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Overlady is a crossover between Overlord and The Familiar of Zero by EarthScorpion.

Originaly posted on Spacebattles Dot Com (Thread 1 and Thread 2) before EarthScorpion left and went to Sufficent Velocity (Thread 1 and Thread 2).note 

This dark and malevolent tale of wickedness begins, as such things do, on a dark and stormy night. Well, no. That's a lie. It was a dark and stormy mid-afternoon. But it was still pretty sinister!

The above sentence roughly summarises the general approach of Overlady to the conventions of the fantasy genre.

Following a comprehensive failure to summon anything, Louise de la Valliere runs away from school to seek her fame and fortune (and the approval of her mother) as a wandering hero. Unfortunately, this turns out to be rather harder than the tales she heard suggested, and she ends up being caught out in a storm in a barren swamp. Naturally, the place she chooses to take cover in is a vampire-haunted ruined tower.

This, surprisingly, turns out to be a wise career move.

Through a series of events which are thoroughly Evil and not coincidental, Louise found herself as the new overlord — well, overlady, as she is of the feminine persuasion — of a tower and attached dungeons which might charitably be called a "fixer-upper". However, it also came with a full tribe of Minions, including a certain elderly goblinoid who calls himself Gnarl and was very impressed by her natural — and denied — capacity for Evil. And so began the tale of the most Evil overlady known to (some people's) history.

Comes with a full cast of goblinoids, vampires, demons, female half-incubi, Heroes, villains, family members, treacherous councillors, tyrants from the Mystic East, and one Karin de la Valliere (who scares all of the former).


Tropes found in Overlady:

  • Accidental Truth: The Reconquista accused a family of being demonologists during the rebellion as an excuse to have them all executed and found out afterwards they really were. They were notably surprised and remarked that said family really didn't seem the type.
  • Ambiguous Syntax: "You're a bloody vampire."
  • Anachronism Stew: All over the place in the Abyss. Let's see, they have enchanted mirrors which serve as TV cameras, paparazzi (who, due to the absence of cameras, rapidly sketch pictures instead), damned souls chained to toilet walls which blow out hot air to dry your hands, and several dragons are seen talking about drops in the 'hoard market'. Can be explained though because the part of Abyss where these things appear is basically an (even more) corrupt and hellish parody version of Los Angeles, appropriately called "Los Diablos".
  • Answer Cut: Magdalene wonders what kind of monster would be cruel enough to hide an Evil artifact in a blocked off toilet, then the narrative switches to Eleanor who's fighting a smirk (despite not hearing the question).
  • Apologetic Attacker: Louise when fighting Cattleya, who is under the Bloody Duke's mind control. Cattleya does apologize back, too.
  • Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: The coach messenger that Louise captures is very disappointed that Louise doesn't want to take advantage of her.
  • Artifact of Doom: There's an endless array of Evil artifacts that naturally count to various degrees, but the four Artifacts of the Overlord are both far more relevant to the plot and are actually sentient. If they're active, a magical brand appears on the corresponding part of the bearer's property/forces, and Overlords/overladies that gain control of all four are especially rare.
    • The Mind of Evil amplifies the bearer's magic and any magical artifacts/beings under their control, its location is unknown in the present day, but seeing as the Albion steam golems have a magical brand on their heads, it seems like their creator possesses the Mind.
    • The Right Hand of Evil makes the bearer's monsters and beasts of war much more powerful, but its location is also lost to time.
    • Louise is in possession of the Left Hand of Evil for most of the story, and its main function is improving the fighting ability of the bearer's soldiery, i.e. making her Minions far more competent than they naturally are and less likely her Minions blow themselves up on accident. Gnarl would prefer if Louise only had this one, since it makes her reliant on the Minions to carry out her plans.
    • The Heart of Darkness is held by the overlady of Albion, Tiffania Westood, and makes the bearer's lieutenants or trusted underbosses far more powerful and skilled than they would be otherwise, which is mainly why Tiffania's orphans are so dangerous and capable of being so much more Evil than they otherwise would be as children.
  • Attractive Bent-Gender: Kirche's crossdressing disguise (but mostly the fake mustache) made Montmorency really uncomfortable.
  • Badass Boast: "I am getting [Louise] back. There may be blood. It won't be mine."
