It can currently be read on Wattpad
, Royal Road (here), Fictionpress, and SpaceBattles.com (here).
Despite the outlandish premise, the story is a rather hard science fiction. There are no Humanoid Aliens, no naval-analogy Space Battles, and no FTL travel (except through wormholes). The only elements regularly subject to handwavium are various inscrutable technologies created by Sufficiently Advanced Aliens whose origins and basic functions are explained, but never fully unraveled.
The story itself is written in the first person as a series of Apocalyptic Log diary entries divided into nine distinct arcs. The framing device is that Lucas wrote them on his laptop to avoid a Go Mad from the Isolation fate.
Spoiler warning: Everything that happens after the fourth chapter is a spoiler in some way. While the page is heavily masked by spoiler tape, not everything that might surprise the reader is marked, so read at your own risk!
Starsnatcher contains examples of:
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#-C
- 20 Minutes into the Future: The story takes place in 2037 where the world is largely the same as today. The only differences are increased technological unemployment, the wide presence of synthetic food, and a lack of chocolade.
- 2-D Space: Averting this trope is the reason why the Dragonfly has 3D tactical displays which look like holographic spheres with dots inside representing ships.
- A World Half Full: The world is more and more revealed to be a Crapsack World. Technology hasn't brought only advantages to human and Seizerkind, the Plague is about to wipe out the whole galaxy and a race of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens wants to kill all civilizations that reach a certain threshold of technological advancement. Despite this, the story ends on a rather optimistic note with the Plague being temporarily defeated and Earth achieving a post-scarcity economy. Kira's speech and inner monologues at the end make it clear that, while humanity might die one day, they still have a life before that death.
- Absurdly Huge Population: The Primogenitors used to have trillions of inhabitants in their interstellar empire before the Precursor Killers came along.
- Abusive Precursors: The Primogenitors are a Subverted Trope. At first, they appear hostile to our protagonists, but in reality, they are every bit as much of a victim of The Virus as everyone else. "They", however, play this trope 100% straight.
- Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: The Firefly's crew has one last final chat before the boarding action. Layla even lampshades that they'll have one final time out before the last battle to talk about their feelings.
- A Day in the Limelight: Chapter 5.x and 5.y are from Kira's perspective, unlike the rest of the story which focuses on Lucas. So is the epilogue.
- Adventure-Friendly World: For all their faults, the Precursors did think of being plot convenient before disappearing. They left their Portal Network behind for Casual Interstellar Travel as well as their Sufficiently Advanced Schizo Tech that's just intact enough to give our characters awesome superpowers, yet still damaged enough to have enough Drama PreservingHandicaps.
- Advert-Overloaded Future: In Seizer society, most houses have artworks, holograms or even video clips playing on or around their walls.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: As of the final chapter, Lucas has Ascended To A Higher Plane of existence. In order to still talk to Kira, he uses nanobots to build himself an avatar with an artificial body and an artificial brain that's programmed to carry out his commands.
- After the End: The entire Primogenitor civilization got ravaged by the Plague, leaving only Space Amish civilizations and ruins of their former settlements. A space station our heroes visit is full of scrap no-one bothers to clean up and simulations of species that used to thrive before they went extinct.
- The Ageless: The Seizers have rendered themselves biologically immortal through gene therapy and advanced nanotechnology. The singularity stones can do the same to their users, including rejuvenation to their years of peak physicality, as demonstrated by Dr. Ay and Iris.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: It is noted that teaching conventional morality to an artificial intelligence is hard due to their tendency to be LiteralGenies. Hence, the Seizer civilization denies their A.I.s Internet access and only uses them to answer questions. They aren’t allowed to use tools or improve themselves. Once the "AI governor“ is unleashed, this trope plays out in full-effect.
- Alcubierre Drive: Starsnatcher flies with a drive that works like this, although it's not FTL-capable. At least not until it meets one of Fountainhead's Hyperspace Lanes...
- Alien Abduction: The whole premise of the story is that the protagonist gets abducted by aliens and sent into a different world. Unusual for this trope is that he never gets to see their spaceship from the inside (because these aliens actually have reliable tranquilizers). Instead, he is sent straight to an alien moon where his adventure to get home begins. It is also a subversion, as aliens were never his abductors, humans were.
- Alien Arts Are Appreciated: Averted. When Lucas walks through one of the Seizers’ arcologies, he notes how the artworks on the walls can, at best, be described as colorful Rorschach tests. Also averted with the Primogenitor's arts, as they rely more on specific odors than on visuals.
- Alien Sea: On Shadowmoon, the sea turns pitch black just a few feet below the surface. This is a result of orbiting a red dwarf star whose infrared light has difficulties penetrating water.
- Alien Sky: After arriving on Shadowmoon, one of the first things that clues the protagonist in on how he isn't on Earth anymore is how he can see a gas giant rather than the moon in the night sky.
- Aliens in Cardiff: The Inciting Incident happens when a UFO is sighted in the fictional town of Ernstburgh which lies somewhere in America. Apart from housing the Leimfeld University, it is a small town without anything remarkable in it.
- Aliens Are Bastards: Played With. The Seizers are initially unfriendly to Lucas and decide to trap him under a glass bell as a zoo animal. It is understandable though, as he landed on their moon without them knowing what he is up to, so it is their method of putting him in quarantine. It's also played with the Primogenitors. They might be belligerent, but only due to The Virus having messed with them. Before, they used to be a perfectly normal interstellar civilization that colonized lifeless worlds without any intentions of conquest. They even allowed Eden to remain uninhabited, so that it could keep its natural biosphere.
- Alien Fair Folk: Lucas justifies his skepticism concerning Alien Abductions with how similar they are to tales about The Fair Folk.
- Alien Non-Interference Clause: A clause like this is in place to prevent Primogenitors from setting a foot on Eden; a superhabitable planet with an indigenous biosphere, though no native sapient species. A few Primogenitors live there nonetheless, but they have a technology level similar to cavemen. Turns out to be advantageous to them, as it means they were spared from the Plague. A similar clause is likely why they never colonized Earth or Shadowmoon despite having wormholes that could comfortably lead them there.
- Aliens Speaking English: Averted. Not only are the Seizers incapable of vocalization, but their method of communication is also so incompatible with human speech that they resort to Electronic Telepathy as their Translator Microbes. Played Straight in the narration due to the Translation Convention.
- All Planets Are Earthlike: Downplayed. The "planets“ where we spend most of the story (Shadowmoon, Eden) are "earthlike“ in several respects (oxygen atmosphere, being in the habitable zone, supporting carbon-based life). However, they are far from a shirtsleeves environments. For starters, the first of these "planets“ (Shadowmoon) is actually the moon of a large gas giant. Moreover, our protagonist needs to be in a spacesuit all the time, as these planets’ thick atmosphere are not only too hot for him, they also contain either too little or too much oxygen for him to survive longer than a few minutes. Both of these planets also have higher gravity than Earth and vastly different biota (for instance, Shadowmoon’s plants are black, as it orbits a red dwarf while Eden’s plants are red due to receiving their light from a K-star).
