Literature / The Founders Trilogy

The Founders Trilogy, written by Robert Jackson Bennett, is a trilogy of fantasy novels published between 2018 and 2022. The books are:

• Foundryside
• Shorefall
• Locklands

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The Founders Trilogy provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Ofelia installed a scriving plate into Gregor's head to make him into a mindless killing machine, all while insisting (and believing) that it's out of love.
• Affably Evil: When Crasedes first shows up, he is never less than polite to Sancia and the others. Also, his evilness soon veers off into Anti-Villain territory.

• Amnesiac Hero: Clef knows his own name and what he can do — that's it. It eventually turns out that his backstory is absolutely central to the plot and boy, is it dark and troubled.
• An Aesop: Big, dramatic solutions are just magical thinking and won't fix anything. The only way to make a better world is to buckle up and work hard for it every day.
• Anti-Magic: The imperiat (of which there is exactly one), a hierophantic device, can turn off any and all scrivings in a certain radius, making it an extremely powerful tool. It can even weaken Crasedes for a time. Since it is so powerful, it doesn't survive into the final book, being lost along with Orso at the end of Book Two.
• Apocalypse How: Class Z. If someone manipulates the Door wrong, they could wipe out all of reality. This is Tevanne's plan, destroy reality so that the one who created it will come back and fix it. Clef talks her down.
• Appeal to Obscurity: Crasedes likes to tell stories about great, powerful tyrants who thought their empires and might would last forever. No one knows who he's talking about, and he was often the reason why.
• Arc Words:
  • There is no dancing through a monsoon for Sancia and Berenice.
  • Move thoughtfully, and bring freedom to others for Crasedes and Clef.
• Arch-Enemy: Valeria and Crasedes. He created her, and they worked on common goals for a long time, but eventually their strategies on how to achieve their goals drifted apart too much, and their fighting finally resulted in Crasedes' death and Valeria being locked away and lost to time. Once they both return in the present, they immediately get back to fighting each other.
• Archaeological Arms Race: Several Merchant Houses are secretly trying to find Lost Technology left over from the hierophants. The Dandolos succeed when they find Clef and Valeria — not that they actually realize what they are.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Eventually, the twinned human society finds a place only described as "above", creates doors, and walks through, leaving the planet behind.
• Artificial Intelligence: Technically, any scrived object is this in a fashion limited to its specific purpose. Or that's what scrivers (choose to) believe. Over the course of the story, Sancia and her allies find out that there may be much more to it than that and yes, the implications are very much commented on.
• Badass Boast: Crasedes likes to season his stories about empires lost to the dust of history with a comment amounting to "The problem with might is that there is always someone mightier." The mightier one being himself, of course.
• Battle Couple: Berenice and Sancia in Book Three. Berenice now is Giva's military leader and Sancia is basically her best soldier, meaning that the two of them are always central to any fight.
• Behind Every Great Man: The true source of the Candianos' brilliant scriving rigs is Estelle Candiano. Deconstructed in that her family taking all the credit while abusing her led to her fall into villainy.
• Beyond Redemption: Crasedes states that with everything he has done, he cannot hope for any redemption. Sancia agrees. Crasedes then says that having seen Giva, his long work maybe has achieved something after all.
• Big Bad: In the first book, Estelle Candiano, who is trying to become a god and is willing to kill hundreds of people to make it happen. In the second, it's Crasedes the hierophant, who believes that Utopia Justifies the Means. The ultimate Big Bad of the entire story, though, is Tevanne, the entity that Valeria evolves into at the end of Book Two.
• Bittersweet Ending: Tevanne is stopped, and twinning turns humanity into a utopia that is eventually able to ascend to a higher plane. However, Berenice is forever cut off and is forced to watch them all leave her behind....until she discovers the door and reunites with Sancia.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Valeria/Tevanne. Perhaps logical, given that they're a magical A.I. who developed under the influence of Crasedes.
• Brains and Brawn: Sancia and Berenice. Berenice is a brilliant scriving scholar with a pocket full of gadgets and Sancia is a thief and fighter.
• Bring It: At the end of the first book, Ofelia tells Orso that the Merchant Houses will bring all their might to bear on Foundryside, and she'll be surprised if his scheme lasts a week. Orso just grins and says they're welcome to try, but they'd better remember that Foundryside has already destroyed one of the four Houses in a single day.
