Literature / Liaden Universe

"The books chronicle the adventures of Clan Korval: a bunch of magicians, lunatics, pilots, and lunatic magician pilots."

— Sursum Ursa, Stuff You Like

The Liaden Universe books by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller feature the creation and later exploits of Clan Korval, a prominent family on the planet of Liad. They are best known for the founders of the clan being the ones who rescued their ancestors from a Planet Eater species that destroyed their previous universe (as well as their unit of money being named after one of them). Being pilots is very important to them. They also own, or are owned by, a sentient Tree.

The Korval novels, in timeline order:

• The Great Migration Duology
  • Crystal Soldier
  • Crystal Dragon
• Balance of Trade (based on/containing a novella of the same title)
• Trade Secret
• Local Custom
• Scout's Progress
• Mouse and Dragon
• Conflict of Honors
• Agent of Change Sequence
  • Agent of Change
  • Carpe Diem
  • Plan B
  • I Dare
• Fledgling
• Saltation
• Ghost Ship
• Dragon Ship
• Necessity's Child
• Dragon in Exile
• Alliance of Equals
• The Gathering Edge
• Neogenesis
• Accepting the Lance

Crystal Soldier and Crystal Dragon make up the Great Migration Duology (a series prequel set centuries before the other novels), in which a genetically engineered soldier, a genetically engineered Manchurian Agent, a sentient tree, and a schoolboy trader help a population escape into a new universe.

Balance of Trade and Trade Secret are another prequel duology, sequence, set in the long gap between the migration and the following Agent of Change sequence, introducing the first Terran Master Trader. It has nothing to do with Clan Korval directly (although there's a cameo appearance by one of Miri's ancestors, and Trade Secret in particular foreshadows developments in later novels).

Local Custom, Scout's Progress, Mouse and Dragon, and Conflict of Honors begin to introduce the Korval characters who will be at the center of subsequent novels, in small-scale adventures where the stakes are personal (but not unimportant).

Agent of Change, Carpe Diem, Plan B and I Dare make up the Agent of Change Sequence, in which the descendants of the prequels realize that there's an enemy within their home planet and band together to defeat it. This was the first published sequence, with everything else either a prequel or a sequel.

Fledgling and Saltation introduces Theo Waitley, whose story overlaps with and continues the Agent of Change sequence. The first two books were posted in draft form to the authors' website as they were written, in return for donations to support the project. They were then picked up by Baen, and sequels commissioned.

Ghost Ship is a sequel to both I Dare and Saltation, bringing Theo together with the Korval characters from the Agent of Change sequence. Afterward, they go their separate ways again, with Theo's story continuing in Dragon Ship, and Korval's in Necessity's Child and Dragon in Exile.

The authors have written many short stories and novellas taking place in the Liaden Universe as well, published as yearly chapbooks sold by mail-order and more recently available online. There have been a number of collections over the years, varying in form and degree of completeness; all but the most recent are now available in the Liaden Universe Constellation collections released by the novels' current publisher.

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Liaden Universe provides examples of:

• 2-D Space: Humorously, Liadens on space stations tend to think that way. In Balance of Trade, however, space-born Jethri doesn't - so when he leaps off the edge of a space station deck into a zero-gravity zone, the Liaden toughs chasing him are thunderstruck and Jeth becomes an in-universe Memetic Badass overnight. The Scout who finds him isn't quite so amazed, but compliments him on a well-executed escape.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: One of the properties of the knives made by the Middle River Clan.
• Abusive Parents: Kareen towards Pat Rin (not necessarily consciously, but enough for the family to decide to have him fostered against her will).
• Accidental Marriage: Val Con giving Miri a knife = married (in the eyes of the Clutch, whose culture and tradition revolve around knives).
• Ace Pilot: So many.
  • There's a high proportion of them in Clan Korval, which actively selects for piloting ability (though even so it contains some so-so pilots, and even the occasional one such as Lady Kareen with no aptitude at all).
  • The Liaden Scouts also train skilled pilots, for a particular skill set focussed on small, fast, and highly-maneuvrable ships. "To fly like a Scout" is a proverb, though whether it's a compliment or an insult depends on the person saying it.
• Achievements in Ignorance:
  • Any trained psychic would know it's impossible to leave a parcel inside your mind for another person to retrieve telepathically at their convenience. Miri has no training, and doesn't know it's impossible, so she does it.
  • Later in Carpe Diem, Shan does several equally impossible things during an astral excursion, and makes the same excuse... but the narration explicitly notes at one point that he knows perfectly well that what he's attempting is impossible (and is desperate enough to try anyway, whereupon it works). There are hints that there's more to Shan and his abilities than he realizes.
• Action Girl: Miri especially, but most of them have badass moments.
• Actually, That's My Assistant:
  • In Plan B, newly-recruited Proud Warrior Race Guy Nelirikk assumes that the Big Guy Jason Carmody is his new commanding officer, and dismisses Miri Robertson as an assistant of some kind, when it's actually the other way around.
  • Happens several times in I Dare after Boss Conrad sets up on Surebleak, where his physically-imposing bodyguard better fits local preconceptions of what a leader looks like.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: AIs seem to be considered somewhat chancy because it is difficult to know what a machine might do without human intervention. Bechimo's creators were well cognizant of the possibility that their creation might possibly go mad (hence the inclusion of emergency backup personalities that could overwrite the primary personality in the event of a mental breakdown). However, some of them (such as Jeeves and, eventually, Bechimo) are legally recognized as sentient and sapient people in their own right. Another consideration is that AIs complicated enough to qualify as people can't be left to run on programming alone, but must be socialized just like biological people; Jeeves, who got a proper upbringing, is happy and very self-assured, but Bechimo, whom unforeseen circumstances forced out into the world before his education was complete, has a tendency to act like a needy, willful, and self-centered child. Admiral Bunter, launched at the end of Dragon Ship with no socialization at all, is even worse.
• Alien Among Us: Inverted in Carpe Diem, when Val Con and Miri crash-land on a 1940s-equivalent human world and try to blend in until they can work out how to be rescued.
• Almighty Janitor: In Scout's Progress, Daav yos'Phelium, Delm Korval and one of the most powerful people on the entire planet Liad, works as a lowly starship mechanic at Binjali's shipyard to get away from the pressures of rule.
• Alternative Number System: It's not explicitly stated that the Liadens have a base-12 numbering system, but they do use multiples of twelve in many applications, including timekeeping (12 days in a week), units of currency (they have several named units, each worth 12 times the one before), and the number they count up to when they're being patient with someone.
• Android Identifier: In the prequel duology, Batchers are an underclass of artificial human servants, who are marked by glowing green markings on both arms, which they're required to keep visible at all times. Though usually referred to as "tattoos", the markings are genetically expressed and can't be removed by any of the methods that would work for a normal tattoo. The only method widely known to work is to amputate and regrow the entire arm (the setting's medical science include limb regeneration), but even if a rogue Batcher could find someone they trust to perform the operation, a person who's "lost" both arms will inevitably attract suspicion.
• …And That Little Girl Was Me: Near the end of Balance of Trade, Jethri's cousin Grig tells him a story about an expedition that encountered a cache of the Old Technology, and a young and inexperienced member of the expedition who was luckier than he deserved to be. The boy is, of course, Grig himself, as is revealed when Grig lapses into first-person at the end.
• And the Adventure Continues: the last page of the Agent of Change sequence
  • It took several years, and a couple of spin-off novels to introduce the new character, but the adventure did continue with Ghost Ship.
• Arranged Marriage: Standard practice for Liadens. Marriages are arranged by the head of the clan, for the good of the clan, and the amount of input the person getting married has into the choice of spouse varies considerably. (Also, Liaden marriages are generally for fixed terms, the standard being "one year, or until there's a baby". Unfortunate daughters of poverty-stricken clans can spend their entire lives going from one arranged marriage to another to keep their clan afloat.)
• Artificial Human:
  • The Great Migration duology is set in a society with an underclass of artificial servants, with barcodes on their arms and no human rights. Artificial humans also make up a significant proportion of their armed forces. And then there are the aelantaza, a clan of genetically-engineered assassins.
  • In the Balance of Trade duology, the Tomas clan, and Jethri Gobelyn, are clones with some added genetic tinkering.
• Asteroid Miners:
  • Terence O'Grady, in Agent of Change, was an asteroid miner.
  • Surebleak was abandoned by its corporate founders after new deposits of timonium were found in an asteroid belt where they could be mined more cheaply than on Surebleak.
• Auto-Doc: Common in the "present-day" time period of the Agent of Change and Fledgling cycles; less so in the prequels' eras.
  • As a collector of old technology, Uncle possesses more advanced Old Tech versions of autodocs, as does the Old Tech ship Bechimo.
  • In Balance of Trade, one of Jethri's relatives relates how an Old Tech autodoc saved his life, and the scouts find one in a cargo of Old Tech contraband. (These units may subsequently have been reverse-engineered into the 'docs ships carry in Shan and Val Con's day.)
  • In the Great Migration duology, Cantra's ship Spiral Dance is unusual for having an illicit Sheriekas-tech autodoc unit aboard.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: the passing of Korval's Ring.
• Badass Creed: The Korval motto, "I Dare".
• Battle Butler: Jeeves, Trealla Fantrol's robot butler, is powered by a retired military AI and is also in responsible for House Security. (Not to mention taking control of the entire planet's security net in the event of a Captain's Emergency.) After Korval migrates to Surebleak, leaving Trealla Fantrol behind, Jeeves is officially reassigned as the clan's head of security full-time.
• Battle Couple:
  • Val Con and Miri
  • Cantra and Jela
• The Big Guy:
  • The Clutch Turtles are gentle giants given to deep thoughts, but if you manage to get them angry you'll regret it.
  • Jason Carmody is a boisterous bruiser (though he pulls off "gruff, mean, scarred and withdrawn warrior" pretty well, right down to pretending to berserk.)
• Blind Jump: Hyperspace travel requires careful calculations to avoid navigation hazards such as stars, but there is a move colloquially called the "Smuggler's Ace", which is a blind hyperspace jump a short distance (generally from somewhere within a solar system to somewhere within the same solar system) — just enough to shake a pursuer or avoid being pinned down in a firefight, while minimizing the risks of jumping blind.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The three sisters in "Veil of the Dancer".
• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • The Liaden abide by a strict, voluminous honor code that governs all aspects of their life and can seem cryptic and impenetrable to outsiders. Prominent features of this code include the concepts of Balance, which holds that any action (whether harmful or beneficial) must be met with an equivalent response, and melant'i, which crosses "face"-like social status with separation of multiple roles held by a single person. This code also incorporates different dialects of the Liaden tongue (which are spoken in different social situations) and bows of varying depth and associated gestures that convey relationships. On Liad, a social faux pas can have lethal consequences.
  • In fact, most planets and cultures in the Liaden Universe have their own cultural mores and honor codes that visiting characters find strange (and vice versa). One of the themes of the series is the difficulty outsiders can have in dealing with "local custom."
• Bodyguard Crush: Pat Rin and Natesa. Ends with Natesa asking to be released from her contract. Pat Rin is devastated, until she explains that she's not leaving, she just wants to continue on her own terms — which, unlike the terms she's just been released from, allow for the two of them to act on their feelings.
• Braids of Action: Ex-soldier action girl Miri has very long hair which she wears in a single braid (which she wraps around her head if she's expecting to be doing something where it might get in the way).
• Brain Uploading: Discussed in "Wise Child". It's been tried, but has always resulted in the uploaded mind breaking down and dying due to an electronic neural architecture being too different from the neural architecture of a living brain.
  • The Uncle seems to have ways around that, as his organization uses this technology to interrogate a captured assailant.
• Brainwashed: The Department of the Interior's agents have all undergone a long and painful brainwashing process that conditions them to unquestioningly accept the Department's goals and their assigned role as an expendable cog in the big machine.
• Break-In Threat: Early in Agent of Change, when Miri still doesn't trust Val Con, he leaves breakfast and coffee in her locked bedroom while she sleeps. In context, it's less a threat than a warning — if she doesn't trust his intentions, she will need to take stronger precautions than just locking the door — and a reassurance that although he could kill her at any time, he isn't going to.
• Brick Joke: The story is set up in such a way that elements in early stories or novels can sometimes appear unexpectedly in later ones.