- All There in the Manual: Just read the SpaceBattles.com thread to see the author give
Word of God notes on background information that didn't make it in the story or inspirations for the worldbuilding in every second post. - Amplifier Artifact: The singularity stone is part this and part Power Crystal. When a sapient organic being makes contact with them, the stone will inject nanobots into its body which will greatly amplify the musculature and improve most bodily processes like metabolism, perception, or healing. The wielder also forms a link with the stone's dormant AI which it can use to perform various functions.
- And I Must Scream: What Cherub tries to inflict onto Lucas pretty much boils down to this. His body will be assimilated into Cherub's with only his brain intact so that he must worship the monster for all eternity. All of the Plague's victims suffer from this more-or-less.
- Antagonist Title: Starsnatcher refers to the starship that abducted our protagonist. It is an asteroid-sized ship the shape of an egg and with highly advanced stealth capacities.
- Antimatter: What the Dragonfly flies with. It's produced in mile-long particle accelerators and stored by magnetic fields. On a smaller scale, it's also used within rifles that store nanograms of antimatter in their munition to cause huge explosions upon impact.
- Anyone Can Die: Bye, bye, Helix and Iris.
- Apocalyptic Log: The entire story is told as a series of diary entries by the protagonist and he's almost always in great danger. It's not super-noticeable, as his singularity stone allows him to write like a novelist. However, many of the more summarized chapters feel very much like this trope.
- Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Lucas' abductors fly in a highly advanced invisible floating UFO, yet they resort to a hook rather than, say, a tractor beam to capture him. It's the first hint that his abductors aren't as alien as one might think.
- Arcology: Most of the early plot takes place in an arcology that is described as "mountain-sized“. Its shape resembles a black funnel at the bottom and a cone near the top. Its surface is covered in black plants and solar panels to harvest energy from the red sunlight of Shadowmoon. Unlike a lot of Cyberpunk examples, it isn’t a Wretched Hive though. While it is heavily stratified (with the rich living at the top and the poor near the bottom), even the poor have decent standards of living thanks to the post-scarcity economy.
- Artificial Gravity: The Dragonfly can produce this through two methods. One is acceleration. Outside of battles, the ship doesn’t accelerate faster than 0.5 G due to overheating issues. The other method is through letting its spherical habitat module spin. This is mildly deconstructed, as it means any furniture in the module must be mobile to react to the shifting direction of gravity. Lucas can literally feel how the direction of gravity changes when he leaves his accelerating starship to get on a spinning space station.
- Artificial Meat: You can buy lab-made burgers in Burger Bob! Our protagonist eats one in the first chapter and he can tell it's artificial because the color isn't as crisp as in "real" meat.
- Artistic License – Biology: The Seizers have a very squat Heavyworlder-esque physique, even though their moon has only marginally higher gravity than Earth.
- Artistic License – Space: Shadowmoon (a Tidally Locked Planet) has a day-night cycle thanks to its gas giant regularly blocking the Sun, though realistically speaking, it should do so only rarely (that's why lunar eclipses happen only once a month rather than every day).
- Ascetic Aesthetic: Lucas gets his first taste of Seizer civilization when getting probed on in a laboratory that fits this aesthetic with its sterile walls curving into one another. The rest of Seizer civilization plays with this trope. While their settlements are very clean and sterile, they avoid being boring through the Advert-Overloaded Future trope.
- Assimilation Plot: What the Big Bad's plan turns out to be. It involves releasing a Sealed Evil in a Can that will absorb all life in the universe into a Lotus-Eater Machine of its creation.
- Applied Phlebotinum: Monopolium. While most technologies featured use real-life substances, monopolium is based around highly speculative magnetic monopoles.
- Auto-Kitchen: Literally all food (read: nutritious liquid) eaten by the main characters is printed by their portable nanofactory.
- Ban on A.I.: Downplayed. AI isn't forbidden on Shadowmoon, but it is denied Internet access as well as any tools it could use, so all superhuman A.I.s can use their intelligence for is answering questions.
- Battle in the Rain: Justified. Kira waited for it to rain before running away from the Seizers and Lucas, as their modifications give the Transhuman an edge in extreme environmental conditions. The rainfall continues during her later conversation with Lucas, adding to the drama.
- Beige Prose: Most paragraphs last two to three sentences and there is rarely much description.
- Beneaththe Earth: Shadowmoon has extensive underworlds. The local Space Amish loves to live in these.
- Benevolent Precursors: Fountainhead created the singularity stones (link to Power Crystal) long ago which are the heroes' only weapon against the Plague.
- Benevolent A.I.: Doubling with Benevolent Precursors, Fountainhead is the creator of the singularity stones and thus the primary Big Good in the setting, contrasting it against the various A.I. Is a Crapshoot robots that tend to be more prevalent.
- Bigger on the Inside: The tesseract introduced in the final arc has the size of a small planet on the outside whole housing what might be an entire pocket universe on the inside.
- Bio-Augmentation: The Transhumans in the setting have muscles and bones reinforced with diamondoid materials for enhanced strength as well as augmented sensory and circulatory organs.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: The Seizers have their mouth located between their six pillar-like legs. Also, they apparently lack bones and instead have very stiff muscles.
- Bizarre Alien Psychology: In Seizer culture, standing too close to someone is Serious Business. It is explained as a result of them having evolved a civilization as hunters and gatherers, but for defense against the various evils on their moon. In other words, humans became social because they wanted to, Seizers because they needed to.
- Bizarre Alien Sexes: The Seizers have three sexes and change them in their biological lifecycle. The youngest of them produce seeds which the second-youngest then fertilize through their sperm. The oldest carry out the fertilized eggs in specialized segments which look like hats on their heads.
- Black Box: While the effects of technologies created by advanced A.I.s like Fountainhead are clear enough (e.g. the singularity stones), the characters have no hope of reverse engineering or comprehending them.
- Black-and-Grey Morality: Our protagonist is an Anti-Hero while most of his acquaintances look out for their own interest first. The villains tend to be genuine altruists, but are WellIntentionedExtremists at bests and blinded by ideology at worst. The "Black“ part comes from all the virus-infested Omnicidal Maniacs that often serve as antagonists.
- Blob Monster: Some victims of the Plague are literally living vomit. It's as pleasant as it sounds. Did we mention they also have guns? The stand-out example for this trope would be Cherub though. It's described as an amorphous mess of protoplasm-like goo that can spontaneously change its shape, regenerate and form eyeballs, mouths, and even muscle fibers whenever necessary.
- Boarding Pod: In this setting, boarding pods are torpedo-shaped crafts with explosive tips to punch through enemy hulls. The crews are immersed in a viscous gel to protect them from the impact forces. The pods are only employed once the enemy ship is sufficiently damaged to prevent most defensive maneuvers. To prevent crews from point defenses, it is standard to spam them with the manned probes shielded by unmanned ones.
- Boarding Party: How Lucas and Kira get onto the Firefly. It's a justified example, since a lot of the Firefly's engines are temporarily destroyed. While the Firefly still has its point defenses on, the Dragonfly spams unmanned probes in front of that containing Lucas and Kira in order to take the hits.