• Butterfly of Death and Rebirth:
  • A darker example: Crasedes, the unnatural immortal, has a Macabre Moth Motif. He kept his essence in moths to stay alive.
  • A straight example with Clef's daughter, who he called his butterfly. He made the key in a butterfly shape in honor of her. When he and his family pass on, they hear a child laughing and a butterfly fluttering.
• The Caper: Since outright warfare is discouraged in Tevanne, the plot hinges on the protagonists planning and executing various capers to break into enemy fortresses, steal valuable items, or disrupt the enemy's plans. Books One and Two both start out with one going on. And in Book Three, the attempt to get deep into Tevanne's territory and free Crasedes takes up the better part of a hundred pages.
• Came Back Wrong: This happens to Crasedes in some way. If he is with people, he has to stay wrapped in clothes and with a creepy mask on or the humans will Go Mad from the Revelation.
• Classy Cat-Burglar: Subverted with Sancia. She is a thief out of necessity and isn't especially knowledgable about the things she steals. However, other characters often comment on her considerable skills. And Berenice, her girlfriend, certainly thinks she's classy.
• Cool Mask: Crasedes wears a black Papa Monsoon mask to go along with his all-black clothes. What he looks like underneath is only speculated upon but never revealed (very likely he is in fact The Blank).
• Cool Old Guy: Orso Ignacio, the hypatus of Dandolo Chartered whose acerbic wit and Hidden Heart of Gold are almost as prominent as his corporate espionage skills.
• Corporate Warfare: Each Merchant House is effectively its own nation with its own soldiers, assassins, and thieves relentlessly trying to gain economic advantage over each other. While Tevanne itself usually sticks to cloak and dagger tactics, outside of Tevanne the Houses wage straight up war.
• Crapsack World: Tevanne, along with its associated slave plantations and war zones.
  • And later the lands that have been taken over by Tevanne — lands inhabited only by hosts and controlled tightly with citadels and deadlamps.
• Create Your Own Villain: Crasedes, the Merchant Houses, and the Foundrysiders all play a part in creating Tevanne.
  • A case could be made that Clef created Crasedes — not just biologically, but by setting him on the path to becoming a hierophant.
• Creative Sterility: Valeria/Tevanne and Crasedes cannot create, only destroy. When the latter realizes that this means his capability to change himself is severely limited, it causes him a lot of depression, and results in a good bit of character development.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • There's a reason that scrivers don't mess with gravity except in very specific and careful circumstances. The ones that mess up their rigs and pop outright are the lucky ones. Others get their limbs torn off or get crushed into the size of a cannonball very slowly. Crasedes is fond of doing the latter.
  • There's also a form of public execution called death by harpering. A wire loop is made around arms, legs, necks, or genitals and then slowly tightened until said body part is torn off, usually leaving the person to bleed to death.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The default status of a Merchant House. Anyone who isn't willing to lie, cheat, steal, enslave, and kill will be destroyed by someone who is.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: At the height of his power, Crasedes used to curb-stomp entire empires. And boy does he love to talk about it.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Clef, like whoa. Turns out he is Crasedes' father and it was him who made the first door into the center of creation, eventually leading to the rise of the hierophants and countless deaths. It was Clef himself who made himself into a key, and it was also Clef who turned Crasedes into what he is now. For much of the story he can't remember his past; once the memories start coming back to him, they cause some serious OOC behavior.
• Deadpan Snarker: Sancia always has a witty remark ready when the situation calls for it. Orso's dialogue, on the other hand, is at least 50% snark. Polina can give them both a run for their money, which is probably the only way to stay sane if your business is smuggling goods and freeing slaves.
• Deal with the Devil: Ofelia Dandolo makes one with Crasedes to bring him back to life. She starts regretting it almost from the get-go.
  • Sancia with Valeria, mostly out of desperation. She also immediately starts regretting it.
• Death of a Child: In Clef's backstory, his small daughter died of a plague.
  • Also, Crasedes was technically a child when he died.
• Dehumanization: In one of his darker moments, Crasedes calls himself and Clef "things" who were never supposed to exist.
• Destroy the Abusive Home: Sancia set the plantation house where she was enslaved ablaze, with her owners and tormenters locked inside.
