Funny / Heralds of Valdemar

Series-wide

• Any time Tayledras mating circles are mentioned.
  • "How many Hawkbrothers does it take for a mating circle?"
    • "Only one, but he has to be flexible!"
• Companions insisting they're not horses.
• Shin'a'in proverbs, and the propensity of the Kaled'a'in Peoples for quoting them.
• All the snipes at Heraldic Whites and the impracticality of an all-white uniform, if not for being conspicuous, at least for being hard to keep clean.

Vows and Honor

• The short story Spring Planting at Fort Reach reveals that the awful, temperamental gray stud that Mekeal bought back in Vanyel's day was indeed bred to other lines, as Van had advised... but instead of keeping the stud's size without passing down his temperament, all that horse's descendants, several hundred years later, are as madly aggressive and difficult to work with as the original gray stud. The stables are full of violent horses that are with great difficulty and many injuries dragged out to work the fields in spring. Just as Companions stepped in to bully that original stud into behaving, now Tarma directs battlesteeds to help her teach a screaming, kicking horse to settle down.

Take A Thief

• Alberich splits a bottle of wine with Skif, with the thought that getting a little drunk will keep the boy in his rooms and get him to sleep instead of going out and getting up to anything. Then he lies down in his bed and finds that he has drunk enough to stay in his bed and not get up to anything - at which point the book cuts to Skif, who was careful not to get intoxicated and promptly goes out and gets up to something.

Exiles

• For the reader, anyway: the opening scene of Exile's Valor, where the Privy Council attempts to ambush and manipulate freshly-crowned Selenay into marriage - with each member of the Council presenting their own candidate in turn. Selenay, thanks to a Companion-Herald relay with Herald-Chronicler Myste, promptly shoots each of them down with encyclopedic knowledge of their candidate's bloodlines, and how it makes them unsuitable as a Royal Consort. Every single one of them.
• Alberich's first scenes with Herald-Chronicler Myste, where it talks about just how unsuited to combat she is, being clumsy, with no talent whatsoever for combat, with coke bottle glasses. Being Alberich, he immediately comes up with alternative training designed to all but weaponize Screw This, I'm Outta Here.
• Myste is an Author Avatar! (Who was blatantly — and successfully — given some of the author's physical disadvantages.)
• How Herald Alberich (with some help from Kantor) deters a pursuer (who happens to be a popular stage actor). He ducks into an inn, finds a group of young women and chaperones who are major fans, and innocently directs them outside where the actor is lurking about. Then all Alberich has to do is flatten himself against the nearby wall before he gets stampeded by the fangirls who practically chase the actor down the street.
  • Afterwards, his reaction (and Kantor's sniping) to Myste taking the initiative to seduce him.
  Kantor: If you didn't read that as an invitation, you're denser than I thought.
• Alberich in general when it comes to Myste. He has no idea what to do with the idea that a woman he likes might actually like him back, and it is hilarious. Kantor thinks so, too.
• The Running Gag of someone asking incredulously, "Did you just make a joke?" and Alberich replying, "Of course I didn't. Everyone knows I have no sense of humour."

Arrows Trilogy

• For those in the know, the early scenes where Talia thinks she's returning a "lost Companion" to Haven are very cute and gently amusing, especially when she starts hoping that she could find work at the palace and... maybe, possibly... even get to visit Rolan sometimes. Everyone she meets knows that her life has just been turned upside-down (in a good way), but she herself is clueless.
• The song "It Was A Dark And Stormy Night". A Henpecked Husband having to deal with his wife's pretensions of musical genius, until she dies under mysterious circumstances, but everyone who lived within listening distance gladly provided an alibi for the husband, leaving the investigators wondering how she managed to eat her lute.
• The minor sub-plot/Running Gag in the first book about Talia and Skif repeatedly trying to have sex and failing because one of them keeps falling asleep due to their crazy schedules. They never succeed, but no one is the wiser, and Skif enjoys a reputation as a ladykiller as a result. Talia marries at the end of the trilogy (with Skif as best man), but Skif is still running wild until he meets Nyara in the Mage Winds trilogy, about ten years later.
• The Once Done, Never Forgotten story about Kris and the chicken; during his first shift in the kitchens as a Trainee, the nobleborn bookworm Kris was asked to prepare a chicken for cooking by stuffing it. After he cut the chicken open, he said, "I don't need to stuff it, it's already full!"
• In the aftermath of Talia's near-drowning in a half-frozen river, Sherrill gives her swimming lessons. Her 'final exam' is to be dumped into the river in winter (again), which she passes "with flying colors and chattering teeth."
• The light-hearted beginning of Arrow's Flight, where farmgirl Talia realizes she's got to memorize essentially the entire Valdemaran Book of Peerage in a week or so because Princess Elspeth's investiture ceremony requires the Queen's Own Herald to act as, well, herald. During the ceremony itself, Heralds Dirk and Kris, acting as Those Two Guys, start slipping information to Elspeth about the nobles so she can give them a personalized greeting — it eventually becomes a contest, which Kris wins.
  Dirk: You wouldn't have if I'd thought of the sheep first.
• One of the few funny moments in Arrow's Fall is when now-official Queen's Own Herald Talia is trying to adjust to her new workload. She asks Rolan what he thinks of the boring royal audience sessions she has to attend, and is delighted when he drops his head and does a convincing imitation of a human snore.

