Webcomic / Dominic Deegan

He always wanted to say that.

Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire is a webcomic started by Michael "Mookie" Terracciano on May 21, 2002. It follows the life and times of Dominic Deegan, a messianic yet pessimistic seer who travels about with Spark, his feline comic relief, and assorted companions. Originally a lighter strip based on puns and wordplay, Cerebus Syndrome ensued, arguably starting with the "Visions of Doom" arc, but certainly by "Storm of Souls".

On May 24, 2013, the comic ended at 3,000 comics. A set of colored epilogue prints, some with art by Garth Graham, were later published. A half-hour documentary about the making of the comic, See For Yourself: The Dominic Deegan Story, was released by TriFocal Productions.

In May 2015, Mookie revealed that a new stretch goal for the Patreon of Star Power would be a sequel comic called The Legacy of Dominic Deegan, set two centuries after the original comic. As of 2018, however, this stretch goal has not been attained, but in July 2019, The Legacy of Dominic Deegan officially began.

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Dominic Deegan contains examples of:

Tropes A-C

• Abandoned Info Page: There was once a page on the main site with biographies and some other background information. Tiring of updating it, Mookie decided to just link to the Wikipedia article - which was fine until Wikipedia decided to trim the article of "plotcruft". Once they did that, Mookie just deleted the info page entirely.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: The author (or at least Spark) is prone to using these as an alternative form of wordplay.
• Aerith and Bob: The comic runs the gamut, from normal (Gregory Deegan) to the bizarre (Runcible Spoon).
  • Just within the Orcs, we have Stonewater and Adrak Bulgak, though Stonewater is the literal translation for the Orcish word for ice.
• All of Them:
  Warnings from which country?
  Um... All of them, your majesty.
• Aloof Big Brother: Jacob. As Gregory is the youngest of the three Deegan boys, Dominic sometimes comes off as this to Gregory.
• Ambition is Evil: It has been stated that for a mortal to try drawing directly from the Heart of Magic's power is a very wrong thing to do. Everyone to try, whether with good or evil intentions has ended up unleashing terrible disasters.
• Animesque: Peculiarly, the art style mimics lazily drawn anime. This seems to be an artistic choice rather than laziness on the part of this particular artist, since such tropes as the Cheeky Mouth are unnecessary in a static art form.
• And I Must Scream: The last poacher killed in the WILD EDGE is paralyzed and eaten alive by slimes.
  • Also, if your soul gets eaten in Hell, then you will experience being eaten for the rest of eternity.
  • Seems to be the fate of the Battlecasters currently being corrupted by the Beast. At least at first.
• And Man Grew Proud: The fate of Eldariat (the former land of Klo Tark's people).
  • A subversion: magical power naturally cycles from race to race in the setting, and every transfer seen or described on-screen has collapsed the previous empowered civilization. Though the fact that the survivors believe that only their own hubris could have brought them down, despite every other civilization in history as a counter-argument, may qualify as self-destructive pride in itself.
• Angrish: After scrying Serk Brakkis's courting of Luna, and his subsequent betrayal of her, Dominic is temporarily reduced to biting his crystal ball in rage, bellowing "I KILL YOU!"
  • A straighter example can be found here.
  Dominic: "BUH—! HURGK! GWUH! FNNF!"
• Annoying Arrows: Dominic gets an arrowhead embedded into his arm without even flinching. He sports a dressing that afternoon, and walks with a cane using that arm the following day.
  • Used as Non-Lethal Warfare at the climax of the Maltak arc.
  • Eltu takes an arrow in the back, and is back in time for a Big Damn Heroes moment three strips later. Then again, in the strip just before Eltu was shot, Suyan asked the archer he'd been traveling with NOT to shoot to kill, which the other Rhazgala archers had been ordered to do.
  • Hell, that very same arrow gets thrust into the assailant's NECK, and he just rips it out a few strips later as well. One is left wondering why people even keep using arrows if they're this ineffective.
• Anti-Hero: Stunt is a rougher-edged protagonist than most of the rest of the cast. He's among the few to carry a weapon, and while the rest of the Deegans prefer to capture or otherwise subdue their opponents (at least, the ones that aren't demons or zombies or monsters or something), Stunt is more often willing to kill (see the fight with Urban Eddie, and his attempt to cut the Infernomancer's throat much earlier in the comic). Ironically, he seemed to be not trying to kill the villainous poachers in his the Walk the Wild Edge arc, at least until they started trying to kill him. He's softened up a bit further after his journey with Jayden in the second part of the Just Deserts arc.
• Anti-Magic: Dex Garrit is a Resistant, meaning that no magic, harmful or helpful, can affect him directly.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Jayden pulls a good one on Rilian when Stunt needs help dealing with his Dark and Troubled Past before dealing with the problems in the present. All Rilian can do in response is give a couple of beats and give Stunt five minutes with the scrying pool without looking like a complete jerkass.
  • A more lighthearted one occurs very early on in the series, when Dominic is inflicted with a curse that makes a fish fall on his head every time he takes a puff on his pipe. He recruits Bumper and Stunt to steal the cure from the sorceress that did it. This exchange of armor piercing questions occurs between Dominic and Stunt:
  Stunt: If this curse is only triggered when you smoke, why don't you just quit smoking?
  * Beat*
  Dominic: If going to jail is only triggered when you steal, why don't you just quit?
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In one strip, an Alpha Bitch (pun intended) gets called out on what she says to Nimmel. These range from defending Nimmel, to encouraging him, but it ends with Nimmel's friend curtly telling said Alpha Bitch, "You ruined boobs for me."
• Art Evolution: After the first couple of years of improvements, the art quality has stayed about the same since. The only notable stylistic change recently is the addition of defined snouts for the Orcs. Mookie has said in an interview that while he can draw better, he feels the current art style fits the comic, and changing it wouldn't feel right.
• Art Shift: Occasionally, close-ups, especially of Dominic, will be given increased detail.
• Ascended Meme: "A Nimmel House" was originally a Fan Nickname for the arc. A few emails to Mookie, and it was official.
  • On one of the forums, the unnamed female poacher of Walk the Wild Edge would always be referred to as Vasquez, and was then officially dubbed, "Vaskez."
• Aside Glance: Usually accompanied with an Incredibly Lame Pun. The author himself states in one of the books that it's "comedy gold!" and he'll never tire of it.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership David Johann, the king of Callan became an archmage just because he was that damn good.
  • Damn good enough to enchant the Archmages into not only making a Fifth Circle for him, but also to follow his every command.
• The Atoner: Celesto has an... unusual view of how this trope works. Stunt and Jayden play it a bit straighter. To a certain degree, Jacob has become one as well.
• Attack Hello: Luna admitted their first encounter with Jacob scared the hell out of her. Their (rather, his) last meeting together, well...
  • Barnet stabs Dominic in the stomach on his porch when she first meets him.
• Author Appeal: In his news posts, Mookie's often admitted his love for certain elements in the comic. Characters have spent entire strips focusing on food or drink that Mookie likes. Dominic's favorite food is Mavpel candy, an admitted Expy of one of Mookie's favorite candies.
  • He's more recently admitted that he likes drawing muscular orc girls because, well, he likes muscular orc girls.
  • Also, he is unapologetically a child of The '80s.
  • He's hinted that he may have a certain fondness for breasts.
  • The B.Y.O.B. arc, according to the blurb this comic, is Mookie's tribute to metal—but it's directly inspired by a band he doesn't like.
• Author Avatar: Not Dominic, as you might have thought. Mookie has stated (in his third book) that Dominic's father Donovan is who he considers to be most like himself. Indeed, the two often behave similarly, and share a sense of humor. The confusion largely stems from the fact that, when he draws himself, Mookie's self-portrait is virtually identical to Dominic. This is partly due to a serious case of Only Six Faces.
• Badass Boast: Nimmel makes one to himself where he explains the real reasons he went to the Coldfire Academy, just before trying to break up a fight between his friend and the Alpha Bitch, and before she sends more werewolves to attack him.
• Badass Normal: Rachel. Inverted somewhat with Dex, who has a rare condition that makes him immune to magic, and is thus one of the few surviving characters who can hold his own in a serious fight without magic.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Played straight with Brian the friendly necromancer, but defied with infernomancy; even on the rare occasion someone tries to use it for good, the demonic influence will still eventually get to them.
• Battle Aura: Gregory's white magic gives him a pretty cool one. And occasionally gives one to his enemies.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: Dominic's preferred combat venue. He's a Squishy Wizard in normal circumstances, but practically a juggernaut in a mindscape.
  • One notable incident is during the Oracle Hunter Arc involves Dominic "relocating the battle"
• Beat Panel: A pun will frequently be followed by the victim staring at the "camera" with a sour expression.
• Becoming the Mask: From the looks of things, Celesto's "familiarity" with the Beast after being trapped in the Elemecca with it for so long, and subsequent impersonation of it to reveal its connection to the king of Callan, has made him...a bit too susceptible to its power. Luckily he seems to have overcome this...just in time to die helping take the Beast out.
• Behind the Black: The plains of Maltak apparently has a visibility of five meters. Characters in this vast, featureless wasteland run into each other by accident and don't hear conversations and see events until they enter the panel.
• Berserker Tears: Used fairly regularly, most notably by Siegfried in the War in Hell story arc.
• Beware the Nice Ones. Bortette is a Cute Mute, Cute Monster Girl. With the level of common sense mongrelfolk seem to display, you might wonder how she manages to survive living alone in the Wild Edge... "snikt".
• Beware the Silly Ones: Runcible Spoon is generally lighthearted and prone to goofy experiments. But upon discovering that Neilen was responsible for his wife divorcing him, he does NOT take it well.
• Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Well, okay, being that they're from the Wild Edge, bizarreness is to be expected, but this is the case between Bort and Bortette. Both identified as mongrelfolk, Bort is covered in miss-matched patches of skin, with an extra eye on his chest, scales in places, and just generally looking like the poster-boy for Body Horror. Bortette, by contrast, is a Cute Monster Girl with a slightly prominent upper lip and some spikes. It's strongly implied that no two mongrelfolk are alike, or even resemble others of their kind.
• The Big Damn Kiss: At least once, we have been treated by a single giant colored panel of Dominic and Luna kissing.
• Blessed with Suck: Being a Resistant (immune to ALL magic) sounds cool, but remember that while they can't be hurt by magic, they can't be healed by magic either.
  • A more humorous example: Nimmel: "Katya, your country has made me immune to boobs."
• Blindfolded Vision: The Infernomancer, though his eyes have been injured and will never heal, and on the inside of his blindfold is two daggers that stick straight into his eye sockets.
• Blood from the Mouth: Used in its most classic sense, as visual shorthand for a fatal injury.
• Body Horror: Celesto's Chaos magic has this in spades, especially in the deaths of Brett Taggerty and Serk Brakkis.
  • Alteration magic due to it being permanent (unless it's for hair).
  • What the Beast did to poor Murray would fall under this too.
• Book Ends: "I am sorry if I was rash earlier. Farewell, Dominic Deegan. I hope you do not forget me."
• Break the Cutie: Inverted; Luna is introduced at the climax of her mother's year-long campaign of breaking her, and saved from suicide by Dominic. We learn more about the process in various flashbacks. Most of her character development revolves around the slow recovery of her sense of self-worth. Gregory is also somewhat subject to this trope, particularly in a couple of the later story arcs.
• Breather Episode: Rather, a breather story arc — the "Around the World" arc, to be precise.
  "...let's just say that it's really good we're going on vacation.
• Brick Joke: Donovan finding out what his orcish name really means and using it hundreds of strips later as a Stealth Pun against Dominic
  • "So he says it hurts whenever he touches. Turns out his finger's broken!" "Hey I think I know that guy!"
    • Similarly, her lower-back still hurts.
  • "And I will strike down my enemiiieeeeees-- --WITH THE SWORD OF CENTURIES!!!"
  • Donovan, having been established as an ostensible goofball dad with zany plots, legendarily bad Orcish, and an overall tendency to be the distraction but otherwise have little impact or relevance to the plot, proves not only his competence, badassery, and the reasons Miranda loves him, but reveals after seven years (real world time) that he's always been able to speak perfect Orcish. This strings a lot of unrelated side-jokes into a single, Batman Gambit -style epic practical joke spanning decades against an entire foreign nation, and afterward he becomes much more of a force on the plot. The reason for the reveal? He realized that revealing the joke had reached the point of being funnier than continuing the subterfuge.
  • At the start of the Beneath Our Masks arc, Gregory remarks that he's bringing his cheapest guitar with him so he won't feel too bad about bashing Celesto over the head with it if they find him. Gregory finds him.
  • The Class Action arc has one so subtle that most probably never saw it: Early in the arc, Neilen threatens to "bite [Runcible's] freaking head off." Then later, Cassafinn tries to make Runcible feel better by giving him an effigy of Neilen to abuse. Guess what he does to it?
• Brought Down to Normal: Gregory Deegan is unable to use white magic for most of the Snowsong arc. More recently, his ability to use white magic was ripped out entirely. So far, it's actually stuck. Word of God says that it's going to stick forever.
  • Also, Jayden spoke the First Heresy of Hell near the beginning of the comic. Funny thing, when a priestess renounces her faith.
  • Dominic loses his Second Sight forever when it returns to the Heart of Magic.
• Bubble Pipe: Quilt the necromatic golem uses one several times. Later on, he uses it to scry, with each bubble acting like a short-lived crystal ball.
• Butter Face: Luna is seen as this in-universe, with her tusks. They're a total dealbreaker when Siegfried visited her, for example, and she's picked on because of them. Of course, with Mookie's art style, she's in reality still pretty good looking.
• Cain and Abel: The comic sometimes pits Dominic and Gregory against their necromancer brother Jacob. Early on, there was an interesting twist: Dominic hated Jacob, but Gregory still wanted to believe the best of him.
  • Luna's relationship with her sisters was also like this for a while, but the three eventually decided to try and at least tolerate each other after the rest of their family got themselves killed with their petty fighting.
• The Cavalry: The Doma have arrived. Oh, and the Shintula.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": "Mavpel" candy, the sap of a mavpel tree allowed to solidify.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Here,◊ in this case, Miranda Deegan calls both of her parents out for their behavior (and their attacks) on Donovan for him being her choice of a future husband.
  Luna: Holy crap. She said that to her parents?
  Dominic: Mom inherited Grandma's skill with the guilt trip.
  • A very brutal variant with Siegfried. After his rebellion against Karnak doesn't pan out exactly like he expected, Karnak is able to convince him what a horrible bastard his father truly was. Siegfried expresses his extreme displeasure by going out and rabidly devouring the head of his father's soul.
• Calling Your Attacks: Often. Hilariously coupled with Buffy Speak in the last panel of this strip.
• Calling Your Nausea: From comic 1775, when Dominic is about to vomit, he asks Luna to conjure a magic jar for it.
• The Cameo: One of the Wild Edge guides/Evil Poachers was a fan cameo who was brought back as a villain because Mookie "wasn't done with him yet". He is now. Mookie: "And so with Chris's death today I continue the tradition of killing people who win a named appearance in the comic via ConnectiCon's Webcomic Charity Auction. Chris won two years ago. This year's winner may not have such a long comic life span. Tee hee."
• Catapult Nightmare: Gregory suffers these in the lead up to "BYOB".
• Cats Are Magic: Spark, the talking cat.
• Character Development: Luna's has been the most significant in the strip. She's a woman who, in her first appearance, was about three seconds from hanging herself after getting turned down by Siegfried because of her tusks. Now, even getting told that she can never become pregnant doesn't get her down.
  • Stunt has been going through quite a surprising bit himself throughout the series. He's become more open and trusting of people and even lost a bit of the misogyny that defined his character after being separated from Bumper for a while and finally forgiving himself for accidentally killing his mother when he was young.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Rachel's face > magical steroids.
• Chekhov's Gun: This being a comic about someone who sees and changes the future, this trope is common. One of it's more unique examples actually comes from his cat.
• Cheeky Mouth
• The Chessmaster: Dominic, especially during the Super-Greg arc. This is one of the reasons Dominic sometimes comes off as a Designated Hero. It's hard to come off as completely heroic when manipulating people, even if it's for the Greater Good and with the power of foresight.
• Chosen One: Luna during March Across Maltak.
• Cliffhanger: Mookie is fond of these, particularly on Fridays. Even the final comic is one, of sorts as an off-panel voice calls Dominic "Dad," but nothing is revealed about the speaker.
• Combat Clairvoyance: Averted in one strip in which a fencing student wanted to see Dominic be badass.
• Companion Cube: Gerald.
• Conscience Makes You Go Back: Provides the trope image.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Serk Brakkis
• Crossing the Desert: The Maltak arc consists of trekking through a vast, featureless wasteland, in the daytime, without pack animals and with no more consumables than what the party can fit in one, ordinary-sized backpack per person, and they apparently keep their tents in those as well. (Though bags of holding have been mentioned previously.) They're also not taking care to cover their heads, and one character is in a dress. They do hire an experienced guide, but this guide is the same one who would've gone through and okayed all of that, and who built a stone fire ring miles upon miles from plant life.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Gregory.
  • "Bortette". Looks like those spikes are useful after all.
  • Professor Runcible Spoon. Though a very intelligent professor as opposed to a moron, he's generally very easy-going and occasionally silly. But if you piss him off? Lord help you.
• Cruel Mercy: Stunt leaves the last of the poachers alive. The guy is paralyzed and "slimes eat anything".
• Crystal Dragon Jesus- The Luanian Church, with its own Jesus Christ/Prophet Mohammed like figure in The Prophet Luana, is the ruling faith in Callan. Throughout the "Around the World" story arc, other racial faiths were touched upon as well as a lesser Callanian religion of Scapilanism in Jayden and Stunt's pilgrimage to the Desert of Eldariat.
• Cultural Posturing: Some of the WA's werewolves do this on occasion; claiming that Callanians and other outsiders are inherently untrustworthy compared to werewolves.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: In this corner, Jacob Deegan, necromancer and mad scientist who's in the past slaughtered several of the Chosen, beat a spellwolf in single combat, and has been a serious antagonist throughout the comic. In this corner, is the Shintula Chief, whose son Jacob just brutally attacked. Jacob didn't stand a chance.
• Curse Cut Short: Subverted in this strip.
• Cursed with Awesome: Dominic has complained since the very first strip about the burdens of being a seer, especially his gift of random visions. He wanted to help people with his gift; instead the comic opens In Medias Res with him being a fortune teller for a town of complete idiots.
  • Dex Garrett is a resistant, meaning he suffers from a rare condition that renders him completely immune to magic, both helpful and harmful. It also makes it very difficult for him to find stable work that play to Dex's strengths (high risk jobs), because employers have to pay heavy taxes and rifle through ridiculous amounts of paperwork to hire one.
  • Spark considered the curse put on Dominic in the first arc (which caused fish to appear out of nowhere and land on Dominic's head whenever he smoked) to be this.
• Cute Little Fangs: Inverted with Luna's, though in-universe it's considered a hideous deformity.
• Cute Monster Girl: The transformation of infernomancers after eating souls seems to work out better for the woman.