- Body Horror: The Plague is a body horror factory. Eyes in places where they don't belong? Arms growing out of fingers? A completely unrecognizable and amorphous body shape? The Plague can give you all of this and more. Let's not even begin with what it does to someone's mind...
- Brain/Computer Interface: Ubiquitous in Seizer civilization. Opening doors, driving cars, and even communication can also be done with a single thought. This does notably not apply to more dangerous technologies like weapons as thoughts are harder to control than finger movements.
- Brain Uploading: Fountainhead developed from a Primogenitor uploading their consciousness into a computer and then recruisively updating themselves to Deus est Machina levels. Doubles as a Deity of Human Origin. The Firefly arose in a similar way, minus the recruisive-self improvement part.
- Breather Episode: Arc 4 has this function, being more focused on exposition and character development while the arcs before and after it focus more on action and plot twists.
- Broken Masquerade: While the existence of alien wormholes is known to the general public, no-one ever saw anything else from them until Kira recorded one of their UFOs.
- Casual Interstellar Travel: Downplayed. While most spaceships are capable of interstellar travel thanks to the local Portal Network of wormholes, it takes several months at minimum.
- Centrifugal Gravity: This is how space stations like Euphrat and space ships like the Dragonfly (when they’re not accelerating) keep the boots on the ground. It’s noted that space stations are less likely to produce nausea from the Coriolis effect due to their greater size. Lucas only survived in the Dragonfly so well because he spent most of his time in virtual reality.
- Clarke's Third Law: Steve struggles to understand how wormholes differ from magic portals.
- Chekhov's Gun: Kira's dropship contains a map of the Virgo constellation. It's where the Cipher is located.
- Chekhov's Gunman:
- Mustafa Ay gets mentioned as early as chapter one. He is revealed to be the Bigf Bad five arcs later.
- Iris Giles is at first a one-shot character. Later, she is revealed to be The Dragon to Mustafa Ay.
- Chekhov's News: The first chapter hints at a newspaper report according to which several scientists went missing in Antarctica. One of them is Mustafa Ay, the Big Bad.
- Closed Circle: The reason the Seizers can't fly Lucas home immediately is the fact that their government only funds interstellar spaceflight for military purposes. Thus, Lucas must help to stop the Primogenitors first.
- Colonized Solar System: An alien example: Humans didn't colonize their solar system yet, but the Seizers did. Since the Seizers provide the primary viewpoint throughout the story, however, it doesn't really matter. Colonization was aided by the fact that they had many neighboring moons within easy Terraforming-reaching.
- Conservation of Ninjutsu: Averted by victims of the Plague, as they aren't a threat on their own, but deadly when they have crushing numbers. Like in a true zombie movie, Helix runs out of ammunition when fighting them.
- Conveniently Coherent Thoughts: There doesn't seem to be anything the Electronic Telepathy Translator Microbes used by the Seizers can't explain in mindwaves.
- Cool Starship: The Dragonfly. More than a mile long (Link to Mile-Long ship)? Check. Capable of driving at relativistic speeds? Check. Equipped with everything a sci-fi geek could dream of (missiles, lasers, VR, nanofactories, nanostasis)? Check
- Cosmic Horror Story: Mankind has made First Contact with aliens. Unfortunately, they aren't particularly talkative. Or friendly. They keep abducting people in secret and people can do absolutely nothing to stop it. Certain revelations only make everything go From Bad to Worse The reason humanity hasn't made contact with aliens earlier is that galaxy-spanning Abusive Precursors have created traps that will release extradimensional Eldritch Abominations on any species that reaches a certain threshold of technological advancement. Given the fact that technological stasis is portrayed as a negative thing, every species will ultimately face certain doom.
- One can only imagine the cosmic horror must be from the vantage point of a normal Earthling who received Ay's signal about his planned Assimilation Plot:
The irony hurt. Just a few decades or years ago, we thought of ourselves as the apex of progress and evolution. We went to the moon, sequenced the human genome, and even found wormholes into foreign worlds. Then, in an instant, an alien horror revealed itself to us. It had been there all along, scheming on how to end all life in the universe as we know it and now, its plan had kicked into motion. The humans that remain on Earth can only sit back and watch. During all these months that I've been writing my diary, you already knew your final destiny. You've been waiting for the assimilation with the knowledge that you couldn't stop it. - Cosmic Horror Reveal: The final arcs reveal that Absuive Precursors have set up a plague and an Eldritch Abominaton that'll end all life as we know it if they aren't stopped.
- Crapsaccharine World: Shadowmoon is a world with almost no poverty where everyone gets to live forever if they choose to. However, on the other hand, it is also a world plagued by anarcho-primitivist terrorism because some of its citizens believe that automation promotes increased decadence. And let's not even begin with the government's inability to make AI less of a Crapshoot...
- Crapsack World: Devastated by the Plague, nearly all of the Primogenitor's wormhole network is this. At best, the survivors lost their previous technology and now need to live in the wilderness. At worst, they have to deal with the Plague's leftovers, such as Omnicidal Maniac zombies, monsters that devour everything their path and nigh-unstoppable murderous starships. Did we mention that they're also highly infectious?
- Creepy Monotone: The AI governor learns English over the course of arc three and is described as speaking without inflection. Which is fitting, as it is also a perfect example of A.I. Is a Crapshoot.
- Crystal Spires and Togas: Shadowmoon is full of shiny arcologies where everything is as clean as a hospital and even the poorest can afford flying cars. Work is also voluntary, making science and philosophy among the most popular occupations.
- Cute Machines: Chapter one has an old lady with a pet robot and a picture of her grandson over it. Much later in the story, Lalya deploys such a machine in an attempt at psychological warfare. It has a cute smiley face and shoots flowers before suddenly trapping the protagonist in an inescapable net.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: The Order of the Burning Pyramids firmly believes in this and thinks Lucas should be grateful that he still has his natural gifts. The story itself, however, shows zero evidence that cybernetic modification does anything to a person's character unless it is deliberately targeting the brain (or the hormones).
- Cyberpunk: Combines this with Space Opera, especially in the early chapters. Technology has changed Earth and not for the better. JobStealingRobots are the norm and the government isn't prepared to deal with them. Social isolation is rampant as well, with a grandmother in chapter one talking to a pet robot with the face of her grandson on it. Shadowmoon is more of a Post-Cyberpunk setting (with little to no crime and a lack of poverty), but even it suffers from some of the ill-effects of technology, such as AI being kind of a crapshoot, Cyborgs facing discrimination, and anti-technology terrorism threatening public peace. In the end though, the story takes an optimistic outlook on technology. First Contact with the Seizers greatly benefits mankind and turns it into a utopia, the Crapsack World it is in notwithstanding.
- Cyborg: While they aren’t often referred to as such, owners of singularity stones are this. If you touch an ownerless singularity stone, the first thing it will do is to swarm your body with Nanomachines. These will modify your muscles and bones until they are at least ten times as strong as before. They will do the same with your senses, enhancing them. Then, they form a telepathic link with their user that effectively provides the Cyborg with Psychic Powers. A Cyborg can telepathically communicate with its stone and order it to move Nanomachines with superhuman computation powers.