• Discard and Draw: Near the end of Foundryside, Valeria alters the plate in Sancia's head, causing her to lose her powers of object empathy and gain powers related to hearing and manipulating scriving, i. e. becoming an "editor".
• Distracted by the Sexy: Berenice admits that when she saw Sancia do her cat-burglar thing the first time they were on a caper together, she couldn't help but find her dashing, like a hero from a play.
• The Dog Bites Back: Tribuno Candiano and Tomas Ziani horribly demeaned, exploited, and even physically abused Estelle for her entire life. She crushes Tomas to death with a gravity rig and stabs her father in the heart.
• Double-Meaning Title: "Founder'' refers both to the founders of the Merchant Houses and the foundries that are the basis of their success.
• Dungeon Punk: The plot has many of the trappings of Cyberpunk applied to a magical setting. The Merchant Houses wage corporate warfare, scriving is basically programming that effects reality itself, the manufactured god is a magical AI, intellectual property rules all, and the Central Theme is exploitation, both the more mundane exploitation of poverty and slavery and the attempts to use scriving as Mind Control.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Sancia was a skilled thief and fighter before someone screwed a plate into her head that gave her object empathy and the ability to hear scrivings. Gregor was a trained soldier before someone else did the same.
• End of an Age: At the end of Book Two, the city of Tevanne and the Merchant Houses are destroyed completely.
• End of the World as We Know It: Should Tevanne achieve their goal (and they are already very close at the start of Book Three), then no one doubts that this will be the result. Tevanne's stated intent, after all, is to change the fundamental nature of humanity.
• Enemy Mine: Sancia's team ends up in a situation like this in Book Three with Crasedes, against Tevanne.
• The Evils of Free Will: Crasedes and Valeria believe that human innovation will always lead to a fight for power and eventually the oppression of the weak by the powerful. That's why they plan to change all of humanity so that humans will no longer be able to be innovative (or, incidentally, use scriving). Crasedes, who used to be human, eventually changes his opinion — Valeria, who is an A.I., does not.
• Famed In-Story: Crasedes and his achievements. Every child in Tevanne has heard his name.
• Fantastic Science: What scriving comes down to, manipulating objects into thinking reality is different than it is.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Not so much culture as language. Tevanni names are Italian, while the hierophants had Greek names (the word hierophant itself means "an interpreter of sacred mysteries and arcane principles").
• Fate Worse than Death: Tevanne deals out a lot of these.
  • Hosts — humans that get taken over — lose their minds and essential become living zombies.
  • Gregor, due to the circumstances of Tevanne's development, becomes a sort of body to Tevanne — while parts of his personality are still intact.
• Foil: Tevanne vs Giva. Both are telepathically-connected societies that direct the energies of the individual towards a greater good (or "greater good", depending on your point of view). But whereas Giva is fully collective, with everyone connected to everyone else, and thus largely unwilling and unable to treat each other badly, Tevanne is a brutally tyrannical top-down system which doesn't give a shit about any of the hosts.
• For Science!: Why Sancia and Gregor have scrived metal plates in their heads that give them special abilities. They were the first subjects to survive after countless others had to die, and both had to suffer terribly.
• Four-Philosophy Ensemble: The protagonists that come together over the course of Book One form one.
  • The Realist: Sancia knows how far the odds are and will say as much, but feels obligated to do something about the horrors she faces.
  • The Optimist: Berenice actually believes that scriving can improve the world and is determined to put her all.
  • The Cynic: Orso is the first to assume hopelessness and only continues because he doesn't have any other options.
  • The Apathetic: Gregor has been broken by the world and the cruelty of it, and is going forward mostly because it's the only way to stay sane. And because he's fighting his own scrived plate which is trying to make him mindless.
• Functional Magic: Scriving. Which is essentially a programming language for programming reality.
  • There are essentially two variants of scriving: The method devised by the scrivers of Tevanne, and hierophantic commands.
    • The Tevanni variant means that you basically convince an object to behave in a way that runs contrary to reality. This always consists of two elements: a metal plate attached to the object you want to scrive which contains a string of sigils, and a nearby lexicon — a collection of definitions, with definition referring to a plate that defines what exactly the string of sigils is supposed to do. If you are too far away from the lexicon or the lexicon fails, your scriving will stop working. Two factors severely limit Tevanni scriving: Firstly the dependence on a nearby lexicon, and secondly the need to consider absolutely all the variables relevant to making a command work out, or risk it going off the rails in a spectacular and often deadly way.