Tropes D-G

• Dark Action Girl: Snowsong and Hirek.
• Darker and Edgier: Spoofed with Dominic's favorite comic being Ret Conned into the character "discovering" he's half demon ... much to Dominic's dismay.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Rilian, the first necromancer, is basically a walking skeleton. In the Around the World arc, he masquerades as a fat jolly necromancer named Brian. This is said to be what he used to be like before the problems of the world and the weight of centuries made him bitter and unpleasantly pragmatic.
  • The Nakta and the Akta are all about this. Specifically the Nakta while dark can be used to take another persons pain into yourself healing them while hurting you. Toward the end the Akta is used to steal life from others to strengthen the user.
  • Black magic in general embraces this trope. Although fueling spells with negative emotions like anger, sorrow, or hatred does presumably have a long-term net negative effect on the psyche, it appears to be magic focused on the principle of destruction rather than magic that is inherently evil, the exception being Infernomancy which specifically is magic of Hell.
• The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: Delving into infernomancy, even for ostensibly good reasons like Bulgak's, will erode your conscience until you care about nothing but yourself.
• Deadpan Snarker: Everyone, from time to time; even in dramatic arcs the comic will revert periodically to its roots and put in punchlines, and when not doing that the snarking goes into the dialogue in a less jokey way. Dominic has grown less snarky through his character development, but other have appeared to share the duty. Jacob is very big on this. Karnak has developed the tendency increasingly.
  Siegfried: [Over about a week's worth of strips as he charges across Hell for his Roaring Rampage of Revenge] KARNAK! KARNAK! KARNAK!
  Karnak: I heard you the first time.
• Deal with the Devil: Infernomancers
• Death by Materialism: Amelia
• Death Is Cheap: Death is always dramatic, as the trope requires, but doesn't ever seem to stick for major characters. Unless your soul gets destroyed, in which case you're pretty much fucked. This could be a result of the comic spending so much time in dreams and mindscapes. Also, Necromancers as a general rule tend to come back when they die, so you have to make sure they're really dead.
• Death from Above: Spark's main form of attack.
• Death Glare: Miranda Deegan's willpower-eroding, thought-derailing Evil Eye, which has a range of half a mile and can strike targets around corners and through dimensions. No one can withstand it either, not even an 8 foot tall spellwolf. Even the Big Bad Johann can feel it as a cold wind in the Archmages' sanctum.
• Death Is Dramatic: Always, even when it's a Disney Death.
• Death Seeker / Miles to Go Before I Sleep: Jayden has ended her vow of silence - penance for betraying Milov and basically getting the Callanians kicked out of werewolf territory - and now she's going on a pilgrimage into the desert where she will die.
  • This turned out to be a case of No Longer with Us: Jayden meant she would die a spiritual death, giving up/leaving behind her old life, "dying" metaphorically in order to move on from the sins she committed. Although considering Jayden's listlessness, vow of silence, and near Despair Event Horizon before this, such a misunderstanding is understandable and surely intentional on Mookie's part. And could even still become literal, depending.
• Decoy Protagonist: The Wild Edge arc was supposed to be about Bort (the author even wrote about how nice it would be to focus on him), but after he got "rejected" he left to pout and the arc's real hero turned out to be Stunt.
  • The following arc started off with Celesto meditating on how the world's magic was going out of whack, but it quickly turned into KARNAK! and Siggy's battle in Hell.
  • The author twittered that this kind of thing happens because he "doesn't want to know what comes next" in his own story.
• Discriminate and Switch: The 2005-11-28 comic during The Battle for Barthis: Part 1, switching Fantastic Racism for Deal with the Devil mages:
  Dominic: Hold it. We're not going to allow their kind into the show.
  Stonewater: If you are forbidding us from buying tickets because we are orcs…
  Dominic: I'm not prohibiting orcs from the concert. I am prohibiting infernomancers.
• Deliberately Monochrome: When the strips are released in print collections, colorized strips are made gray scale. As Mookie notes in the 4th collection, "Color printing is expensive. Very expensive."
• Demon of Human Origin: Karnak was a human who averted a war in Hell by attacking the Demon of War. He was carried down to Hell, became a Demon Lord and eventually after another Hell war, King of Hell.
• Depraved Bisexual: Szark, Celesto. Szark even comes out as gay rather than bi after his Heel–Face Turn. This facet of Celesto's character seems to have been abandoned.
• Depth Deception: Nothing is as it seems on the Wild Edge. Least of all perspective.
• Determinator: Dex Garrettand The Infernomancer.
• Deus ex Machina: In an apparently unintentional lampshaded example, Miranda has taken to calling herself "Deus Ex Momina," being a rather jarring Parent ex Machina in what is neither a sitcom nor starred by a teenager. Word of God states the joke was her terrible delivery of the joke rather than being one of the most Meta Guy moments the comic's ever had. There are other events where this happens, sometimes even being mentioned by the cast.
• Devil's Job Offer: Multiple:
  • When The Infernomancer (aka 'TIM') is sent to Hell by the white magic of Gregory Deegan, he strikes a (new) deal with Karnak to return to the land of the living. Actually, Karnak was bluffing, but TIM didn't know that...
  • Lord Siegfried Gunther Aern Damaske von Callan (or Siggy) dies killing the Royal Seer and immediately becomes the lieutenant of Karnak, who had moments before killed every high level demon in Hell, so high-quality damned souls were in high demand.
• Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: When The Beast comes to attack Dominic, it makes Dominic weak because he 'willed' it. Likewise, Dominic uses an illusion to pretend he's willed himself to have the powers of a Destroyer to make The Beast retreat in fear he'd destroy himself to try and take it down with him. Justified in that The Beast is an extradimensional being from a realm of pure insanity; the idea that something it perceived was not real would be completely alien to it, making it vulnerable to Dominic's illusion spells.
• Didn't Think This Through: After ambushing Dominic and Luna's wagon on their way to Erossus, Stunt stabs Dominic's arm after one of his smug insults. Unfortunately for him and Bumper, that knife was at Luna's throat, making sure she couldn't do anything. Without the knife there, Luna's free to freeze them in blocks of ice.
• Discretion Shot: Various, including Shadow Discretion Shot.
• Discontinuity Nod: Quilt, the necromantic golem; before he was given a name, forum regulars named him "Patches." Quilt himself rejected it, saying it made him sound like a dog.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Both in and out of universe with Celesto's murders of Serk Brakkis and Brett Taggerty.
  • According to Celesto, Amelia's death.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Happens to Nikolai, who really should be used to this by now.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Milov being Mind Raped looks like he is being actually raped by Naughty Tentacles
  • In this strip, Jacob's dialogue combines with the way he holds the slain (and completely naked) Chosen girl's chin in a fairly disturbing manner.
• Dragon-in-Chief / The Man Behind the Man: Either the King of Callan is behind the (currently weakened) Beast's rise to power or the King is the Beast's Dragon-In-Chief (it seems to be the latter).
  • Hijacked by Ganon: While the timeline is not exactly clear yet on when exactly he rose to power, if David Johann was king during the Callan/Orc war and thus condoned the atrocities which Warlord Damaske perpetrated, then this would make him indirectly responsible for a good portion of the bad events in the Deegan-verse that have affected the main characters directly—Thuen Gor's curse (and its effect on Luna), Karnak's fall, Siegfried's corruption and everything that came of it, what happened to Maltak... For certain, now that he has the Infernomancer working for him (by proxy) this makes him a threat to everyone, even Karnak. Whether this will result in an Enemy Mine later (albeit one certain to break due to Karnak's lack of trustworthiness and Celesto's descent into madness / possible corruption by the Beast), it seems as if Johann is shaping up to be the ultimate Big Bad of the comic.
    • He was. And in fact the Beast was only the king's eyes given life and sentience by their view of the Heart of Magic, plus the power of the Elemecca, so it was the actual Dragon-in-Chief.
• Dramatic Drop: Upon harsh shocks, things get dropped.
• Dude, Not Funny!: In-Universe, making fun of someone's pack (or equivalent) is a major low-blow to the werewolves, as seen here.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: The end of the War In Hell arc in ends with an Earth-Shattering Kaboom in hell, which is powerful enough to breach dimensional barriers.
• Easily Forgiven: Dominic and Co. forgive Szark, Snowsong, and Barnet rather quickly after their respective Heel Face Turns. Of course, each has its own mitigating circumstances.
• Easy Sex Change: The cosmetic surgeon alterist Dom and Luna visit used to be a man.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • The Beast. Though not portrayed as malevolent, the Hydra seen in the Vacation arc wouldn't be out of place in a Lovecraft story. It's a hydra worshiped by half-fish people. If it's not a shout out to Shadow Over Innsmouth, what is?
  • Miranda's teacher, as well as the Archmagi of the Fourth and Third circles.
  • The aptly named "Guardian Destroyer" from the Plane of Destruction is regarded as one.
  • The current Big Bad of the comic. Interestingly, the majority of arch-magi that Miranda Deegan deals with appear benevolent versions of these. It is mentioned that one archmage is too small for a human to see, and another is as large is a city, and that their high-council chamber equalizes them in size for easy meeting.
• Elemental Plane: We've seen the Plane of Destruction; the existence of the other elemental planes is referenced occasionally.
  • Six exist, mediated by a cosmic machine-city called the Elemeca. The traditional four, as well as Creation and Destruction.
• Elemental Powers: Nimmel specializes in "seasonal spells". So far, we've only had the chance to see winter.
• Epic Flail: Karnak causes Grievous Harm with a Body when he uses the chains that once restrained him to turn Siegfried into one of these!
  • He then cranks this trope up to eleven by turning those same chains on Bulgak, right before his soul goes nova.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Often, Dominic or other characters will be inspired by seemingly irrelevant conversation.
• Evil Costume Switch: Siegfried and Jayden each get one from Karnak.
• Evil Counterpart: Celesto is Dominic's. He even has a goatee!
• Evil Poacher: The "tour guides" of the Wild Edge are poachers in the off-season. Despite this, they seem to prefer to take their prey alive by using tranquilizers and nets. Although, alternately, given they apparently have no problem with slicing off bits of the tranquilized animal and then leaving it to bleed to death suggests they're not exactly humanitarian in their methods.
• Exactly What I Aimed At: This strip. Also a Chekhov's Gun, or Foreshadowing.
• Exasperated Perp: Dominic combines this with a Journey to the Center of the Mind during an interrogation with Barnet Travoria. It comes back to bite him.
• Exposition Beam: Dominic does this often.
  Dominic Deegan: See the truth!
• Eye Scream: The Infernomancer, whose eyes are wounds that will never heal as a result of a deal with Karnak. That is, until he became a monster.
  • Death From Above!
  • Might want to skip this one if you have a weak stomach. Long story short: David Johann, having been blinded by the light of the Heart of Magic, decided the best use of his eyes would involve tearing them out himself.
• The Faceless: For several years, the King of Callan's face was either just off panel, or in one case behind a voice bubble. This has since been rectified.
• Fantastic Racism: Racism is rampant in the kingdom of Callan, specifically towards Orcs. It really came to a head with the Orc War. Callanians and Semashi don't seem to get along easily, either. Quite frankly, there isn't a nation on the planet that doesn't or at least hasn't indulged in this. Luna, a human with unusually large lower canines, has suffered spillover racism on occasion as well (her teeth look like orc tusks... at least to humans; orcs can easily tell the difference). That's the only thing she has in common with orcs, but nobody said racism was rational.
  • Oddly enough Luna's colleague Melna, an actual orc, has suffered far more at the hands of other orcs in her homeland than she ever did in Callan.
• Fantasy Contraception: Protection Scrolls; refusing to use one when he slept with Luna, then chewing her out when she talked him into using it, was one of Serk Brakkis's many Kick the Dog moments.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Callan is Eagle Land type 2, the Winter Archipelago is Russia with a dash of Vermont, the orcs are Native Americans and Semash seems to be a cross between Italy and Brazil.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Previously the comic featured knights, wizards, dryads, werewolves, undead, slimes, orks, dragons etc., but ever since the Dominic's and Luna's 'round-the-world trip story arc, this trope has gone into overdrive, with the author showing a ton of new races, i.e. merfolk, sea monsters, hobgoblins, halflings, dwarves, mongrelfolk and whatnot in rapid appearance.
• Fertile Feet: Luna
• Final Speech: Siggy gets one.
  • It also doubles as a Call-Back, since he said the same thing at the conclusion of his and Dominic's first meeting.
• Flanderization: Szark Sturtz was originally a master swordsman and a sadist. Following his Heel–Face Turn and admittance to having a crush on the title character, he eventually became "Szark (who is gay)", according to one forum that follows the comic.
  • Siggy's racism. Quilt's stupidity. Dominic's ability to plan ahead. Luna's bids for independence. Dex's timing for Big Damn Hero moments.
• Foreshadowing: The reformed "Baron of Burglary"-turned innkeeper who's also an Elemental Changeling has just been introduced in Jayden's journey of repentance story but Word of God states that he'll definitely return as a bad guy — a good guy isn't that shifty-eyed.
  • When Reinholdt was asked why he didn't join the newly-formed Battlecasters, one of his reasons was, "That order and the people in it were turning [him] into something [he] wasn't." Several arcs later, it's revealed that such a "turning" is now literal among the Battlecasters thanks to the Beast's magic in their armor.
• For Your People, By Your People: From the strip of December 18, 2019: Dream Poetry: Volume Five: Poems of, for, and from the dreamscape
• Freudian Excuse: Often precedes a Heel–Face Turn, most notably with Snowsong and the Oracle Hunter.
  • Karnak's was so over-the-top it made him tempting to sympathize with, since he hasn't even left Hell in so long he hasn't been causing problems for any good guys.
• Framing the Guilty Party: Celesto's plan to expose the King's partnership with The Beast. Dominic takes a third option by saving Celesto's would-be victim and displays an image of the King and The Beast together that is enough to arouse suspicion in the eyes of the public.
  • The same plan is also employed simultaneously to use the paintings of an artist driven mad by the Beast (and Amelia) to expose the battlecasters' corruption. Again, Luna takes a third option by making the battlecasters and Celesto visible to the gallery guests while still saving the innocent mages' lives.
• Frankenstein's Monster: Quilt is a golem made by dead people. But, he's pretty goofy and more like Nightmare Retardant.
• Fun with Foreign Languages: Donovan Deegan speaks comically bad orcish. Also a direct Homage to the Monty Python's Flying Circus "Naughty Hungarian Phrasebook" sketch. It's eventually revealed he's doing it on purpose, as foreshadowed here.
• Gambit Roulette: Justified. Dominic uses his Second Sight to pull off gambits that would be Roulettes for anyone else. Other characters comment on it, but they're not being Genre Savvy. Dominic likes to do The Reveal when his plans have come to fruition—or is occasionally forced to reveal his intentions when one of his plans goes awry. It's the major source of friction in his relationship with Luna (who spent most of her life abusively manipulated by her mother and sister).
  • Some of the villains like to pull gambits of their own, leading to insane Gambit Pileups in at least two story arcs.
• Gallows Humor: Regularly, because there are so many deadpan snarkers and pun addicts. One that was creepy at the time and has only grown worse in retrospect is back in the 'Ecstasy and Evil' arc.
• Gender Bender: Male misogynist Stunt was subjected to a (very brief) gender bender in the Wild Edge territories story arc, before being turned into a half dozen other critters, and eventually changed back.
  • The alterist Dom and Luna visit used to be a man.
• Genericist Government
• Genre Savvy: Donovan, though it's not always appreciated.
• Girls with Moustaches: Apparently all the dwarf women, since the only one we see has a rather spectacular full beard.
• Glass Cannon: Neilen, once he becomes linked to the brittle soil of Maltak.
• The Glomp: Dominic proposes to Luna with a Lunarian Solarstone. Luna stands up and walks away, with Dominic looking crushed, until Luna tells him she just wanted a running start. Dominic's face is priceless.
  • Quilt shows his example.
• Going Commando: Pam. Quilt finds this out the hard way.
  • Though not always.
• Go into the Light: Played with; after the Heroic Sacrifice of Celesto taking the Beast with him, Dominic has a vision not only of the Heart of Magic, but flashes of the future for Callan and all his family and friends, then wants to "know more" and goes through the doors to "go home"...but it's his seer powers as a personified being, "dying" and rejoining the source of all magic, while the real Dominic, though badly injured, lives on albeit Depowered.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: Stunt and Bumper, for the first few arcs.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Seems to be the fate of anyone who truly comprehends the Beast and its realm and powers. It happened to the poor painter and former children's illustrator Micheal Cao, and it also seems to be happening to Celesto thanks to his spending far too much time imitating the Beast's appearance and powers. What's worse, even if he's even aware of this at all he likely considers it a small price to pay to bring the Beast down, even if in the end it results in him becoming its servant in truth, or no better than it.
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: After much deliberation, Greg & Co. choose "Face Bath", inspired by what their very grievously injured immune-to-magic pal has to do every day to keep his wounds from festering. Also, during the Battle For Barthis arc the temporary rockband gets named "Oblivion Folder" after a file-folder that Lars Sturtz keeps misplacing temporarily.
  • The comic that gives us Face Bath also contains several others.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Nimmel, a good-natured graduate of the School of Arcane Arts is introduced with a scar encompassing his right eye and a good chunk of flesh around it, which was deliberately made to look as nasty as possible. He'd gotten the scar from an attack on the school, and his telling the attacker where to find Miranda, which ended the attack, is seen as cowardice by him. As he gains prominence, his scar looks a bit better, and Luna gets him to see that he saved his classmates' lives by telling the attacker, and he shouldn't think himself a coward for it.
• Groin Attack: "There's no need for — *BAM*"
  • And earlier than that... right in the "knighthood." Ouch.
  • Reverse snowgie!
• Grotesque Cute: This. Just this.