By The Sword

• Just the fact that when Kero had sex with Eldan for the first time, they were on top of Need, who was tucked under the bedroll. That seems... uncomfortable. (At least the narrative tells us it was 'well padded to avoid making a lump').
• Herald Eldan, who falls deeply in love with Kerowyn, attempts to get her to come to him in Valdemar by requiring her to go to Haven to collect his ransom. When she finally needs to collect it in order to help outfit her newly gained Mercenary company, she instead sends a proxy via the Mercenary Guild. When they reunite years later, Eldan describes the encounter:
  Eldan: He just gave me one look, and made me feel like a small boy who's been caught trying to look up little girls' dresses.
• Many of Kerowyn's more colorful oaths, but the following one uttered when Daren manages to save the Skybolts and the Queen from Ancar's clever pincer attack takes the cake:
  "Great Blessed Agnira on a Polka-dot mule!" she breathed. "By the seven rings of Gabora and the rock of Teylar! Someone put that bastard up for sainthood - he's pulled off a friggin' miracle!"
• Kerowyn's reaction to finding out that her ex-lover/Better as Friends Daren has fallen in Love at First Sight (aka lifebonded) to Selenay, Queen of Valdemar
  Kerowyn (thinking): I'll have to remember to tell her he snores when he's drunk.
• The lectures/rants in the book about appropriate fighting attire (nothing bright to stand out, nothing fluttering to catch the eye, no fancy patterns or decorations that can get caught on something) in contrast to the outfit Kerowyn herself is wearing on the cover of the book. It's the main page image - see for yourself. It's actually possible to tell when someone else is at that point in the book, because nearly every reader will have the exact same reaction: a blink/double-take, looking at the cover of the book again, and snickering.
  • Naturally, when Kerowyn has earned Whites, she won't wear them, calling it the "just shoot me now" uniform.
• Kerowyn confessing to Dirk and Talia that she hates "Kerowyn's Ride" because people either sing it badly or take it too seriously. Talia is sympathetic, but Dirk is so amused by her frustration that he eventually has to flee for fear of laughing in her face. (He had started off on the wrong foot with her by congratulating the Skybolts on their 'professionalism and restraint' — he, like most Valdemarans, assumed mercenaries were all like the Tedrels).

Last Herald-Mage

• In Magic's Pawn Vanyel has an angst session after his first encounter with a colddrake, thinking that he was cowardly for gaping in shock instead of seeing a giant dragon for the first time and immediately attacking it.
• Vanyel's grumbling about his mostly-self-inflicted celibacy during Magic's Promise.
• How often Van's volunteered to be a Chosen Conception Partner - he's sired four children! One can get the impression that his Chronic Hero Syndrome and belief that every time he can use whatever he has to help extends to his fertility and his pretty Gifted genes. At one point he asks Yfandes if he should charge stud fees.
• More darkly humorous than anything else... Bard Stefan complains to Vanyel's nephew Medren that he's done nearly everything to try to seduce Vanyel and is seriously considering just ambushing the man. Medren quickly advises him not to take that approach, given Vanyel does not react to... surprises well, and mulls to himself about a time when some poor idiot barged in on Vanyel taking a bath. Said thoughts go along the lines of "Grandfather did say he wanted to rebuild the bathhouse. I don't think he meant for it to be demolished that way."
• Starwind and Moondance become the first Tayledras to make their presence known to multiple Valdemarans with they visit Forst Reach. Savil warns them about the particularities of the Ashkevrons and Starwind airily waves off her concern. The next chapter, the two of them are desperately trying to maintain polite calm when chattered at by one of the many teenage girls of the main family. Once they are able to elude her, a bewildered Starwind says that the Ashkevrons aren't a family but an army, noting that k'Vala is bigger but that's an entire Clan, not the descent of a single set of parents (Three generations, with the oldest members of the third getting ready to be married themselves, all in one household)!
• Bard Lynnell finding out that the young singer she rescued off the street assumed he'd been sold to a house of prostitution. According to Stefen, she blushed as red as her cloak.
• Van getting drunk the night before a major spellcasting — the one which he hopes will create Valdemar's magical security system, the Web. When he wakes up with a hangover and a bad mood (and on the floor, but that's unrelated), Yfandes is only too happy to enjoy his misery, and he swears he'll turn the tables on her as soon as he discovers how to get a Companion drunk.
• Offscreen, Vanyel and Stefan have a song competition where they sing and play the worst songs they can think of. The only one that's mentioned or described is one Vanyel sings, about being trapped in a Mage-circle for seventeen years. Savil, having a serious discussion elsewhere, knows it and sarcastically says it takes seventeen years to sing.
• The anthology Sword of Ice has Vanyel and Guardsman Jonne in the short story Chance, by Mark Shepherd. It starts with some yearning and the action makes for an Excuse Plot to make Vanyel need some tending, altogether it's very much a Hurt/Comfort Fic. Van's clothes are cut off him by lightning. Jonne gives him a full-body massage as part of the After-Action Patch-Up. Bathing together in a hot spring is involved. It's adorably self indulgent and includes this line.
  Fortunately, Vanyel's injuries were bad only above the waist.

