ami Mizuno gets named Tiger for her physical appearance reminding people of the animal.
• Anchored Teleportation: The most common type of teleportation summons a cylindrical area with the target inside to the caster's location. The target needs to stay in the cylinder until the teleport spell finishes activating.
• And I Must Scream: Queen Beryl sentenced Jadeite to Eternal Sleep for failing her. Despite the name, the victim is actually entirely conscious — but also entirely sensory-deprived. By the time Ami rescues Jadeite, he's counted in his head up to 649,003 just to keep himself sane. It contributes to his willingness to faithfully serve Ami and his desire for revenge on Beryl.
• Angrish: Cathy is too stunned to string words together after seeing the corpse of the Eldest Dragon.
  Cathy: That. You. Dragon. How?
• Angry Cheek Puff: In "Mukrezar's Return", it's verbally described, and done by the youngest/most childish, of a set of sisters:
  Camilla sputtered, her cheeks puffed up in anger.
• Animated Armor: As explained in "Divine Opposition, Part 2", Ami's Powered Armor are basically remote controlled armor pieces that move with the wearer to apply more force to their actions. If the user is actually outside the armor, it's basically this trope, "[w]hen fitted with a fake helmet".
• Animate Inanimate Matter: Ami has made ice golems, which are basically statues of herself, in ice, except the interior is filled with water-powered ice hydraulics controlled by a magical stone inside.
• Animal Testing: Evil Sorceress Monteraine, under Ami's employ and orders, uses rats and chickens to develop magical techniques to develop magics:
  • "Delivering Presents": After she gets an assistant:
    Her gaze came to rest on a row of cages filled with rats. She sighed again. "For now, make yourself useful and start shaving the test subjects."
  • From "War Council":
    “My Empress? Pardon the interruption, but I have run out of test subjects,” a mental message from Monteraine derailed [Ami's] train of thought.
    That, at least, was a problem she could solve quickly. She shifted her Keeper sight to a tiny hatchery back at her dungeon. Hens and yellow-feathered chicks scrabbled in the dirt of the square pit
• Animorphism: In "Convoluted Rescue Plan, Go!", Ami has made pills that turn people into "baby mice", and Tserk willingly took one, to facilitate the rescue plan.
• Anti-Interference Lock Up: In "A Short Break", Ami cuts a deal with Tserk, who she locked in her bedroom to keep them from revealing to anyone not already in the know, that Snyder is aligned with the gods of Light Is Good, because she doesn't want Snyder to be harassed, given that the majority of her employees are of the opposing Dark Is Evil side.
• Annoying Arrows:
  • Justified when Ami is inhabiting a golem body; as they're animated by magic, minor damage is not disabling, and at worst she can just evacuate the golem. But she can still be inconvenienced:
    A hail of crossbow bolts cut off Ami's attempt at diplomacy, turning the front of her ice golem body into a pincushion.
    "-yohhhhk- " She blinked when her tongue refused to move, pinned to the back of her throat to by a bolt that had entered her open mouth. Surprised and annoyed by her sudden inability to talk, she darted into cover behind one of the pines.
  • Also justified when her enemies try to shoot reaperbots, which are entirely metal and thus unbothered.
    Elaine: Its chest is an entire forest of crossbow bolts, but it just won't fall!
• Answer Cut: Cathy should probably have known better than to ask whether they're going to charge the enemy army head-on. Cut to the Underworld Army facing The Avatar, Mercury, Jadeite, Rabixtrel, some automatons, and some golems.
• Appeal to Force: After two hours of fruitless explanation, the only argument that successfully persuades goblins to care about hygiene is the appointment of six "health inspectors" with clubs.
• Appetite Equals Health: In "Trouble Is Brewing", there are worries about Ami's health and a lack of appetite.
  "Bullshit! You barely touched your meal. You didn't defeat that Reaper just so you could get done in by a lack of appetite! I'm making sure that you are eating right, and that's final!"
• Armies Are Evil: Dungeon Keepers, who are all worshippers of at least one God of Evil, have standing armies, while the God of Good worshipping Surfacers are feudal and don't have standing armies, having guards and recruiting militia from the civilian populace at need.
• Armored Dragons: In Frenzied Fortification, Ami starts armoring her dragons for the upcoming battle:
  the two dragons breathing fire into the furnaces. Goblins with a small pot full of molten metal crawled over them, coating the dragons' scales with a layer of molten steel.
• Artifact of Death: The Battle Staves of Calarine amplify spellcasting, but they draw on Crowned Death's power to do it, they have no safeties, and if the user kills themselves with too much power, a necromantic spell activates, which is suspected to turn them into an undead servant.
• Assassination Attempt: In "Out-of-Dungeon Experiences", Ami almost gets killed by one, in the Underworld, but the attempt is foiled due to her possessing an ice golem, which keeps her from dying as easily as normal.
• Ass Shove: In Equipment Test, it's the only thing that can have something shoved up it, as Jared says when describing Marda fighting the Reaperbots:
  "Whoa, she shoved its own scythe up its..."
• As You Know: In "Delivering Presents", when two minions are talking about their dungeon's defenses. which they should both know:
  "Shouldn't we keep an eye on her?" the smallest of the orcs asked as the other three moved toward the stone archway leading out.
  
  The largest orc stopped. "Yes, clearly she's going to dig through sixteen cubits of near-indestructible rock, avoid the alarms, and attack the dungeon heart by herself, all without anybody noticing," she said sneering. "Just to be clear, that means 'no', 'you are a moron', and 'that's their job'." She pointed up at a crenellated balcony.
  Ami followed the pointed digit and spotted two dark elves standing motionless in the shadows.
• Attack on the Heart: In "Assault on Wemos", Zarekos temporarily kills Wemos - a vampire - by attacking his heart:
  cracked-open ribcage, grabbed the beating heart, and plucked it from its exposed perch in a shower of blood. Immediately, the separated organ and its owner dissolved
• Attack Reflector: One of Nero's spells, that counters Ami's Shabon Spray, as seen in Escape from Arachne's Dungeon:
  Ami responded with a well-aimed Shabon Spray Freezing. Alas, the magician's hands, which had been concealed within the long sleeves of his skull-embroidered robe, shot up, already glowing greenish with gathered power. As if drawn by a magnet, the blue ray of concentrated bubbles tracked the wizard's outstretched hand, which traced a horizontal circle in the air as he spun around his own axis until his extended finger was pointing back at Ami. With an "Eep!" of surprise, she threw herself out of the way of her own attack, rolling off her momentum on the thick carpet.