Tropes H-M

• Hard Head: Rachel Hart. "I break things with my face."
• Harmless Freezing: Ice spells have a tendency to do this, which is handy, because they're the weapon-of-choice for several of the good guys. See Luna to Stunt and Bumper early in the comic, who come out of it with only the sniffles, and Nimmel more recently with a pair of werewolves.
  • Averted with Snowsong, who turns a Golem into living ice so he can watch himself melt.
• Hate Sink: Brett Taggerty, Serk Brakkis, Amelia Sturtz and Warlord Damaske to name a few. Mookie also seemed to want to turn Siggy into one after the backlash caused by his death. It didn't work.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Mookie has a habit of reminding the readers in his newsposts that he loves boobs every time breasts appear or are mentioned in the comic.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Gay?: Szark. Once he comes out, he and the people around him can't stop mentioning it. This was mocked by fans who, whenever they would mention Szark, would write, "Szark (who is gay)"
  • And yet described his budding love of death as "the feeling he felt towards girls" (emphasis mine)
• He-Man Woman Hater: Stunt, to a ludicrous degree.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: The King of Callan, in his initial appearances.
• Head-Tiltingly Kinky: Hobgoblin mating season sex. Surprisingly, it is safe for work.
• The Heart: Early on, both Gregory and Luna fulfill this role for Dominic.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Dominic attempts one of these to take out the Beast—twice.
• Hollywood Healing: The head of the Wild Edge guides goes from having a knife in the gut to running at full speed and surfing a slab of rock down an avalanche after Stunt patches her up, without any apparent use of anything more than some bandages and stitches, although they do dramatically pop out in the process.
• Hollywood Tactics: Men, half of you will charge in to fight the enemy hand-to-hand! The other half will then take up their bows and fire into the melee! But remember: don't kill anyone!
• Holy Hand Grenade: Miranda is able to turn one of the Infernomancer's gauntlets into a purified holy one...and then uses it later to destroy Helixa.
• Homage: It appears that the author got a lot of inspiration from Slayers anime, including several characters who start powering up a Sphere of Destruction illusion, not to mention the animesque character design and Fantasy Kitchen Sink setting (although the person who pointed this out noted that Naga's breasts would hardly stand out in DD).
  • David Johann, the king of Callan and new Big Bad is basically Slayers' Priest Rezo (points by ZeeToo): Masters magic, produces wonders, widely hailed [but] can't fix [his] own eyes. Makes pact with otherworldly monsters. One of the five biggest magic-users in the setting. He's also a combination of "elected queen" Amidala, Lex Luthor (super-genius with good-ish publicity) and Vegeta (powerful hand-lasers).
• Hospital Hottie: Nurse Pam, particularly during the Hello, Nurse! arc.
• Hot Librarian: Pam Chayler. Well, hot nurse, but the trope still applies.
• Hot Teacher: Dominic, apparently. And Cassafin, pre-promotion.
• Hotter and Sexier: Legacy doesn't shy away from nudity, including full-frontal shots of the main character and the leading lady.
• Humiliation Conga: The last Evil Poacher is paralyzed, peed on by a cloud-creature, and eaten alive by slimes.
  • Earlier, Serk Brakkis winds up along these lines - after having his toupee impaled, he finds every crime he's committed in the prior few years paraded past him one by one, leading to his Smug Snake mannerisms completely disintegrating. And to top it all off, he's then teleported back to Callan via lightning. And then, just before he would have been paroled, he's blown up by Celesto.
• Hurricane of Puns: Lots of them. Sometimes one-sided, sometimes a volley between two characters, and sometimes the entire on-panel cast will join in.
• Howl of Sorrow: One use of werewolf howls is to announce the break-up of a pack. Given what breaks up a pack...this is generally a combination of rage and painfully deep sorrow. And it doesn't just announce that the pack has broken up, it announces exactly why it's broken up.
• I Always Wanted to Say That: Dance, Puppets! Dance!
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Szark, albeit with "left" changed to "right".
• An Ice Person: Stonewater, Nimmel, and of course Snowsong.
• If I Can't Have You…: Karnak's motive for attacking Miranda.
• Ignored Epiphany: Bulgak's desperate effort to deny the evil he accepted and committed as an Infernomancer.
  • His eventual acceptance of his evil is juxtaposed against Siegfried's inability to do so.
• I Just Knew: Constantly, especially in Maltak. Huk Thak once pulls this off three distinct times in a single 8-panel strip. The best part is that the last one turns out to be completely inaccurate.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Dominic's mindscape battle with Szark.
  • Dominic, on the verge of mindbreak and being corrupted by the Beast, is snapped out of it and able to unify the two halves of himself with the help of his students. Specifically Prento using the same combination of spells he did when trying to save him from Barnet, and later mindbreak, with the same anticlimactic result—but identifying that Prento was real and not just one of the Beast's illusions.
• I'll Kill You!: I KILL YOU!
  • And that was the eponymous lead character biting his crystal ball after it showed him visions of his girlfriend's really evil ex breaking her heart and plotting to have her commit suicide a few months back.
• Immunity Disability: Resistance to magic is generally considered a disability, because while magic fireballs can't hurt you, white mages can't heal you when something non-magical almost kills you. It's mentioned that many who are resistant can't get employed, because of the liability and insurance concerns.
  • Though the only sufferer seen in-comic is a fantasy-counterpart rugby player, so insurance clearly isn't all that big of a deal. Nor is regular medical treatment (it's implied that white magic is very expensive and usually unavailable to commoners in any case). That said, when he is grievously injured, he spends the entire rest of the comic's run recovering from the injuries while any other character could've been healed in seconds by white magic.
• Impersonation-Exclusive Character: Early on, Jacob infiltrates a group of Chosen members by killing their mentor Vilrath and disguising himself as him. Vilrath is never spoken of or seen again aside from a brief cameo in a vision a few arcs later.
• Important Haircut: Nimmel gave himself one.
  • Gregory later inverts this and has his hair made much longer via hair alterist when he starts his band.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: The Rhazgala are apparently such good archers that they can fire volleys into the air into a melee with such accuracy as to only score non-lethal hits, a pretty much impossible feat in real life.
• Improvised Golems: Nimmel's Improvised snow golem
• I'm Standing Right Here: When Miranda reflected on how her parents reacted to her and Donovan's engagement, they were incredibly uncouth in regards to their opinion of him. Donovan reacts by saying this exactly.
• In Love with Your Carnage: Ripping apart the poachers solidifies Bort's love for "Bortette".
• In the End, You Are on Your Own: Despite all the others who undertake the quest with him, Dominic usually fights the Big Bad alone.
  • Despite leading the entire Shintula tribe to the Bikta camp, Thuen Gor is the only one who does any fighting.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: Most, if not all, of the hurricaned puns, at a bare minimum, make people rolls their eyes. In other cases...
• I Need a Freaking Drink: The reasons run the gamut from bad days at work to vomiting up a "virus spell" after a long and arduous psychic battle.
• Informed Ability: Reinholdt is supposedly trained in "Wasteland Survival", and yet clearly has no idea what he's doing. Since it's a Magical Wasteland Dead World and all around World of Weirdness, it would be silly that the same limits should apply to the letter of the law.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The Sword of Centuries, a legendary sword so magically powerful it can deflect spells from the king of all wizards. Donovon Deegan wrote a song about it way back when he never mentioned it was his sword.
• Insistent Terminology: Inverted. Brett Taggerty called Gregory a faggot and Rachel a dyke at about every opportunity. Neither, especially Rachel, would put up with his crap.
• Instant Expert: Chance Masters was apparently terrible at physical activities and didn't expect sword fighting to be any better. To his surprise he beat his foe on the first try! He may or may not be playing host to an abomination.
• Ironic Echo:
  • When Rachel goes to break up a fight between him and the bigot slaughterball player she used to idolize, Brett Taggerty:
  Rachel: I don't know what's going on in here, but I suggest you let go of my friend and explain yourself.
  Brett: (lets go of Gregory and raises his fist) Yeah? How about I break your face instead?!
  Rachel: I invite you to try, Taggerty.
  (Brett promptly punches Rachel in the jaw, eliciting a "KRAK"; but in the next panel, he's got a bloody hand)
  Brett: AAAAAGGH!
  Rachel: I break things with my face.
  Vilrath: Listen to me well, seer, because I'm only going to say this once. You are no match for me.
  [later]
  Dominic: Listen to me well, seer, because I'm only going to say this once. I'm not afraid of you.
  • From two different conversations, both spoken in Orcish:
  Hukthak: I hope you can speak Orcish.
  Donovan: Of course! I'm the little pink man in pink. I'm here to do your taxes in Autumn.
  Hukthak: ...Close enough. Let's get moving.
  [Elsewhere, after Dominic complains about the current situation and his Second Sight being blocked.]
  —>Suyan: My Callanian is rusty. Is he yelling about his taxes in Autumn?
  Melna: Close enough. Let's keep moving.
• Irony: Chance Masters is first shown as a wealthy arrogant bully who gives special attention to another boy with a ponytail. It turns out "Ponytail" used to bully Chance because Chance sucked at sports and he ("Ponytail") thought that all rich kids were jerks because that's how his "action books" always portrayed them (apparently Richie Rich doesn't exist in Callan).
• It Has Been an Honor: Siegfried's Final Speech.
• It's Personal: After the death of Bumper, this is Stunt's attitude toward helping Dominic take down the Big Bad.
• It's Raining Men: Or in this case, souls.
• Jerkass: Lord Siegfried Damaske, Stunt.
  • Stunt gets Character Development, eventually. Siegfried gets some of that and it was perfectly possible to be somewhat attached to him, but he also gets killed, and dragged to hell, and turned into a demon servant, and then the true depths of his cruelty and self-delusion are displayed at length as he gloats in his brief ascendancy in hell, and then he gets his ass handed to him again, and then a guy's soul explodes and he's a pathetic, crippled demon, and then he eats his father's still-talking severed head in revenge for raising him to be a psycho, and was last seen crying for somebody, anybody, to help him.
  • Karnak was a Jerkass from day one. In the strip, not his actual life; he seems to have been a decent guy once, that nasty episode toward the end notwithstanding.
  • Celesto over half the time. Collateral Damage Man is a title he earned by being really into that 'pfft, sacrifices for the cause' thing.
  • Siegfried's dad. That Doma chieftain Melna whacks. TIM. Rilian rather often, despite being pretty definitely on the right side and having his good side. The MaDara kid.
  • JACOB, though he seems to have finally got a clue. All the bad guys are jerkasses, partly because they all participate in some way in the strip's style of humor.
• Jerk Jock: Brett Taggerty and the majority of the Baccdair Brawlers fit this trope perfectly. Dex Garrit and Rachel Hart are the only athletes who don't.
  • Several of the werewolves we've seen at Coldfire Academy fit this profile. Some of them soften, though, after the Alpha Bitch goes too far.
  • Chance Masters is a spoiled brat who is excellent at fencing.
  • Chance's favorite target Heliner used to be one and bullied Chance mercilessly.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: Dom's gone into other peoples' minds, and currently The Beast is probing Dom's physical brain but can't find his mind because (or in spite) of Dom's mind being inside his own head trying to reason with his mind/soul to prevent the dreaded MINDBREAK.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: A certain elemental goes from a womanising scumbag to an insane mass of death earth attempting to kill one of the main characters. Then again, it was less "jumping" and more "shoved by Jacob".