Mage Winds

• Elspeth's Long List of what the hertasi can and can't add to her Heraldic wardrobe, concluding with 'nothing sparkly or shiny to catch the light and give us away.' The one she is talking to promptly snarks about how inconspicuous "big white target in green field" is.
• As Hydona puts Elspeth through some intense magical training, the Heir thinks to herself that the only way Hydona could be any more like her Shin'a'in-trained weaponsmaster is if Hydona quoted a Shin'a'in proverb. Hydona proceeds to then quote a Kaled'a'in proverb.
• After finding and rescuing Hyllarr, an injured hawkeagle bondbird, Darkwind hits on the idea of having his father Starblade care for him, as Starblade is himself slowly recovering after being freed from the villain's control and having someone to take care of might help both of them heal. Since most bondbirds have very limited ability to grasp complex ideas or abstract concepts, Darkwind is prepared to face some difficulty in explaining his plan to Hyllarr - and is completely floored to discover that Hyllarr not only gets it immediately, but is fully capable of shamelessly hamming up the pain of his hurt wing to play to Starblade's sympathy, complete with little chirps of distress.
  The bird roused again with satisfaction. :Hyllarr plays hurt-wing-eyas, Starblade feels good, Hyllarr gets many good eatings, tender eatings, tasty prey, make Hyllarr better. All good.:
  "You," [Darkwind] said, shaking an admonitory finger at the bird, "are going to wind up too fat to fly."
• When Elspeth, Darkwind, and co land in the forest of Sorrows due to their Gate being hijacked. There they are, trying to figure out how they got there and expecting a fight, when a spirit manifests, terrifying them even more, because there's nothing anyone can do about a malevolent spirit. Then...
  "Bright havens!" said a cheerful, gentle voice in her head. "You all look as if you've seen a ghost!
  • Enjoying yourself there Vanyel?
  • Need, who is considerably older than Vanyel, emphatically calling him a child, deflating his ego when he's proud of what he's done, and lecturing him about abducting the party and letting everyone who was waiting for them get frightened.
• Vree contributing to a serious meeting on how to infiltrate Hardorn in an assassination mission - suggesting he and Firesong's bondbird Aya do tricks and proceeding to do a somersault on the meeting table. The later description of the "traveling carnival's" bird show makes special note of how gleefully Vree takes to the role, and how aggrieved Aya is by the indignity.
• Poor An'desha, trapped in Falconsbane's head during his imprisonment by Ancar, has a good luck at the people around him in hopes of a potential ally. Instead he finds King Ancar — a father-slaying Evil Prince who enjoys Cold-Blooded Torture and sex with young girls — and Hulda, a Manipulative Bastard who would use any thing or anyone for power. The rest of Ancar's court isn't much better. It's enough to make An'desha consider, however briefly, making a pact with Falconsbane just to get out of there.
  These people were all scum!
• The gryphons, being something no Valdemaran has ever seen, cause minor commotion wherever they go (and scare the hell out of the Heralds who first meet Elspeth and her party). When someone suggests trying to 'hide' the gryphons so they are less conspicuous, Elspeth is flummoxed at the very suggestion
  As what? Statuary?