  • In Crystal Dragon, Cantra sends her starship off on a decoy mission, with an offspring of Jelaza Kazone at the controls, to draw the enemy's attention away from her exodus fleet of starships. Half a dozen books later, in the final chapter of Dragon Ship, that ship found its way into the new universe, with the same tree still at the helm.
  • Plan B has a single-book use of the structure: Very early in the book is a scene where a character far from the action learns what is going on and starts pondering what to do about it; then there is not so much as a hint of him until he shows up on the final page.
• The Cabin Boy: Gordy Arbuthnot serves as cabin boy on his cousin's trade ship until he's old enough to formally sign on as an apprentice trader.
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Borrill, Zhena Trelu's "dog" on Vandar, doesn't look anything like a "dog" as Val Con or Miri know them, but is called a dog by the narrative (and Val Con theorizes that it fills the same ecological/cultural niche on that world). Borrill is only described in the most general of terms, but he has head ridges and is never pet, he just his ears pulled, suggesting he isn't a dog we know either. The local "cows" are likewise said to be weird. The primitive humans, OTOH, are pretty much standard.
• Can't Argue with Elves: The books (particularly Conflict of Honors) are replete with examples of Liadens who treat humans with absolute disdain, referring to them as "it" and cheating them blind at any opportunity. This mindset also fuels the villainous Department of the Interior's plans for Liad's ascendance (under their rule, of course) and the rest of the galaxy's enslavement.
• Canon Discontinuity: The short story "Lord of the Dance" was written as a look ahead at what life on Surebleak might be like after the five-book "Agent of Change sequence," but before any such novels were even on the drawing board to be written. When the authors actually sat down to plot the later novels out, they realized that various necessary plot elements, including certain characters leaving Surebleak for extended periods at particular points, meant that there was literally no time in which the story as written could actually have taken place. Hence, it has been relegated to non-canon (though certain elements, such as the reason Pat Rin couldn't pass any of his piloting tests, were incorporated into other canonical tales).
• The Captain: Shan and Priscilla, consecutive captains of the Cool Ship Dutiful Passage.
• Captured on Purpose: Agent of Change begins with the sentence "The man who was not Terrence O'Grady had come quietly." It shortly turns out that being exposed as an imposter and captured is all part of the plan, as it gets him inside a security perimeter so he can achieve his actual goal, after which he swiftly makes good his escape.
• Cast from Calories: How it works for wizards. For minor everyday workings it doesn't have any obvious effect, but a working of any significant size will leave a wizard ravenously hungry, and there are at least two examples of a wizard visibly losing weight after a major working. (One is in Conflict of Honors, and is followed by Priscilla looking in the mirror and reflecting that she looks like she's the survivor of a famine.)
• The Chessmaster:
  • Uncle, at least from other characters' perspectives.
  • The Department of the Interior's analysts and Commanders of Agents imagine Val Con as some kind of chessmaster, when in reality Korval is simply a huge Coincidence Magnet. (Though that doesn't mean Val Con can't also be a chessmaster...)
  • Daav has an excellent reputation for always getting his way. At one point he convinces Kamele to take Theo on a trip because it will be good for Theo—and convinces Theo to go on the trip to humor her mother.
  • Jelaza Kazone may be the greatest chessmaster of them all. Certainly, it has played the longest game (or, at least, second longest—the Uncle is one of few beings in the Liaden Universe who can claim to have been an adult when the Tree was only a seedling), can foretell the future, and has a knack for getting its way.
    • In a subplot woven through Dragon Ship, Dragon in Exile, and Alliance of Equals, the Tree even forces the Uncle to take part in its design, by the simple expedient of giving Daav a pair of unripe seed pods before he undertakes a dangerous mission. Much as it rankles, the Uncle knows he dares not bet against "Korval's meddling Tree" insofar as it can foretell the future.
• The Clan: A basic building block of Liaden society.
• Clean Up the Town: Pat Rin yos'Phelium on Surebleak.
• Cliffhanger: Many of the books end with either real cliffhangers with the characters in danger, or the authors piquing readers' interest in some other way... then the book ends. Sometimes several books can go by between their introduction and resolution. The series has been this way from the very start—the first-written book, Agent of Change, ended with Val Con and Miri trapped in a crippled space ship, in orbit around an uncharted planet... and then the authors wrote Conflict of Honors, a backstory novel about entirely different characters, before revisiting the cliffhanger in Carpe Diem.
• Cliffhanger Wall: I Dare, the last book in the original story arc, ends with an And the Adventure Continues scene that can also be interpreted as a cliffhanger. While the fans quickly made it clear they'd like to know what happened next, the authors first had to figure out for themselves where the story was going; Ghost Ship, which picks up from the end of I Dare, was published nearly a decade and six other novels later. The six other novels are all prequels, a mixture of distant prequels set centuries earlier and more recent prequels that start to set up the backstory for Ghost Ship and what followed.
• Cloning Gambit: Hinted and eventually explicitly shown (in Dragon in Exile) to be the source of the Uncle's longevity; he has an Old Tech device with which he can produce a new body for himself whenever the old one is dying.
• Coincidence Magnet: The Korval clan comes in for special attention from fate (or "the Luck" as the characters themselves have it), perhaps due in part to Cantra's role in leading humanity to that universe. It is demonstrated repeatedly that members of Korval's families are magnets (or "nexuses" as the characters have it) for strangely unlikely chance. This tends to result in members of the family ending up in impossibly coincidental situations that can leave other characters shaking their heads (and often, quite reasonably from their perspective, seeing conspiracies where only coincidence exists).
  • For example: what are the odds that a half-brainwashed Agent of Change disengaging from a mission would meet, become companions with, and eventually lifemate a woman who happens to be the granddaughter of a missing member of a long-lost clan with whom his is allied—a woman who grew up on the planet that his cousin is shortly going to civilize so Clan Korval can move to? And that this woman's own clan's world is about to be invaded by Yxtrang, bringing with them the very member of that race he had encountered ten years before? The entire Agent of Change sequence is one long chain of increasingly unlikely coincidences. (It drives the Department of the Interior, and more than a few people who are actually in the know about Clan Korval's history with the Luck, right up the wall.)
  • In Dragon Ship, a clan or guild of psychically-empowered merchants not only declines a Korval business offer but has Theo Waitley and her ship all but thrown off the planet because they are aware of Korval's chancy history with the Luck and don't want to risk any of it rubbing off on them. Bechimo's builders strongly warned him against having anything to do with Clan Korval for effectively the same reason.
  • The Crystal duology has the striking coincidence of Tor An deciding to fly to Landomist for the first time and showing up just as Cantra's scholar alias is in need of a pilot with certain information.
  • It is actually hard to decide whether Coincidence Magnet or Weirdness Magnet is more apt, since from the point of view of Clan Korval there is nothing supernatural about the Lost Technology, aliens, or psychic powers they keep encountering. But the mundanes who frequently get caught up in events and swept along in Korval's wake would have different opinions…
• Coin Walk Flexing: One of Lute's signature moves is walking a round gaming counter across his knuckles. After Shan learns that he's a reincarnation of Lute, he acquires an ability to make a gaming counter appear, walk across his knuckles, and disappear; to his annoyance, it's not entirely within his conscious control and sometimes happens by itself when he's worried or distracted.
• Common Tongue: Trade. Guess what it's used for.
• Company Town: Surebleak was a company planet, until the company left; then it became a Dying Town. Things are starting to change, though.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: As a result of their brainwashing, Agents of Change will unblinkingly do terrible things to people — including themselves — if it will serve the Department's Plan.
• Cool Ship: Just about every ship ever mentioned in the series—after all, "Korval is ships." Special mention goes to the Dutiful Passage, Korval's flagship; Ride the Luck, the ship Aelianna Caylon wins in a game of chance; and Bechimo, the old-tech starship with a mind of its own from Saltation and Ghost Ship.
• Crapsack World: Surebleak, up through I Dare (though this is starting to change as of that book and Ghost Ship).
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Due to an oversight on the part of the original contract signers who booked Clan Korval to take them to what became Liad, the clan is technically still legally responsible for the welfare of the "passengers" (i.e. all Liadens) to this very day. (Or at least until the last chapter of I Dare.) Yes, Clan Korval noticed. Yes, they have been planning for a gajillion years that they would be able to fight an enemy of Liad if they had to all by themselves. Which is why they want as many people as possible to be pilots, get ahold of as many ships as they can, make lots of money trading, created Plan B (see above), etc.
  • On the individual level, being Crazy-Prepared is presented as a way of life for pilots in general (who in the Liaden universe tend to be a sort of combination of long-haul trucker, Top Gun fighter jock, samurai, and gunslinger) and Scouts especially. Examples include the firing range scene in I Dare where Pat Rin and Cheever McFarland unpack enough weapons between them to fill a table (including a number of hold-out weapons), or a large part of the "Standard rules" that are stated to "apply" to pilots in Saltation.
    • Even those who spend time around pilots without actually being one themselves can pick up on this. In Dragon Ship, Kamele applies the lesson she learned from watching Kiladi teach Theo how a pilot packs when she herself needs to pack to make the trip to Surebleak. As a result, she is able to abandon unnecessary possessions on board her cruise ship when she needs to escape the Department of the Interior agents who plan to abduct her—everything irreplaceable was already on her person.
