Drop A Stone
started as a Legacy of Kain What-If story, but as the series continues it has evolved into a Slice-of-Life based on the Original Characters that the original premise generated.The series provides examples of:
- Baby Factory: Vempari were under an obligation to have children during the war, with one group of refugees being raised in a creche instead of by their parents so those parents could fight. A pair of lesbians acknowledges that they need to have children because their numbers are still low, and wouldn't invite a male into their bed otherwise.
- Black Hole Sue: Being able to go more than one thousand words without Sarah being at least mentioned is rare. That she's usually at least a little involved with anything interesting that happens does not help her case. Lampshaded in the author's notes. "Hey look, a Kain chapter. Remember Kain? I almost got through the whole thing without talking about Sarah."
- Butterfly of Doom: Invoked before being Averted. Janos is a lynchpin of History and the story starts by an Isekai saving his life. Some details change, but mostly the important bits are restored. Discussed much later when Sarah tries to talk about Anarcrothe, who never became a Guardian because that change to History wasn't corrected.
- Brutal Honesty: Referred to in-universe as "the truth bludgeon," Sarah sometimes wields honesty as a weapon.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Comes up a few times in the interest of preserving time-loops. Averted in one case where his son can take his place, and then they realize that a clone would be better.
- Doctor's Orders: Archimedes has an argument with Ozker about how Ozker doesn't have the authority to make Archimedes slow down and take care of himself.
- Eloquent in My Native Tongue: A weird example because while Sarah's English mostly aligns with Nosgoth equivalent to English, some phrases don't. The most egregious example is Terran-nerd-speak sounds really violent except in Hylden, where BSOD is "giggling embroiderer."
- Even Evil Has Standards: Vorador takes pride in being the most wicked vampire ever, but when Sarah asked him for lessons in being evil, he later complained that she was crossing lines that made him uncomfortable.
- Homosexual Reproduction: Ribaki is the son of Chixiksi and Ozker, while his mother was a machine. They spent about seventeen years trying and had to settle for a child that should have been terminated because of defects that weren't legally allowed when using artificial reproduction. A lesbian couple considered using the same process, but decided against it because they weren't allowed to carry the attempt in one of their bodies.
- Incompatible Orientation: Catullus is a vempari and he falls in love with a human. She is initially repulsed by the idea, but eventually she is willing to reciprocate. It's hinted that them being genetically incompatible might still be a social issue.
- Language Equals Thought: Played with.
- Multi-lingual characters introduce words that are clunky to express in other languages, such as a word that translates as "mistrust," but it's like saying "dislike" instead of "murderous hatred."
- The Timestreamers have a strange thought process that makes it hard to explain things because there is no language for it.
- “Shift feathers if the daegalum decides to slam you into something.” Daegalum is one of the thirty words for wind that was explained earlier in the story, but this was also said by a bat-winged character to someone who didn't have wings.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Mainly Catullus. He was mostly raised by his mother with help from a Cultural Rebel and a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire, but he was living in a human city for the first part of his life. It resulted in him not quite fitting in with the rest of his kind, and he finds the older generation problematic.
- Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid: Ribaki is half Hylden, half vempari/vampire. Lailah was temporarily a vampire, which did things to her DNA that made her not quite human and able to have children with Catullus.
- No Woman's Land: One city does give rights to unmarried women, but when Lailah tried to run away from an arranged marriage, the leaders demanded that she be returned to her husband when they knew that he forced himself on her.
- O.C. Stand-in: Chixiksi is The Builder
- Redeeming Replacement: While following Moebius' chessmaster methodology, Archimedes has much better intentions than his predecessor. Downplayed because Archimedes is aware that he's using a Omniscient Morality License without complete omniscience.
- Social Services Does Not Exist: In one city, if you feed an orphan, you own him. Averted in another town where children can be taken away if they're not being properly cared for.
- Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Sarah's nature as an Isekai with powerhouse traits makes her a natural candidate to steal the spotlight away from Kain and Raziel. Timestreamer Archimedes also spends a lot of time in the spotlight, but as the story progresses, each Original Character gets far more attention than Kain or any other Canon Character.
- Talking the Monster to Death: Breaking the Timestreamer is an arc of the story focused on this. It ends with the idea that Sarah might accidentally be killing the monstrous part of vampires just by being a bad influence.
- Trapped in Another World: Sarah is from Earth, and she's not sure whether it's Trapped in TV Land or if she's in a real world that inspired the video game.
- Turn the Other Cheek: Sarah once challenged Kain and did not try to physically fight back. That he was willing to hurt her while she was only taunting him showed that he was not in control of himself.
- Windmill Crusader: Head Chancellor Caldwell believes that he is averting the wrath of Lady Fortuna by trying to permanently kill Sarah after she knocked over a shrine. A need for an Obvious Rule Patch quickly turned into Screw the Rules, I Make Them!.
- With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Invoked in a set of principals whose name translates to "duty and selflessness." Also Discussed whenever someone questions whether or not it's a good thing.
- Vegetarian Vampire: While one of the ingredients is human corpses, there is a substance other than blood that vampires can drink. Many vampires in the setting still want the real stuff.
- Voluntary Vassal: While Sarah didn't have a choice about serving Kain, she says that she didn't mind being his property because he treats his things better than people. Later, Sarah suggests that Archimedes claim her as his slave, and they finally settle on calling it community service.