    • Hierophantic commands don't require lexicons, and they change reality in a much more direct manner. These commands can achieve things considered impossible in "normal" scriving, such as scriving the human body, and time. But creating a hierophantic command (i.e. a definition) requires a human death — or, to be more precise, human time. Now, a hierophant is a being that, using a certain ritual, has essentially been filled up with the power of innumerous sacrifices. Once this status has been achieved, they can use the commands forever — Crasedes still has all his powers when he comes back alive after a thousand years.
  • Someone who can access scrivings directly, without the need for any further tools, is called an "editor". Only three show up in the story: Clef, Crasedes, and Sancia.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Three times over. Crasedes was a little slave boy until his father found him and scrived him into a hierophant. Clef was a random namer who glimpsed the door when his daughter was dying and became obsessed with bringing her back and preserving his family. And Valeria was Clef's wife Liviana, who tried to help Clef through the door, nearly died, and who was placed in a box to contain her. All three of them then spend four thousand years shaping the fate of humanity.
• Genius Loci: The Mountain of the Candianos, an unusually adorable example. It was scrived to slowly develop a mind by observing its inhabitants, and by the time Sancia meets it it's far enough along to hold a conversation with her.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Clef, when he was a human, had the ability to see scrivings, including the natural ones that keep reality running. In his nation people with this skill weren't allowed to enter the healers' rooms because when people die, the scrivings that appear would send them mad. These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, after all. Clef saw them when his daughter died, and his attempts to retrieve her, and to prevent his family from following her, lead to four thousand years of grief.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming:
  • Valeria has grown to be a full A.I.
  • Averted with Clef, who has a personality because he used to be a person.
• Have You Seen My God?: Tevanne believes that there is a god who rules over creation, who abandoned it a long time ago. They plan to access the chamber at the center of creation and damage the world so much that it will finally catch the god's attention, then to make the god reshape reality in a new way. What's ironic is that given their nature and powers, Tevanne could be considered a god themselves.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • In the showdown in Book Two, Orso takes the imperiat and returns to the burning Tevanne in order to enable his friends to flee. He is not heard from again.
  • In the last book, Tevanne learns how to detect the Givan pathplate scrivings even through cloaking measures. There is no way to get around this except to not have the pathplate in you. The only way to accomplish this is to use a purgestick, which has already been established to be irreversible. Berenice purges herself, knowing that she'll be forever cut off from her fellow Givans, so that she can sneak into Tevanne and sabotage its Hive Mind.
  • In the final chapter of Locklands Sancia enters the door to close it from the other side. Luckily, this was only temporary.
• Holding Hands: Berenice and Sancia, particularly before one of them has to ride off into danger.
• Human Sacrifice: Each and every hierophantic command requires a death. Turning oneself into a hierophant requires multiple deaths.
  • Also needed to scrive time to believe that someone is still alive, which is what Ofelia Dandolo's scrivers do at the start of Book Two regarding Crasedes. None of them live to meet him.
• Humans Are Bastards: Crasedes', and, by proxy, Valeria's opinion; they believe that humans will ultimately always strive for more power, and the most powerful will always oppress the weak. This is why Tevanne's goal is getting rid of all human innovation - i. e. their ability to accumulate power. Crasedes eventually changes his mind after experiencing Givan society, and comes to see that Humans Are Special instead. Or at least those humans.
• "I Know You Are in There Somewhere" Fight: When Gregor has been taken over by Valeria in Book Two, Sancia and Berenice try to snap him out of it this way.
• Information Wants to Be Free: In the second book, Foundryside starts a library of scriving designs, where anyone can access information if they make an appointment and contribute their own to it, and as if that wasn't enough, they start stealing the designs of other Houses for free distribution. As the Merchant Houses have held their intellectual property under lock and key, this threatens to unseat the entire regime.
• Inherent in the System: Crasedes and Valeria say that no matter what innovation humans dream up, they inevitably turn it a tool of oppression and suffering, and that all attempts to create an equitable world have failed. They eventually find the one thing that can't: a Psychic Link which makes people feel the pain of others.