• Creator In-Joke: Timonium, the series' version of unobtanium, is named after a town in Maryland near where the authors lived when they created the series.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass:
  • The Clutch Turtles aren't really morons per se, so much as they appear to be large, slow, and fairly naive regarding human culture. But those who get on their bad side discover, very briefly, the error of their ways.
    • Their space drive could be considered a metaphor for the Turtles themselves: normally slow, quirky, and meandering, it can move very quickly and directly if the Turtles see sufficient need.
    • The Yxtrang — a culture / human subspecies entirely composed of Badass Army, for whom conquest is a way of life — leave the Clutch strictly alone. In I Dare we find out why.
  • To the other denizens of the university on Delgado, Professor Jen Sar Kiladi seems to be a harmless albeit somewhat (all right, very) eccentric academic. But surprise—he's actually ex-Delm Korval Daav yos'Phelium, and he knows how to get dangerous very quickly at need.
• Cryptic Background Reference: Many of them. Some get explained in later books; others languish.
  • Saltation: What is a banthawing? How does it teach bad habits?
• Crystal Weapon: Val Con has a crystal knife made on an alien world by the Knife Clan of Middle River, which is nearly indestructible and has an Absurdly Sharp Blade. The Knife Clan is said to grow the blades in caves over a period of decades, with considerable care and attention required for them to come out with the required characteristics.
• Culture Clash: Even leaving aside alien aliens such as the Clutch Turtles, the trope is used often within the books due to the number of different human cultures in the galaxy (Terran, Liaden, Yxtrang, lost colony worlds), as well as the fact that pilots are a culture unto themselves and Scouts are a subculture unto themselves (so much so that the flexible mindset required in a Scout leads to alienation from the rest of hidebound Liaden culture). Culture shock is generally a given.
• Dance Battler:
  • In the earlier books, L'apeleka is a dance and fighting discipline Val Con learned from the Clutch Turtles.
  • In the later books, menfri'at, taught in some places as strictly dance, is both a dance and a self-defense discipline for pilots.
• A Day in the Limelight: In the series as a whole, Kareen yos'Phelium is a rarely-seen supporting character with whom the main characters tend not to get along (with, it has to be said, some justification). The short story "Daughter of Dragons" gives her a solo adventure and a more sympathetic viewpoint.
• Deep Cover Agent: Val Con's role in the Department of the Interior.
• Description Cut: In Carpe Diem, a section in which Val Con's family wonder where he is and worry that he might be in trouble ends with Shan confidently stating that "Wherever Val Con is at this moment, he has the best of everything possible". Cut to Val Con and Miri, marooned and almost out of food.
• Did You Get a New Haircut?: When Aelliana returns to the family home at the beginning of Mouse and Dragon, so altered that none of her relatives recognize her at first, her sister is so stunned that all she can think to say is "you've done something with your hair". (She has, in fact, had an Expository Hair Style Change, but of the changes it's perhaps the least significant in itself.)
• Dirty Mind-Reading: In I Dare, there is a remarkable carpet called the Sinner's Rug; it comes from a world where adjudged sinners are required to make and display carpets depicting their sin, and this particular example of the type depicts a group of people performing a variety of imaginative sex acts. In the short story "Persistence", it's revealed that the maker of the carpet was an unlicensed telepath, and the rug represents not what she did herself but what she overheard before she was caught.
• A Dog Named "Cat": In Mouse and Dragon, Aelliana meets and befriends a cat who is called Mouse for its timid personality. Over the course of their acquaintance, it becomes bolder, and ends up being renamed Scout.
• Domestic Abuse: Aelliana's brother practiced this on her constantly. He also arranged for her to get contract-married off to an abusive husband too.
• Doomed Hometown: Tor An's homeworld is destroyed at the beginning of Crystal Dragon, sending him on a quest for explanations that gets him tangled up in the rest of the plot.
• Dude, Where's My Reward?: The reward for saving the planet is to get unceremoniously booted off the planet forever. This actually works out well for Korval, who had grown tired of the responsibility of looking out for an ungrateful planet for several hundred years, and had somewhere else to go, but some of the other Liadens who helped out, and received the same "reward", are less fortunate.
• Dumbwaiter Ride: In "Daughter of Dragons", Kareen's house in Solcintra city has a dumbwaiter connecting the kitchen with the service entrance where supplies are brought into the house. Kareen recalls her young brother Daav playing in it when he was a boy, and at the end of the story she goes down in it herself to evade assassins searching the house (finding it much less fun for a full-grown woman who can barely squeeze into the space and knows how dangerous it is).
• Either "World Domination", or Something About Bananas: In Saltation, Theo catches a fragment of a conversation being held using hand signals:
  She'd caught what might have been been inadequate preparatory curriculum but, given the syntax and motion of one hand doing the work of two, could just as well have been weakly unbaked circles.
• The Elites Jump Ship: The Great Migration duology reveals that this happened on Solcintra just before the eponymous Homeworld Evacuation — Solcintra's High Houses bought up the available shipping and took off, leaving the rest of the population to get wiped out by the invading enemy forces. (But as it turned out, it was the elites in their fortified hiding places that got wiped out first, while the remaining Solcintrans pulled together the Great Migration and found a safe haven on Liad.)
• Emergency Authority: During the Migration, Cantra's employment contract as Captain grants her absolute authority in an emergency that threatens the safety of the passengers. In the event, this clause is not needed during the Migration — but it does get invoked centuries later when one of her descendants (who has inherited all her rights and responsibilities as Captain, according to a clause originally intended only to keep things going if Cantra died before the Migration was over) discovers a threat to the safety of Liad, the planet populated by the passengers' descendants.
• Empty Bedroom Grieving: In "From Every Storm a Rainbow", one of the signs of Birin Caylon's Excessive Mourning for her dead son is that she keeps his room untouched from how it was the day he died.
• Encyclopedia Exposita: Cantra yos'Phelium's oft-quoted-from logbook.
• Excessive Mourning: In "From Every Storm a Rainbow", Birin Caylon mourns her dead son to the point of neglecting her living children and grandchildren and allowing the family business to decline, leading to a Sanity Slippage that results in her death.
• Extended Disarming:
  • Val Con disarming himself on board the Clutch Ship in Agent of Change.
  • Pat Rin and Cheever McFarland laying out their weapons at a firing range in I Dare.
  • Disarming an Agent of Change near the end of I Dare.
• False Reassurance: In the prologue of I Dare, a man visited at night by two people who have employed him for a shady endeavor worries about his grandson being disturbed, and they reassure him that they did not wake the boy when they came in. In fact, they murdered the boy in his sleep, and proceed to kill his grandfather as well.
• Family Business:
  • Many Liaden families, especially those whose surnames have the dea' prefix, have a family business or profession that they specialise in. dea'Gauss is lawyers and accountants; dea'San is taxis; dea'Judan is shopkeepers. How a given family copes with a child who has no proficiency for the family trade varies considerably.
  • On the Terran side, it's not uncommon for individual spaceships to be run as a family small business. The protagonist's family in Balance of Trade is one example.
• Fantastic Honorifics: Bentrill, where much of Carpe Diem is set, uses "zhena" for women, "zamir" for men, and "zama" for children. ("Zama" is only used once in the novel, and the narration doesn't specify the gender of the child in question.)
• Fictional Sport: Scavage and Counterchance. Bowli ball might also apply, but it's more like a (literal) Happy Fun Ball.
• Fiery Cover-Up: In the prologue to I Dare, agents of the Department cover up a just-concluded operation by burning down a building with all the evidence of their presence (including the corpses of the locals they'd worked with) inside.
• Floating Head Syndrome: The covers for the Meisha Merlin and Ace editions.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: Anthora and Ren Zel get engaged after they've met exactly twice. The second meeting does end up with Ren Zel spending the night at Anthora's place (and apparently they don't spend much of it sleeping), but even he's bemused by how quickly things develop. Anthora often seems vague, but when she's made up her mind, she doesn't hang about.
  • It helps that, being "wizards," Anthora and Ren Zel's contact ends with each of them knowing literally everything about the other. Once that's happened, why beat around the bush?
  • Val Con and Miri, technically. In the eyes of the Clutch turtles, anyway, due to Val Con giving her a knife. They decide to let it stand by the end of the book.
• Future Slang:
  • Each new culture presented in the series has its own slang, as well as non-slang words in common usage and honorifics. Some of these derive from English or other present languages (such as "onagrata", Delgado's term for a contract-husband-cum-concubine; Word of God states it was derived from persona non grata, assuming that if there was such thing as a "non grata" person, there must be the "grata" kind as well); others' origins are less clear.
  • There are also plenty of borrowed words from other languages as well, particularly Liaden (especially for concepts that do not have a simple translation into English, such as melant'i).
  • There are also some corruptions of modern-day English words, such as "handwich" for sandwich.
• Gambit Roulette: Aware of the Department of the Interior's machinations, Liaden's Scouts hatch a cunning plan: they will destroy the DoI from within by feeding Val Con yos'Phelium to it without giving him any forewarning or preparation, counting on his line's Weirdness Magnet nature to throw a monkeywrench into its schemes.
• The Gambler: Pat Rin.
• Getting High on Their Own Supply: The Big Bad in Conflict of Honors is involved in a variety of shady dealings, including drug smuggling. He gets hooked on one of the drugs he's running, which affects his judgment and contributes to his downfall.
• Girlish Pigtails: In a flashback in Agent of Change, twelve-year-old Miri has pigtails. (As an adult, she has an Action Braid.)
• A Glass in the Hand: In Conflict of Honors, Shan does this when he thinks Priscilla might be dead.
• Glorified Sperm Donor:
  • Anne treats Er Thom as this, having decided to have a Secret Pregnancy and not mention it to him.
  • In Fledgling, the planet Delgado is revealed to have a very matriarchal culture, in which women may choose to have offspring without the men getting a say in it. When Kamele Waitley chooses to have a child (Theo) by Professor Jen Sar Kiladi, she gets more than she bargained for.
• Going Native: Scouts do this a lot.
• Government Conspiracy: A secret organization that has infiltrated the government at the highest levels (despite using a government-style name, it is not clear that it was ever a subsidiary of the government per se) is against any non-Liadens and half-Liadens.
• Hand Signals: Starship pilots are taught a hand-signal language used to communicate in situations where verbal communication is difficult. They also use it to carry on private conversations under the noses of non-pilots.
• Happy Fun Ball: Bowli ball. Literally.
• Happily Married: most everyone once they end up with their life mate.
• Have You Come to Gloat?: After Bar Jan chel'Gaibin is seriously injured in a duel he forces on Jethri, Jethri visits him and chel'Gaibin asks if he's come to gloat. Jethri hasn't; the local (Terran) authorities have asked him to act as a translator, as the only Liaden-speaking Terran on port, to ensure that language barriers don't prevent chel'Gaibin receiving fair treatment.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Er Thom and Daav, Pat Rin and Cheever
• Hired Help as Family:
  • In "Degrees of Separation", the protagonist is orphaned at a young age and taken in only out of obligation by his mother's brother, who had a grudge against her. His uncle basically hands him over to the household servants and tells them to look after him, and they end up being more like family to him than his uncle; the cook in particular becomes a maternal substitute and the family lawyer something of a father figure.
  • While Jeeves, Clan Korval's butler, has his own unique position relative to the clan, his daughter Tocohl was adopted as a clan member, with all the attendant rights (and responsibilities).
• Homeworld Evacuation: In the backstory, Liad was settled by the population of the planet Solcintra, which they evacuated as it was about to be overrun in an interstellar war, in an event known as the Great Migration.
• Hot Gypsy Woman: Droi.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: The Clutch Turtles are perpetually bemused by the strange behaviors and values of the "hasty" humans, and often misinterpret social cues (as in the Accidental Marriage entry just above). It is only when they begin to perceive that Val Con and Miri are in trouble that one of them starts to develop a remarkable level of empathy for the way humans think in order to figure out how best to help them.
• Identical Granddaughter: Miri Tiazan and Miri Robertson. The first time Robertson sees her grandmother's portrait, it takes her a moment to realise it isn't a mirror.
• I Have No Son!: Fairly common in the clans and clan-like family structures that predominate in the settings: people cast out of clans are not simply disowned, they are ceremonially declared dead (and sometimes more than ceremonially). Characters to have this happen to them include Priscilla Mendoza, Ren Zel dea'Judan, and Ran Eld Caylon.
• Improbable Piloting Skills: Though given the emphasis on piloting, studying, ship owning, and breeding for pilot-fast reflexes in the books (and the Artificial Human breeding stock (from the Great Migration duology) that founded the clan), it might be slightly less improbable to expect the members of Korval to do what they do.
  • As shown in Fledgling, pilot-fast reflexes are a genetic feature of the Korval line; only one known born-in-clan member (Kareen) does not seem to have any vestige of piloting talent. Pat Rin, who was psychically influenced by Kareen into failing his piloting tests, finds his piloting talent later in life.
• Improvised Weapon: In "Changeling", the protagonist and one of his colleagues are attacked in a pool hall, and make use of balls, cues, and stools as weapons.
• Innocent Innuendo: Quin's "date" with Villy in Dragon in Exile turns out to be to help him with his schoolwork, but up until the reveal is discussed in terms that make it sound a lot like they're getting together for sexytimes.
• In the Blood: Theo Waitley is born and raised on a university planet with an obsession with "Safety," but she's half-Korval by birth. Fate almost immediately rams her into a piloting role almost against her will.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: Some Liadens, considering non-Liadens to be subhuman, refer to Terrans as "it". Specific examples include the antagonist in Conflict of Honors, who even does it to his own Dragon, and the antagonist in Carpe Diem.
• The Jeeves: Who else but Jeeves the eponymous robotic Battle Butler, a rehabilitated decommissioned war machine who it turns out actually adopted his name and manner specifically from certain ancient novels (after having suffered at the hands of a character who is entirely coincidentally named Roderick Spode).
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Most of the characters, including Jeeves, the robot butler.
• Klingon Promotion: Apparently, the only way to get ahead on Surebleak is to kill the old boss.
• Last Episode, New Character: Theo Waitley was introduced in the final chapter of what was thought at the time to be the final book of the series.
• Legacy of Service: The family firm of dea'Gauss have served as attorneys to Clan Korval through many generations. One of the prequels reveals that it was a dea'Gauss who did the paperwork for the founding of the Clan, centuries ago, and Korval has had them on retainer ever since.
• Literal Surveillance Bug: In Fledgling, Win Ton catches an insect-like device spying on the Delgado party (though it is referred to as a "spying device" as the parties discussing it apparently do not use the colloquialism "bug").
• Lost Colony: The planet Miri and Val Con wind up on in Carpe Diem. Well, not so much lost as technologically regressed and out of contact with the wider galaxy. It's implied to be one of a handful that are known of and occasionally monitored to see if they are culturally mature enough to handle reintegration into the wider galaxy.
  • A short story later revealed that Val Con, Miri, and an Agent of the Department of the Interior unintentionally accelerated that process.
• Lost Him in a Card Game: Played with in Plan B, with a character who's fallen so low that not only did his last master stake him in a wager, the bet was that the loser had to keep him.
• Lost Technology: "Old Tech" or "Befores", Clarkian technology from the waning days of the previous universe (as seen in Crystal Soldier and Crystal Dragon) and the early days of the present universe. Much of it was designed by or derived from tech designed by the Sheriekas, the evolved transhumans responsible for rendering that universe inhospitable to ordinary human life, and it usually carries their malign influence. One of the primary missions of the Scouts is to sequester or destroy any remnants of that technology that still exist, whether harmful or not, as well as research it to try to derive safe versions. This can sometimes bring them into conflict with others—such as Uncle or Clan Korval—who take a more enlightened stance toward using that technology. Likewise, the Department of the Interior recognizes the inherent advantage in having as much Old Tech as they can.
• Lucky Seven: In The Gathering Edge, Chernak and Stost are dubbed "the lucky ones" by one of the people attending their birth because they were born on the seventh minute of the seventh hour of the seventh day, seven seconds apart.
• The Mafia: Juntavas.
• Magical Romani: The Bedel, are characterized as Gypsies In Space, have a number of mystical-seeming abilities due to Magic from Technology. Also, one of the ways they make money is by doing fortune-telling for non-Bedel, but that's explicitly said to be a confidence trick; some of their elders do have a limited ability to see the future, but they wouldn't waste it on outsiders.
• Magnetic Plot Device: It is frequently said throughout the course of the series that "the Luck" moves strangely about Clan Korval—hence the clan is one great big Coincidence Magnet. It is never explained why exactly this is so, but everyone who believes in "the Luck" seems to regard it as an immutable fact of life. Also, it is shown to be every bit as genetically heritable as the famed Clan Korval piloting ability, regardless of whether its inheritor is officially in the clan or not.
• Manchurian Agent: In the old universe, the aelantaza were a group of genetically-engineered assassin-spies who had the ability to act in deep cover, using a Memory Gambit to submerge themselves in an innocent persona. Cantra was born and raised aelantaza before her family were killed, and her use of the ability in the rescue of Master dea'Syl forms a large part of Crystal Dragon. The ability to submerge oneself in an assumed persona also shows up to some extent in her descendants, particularly Daav with his double life as Jen Sar Kiladi (and probably also plays a role in Val Con's missions as an Agent of Change).
  • In Alliance of Equals, it is revealed that the Tanjalyre Institute also made the transition to the new universe where it continues to produce aelantaza.
• Mandatory Motherhood: Under the Liaden clan system, everyone has to produce a biological heir, but raising the child yourself (as a single parent) seems to be optional/left to relatives/nannies/boarding school a lot.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Anthora (especially for Ren Zel).
• Matriarchy: Several, generally classic Patriarch Flips. Delgado, the one seen in most detail, is one such. Women hold all the authority while men are treated as Glorified Sperm Donors.
• Memetic Badass: In-Universe, Jethri in Balance of Trade picks up this reputation after escaping pursuers through a zero-gee zone. He's space-born, so he doesn't see it as anything particularly unusual, but the Liaden stationers are used to thinking in terms of gravity and two dimensions, and his move becomes a legend among the Liadens he's met (except the Scouts, but even they're impressed).
• Metafictional Title: In the novella "Degrees of Separation", the protagonist figures out how to deal with his Evil Uncle after being inspired by the events of a play titled Degrees of Separation.
• Mindlink Mates: how lifemating is supposed to work on a psychic level. Can lead to:
  • Synchronization, which presumably kills Er Thom after Anne's murder, and injures Miri along with Val Con. (Did not happen to Daav, though.)
  • Sharing a Body: What happened to Aelliana and Daav after she was murdered instead.
  • Also, in Dragon Ship Theo's "bonding" as the official captain of Bechimo involves mental linking.
• Mind over Manners: Healers.
• Miss Kitty: Miss Audrey is a brothel owner in the Space Western equivalent of a frontier town. She's a canny businesswoman, and closer to being a respected community leader than the guys who are officially in charge. She even runs a school out of one of the back rooms.