B

• Back from the Dead: A few instances:
  • Zarekos comes back as a Ghost. Considering the guy was a Dungeon Keeper, and the souls of Dungeon Keepers go to the Realms of the Dark Gods when they are killed or their Dungeon Hearts are destroyed, him coming back after having been physically killed is an Oh, Crap! moment. Of course, he was in the process of making himself a god prior to his physical death.
  • After Mercury thwarts Crowned Death's attempt to physically incarnate one of its Lesser Aspects, it prevents her from reclaiming the Mantle by sacrificing it to resurrect Keeper Mukrezar, the man who originally defeated the Avatar.
• Backing Away Slowly: This happens a few times after some of Ami's pronouncements, like responding to a protesting orc in "A New Home":
  His eyes widened in surprise as he suddenly found himself isolated, surrounded by a ring of unsympathetic faces and expectant grins. His head darted left and right like that of a trapped animal looking for an escape route before he dropped to his knees. "I didn't mean to-"
• Badass Fingersnap: How Ami frees Malleus's slaves:
  she snapped her fingers, causing all the manacles to open. The captives slid or staggered to the floor, unsure of what was going on.
• Bad Boss: Keepers in general, as well as Queen Beryl. Mercury sometimes needs to remind her minions she averts this trope.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: Mercury is trying to avert this, but Keeper powers are tailor-made for a villain, particularly the corrupted landscape.
• Bad Powers, Good People: When Ami finds out that she's inadvertently bound herself to the Dungeon Heart, she decides to invoke this. The Reaper is disgusted by the idea, but more pragmatically, informs her that the dark gods who blessed the Heart would be offended and call on all other Keepers to launch a crusade. She doesn't intend to let that stop her, though.
  Reaper: In short, all you have to do is crush all the other Keepers before attempting such a thing! Go right ahead, it shall be glorious!
• Bad Vibrations: Surfacers and Ami both have what is effectively seismographic equipment, which picks up on bombings and imps mining, both signs of enemy action.
• Baffled by Own Biology:
  • Ami liked body swapping with a demon due to the endless energy, but said demon was unused to the energy needs of a human body, so it kept damaging her original body enough that she switched back to prevent further damage.
  • Fairies can get drunk on magic if there's enough in the air, but not everyone knows it so they can be warned, so a group of fairies who were visiting a location had to ask a local about the ambient magic density before the fairies figured out why they felt "tipsy".
• Bag of Kidnapping: In A Poor Plan, how Ami gets her first goblin minion, basically:
  the [imp] scuttled over to the unconscious [goblin] it had landed on, and unceremoniously stuffed him into its pack. With a high-pitched groan, it strained to lift the body, which was still hanging half out of the sack, and disappeared. [...] Back at the dungeon heart, the imp reappeared, and dumped the unconscious body on the ground as if it was garbage.
• Bait-and-Switch Silhouette: From "Extended Mining Operations":
  A bright light shone right into his eyes, forcing him to squint at the grossly obese visitor who was wearing a yellow helmet with a lamp in its centre. No, wait, it was actually just an imp standing behind a large metal pot.
• Balcony Wooing Scene: In combination with Serenade Your Lover, one of the things General Jadeite learned from reading romance novels, and a discarded plan to get Mercury to fall more in love with him, as said in "Beryl's Plan":
  Somehow, he didn't think she would be impressed if he serenaded her from below a balcony. Not that she had a balcony in this dungeon.
• Baldness Angst: Ami, having her head shaved thanks to the Unraveler. While she's not particularly broken up about it, she's still rather annoyed and seeks to repair the damage.
• Bald of Evil: Not intentionally, but Mercury was, at one point, bald and is assumed to be evil by most of the world.
• Battle Aura: Sometimes, Mercury acquires "a corona of writhing dark energy" when using a lot of magic.
• Beard of Evil: Multiple, as part of the generic "evil wizard" look as mentioned in Nero's first appearance:
  • One of the first warlocks Ami hires is described as a "generic evil warlock". Upon closer inspection, he sports a fake beard. He was too young to have a proper one and was going for the look, thus being an Invoked Trope.
  • Ami herself, thanks to losing hair to a misadventure and using a modified beard growing spell. Subverted Trope, as she isn't evil, everyone only thinks she is.
    Torian, did you by any chance, only expand the target region?
• Barely-There Swimwear: Discussed in Unwelcome Surprises, about a corrupted Sailor Mercury uniform that's a "net-like collection of loosely connected holes", where it's said that Tokyo has "skimpier swimwear", which gets a raised eyebrow from Cathy.
• Benevolent Boss: Jadeite is initially quite unhappy to find that he's become the servant of a Sailor Senshi. He soon decides, though, that she's a big improvement from Queen Beryl; she appreciates his successes instead of fixating on failures, lets him speak his mind and implement his own ideas, and she's even a good student.
  He might have to serve her, but this had the potential to be at least amusing. It might even be fun to work for a ruler who appreciated his abilities and wouldn't punish him at the slightest provocation.
• Benevolent Dictator: Ami received her first Dungeon Heart and became a Keeper by (accidentally) selling her soul to the dark gods. Within the area claimed by the Heart, her word is law, and her control of creatures who have entered her service is so absolute that she can telekinetically snap their necks with a mere act of will. She's doing her best to use all of her newfound power to survive, protect as many innocents as she can reach, stop the other Keepers threatening the world, and reclaim her soul in order to return home and help her friends save Earth from the Dark Kingdom. Her light-aligned employees are loyal to her because she's a Benevolent Boss, while her Evil employees expect harsh treatment and would be suspicious of her otherwise, but she still tries to control them through good pay and working conditions, escalating to intimidation as needed, rather than torture or execution.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: Averted. But Ami has a hard time convincing anybody. The rumor mill insists Ami has these tendencies.
• Berserk Button: A few characters have them.
  • The Avatar has Keepers, and Mukrezar in particular.
  • Boris has Keepers and their minions.
  • Ami has the atrocities committed by Crowned Death.