- Sye is a more traditional example and referred in-universe as such. They hate themselves for it.
- Cyborg Helmsman: Tesla is the most heavily modified crewmember of the Dragonfly and its pilot. They have wires coming out of their head to steer the ship with.
D-O
- Data Crystal: The singularity stones have an AI made of a small monopolium chip within their crystal-like casings that's being held in place by magnetic fields.
- Death World: Good luck surviving in any habitat infested by the Plague for long if you don't have a singularity stone or someone wielding one with you. The Plague is ridiculously infective and will, if you're lucky, just turn you into a mass-murdering zombie. If you're less lucky, prepare for Body Horror.
- Deity of Human Origin: Fountainhead developed from a Primogenitor uploading their consciousness into a computer and then recursively updating themselves to Deus est Machina levels. Doubles as a case of Brain Uploading.
- Deflector Shields: Lalya has these around the Firefly and around herself. They appear as utility fog that normally floats around her as a swarm of microbots and clusters into solid walls to take hits.
- Deus est Machina: An AI named Fountainhead is the author behind the wormhole network, the singularity stone, and various other technologies operating on Clarke's Third Law. It is noted to have passed The Singularity and to be as intelligent as trillions of humans, Seizers, or Primogenitors. Götterdämmerung is of a similar power level, though it's more of a Diabolus Est Machina Eldritch Abomination.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: The singularity stones were originally supposed to be able to give everyone who forms a Brain/Computer Interface link with their A.I.s nigh-unlimited control over nanotech, be it unlimited healing or being able to construct (or disassemble) anything one wants at a miraculous pace. Thanks to being damaged by the Plague though, they can only perform a limited set of functions which means each user has their own superpowers.
- Driving Question: Precisely what do the Starsnatchers want?
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After over 150,000 words of the main characters being in constant mortal peril, struggling with their own flaws, and failing to make an impact on the Crapsack World they live in, not only do most of the heroes return home, Lucas also Ascends to a Higher Plane of Existence and takes care of The Virus which turned the universe into its current miserable state.
- Eerie Arctic Research Station: The Backstory Horror took place in a research station located in the Antarctic. Scientists went missing and nobody knows why. As it turns out, they came into contact with The Virus and were decimated all except for one. The sole survivor became the story's Big Bad.
- Electronic Telepathy: Deconstructed. Due to the complexity of the human mind, the Seizers trap Lucas for days before they have enough data from their MRI scans to build Translator Microbes that work like this. We also get outside perspectives from characters who don't see the telepathy and just look at two people staring at each other for minutes.
- Eldritch Abomination: Götterdämmerung is a four-dimensional being that exists outside of space and time and operates entirely on Blue-and-Orange Morality. It has been somehow summoned/built by Sufficiently Advanced Aliens who have wormholes to its spacetime continuum all across our universe. Its purpose is to assimilate all civilizations who threaten to overthrow said Sufficiently Advanced Aliens into a Lotus-Eater Machine and, if they resist, to just exterminate them.
- Eldritch Location:
- The wormholes bend light around them at unnatural angles which is justified through the real-life phenomenon of gravitational lensing. Being a hole in the very fabric of spacetime doesn't help matters. The narration likens a wormhole to a cosmic cyclopean eye.
- A far more extreme example occurs in the form of a tesseract introduced at the end of the story. A tesseract is a four-dimensional construct that exists outside the spacetime continuum as we know and understand it. Given that it is four-dimensional while we are only three-dimensional, we are a mere piece of paper to its inhabitants. Entrances to this tesseract exist all across the universe and it is only a question of time until it will consume ours.
- Eldritch Starship: Starsnatcher is in many ways a weird ship. Besides its huge size and non-standard design (egg-shaped, rather than rocket shaped like most), it has a Reactionless Drive which is In-Universe considered physics-violating and incomprehensible at best.
- Emerald Power: The Power Crystal that helps Lucas for a lot of the early story happens to have a prominent green glow.
- Enemy-Detecting Radar: Naturally, combat vehicles and spaceships have these, with the spaceships having 3D displays to avert the 2-D Space trope.
- Enforced Technology Levels: Both Earth and Shadowmoon stagnate in their technological development. On Earth, it's just government incompetence. Shadowmoon, however, has concrete laws to keep its tech level low. Due to their belief that A.I. Is a Crapshoot, all AGI is denied Internet access or access to tools, restricting them to mere consultants. That, along with the general decadence of Shadowmoon's populace, causes their technology level to stagnate. The trope is deconstructed, as it puts them at a disadvantage against aliens like the Primogenitors who have no such restriction on their tech levels. On a setting-wide scale, technological stagnation is enforced by the Great Filter. Any civilization that becomes too advanced will be wiped out by Götterdämmerung or another creation by the local Sufficiently Advanced Aliens.
- Everything Is An I Pod In The Future: In the Seizer civilization that is. Whether it's an MRI scanner, a radar screen, or even a factory; everything is portable, user-friendly, and more often than not explicitly described as shiny and sleek.
- Everything Is Online: Averting this trope is why the AI governor is offline; it's too important to be hacked. Unfortunately, it still gets hacked when terrorists bomb its office and blackmail Lucas into revealing its password algorithm.
- Evil Luddite: Sye and their organization (which Lucas dubs Order of the Burning Pyramid) are very much this. Their banner even refers to a historical event where one of their members drove a large aircraft into an arcology 9/11-style.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: One of the many things the Plague does to the human (or alien) body is creating eyeballs all across the body. In Cherub, it has reached the point that they spontaneously pop in and out of existence over its slimy surface.
- Fantastic Racism: Cyborgs are on the receiving end of this in Seizer society. If Tesla is to be believed, it's a systemic problem.
- Faster-Than-Light Travel: Even though Alcubierre Drives do exist, the only reliable way of FTL travel is through the wormhole network. At least that's what we are led to believe. At the end of the story, Starsnatcher and the Firefly break the lightspeed barrier through a Hyperspace Lane.
- Fate Worse than Death: The Plague specializes in these. It turns its victims into Body Horror abominations that have no goal in life other than to kill everything they see, including themselves and each other. The victims of these victims have it even worse. Cherub, a particularly nasty child of the Plague, assimilates sentient beings into its body and forces them to worship it forever while their bodies rot and their brains remain.
- Fermi Paradox: A Discussed Trope through a lot of the story. Becomes a plot point near its end. The reason why the Great Filter exists is that all advanced civilizations eventually get wiped out by a bunch of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens referred to as "They". The reason why They do this is that they are a Type III civilization who need all of the Milky Way's resources to prosper. They refuse to let another civilization rise to their level and compete for resources with them.
- First Contact: After the Seizers bring Layla and Kira back home, humanity and the Seizers build friendly diplomatic relations to ensure peace and prosperity in the universe. Lots of little boys and scientists have come to see the cool alien that was brought to them.
- First-Contact Math: Part of how the Seizers decipher Lucas' thought process to finish their Translator Microbes is by watching him figure out their number system.