  • Beware the Silly Ones: Minions are short, dimwitted, and easily-distracted goblinoids prone to fighting (and killing) each other for loot... but they are not to be underestimated. During the raid on the Bloody Duke's tomb, the Greens take little time to brutally dispatch quite a few of the surrounding vampires who were watching the fight from a distance.
    • Louise's sister Cattleya is quite the Cloudcuckoolander but is still a rather powerful vampire.
  • Blood Bath: Louise's grandmother was very fond of bathing in the blood of commoners to regain her youth. She occasionally overshot, turning her into a little girl.
  • Bond One-Liner: Guiche tries to insist on these but others don't understand why.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: Parodied in the original Spacebattles thread, which include a list of fake Achievements based on the events of the story, including some for stomaching the Heroic Interludes which focus on other characters.
  • Buffy Speak: From time to time Louise devolves to this when she can't find the words to say.
  • Cannot Cross Running Water: All Vampires stick true to traditional lore.
  • Children Are Innocent:
    • Inverted. The minions raising hell while disguised as children actually helps their disguises as everyone knows children are little monsters.
    • Averted later on with the Albion orphans under Tiffania's care, who are both the source of Evil plots and schemes for the dark elf faction that Tiffania belongs to, but are also part of their overlady's fighting forces, made much more lethal by Tiffania's artifact.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Agnes would rather shoot an evil clown than listen to his monologue.
  • Comically Missing the Point:
    • Louise frequently misses other's hints and implications that her elder sister Cattleya is a lesbian, thinking they're talking about her obvious vampirism instead.
    • Cattleya seems to think her parents were overprotective due to how much they worried when she left the house, rather than them being worried she'd kill someone.
  • Creepy Crossdresser: One of the Minions, a Green named Fettid, enjoys wearing dresses and other feminine clothing. Though given the Minions' nature it's not entirely clear if Fettid is crossdressing at all. Possibly subverted either way, since Fettid is refered to with female pronouns.
  • Dance of Romance: Subverted with Louise and Lee's dance during the Cabal Awards, mainly due to the fact that both of them are wearing full plate.
    "...thus any possible flirtatious touches of flesh against flesh had two layers of demonic steel in the way."
  • Demonic Possession: Madame de Montespan after she uses an Evil artifact against Louise.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: The Dark and Evil Start of Evil Darkness (also Dark Evilness).
  • Do Wrong, Right: Demons dislike adultery as it barely counts as a sin (they would know) and if it's done with permission, it doesn't stain the soul at all.
  • Double Entendre: So much of the humor in this. Especially when the subject of Scarron (all hail the Lord of the Rising Tower) is raised, but there's also a running side joke about how Louise doesn't have a tall tower like previous (male) overlords.
  • Double Meaning: Eleanore de Valliere's "praise" of Francoise de Montespannote  during their debate is filled to the brim with this and Double Entendre—such as praising de Montespan for her dedication to wardsnote , the long nights she spent working on wards, or how her devotion to wards led to her current social and political success.
  • Dramatic Pause: Spoofed by the vampire Louise meets in the first chapter, who inserts one after every other word.
    "The constant dramatic pauses in the dialogue were beginning to disturb Louise by this point, because they broke up the flow of conversation no end and really rather annoyed her."
  • The Drunken Sailor: Notable mostly because the minions want to know what to do with him, early in the morning. Maximilian even gets a couple new verses out of it.
  • Dysfunctional Family: The Vallières. The Duke's and Karin's marriage is strained, following Henrietta's dethronement and the peace treaty with the Albion Rebellion, both of which Karin is furiously against. The eldest child, Eleanor, is distant and responsible for the middle child, Cattleya, getting turned into a vampire, and the youngest, Louise, is believed to be dead from their POV.
  • Elite Mooks: Literally. There's a band of five named Minions conforming to the standard RPG "Fighter, Rogue, Mage, Healer, Bard" loadout who tend to end up running around on their own engaging in special operations for Louise. And stealing and breaking things while unsupervised.
  • Epigraph: Each part start with a quote, most of them belonging to a blatantly evil or delusional figure.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Scarron towards his daughter and niece, Jessica and Isabelle respectively. The former is the primary reason why he's lost most of his power (she's the lynchpin of his binding, being a child of his blood); he literally can't hurt her because of the binding that her Hero mother placed on her, but he genuinely loves Jessica and promises that anyone who does get her killed is going to have A Fate Worse Than Death. Isabelle is the only niece he has who isn't a treacherous backstabbing idiot, and he's ecstatic when they begin to make up their differences.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Though in this case, the standards apparently consist of not selling all your Evil artifacts simply to have the funds to to buy expensive clothes.