  • But by far the biggest button belongs to Crowned Death, who is positively rabid with hatred for the Dark Empress by this point.
• Better Off with the Bad Guys: As Jared says in "Vampire Solution", his status has gone from being a common adventurer, to the high position of working under royalty, due to being hired by someone most regard as an Evil Overlord:
  Jered could sympathise with the feeling. He hadn't properly internalised yet that he was now working directly underneath an empress. Him!
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Keeper Wemos uses his few seconds of freedom to make a Spiteful Suicide instead of being re-enslaved — and shows his former captor a finger from each hand as he's doing it.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Ami really is a kind and generous person, trying to do good even with a truly horrible power set. She even feels bad about executing centuries-old monsters. Nonetheless, she's also of a scientific turn of mind, and picks up a lot of pragmatism, and when someone offends her badly enough, she's perfectly capable of, say, arranging a portal accident that will spread them out over several square meters.
• Bewitched Amphibians: A few times:
  • Speculated about a frog in Strategy Meeting:
    Ami sighed, busy with removing the fat frog from her ear. The animal had clamped down on one of her small blue earrings, which added some pain to the general discomfort of being attacked by a slimy amphibian. Both of her hands closed around her diminutive attacker when she finally got a firm grip on it, and the frog croaked angrily as she held it out in front of her. "This isn't normal frog behaviour."
    ...
    "Well, well. It is possible that this is not a frog at all, but another victim of the evil warlock, transformed into this unappealing form."
  • From Creepy Crawlers:
    "Mercury," Cathy's agitated voice shouted in Ami's head, "Jadeite just got turned into a frog! Do something!"
• BFS: Since Ami can telekinetically move objects that she owns, and since she is good at ice magic, it's fairly straightforward for her to make a giant floating ice hand, wielding an equally giant sword. Her kill count with it rivals the full fury of a Horned Reaper.
• Big Bad: Ironically enough, Empress Mercury herself, at least in the eyes of the major powers in the Dungeon Keeper setting.
  • On the other hand, the Dark Empress doesn't have all that much trouble portraying herself as the Lesser of Two Evils since she has a tendency to fight the Eldritch Abominations that pass as dark gods in the Dungeon Keeper world.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Luna, when Moon and Mars are getting thrashed by Jadeite and Mareki.
  • Tiger, for Ami when she is possessed by Crowned Death. Torian also attempts this, and though it is definitely his moment of pure Badass, he is a Butt-Monkey, and thus fails.
• Big Fancy House: The Shining Concord Empire, as part of their conditions for opening diplomatic channels with Empress Mercury, insist that she build them an embassy according to specific blueprints they provided (of a scale model of their Emperor's palace) - at her own expense. It's just a misinformed attempt to make Mercury spend more precious gold, as she can make more at any time as opposed to normal Keepers.
• Big Shadow, Little Creature: In "Mukrezar's Return":
  A huge shadow, almost as broad as it was tall, moved across the mildewy wall as its owner approached with quiet footsteps. The being that stepped into the weak torchlight was much shorter and less imposing than the menacing shadow it cast. An eyebrow rose curiously over half-lidded, fist-sized imp eyes.
• Black-and-White Morality: The Dungeon Keeper world works by this trope, having only two sides for people to be on. The side of the Light Gods, which is Good, and that of the Dark Gods, which is Evil. The confusion inspired by a champion of love and justice keeping a dungeon heart is one of Mercury's greatest strengths. Even the one outside group that believes she's not irredeemably evil wants to imprison her for eternity.
• Black Magic: Magic from the dark gods, including the power available from a Dungeon Heart, has distinctly evil qualities. It corrupts the environment around it just by existing, and when Ami uses it to cast spells, her Shabon Spray Freezing changes from encasing the target in a block of ice, to creating a massive ice spike that breaks into razor sharp splinters when touched.
• Blind Bats: Subverted. Ami assumed that bats are blind, but her time as one has her learn that they have good eyesight.
• Blood Knight: The default state of Horned Reapers, who get angry when they can't kill anything. Ami is able to outbid at least one other Keeper (possibly multiple) and hire an unemployed Reaper, just by offering the chance to "kill every ghost and skeleton on this continent."
• Blood Magic: Blood contains mana, which can be used to power magical things, as said in A Capture, when wondering how to power something:
  Blood. [...] the mana within is easily assimilated.
• Blow You Away: In Nero's Spell (Part 2), a vampire "unleashes a gust of wind" against Marda, as Nero orders with "You! Blow that troll away from the reaper!"
• Blue Means Cold: Ami has blue hair and her second spell can generate ice.
• Boats into Buildings: Zig Zags the trope. Ami's Iceberg Dungeon Ship was originally constructed in an underwater cavern before being floated to the surface to expand the structure and move about the sea. When the dungeon reaches its destination in the Avatar Islands, it is solidly affixed to the coastline with even more ice, like a glacier calving in reverse. Later chapters mention that there's an underground tunnel connecting the iceberg to the mainland.
• Body Double: Tiger, due to having copies of Ami's memories and being able to shapeshift, is pretty good at mimicking Ami, which is useful for concealing Ami's absence to create a hidden Dungeon Heart.
• Body-Count Competition: From Assault on Wemos:
  Two imps huddled in the corner, forgotten as ghosts and vampires clashed with reaperbots and Rabixtrel. Despite the huge numerical disparity, the wraiths were not doing too well. The horned reaper even had the time to spare a glance at the odd little imps, if only because their supremely strange behaviour had caught his eyes. One of them had retrieved a piece of parchment from her backpack and was making little scratches on it as she watched the battle. A moment of observation later, he determined that the worker was counting kills, making a mark next to the number of each bot. Which meant the stupid doodle with two horns and the longest bar next to it was supposed to represent him. Wait a minute. The reaper snorted in anger as another oddity caught his eye.
  
