Literature / Whom Gods Would Destroy

"...they first drive mad."

Whom Gods Would Destroy: An Occult History of the First World War is a 2023 novel trilogy by Tyler Kimball told in the form of a paranormal survey of the First World War, with the three parts entitled The Architects of Hell, Archangel, and Armageddon. It begins as a relatively straight-forward historical investigation based in “real life” events blended with fantastical elements, but various characters and plotlines began to interweave, resulting in an apocalyptic dark fantasy superhero religious horror war story...thing.

---

Whom Gods Would Destroy contains examples of:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Part of the story takes place in the make-shift underground cities constructed along the western front, which even had chapels and entertainment areas.
• Agent Peacock: Tom Noun. Notably feminine, literary, and pretty, to the point of being a convincing crossdresser; also incredibly tough and dangerous.
• Ambiguously Human: whatever the Nine are isn't quite human. As it turns out, they're nephilim.
• Anachronic Order: A brief slip from the general chronological order: The “Finwife” story takes place in 1919.
• Ancient Conspiracy: multiple overlapping ones are mentioned;a chunk of their story involves their struggles for supremacy in Edwardian occultism. Though the conspiracies are often not-so-ancient, such as the Ordo Templi Orientis, the Esoteric Order of Enoch, and the Oddfellows.
• And Zoidberg: in one of the snarkier bits, Bulgaria gets this treatment among the War's powers.
• Animalistic Abomination: the rat-king, the Hound of the Somme, and "the dragon."
• Apocalypse Cult: multiple crop up before and during the war, and the Nine may be one.
• Aura Vision: very common among the empowered individuals of the story, as it was a stock psychic power popularized at the turn of the century.
• Author Appeal: It's pretty clear that the author is interested in obscure paranormal trivia, since most of the many, many characters are as well, to an obsessive degree. Then again, characters surrounded by occult weirdness would probably want to know more about it.
• Artifact of Attraction: the Cambridge Cabal's ring, which may be something of a monkey's paw.
• Astral Projection: In part I, Machado Correia, a Portuguese psychic who astrally projects herself down from the upper atmosphere using moonlight. She is a brutal, raging assailant who cannot be reasoned with. In part III
• Awesome, but Impractical: experimental weaponry, communications technology, fringe science, occult gambits, and new tactics get explored frequently. They are rarely worth it.
• Badass Longcoat: a majority of characters who are described physically seem to wear a version. It is the era that put the trench in trench coat, and leads to a cast tricked out in Coat, Hat, Mask and Gas Mask, Longcoat styles.
• Beast of the Apocalypse: the beasts of the Book of Revelation are identified with the great empires of the time - the Beast from the Sea with a dead head is identified as the British Empire and America (upon joining the War), the Beast of the Earth is identified with the French, the Whore of Bablyon which sits upon the mountains is Germany and Austria, the Great Red Dragon is Russia. And then there's what may be what is called the Second Coming of Christ, which takes the imagery of the Bible literally, including a sword coming out of his mouth and a brassy face. This, however, is described by the least reliable narrator.
• Bedlam House: quite a chunk of the story takes places in wartime hospitals and asylums, places of disease, madness, drug abuse, and psychic horror.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: apparently, several historical figures have been some kind of supernatural being, including Tarrare, who has a Cannibalism Superpower and Resurrective Immortality. Charles Dellschau's Sonora Air Club is hinted at being real and connected to the mystery airship flap and one of the nephilim, the Hungarian Serial Killer Bela Kiss is apparently a functional astrologer and blood witch, and Thomas Edison's scientific yacht crew may have helped awaken Leviathan.
  • Perhaps the most striking omission is Rasputin, who typically gets a central focus in Weird World War One stories; he is mentioned a few times in chapters covering his two assassination and the fall of the Romanov dynasties, but isn't depicted as being any kind of supernatural being or doing anything otherwise not covered by conventional history.
• Beige Prose: Occasionally, particularly when quoting from journalistic sources. Tom Noun writes in a notably Modernist Purple Prose.
• Bilingual Bonus
• Biomanipulation: Tom Noun's ability.
• Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics / Improbable Aiming Skills: Jacoba van der Aarde has a supernatural command over anyone who hears her voice, rendering them completely helpless. This is far more than standard mind control, to the point that any shot she fires will hit them. She demonstrates this by firing a gun into her own mouth, which hits a target.
• Body Horror: Warping flesh, rats eating people alive, locusts swarming over the hills of Jerusalem, polyphagia, trench foot, and the horrifying statue-sickness "encephalitis lethargica."
• Born Lucky / Winds of Destiny, Change!: Hannibal Barker, though with the downside that he seems to "bank" his luck, with improbable good fortune balanced out, in the end, by bad luck.
• Breaking the Fellowship: halfway through Archangel, echoing The Lord of the Rings, the nine giants lose two members and are separated, with two heading to Russia and the rest heading towards Greece.
• Brown Note: Witnessing various paranormal events seems to cause psychological distress and physical ailments, though not to a Lovecraftian extent of complete sanity loss.
• The Bus Came Back: Amadeo returns to the Nine after his crisis, rescuing Anna Sokoll and Zrno and fighting against Typhon and the Martian's summoning ritual.
• Casting a Shadow / Power of the Void: Susan, Tom Noun's mother, has a variation, where she can manipulate and teleport anything completely obscured by darkness.
• Chameleon Camouflage: the fae have ghillie suits that resemble Green-Man costumes, and are far more advanced than anything humanity has in the 1910s.
• Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: The book goes out of its way to subvert this trope, instead portraying the Gauls with Grenades as something like a revenge-fueled Blood Knight nation.
• The Chessmaster: Both Venetianer and Winepress seem to be subtly gathering superpowered individuals and gathering them together for some purpose.
• Christmas Episode: The famed Christmas Truce is featured in Gottlieb's introduction.
• Clingy Macguffin: The Ring of the Cambridge Cabal seemingly teleports after gaining a new legal owner- after having fallen into a stream.
• Complete-the-Quote Title: the full quote is "Whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad."
• Conspiracy Theorist: many, though Willis George Emerson and Elliott O'Donnell take the cake. Through his plotline as an amateur journalist, Hannibal Barker slowly descends into conspiratorial madness, clutching at threads such as apocalyptic cults, serial killers, anomalous airships, giant bones, and the high strangeness events in San Bernadino.
• Crapsack World: even away from the War front, the world of WGWD seems to be a miserable, hateful, decaying wreck.
• Crossover Cosmology: angels, demons, fairies, aliens, the giants of all cultures, kraken, and atmospheric entities are all in play.
• Culture Clash: On a macro-level, European cultures and their values clash; on a micro-level, the Siberian Anna Sokoll and everyone else, and Venetianer and his gentile cohorts.
• Deadpan Snarker: Celeste is fairly witty, with a calm yet cruel edge.
• Decoy Protagonist: Hannibal Barker appears early in the story and seems to be the guiding investigator piecing together the various plotlines. He doesn't make it to the end of the first book of a trilogy.
• Death of the Old Gods: while the angels and demons and other Biblical figures intend to go out with a bang, the fae are dying out slowly and pathetically.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: The fictional bits don't exactly shy away from the values of the Edwardian and WWI eras.
• Documentary of Lies: quite a bit of the history is correct, for a given value of “correct” when dealing with occult and paranormal events. However, it's the skeletal structure of a fictional narrative.
• Direct Line to the Author: As one would expect from the conceit of a paranormal investigation, the “author's” commentary tinges and shapes much of the tale.
• Dream Weaver: Venetianer is able to do this, via some association with crows.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: One of the wilder theories floated by the characters: dinosaurs are not only dragons, but dinosaurs became the category of angels known as seraphim, described fiery winged serpents. Also, Typhon regresses a chicken into its dinosaur ancestors, transforming it into a pathetic monster several Bulgarian villages misidentify as a dragon.
• Distant Finale: More in space than in time, but the final chapter of the third book follows two brand new characters in Windhoek, German South West Africa (modern day Namibia) in the last days of the war, as the British push in from South Africa. One is a Boer engineer, while the other is a young Herero boy who may or may not be possessed by the spirit of a German colonial commander.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him / Too Cool to Live The fate of Hannibal Barker happens rather abruptly, though he goes out with an epic final flight. But then again, they Never Found the Body.