    • Izah'belya is honestly shocked that a six year old is summoning succubus demons like her.
  • Evil Is Deathly Cold: When Hell freezes over. Seriously, you have to wrap up warm when journeying to the Abyss in the winter.
  • Evil Overlord: Louise herself, becoming the latest Overlady to take control of the Tower. She shows unsuspected talent for Evilness, even if she has to convince herself she's actually doing Good deeds. There's also speculation from readers that Brimir might have been one (well, an Evil overlord).
  • Exact Words: Kirche reassures Queen Marianne that she "does not think of (having sex) with men and she certainly doesn't do anything with women."
    • Cattleya's letter is full of statements that are technically true such as the Overlady of the North knowing where Louise is and that she won't harm Louise if Cattleya comes with her.
    • Cattleya didn't "order" a wolf to kill a nobleman.
    • Pure heart does not mean "good", as one demon finds out. Pure evil works just fine.
  • Exactly as Planned: Louise claims that everything Madame de Montespan has done is the result of her manipulations. It really wasn't. At all.
  • Fantastic Racism: Demons who possess Hero blood suffer from this in the Abyss, as there's a fear that they'll start using their powers for Good.
  • For Want Of A Nail: The plot is set off by Louise not summoning Saito at the Spring Summoning Ritual, or indeed anything at all. In addition, how much trouble would Tristain and Henrietta be in without Louise and her familiar to clean up the mess? Let's bury her underground for three months and find out!
  • Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Cattleya tries to be one, and is succeeding. Somewhat.
  • Fountain of Youth: Louise's grandmother used blood baths for her dose of anti-aging. Notably, there were times where she misjudged the dosages and thus ended up with the body of a little girl.
  • Funetik Aksent: Tabitha speaks Tristanian with a heavy Gallian (French) accent, which is a main reason she doesn't talk much.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: Jokes about the morality system not working as advertised.
  • Glamour: A common demon power, though Minions also seem to have it somehow. Jessica suffers because, as a half-incubus girl, it makes her appear as a irresistibly handsome guy, and when she gets too excited the changes become physical.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: Louise gets bright yellowish-pink ones after she becomes the Overlady.
  • Good Is Dumb: Oh so much.
    • Note that Delusional Evil figures don't quite count, however. See Hypocritical Humor below.
  • Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Both Louise and Cattleya avoid using actual curses, which results in declarations like "Sugar!" and "You dastard!"
  • Grey-and-Gray Morality: Creeps in often in the story. The forces of Evil want to despoil and kill everything, in theory. In practice most of them are more card carrying villains. The forces of Good on the other hand are just as often corrupt, petty and vindictive. Many who claim to be Good abuse their power, wealth and authority while indulging in morally questionable acts. Being a comedy, this is all Played for Laughs.
  • Guile Hero: Due to being much weaker than the rest of the group, Guiche has grown used to using his wits to defeat an enemy.
  • Half-Breed Discrimination: Demons who have Hero blood suffer from major Fantastic Racism in the Abyss, while Humans with Demon blood in them always run the risk of being killed by intrepid Heroes above ground due to either mistaken identity or out of fear that they'll bring Demons around. This leaves half Demon, half Hero hybrids like Jessica stuck between a rock and a hard place.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Jessica, who is the daughter of the prince of incubi and a human heroine.
  • He-Man Woman Hater: Pope Aegis X, who appears in the pre-chapter quotes from time to time, is this. What else would you call someone who's written over thirty lectures on the "wickedness of women"? Though reading his words it becomes very clear that his reasoning is based on selfishness, a lack of empathy, and generally having the mindset of Never My Fault.
  • Hidden Buxom: Kirche's attempts to do this subvert the many clean and pretty variants found in most animes. She has to use a hideously expensive whalebone corset, which causes her a huge amount of pain and breathing difficulties, and halfway through the night it causes her to faint from oxygen deprivation and breaks one of her ribs.
    • Inverted with Louise's armor which is designed to make her look bustier than she is.
  • Hiroshima as a Unit of Measure: Apparently Louise and Cattleya measure how mean someone is in centi-Eleanore's (as in one hundredth as mean as their eldest sister).
  • Hurricane of Puns
  • Hypocritical Humor: When it comes to "Heroes" and Delusional Evil, because there's absolutely no difference between the two categories.