  The note-taking imp squealed in surprise when a shadow fell over her and a red-scaled hand as big as her head reached down and lifted her by her backpack. A moment later, she found herself face to teeth with the Reaper.
  
  "WHO?" the enraged beast snarled, and a gust of searing hot breath blew the imp's helmet off her head. A claw-tipped digit was pointing at the score on the imp's chart that was higher than his own.
  
  Ears pressed to her head, the imp lifted her short arm and pointed up, prompting the reaper's pupil-less white eyes to look in the same direction. They widened at the sight of a giant, frozen hand gripping the handle of a sword sized perfectly for its use. The giant bar of sharp metal rotated, spun, and whistled through the mass of ghosts, slaying anything in its path. Rabixtrel threw his head back and let out an ear-splitting roar. He tossed aside the imp and used the shoulders of a reaperbot as a springboard to launch himself into the thickest concentration of flying ghosts, his competitiveness roused.
• Body Horror: An In-Universe example; Ami knows her warlocks are magical Mad Scientists, but she still shrieks when she sees one of them who has turned his head invisible, and only his head — but not the blood pumping through it.
• Body Snatcher: Keepers in general do this with their minions via possession spells.
• Body Surf: Keepers who know the right spell can hop between their minions' bodies at will, making them extremely difficult to kill without exterminating every creature under their command. Ami is on both ends of this at different times, using constant body-swapping to fight the Reaper, and later having Jadeite play whack-a-mole with the Western Keeper.
• Born of Magic: Dust bunnies and other things gain life when exposed to enough of Metallia's power. As described in Ward Trouble.
• Bounty Hunter: The Silver Hawks, who were introduced when they started hunting Ami.
  • Though they have decided to stop hunting Ami and Co until a legal ruling can be made on whether or not it is acceptable to take contracts on an Empress, Keeper or not, who holds her throne by a literal divine mandate.
  • And are now back in action hunting Mukrezar, who has managed to acquire a two ''million'' gold piece bounty on his head before he's been Back from the Dead for a single day.
• Bows Versus Crossbows: In Out-of-Dungeon Experiences, Ami notes that 'dark elves', who have instituted steep tolls to enter their city, use crossbows, while regular elves use bows.
• Brainless Beauty: Possibly one of Zarekos/Wemos's vampires. If so, then also a Dumb Blonde:
  "Master! I have brought what you require!" A short-haired blond vampire called happily as she appeared before Zarekos
  "Begone, brainless buffoon," he sighed "Note to self: do not chose any more vampires candidates purely on looks."
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs:
  • Delivering Presents: "The imp-made engravings had nudity and intertwined bodies too, but they were more stylized and alternated with gory battle scenes. Ami winced a little when she spotted an engraving that mixed both themes."
  • Here:
    "I find out that all portals leading out of my domain have been mysteriously blocked from the outside. At the same time."
    In sharp contrast to the Keeper's expression, his voice remained cheerful. It only got a bit louder when the rattling of the knight shaking in his armour threatened to drown it out.
    "Mysterious. And synchronous. Mysteriously synchronous."
• Breeding Slave: Malleus's slaves, who also doubled as Sex Slaves, as said:
  To Malleus, the poor girls chained naked to the walls were nothing but objects of convenience, there to sate his lusts and produce offspring.^note Not that he wants to raise any children. They just make potent Human Sacrifices.
• Briar Patching: Ami's strategy for improving relations with the dwarves — having Duke Libasheshtan appointed as her regent — is effective precisely because the dwarves falsely believe it's happening against her wishes and will be a hindrance to her, so they immediately start plotting to maximise and utilise it, rather than undermining it.
• Brick Joke: In Chapter 16: Deeper into Trouble, Jered comments that he'd like to see the place Mercury comes from, since all the girls her age wear sailor fukus. When the adventurers reach Mercury's dungeon in Chapter 20: Strategy Meeting, they find that all the goblins have been dressed as Sailor Mercury.

  Cathy: I bet this wasn't what you were expecting when she told you that all the girls where she came from wore something like this.

• Bring It: Baron Leopold refuses to be intimidated by Keeper Arachne, and challenges her to do her worst.
  Leopold: YOU HEAR THAT, ARACHNE? RAGE AS MUCH AS YOU WANT, I'M COMING FOR YOU!
• Bring My Brown Pants: From Ultimatum: The implication is that Kivith's robes seem to have a urine stain on them:
  Kivith's footsteps echoed through the hall as he hurried towards his master, his cheeks burning with shame. With every step, the wet cloth of his apprentice robes slapped against his shins, reminding him that it was stained with bright yellow liquid. Normally, he wouldn’t have cared – potion accidents happened – but today, his master stood at the massive gilded table seating most of the Duchy’s highest nobles
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: The Devourer's high priest is attacked by slave women whose children he had sacrificed. Upon learning this fact, he still can't identify any of the women beating him to death.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Torian is a strong warlock, but every time he tries to curry favor with Mercury he fails miserably. He eventually achieves fame with his undead-taming spell, but that's a more useful tool for the good guys than the bad guys.
    • Note that Torian's crowing achievement may not be a subversion: given how Crowned Death (god of undeath) is in the Warpath arc, Torian really does not want his name right next to the spell. Even Torian understood just how much trouble he was in. And then he improved the spell to affect undead in enormous numbers, only to be possessed by the gestalt mind that animates them.
  • Tserk, the tentacle monster. It just can't seem to catch a break.
  • Lishika's teleport side-effect has caused her repeated mishaps, apparently even setting her on fire once.