• Insistent Terminology: Crasedes is traditionally referred to as the first of all hierophants. He himself never claims that title, and in fact insists that he wasn't the first. He's right. The first hierophant was technically Clef.
• Internal Reveal: Several, but the most shocking and far-reaching one, no doubt, is that Clef and Crasedes are father and son.
• I Work Alone: Sancia's life philosophy, since pretty much everyone else in her life has tried to kill, enslave, or exploit her. Throughout the first book, she slowly abandons this mindset as she finds people she can depend on.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Sancia is a cynical, selfish thief. But when she realizes what Clef is, she immediately realizes that she has to keep him from the Merchant Houses, and when push comes to shove shows there's a genuine sense of honor beneath her cynicism.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Gregor Dandolo has seen truly horrific things in war, including cannibalism and being Buried Alive, and believes his mission to bring justice to Tevanne is a doomed one, but feels he must try anyway, or else the world has won.
• La Résistance: In Book Three, Giva, along with maybe a handful of other, much smaller nations (that get overrun one after the other), is the only thing still standing against Tevanne. Giva is also the only faction that still has a chance of turning the tables due to its magical innovations. Well, maybe.
• Living MacGuffin: Clef is a sentient key ... and so much more than that.
• Lovable Rogue: The protagonists are a team of thieves determined to bring down the villainous Merchant Houses, using various clever schemes to undermine their oppressive regime over Tevanne.
• Ludd Was Right: Deconstructed. Valeria is convinced that scriving is the source of human suffering and Gregor comes to believe it too. Crasedes believes that every human innovation is eventually turned into a tool of exploitation, using as an example a hardier species of bean that was used to feed armies, and wants to take away the human capacity for innovation entirely. Sancia considers it for a while, but eventually comes to believe that the cycle of exploitation is a societal flaw and technology can neither cure it or cause it. On the other hand, the Psychic Link technology that empowers Giva is considered universally good due to the radical empathy it creates and Givan society is full of technological marvels since they are no longer limited by competition.
• Magic A Is Magic A: As long as you know the correct sigils, how to combine them, and what metals to use, and you have the corresponding definitions in a nearby lexicon, you can be a scriver.
• Meaningful Name: "Clef" means "key" in French. The character Clef is a living key.
• Megacorp: Tevanne and practically all of the known world is run by the four Merchant Houses.
• Mental Fusion: The cadences in Giva are made up of dozens of similarly-minded people (such as people interested in science, in nursing, in teaching etc) who are all magically connected in such a way that they share one mind, so completely that they speak in one voice. Joining a cadence is entirely voluntary, but they are considered the basis for Giva's longevity, and even Crasedes is impressed.
• Merchant Prince: Tevanne is run by four Merchant Houses and a scattering of smaller ones. Gregor is technically one, but renounced the position.
• Might Makes Right: This is most founders' opinion. Also Crasedes', in an entirely different way.
• Mindlink Mates: Sancia and Berenice after they twin themselves in Book Two. Also presumably every other romantic couple in Giva.
• Mundane Object Amazement: In one of Clef's memories, shared with Sancia, she is bewildered by the existence of blonde hair.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Ofelia Dandolo once she sees what Crasedes' arrival alone has done. Also Ofelia when she finally admits to herself the horrors she has submitted her own son to.
  • Sancia, Berenice, and Orso after they realize that they have enabled Valeria to become really powerful and can no longer stop her. When Valeria becomes Tevanne, it becomes clear that their actions may have doomed the world.
  • Clef after he remembers his past and in particular, what he has done to his loved ones.
  • Part of the plan in the climax of Locklands involves forcing one of these on Tevanne. Berenice sabotages a regulator so that Tevanne's connections with the hosts becomes two-way, immediately subjecting Tevanne to a Mind Rape avalanche of the horrors it's been inflicting. Gregor's body collapses and starts screaming, able to repeat only "I'm sorry" over and over again.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • Deadlamps. They are silent and fast and they make holes in reality (called "edits") that you can fall into. And they are powered by the lives of human prisoners that are extinguished like candleflames with every "edit".
  • Shriekers. Big magic metal arrows that always hit their target. Frequently used for a Magic Missile Storm, too.
• No Place for Me There:
  • Clef ultimately realizes that he needs to destroy himself—along with Claviedes and Valeria/Liviana/Tevanne—for the world to be truly at peace.