  • I Hate You, Vampire Dad: Cattleya to her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Louis de la Vallière. Cattleya kills him after Louise wounded him.
  • Impossibly Cool Clothes: Jessica specializes in making these and manages to make them practical to boot. First she designs a cool suit of demonic armour for Louise with functional heels and blood-red cloak draped over it, which accentuates and emphasises Louise's figure, while also offering full-body protection. Later she creates a gorgeous scarlet wedding dress for Cattleya made out of a gauzy fabric dyed in unicorn blood (fitting because Cattleya is a vampire), for both looking fabulous while also allowing for mobility in a fight.
  • Incompatible Orientation: Henrietta to Louise, since she had True Love with the deceased Prince Wales, meaning there's no room in her heart for anyone else, on top of her platonically loving Louise.
  • The Incorruptible: The current generation of Vallières are the paragon of noble and good virtues, a far cry from the Obviously Evil of previous generations. Most of the foul, wretched beings Louise speaks to, as well as the house staff who served them during their evil heyday, blame this on Karin, claiming that she lured the Duke away from his Obviously Evil heritage, and are delighted that Louise is going back to her roots, so to speak.
    • Interestingly, there are some hints that they, especially Karin, aren't all that squeaky-clean as they'd like people to believed — the main piece of evidence being Karin had to have a rather late Shotgun Wedding due to falling pregnant with Eleanor.
  • Innocent Innuendo: Guiche spouts off a hurricane of them after beating Don Marko.
  • Insistent Terminology: Jessica is half-incubus, not a succubus or half-succubus (because her father is an incubus and her mother a human, you see). Given that her Glamour powers work so that she looks like a dashingly handsome guy rather than a sexy girl (which she still is under the Glamour), it's a reasonable insistence.
  • It's the Best Whatever, Ever!: One of Louise's Minions declares Cattleya to be the "best sister in the whole world!" after she suggests they can ride her vampire wolves.
  • Karma Meter: As a faux-novelization of the imaginary Familiar of Zero-themed Overlord game, there is a morality system with three branches: Pragmatic Evil (conquer the village and exploit its resources), Indulgent Evil (burn the village down because it pissed you off somehow), and Delusional Evil (either of above options, with the "For the Greater Good" excuse), with possible overlap between them.
  • Kavorka Man: Blitzhart von Zerbst. As one Spacebattles.com member said: He has so many points in Seduction and Bluff that it overcomes the really low Charisma.
  • Killed Mid-Sentence: Agnes shoots an evil clown in the middle of his monologue.
  • Killed Off for Real: Igni tries to fight the fallen angel Baelogi after she possesses Francoise, only for the burgeoning dark goddess to logically deny the existence of Minions hard enough that he fades from existence entirely, making him extremely double-dead.
  • Large Ham: Vampires are noted to have a tendency towards excessive melodrama, a trait that can actively be used against them since they love to waste time showing off and giving unnecessary speeches.
  • Lesbian Vampire: Cattleya is all but stated to be one. During her return to the family estate, Louise found Cattelya literally face-first in her maid's crotch (granted, Cattelya was having to be sneaky about drinking blood). She's totally immune to Jessica's incubus aura when the latter's excited about the Cabal Awards (something that Jessica quickly picks up on and tries to gently point out to Louise). Cattleya also makes a point of saving young women just to hire them to be new maids. This apparently was the case before she even became a vampire, as an epigraph where her mother states that she wasn't likely to get married at all shows.
  • Licking the Blade: Cattleya after butchering a group of vampires starts licking the blood off her sword.
  • Magic A Is Magic A: Incubus allure makes people see the wielder as an extremely handsome man, while succubus allure makes the wielder appear to be a very beautiful woman. A human/demon's gender does not factor into the equation. This means some people are unfortunate enough to be a completely different gender from their allure, meaning people automatically see you as an attractive person of the opposite sex, as shown with Jessica.
  • The Medic: All blue minions. Scyl in particular, since he's a member of the Five-Minion Band.
  • Mistaken for Gay: Louise a couple of times, mainly thanks to her choosing to wear sensible armour unlike the stripperific attire Overladies traditionally wear. Potentially not mistaken after she starts getting very attracted to Henrietta.
  • Memetic Badass: In-universe, Karin the Heavy Wind, at least to Louise's minions.
    Under her armour, she no has fingers. She only have more wands. For more magic.