C

• Call-Back:
  • Ami's self-destructing Dungeon Heart Chambers.
• Calling Your Attacks: She's still a Sailor Moon character, you know, and discussed in Reaper Battle!, when she was fighting the Reaper:
  "Shabon Spray Freezing!"
  It was really convenient how she had to shout out the attack phrase, alerting him to the incoming danger. Strange echo this time, though, thought the Reaper.
• Cassandra Truth: Multiple, all involving Ami and her good, peaceful, Bookworm, Dark Is Not Evil nature, against all expectations of Dungeon Keepers, being part of her as a Hero with Bad Publicity:
  • From "Outside Perspectives":
    "That- that deviant monster! What did she do to her?"Anise demanded to know, her cheeks matching her eyes in colour.
    "I don't know." Dandel turned over the scroll, revealing two blackened lines where she had been reading. "Someone has censored that part of the letter. Oh, and there's an annotation in a different handwriting." The fae stared at the much neater characters. "This part was not factually correct and based on a misunderstanding. Nothing untoward was planned nor occurred," she read.
    "Yeah, right, who'd believe that?" Tilia snorted.
  • From "Ward Trouble":
    “I believe his exact words were,” the King began, imitating the Avatar’s impatient and disdainful tone nearly perfectly, “’just stop provoking the bookworm and she won’t bother you.’”
    Duke Libasheshtan remained silent as he parsed the absurdity of the statement.
  • From "Reluctant Overtures":
    “I expect you would be disappointed by the results. She’s more than happy to stay with her books unless forced into action, as I have repeatedly pointed out before.”
    King Ral snorted. The day he started to believe that the Dark Empress had an elaborate city conquest plan just lying around with no intention to use it was the day he’d abdicate due to senility.
• Cast from Money: Gold is turned into the magic for spells by dungeon hearts.
• Chairman of the Brawl: From Dealing with the Blockade Ship, when Anise is being molested by Tserk:
  Anise felt something slimy wrap around her left ankle, and suddenly found herself suspended upside down in the air, prompting alarmed cries from her sisters. She gulped. This could end badly. She suddenly wished that their outfits offered some more coverage than swimsuits. On the bright side, however, she could make out a few eyes in the centre of the mass from her elevated vantage point, and she still had her chair…
  “Much better. Now- OW!”
• Character Action Title: The chapter where someone returns: "Mukrezar's Return".
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The warlock who turned his own head invisible. The spell derived from that is used to rescue Jadeite.
  • Ami's testing reveals that dragons have the tastiest kind of life energy for Queen Metallia. So, when she's later facing one, she creates a temple in its path, and when it inadvertently touches the pool, Metallia sucks out its life instantly.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Both the Avatar and Keeper Mukrezar are mentioned in the twelfth chapter, "Ambush", with the implication that they are dead.
• Chess Motifs: Ami's first dungeon has one, with the "white and black chequerboard pattern of the floor [and] the bas-reliefs of chess figures on the walls."
• The Chosen People: A Dwarf says that the Light Gods blessed his people with the ability to live underground.
• Citywide Evacuation: When Ami attacks the city of Salthalls, its citizens evacuate after her presence unleashes a magical catastrophe inside it.
• Cleavage Window: As mentioned in "Fairy Attack": The fairy sisters' uniforms:
  The smaller gap in the front, strategically positioned to reveal a good amount of cleavage, had to be for vanity purposes.
• Clingy Child: In "General Assembly", a child clings to the person who rescued him from menacing goblins, even though she's a member of an evil race:
  "You can let go now," she said to the child, whose arms were still encircling her leg.
  The brat shook his head and pressed his face against her leg.
• Clothing Damage: A Running Gag, bordering on Negima! Magister Negi Magi levels. Often due to a combination of magically conjured clothes meeting Anti-Magic wards. More recently, Crowned Death, The Mighty Tyrant, and The Unraveller of Mysteries teamed up, creating a curse of sorts that degrades anything in Ami's dungeon. Including clothes. Especially clothes. The only stopgap solution seems to be having everything in the dungeon decorated in aesthetics that evoke either Ami's Ice powers, or emphasize "fertility" (in contrast to the God of Death) or "fragility" (contrasting the God of Strength). In other words, for clothes and other items to not rot away, they have to be either transparent, pornographic, or barely there.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Mukrezar may be an irredeemable monster who callously massacred an entire country, but he's also a pretty quirky guy who manages to be Plucky Comic Relief in his own demented way. He, among other things, has a strange obsession with using cursed gold rings as part of his plans, despite them having a previously standing track record of zero, and also claimed that he was going to bake the biggest cake in the world. He then baked that cake by throwing a huge amount of gold at an Underworld city which got too greedy and sold him all their food stocks, pushing the whole settlement to near starvation. At the same time Mukrezar was attacking the keeper who supplied their stocks. His plan the whole time was to extort them into proclaiming him lord and master of their town. That's right, he laid low an entire Underworld city, by baking a cake. Sadly, the cake tasted so terrible Mukrezar couldn't stand to eat it.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: A standard keeper tactic of course. But also comes up as a challenge when one of Ami's schemes requires her to make ghosts out of undead, since the necromancy only works when the various zombies were tortured to death. One of her Dark Mistresses is actually too effective, torturing a zombie into turning and requiring Ami to order her to "torture it to death properly."
• Cold Iron: Iron negatively affecting fairies, is referenced, multiple times:
  • In Meet the Locals when people think Ami is a Fairy, because of her blue hair:
    “… blue? … think she’s fey?” “… no, touching the iron cutlery…” “… but … gloves …” “…rather young… ” “… witch looking for trouble…” “… hair’s so short… disgraced… ?”
  • From Diplomacy and Gifts, with the Fairy Ambassador:
    “So it’s true what they say about fairies and iron, then, Ambassador?”
    “If they are saying that it burns our skin, yes.”
  • From Cornering The Duke, when Kivith, a Dwarf, is thinking about Fairies:
    Oh, yes, the other point against them, in Kivith's opinion. There just had to be something deeply wrong with creatures that couldn't stand the touch of good, solid iron.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Presumably, most, if not all Dark Mistresses.
  A quick knee to the stomach and a follow-up strike with the pommel of the sword to the woman's chin sent her reeling to the floor, moaning in ecstasy.
• Comically Wordy Contract: The Shining Concord Empire's main request from Ami is conveyed in a scroll that starts off with "long-winded introductions", and when the demands are reached, it's with a sense of having been a long time coming:

  Ami finally got to the part that held the demands.