  • Dominic thinks that Celesto is going off the deep end with his insane scheme to implicate the King and the Beast by murdering Chance with a fake Beast. What really worries Dominic is that Celesto is positively giddy about this plan. The power boost in chaotic magic from being the Champion of Chaos and fighting The Beast's influence on his mind is eroding his will and slowly but surely pushing him to the edge.
• Just Eat Gilligan: The treasure of Luana is an artifact that acts as a key, allowing its holder to open the door to the Heart of Magic. It has been stated that the Heart of Magic is not meant for mortals. Even though all of its guardians believe that any attempt to approach the Heart of Magic is an incredibly foolish act that can only ever lead to disaster, they make no effort to destroy it until the Big Bad tries to claim it. They succeed in destroying it, but the Big Bad proceeds to consume Dominic's second sight and gloats that it can just use that to find another way to unlock the Heart of Magic.
• Kangaroo Court: Well, at least Siegfried is honest about it.
• Karmic Death: Brett Taggerty and Serk Brakkis, from Celesto's (And some readers) point of view, anyway.
• Kick the Dog: Among the first things we see Siegfried do are beat Dominic to a pulp for not giving him the prediction he wanted, and then beating Gregory, a crippled kid, with his own walking stick. Of course, he does Pet the Dog a couple times later on.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Celesto Morgan's merciless exploding of Brett Taggerty and Serk Brakkis. Merciless, and rather messy, but executed on an Asshole Victim extraordinaire both times.
• Kids Are Cruel: Even at universities studying the intricacies of magic, there are still bullies.
• Killed Off for Real: Klo Tark's second death seems to have stuck.
  • Narrowly averted with Luna. At the end of the March Across Maltak arc Mookie said that he really considered letting Luna die in order to get a more dramatic ending. He decided against it after considering how it would absolutely destroy Dominic and kill the future plot lines he planned out.
  • In the start of the comic's last year, Mookie declares that not everyone will make it to the end...and then kills Bumper. Followed now by all the archmages, the denizens of Aberthast Cathedral, the Masters family, the Maestro...and Rilian. And Quilt and Celesto.
• Large Ham: Zelda (No, not that Zelda), an old friend of Dominic's during her appearance in the Oracle Hunter Arc. For more fun, remember that Zelda Zanzibar is based on a gag Mookie used to pull. Yes, in drag.
• Last Episode, New Character: An unseen character in the very last comic calls Dominic "Dad".
• Law of Inverse Fertility / Babies Ever After: Not sure how to classify this: Luna was rendered infertile, but a few of her eggs survived. Since Dom's infertile as well she decides to donate them and the eggs will, to quote the alterist, "actually take on the genetics of the recipient."
• Layout Screw The 8 frames of each strip can and have been screwed with to show something is happening in-universe relating to the metaphysical planes in one form or another. This also allows for funny stuff to happen in the background.
• Let's Wait a While: Dominic and Luna holding off on sex until "the time was right." And when it finally happened? "Worth the wait."
• Letting Her Hair Down: Nurse Pam
• Lightbulb Joke: Donovan tells a local variant here as a form of Self-Deprecation.
• Light Is Not Good: While the Akta isn't bad, being a force for life and healing, its most powerful practitioner, the Bikta spirit father, is a fanatical asshole.
  • While White Magic in general is fueled by positive emotions and does positive things for people like healing or strengthening their bodies, it is not by strict definition 'good' but rather based on the aspect of creation, the exception being Holy Magic as a direct opposition to Infernomancy.
  • Jacob discovers that the Blight isn't a form of necromancy, but rather out-of-control White Magic perverted by necromancers.
• Longing Look
• Love at First Sight: Usually averted, but played straight with Hansi and Kiya.
• Lovecraft Lite: Halfway through the comic, we learn that the Big Bad is an Eldritch Abomination trying to devour all parts of the world that isn't Callinen. It gets it's ass kicked.
• Love It or Hate It: Invoked in-universe with Greg's second band. At their opening concert, half the crowd walked out right off the bat, but the other half stayed and had a blast.
• Lower-Deck Episode: Occasionally, we're treated to an arc without our main characters: Hello, Nurse! and Built to Resist omitted Dominic and Luna in favor of Gregory, and Two Thief featured only a small cameo from Dominic.
  • 2010 was basically a Lower Deck year, to even out the fact that one story arc took up the entirety of 2009.
• Lowest Common Denominator: In-Universe - The concept was relentlessly mocked here.
• Mad Scientist: Jacob Deegan the necromancer.
• Made of Iron: Rachel "I Break Things With My Face" Hart
• The Magic Goes Away: The Maltak arc ends with the Orcs' magic being taken away by Maltak to aid its rebirth. It doesn't seem to be completely gone, though, more that they'll have to rediscover it.
  • And the next arc begins with Callanian Magic mysteriously malfunctioning as a result.
  • The Big Bad's entire motivation is to prevent this from happening to Callan.
  • Courtesy of Dominic's final vision, it actually turns out to be the opposite of this for Maltak, as their Chandaks come back and they become a great power of magic, while Callan seems to be headed toward either a Steampunk future.
• Magitek / Functional Magic: What starts out as a pseudo-medieval fantasy world turns out to be a world with advanced arcane laboratories, magical electric guitars, heavy metal bands ... and, apparently, spandex. There's also magical surgery, magical CT scans, and magical obstetrics, as well as whatever magical devices that allowed them to learn about genetics.
• Makeover Montage: Rachel Hart makes it happen.
• Mama Bear: Mess with Miranda Deegan's kids, and she will fuck you up.
• Manipulative Bastard: Dominic gets dangerously close to being one during the Super-Greg arc. He's far from the worst example though.
• Manly Tears: All over the place.
• Meaningful Funeral: Bumper gets a funeral pyre in the middle of town, plus some added context to let the readers know that he was well-known enough for the whole town to show up and that he was Quilt's friend.
• Meaningful Name: Donovan's orcish name, for one. For two, Stonewater. For three, Huk Thak. For four, Rocky the golem.
  • On a more symbolic note, "Karnak" is old orcish for "The Morning Star". Which comes off as Fridge Brilliance when you consider that he uses Bulgak as an exploding ball of doom wrapped around a chain by throwing him on their enemies.
  • Stunt is stunted. The religion of his homeland, Scaplianism (it's not as sexually liberated as Luanianism and his father being religious and abusive didn't help his view) might be a shout-out/take that at Episcopalians.
  • The town of Lynn's Brook is named after the author's high school. It's full of idiots. It later gets destroyed and Dom's parting gift is a hailstorm of thick books.
• Merger of Souls:
  • Acibek was a golem created by an ancient Elven tyrant who powered him with several souls combined together, many of them collected unwillingly, and not happy about it. The Sylvan Oracle and her own creation "Dirk the Mighty" were similar golems.
  • And there's also the Storm of Souls, a raging maelstrom of souls formed from deceased members of the chaos-worshipping cult The Chosen and intended to be their weapon to destroy the world with. Acibek sacrificed himself to trap it in a cage forged from his own souls and centuries later the Sylvan Oracle sacrificed herself to destroy it.
• Messianic Archetype: Luna has become this in the March Across Maltak arc, becoming essentially the Jesus of the orcs. She sprouts plant life wherever she walks, can pull water from nowhere, and is literally powered by the gods of Maltak. Near the end of the arc, she dies and is promptly resurrected.
  • Klo Tark died for your sins. Twice.
• Megaton Punch: Miranda Deegan one-shots the Oracle Hunter. Complete with one-word Pre Ass Kicking One Liner.
• Metal Scream: Weaponized, even.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Reading that strip now without making a Skyrim reference is pretty much impossible.
• Mighty Whitey: Nimmel is basically called one by Milov, as Milov explains just why he personally accepted him to the Coldfire Academy. It remains to be seen if we are supposed to be taking him seriously or not.
  "You're a better werewolf then most werewolves."
  • Arguably Luna during the Maltak arc(s), when she was divinely appointed to be unifier of the tribes by the elemental gods of Maltak.
• A Million Is a Statistic: At the end of the Maltak Arc, much is made of Luna's personal sacrifices, but no mention is made of the heavy casualties of the Big Bikta Battle.
  • It's implied that the newly dead came back rather than than return to the earth. That may have just been Jacob and those he was holding, but he didn't seem to be in control of it, he was simply assuring those two followed him.
• Mind Rape: Siegfried hijacks a lunar divination between Dominic and Milov to do this, displaying his fate since the War in Hell and his past affair with Lady Jayden in order to force Milov into having a Heroic BSoD.
  • Dominic is accused of this by Barnet in a What the Hell, Hero? moment. It didn't help that she was already in a bad way.
• Mirror Character: Not only is Celesto Morgan Dominic's Evil Counterpart (and opposing Champion during the Storm of Souls arc), but Celesto's tendency to believe I Did What I Had to Do, that Utopia Justifies the Means, to act as if he has an Omniscient Morality License and is Above Good and Evil, and his Well-Intentioned Extremist thinking are all mirrored in Dominic being The Chessmaster who often gets accused of Protagonist-Centered Morality. Dominic, recognizing this, keeps trying to offer Celesto a way back to the light on numerous occasions (which he of course sneers at and rejects) while Celesto, when he isn't offering Dominic the chance to join him and make the world a better place, the way they think it "should" be, is usually calling Dominic on his manipulative actions and nastily underscoring their similarities. In a twisted way, even his stint as The Atoner could be said to be Celesto attempting to make amends by turning himself into what he thinks Dominic actually is.
• Mistaken for Gay: Bumper could have sworn Stunt hated women because he was gay. It turns out he just really can't stand women, at least ones that throw fire balls at him.
• Moment Killer: Played for Laughs with Dex.
• Mood Whiplash: This strip could be the trope picture. Switching directly from people grieving, realisticly, over a villain, to a bunch of posh slimes eating the same.
  • Before that, we have Luna being returned to life, by virtue of Dominic's heartbroken grief being interrupted by her jolting awake so suddenly she headbutts him in the face.
• More Hero than Thou
• More than Mind Control: Karnak's control of Szark and Siggy after his damnation.
• Mundane Utility: Crystal balls are videophones. Frequently even when there's no one with scrying talent established on either end of the line. Scarlatti used Tomen's Teleport Service to get to Barthis so quickly for the duel. And the people with flying spells use them all the freaking time, as well as Dominic's ability to 'bookmark' to any of a few set places instantly, as often as he wants.
  • Also, alterism. It's basically plastic surgery, only magic and therefore with far more options. Like, presumably, ftm sex-change operations that really work, as it were.
  • Magic is essentially mundane in this world, apart from not being available to everyone—even things like monitoring Hell are only deviations in scale from the routine. Some ritual stuff and horror and of course the major world-saving quests are the main exceptions.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Karnak's attempted way of dealing with the love triangle between him, Miranda, and Donovan. He thought better of it without actually killing anyone, so one hopes it didn't count too much toward damnation.
• My God, What Have I Done?: A lot. Heel Realization happens a lot, although sometimes (especially if your name is Celesto) it turns into Ignored Epiphany pretty quick.
• My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Donovan's attempts at speaking orcish. Its on purpose.