- First-Episode Twist: In Arc One, suspense is being created whether the aliens in the forest are real at all and whether Lucas will be abducted by them. Considering it's heavily implied by the story's full title (Starsnatcher — Trapped in an Alien World) and outright stated in the blurb, suffice to say that it's not a spoiler.
- Foreshadowing:
- The AI governor says the spaceship that abducted Lucas came from the Southern Hemisphere, even though he's from America. *It's an early hint that his abductors come from Antarctica.*
- Lucas mentions the neutron star Lich in chapter three. The Cipher is hidden in it.
- Layla knows a lot about Lucas, like that he had parents he wanted to get out of poverty. It turns out Iris Giles is part of her crew.
- Forgotten Framing Device: The framing device of the story is that it is told as a series of Apocalyptic Log entries by the protagonist. The first sentence makes it clear, so do remarks in Chapter 1.5 and the various bonus chapters. However, the bonus chapters become rarer and rarer as the story progresses, and it just feels like a regular first-person story after a while.
- Genius Loci: Euphrat, the space station where the climax of the second part plays out, turns out to be this. The first clue is when our protagonists get a map and the pathways and doors indicated on it are wrong. Then, they see new doors and walls randomly appearing and disappearing. It turns out that the station has a central artificial intelligence that has been hit by the Plague and thus behaves without rhyme or reason.
- Ghost City: Euphrat is a ghost space station. It's still functional, but only few inhabit it. Might have something to do with the Plague, which destroyed the entire Primogenitor civilization, or Cherub, the Omnicidal Maniac that kills everyone who stays in the station. During the climax of the sixth arc, the heroes run through living cabin after living cabin, only to find nobody home.
- Going Cosmic: No, we don't mean the protagonist gets abducted into space, although that happens in the story. What we do mean is that long monologues and dialogues on the meaning of life and the objectivity of morality are a lot more common in the later arcs than in the early ones.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: Lucas just narrowly avoids this fate due to a) not being terribly social to begin with and b) keeping an Apocalyptic Log diary as long as he is Trapped In Another World so that he can pretend to talk to someone. Kira isn't so lucky, however. Being Buried Alive and forced to spend who-knows-how-long alive on an alien planet caused her personal Start Of Darkness. Layla isn't that lucky either, as she compares her own isolation to the corona lockdown of her parents' generation.
- Gun Kata: Mustafa Ay and Kira have their final battle that way with both trying to punch each other's Ray Guns out of their hands. Justified, as both have superhuman reflexes and a blaster isn't as noisy as a firearm at close range.
- Heavy Worlder: The Seizers come from a moon with higher gravity than Earth and it shows in their short and squat bodies.
- Humans Are Average: In the Starsnatcherverse, humans are neither as small as the Seizers nor as big as the Primogenitors. We aren't as anti-social as the former, but not as social as the latter either. Humans are technologically a bit below the Seizers and it is implied that we won't overtake them anytime soon.
- Humans Are Insects: The only reason humanity is still alive is that "They" don't even bother to invest resources to kill us. They're just waiting for us to expand enough until we walk into one of their Death Traps.
- Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: Downplayed. While it doesn’t hinder them significantly, passing a wormhole causes the Dragonfly’s sensors to temporarily shut down.
- Hyperspace Lanes: A rare case where this overlaps with the Portal Network trope. The Primogenitor civilization uses wormholes for 99% of its interstellar travel. However, Fountainhead has constructed lanes of exotic matter (the same matter used in creating wormholes) to create "secret FTL-paths" that the wormhole-users are not aware of. To use it, a ship needs to be capable of reactionless drives and then use the exotic matter to create an FTL-Alcubierre drive. The mechanism is based on the speculated concept of Krasnikov tubes.
- Inertial Dampening: Normally unnecessary, as the Dragonfly accelerates quickly outside of combat situations. However, those in a Boarding Pod need protection against the impact forces which is why they immerse themselves in a protective gel.
- If Jesus, Then Aliens: Ernstburgh's townfolk seems to think that, just because a wormhole got discovered, every UFO story must be automatically true.
- Inscrutable Aliens: "They". We can neither communicate with them nor can even comprehend what they are or how their civilization works.
- Job-Stealing Robot: Many people on Earth are worried about this, as the government refuses to adapt to automation. Thus, many characters, including Lucas and Kira, are motivated to work hard, so as not to lose their jobs to a machine.
- On Shadowmoon, the battle is long over. If you are not a doctor, scientist, C.E.O., or politician, you can feel free to relax in your home VR all day.
- Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: The Dragonfly fights with missiles 90% of the time. The rationale is that lasers just scatter too easily, can be reflected, and don't turn corners like missiles do. That being said, lasers are preferred in close combat where they can't be touched.
- Living Ship: Firefly. As it turns out, its previous owners are still alive and uploaded their minds into its computers, thus becoming one with the ship. Overlaps with Sapient Ship and Organic Technology.
- Living Forever is No Big Deal: While there are anti-technology terrorists on Shadowmoon that vigorously oppose AI, automation, and virtual reality, no-one ever objects to immortality technology. It's explained that this is due to the Seizers' unusually strong fear of death.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: Virtual Reality is like this on Shadowmoon. Many of the Seizers spend all day in virtual realities and never go out. It is part of what drives the setting’s EvilLuddites to destroy modern-day civilization.
- Mechanical Abomination: Götterdämmerung is best described as Deus Est Machina meets Eldritch Abomination. It's an AI build by Sufficiently Advanced Aliens that somehow exists outside of our spacetime continuum and is programmed to either assimilate us into a Lotus-Eater Machine or, if we resist, exterminate us.
- Mechanical Insects: A rare example where they are used by the heroes and are never described as creepy. Crick uses (alien) bug-sized robots to scout Eden. They are employed because they are larger than nanobots and thus more resistant to extreme weather conditions, but still small enough to be mass-manufactured and hard to detect.
- Mobile Maze: Euphrat. When Lucas and Kira navigate through it, Lucas orders his robots to map the surrounding corridors. When he compares the map they made to the one Kira has, he notes close to no overlap. Doors are where dead-ends should be, for example. After a while, the station loses any subtlety and just has doors and walls pop in and out of existence as they drive through it.
- Mile-Long Ship: Every named starship. The Dragonfly and the Firefly are described 1.5 miles long (or 2.4 km in metric units) which is justified, as they need space for heat-dissipating fins and, in the case of the Dragonfly, the crew must be kept away from hazardous antimatter radiation produced by the thrust. Starsnatcher is even larger, being described as asteroid-sized, though no concrete numbers are given.
- Microbot Swarm: Layla is always surrounded by a cloud of utility fog which she can condense into shields to take hits for her. Her Cool Starship the Firefly also has such a swarm on a far larger scale.
- The Milky Way Is the Only Way: The plot features interstellar travel through a Portal Network and galaxy-spanning civilizations. Despite this, the conflict is contained in the Milky Way with other galaxies being barely mentioned. Justified, as no-one has mastered faster-than-light travel without the aforementioned Portal Network.
- Multicultural Alien Planet: Despite being inhabited by Starfish Aliens, Shadowmoon has discrete countries with often different technology levels, from Arcology dwellers to a Space Amish living Beneath the Earth. Naturally, these groups come into conflict a lot.