• Dual Wielding: the classical trench-raider combination of pistol and melee weapon is often employed.
• Easter Egg: besides the openly explained elements, there are sideways references to multiple paranormal events, such as Mothman (Dr. Laurent notes that witnessing certain supernatural powers caused Actinic conjunctivitis among his staff, something connected to Mothman sightings by John Keel in ''The Mothman Prophecies'').
• The Edwardian Era: naturally, the portions that take place before the War, though the paranormal elements push it into a Gaslamp Fantasy feel.
• The Empire: how Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Ottomans, and the Austro-Hunagian Empire are portrayed.
• The Emperor: An essay explains the lingering culture power of the Kaiser as a meme, The Butcher of Belgium, and the actual personality of Wilhelm II.
• Epigraph: Several, including one from the Errol Morris documentary, "The Umbrella Man," about the anomalous micro-level of history.
• Evilutionary Biologist: Typhon, originally named Evangelopoulos, subverts this trope's notions of progress, instead choosing to regress organisms to primordial forms which he views as mightier and less degenerate. He also practices xenotransplanation, and worked with the French for their surgical enhancement black project. He even bulks up his own body into a hirsute, apelike form, and regresses a chicken into a dragon.
• Fantasy Americana: the parts that take place in America (natch) focus on the idiosyncrasies of American mythology, particularly baseball, Mormonism, and burial mound mythos.
• Fertile Blood: animals and plants semi-spontaeously generate from the spilled blood of nephilim, likely based on similar examples from Classic mythology, such as the moly plant. An injured Céleste produces snakes, Tom Noun's blood fills with beetles, and, at one point, a red bird flies from Anna Sokoll's wound.
• Footnote Fever: There are hundreds of footnoted references, and most are real sources. Some are not.
• Fog of War: a theme, most prominent with the essay on the Angels of Mons.
• Foregone Conclusion: by its very nature, there's quite a bit of historical irony involving the ultimate fate of the nations involved in the war.
• Genius Bruiser: the Nine are huge (apart from Anna Sokoll), physically powerful, and highly intelligent.
• Genius Loci: whatever Amadeo Avezzana encountered in the mountains may have been this, a delusion, or the Whore of Babylon.
• The Ghost: ultimately, God never actually appears on screen or speaks unambiguously to a person.
• Government Conspiracy: multiple occult organizations with the governments of Europe and America are mentioned, most prominently a British MI-18.
• Götterdämmerung: the Great War is the violent destruction of the old supernatural order, including, and culminating with, the Battle of Armageddon.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: As expected of a work taking place in many places across the world, it is littered with multiple languages.
• Gravity Master: The talent of Anna Sokoll, which she uses for flight and levitation, propulsion of objects, manipulation of weight, and pinning people in place. It also makes her a talented Turkic-style wrestler.
• The Grotesque: the highly-scarred but intelligent Baron von Bohm and the foul-smelling and frog-like, but ultimately helpful and oddly wise, Adolphe Bouchard.
• Hallucinations: a cosmic hallucination involving Leviathan and the Titanic occur to Siegfried while under the effects of anaesthesia.
• Hammerspace: "Adolphe Bouchard" is able to regurgitate anything he has ever eaten from his gullet, even years after swallowing.
• Healing Factor: Tom Noun has this, in addition to body manipulation abilities.
• Hebrew Mythology: Invoked occasionally, usually by Venetianer.
• Hellfire: depicted as a hot gas connected to the planet Venus (the Morning Star), which may be Hell itself. It seems to be manipulated by demonic entities, and it is treated like Super Smoke.
• Historical Domain Character: Many historical figures get name-checked, but Kaiser Wilhelm II, Carl Jung, Morgan Robertson, and paranormal investigator Elliott O'Donnell get the most attention in the first book. Along with a certain 18th century figure. Archangel, similarly, opens with a chance meeting of Henry Darger, Charles Dellschau, and Vida Henry. Armageddon features Thomas Edison, Brother XII, Austin Osman Spare, Bela Kiss in major roles, with Lawrence of Arabia and Edmund Allenby in key "off-screen" roles.