    They say she blow Overlord so hard he go flying up into sky and only leave tiny twinkle behind, and that where that song come from.
    They say, if you see her and you Evil, it already too late. If you not see her, you maybe only seconds from death.
    We only have to fight the bear carpet in her room? It not dead, you see; it just scared to move.
    I hear there is once a sucky-bus who is falling for the Karin. Then she take it into room and when she come out, it go and become a nun.
    • At the very least, the bear carpet one seems to be true; Cattelya tells her pet bear that he should go back to her mother's room before she returns from her trip.
    • Turns out she killed so many Evil Villains that she crashed the economy of Hell, all by herself. It's called the Karinian Crash.
    • It's not just to the Minions. Emperor Lee has heard the one about more wands as well, and he lives across the ocean with a language barrier in the way.
  • More than Mind Control: The Evil Artifacts of the Overlord inflict this on their bearers, giving them power in exchange for subtly, slowly, bringing their worst aspects to the fore. This is all in order to motivate the bearer to hold a truly Evil mindset, preventing them from realizing this. Louise spends the vast majority of the plot under the influence of the Left Hand of Evil, which is why the anger born from her inferiority complex rules her and why she's so conflicted about Henrietta. After Eleanore takes the Gauntlet from Louise in Amstelredamme, Louise discovers that she can cast magic (in particular Air) at a very high level with no training, and that she feels better than she has in years.
  • Mundane Luxury: After three months of rat meat and mushrooms, Louise is overjoyed to have some bread and a bowl of stew.
  • Mundane Solution: Kirche's father was once faced with two cups, one of which was poisoned and told to figure out which was which. He responded by punching the man and making him drink both cups.
    • Montmorency stops three hundred mercenaries from attacking her group by hiring them for more money than their last boss was paying. The mercenaries' previous employer is quite upset that worked.
  • Mundane Utility: Louise uses evil Overlord fire spells to heat her baths.
  • Necessarily Evil: Most of the Delusional Evil types are figures of authority on the side of Good, i.e. the Popes. Louise is convinced that everything she does and plans to do is for the greater good of Tristain.
  • Nightmare Fetishist: Monsieur Blanc, the butler of the Vallière household, is one. When a maid recounts a supposed encounter with a ghost, he goes into a rant about how the house used to be properly ghost-infested and the former owner (Louise's grandfather) and his wife used to positively collect and manufacture more ghosts by torturing people to death, then complaints about how Louise's parents got rid of them all, much to the butler's dismay. The two maids listening to him understandably have a little trouble sharing his enthusiasm about ghosts and torturing people.
  • No Man of Woman Born: Scarron tried to avoid this kind of prophecy, as it claimed that he would be brought low by one of his own bloodline. He took steps to avoid producing a child (thus becoming an incubus that focused on corrupting men instead of women), only to get caught out with a female Hero that dressed in a masculine way. Scarron's schemes to conquer the world were repeatedly foiled by that same Heroine and her companions, with the final blow being a ward using his daughter that constrains most of his power and prevents him from harming said daughter.
  • Not What It Looks Like: Spoofed to hell and back when Louise walks in on Cattleya in a compromising position with one of her maids. Cattleya was sucking her blood... from her inner thigh.
  • Obviously Evil: Apparently, every generation of the Vallières apart from the current Duke and Karin. One of Louise's ancestors was a previous Overlady, and her grandmother actively summoned demons and bathed in the blood of commoners to regain her youth. The Tristainian Royal Family (themselves seesawing between Good and Evil every few generations) consider the Vallières to be a family worth keeping around, since they traditionally keep to their lands, pay their taxes on time, and are patriotic to the point that they'll crush outside forces that attack Tristan.
  • One True Love: Princess Henrietta of Tristain and Prince Wales of Albion have this, which goes poorly like in the Familiar of Zero canon. True Love is a recognized phenomenon in-universe, and it renders Henrietta totally immune to demonic allures since she only sees her memories of him when affected. Deconstructed over the course of Overlady, as Henrietta literally cannot move on from her Prince's death; she's motivated to become a powerful necromancer solely to bring him back from the dead, and she feels like that no-one will ever love her like he did. In the bad future after Eleanore breaks time itself, Henrietta becomes a tyrant that invades Albion, kills everyone there in revenge for its government causing Wales' death, and then crashes the island into the Abyss pursuing further revenge. She conquers a third of it before dying, then becomes a psychotic undead tyrant warring with the Abyss for the remaining two-thirds.