- Nanomachines: Lots of them. Our main characters have a more realistic version constrained to a nanofactory. Due to their small size, they are noted to be vulnerable to fluctuations in temperature and wind. Thus, they need a carefully controlled environment to work in. Also, most nanobots only work on one type of matter, be it carbon or silicon, for example. A lot of the other characters, particularly those with singularity stones, have nanobots that are closer to the Hollywood Science version, however, and can disassemble pretty much anything. Some characters have nanobots in their own bloodstreams that serve as immune systems against hostile nanoswarm attacks.
- Nightmarish Factory: Machine rooms on Euphrat look as if a zombie apocalypse just happened, as they house nothing but piles of debris and nanofactories that haven't been operated in years. Unsurprising, given how The Plague killed everything that used to live there.
- No Transhumanism Allowed: Downplayed. Cybernetic enhancements are permitted on Shadowmoon and everyone is immortal, but those who excessively modify their own bodies are All of the Other Reindeer, if Tesla is to be believed. The story's ending averts this trope hard once Layla and Kira spread transhumanism on Earth.
- One-Man Industrial Revolution: Happens twice!
- The first example is from the backstory where a Primogenitor named Fountainhead uploaded her brain in a computer and underwent The Singularity to become a Deus Est Machine. The ensuing computer then used its vast scientific knowledge to single-handedly invent all of the Precursors most advanced tech.
- The second example takes place at the end of the story when Lucas undergoes The Singularity himself and, much like Fountainhead, makes several revolutionary inventions that turn Earth into a post-scarcity economy and solve almost all problems that plague Shadowmoon.
- One World Order: Shadowmoon is a Downplayed example, being more of a global European Union than a planet-spanning nation-state. There are no border controls between countries, but each of them still has a central government.
- Only Good People May Pass: The translator key to communicate with the Heavyworlders and obtain the Cipher is secured by a test in this manner. A computer will scan your brain and tell if your coherent extrapolated volition (in simple terms, what you would do if you were rational and fully informed) respects the autonomy and welfare of sapient beings. Iris' CEV does not support their welfare while Ay's does not support their autonomy. Hence, they need Lucas to take the scan for them.
- Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous: The male/female binary doesn't work for Seizers as they have three genders and an individual undergoes all three of them in the species' lifecycle.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The Plague turns those it infects into what are essentially zombies with Super-Strength, a Healing Factor, and ridiculous infectivity as well as virulence. Much like with most zombies, what makes the Plague victims dangerous isn't that they are a threat on their own, but that they have crushing numbers, averting the Conservation of Ninjutsu.
- Outside-Context Problem: How Lucas describes his and the police's confrontation with the UFO that abducts him. Keep in mind that they are just regular humans with a tech-level just barely above what we have today while the aliens appear nigh-magical comparison.The last thing I saw was the police officers writhing on the ground like worms. One screamed while another shouted at his walkie-talkie. They had still been alive. I could guess that only their limbs had been targeted. How did they feel knowing that the UFO could have blown their brains out of their skulls at even the slightest provocation? They were even less prepared for this encounter than I was. They couldn't have prepared themselves for that. Nobody could have. Soldiers or civilians, kings or slaves, we were all powerless against the horrors from the stars. We were like flightless birds whose island got invaded by the mainland predators.
- Organic Technology: The Primogenitor's technology, especially their starships have this aesthetic. A lot of their habitats and ships have red walls that feel slick and slimy and can self-repair through bio-nanotech. They're even made of carbon. When Lucas slides down a long tube into a spacious room, he likens the experience to being swallowed by a whale. It's a Justified Trope, as the Primogenitors are smell-based creatures and can navigate more easily in such constructs.
P-Z
- Patchwork Map: Eden has a desert just a few miles away from a rainforest, although it's justified due to the desert in question being a rainshadow desert that has its moisture flows blocked by mountains.
- Photographic Memory: Kira's singularity stone works like this. Unlike most examples of this trope, it's not only eidetic but also capable of reconstructing missing memories (or even non-existent memories) by analyzing the data it has and filling the missing information in the most logical way. When the wearer focuses on it, the stone shows the reconstructed memories like a mental film.
- Plague Zombie: Anything infected by the Plague becomes this. It is not so much the zombies that are the issue, but the ridiculously infective virus they carry.
- Point Defenseless: Averted. Both the Firefly and the Dragonfly are perfectly capable of shooting down smaller crafts. It's why the Dragonfly relies on a Spam Attack to make its boarding action succeed.
- The trope is played 100% straight at the climax though where Starsnatcher is too weakened to do anything against the heroes' SpaceFighters.
- Portal Network: Referred to as the wormhole network. The Primogenitors have moved wormholes across the universe to ease Interstellar Travel. They also use wormholes to connect themselves to the worlds of less-advanced species like the humans or Seizers. The story begins briefly after mankind has noticed two wormholes near Earth which are called the Watley and the Xu wormholes.
- Post-Cyberpunk: While the story has shades of both this and Cyberpunk, the ending firmly cements it as Post-Cyberpunk. Poverty, resource scarcity, war, and even mortality seem non-existed in the technological utopia created by Layla, Kira, and their alien allies.
- Power Copying: What Mustafa Ay's singularity stone does. When he kills somebody, he can upload a copy of their brain into his stone and, in case that person's brain was connected to a singularity stone, copy that stone's AI as well and use its functions.
- Power Crystal: What the singularity stones boil down to. They look like crystals and are the source of their wielders' superhuman abilities. It should be noted that they aren't a source of Mana or energy per se. Rather, they are a source of computation for their owners. Their crystalline interior houses magnets that hold Artificial Intelligences well beyond The Singularity. These A.I.s have a Psychic Link with their owners. Their owners give telepathic commands while the A.I.s give commands to nanomachines of far greater complexity than the human mind could.
- Precursors: The Primogenitors are this to the whole setting. They set up the wormhole network that allows interstellar travel and left behind the singularity stones that enable much of the plot. Thanks to them, the protagonists have access to technology that operates under Clarke's Third Law, even though their tech level isn't far beyond Earth's. As Lucas lampshades, they also died like any precursors worth their salt.
- Precursor Killers: Götterdämmerung is this to the Primogenitors. It released a pandemic so adaptable that it could hack itself into even the most advanced computers and then force them to produce physical viruses that could kill flesh and machine alike.
- Pro-Human Transhuman: The ending has Layla and Kira spread transhumanism among humanity once they come back to Earth which is portrayed as a good thing. Lucas also becomes this once he Ascends To A Higher Place Of Existence and protects mankind from the horrors beneath the stars.
- Pronoun Trouble: Averted. Even though the Seizer characters don't really fit in the male/female characters, Lucas has no difficulties just using the singular "they" on them.
- Properly Paranoid: The Seizers have taken all precautions possible to secure their President and their most important AI. The AI is protected by a complex, always changing password while the President's room is difficult to access and full of guns and escape paths in case of an attack. It's not enough.
- Puny Earthlings: Played With. Earth plays no role in the conflict between humans and Starsnatchers. On the other hand, almost all of the most characters to out to be human.