• Humanoid Abomination: the Haligonian is a waifish figure who at first appears be a ghost emerging from the Halifax Explosion, but is soon revealed to be the reincarnation of Leviathan, who previously incarnated as the Titanic.
• Human Sacrifice: A recurring mythical/historical motif, bringing up Punic, Canaanite, and Mesoamerican practices, particularly the god Moloch.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Celeste's eyes are noted to be strikingly bright blue and either blazing or cold by everyone she meets, and she appears to be a heat manipulator of some sort, both an Ice Person and a Playing with Fire. Even more noticable as she's half-African, a Dahomey.
• I Have Many Names: “Alter Venetianer” seems to have multiple aliases, including Alter Sandmann and the Crow-King.
• I Know Your True Name : Thomas Noun believes in some form of name magic, and claims his surname, which simply means “Name,” is the result of an act of Name magic that hid his family's True Name in the last words of the last man. Indeed, attempting to record the name seems to cause people's memories to glitch and misspell it.
  • Alter Venetianer appears to follow this twofold - he frequently uses pseudonyms for some reason, and is named "Alter," or "Old Man," an Ashkenazi Jewish tradition said to hide a sickly child from the angel of Death.
  • Though never outright confirmed, there may be some name-magic-related reason why three characters - Amadeo, Gottlieb, and John Rowan Theophilus Winepress - all have names which mean "Loved by God."
• Info Dump: much of the first half of the book.
• Island of Mystery: Patmos.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: all the pieces do see to come together into a whole by the end of the first book, but it takes its bloody time.
• Lemony Narrator: The narrator is largely journalistic in tone, but occasionally drops some humorous asides.
• Literary Agent Hypothesis: the presentation as a history and multiple citations definitely try to raise the spectre of this being a series of actual events, despite the oddity of it all.
• Long List: Crops up, occasionally, particularly in the lists of airship sighting.
• The Lost Lenore: Hermann von Bohm's wife.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic: What appears to be Hannibal Barker's “superpower,” the ability to gain fortune now and misfortune later, or vice-versa.
• Lunacy: The dangerous Machado seems capable of projecting herself across the world, but only by reflecting herself off moonlight.
• Magical Eye: the supernatural abilities of Nephilim seem to be attached to eyes, due their descent from the class of angels known as the Watchers/Grigori. The most striking version is Batoul Chedid, who has the bizarre ability to roll the white out of her eye, which drips onto the ground to become a roving, rapidly growing sphere nicknamed Sanchuniathon.
• Magical Jew: Venetianer is both Jewish and a enigmatic mentor figure to Siegfried.
• The Magic Goes Away: the world is losing most of its old supernatural events, which are declining or altering to more "scientific" forms.
• Magic Realism: elements of it, such as in the tale of the Orkney Isle “mermaids” and the Rat-king.
• Male Sun, Female Moon: Noun actually holds that the opposite is true, with a generative female Sun and a wandering, reflective Male moon.
• Martians: A man claims to be a Martian in Armageddon, though whether he is delusional, lying, or the real deal is up in the air. He has a notably oversized head (but he may be hydrocephalic or suffering from elephantiasis, and shows no obvious alien physiology) and has access to advanced radio technology (though it's all possible, if cutting edge, by 1918). He is motivated by the idea that it's Earth's apocalypse, and no other planet in the cosmos deserves its fate, and seems to be connected to Crowley's alleged alien contact, an entity called Aiwass.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The Cambridge Cabal and their “magic ring” - the ring behaved oddly, once, in rolling on the bridge after allegedly falling into the water below. But all the good fortune it grants could have easily happened anyway to the privileged group.
• Meaningful Name: Hannibal Barker, recalling the ancient Punic hero. Siegfried shares his name with a Germanic hero. Alter is an "Old Man" hiding his real name, Anna and Hermann recall the Anakim and Mount Hermon. And of course, Noun.
• Mundanger: Sometimes non-supernatural but historical oddities are thrown in, including the national myths and delusions of the various Great Powers, and how they led to war.