  • Only in It for the Money: The band of heroes from the heroic interludes only bestow their heroic time and efforts on quests that bring in the big bucks. Some of the group have an actual reason for this beyond simple greed, however. Kirche's reason for doing this is to gain enough money to buy her own lands and property, as she'll only be the heir to the Zebst fortune so long as her father doesn't have a legitimate son, which she accepts will happen someday.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: Pretty conventional, and in the Hammer Horror school. Vampires feed off life energy (most commonly from blood), are fast, strong, and tough, and can turn into things like bats and wolves. They also have a crippling number of Achilles Heels: fire, sunlight, counting, stakes, no reflection, silver, counting, excessive melodrama...
  • Oxymoronic Being: Athe the Doubter is worshiped by being ignored and denying his existence as his realms include doubt and disbelief, and as such, atheists are amongst his favored mortals. A shrine dedicated to him is one deliberately neglected and ignored by its owner, who turns away from it while reading aloud from atheist writings or biology books, then denying the existence of gods if he or his servants call.
  • Playing with Fire: Louise learns a fire-based spell and uses it for everything, up to and including warming her bath. Best of all, it is adorably pink! She also threatens to set people on fire a lot, and fire magic is her go-to for most problems.
  • Punctuation Shaker:
    • Most demon names are a creatively spelled human name with some apostrophes thrown in, such as Izah'belya (Isabella).
    • One dark elf's name is so bad that everyone (including the narration) simply calls him "Apostrophe".
  • Pure Is Not Good: Demons only have to follow the spirit of their orders if given by a pure-hearted virgin of noble blood. Pure evil works just as well as pure good.
  • Raised as the Opposite Gender: Kirche and all of her sisters. Their Father is a very powerful (both personally and politically), self-centered (and/or incredibly stupid) man with extremely sexist views on women who had no luck siring (legitimate) sons, so he raised his daughters as sons, and considers the female gender as a flaw they can actually grow out of. Kirche didn't even know she was a girl until she was 9.
  • Rage Breaking Point: Louise manages to remain fairly stoic when hearing all that's happened during her time in the Tower, but learning that her fiancé Wardes is already sleeping with another woman (instead of going through the traditional period of mourning) launches her into a rant that manages to impress Scarron. Wardes remains a sore spot for her, and she goes into further rants later on.
  • Right for the Wrong Reasons: Ol' Phil, uneducated horse herder who's occasionally quoted in the Epitaphs. He's a crazy old man with an Oop North accent who has an Elven conspiracy theory for everything. The snag is that he's mostly right about what he rants about; as an example, he thinks Elves meet with evil creatures every year to plot and eat cheese on sticks, and they planned to blow up his herd with a ray from space. The forces of Evil do have secret meetings every year where they plot and eat expensive food, but the only Elves not killed immediately are the Dark kind, and they weren't involved in blowing Phil's herd up.
  • The Runaway: Louise runs away at the beginning of the story, after failing to summon absolutely anything during the Spring Summoning ritual. It's how she manages to stumble into the Tower in the first place.
  • Running Gag: Louise is confronted by angry horses (or unicorns or pegasi) every time she leaves the Tower. Even Henrietta's undead mount wants to gore her. It's mainly due to the raw Evil pouring out of her, since once she loses her Gauntlet to Eleanore in Amstelredamme, a unicorn helps her without attempting to kill her.
  • Serious Business: Maxy the Minion takes poetry very seriously and viciously beats a particularly bad bard for a) having too many syllables in one line, b) trying to rhyme lament with Gramont.
  • Shout-Out: Lots. To list but a few:
  • Sliding Scale of Vampire Friendliness: Inclined quite heavily towards the "unfriendly" end of the stage. Vampires have to feed off life frequently (and human blood tastes much, much better than animal blood), but the main source of unfriendliness is the fact that it comes with a non-human mentality. Vampires are predators, and have no instinctual issues with killing people.
  • Stealth Insult: Eleanore gives a long speech about how Madame de Montespan's expertise is wards and she has spent long hours on her hands and knees working on wards.note  She further adds that no one has any doubt about her virtue, fidelity (to the church), and suitability for marriage. She's doing it because she's mean to the bone and Montespan took her (not actually) deceased sister's fiance for personal gain, and everyone in the audience is playing along, including the man overseeing the debate.