• Modified Clone: The Uncle has produced a number of clone "brothers" (and at least one "sister") whose genes are based on his but have been tweaked to have an aptitude for something that will be useful to his long-term plans. They include Arin Tomas (trade routes), Jethri Gobelyn (fractins), and Seignur Veeoni (old universe computing systems).
• The Mourning After: Liaden lifemate marriages do not provide for divorce nor allow remarriage, even after a spouse's death.
  • And true lifemating can often lead to the nondeceased soon following the deceased party into death (Er Thom & Anne) or else the deceased taking up residence in the nondeceased's head (Daav & Aelianna). Not that this stops Daav from re-marrying elsewhere, with Aelianna's enthusiastic encouragement.
• My Beloved Smother: Kareen towards Pat Rin.
• Mysterious Mercenary Pursuer: The Agents who repeatedly attempt to capture both Val Con and Anthora.
• Mysterious Past:
  • Uncle, to most other characters.
  • Professor Jen Sar Kiladi, to Kamele and Theo.
• Never Given a Name: Rool Tiazan's lifemate, who is featured in Crystal Dragon with brief appearances and mentions in other novels, defected from a school of sorceresses who go their entire lives without names (being born and raised within the school so that this can be ensured). Being equipped with telepathy and other powers helps smooth over the potential social awkwardnesses. The school teaches that being nameless is a strength, rendering a person immune to I Know Your True Name types of magic, but it's suggested that it also somehow weakens their individuality and makes them susceptible to being dominated by the school's masters. Some of the other defectors went on to find names for themselves (Moonhawk being the most prominent), but Rool Tiazan's lady never does, and is referred to throughout the series only by description.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: The dramliz and especially the clutch turtles.
• No Bisexuals: According to the authors' FAQ, having a child has nothing to do with who you prefer to boink on your own time, and everyone should be assumed to be bisexual. That said, bisexuality is rarely seen, except for Dagmar, Priscilla, and Lina (two of whom aren't Liaden) in Conflict Of Honors, and the lover of the patient from "This House".
  • Quin and Theo later on.
• No Medication for Me:
  • Bell, in the short story "Phoenix", has serious manic-depressive issues that he manages using various non-medical coping strategies because the available medical treatment also completely suppresses his (extraordinary) gift for painting.
  • In Fledgling, Kamele's decision not to medicate Theo out of her "clumsiness" was made after carefully researching the potential side-effects of the pharmaceuticals in question and finding them to be considerable.
• Not What It Looks Like: In Fledgling, Theo Waitley and Win Ton confess to Kamele that they have been indulging in risky activity. They mean to explain that they have been playing the physically hazardous sport of Bowli ball with other pilots, but their nervous stammering and lack of specific details at first lead Kamele to quite another conclusion.
• Nothing Up My Sleeve: Pat Rin's pistol
• Oddly Common Rarity: To some extent these are explained by Korval's Weirdness Magnet nature, but…
  • True lifemating is so rare that many Liadens think it's just a romantic myth or a metaphor — and it's happened five times in Clan Korval in the last two generations. Attributed to the meddling of Jelaza Kazone.
  • After the first few books, the Lost Technology of the previous universe goes from almost-unheard-of to practically lurking around every corner.
• Old Retainer: Mr dea'Gauss has personally been serving Clan Korval since before the current head of the clan was born; his ancestors have served in the same role since the day Clan Korval was founded.
• One Degree of Separation: As a result of the Korval clan's Coincidence Magnet nature, many non-Korval characters find their paths crossing Korval's repeatedly in improbable ways. It sometimes seems as if every minor character in the entire universe is related to Korval in ways that just haven't been revealed yet.
  • On a related note, it appears that almost every bad thing that happens to Clan Korval in any of the books or stories set more recently than the Balance of Trade series can be laid at the feet of the shadowy Department of the Interior.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: The mysterious Uncle. His personal name, Yuri, is used a handful of times in the entire series by those closest to him; the rest of the time, and to everyone else, he's just "the Uncle". (His original surname, if he ever had one, has never been revealed.)
• Operator Incompatibility: Val Con trying to fly a Yxtrang ship.
• Oracular Urchin: Anthora
• Ordinary High-School Student: Theo Waitley from Fledgling, in spades.
• Our Nudity Is Different: Liadens consider the face to be a private area; showing it in public is unavoidable, but touching it or drawing attention to it is impolite, as is looking too long at another person's. (Wearing a mask counts as drawing attention, in the same class as wearing decorative make-up.) The Liaden language has a lot of emphasis on hand gestures and other body language to convey the information that Terrans use facial expression for; showing any facial expression in public is another impoliteness. Touching another person's face is an extremely intimate act; there are several instances in the series of Liadens being surprised by how quickly Terrans escalate to kissing, which a Liaden couple wouldn't even consider before they were married (and possibly not even after).
• Overly Long Name: Clutch names describe your personality/resume as well as your actual name. They can take hours to recite in their full form.
• Parental Abandonment: Any child born of a temporary marriage is pre-assigned to the family of one parent or the other, and the other parent has no part in the raising of the child. Also, Daav eventually becomes a Disappeared Dad after Aelliana dies (and again, to his new family, after Plan B necessitates his return to Korval). It's implied that something bad/iffy happened with Er Thom after Anne's death as well.
• Parental Favoritism: Aelliana's mother favors her baby boy and shows Parental Obliviousness to the other kids, which is why she doesn't notice that her baby boy is abusing the hell out of Aelliana.
• Parental Substitute:
  • In the Jethri books, Jethri's mentor Master Trader ven'Deelin also becomes the mother he never had.
  • Luken is Pat Rin's official foster father, so some degree of this would be expected, but it's notable that they habitually refer to or address one another as "father" and "son" without using any qualifiers. Ghost Ship shows this extending to the next generation, with Pat Rin's offspring addressing Luken as "grandfather" (to the confusion of an outsider who had gathered, as is technically true, that Luken has no grandchildren).
  • Inverted in Fledgling, where Theo's counselor tells her that it is "antisocial" to refer to Professor Jen Sar Kiladi as "father". In the culture of Delgado, minors do not normally learn who their father is until their gigneri renders them officially adults.
• Passing the Torch: Among the supporting cast, a new dea'Gauss is introduced at the end of I Dare, following old Mr dea'Gauss's retirement.
• Perception Filter: Scouts (and Agents of Change) are taught to stand perfectly still in such a way as to be almost impossible for ordinary people to spot.
  • In Dragon Ship, Theo panics the psi-sensitives at a business she visits by starting to imitate Daav's way of disappearing in this manner.
  • Also in Dragon Ship, Kamele Waitley is tipped off to the Department of the Interior's agents in time to escape their plan to abduct her because Daav in his Kiladi persona had taught her how to notice people doing that.
  • In Alliance of Equals, Shan does this as part of an effort to allow Padi to trade without the other party being intimidated by having the Master Trader there with her.
  • Also in Alliance of Equals, Padi does this to hide when agents come to kidnap her. Partially subverted in that the agents deduce that she might be doing exactly that, and find her by physically searching the room.
• Percussive Maintenance: In The Gathering Edge, an unreliable piece of equipment has a handwritten notice on the wall next to it warning that hitting it won't make it work any better.
• Pheromones: The aelantaza are genetically-engineered assassins whose enhancements include the ability to emit pheromones that make people more trusting and likely to accept their cover story.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • Averted in Conflict of Honors, when Priscilla misunderstands Shan's warning that he will have no murderers on board after she was forced to take a life in self-defense.
  • Poor communication nearly kills in Scout's Progress, as Daav's reluctance to reveal to Aelianna precisely who he was led her to return to her house alone where her abusive brother locked her in the sleeplearner.
• Prequel in the Lost Age: The Great Migration Duology.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Beautiful
• Psychic Powers
• Puberty Superpower: It is said that psychic powers tend to manifest during the teen years, although there are exceptions (the occasion on which it is said is the discovery that three-year-old Shan is already manifesting).
• Reader-Friendly Interface: Carpe Diem appears to offer a textbook example when the classified file Nova was "downloading" appeared at reading speed on the screen, then "The image on the screen shivered, broke apart, and went blank" when someone noticed the unauthorized access. (But given all the ways of creating anti-copy-and-paste DRM in vogue even today, may possibly be a Justified Trope.)
• Really 700 Years Old: Thanks to the Old Tech Uncle collects, he and Dulsey (and perhaps a small number of their staff) may be the only remaining human survivors of the old universe from the Crystal duology, hundreds of years prior to the present day. There's also some reincarnating wizards and a small family of meddling tree-things.
• Refuge in Audacity: Stealing the aircraft from the Yxtrang.
  It was a plan somewhat short on detail, but Nelirikk never doubted it would succeed. It was much too audacious to fail.
  • In fact, this trope is Clan Korval's very way of life, as expressed most fully in the clan motto of "I Dare".
• Reincarnation: Shan and Priscilla are the reincarnations of Lute and Moonhawk (who get covered more in short stories).
• Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?: Jethri Gobelyn develops a legend among Liadens for having jumped off the edge of a space station, and is repeatedly asked to tell the tale. He doesn't think it's so amazing; he was just a veteran space brat who knew where the zero-gee zones were.
• Remittance Man: Vel Ter jo'Bern, a minor character in Dragon in Exile is a Black Sheep who travels about drinking, gambling and having a good time, supported by an allowance from his family on the condition he stays away from the homeworld and anybody the family would be embarrassed for him to meet.
• Resolved Noodle Incident:
  • In Carpe Diem, one of the main characters is driven through the city of Solcintra by a snarky cab driver who caught the imagination of fans and prompted many to write in asking for more about her. The novella Skyblaze gives the cab driver a name, Vertu dea'San, and tells what happened to her during after the climactic battle that occurred in Solcintra a few novels later.
  • In Scout's Progress, one of the chapter heading quotes is a message home by a pilot, one of Daav's ancestors, giving a brief account of a stopover at space station where he was overcharged for emergency repairs. "The Space at Tinsori Light" is the story of that pilot, and reveals that there was something much more sinister going on at the space station than the brief account would indicate.
• Right in Front of Me: In Saltation, one of Theo's co-workers at the Howsenda Hugglelans turns out after she's known him for quite some time, and occasionally poked fun at him, to be the son of the owner, doing an employee's-viewpoint work experience placement. Theo is somewhat taken aback by the revelation, though not nearly as much as the irate customer who provokes the revelation by demanding to see the owner and threatening to have both of them fired.
• Rite of Passage: There are many of these from many cultures mentioned in the books. Examples:
  • Fledgling features the "gigneri" from Delgado, in which a minor loses her virginity and learns who her father is at the same time. An older variation on the gigneri separates these two events, and is used to give Theo the freedom to pursue piloting lessons without forcing her to have sex.
  • The permanent silver earring Daav wears in one ear is part of the marriage ritual on a primitive planet where Daav spent time as a Scout.
  • Obtaining a pilot's license seems to be an informal rite of passage for Clan Korval.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • Pat Rin goes on one against Boss Deacon after the accidental murder of his dead little gardener.
  • The young Natesa also goes on one after the death of her father in "Veil of the Dancer".
• Roguish Romani: The kompani, introduced in Necessity's Child and the short story "Eleutherios", are a band of secretive travelers who keep to themselves, have mystical powers, tell fortunes with decks of cards, have extremely good technological artificing skills, and disdain/steal from most outsiders.
• Second-Face Smoke: Boss Moran tries this on Pat Rin during their confrontation, before using the lit cigar to underline his explanation of how it would be a Shame If Something Happened to Pat Rin's more flammable possessions.
• Secret-Identity Identity:
• Serious Business: Everything, to Liadens, is serious business. Special notice goes to professional status, though; Pilots and Traders, among other professions, are usually capitalized and consider professional brotherhood to be almost as important as clan loyalty, something which even extends to Terrans in the same profession.
• Shame If Something Happened: Shortly after Pat Rin sets up shop on Surebleak, a group of men with guns show up to discuss the necessity of insurance against accidents such as, for instance, valuable stock catching fire, or employees falling down and breaking something important.
• Shout-Out: Many places, people, and things are named for elements of other works. A few examples:
  • LaDemeter is the premier gunsmith of the age.
  • In Fledgling, an academic is accused of falsifying her sources, and the forensic literature workgroup charged with investigating her work does so using a venerable technique known as the Antonio Smith Method.
  • The Gallowglass Chair is named for a historical practitioner of cultural genetics.
  • Pat Rin's Surebleak nom de guerre, Conrad, comes from Roger Zelazny's "...And Call Me Conrad".
  • In Crystal Dragon, Moreta's Flight was a hyperspace jump of unusual duration. Also, a late scholar was ser'Dinther, who'd tried to prove parallel universes with a cat, poison gas, and a box.
  • The rust-colored elderly norbear Hevelin was named in honor of Rusty Hevelin, a respected elder of the SF fandom community (who has since passed away).
• Sibling Seniority Squabble: In The Gathering Edge, Chernak is older than Stost by all of seven seconds. They don't squabble about it, though; in fact, Stost has got in the habit of regarding Chernak as his wise elder sister and following her lead in everything, even though they went through training and active service side-by-side and he knows everything she does.
• Single-Minded Twins: Meicha and Miandra Maarilex, in Balance of Trade, dress identically, move in coordination, and exchange Twin Banter; people have trouble telling them apart, and their uncle refers to them as "Meichamiandra" (though their grandmother always knows which is which, especially when one is in trouble). It being a setting with psychic powers, they also have a touch of Twin Telepathy. They become more distinct as the novel progresses.
• Sleep Learning: In the prequel Balance of Trade, Jethri's lessons in the Liaden language are supplemented with "tapes that played while he slept". (In the main sequence, several centuries later, there is a wide-spread method called "sleep learning", but it is based on neural induction technology that works by implanting information into otherwise unused neurons, not the "sleeping with a tape recorder" idea that this trope is mainly about.)
• Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence: Ranging from automatic tools (such as Lytaxin's robot taxis and cleaning bots in Agent of Change) through to Automatic Intelligences complex enough to recognised as actual people with human rights (Jeeves, Tocohl, Bechimo). The Defense Pods seen in Plan B and Ghost Ship are harder to place, but definitely toward the automatic end: within their parameters they're capable of very complex problem-solving, but they're at a loss to handle any situation they haven't been specifically programmed for.
• Some Call Me "Tim": One of the main characters in the series is... (deep breath), "Eleventh Shell Fifth Hatched Knife Clan of Middle River's Spring Spawn of Farmer Greentrees of the Spearmakers Den: The Edger." And that's the short form of his name, "used by the Clans of Men on those things called visas." His human and Liaden friends just call him "Edger".
• Space Elves: The Liaden are more or less the space version of Better Elves — petite, physically attractive, technologically advanced, and inclined to look down on anybody who isn't them. Although to call them this is as much as an oversimplification as it is in most other cases, it does merit special mention for being lampshaded in the second book.
  He glanced up, smiling. "It's my Uncle Richard's fancy that Liadens are the 'little people' of Old Terra's legends. Thus, Arthur Galen, Johnny, Nora, and Annie Galen. And their foster brother, the king of Elfland."
• Space Jews: The kompani, introduced in Necessity's Child and the short story "Eleutherios", are a band of secretive travelers who keep to themselves, have mystical powers, tell fortunes with decks of cards, have extremely good technological artificing skills, and disdain/steal from most outsiders. The authors have acknowledged that they're inspired by the Romani.
• Space Nomads: The Loopers, families of traders who travel from planet to planet, never stopping for long. In Balance of Trade, one Looper family has to stay on a single planet for several months while their ship is refitted, and all find it immensely stressful.
• Space Sector: Surebleak is in the Daiellen Sector; other locations mentioned in the series include the Clanave Sector, Faerie Sector, Kinsa Sector, and Tipra Sector.
• Space Trucker: Some of the courier pilots; in I Dare there's a scene where Cheever and Pat Rin have breakfast in an eatery that serves mainly pilots, and the food is stereotypical truck-stop fare complete with Hash House Lingo that causes Pat Rin to doubt his grasp of the Terran language. In fact, pilots (or at least most of the ones encountered in the books) are usually presented as a combination of long-haul trucker, Top Gun fighter jock, samurai, and gunslinger.
• Spock Speak: Liadens speak in very polite and frequently roundabout form. This is in part because the stories often draw inspiration from Edwardian romances, and partly because Liadens are a culture where the slightest insult might provoke a lethal duel, depending on the temperament of the one insulted. It also frequently serves as a Translation Convention to give readers a sense of the formalized structure of the Liaden, especially High Liaden, tongue.
• Spirit Advisor: Moonhawk for Priscilla in Conflict of Honors; Moonhawk and Lute for Priscilla in "Moonphase"; Lute for Shan in Plan B (and Moonhawk for Shan in I Dare)
• Staff of Authority: Each department chair at the University of Delgado has a staff of office. At least one of them has a concealed sword built into it.
• Standard Time Units: Interstellar commerce is governed by the Standard Calendar, consisting of Standard Years, Standard Months, Standard Days, Standard Hours, and Standard Minutes. It's not said who set the standard, nor what it's based on, but it has a suspiciously high degree of congruency with the local calendar of Liad.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Er Thom and Anne's (sorta) Interspecies Romance, or at least interplanetary, doesn't go over well with his mother.
• Starship Luxurious: On several occasions, the novels have contrasted Terran ships (small, utilitarian) with Liaden ships (huge, luxurious) as a way of drawing attention to just how rich Liaden traders are. (Though there are exceptions in both directions; the Liaden trade vessel Daxflan in Conflict of Honors is relatively small and utilitarian, and no preparation for the point-of-view character's later experience of the Dutiful Passage, while the Terran spaceliner in Fledgling is pretty swish.)
• Storyboard Body: All the Yxtrang
• Super-Fun Happy Thing of Doom: The Department of the Interior, a secret Liad-supremacist terrorist conspiracy, is named for the department of the US government in charge of looking after national parks.
• Super-Soldier: the Yxtrang, Jela
• Sword Cane: Professor Kiladi, Gallowglass Chair of Cultural Genetics at the University of Delgado, doesn't have a mere sword cane, he has a sword concealed in his professorial staff of office. It has not been established whether this is his own improvement or whether the staff of office was made like that in the first place. (The latter is not out of the question, considering that the Gallowglass Foundation was set up to support cultural genetics research and education following a series of incidents in which a nationalist organisation attempted to shut down a line of research they disapproved of using methods up to and including assassination.)
• Tarot Motifs: In "Moon's Honor", each chapter is headed with the name of one of the Major Arcana and a brief description of what it signifies.
• Tarot Troubles:
  • "Moon's Honor" also has a scene in the fourth chapter featuring an actual tarot deck, which makes use of the common confusion about the meaning of the Death card. (The male lead thinks it signifies a literal death, and is greatly disturbed; the female lead knows it more accurately as "the change card", and is not so worried.)