• Milkman Conspiracy: a real conspiracy of Ophthalmologists is mentioned.
• Mordor: The trope loops back on itself here, as the books play up the horrific desolation of the war's battlefields to the point that it becomes a fantastical wasteland haunted by giant rats, demons, and ghosts.
• Mr. Exposition: Venetianer and Winepress seem to be the only ones who know what's going on.
• Multinational Team: the Nine consist of a German, two British men, a Jewish Hungarian, an Austrian, a half-Dahomy French woman, an Italian, a Bosnian Serb, and a Siberian (half-Tuvan, half-Jewish) Russian woman.
• Must Have Caffeine: Siegfried, the Friendly Sniper, is a caffeine addict, to the point that he eats powdered ersatz coffee cut with sawdust to stay awake.
• Mythical Motifs: Along with common angelic and demonic imagery, Medea and Moloch are recurring symbols of a culture killing/sacrificing its own children.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: Thomas Noun easily recovers from evisceration due to a powerful Healing Factor.
• Noodle Incident: Something happened between the Nouns and the Sokolls, presumably during the Crimean War and involving someone named Walter Black, but there is no explanation.
• Nothing Is Scarier: the implications of most of the high strangeness is simply implied.
• Occult Detective: Winepress and Noun serve this role in the British Armed Forces. Also, the narrator.
• One-Steve Limit: Some common names, like Thomas and variations of Marie/Mary/Maria and John/Jean/Johann occur multiple times in the text, and there are both a von Böhm and a minor character called Böhm. In fact, both von Böhm and Celeste have Marie/Maria in their name, and Siegfried and Winepress share a Johann and a John.
• Opt Out: Amadeo simply leaves the party after the destruction of the unwillingly fallen angel Shemiel by her superior. Also, a man claiming to be the Devil simply opted out of the Apocalypse and hid in a small shack in Poland. As he is the angel of failure, he cannot trust himself to lead his faction.
• Orderlies are Creeps / Bedlam House: Dr. Laurent's hospital is unsettling, and the odd people in it don't help. Celeste herself comes across as a somewhat played down mix of the Hospital Hottie, Martial Medic, and the Battleaxe Nurse.
• Our Angels Are Different: there are strong hints that there was some basis to the Angels of Mons, and the religious visions of the Welsh Revival. Angels begin to be key figures in Archangel, in full "Biblically Accurate mode." The choirs of angels are descended from the various species lost in the prior Great Extinctions of Earth, including Seraphim, "the fiery serpents," being descended from dinosaurs.
• Our Archons Are Different: owing the the religious horror of the plot and a note on the Gnosticism-tinged prophetic dreams of psychologist Jung, this may be what's behind everything.
• Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious: from sea serpents, atmospheric beasts, and giant rats to...an animated white bag thingy.
• Our Fairies Are Different: hinted at being more like the wildmen of European lore, and cannibalistic. Though they could all be a delusion of Thomas Noun.
• Our Ghouls Are Creepier: there was something ghoulish, or possibly demonic, stalking around the British Army centre known as the "Destructor."
• Our Mermaids Are Different: based on the finwives and selkies of Orkney folklore, these Ambiguously Human beings don't seem to be physically different than human women, apart from a clammy skin tone and possession of what may be an enchanted shawl.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: legends of giants crop up multiple times, including alleged pre-War giant bone findings across the Americas, along with references to figures such as Gogmagog, the Nephilim, the Giants of Ath, and Greek Titans. It becomes apparent that the Nine may be nephilim, but none stand over two meters tall.
  • Part II confirms that they are nephilim, or rather, the 99th and 100th generation descendants of such, dubbed the Elioud.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: there are oddly four or five types of unconnected werewolves in the story: the Beast of the Somme, a legendary giant wolfdog which a mad scientist surgically implanted the brain of a psychopath; Padraig, an Irish-style werewolf (based on the Werewolves of Ossory), who doesn't transform into a wolf but instead astrally projects into a tamed wolf; a Polish werewolf who ejects a kidney which rapidly transforms into a giant wolf, caused by the alleged blessing of an angel; and "Adolphe Bouchard" and Kwyksilber, who may or may not be a wolf-men but seems to have some ability to attract massive packs of Savage Wolves to them and have other supernatural powers.