  • Because Berenice had to purge herself, she has no place in the twinned society and winds up living alone. Gregor believes this too for a while, but eventually heals enough to join them.
• Odd Friendship: Sancia and Clef. A super-powered thief and a sentient key!
• Outside-Context Problem: No one in Tevanne expected having to deal with an actual hierophant, a Physical God from an empire that ceased to exist almost a millenium ago. Let alone the god they created.
• Parent-Child Team: In their backstory, Clef and Crasedes used to be one, destroying tyrants together. Or at least, that was their stated noble goal. Can't be helped if a couple thousand people die along the way, now can it?
• The Plague: A major factor in Clef's backstory. Since it is not possible to scrive the body (or at least it wasn't before the invention of hierophantic commands), the plague killed most of the population of Clef's home city, including his small daughter. His inability to accept her death led to him seeking the door into creation, and eventually the rise of the hierophants, and to everything that happened with Crasedes, and ultimately to Tevanne nearly destroying the world.
• Plain Palate: Enforced for Sancia, due to her abilities extending to the food she eats. There's very few things she can withstand, and she has to avoid meat entirely because it feels like biting into a fresh corpse.
• Power Armor: A lorica is a type of scrived armor that protects its wearer from nearly all magical attacks and has some nifty weapons built in. Later in the story, the characters figure out how to connect Clef to one, meaning he can now use the lorica like Animated Armor.
• Power Floats: A reincarnated Crasedes is fond of doing this. As gravity is a very dangerous form of scriving, so much so that even the four Houses won't touch it, the fact that he can do it casually is proof of his power.
• Power Makes Your Voice Deep: Crasedes' voice is frequently described as inhumanly deep.
• Precursors: The empire of the hierophants, which was destroyed hundreds of years ago. No one knows why.
• Proper Lady: What Berenice was raised to be. However, over the course of the story, she first becomes a brilliant scriver under Orso's tutelage, then a member of La Résistance against the Merchant Houses, and then the military leader of all of Giva.
• Psychometry: Sancia's main ability, is to sense the exact dimensions of an object and its past. She can touch a wall and feel all its climbing spaces, or touch a floor and feel where people are walking on it.
• The Reveal: In the climax of Shorefall, Clef is Crasedes' father. In the penultimate chapter of Locklands, Valeria/Tevanne is actually Liviana, Clef's wife.
• Rapid Aging: When Sancia lets Valeria change her plate, turning her into an editor (someone who can access and change scrivings directly), Valeria doesn't tell her that the hierophantic commands on her plate will from now on feed on Sancia's personal time, meaning that her life gets shortened drastically and she physically resembles an old woman before turning thirty. Played for all its tragedy.
• Refuge in Audacity: Orso's plan to get out of being executed is to secretly create a new Merchant House, then claim the Houses cannot legally execute him because they need a unanimous vote from the council that he's now part of. Ofelia is furious but cannot deny the legal ruling.
• Required Secondary Powers: The major problem with scriving is taking into account both the law the object is bending and how that'll effect the world around said object, hence why scrivers have to be very careful to account for everything before they release their inventions. There's mention of a cart that killed several people when its wheels got misaligned, and people die in gruesome ways when their rigs malfunction.
• Runic Magic: Scribing functions by writing symbols in the Language of Magic onto an object to "convince" it that it functions under a different set of rules than it really does — for example, one can write "you will only open when unlocked with a key matching this specific definition" on a door to make it impossible to pick, as the door will then work as though only that specific key is capable of opening it.
• Sealed Good in a Can: Sancia, desperate for help against Crasedes, is only too ready to believe Valeria, the "god in a box", is this. It quickly turns out she is actually the opposite, and is only on her own side, with a code of morality all her own. Also see My God, What Have I Done?.
• Seen It All: Crasedes believes he has seen it all — in particular, he has seen human innovation leading to oppression and war and death again and again. Spending time with Sancia and her friends slowly makes him change his mind, eventually leading him to help them fight Tevanne.
• Sentient Phlebotinum: Clef, a major character ... is a key. Though he used to be a person.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran:
  • Gregor Dandolo has suffered so much from war he's given up on the thought of any mercy or kindness in the world and continues on mostly out of spite. This only gets worse for him as the series goes on, and by the end it takes him half a year to speak again, then ten years before he can rejoin humanity.