  • In Necessity's Child, the female lead is learning to do readings with a tarot-like deck of cards particular to her native culture. Some of the individual cards are recognisable from their descriptions as variants of actual tarot cards (for instance, the card called The Burning House is a version of the tarot card called The Tower).
• Telepathy: The Dramliz and healers have this, as do lifemates. Sometimes they may have more trouble not listening to people's inner thoughts (as with Anthora and Theo in Ghost Ship). It's noted, though, that in most cases, this means being able to gain an impression of the other person's emotions and the shape of their thoughts, but not "hearing" their thoughts in verbal form the way telepathy is often depicted. The ability to hold mental conversations using actual words is something lifemates might develop in time; otherwise it's extremely rare.
• There Are No Coincidences: The Department of the Interior and its agents have a tendency to see conspiracy and collusion in everything Korval does, when actually it's just coincidence (or "the Luck") 99 times out of 100. (To be fair, though, Clan Korval is such a huge Coincidence Magnet that the things that happen to them by coincidence would stretch the credulity even of someone who wasn't as incorrigibly paranoid as the Department.)
• Third-Person Person: Liadens sometimes do this, though not for the reason you'd expect. They use whatever name or title they're using to make it clear what melant'i they're operating under. When the Delm of Korval says "the Delm of Korval speaks," it means that right now, he is not your beloved brother, lover, or anything else; he's the guy who has to make decisions for the clan (in this case, this is a form of Royal "We"). In a lighter example, when talking to Theo, her father tells her that while sometimes, "Professor Kiladi" needs to be trotted out on formal occasions, he asks her not to invoke "him" too often.
  • When speaking the High Liaden tongue, Liaden often refer to themselves in the third person as "one," instead of "I". This is part of the shorthand used to represent the stilted cadences of High Liaden for people who read in English.
• Time Dissonance: Turtles are very long-lived, and don't believe in rushing things. In one short story, the Knife Clan makes a knife for their first human customer, using their usual technique, then finds that in the (to them) short time this takes their customer has died of old age.
• Time for Plan B: Clan Korval's emergency "clan is under attack, everyone bug out, get weapons, and maintain radio silence" plan is officially named "Plan B". (Word of God is that "Plan B" was a working draft term for the real name of the plan, intended to be replaced in the edit process when they could come up with suitable Liaden nomenclature, but it somehow stuck.) It's pretty telling that Clan Korval has had this plan in reserve pretty much since they landed on the home planet.
  • Plan B went on to also be the title of a novel showing the Clan acting on the Plan. Word of God is that the title of the book was actually decided upon for them by fans during the long gap between their publisher rejecting further books in the series after the third (in which the name "Plan B" was first mentioned) and the authors learning they had an unexpected Internet fan movement. Fans kept asking them when Plan B was coming out, and they chose to take advantage of the name recognition when they found a publisher for future books in the series.
• Title In: In some of the books, each chapter begins with a heading stating where the first scene of the chapter is set, such as "Jelaza Kazone, Surebleak".
• Took a Level in Badass: Kamele Waitley in Dragon Ship, when she rises above her naive ivory-tower absorption in her researches to realize she is being stalked—and takes effective and unexpected action to get away.
  • In Dragon in Exile, Kamele learns to shoot, and ends up taking down a mobster who has the poor sense to attack the shooting range where she is competing in a match. Will Theo even recognize her when and if she finally returns to Surebleak?
• Translation Convention: When characters are speaking in foreign languages, the discussions are commonly translated into English (save for foreign words such as melant'i that don't have simple translations). However, the English translations still maintain a particular flavor of the language. (For example, conversations in formal "High Liaden" are rendered in somewhat stilted passive-voice, often with the speaker referring to himself in the third person (as "one").)
• True Love is Exceptional
• Truth Serums: Pimmadrene, seen in action in the trial scene at the climax of Conflict of Honors. Unlike many fictional truth serums, it doesn't cause the subject to volunteer information; on the contrary, the dramatic tension comes from the fact that the subject will answer precisely the questions they are asked, and the potential for this to give misleading results if the questioner doesn't think of the right questions.
• The Unfavorite:
  • In Scout's Progress, Aelianna Caylon, despite being acknowledged as the foremost mathematical mind on Liad and the indirect saviour of many starship pilots, is The Unfavourite of her mother's children, and has been a target of her brother's abuse ever since they were children, when they overheard a conversation in which Aelianna was recommended to their mother over her brother as the best candidate for being her heir. Her brother was chosen instead, but has abused the position by taking out his resentment on Aelianna ever since; their mother refuses to recognize the situation.
  • Kareen yos'Phelium thinks of herself as the unfavorite, having lost her mother's preference to her younger brother when she proved to have no aptitude for piloting, considered an essential attribute in a leader of Korval. It's not clear, however, how much that's an accurate assessment of her mother's feelings; Kareen and Daav's childhood has only been glimpsed in flashbacks, and their mother has never been a viewpoint character, so her actions are open to a number of more or less charitable interpretations.
• Unfazed Everywoman: Kamele Waitley, who over the course of knowing Professor Jen Sar Kiladi goes from being a naive, cloistered ivory-tower academic (Fledgling, Saltation) to setting out to "rescue" Kiladi from Clan Korval but ending up rescuing herself from the machinations of the Department of the Interior instead (Ghost Ship, Dragon Ship).
• Unobtainium: Timonium.
• Unusually Uninteresting Name: The Department of the Interior.
• Vehicular Turnabout: Val Con, Shan, and Beautiful stealing the Yxtrang aircraft and using them in the defense against the Yxtrang invasion in Plan B.
• Walking Armory:
  • Agents of Change, the assassin-spies of the Department of the Interior, carry an enormous number of weapons, most of them disguised as everyday objects or incorporated into their clothing.
  • In a scene in Dragon in Exile, Nelirikk, a career soldier turned bodyguard, is carrying four handguns, six knives, crowd control explosives, arm-chains and razor wire — and this is his basic everyday complement when he's not expecting trouble.
• Weirdness Magnet: See Coincidence Magnet entry above.
• Wham Line: In Crystal Soldier, chronologically the first book:
  "The problem we face," he murmured, "is that someone — and we must assume that someone equals the Enemy — is experimenting with dismantling the universe."
• What Happened to the Mouse?: A few instances.
  • In "Moonphase", Lute and Moonhawk tell Priscilla that the Sintian church has done everything it can to keep their reincarnations apart ever since the last time they were reincarnated together (covered in "Where the Goddess Sends" and related stories)—implying that there might be serious repercussions for the church now that Priscilla and Shan have finally gotten back together. Certainly the church has some Balance coming to it after the way it kicked Priscilla out and declared her dead. As yet, however, there's been no sign that any Balance toward Sintia is forthcoming.
• What Have We Ear?: Lute does this to Moonhawk in the course of a magic lesson in "The Wine of Memory".
• When Trees Attack: Jelaza Kazone, who managed to be the last survivor of a Planet Eater's attack. Is also not averse to scaring the heck out of someone it doesn't want marrying into the family.
  • In Dragon in Exile, the Tree takes an active hand (or branch) in dissuading a group of tourists who mistakenly believe they had bought the right to tour Korval's inner gardens.
• Which Me?: In Plan B, Shan has a vision-conversation with Lute, who is connected to him in some complicated and as-yet unclarified way that involves reincarnation; Lute does things with first- and second-person pronouns that they were never intended to do.
• Whip Sword: The "shib", a weapon wielded by Jela in Crystal Soldier. It can take a person's arm off, and he wears it as part of his belt when he's not using it.
• Wine Is Classy:
  • Shan walks around with a glass of red wine all the time. Does he even drink from it?
  • In addition to the "usual" red and white wines, Liadens also have canary wine and blue wine (Misravot). This seems to be used as an establishing detail to help show how different the universe is from our own.
• Wise Old Turtle: The Clutch Turtles are an alien race who resemble anthropomorphic turtles, who live a long time and are given to deep thoughts. The one who gets the most page time, The Edger, is nearly nine hundred years old — and considered young and reckless by the standards of his people.
• World Tree: Jelaza Kazone, the gigantic tree that literally lies at the foundation of clan Korval's family tree, and which in modern times is about a quarter of a mile high. The name - Jela's Fulfillment - is a remembrance of the promise that Jela's partner made to him that she would protect the tree - a promise that is considered (according to Val Con, the current head of the family) to have led directly to the colonization of the planet, since she needed a safe place for the Tree. It is an intelligent being (although most outsiders don't seem to be aware of this), and is considered a member of the family.
• Would You Like to Hear How They Died?: In Crystal Dragon, the assassin Veralt pauses before killing Cantra to inform her that it was him who killed her mother. "She died as she had lived — a fool, and begging me not to harm you." He intends this to show her how thoroughly she's beaten, but only succeeds in pushing her Relative Button and giving her a Heroic Second Wind.
• Xanatos Speed Chess:
  • Clan Korval's countermeasures against the Department of the Interior after Plan B kicks off, especially during I Dare. The conflict escalates with dizzying intensity, each agency acting to counter the other, until it culminates in Clan Korval obliterating several cubic miles of city to destroy dangerous Lost Technology doomsday weapons.
  • Uncle lives to play Xanatos's game, especially in the books beginning with Saltation, though we aren't privy to most of the moves. In Dragon Ship, he comes to realize that Xanatos Chess is riskier than he had expected when some of the pieces are Korval—and the only thing he can do is try to play faster.
• You Watch Too Much X: In Balance of Trade, Miandra says that some of her sister's stranger ideas about Terrans come from reading too many adventure stories.

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