• Overly Long Name: Hermann Maria Ernst Freiherr Przibislaus z Lipé von Böhm, though not unrealistic for Austrian aristocrats of the time.
• Perspective Flip: the tale jumps across many, many perspectives, with both the Allies and Central Powers taking turns as the evil enemy.
• Plague Doctor: A seemingly demonic entity - the Goetic "Amy" - associated with the H 1 N 1 or "Spanish" Flu travels from Kansas to Europe, shifting from a classical horned and hairy devil to a hypnotist (associated with Edgar Cayce) to a classic European plague doctor along the way. The entity returns, with Pest Controller powers.
• Politically Incorrect Hero and Politically Incorrect Villain: few of the characters are above the casual bigotry and extreme nationalism of the era.
• Posthumous Character: technically everyone, as the narrator is in the modern day, but Morgan Robertson is dead before even the WWI-era characters hear of him.
• Postmodernism
• Power Born of Madness: a possible explanation for the “superpowers” of the protagonists.
• Psychic Dreams for Everyone: Carl Jung, multiple minor characters, and Siegfried Gottlieb all have prophetic dreams. Gottlieb's dream has him blend consciousness with writer Morgan Robertson, known for the Wreck of the Titan, and connects ''The Titanic'' with the Biblical Leviathan, the demon of Pride.
• Pyrrhic Victory: the Assassination of Franz Ferdinand is portrayed in a modernist short story by Thomas Noun. The assassins are framed as the pyrrhic victors.
• Rain of Blood: multiple historical instances are discussed, though the narrator chalks up the Wartime incidents to disturbed red soil from entrenchment.
• Reality Warper: Certain entities (possibly Physical Gods) and places seem to actively warp what's possible, and mundane people who witness it seem to have to roll a Sanity Save. Though it may all be simple Psychic Powers. Part II confirms that it is a Domain Holder situation, and the nephilim are surrounded by a gap in a reality called "aretztikapha, a 'world of distortion,' a term apparently taken from an angelic title in the Book of Enoch. Within this 'sinus,' they warp reality to their whims.
• Red Baron: Zrno, meaning both bullet and seed, is used as an alias by a superhumanily fast Serb. Venetianer is known as der Krahenkönig, the Crow-King, Baron von Böhm is the Storm-Lord, Céleste is the Salamander, Gottlieb is known as Geist (Ghost) or Eisengeist (Iron Ghost), and Amée Hart is known as the Laugh-Man (and, presumably, the Plague Doctor). The actual Red Baron is mentioned, but does not feature prominently.
• Resurrective Immortality: While the limits of his "death" are never tested, "Adolphe Bouchard" appears to be able to resurrect himself with a new body after severe physical decline by bursting out of his own rotting body like a cocoon, with all the puss and decay involved described in detail. He has been doing this since at least the late 18th century, and he hints at being far, far older.
• Ridiculously Long-lived Family Name: Subverted by the Nephilim families; by 1917, only the Nouns, which are a magically-enforced non-name of sorts, have the same names as the line they come from, and most of the families are long-collapsed with the members unaware of their origins.
• Ring of Power: The first story in the book covers a ring which grants its owners wishes, but in a more subtle way than the typical genie rings, to the point that the narrative notes it may have been a matter of hysteria (the boys involved were already wealthy). The previous owner of the ring held that the owner had to sell the ring for less than it was purchased for or they would go to hell, but the truth of the matter is never uncovered.
• Room Full of Crazy: Tom Noun's bed in the Somme hospital is covered in anti-fairy wards and stolen iron nails.
• Sanity Slippage: Implied to happen to all of Europe.
• Scrapbook Story: the narrative even includes historical newspaper articles alongside journal entries.
• Science Fantasy, of the Fantasy Kitchen Sink variety.