Mage Storms

• In Storm Warning, Karal and his mentor Ulrich meet a Herald and his Companion who are their assigned escorts to Haven. Karal sizes up the Companion in purely horsey terms — graceful and clearly trained as a kind of service animal, but those blue eyes probably mean deafness, the silver hooves are painted or something, which will cause problems in the long run, and how on earth is an intact stallion so well behaved? When he realizes he and his master have been traveling with a White Demon and his Hellhorse all this time, he's so shocked he nearly goes into a Heroic BSoD.
• In the same book, Karal meets Herald-Captain Kerowyn, who is The Dreaded in Karse because of the military defeats she and the Skybolts handed them. He's terrified. (And turned on.) By Storm Rising, however, he muses that her reputation for eating Karsite babies on toast for breakfast is exaggerated — toast, sure, but no babies until lunch at the earliest.
• While they're walking home from a pub, Karal gives An'desha and Natoli an impassioned speech about how people like them, who were unusual as children, have troubled youths and the important thing is that they don't let those troubles define them, but that they do what they can with the parts of their lives they have personal control over! Natoli applauds.
  "That makes good sense. I wonder what late night food we can gain personal control over?"
• Being teleported by a Firecat, or "Jumping", is much more difficult and nausea-inducing than going by Gate, and Karal hates the former. After their party takes a Gate to the edge of the D'horisha Plains and are looking down the cliff at a difficult climb, Firecat Altra smugly says he'll meet them at the bottom, unless Karal wants to Jump with him now. Karal, realizing that Altra thinks he won't take him up on it, immediately announces that Altra has volunteered to get everyone down, one rider and mount at a time. Altra did not want to exert himself like this, but seeing the gratitude of the other party members, he's forced to be gracious and do it.
• In Storm Breaking, Karal nearly being proverb'd to death by a leshy'a Kal'enedral heavily implied to be Tarma ^note Later confirmed by Word of God. He finally shuts her up with "Who is wisest says least."
• Most of the goings-on with Duke/King Tremane and his Earth-sense are darkly funny, given that he tends to be The Comically Serious and something of a Flat-Earth Atheist where non-magical Gifts are involved.
  • Initially, he scoffs at the idea he would even have it, thinking it's too much of a Contrived Coincidence. Darkwind counters that the descendant of hereditary farm holdings probably would have it, since his ancestors couldn't have done so well without it. Not only is it a neat argument, it gets a laugh out of Tremane.
  • Then he agrees to the binding ritual, thinking it'll be empty words. The next morning he is in psychic shock due to a combination of the new Gift and the wretched state of the land itself — which becomes funny once Elspeth and Darkwind coach him through the worst of it and he admits he brought this on himself by not taking things seriously.
  • And later, when he needs to use his Earth-sense to scout the magical Nodes (a task he's dreading), High Priest Solaris scolds him like a mother, with implications that Hardorn itself is telling him to man up.
  • When he's finally been instated as King, there's one last bit of physical humor at his expense — his chair of state is a prop throne from a theatre production, carved down to hide the Imperial motifs. This has made the wood rather thin in places, so he has to sit down very carefully so it doesn't collapse under him. (Though by this time he's unbent enough that he finds it funny too).
• Firesong is very dismayed to find himself Need's bearer. She's got a very acerbic wit and is the one person he knows who is not impressed in the slightest by his beauty or power, so he's always on the back foot with her. Even hearing that she thinks it's funny when people realize she's a possessed sword causes him serious consternation. Firesong decides he'd better introduce her to the rest of the team so that she doesn't scare anyone into dropping something important.
  Need remained silent after that little sally, which either meant that she agreed with him, or that she was insulted and was plotting revenge.
• The running gag of Firesong being bad at basic housekeeping. At one point Karal hears him singing and supposes he must be mending something — singing keeps him from just swearing outright.
• Seized with the idea that the still-powerful ghost of Vanyel Ashkevron would be invaluable in preventing the second Cataclysm, Karal's approval is required before they can go about fetching him. To Karal Vanyel is a terrifying figure out of myth and a boogeyman used to scare children into behaving, so for all that he's learned to like and trust Heralds and Companions this gives him pause. Cue Florian, Altra, Firesong, and Need (sharing Firesong's senses) giving him essentially puppy-dog eyes.