  • Stripperiffic: Comprehensively averted with Louise's armor, despite the best efforts of the universe. She was offered many forms of typical Evil outfits for women, with little-to-no protection. She then decided that she wanted the male-style ones, which look basically like the canon Overlords' ones. She keeps getting insulted for it, but Louise can actually survive explosions and combat as a result of wearing actual armor.
    • Henrietta, on the other hand, is fully embracing such outfits. The reasons are two-fold. First, it's traditional. Second, she's rebelling against her mother's idea of proper dress.
    • Most female villains and demons follow this to a ridiculous extent. A dark elf is noted as having "increased the amount of fabric she was wearing by at least two orders of magnitude" by putting on a cloak, while a succubus barmaid in the Charming Fairies Inn is described as "wearing about three handkerchiefs worth of clothes". One of Louise's ancestors, who actually was an Overlady herself, apparently only wore tassels and... one wonders what else, if anything.
  • Stupid Sexy Flanders:
    • Kirche in drag provokes this reaction from Montmorency.
    • Overlady Louise and her "confusion" about Princess Henrietta, which starts getting worse over time. She gets very flustered by her, and keeps having to convince herself that it's her Evil blood's traditional reaction to a captive princess, and not her being sexually attracted to her.
  • Succubi and Incubi: Scarron is an incubus. A "confirmed bachelor" incubus. With a half-incubus daughter. (No, not "succubus". Yes, "daughter".)
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: Jessica reassures Louise that there's absolutely no chance of a monster breaking free during the performance at an Abyssal cinema and killing everyone.
  • Take a Third Option:
    • Scarron was confronted with a prophecy that stated he would be brought low by one of his own blood... so he changed his focus from female mortals to male ones, as that would let him keep building his power without resulting in a child.
    • When confronted with killing Cattleya or being killed by her, Louise throws a bunch of coins at her then beats her senseless while Cattleya's forced to count them.
  • Take That!:
    • Louise rants about the idiocy of the imperial system of measurement at one point due to its ridiculous conversion rates.
    • Jessica is very insistent that subtitles are far better than dubbing. Louise shoots right back that she doesn't want to read words on the screen at the same time people are talking.
  • That Came Out Wrong: "Let's go take advantage of Jessica while she's hungover."
  • Time Abyss: Gnarl, when pressed by Louise during the Albion invasion, casually reveals that he is six thousand years old and came into existence around the time of the first Overlord, i.e. when the world first came from the Void and that Overlord corrupted it with Evil. The named Minions are a lesser example, as they all have been fighting and dying for a thousand years.
  • To the Pain:
    • Scarron gives a rather impressively gruesome description of what he will do to Louise if she allows Jessica to get killed. Jessica gets angry about it when she learns about it, since Scarron keeps scaring her friends off with the speech.
    • Any time Louise wants her Minions to know she's very serious about a given order, she'll give more detailed threats than normal.
  • Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Played for Laughs with the orphans who suggest the Greenpeace-like "Dark Elves" commit blackmail, mass-murder, prostitution, kidnapping, and extortion.
  • The Un-Favourite: Eleanore. Born of unplanned pregnancy when neither the Duke nor Karin were willing to retire from Hero work yet, and thus was mostly raised by the household staff, resulting in the somewhat distant relationship with her parents. And then her attempt to impress them resulted in Cattleya becoming a vampire, and she was nearly disowned for this. She now lives in Amstelredamme, and very rarely comes home.
  • Unskilled, but Strong: Cattleya has no real clue how to use a sword, but she's so insanely fast and strong from being a vampire that it doesn't matter.
  • Villain Protagonist: Louise, natch. For a given value of 'villain'.
  • We Will Meet Again: Subverted; Mott starts to make a speech to this effect, but he gets Killed Mid-Sentence.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: The less-known vampire's weakness of being forced to count beans/coins is used by Louise to disable Cattleya without killing her. And beating her down while she was counting. Louise was sorry about that.
  • Weirdness Censor: The minions are often seen as normal children despite their Paper-Thin Disguise.
  • White Sheep: Duke Vallière is a Good Hero from a family of Evil.
  • You Kill It, You Bought It: A group of Orcs attempt this after Tabitha kills their leader.
  • Younger Than They Look: Subverted; Kirche is actually twenty. When the others are surprised, she points out that she got kicked out of multiple academies and is both taller and bustier than every other girl at school.

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