• Science Hero: Thomas Edison is played as something of a science antihero; rather gruff and beaten-down by age, but defeating his occultist foes by guile, quick thinking, and the power of Direct Current. Ironic, considering Edison's treatment in most recent media and alternate history. His chapter might be a long tribute to the now forgotten subgenre of the "Edisonade."
• Secret History: The premise of the series.
• Semantic Superpower: Angels appear to be rooted in the concept they embody, and have mastery of any variant on that idea.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Well, Noun and Siegfried Gottlieb are both Shell-Shocked current participants of the Great War.
• Shown Their Work: the hundreds of footnotes often lead to genuine historical events.
• Skepticism Failure: happens multiple times, most notably when Thom Murdock witnesses “the finwife.”
• Spy Fiction: Many elements of WWI-era spy fiction, along with actual historical espionage, crop up in the book, particularly the actions carried out by Alister Crowley.
• Superhero Packing Heat: Even the super-powered characters usually resort to simply pulling a trigger when violence is needed.
• Super-Speed: Zrno is able to accelerate and decelerate objects. This causes severe bleeding and clothing damage, as there is still wind resistance. He makes up for it with a Healing Factor.
• Supervillain Lair: The real life Edgewood Arsenal, a US military experimentation base.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Tom Noun's general reaction to his peers, particularly some Tommies who believe they were sent off to protect the "Beligums."
• The Swarm: Jerusalem experiences a major locust outbreak during the War, with all the creepy-crawly horror that entails.
• Stylistic Suck: some of the first-person accounts, both the real ones and the (seemingly) fictional accounts can be notably worse in spelling, grammar, and diction than the rest of the text.
• Telepathy: a stock psionic ability which crops up regularly, as it was a common fascination of Edwardian occultists and paranormalists.
• Textbook Humor: during a description of the battle of Tanga, which involved a destructive attack by a massive bee swarm, the academic, historical style suddenly starts treating the queen bee as if it were a legitimate head of state of a belligerent nation, and lauded as the most successful monarch of the Great War.
• Title Drop: Delivered early in part I, in its Latin form, and then later on in English in part II, both by Thomas Noun.
• Transmutation: rooted in the concepts of alchemy and chemistry, Rowan Winepress is capable of transmutating elements at a touch.
• The Tunguska Event is depicted as the interrupted impact of the Biblical Star Wormwood.
• Unreliable Narrator: as expected for a tale proposing to piece together a secret history from first-person and second-hand accounts, there are multiple instances of misinterpretations, Alternate Character Interpretation, and people believing things that are flat out wrong or written Through the Eyes of Madness. Also, the reliance on such sources leads to many cases of The Unreveal, That Was the Last Entry, and What Happened to the Mouse?.
• Unstuck in Time: Siegfried's bizarre hallucination has him shifting backwards and forwards in time, possibly into past lives.
• Unwitting Pawn: Practically everyone in the war, but Siegfried in particular is a jerked around by his superiors, who remain mum on their ultimate goals in Part I.
• Verbal Tic: Thomas Noun tends to add a Bertie Wooster-esque ", what?" to the end of his sentences, while Celeste tends to have French constructions in her (translated) dialogue, such as a final "no?" or saying "if you will" instead of "please." Winepress also slips into his Geordie accent at times.
• War Is Hell: and literally so, at times.
• Weather Manipulation: what seems to be Baron von Bohm's superpower, based on the real life popularity of “Weather-shooting” in Austria.
• Weird Historical War, including elements that feel like predecessors to Soviet Superscience and Ghostapo.
• Wham Line: In the final lines of the first book, Winepress reveals that the enemy they are uniting against are angels, and the references to the Battle of Armageddon and allusions to the Book of Revelation are not metaphorical.
  • In Part II, a demoness calling herself Nama'ah rants about the true nature of the cosmos and the War in Heaven, proclaiming that God created the world unwillingly, because "God was raped."
  • In Part III, Mihajlo and Gavrilo Princip are revealed to be the archangels Michael and Gabriel.
• World of Mysteries: while many elements seem to converge on the Nine and the angels, some things, like the ratking and mermaids, simply happen to be around.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: Jacques Vallée's theories surrounding culture shaping our perception of Unidentified Flying Objects plays a minor role in the story's worldbuilding.