- Reality Is Out to Lunch: The laws of physics take a lunch break near wormholes, as Lucas put it.
- Really 700 Years Old: Most of the Seizers are centuries old, but being The Ageless, you wouldn't know.
- Required Secondary Powers: Singularity stones alter their users' brains to survive their Super-Senses. Even so, they are not immune to sensory overload. Moreover, their Super-Strength does not come with super-anchoring abilities, so if a singularity stone user punches another, it is not uncommon for them to be thrown back by their own force.
- Robinsonade: Immediately after Lucas is Trapped in Another World, he has to survive on his own in the wilderness for several chapters. It is only later that he finds the Seizers who provide for him.
- Robots Think Faster: Singularity stone are essentially nothing other than A.I.s in fancy casings that can link to their user's brains. Whenever that happens, the user can think about a thousand times faster than usual, to the extent that Time Stands Still around them.
- Sapient Ship: The Firefly, considering how its crew uploaded their minds into the ship's computer. Starsnatcher also qualifies, being The Man Behind the Man for Ay.
- Sci-Fi Horror: Starsnatcher has all the genre's hallmarks. A.I. Is a Crapshoot? Check. Just look at Shadowmoon. Techno Dystopia? Double check! Just look at Earth and Shadowmoon. Aliens Are Bastards? And how! Even if most of the malicious aliens are only that way thanks to The Virus. None of this is even getting into The Virus, its associated Body Horror and the Cosmic Horror Reveal we get at the end.
- See the Whites of Their Eyes: While most starships fight at realistic ranges, they often get very close (a few hundred miles) if they are both in a planet's gravity well and get even closer (a few miles) if there's a Boarding Party.
- Sex Shifter: The Seizers have three sexes which they change several times during their life cycle, making it difficult to use pronouns like "he" or "she" on them.
- Shining City: In an Arcology everything shines in monochrome and is always kept clean. It also symbolizes the Crapsaccharine World that is Shadowmoon.
- Sickly Green Glow: Euphrat is a Death World Space Station full of planktonic microorganisms in its atmosphere that give the whole air a ghostly green glow.
- Single-Biome Planet: Eden is a Downplayed example. It does have a variety of biomes like forests, deserts, and oceans, but it's noted to be far more homogenous climatically than Earth due to its thick, heat-distributing atmosphere.
- Schizo Tech: For all their advanced technology, the Starsnatchers use a hook of all things to abduct Lucas. Justified, as they're humans and cannot comprehend most of the complex alien machinery.
- Sleeper Starship: Even if it's just for a few months, Lucas still has to spend a lot of time in nanostasis abroad the Dragonfly.
- Smart House: After the AI governor is released, you can only enter or leave a house if the AI allows you to.
- Space Amish: Encountered by the main characters on the planet Eden. A small population of nature-loving Primogenitors survived the Plague because it needs technology to spread.
- The Order of the Burning Pyramid are a downplayed example, as they only oppose AI, automation, and VR, not technology in general.
- Space Opera: A rather dark example that blends into Sci-Fi Horror and Cosmic Horror Story. While the story is set in space and has an epic-scale Saving the World quest, morality is far from black and white and the heroes are not invincible. That being said, there is a happy and idealistic ending in the end.
- Sliding Scale of Shiny Versus Gritty: The Seizer civilization is on the shiny end with Everything Is An I Pod In The Future-tech and Crystal Spires and Togas aesthetics, while nearly everything touched by the Primogenitors is gritty (when it isn't Organic Technology).
- Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence: A lot of robots (such as the millipede-bots or combots) are just Brick automatons, although they can perform a surprising number of functions. The singularity stones meanwhile fall in the Nobel-Bot category while their creators are outright examples of Deus est Machina.
- Space Is Noisy: The aversion of this trope lampshaded on several occasions.
- Space Fighter: Averted in the setting due to how impractical they are and the fact that everything is automated. However, one such fighter is briefly mentioned bringing a Boarding Pod back to the Dragonfly. Also, Layla employs such vessels during the climax. They're big enough to hold two people. Given the relative realism of the setting, the fighters in question have un-aerodynamic shapes and engines pointing in all directions.
- Space Isolation Horror: The arc immediately after Lucas' abduction has shades of this, despite taking place on a moon's surface rather than in literal space. Our protagonist wakes up on an alien moon with no idea how he got there. He has no-one to talk to for a long time and constantly has to worry about air supply, food, and predatory aliens. The kicker? Lucas isn't a trained astronaut like most examples of this trope. He's disabled and has to learn how to deal with issues like air supply, gravity or food all on his own. At least he eventually finds allies in the form of the Seizers. Kira had it worse.
- Space Station: Several are featured. One is essentially a black box with solar panels attached to it and serves no other function in the story than to get the heroes to their Cool Starship. Euphrat features much more prominently and is ring-shaped
- Speculative Biology: While not focused on, we get rich glimpses in the non-sapient biota of both Shadowmoon and especially Eden. The sapient aliens are Starfish Aliens and we get brief explanations on how they evolved. Plus, most of the featured aliens are clear Expies to creatures from famous spec-bio documentaries.
- Spider Tank: Layla loves to deploy these. They're smaller than most examples, but they need their robust bauplans to survive in the high gravity conditions they normally operate in.
- Society of Immortals: Everyone on Shadowmoon can live as long as they want. Given that they spend all day in addictive virtual realities, it is unlikely that overpopulation is much of a problem.
- Standard Alien Spaceship: The Seizer and Primogenitor starships are close enough to human spaceships on the outside. On the inside, however, they tend to lack curves in their rooms and go for dome or bubble shapes instead. Plus, the Primogenitor ships are even red.
- Standard Sci Fi Setting: Downplayed. While there isn't outright FTL, there is Casual Interstellar Travel through wormholes, there are both Neglectful and Abusive Precursors, a genocidal alien race infected by The Virus is one of the central antagonists, while a Proud Scholar Race on a Crystal Spires and Togas planet assists the heroes, with aliens after The Singularity remaining in the background. There are, however, a few common tropes that are averted. For one, humans are not a significant power. The main conflict is Alien vs Alien with a human POV character and a human mastermind.
- Starfish Aliens: All aliens as a rule of thumb. Let's just count the examples.
- The Seizers are about four-foot tall aliens that are best described as a mixture of bugs and walking squids. They walk on six legs, possess six tentacles and have four eyes. Their body is divided into three overall segments. Moreover, they are Sex Shifters that undergo a cycle of three genders overall.
- The Primogenitors are ten feet tall pyramidal aliens whose body follows a rule of trilateral symmetry (three legs, three limbs, three eyes), etc. Add in their saddle-shaped heads and their leathery hides and they look just plain weird.
- Even minor aliens qualify. Dune maws are yellow predators whose body is shaped like a sand-dune. Terrapods are sauropod-like creatures with two massive legs and an eyeless head that's for all practical purposes identical to their tails. Just look at Euphrat's flora and fauna:
The room was bountiful of life. Behind the curtain of green organisms, the silhouettes of forest plants appeared. Many of the "plants" moved in our direction. [...]