• Comical Overreacting: Cathy rushes to Ami's side upon hearing her scream of anguish. Turns out that Ami has scryed on her home world and discovered that she has fallen behind in school.
• Compact Infiltrator: Tserk was picked for "Convoluted Rescue Plan, Go!" because as a tentacle monster, he can fit through cell bars that would block a more solid infiltrator on their way to his target.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Ami doesn't like to let her troops get killed, so she uses a small number of powerful troops, such as the reaperbots, the youma, and her golems, and the main characters play a pivotal role in the battles. Enemy keepers prefer to Zerg Rush.
• Cooked to Death: While mopping up the attack of Emperor Zarekos, Ami notices that her chief goblin cook has a pot on the stove, chained up but still being jostled from inside. She decides not to ask any questions.
• Cooldown Hug: Ami gives one to Jadeite after he gets angry about Eternal Sleep.
• Cool Gate: As part of the two sets of Portal Networks:
  • Underworlder Portal installations, which connect to other ones, first seen in "Into the Portal", are described as:
    The portal reminded Ami of pictures of Stonehenge. Four arches, composed of two tall stone pillars with a horizontal crossbar on top, were arranged in such a way that they touched at the corners. The area inside the square they formed glowed with hazy images of faraway territories and emitted a warm orange light
  • At least one "hero gate network" exists, as said in "No Wonder Cure", and such gates are, as seen in "More Lessons":
    a structure that resembled a canopy tent, except that it was made of stone and rested on four thick, round pillars. Within the structure wavered a water-like surface, forming an upright oval that looked like a full-length mirror.
• Covered in Gunge: Here: One of the warlocks prefers imagining Cathy's blood-splattered body being covered in "sweet syrup instead".
• Covered with Scars: From Strange Trolls: Trolls that have been training and fighting against vampires and other undead for fifteen years, have been described as:
  four muscular trolls whose green hides were covered in battle scars
• Creepy Cave: The second lair of Keeper Arachne is a cave that is entered vertically, and spider-infested, along with All Webbed Up corpses.
• Crossover Power Acquisition: When Sailor Mercury becomes a Keeper, she gains access to a power set that is enough by itself to let Keepers become nation-level threats, giving her the ability to sense and influence everything in her territory. It also turns out to synergise quite well with her native senshi abilities (eg being a senshi means she regains magic much faster, and being able to possess minions allows her to grant Cathy access to her senshi transformation, for Super-Strength and Super-Toughness). If she could just get back to Earth, she would be in a much better position to defeat the Dark Kingdom...but there's a long road ahead, to regain her soul, before that's possible.
• Cry into Chest: Ami breaks down sobbing on Jadeite after returning from being tortured in the realm of the dark gods, long enough that Cathy's legs start to go numb while waiting for Ami to recover.
• Crystal Ball:
  • Used for communication, as revealed in Deal with the Devil:
    Her gaze turned to a round object sitting on one of the lab benches when she felt the magic around her react to it. The crystal ball, for it looked as if it had emerged straight from a fortune teller's tent. A glowing white nimbus surrounded it, and fog within was swirling to form a face.
    One of the devices in [Nicodemus Asbraxe's] study alerted him that a Keeper was searching for some unspecified item, and the fence quickly pulled his hood down until his face was hidden in a pool of darkness out of which only a long, mangy beard protruded. He then muttered a well-practised incantation, and a picture formed in the air above his coffee table, showing him the prospective client[.]
  • Ami later sees Sailor Mars scrying for her in a fire, instead of a ball. However, the contact across worlds is visibly far more draining for Rei than for Ami, leading Ami to suspect that the crystal ball makes it much easier.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Has happened several times in-story so far. Instances include Jadeite vs Arachne's second dungeon, Mercury's army vs the keeper on the coastline, Zarekos vs Mercury and Jadeite, and any instance where Mercury attacks a dungeon whose owner is banished or dead (except Zarekos, who isn't really gone at all).
  • The fight against Morrigan, the muscle-bound giant Acolyte of Azzathra is notable in that it is arguably the single most one-sided fight in the entire series. Morrigan is thrashed so hard some minions are actually unable to fall back to pre-established secondline defenses.
  • On a non-keeper note, the fight with the Underworld Army as Mercury strikes at them before they strike at her, while they're still in the Underworld no less.
  • Back to curb stomping keepers, Mukrezar took out the entirety of Crowned Death's intelligent troops with a collapsible ceiling.
  • When Ami is forced to abandon her holdings on the Avatar Islands, she defeats Dumb Muscle Morrigan again. The fight is ludicrously one-sided- to the point Ami actually considers Morrigan's forces collateral. Later, when interrogating Monteraine (the only one of Morrigan's minions to survive) she actually has to think about it a moment before she remembers Morrigan from their previous encounter. He didn't make much of an impression.
• Curse Cut Short: The "shit" from "flies over shit" said by Baron Leopold in "Beryl's Plan" when asking about what's drawing Keepers to the Avatar Islands:
  "Good. One less Keeper in the world. Have you found out yet what's attracting them to that desolate place? They are over it like flies over-" The Baron fell silent and nodded a greeting as he passed two halberd-wielding guards, causing them to salute.
• Cutting the Knot: Tasbaal alerts Ami to a dangerous build-up of wild magic around her dungeon heart, which will require the invention of complex spells and wards to drain it off. Or, someone could just throw some chickens inside to absorb it.
  Alchemist: Pretty fireworks when the magic went after them, too. You might want to have someone clean the chamber, though, Keeper.
• Crash in Through the Ceiling: At the end of "The Upper City" and therefore the beginning of "Making an Entrance", Ami uses her staff to smash a hole into the floor of a tunnel to get into the chamber below, with the noise drawing defenders right underneath her.
• Creepy Changing Painting: Multiple:
  • A normal, positive painting, under default Dungeon Heart configurations, will eventually be altered into something disturbing.
  • When Ami's dungeon is under direct attack by the dark god Crowned Death things start falling apart or warp in eerie ways as his rot-everything power infects them. Strangely, it is noted that parts of her Dungeon under observation are more reluctant to succumb to the effect.
• Creepy Monotone: The Unraveller. The author even said that it sounds like GLaDOS in his mind.
• Custom-Built Host: The Ice Golems are made by Ami specifically to host imp spirits.