The Founding of Valdemar

• Kordas's mage Jonaton is a crossdresser who also has a bad case of Sticky Fingers. Jonaton was officially first found running away from a mob that was after him for wearing women's clothing. To this day, Kordas isn't entirely sure of the dress-wearing to dress-stealing ratio that was present in the mob's motivation. One of Jonaton's other hobbies is basically taking pictures of cats, adding funny captions to them and passing them around during meals.
• The first gate is made in a basement that is officially the storage space for several kinds of food, including preserved nuts. Upon seeing the Circle, a group of mages so elderly that they are considered to be partway through live mummification who also spend a lot of time bickering with each other, someone quips about spotting the preserved nuts mentioned on the sign near the entrance.
• While putting on his "country bumpkin" act, Kordas spins a very extensive tale about the manor that was built for his family on the Emperor's orders in which it is only a quarter occupied, with the rest very much overrun by vermin. As in so much vermin that about half of it is keeping the other half in control, while he doesn't mind the colony that is in the wine cellar because it keeps the servants from stealing wine and likes how easy it is to get pigeon meat or eggs.
• Kordas and Isla are trying to find an idea to keep the Empire's attention away from their Duchy-wide escape plan. The idea the Dolls's Hive Mind comes up with? That Isla and Hakkon have an affair to distract anyone spying on the Valdemar Duchy from anything else that might be going on. The suggestion is made only knowing of Hakkon's existence, which means the Dolls are unaware that Hakkon already is in a realtionship the Empire wouldn't approve of. With Jonaton, who is absent due to being part of the team getting the first temporary settlement ready.
• During the escape, Kordas views taking the animals from Merrin's farms without the latter's knowledge as a way of getting back to him for being the local Imperial spy. At the end of Beyond, when the Valdemar Duchy's former lands are left in the care of a Good All Along Merrin, Kordas gives Merrin a few suggestions for a new prime export. In the middle of it, he realizes out loud that it may be a little hard for Merrin to follow his suggestions if he doesn't return his cattle.
• The tales of the telecaster at the beginning of Into the West. First of all, two people using it to give cooking lessons turned out to be a surprise hit. Second, one of the cats, Sydney, regularly sleeps in the camera lens equivalent and the device sometimes randomly activates. The latter keeps happening right when Syndney is licking his genitals.
• Kordas still refers to Sydney as "Sydney-You-Asshole", a nickname he got in a scene from the previous book in which Jonaton got so mad at the cat that he called him this.
• It turns out that Jonaton's worst resentment towards the Empire, which has a "draft-or-kill" policy when it comes to mages, is the outfit he had to wear as a draftee.
• Jonaton's first proper scene in "Valdemar" is quite a riot:
  • He's officially the prime suspect for about one out of twenty discrepancies in the budding kingdom's inventory.
  • While discussing what Kordas could do about the above issue, he suggests sending Hakkon to enforce it, because the two of them have been having trouble finding time to spend together.
  • He's supposed to have apprentices. When Kordas asks why he's carrying books for him instead of said apprentices, he replies that they have all been sent out to steal things for him. Kordas knows all too well that the chances he's joking are much lower than they should be.
  • After stopping short of seemingly forgetting that Kordas is now a king during most of the scene, he justifies his theft of the latest draft of the duchy-wide map by its obsolescence: said map still has the royal palace labeled as a manor.

Anthologies and Other

• The Valdemar Companion includes a travelogue set after the Owl books, featuring a few places that haven't been seen in a long time, including a town where a demon had constructed a temple of lust before Tarma and Kethry took him out.
  Now Delton has turned into a tourist trap—whether this is an improvement or a tragedy depends on your point of view. Little souvenir “Need” swords and Tarma and Kethry dolls of the very lewdest quality are for sale at the temple where the demon was destroyed.
• Sword of Ice has Chance, which is an official Hurt/Comfort Fic expanding on an anecdote in Magic's Promise. A gay soldier performs an After Action Patch Up on Vanyel after Van's clothes are cut off by lightning and makes an observation that is critical for the Sexy Discretion Shot.
  Fortunately, Vanyel's injuries were bad only above the waist.
• Seasons has A Midnight Clear. The village of Kettleford's giant talking Friendly Neighborhood Spiders, which are sweet, childlike, cuddly, and wear sweaters and booties the villagers knitted for them, respond to a bandit attack by leaping on and envenomating the bandits, killing them horribly, and then consuming their liquefied insides. The Killer Rabbit aspect is a little funny - before the bandits show up, the short story really works on portraying the lamb-sized spiders Rhapsody and Harmony as adorable and fully integrated into village life - but it's also darkly funny that poor Vanyel Ashkevron sees this and goes "Wait, isn't that fucked up?" but the villagers and his Healer friend wave off his concerns and are even a little condescending to him for being bothered.

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