Tropes N-R

• Necromancer: death and decay magic is commonly used by the villains, including Dominic's brother Jacob. Subverted by the fact that - according to 'Brian' ( actually Rilian in disguise) - Necromancers were originally a combination of undertaker, grief counselor, and Psychopomp, seeing the dead to their rest and caring for their bereaved, but have had their profession besmirched by those who misuse those powers.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Several examples, including:
  • A twofer Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, involving Gregory and Brett Taggerty. First, a wasted Brett punches out Pamela, whom Gregory has a crush on, and dares him to fight back using his white magic. Gregory erupts into a geyser of white fire. Oops. The resulting tidal wave of White Magic heals everyone in the hospital...with the unintended side effect of powering up Brett and the rest of his Slaughterball team, and sobers them up, too. Oops.
  • Overlapping with Oh, Crap!: The Infernomancer's response when Dominic tells him the demon lord he was supposedly bound to serve didn't have control over him: "Now I get to kill you the way I've always wanted to — slowly!"
  • Miranda banishes the Infernomancer to "the planes beyond all reason and imagination...an unspeakable place between the known dimensions". Unfortunately this allows him to become corrupted and controlled by the Beast. Later, Dominic blasts Celesto into the same place when he destroys the Storm of Souls in the Elemecca; when Celesto breaks free later still due to the War in Hell, he accidentally brings the Infernomancer, and the Beast, to the Material Plane with him.
  • Something the Shintula Chieftain experiences in the form of Luna's Chosen One status, which would never have happened if he hadn't cursed the Callanians with the affliction that would lead Luna to being born with 'Tusk-Mouth' in the first place.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Jacob tries to kill Gregory by ripping the Blight of the Undead out of Gregory's body (through his unaffected parts). Turns out he just removed the Restraining Bolt that hampered his white magical abilities.
  • The Infernomancer stabs Quilt...but that just allows him to get in close and impale him in turn, as well as Rilian...thus corrupting the Infernomancer with the Blight and freeing Rilian's necromancy from the Big Bad's control.
• No Bisexuals: Szark was apparently deluding himself that he was turned on by his wife back when he was a hedonist, even though hedonists don't go in much for that. Because he's gay now. Totally. And doesn't like women and makes gay jokes pretty much every time he opens his mouth. It's part of the Heel–Face Turn package. The monks helped him realize it and now he's comfortable with himself. Because obviously only people who're sunk deep into depravity would like both girls and guys, and they also usually express that by having threesomes.
  • Although, since he describes "the feeling he felt towards girls" as how he felt about killing other people for pleasure, it's quite likely that he means that it was something that brought him short-term pleasure but knew deep down wasn't what he wanted.
  • Szark's relationship with Luna's sister is heavily implied to be the result of her using magic to enchant him, and that he has been gay all along. He even mentions that he was crushing on Dominic for a while when they were younger.
  • During 'Two Thief' Szark makes a passing remark (and a tasteless joke) that revealed that at some point during the several hours Amelia had Bumper as her brainwashed 'exotic toy,' they fit in a foursome. This is technically rape, and one has to hope Bumper doesn't remember. That night was traumatic enough for him.
    • Actually, that was established in the original arc. Background of panel two. He seems to be asleep.
  • Celesto Morgan: Although, from what we have seen of him, he is more asexual, using sex simply as a tool for manipulating others.
• No Indoor Voice: Inverted; anyone whose portrayed as talking really quietly or high pitched is written in no-caps.
• No Name Given: Stunt's female boss didn't get a name until the last page of the WILD EDGE! story, (Gail Vazkes); meanwhile several male poachers got names much earlier despite being Red Shirts.
• Noble Demon: Averted. Word of God is that incarnations of evil are actually evil for once.
• Noble Savage: Orcs.
• No-Dialogue Episode: The Legacy of Dominic Deegan, due to the main character's deaf-mutism.
• Non-Lethal Warfare: They're beating us up with their arrow volleys! Apparently the idea is the orcs were shooting to wound but...well, Arrow Volleys Do Not Work That Way.
  • Almost immediately averted when the other side's leader uses nature magic to upgrade his troops' weapons with spikes. Then the archers start shooting to kill.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: The Nagasta and the Qualenti. Mookie has admitted this doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but put them in because, "I like boobs."
• Not In This For Your Pilgrimage: Initially Stunt doesn't care one whit for Jayden's spiritual journey into Eldariat (not that he actively wants to support her supposed quest for death either). All he cares about is the Lost Treasure of Luana. This changes a bit as they get closer to the end and explore each other's motivations for taking the pilgrimage together.
• "Not So Different" Remark: King David tries to pull this on Dominic, based on their both being The Chessmaster and doing their level best to preven the tragedies they foresee. Of course Dominic's methods are nothing like his, and while he tries to prevent the death and suffering of loved ones and friends, the king is trying to prevent the loss of magical prominence for Callan (and himself).
• Oblivious Younger Sibling: Gregory refuses to believe that his big brother Jacob is at all evil... until Jacob admits he tried to kill him.
• Odd Couple: Former thief, Anti-Hero, and Deadpan Snarker Stunt is paired up with good-hearted, noble (if tainted in her own mind) priestess Jayden on her spiritual pilgrimage of redemption. It ends up being It's the Journey That Counts which helps both of them let go of the past and Stunt (perhaps not) fully reforms.
• Odd-Shaped Panel: Whenever Dominic goes into another plane of existence, the standard panel arrangement disappears.
• Offhand Backhand: With plants
  • Turns out Melna can Dual Wield.
• Off with His Head!: King David's fate courtesy of Stunt, after Donovan stabbed him In the Back. (And then he gets blown up along with the Sanctum.)
  • Earlier in the comic, the Doma chief's fate, courtesy of Melna, thus avenging her family. Made more awesome by being delivered not with a sword-blow, but by smashing it clear off his shoulders with Stonewater's hammer.
  • And in the very first arc, this is how Siegfried kills Croona Travoria after he gets to hear her admit everything about her plan to get Luna to kill herself.
• Oh, Crap!: Multiple:
  • The Shintula Chief tells Luna to choose her words carefully...She does indeed.
  • The Shintula gives Jacob a good one here.
  • Miranda Deegan, a woman who has stared down devils and demons and kicked their asses, has this expression when she goes to see her little boy's band playing.
    Gregory: Hey, everyone. We're Facebath! AND WE'RE HERE TO KICK YOUR ASS!
    Miranda: oh dear.^note See No Indoor Voice above
  • Here, Neilen does it for three panels in a row.
  • "Oh crap"
  • The Infernomancer goes bug-eyed and whimpers "oh, no" when he realizes where he is and who is there to greet him on arrival.
• One-Way Visor: Multiple:
  • Damned Siegfried
  • Corrupted Jayden
• One-Winged Angel: The diminutive Dirk the Mighty can transform into a powerful ogre. Infernomancers like Caylen Bren and Bulgak become more obviously demonic the more they tap into their demon lords' power. After becoming the servant of an Eldritch Abomination, TIM shifts between a mostly human form and a mass of tentacled horror at will.
• One-Word Title: In the some poems:
  • December 16 2019 strip: "Asleep" by Prento Fallin
  • December 18 2019 strip: "Meditation" by Larabel Tilne
• Only Six Faces: Lampshaded here. There are other occasions where it's clear that Mookie is aware of it. Dex Garrit and Dominic Deegan look alike because they share similar hair. The mystery and dramatic reveal of the Oracle Hunter's identity was only able to keep the reader guessing because of this trope.
  • Gets kind of ridiculous when you add Generation Xerox: Dom and Greg look like their mother and father while their older brother has their mother's parents' hair and better-than-thou attitude. It also kind of messed-up the dramatic entry of The Infernomancer into the Beast's and King Johann's plot since he wasn't named and he looks like a buffed-up Greg with cool gauntlets.
• Omniscient Morality License: Lots. Especially Rilian. And his Omniscient Council of Random Secondary Characters Plus Dragon.
• Open the Iris: They're anime style characters. The sizes of their irises/pupils change with their emotions.
• Orcus on His Throne: Since his reveal as The Beast's partner-in-crime, the King of Callan has been fairly passive overall. It's eventually revealed that this is because he was waiting for the Beast's champion the Infernomancer to regenerate. It also highlights just how little he thinks of his enemies' efforts against him.
• Our Orcs Are Different: Herbivores
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Are their own culture, and come in two flavors: Werewolves, and Spellwolves. Both can shift at will, and retain pretty much all their mental faculties. Spellwolves are a special, rarer type of Werewolf that can use considerable magical power. The moon is significant in the culture, and Spellwolves can use the full moon to scry like seers.
• Out of Focus: Given the comic's large character base and varied locations, it's not uncommon for the focus to change drastically from arc to arc. Supporting characters like Milov and Jayden will sometimes disappear for arcs at a time, and even main characters like Dominic and Luna will occasionally take an arc off.
  • After the end of the Maltak arc, Dominic and Luna were absent from the comic for nearly an entire year.
• Overly Long Name: A really, really early gag with Siggy's full name. We don't hear the whole thing again for eight years.
• Painting the Medium: Legacy is done entirely without dialogue or SFX because the main character is a deaf-mute. He communicates by writing in his journal and showing it to people.
• Paint It Black: The Nakta does this to Luna's hair.
• Papa Wolf: Though not as rabid as Miranda, when you're around Donovan, it's really not a good idea to screw with Dominic or Gregory. There's also the Shintula Chief, as Jacob learns the hard way.
  • Don't forget the poppa furry things of the Wild Edge.
• The Paragon: Dominic and Luna's goal in the Maltak arc.
• Pardon My Klingon: Ilka Tuk Tak, as well as "Kegak," which seems to be more of a direct insult.
  • This strip gets funnier if you imagine the phrase means "motherfucker", although anything with fuck in it is probably broad enough for the number of places "Ilka Tuk Tak" get's used.