D

• Dangerously Close Shave: Defied in Vanity Issues when Ami needs a haircut:
  "Cathy, can you cut my hair please?" She asked, producing a pair of scissors from thin air.
  "I'm not much of a barber," the blonde cautioned.
  "Well, I don't think the imps could do a good job, and I'd prefer not to have any of my other subordinates get too close to me with sharp tools."
• Dark Is Evil: The creatures of the Underworld, and Keepers in particular, are rightfully feared and hated by the surface world.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Ami's hospitals have deadly necromantic glyphs at the entrance — specifically, designed to kill viruses like the common cold.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to Sailor Moon canon, at least; the crossover pretty much ensures this. By the time Ami meets General Jadeite, she's prepared to acknowledge that his own schemes are not so bad compared to the evil she's seen in the Dungeon Keeper world.
• David Versus Goliath: Many of the conflicts with her enemies are like this, often with the enemy also underestimating her.
• Deadpan Snarker: Mukrezar's imp-butler.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • Becoming a Keeper is a pretty classic trade, gaining access to vast wealth and magical power in exchange for your soul belonging to the dark gods after you die.
  • The title of the third chapter is A Deal with the Devil, referring to Ami's deal with the demonic Horned Reaper, which Ami mentally notes "sure did look like a Western illustration of the devil."
• Death March: Soon-to-be human sacrifices for a ritual in the name of a God of Evil, Crowned Death, are mind-controlled and marched to the sacrificial site. The only consideration taken for their well-being is to ensure they won't die before the ritual takes place in a few days.
• Decapitation Strike: This is Mukrezar's proposed solution to Crowned Death's instruction to eliminate Keeper Mercury. That is to say, he wipes out the entirety of Crowned Death's intelligent troops with a collapsible ceiling, so that he won't have to fulfill the assignment.
  Mukrezar: Servants of Crowned Death! You may be wondering why I asked for you specifically. That's simple: you are his best and his brightest! Not only are you vastly more powerful individually than the shambling hordes; more importantly, you are also smarter. Much smarter. You can follow complex instructions without supervision. You have the ability to effectively use magic. Surprises? They won't leave you stumped. Where other undead blindly follow orders, you can think on your feet, evaluate the situation, take the initiative and make decisions! Strategy and tactics are not beyond you. All of you are, dare I say it, qualified to lead. And that, that is why I wanted, no, needed you all here! That is why I need you all- [crash] -need you all to disappear. Yes, exactly like that. Thank you very much for your cooperation. By the way, I quit.
• Decisive Battle: The "Armageddon" spell links two Dungeon Hearts together and teleports all their minions to one location for an epic battle. Whichever Heart runs out of troops first, shatters.
  • Ami first encounters it used by Nero, a subordinate of Arachne who fortifies his dungeon and then triggers the spell to pull Ami and her minions in. However, between Cathy's Senshi enhancements, Jadeite's extensive abilities, and Ami's direct intervention, Ami's forces win.
  • She in turn uses it when she's about to abandon the Avatar Islands, ensuring that the invading Keepers will go down along with her old Hearts.
• Defiant to the End: Abbot Durval doesn't intend to bow to a Keeper, even if it gets him killed. Subverted since Mercury isn't bothered a bit, of course.
  An insane act of defiance, perhaps, but he had lived a long life resisting and defying Keepers, and he wasn't going to stop in his old age.
• Demonic Possession: In a Callback to the Dungeon Keeper games, Ami is able to assume a black vapor form and enter someone else's body. It's possible for a strong-willed target to resist, but she mostly uses it on sub-sapient targets like golems, or with consent. The fact that her original body vanishes can be almost as useful as the possession itself. (It also kick-starts her perverted reputation, when an accident while learning the spell results in a situation with the Reaper's body that's Not What It Looks Like to the goblins.)
• Derelict Graveyard: The Dreadfog Isle Exclusion Zone, where ships disappear due to priests of Crowned Death and other servants of that god sinking them.
• Description Cut: From "A Small Deception":
  "it seems that Mercury lacks much of the viciousness of regular Keepers"
  [cut to Mercury torturing people in a bloody room. But, she actually didn't wound her captives and did it reluctantly.]
• Desk Sweep of Rage: In Unwelcome Surprises, a High Priest of Crowned Death is angry and "roared and swept its arm to the left, as if wiping everything off an imaginary table".
• Destination Defenestration: Baron Leopold hits Jadeite through a window, with a table.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: Tiger is a bit incautious with her inherited memories in Communication Restored:
  "Oh well, I'll console myself with all that awesome mind control magic in the library." A pause. "Wait, did I say that out loud?"
  Ami nodded slowly.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Ami has bested in single combat a Horned Reaper (multiple times at that), the oldest known Dragon on the planet, the Avatar, and a Lesser Aspect of the Dark God Crowned Death, which Mercury defeated by eating it and dumping the waste products back into the dark gods' domain.
  • And now she has escaped from Azzathra, Crowned Death, and The Unraveller. Despite the trap being double-layered and briefly successful in the Unraveller's case.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • The Light gods have seen and countered a wide variety of threats in their time, but they weren't prepared for a powerful electromagnet pinning the Avatar to the wall by his armour.
    "Admittedly, this is new. How are you accomplishing this?"
  • The dwarves' adamantine box blocks a Keeper's power from reaching the inside, so the Keeper can be killed — but they didn't realise just how much power is flowing to Keeper Mercury, not only the regular flow from her Dungeon Hearts, but also her senshi magic, and most importantly, a vast supply of Metallia's power. The box still keeps it out, but the whole city surrounding it is flooded with the resulting dark energies, turning tens of thousands of citizens into corrupted partial youma.
• Diplomatic Cover Spy: The Shining Concord's Ambassador to The Dark Empress is justified as this, but everyone involved knows what's going on, so it's not a secret information channel.
• Disciplines of Magic: Different types of magic are sorted into categories that are associated with specific symbol, like the "necromancy skull" and the "teleportation squiggle", but also the alchemy beaker, Metallia dark sun, and space-warping spiral.