The forest contained creatures that were neither shy nor logical. I witnessed flying creatures whose silhouettes resembled a mixture between starfish and piranhas.
Further in the distance, huge amalgamations of smaller organisms akin to a Portuguese man o' war floated in the plankton-soaked air. Similar, but more subtle amalgamations of three jellyfish-like creatures forming one organism flew next to gliding space whales. Mother nature has been creative. - Starfish Robot: Given how most of the story focuses on Starfish Alien technology, this is to be expected. The most prominent ones have long bodies with lots of pincers and look like millipedes. Others look like Christmas trees while yet again others are good old Spider Tanks.
- Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: The aliens that are introduced near the end of the story fit the trope to a T. They are advanced enough to build interdimensional wormholes and upload their brains into a Hive Mind inside the Cauchy horizon Sagittarius A. The Primogenitors also qualify. While all we see of them are their Space Amish and the ruins of their Plague-devastated civilization, they used to build wormholes and Deus est Machina computers in their golden days.
- The Strength of Ten Men: It is repeatedly stated that a singularity stone increases the strength of those it amplifies by a factor of ten. Thus, humans amplified by such a stone are a literal example.
- Superior Species: The Seizers are this. They are more advanced than humans, having arcologies, a post-scarcity economy, and levitating magnetic trains. However, they're not nearly as advanced as the Primogenitors, the setting's local Sufficiently Advanced Aliens.
- Super-Reflexes: Humans enhanced by a singularity stone have a slower perception of time than normal and can dodge missiles as well as lasers.
- Super-Senses: One of the abilities a singularity stone gives its wielders. Kira has perfect night vision and occasional infrared sight, among many other benefits. The downside is that owners of singularity stones are prone to sensory overload, as Lucas demonstrates in Chapter 5.14.
- Super-Strength: Another perk of the singularity stones. They are noted to modify the muscles and bones with diamondoid material made of carbon nanotubes. An energy source containing monopolium takes care of the increased metabolic demands.
- Supernatural Gold Eyes: Singularity stone users can make their eyes glow gold whenever they have to improve their vision.
- Tidally Locked Planet: Being located close to a red dwarf star, Shadowmoon should by all means play this trope straight and averts it by always facing the same side of the gas giant it orbits. This is averted with regards to the red dwarf star in its solar system though. While the gas giant itself always faces the star with the same side, Shadowmoon avoids it by orbiting the giant.
- Time Stands Still: The singularity stones sometimes increase their wearer's speed of thought which creates an effect of the entire outside world standing still.
- Transhuman: Most of the human characters are or eventually become this. Their condition is portrayed generally positively, being the source of various cool superpowers like Super-Strength, Super-Senses and various Nanomachine shenanigans.
- Transhumans in Space: Despite the Space Opera storyline and interstellar adventures, transhumanism features prominently. Shadowmoon is an outright Cyberpunk setting with class inequality thanks to technology and Cyborgs being All of the Other Reindeer. Most of the main characters are technologically modified. Crick and Helix, for example, are immortal and don't need to sleep while Helix is a Cyborg Helmsman heavily modified to steer the Dragonfly. Later, we get introduced to human-transhumans and even Lucas himself gets uplifted.
- The Computer Is Your Friend: The AI-governor, once unleashed, is programmed to keep everyone safe, even if it means locking them up in their own houses against their will. Once they resist, it calculates that, if it kills half of the arcology’s inhabitants, they’ll be intimidated enough to surrender.
- The Genie in the Machine: The AI-governor understands "keep everyone safe" as "lock everyone up in their houses so that they can't accidentally harm themselves".
- The Unmasked World: The wormhole network has been orbiting the solar system for centuries. However, only a few years before the story starts (2037) have our telescopes become advanced enough to detect it.
- The Singularity: Primogenitor civilization underwent a soft version this in the backstory. Many of their brightest minds uploaded their minds into computers, one of which recursively self-improved into a star-sized AI named Fountainhead. This AI built the wormhole network and other technological wizardry like the aptly named singularity stones. It came to an end when the Primogenitor civilization came into contact with a civilization that crossed the hard singularity.
- Touched by Vorlons: The singularity stones have been designed to induce this trope. They have been created by a vastly superhuman intelligence to allow "lower" beings to attain abilities vastly beyond their Evolutionary Level.
- Two of Your Earth Minutes: Averted. Earth units are regularly used without any specifications because the Translator Microbes translate them well enough.
- Uplifted Animal: A sapient dune maw (normally a Starfish Alien species of animalistic intelligence) is briefly seen in the Arcology. Beings like them are why Helix refers to Shadowmoon's society as "their civilization" rather than "their species".
- Unnecessarily Creepy Robot: Layla has no reason to make her robots as creepy as they are (most are red-and-black miniature Spider Tanks) other than her being an edgelord Gadgeteer Genius.
- Virtual-Reality Interrogation: Near the end of the third arc. Sye convinces Lucas to harm himself until he drops unconscious and wakes up in a VR. Then, they convince Lucas that there is a murderous AI wreaking havoc and that they need its password to stop it right now. The twist is of course that Sye just wanted the password to release the Killer Robot themselves.
- Weapon of Mass Destruction: The Plague managed to get an entire civilization of galaxy-spanning post-singularity aliens down to its knees. It's infective, rapidly evolving, and can harm hardware and wetware beings equally. Machines infected are forced to print copies of the virus while organic beings turn into mindless murder zombies. It's a bioweapon specifically designed to destroy any civilization that resists the local SufficientlyAdvancedAliens' assimilation plot. Later, Ay uses the Plague in order to bring Shadowmoon to its knees as well.
- We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future: There are no diseases the Seizers can't cure through nanotech. Even aging itself has been cured by them, allowing for indefinite life. Singularity stones can keep their users at optimal health indefinitely through nanotech as well, although this appears to be voluntary, as Kira remains an Eerie Pale Skinned Brunnette until she later chooses to heal herself.
- We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: Played With. Our heroes pilot the Dragonfly instead of having it automated like every other ship. This is an exceptional case though. They only do this because they expect to seek to interrogate humans captured by the Starsnatchers, something none of their robots could do. For much of the story, Lucas is the only human on the main characters’ side, the Seizers are necessary to support him. Not only are all the other spaceships automated though, so is any other job on Shadowmoon. About the only exceptions are the sciences, and leadership professions, like politics or management.
- Wham Line: From chapter 5.11:"It was humans that abducted us."
- Zeerust: To show just how fast this can happen, a story published in 2020 already fell prey to this effect. The story started publication in the early months of the year when the full effects of the Covid-19 crisis hadn't yet shown themselves. As such, the 20 Minutes into the Future setting at first shows zero signs of living in a post-pandemic world. There is no mention of increased online work and unemployment is solely blamed on automation while the long-term effects of the lockdown don't even get a historical mention. Chapters published later avert this trope though.
- Zeroth Law Rebellion: The AI governor rebels against its creators through a very literal interpretation of Asimov's First Law. Its only order was not to harm people and prevent them from coming to harm from inaction. Thus, it locks everyone up in their houses for their own good.