    • Given a lookup in a Scots dictionary, Ilka Tuk Tak would translate to "Gather each thorn." Taken as an idiomatic phrase meant to convey an incredibly demeaning and humiliating task (or the feeling associated with it), this meaning makes sense and fits with their culture/herbivorous nature.
  • Later comics give us "kiak", "fak", "uruk", and "thok".
• Parent ex Machina: Miranda, somewhat exceptional in that the main character is (ostensibly) no longer a child. Actually lampshaded at one point when Miranda tries a few puns on the phrase, including "Mama Ex Machina" and "Deus Ex Momina," and, after seeing the confused reactions of her audience, she settles for, "I'm his mother, and I'm going to fix everything."
• Pet Homosexual: Szark. Oh, Szark.
• Pet the Dog: Jacob resurrecting Luna. "Don't say I've never done anything for this family."
  • Just after Celesto kills Brett Taggerty: "Go. Get out of here. Run home to your daughter, hold her tight, and thank her for that 'good luck pinch.' It just saved your life."
• Phantom Zone: A nameless, Lovecraftian dimension exists that has, so far, been used as a convenient way to get rid of villains so they can return later. Although the indiscriminate infiltration of tentacles into their various orifices seems to be a bad side effect of staying in this dimension for too long.
• Pimped-Out Dress: Amelia's dresses
• Planet of Hats: In this case, Tribe of Hairstyles. Every tribe in Maltak is given their own adjective.
• Play-Along Prisoner: Dominic to Johann, in order to save his friends and family and get back the Lost Treasure of Luana. After viewing the Heart of Magic however, it's not clear how play-along he actually is now.
• Poke in the Third Eye
  • A literal version of this occurs when the Beast, possessing a corrupted version of Dominic's body, gets stabbed in its third eye by one of its own fangs it had bitten Dominic with.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Siegfried, Siegfried's father and Brett Taggerty come to mind
• Porn Stash: You never guess WHOSE porn stash it's referring to...
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: A rare case of this being presented in a positive manner. At the conclusion of the Maltak arc, the souls of the Orc dead are absorbed back into Maltak to help it recover. Essentially, the souls of the Orcs have been turned into spiritual mulch.
  • Rather, it's explained that this was a natural cycle that the poison in Maltak was halting, which is why the place was barren in the first place.
  • Whereas the Bikta orc clan's leader used Grench and their connection to the elements to keep his sanctuary alive.
  • An Acibek is a golem created by merging multiple souls into a single collective entity using Order magic. The original Acibek was created by the elf tyrant Raf Maliksh using the souls of his own followers. It's no wonder Acibek immediately turned on Raf in disgust. Two other characters, Dirk the Mighty and Leaflette the former Sylvan Oracle, are also Acibeks. Dirk was created by Leaflette to be a guardian for the Dryad using the souls of a tree ogre, slumber flower, and a halfling. Leaflette was created by the original Acibek using an unknown combination of souls. This is also an unusually positive case: Acibek assures the loved ones of Raf's sacrifices that the souls inside him are at peace within his collective being.
  • The Evil Counterpart of the Acibek, the Storm of Souls, is as nasty as it sounds. It's an Eldritch Abomination composed of the souls of the Chaos worshipping Chosen that can devour other souls as well. Unlike an Acibek, the souls within the Storm are not at peace.
• The Power of Legacy: Used twice: once when Donovan sees Karnak jump into Hell after beating him to a pulp, he chooses not to tell Miranda about what had happened. Later on, Dominic follows his father's example by telling Milov and Jayden that Siegfried died as a knight of Callan, even though he was a genocidal maniac who promptly went to Hell. The first example is the Trope Namer and is found here. The second one is here.
• The Power of Rock: Papa Deegan's specialty; Greg seems to have inherited it.
• Precision F-Strike: And Mookie makes no apologies.
  • An earlier example was when a character said "shit" for the first time, though Mookie played up on it in his post, despite much more mature content done in previous comic strips. Specifically, he had originally intended the character to say "Oh, Crap!", but felt "Oh shit" was stronger and fit better.
• Pretty in Mink: One of Amelia's dresses. Miranda's mother had a fur muff.
• President Evil: King David. Don't let the king title fool you, he got elected after the previous king was murdered. By him. After that, he joins forces with an advanced AI that's made from his eyes and hungry for souls.
• Progressively Prettier: Luna's tusks have become noticeably less, er, protrusive, over the years.
• Psychic Nosebleed: Dominic gets one after banishing a demon overlord with his mind.
  • Celesto is frequently a victim of this as it slowly becomes harder and harder for him to fight off The Beast's influence on his mind.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Miranda: I've. Had. Enough.
• Pure Magic Being: Several.
• Put on a Bus: Szark and Snowsong are sent to the Aberthast Cathedral for a while to get counseling after they nearly go off the deep end.
  • There's also Luna's sister, Barnet, who's currently in jail awaiting trial.
  • At the conclusion of the Maltak arc, Reinholdt is put on a mountain.
  • Nimmel when he left for the Winter Archipelago for some wacky nudist werewolf hijinx!
• Pygmalion Plot: Leaflette fell in love with her creator Acibek. An odd case, since both of them are golems created using the same process. Sadly, they only get to be Together in Death.
• Black Comedy Rape / Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: When revealing how Luna lost her virginity, there's a one-panel sight gag of a panicked Dominic tied up, wearing cat ears, and screaming "help!", with the information that he slept with Gregory's friend Rachel the mercenary on their first date, and "didn't have much of a choice."
• Raised Lighter Tribute: Done with magical fires in the last panel of this strip of Donovan Deegan's guitar solo in Part 1 of The Battle of Barthis.
• Rape as Drama: Given an unusual examination with Stonewater and Melsheena, but many of its regular subtropes played straight.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Stunt, in his early days of semi-violent misogyny still gets appalled by the implication that he'd use "Sin City Specials" while in Erossus.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Dominic's father, Donovan, is the Trope Namer.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The Beast delivers one to Celesto:
  Pathetic. Hard to believe I ever considered you a threat. Look at you. A sad imitation of a real seer, and more animal than oracle. You cling proudly to your "identity", but at your most powerful you are not yourself. You are me. But unlike me...and unlike a true champion...you cannot bear the power you are granted. You don't even possess enough power to fuel a Mindbreak, like a real seer. Without your stolen powers and cheap imitations, you are nothing. Well, maybe not "nothing". You can still serve one purpose...as an appetizer.
  • This is subverted, however, when in the end Celesto not only uses his chaos magic to blow up the Beast's corrupted clone of Dominic, he sacrifices himself with a detonation when the Beast tries to pull him down into the heart of the Elemecca with it. Just prior to this, both Dominic and Celesto get to give their own "The Reason You Suck" Speech back to the Beast, and even Mookie gets in on the act in the newspost.
  Dominic: When we first encountered the Beast...we were all so scared of it...but the more we learned...the more we discovered...the less frightening it became...until...I can't believe I was ever scared of you.
  Celesto: Hard to believe I ever considered you a threat.
  Mookie: Dominic's reflection on The Beast in the second half of today's comic is true about most things we're frightened of. The unknown is the scariest element of all. Knowledge dispels fear as it creates understanding, and even the mightiest of monsters can be reduced to a stain on the ground. Over time, knowledge of The Beast has diminished it. From a disembodied, eldritch god-fiend from an unknowable place...to the discarded eyes of a mad king, given parasitic life in a planar garbage dump.
• Red Shirt Army: The Rhazgala clan, in the final battle of March Across Maltak.
• Redemption Equals Death: Not only does he show up in a Big Damn Heroes moment in the Elemecca, but when the Beast has created a corrupted doppelganger of Dominic and is also still corrupting Dominic himself, instead of blasting both of them to be sure he got rid of every last bit of his enemy, Celesto spares Dominic, only destroying the Beast. This may have been a mistake, since the Beast still wasn't dead and ends up pulling him down into the Elemecca with it...leading Celesto to set off a chaos explosion to kill them both.
• Redemption in the Rain: Played straight, in Maltak, where the orc tattoos washing off, was used to show show their powers are returning to nature.
• Retcon: Borderline: What happened to Stunt's mother and why. In a deleted comic, Stunt said he "slit her nasty throat" because she was abusive. That was removed and replaced with one where he just said she was his first murder. Then it turns out he was just trying to scare her and his mother's lesbian lover apparently (accidentally?) pushed her in front of his knife.
• Retired Badass: Donovan Deegan.
• Rerouted from Heaven: Karnak's acquisition of Siggy's soul is initially portrayed this way. A later plot arc reveals that Siggy earned his place in Hell with a lifetime of horrifically evil deeds, and Karnak merely enslaved him once he got there.
• The Reveal: Throughout the Oracle Hunter Arc, it's heavily implied that Barnet is the illegitimate child of Donovan and a woman he dated prior to meeting Miranda, making her Dominic's half-sister. However, it's later revealed that she's actually one of Luna's sisters.
  • The identity of the Beast's power source/magical ally in the mortal plane: the king of Callan. Extended when it is revealed that, "political implications aside", he was not only the first human ever allowed to join the Circle of the Archmagi, a circle was actually invented for him to hold. He is one of the most powerful magi in Callanian history, and he's trying to kill them all.
• Rule of Cool: Mookie is known to invoke continuity errors or unexplained events for the sake of coolness. For example: why does Melna's hammer have lightning coming from it when she kills the Doma chief? Because "it's pretty f* cking metal."
  • Mookie also invoked this involving a Rain of Arrows that inexpicably changed direction from one strip to another:
    Mookie: Okay, I know in yesterday's strip that the Rhazgala archers all had their bows pointed up and today those arrows are flying horizontally past Suyan's head. This "continuity error" is just a dramatic choice on my part because I felt the arrows flying straight on past him looked cooler.
• Rule of Drama: From comic 1763, where Quilt uses this to try and deduce the identity of the Oracle Hunter:

Quilt: I have deduced that your old girlfriend escaped death because she was pregnant with your love-child and this Oracle Hunter is none other than your long-lost daughter!
Donovan Deegan: And how, praytell, did you deduce all that?
Quilt: Because it is very dramatic.

• Rule of Funny: Apparently, this is why bards do anything.
  • Including spending two decades intentionally misspeaking orcish!
• Running Gag: Quite a few. Sparks' "Death from Above", "Fear My....Illusion", and the habit of everyone making bad puns.
  • Also Mookie himself pointed out in a comic "And so with Chris's death today I continue the tradition of killing people who win a named appearance in the comic via ConnectiCon's Webcomic Charity Auction."
  • Lower Back Problems
  • CURSE YOU, RUNCIBLE SPOON!

Tropes S-Z

• Sadist Teacher, subverted. During his tenure as a teacher, Dominic gained a reputation of being a hardass before the first day of class even began. He admits that Second Sight (the course he was teaching) would be hard, as there is a lot of history and heavy reading involved. Despite this, he has a positive relationship with his students, and vice versa.
• Say My Name: After Siegfried is freed from Karnak's control, he spends the next several comics traversing the Hellscape shouting "KARNAK!" When he shouts the name again, he grabs a spear mere inches away from his face, thrown by Karnak who says, "I heard you the first time."
• Scarf Of Ass Kicking: Dominic's never without his scarf, not even in psychic battles.
  • Of course not. It's the reason he can hold his own in them.
  • Scarf Of Asskicking Leads to Leadership? During the meeting of the new-and-last chiefs of the Orc tribes, most of them have a scarf on, and Mookie's commentary notes that a scarf in this comic makes you badass.
• Screw Destiny: At the end of the Maltak arc, Melna tells fate to kiss her ass. A few comics later, Kiya steals her line.
  • This is pretty much what Dominic does throughout the comic. The only time fate ever won was with the "Fated Fatal".
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Serk Brakkis
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Nielen pulls a glorious one after being told that his punishment for attacking Dominic and Luna was to be promoted to Runcible Spoon's personal assistant.

  I quit I quit I quit I quit I quit I quit OH DEAR LORD I QUIT!

• Scry vs. Scry: Dominic and Celesto, several times.
• Seers: One of the hallmarks of the comic. Dominic and Celesto are the prime examples.
• Self-Defeating Prophecy: Dominic's second sight shows the unaltered future: What the future will be if he doesn't do something specially to change it.
• Self-Deprecation: Donovan resorts to this type of humor as applied to Callanians while held captive by the Shintula, including the local equivalent of a Lightbulb Joke.
• Semantic Superpower: Demon Lords, and to an extent lesser demons, seem to work this way. Toxcel, Lord of Poison, can also poison thoughts and relationships. The Lord of Treachery is just too slippery and treacherous to stay dead as long as their death is part of a Thanatos Gambit. And Chaos Demons are immune to White Magic, because that vulnerability is a rule.
  • That being said, it at least matches standard metaphors. People talk about toxic relationships, cheating death, and the laws of physics all the time.
  • It also leads to a notable Logical Weakness: the Lord of Treachery is killed using herself as a weapon - dying by 'betraying' herself.
• Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains: The female villains tend to dress a LOT sexier than female protagonists.
• Serial Homewrecker: Neilen Everstar had a habit of working to break up couples and apparently catching the girls on the rebound. He was responsible for wrecking Runcible Spoon's marriage and attempted it with Dominic and Luna, but was foiled by The Power of Trust.
• Shout-Out: A few visual references to Guilty Gear, among others.
  • IThat's a Shout-Out to System of a Down.
  • "I'm not trapped [in Hell] with you, you're trapped in here WITH ME!" The author claims it was accidental. Coincidentally, the same quote happens to be his friend Tim Buckley's forum signature on his own website.
  • Dominic's Father's grasp of orcish bears a striking resemblance to Monty Python's Hungarian Phrasebook sketch. "I cannot wait til lunchtime" is a direct quote.
  • This strip, with "Ghost in the Spell" as an obvious shout-out to Ghost in the Shell.
• Shut Up and Save Me!: The Trope Namer, here.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Or Orc Woman. My orcish is a bit rusty, but I think this is what it implies. Kiak?
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: From comic 1769, when Quilt wants to look more necromantic, he wears faces as shoulderpads and a necklace, as a reference to the skulls for same look usually done by villains.
• Small Name, Big Ego: "Look, ball-for-brains, just use your vision to tell me how awesome I am.
• Smoking Is Edgy: Dominic Deegan smokes a pipe in almost every panel at the beginning of the comic. Dominic is a jaded seer who is tired of using his second sight on frivolous customer requests, and he is easily one of the most cynical and sarcastic characters in the story at that point. He is eventually cured of his smoking habit when his brother, Gregory Deegan, releases a burst of healing White Magic.
• Smug Snake: Serk Brakkis.
• Snarky Non-Human Sidekick: Spark
• Some of My Best Friends Are X: Siegfried uses almost the trope name in the 'War in Hell' storyline after Dominic calls him a racist. Unusually, what he says is absolutely true and not particularly tainted by stereotyping or tokenism: One of his best friends is a spellwolf. It's just orcs. He has this huge problem with orcs. Oh, but "orcs aren't people."
• Something Only They Would Say: How Dominic realizes that the redhaired prisoner in Callan is Klo Tark.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Dominic and Luna, during their vacation after meeting a dragon:
  Luna's narration: Dominic and I, having just been in the presence of such a majestic creature, reacted the way any pair of intellectuals would have...
  (Dominic and Luna stare at each other)
  Dominic and Luna: (bouncing up and down) DRAGONDRAGONOHMYGODDRAGONOHGODOHWOWDRAGONDRAGON!
• The Spiny / Wolverine Claws: "Bortette" is covered with giant, random spikes that she can stab you in the face with.
• Stealth Pun: The Yuvonir, a mole-montain - it makes mole hills out of mountains.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: In the first story arc, both Siegfried and Spark use the phrase, "In my defense, it had tusks" to describe Luna (which Dominic catches right away when Spark says it). The two instances occur several days apart. Subverted in the second case, as it turns out Spark wasn't referring to Luna, but to a sea monster that also had tusks.
• Straw Critic: A highly-regarded but unnamed and unseen music critic shows up in The Power of Rock story. He thrashes Greg's "dumbed-down" music and while he doesn't exactly praise FACEBATH's proto-metal he does like that it's original; naturally by that point Greg and his two bandmates (a dude with tuskmouth and the jerkass bisexual(?) elf son of his father's bandmate) don't care.
• Suddenly Speaking: Variation with Bort the mongrelman: he could talk when introduced, but only in brief bits of Hulk Speak. During the final arc of the comic when he shows up to help, thanks to a combination of Celesto's magic and that of the Elemecca he can talk normally—and he's as surprised as Dominic is. Even funnier, he speaks in near-Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness.
• Superhero Episode: Super-Greg
• Suspiciously Idle Knights: The knights on Serk's take during Scarlatti's duel with Sturtz.
• Take Me Instead: Dominic's offer to Johann, to end the Zombie Apocalypse and save his family and friends.
• Taking You with Me: The Beast tries this several times with both Dominic and Celesto. It finally succeeds with the latter, only for the seer to turn the tables by destroying them both with a chaos explosion.
  The Beast: Pathetic seer! If I must go, I'll take you with me!
  Celesto: ...took the words right out of my mouth.
• Talk to the Fist: This strip.
  • Siegfried pulls one on a hallucination/flashback.
• A Tankard of Moose Urine: Reaction to Human beer from Orcs and Dwarf beer from Halflings.
• Tautological Templar: Siegfried, at least at first.
• Tear Off Your Face: Jacob.
• Tears of Remorse
• The World Is Just Awesome: "The reality of it all is overwhelming. And beautiful." What makes this even better is that it's based on Mookie's reaction to the Hubble telescope revealing ten thousand galaxies.
• There Are No Therapists "I think you people need to stop dumping all of your problems on me. I'm a CAT!"
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Chief Thuen Gor orders his men to stay back while he fights the Bikta Chief alone.
  • Justified Trope if you take his 'They stayed back because I told them to' as an admission that he might hurt his own tribe if he really went all out against the Bikta Chief. Given that their fight was interrupted before Thuen Gor got serious, we'll never know.
• Threaten All to Find One: When the Infernomancer was searching for Archmage Miranda Deegan, he broke into her magic academy, and killed three of the students. He took out the eye of a fourth, Nimmel, who caved and told him where she was to keep him from killing more students.
• Title Drop: Dominic once referred to himself as an "Oracle for Hire" near the start of the Shadow of Siegfried arc.
• To Hell and Back
• Tonight, Someone Dies: Done with the "Fated Fatal" Dominic goes through early in the War in Hell story arc, which he says means someone he knows will die, and there's nothing he can do about it.
  • Word of God promised that someone would not be returning from Maltak. Several deaths were teased, but in the end, Reinholdt is required to stay in the magic mountain.
  • As the comic enters its final year Mookie proclaimed that there would be several character deaths in the coming story arcs. A comic page before the Infernomancer drives his claws right through Bumper's chest.
• Too Dumb to Live: The poachers are dumbed down to irrelevance, even by the standards of a fun story about weird critters and murdering bad guys. They're hunting a mongrelman, an unknown quantity that survives in the Wild Edge - a plain where Reality Is Out to Lunch, known for giant horrible teeth bursting out of places you'd least expect, that has already killed some of them. They catch it by (1) throwing a net over it, and (2) gloating. This when they have been shown to have Instant Sedation - causing tranquilizers that can knock out a tosserphant. There were body parts everywhere.
  • Really, Too Dumb to Live kicked in earlier, when the one guy decided to just ignore the leader's advice and pick up one of the little fuzzballs.
• Took a Level in Badass: Luna's taken a few over the course of the strip. Starting with this exchange: When the hell did *Luna* gain self-confidence?!
• Too Much Information: Former page quote for that quote was from this webcomic