• Dismembering the Body: Worshippers of Crowned Death have the ability to animate relatively intact corpses in their area of influence. So, while facing one, Ami had to do some Precautionary Corpse Disposal and rapidly cut up the single corpse in her territory. The oldest dragon.
• Disobeyed Orders, Not Punished: Due to events not going according to plan, Ami's minions take desperate measures, against her previous orders against such measures, to rescue her.
  In her current situation, she couldn't quite muster the will to feel anything but grateful about his insubordination.
• Disposable Decoy Doppelgänger: Ami eventually gets the ability to, given enough warning beforehand, create inanimate matter and shape it into whatever she wants it to look like. One use of it is to make decoys of herself, as seen in "Abandon Ship, Part 2".
• Disproportionate Retribution: Played for Laughs when Mukrezar, upon his return, feels that everyone is overreacting to his past misdeeds.
  Mukrezar: You burn down just one tiny little continent, and suddenly, someone sees it fit to put a bounty on your head.
  Imp butler: People can be so unreasonable.
• Distracted by the Sexy: In Assistants Acquired, Jared, apparently, by one of Ami's Dark Mistress applicants, who had:
  jiggling mounds straining against form-fitting black leather [...] Jered, [...] seemed hypnotised by the displayed cleavage.
• Divine Intervention: During Nero's Armageddon Battle, Mercury was about to die to the eldest dragon in existence until she managed to trick her into a sacrificial pool. The Queen of Darkness herself was more than pleased by this worthy sacrifice, killing the creature in an instant.
• Doing Research: As a Science Hero working in a new world, Ami does a lot, and then there's the warlocks which research enemy dungeons, and new spells.
• Doorstopper: It's over 810,000 words and still going. Even if you just keep to the entries by Pusakuronu, you will spend hours reading through the story.
• Double-Meaning Title: The chapter Staff Difficulties features both problems regarding a magical staff and Ami's problems with controlling her employed warlocks (a.k.a. her staff).
• Do Wrong, Right: Dr. Mizuno is concerned upon hearing about Ami getting drunk at the victory party held for defeating the assortment of Keepers, but consoles herself that the ensuing hangover would have taught Ami better. On being told that there was no hangover due to the alcohol being magically created and temporary...
  "Ami, that can't be healthy!" she shouted as she leaned toward the crystal ball. "Liquid suddenly disappearing from cells that are already using it - I shudder to think what that does to a metabolism." Very sternly, she continued "Next time you want to get drunk, use a real drink! Doctor's order!"
• Draco in Leather Pants: In-Universe example. The fairy sisters, proving that there is no justice in the Dungeon Keeper world, keep assuming the best about Jadeite because he's pretty, even as they assume the worst about Ami.
• Dragon Hoard: Dungeons' treasuries serve as this for Dungeon-Keeper-employed dragons.
• Dragons Prefer Princesses: Princess Julia is saved from a dragon by Jadeite, and wants to be returned there for some reason.
• Drama Panes: The chapter, "Fairy Audience", more than 200 chapters in, starts with the view out a window, as the third paragraph begins so:
  Two pinpricks of red light shone behind a tall window of one of the buildings burrowed half into the mountainside. Ami's breath condensed on the cold glass in front of her as she watched the crawling creatures scraping wide trails through the snow.
• Dramatic Irony: When the Sailor Senshi learn about the title that the Light gods granted to Ami:
  Sailor Moon: Hey, if Sailor Mercury is a real empress now, can we substitute her if we don't find the Moon Princess?
• Dramatic Stutter: Snyder when he's anticipating seeing Ami's 'true form' and doesn't:
  "Aren't- Aren't you going to convince them by revealing your grotesque and horrifying true form now?" Snyder asked, a hint of disappointment quivering in his voice.
• Dress-Coded for Your Convenience: In the episode Out-of-Dungeon Experiences, it is stated that the Dark Gods have a dress code for Keepers. It is even reported that those who veer from it suffer embarrassing wardrobe malfunctions.^note The tailor who told Ami this, however, might have been lying in order to get her to choose something less heroic-looking, however.
• Drool Deluge: A tense standoff between Ami and Jadeite is broken by him politely asking her to remove her dragon, since it's drooling on his head.
• Drunken Glow: A few:
  • From "Beryl's Plan": Ami, who was "red-faced" and had "obvious inebriation".
  • Cerasse, when she and her sisters are playing cards, with the prize being a cup of wine from a bottle.
    As the thinker of the group, she had already won the prize disproportionately often and it showed in the slight blush on her cheeks.
• Dual Wielding: With its many tentacles, Tserk is able to use three crossbows at once. The goblins call that cheating.
• Dude, Not Funny!: In-Universe, Ami's reaction to Tiger's antics. Leads to the Green-Eyed Monster reveal for why Tiger is acting that way.
• Duel to the Death: Azzathra, dark god of violence, demands that Ami face a Horned Reaper in single combat to the death, for his entertainment, as a condition of lifting the plague on her dungeon. And magic use is penalised. She's heavily injured, but ultimately wins by Ring Out.
• Due to the Dead: In City Expedition, Second Attempt, after losing some of her goblins, and driving back the enemy that killed them, Ami asks the rest of her goblins what she could do about it. This is their unsurprising response, to the surfacers' chagrin:
  "You heard! Go loot bodies before someone else do!"
• Dumb Blonde: From Assault on Wemos: One of Zarekos/Wemos's vampires, possibly also a Brainless Beauty:
  "Master! I have brought what you require!" A short-haired blond vampire called happily as she appeared before Zarekos
  [...]
  "Begone, brainless buffoon," he sighed "Note to self: do not choose any more vampires candidates purely on looks."
• Dungeon Bypass:
  • Keeper powers don't work on territory claimed by someone else, but that limitation doesn't apply to Dark Kingdom style teleportation, allowing Ami to directly rob Keeper Morrigan's treasury and leave him fuming and furious.
  • This is also Ami's tactic against Zarekos. She attacks him from the Underworld, where he hasn't set up any defenses, and is a location where no one other than Ami has attacked from before.
• Dungeon Punk: Ami's dungeons end up looking like this, combining the fantasy world of Dungeon Keeper with her technological know-how.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: In "Assault on Wemos", Wemos. Despite being a very sad Butt-Monkey for Emperor Zarekos up to this point, he goes out in a fairly badass way, helping take out his enemy by doing so, stopping him from using his dungeon heart by proxy.

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