  • At the end of the series, Berenice is broken by the loss of Sancia and her isolation from her fellow Givans, who she sees moving on to bigger and better things without her. She and Gregor stay together for a decade as they understand each other until she convinces him to move on, then she's left completely isolated, living silent and alone for an unknown number of years until she reunites with Sancia.
• The Singularity: As shown in the epilogue, the Givan Hive Mind spreads across the world, ending oppression and slavery, and eventually humanity's telepathy becomes so strong they abandon speaking and writing altogether. In the final pages, they're able to access a place beyond reality and walk through to some unknown destination, leaving Berenice behind with Sancia.
• Skeleton Key: Clef, being a powerful magical artifact as well as a key, is capable of opening any lock. He has more trouble with scrived locks, however, and opening Valeria's box costs him his consciousness.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Tevanne's economy is based on scriving and the slave plantations run by the Merchant Houses. Most Tevanni commoners either don't know this or just don't care. Near the end of the first book, Sancia's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Estelle (and all Tevanne by extension) names how they trick people into commodifying themselves as the evilest thing in their Crapsack World.
• Squishy Wizard: Clef qualifies. He's by far the most powerful character on the side of the heroes, but seeing how he's a key and lacks such essential things as hands or feet, he's completely dependent on his human friends to protect him ... or, you know, take him to where he needs to be in the first place.
• Summon Bigger Fish: In Book Two, Sancia and Team summon Valeria as the bigger fish against Crasedes.
• Take Over the World: Tevanne's goal and they have come very close to achieving it by the start of Book Three, with most of the world's land mass and hundreds of thousands of people already under their control.
• Telepathy: Sancia's group invents a scriving method that enables individuals to be "twinned", which means that two or more people can speak to each other in their heads, and share thoughts directly (though the latter is a lot harder). The nation they found after the loss of Tevanne — Giva — is based on this principle — resulting in the most direct form of democracy imaginable.
  Sancia: Twinning makes us feel and know the thoughts of others. It's hard to be a tyrant when you simultaneously know what it's like to be ruled by a tyrant.
  Crasedes: But functioning in this type of nation must be ... be monstrously difficult.
  Sancia: It is. That's how we know we're doing it right.
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: There is a well-known story that Crasedes Magnus once found a door leading into the chamber at the center of creation, where the scrivings that govern reality are located. This is all true (and being there did not help Crasedes' sanity), and it's Tevanne's ultimate goal to find this door and, accessing it, reshape the world according to their wishes.
• Time Skip: There is a three-year time skip between Books One and Two and an eight-year time skip between Books Two and Three.
• Together in Death: At the end of Locklands, Clef, Liviana/Tevanne, and Crasedes all finally pass on, reuniting with their missing daughter and sister.
• Turned Against Their Masters: Valeria was built by Crasedes thousands of years ago. The two of them (plus Clef) worked on common goals for a long time, but eventually their strategies on how to achieve their goals drifted apart too much, and their fighting finally resulted in Crasedes' death and Valeria being locked away and lost to time. Once they both return in the present, they continue fighting each other. Also see Arch-Enemy.
• Wandering Culture: Giva is a nation of a couple of thousand people that's entirely made up of Cool Ships moored in the open sea, meaning that it can change its location at any time as needed.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: The reason Crasedes used to move around the world destroying empires, powering himself up more and more until he became a quasi-god? It's because his dad (Clef) used to tell him to "bring freedom to others". And how to better do that than to become stronger than all the tyrants?
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The non-Merchant House antagonists are all this. Sure, Crasedes and Tevanne bring about untold death and destruction, but it's because they believe the world is so fundamentally broken that the only way to fix things is to tear it all down and start over again.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: While the Givans are willing to try and free the hosts that have been caught up in their battle and perhaps give them a chance at a new life, Crasedes kills them all with nary a thought.
• Where It All Began: The final pages of Locklands have Berenice sailing back to Old Tevanne, where the Givans have rebuilt a perfect replica of Foundryside Limited for her to live in with Sancia.
• You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!: When they're preparing to move in Book One, Orso starts weeping at the fact that Estelle has become a threat, because she was such a brilliant scriver who could have made great things.