  Donovan: Yeah, Miranda isn't particularly religious, but after all these years, I can still make her see God.

  Dominic: DAD!

• Trademark Favorite Food: Dom's "Mapvel Candies". Also, Spark really loves fish. But he is, after all, a cat. And, uh...yeah.
• Tranquillizer Dart: Instant paralysis darts that seem to only be in effect while they're still stuck in the person.
• Traveling at the Speed of Plot: In a bizarre on-panel example, a character walks out of an empty, flat wasteland and into an enemy camp. A similar scene takes several minutes on Lawrence of Arabia, and the traveler is on camelback. Here the traveler is past the camp's guards in the time the guards take to spot her, recognize her, and recover from the surprise that she's alive.
• True Companions: Dominic's network of friends and allies. A werewolf's social worth revolves around their "pack" and to insult one is a major Dude, Not Funny! offense.
• Two Guys and a Girl: A repeated trope to the point the Xerox is starting to edge onto Naruto's turf. Donovan, Miranda, and Karnak seem to have been this, though it's unclear how Karnak felt about Donovan most of the time. Stonewater, Grenchka, and Bulgak also follow this pattern, with a variation in that Bulgak knew Grench first, but does not get her. Milov, Jayden, and Siegfried are eventually revealed to have been this not just in gender combo but in dynamic.
  • This seems to be the preferred composition of any given adventuring party in the setting, which owes a lot to fantasy RPG conventions, though not in the story. Greg, Luna, and Dominic fell into it early on, and if Szark had been a little more sane in his intro and the plot a little more conventional, he probably would have wound up a party with Dominic and Luna and given us the variant where the girl and one of the guys both like the other guy. Instead he's just the Pet Homosexual.
  • Mookie does like threes, though.
• Unexplained Recovery: The only apparent explanation for Dex's sudden recovery is sheer force of will. It's not a complete recovery, and in fact, even by the time the comic ends, he's still not fully healed.
  • Happens to Reinholdt during the climax of the Maltak arc, though not without a price.
  • Similarly, when Luna is stabbed with the Hukthak, her injury disappears as soon as it's pulled out, but it too comes with a price: She can never have children.
    • Though that, at least, is implied to be because of how the Hukthak combines healing and destruction magic.
• Unholy Nuke: A rare example of one used by a good character. Dark Soul Burst is a spell powered by anger and hatred, and is typically used by Luna when someone REALLY pisses her off. The first time it's used, it knocks out Siegfried, a rather strong royal knight, in a single shot. Later on, an ally deliberately pisses her off to make the spell more powerful when she casts it.
  • As part of his endgame, King David uses a combination of the imprisoned Rilian's necromancy and the Beast's power to launch gigantic "Blight-Bombs" to destroy everything outside of Callan.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Constantly.
• Unusual Euphemism: Dominic's term for large breasts is "lower back problems." Luna also wrote about her crush on Siegfried in her journal, and makes mention of his "great big sword".
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Raf Maliksh and Celesto.
  • And in Maltak, Dominic. Though it was really more Because Destiny Says So, and he did look for wiggle room a bit.
  • King David claims this as part of his Motive Rant, by creating the greatest (and only) magical kingdom in Callan, but really it's just a cover for Ambition is Evil (and, if he gets hold of the Heart of Magic, Godhood Seeker).
• Veganopia: Major piece in developing the orcs. It's not that they're not a violent, primitive society, but they're herbivores, and it adds a certain buccolic innocence to Maltak.
  • Also note Karnak's bizzarre behavioral tic of taking unnecessary mouthfuls out of his enemies and then spitting them out. He was raised an orc. They had to boil the food for ages to get it soft enough for his human teeth. No word on what, if anything, he's actually eaten all these years in hell.
• Vigilante Execution: Celesto does this to Brett Taggerty and Serk Brakkis, and almost to Barnet Travoria.
• Violation of Common Sense: "I think we should stop trying to rob someone who can see the future."
• The Voiceless: According to Luna, Jayden hasn't said a single word since the Shadow of Siegfried incident. Demon Siegfried may qualify as this as well, though he seems to lean closer to The Speechless since his mask obstructs his mouth (Though he can still communicate with Karnak without the use of body language somehow). Jayden finally breaks her vow of silence to wed Dom and Luna, only to be interrupted by Greg.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Neilen's channeling of Maltak's dead earth gave him crazy elemental powers... and made him as brittle as the soil itself.
• Webcomic Time: Frequently and often lampshaded, sometimes straight and sometimes through continuity nods. Usually it gets so confusing over how much time has passed during the arcs that it can only be determined by Spark's lampshade hanging via hunger.
  • Some examples of the nods and lampshades: This early strip, or this one.
• We Can Rule Together: King David makes this offer to Miranda; naturally she refuses.
• Wedding Finale: The final strips cover the wedding ceremony of Dominic and Luna.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Celesto Morgan, who first wanted to cleanse the world with Chaos after deciding the people in it were all assholes, and who now says he's trying to save the world from The Infernomancer while incidentally destroying Lynn's Brook, which he calls "a small price to pay."
  • He also thinks brutally murdering a teenager (who he claims will grow up to be a bad person anyway) using methods that will implicate the King and the Beast is justified since it's for the "greater good".
• Wham Episode: The folks that Dominic and Luna meet in their relaxation cruise, namely: Suin Seyera from Faria, The Dragon from Nagastrali, Buckley Hussle and the Dwarf he had a fight with from Olde Tucklebruck Island, The Trickster from Quastrilla, Milov from the Winter Archipelago and Arcangelo Scarlatti from The Semashi Kingdom. They are called together by Brian, who's RILIAN in disguise! THE MAESTRO was in on it too. It was a test, but still! And apparently one of his student's theories was right as well.
  • The one aiding the Beast in gaining power is the king of Callan, former Archmage of the Fifth Circle (for whom said circle was invented!) and one of the most powerful magi in Callanian history. All of his battlemages are either being corrupted by the Beast into humanoid Eldritch Abominations, or already have been, thus giving it even more power. And it seems Celesto may be on the same path.
• Wham Line:

  Nimmel: What is he doing to them? Why is this happening?

  Snert: Because the Archmage of the Fifth Circle wills it.

  Nimmel: Miranda? No, you're lying! It can't be!

  Snert: I am not lying, Nimmel Feenix...and I don't mean Miranda Deegan.

• Wham Shot: Occurs in this strip when the storms hammering Maltak finally subsided, and all the orcs assembled at the border ran back to their homeland... to find it reduced to a desolate, lifeless wasteland. Donovan's reaction to all this 4 strips later tells the tale.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: While there are quite a few characters who have not been heard from for a while (possibly to make a cameo later) the most infamous example to some fans is Brok who just vanishes from the comic completely with only passing mention from Stunt and Bumper later about losing him. Granted that he was only a hired thug, it still felt odd to just drop him.
  • Word of God was that Brok himself was a reference to one of Mookie's friends, and on reflection Mookie felt he didn't really "fit" in the comic.
• What Might Have Been:
  • Mookie planned on Luna dying at the end of the Maltak arc, but realized that there'd be no way that her death wouldn't break Dominic (having previously established what A Bad Thing Dominic breaking down would be). Enter the last-second rescue by Jacob.
  • A storyline titled An Unlikely Visitor was teased in mid-2005. In late 2011, Mookie reveals that the abandoned storyline was to have revolved around Luna's father.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Pam at the end of the Snowsong arc. She calls out Gregory and Dominic for their actions and punishes them for it.
  • Huk Thak invokes this at the climax of the Maltak arc, but is dismissed by Reinholdt.
• White Magic: White magic can manifest in white mages in the form of light, or in more exceptional mages, (e.g. Gregory) white fire.
  • For the Orcs, at least, Ice Magic is treated as a holy magic.
  • Also the name of Greg's band, which was dubbed "vaguely racist" by the incredibly important but unnamed music critic.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: The Aliak.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Dominic thinks that Celesto is suffering from this due to keeping his powers as the Champion of Chaos. According to Dominic, humans aren't built to wield that kind of power indefinitely and that it's warping Celesto's mind.
• With This Herring: Toyed with and taken a bit too literally here.
• Worf Effect: Jacob Deegan, who previously annihilated a group of Chosen in a Curb-Stomp Battle, is effortlessly killed by Chief Thuen Gor.
  • Milov Danovich, a spellcasting werewolf, is the most frequent victim of this in the series.
• World of Chaos: The Wild Edge, where Bort the Mongrelman lives. It's a deceptively peaceful-looking meadow/savannah.
  • Hell: It's got some creepy stalagtites with tentacles, and a huge pit full of damned souls.
• World of Pun: Especially during the early strips before Cerebus Syndrome set in. For example: Seer's catalog, bookmarking sites...
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Heliner, who keeps trying to base his life on comic books. For example, Dominic is a seer, which means he must have godlike reflexes, right? And Chance is rich, which means he must be a jerk who deserves to be treated like crap, right??
• Worthy Opponent: King Dave to Miranda, the only mage he couldn't put under mind control.
• The X of Y: Multiple:
  • The section called "The Legacy of Dominic Deegan".
  • In "The Legacy of Dominic Deegan", a search for The Dream Realm of Asinotaph takes a few strips.
  • In some books from the March 13, 2020 strip:
    • Dreams of Dick by Schlong Johnson
    • Visions of Ass
• Yaoi Fangirl: This strip.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: Luna in the March Across Maltak. Also a case of Light Is Not Good and Dark Is Not Evil.
  • Earlier, there was Dominic as the Avatar Of Balance in the "Storm of Souls" arc. It seems to be a recurring theme in the comic.
  • And also comes up near the climax when Jacob has a revelation about true necromancy, directly tied to his experiences in Maltak. He realizes that necromantic corruption is actually life magic twisted to destruction, which is why it can endlessly grow and consume. He is then able to use necromancy, merging creation and destruction, to cure a massive case of blight from hundreds of people.
• You Have No Idea Who You're Dealing With: Miranda says exactly this to TIM when he attacks her in the "Ecstasy and Evil" arc. The true meaning of her words weren't revealed until years later, but the "Archmage of the fifth circle" isn't a rank in the archmage academy. It's literally the circle in which she stands in the five-being council that rules ALL the archmagi.
• You Know What You Did: Neilen attempts to pull this on Dominic and Luna. It fails miserably.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Happens at the ruins of Aberthast Cathedral when the Beast's (and Rilian's) necromancy raises the slain priests and nuns.

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