"You won’t smell the lingering reek of sulfur or brimstone. This presence transcends the physical senses. Breathing becomes difficult. You have to force yourself to take in air that cloys the lungs. The chest constricts, goes cold in the body’s desperate attempt to makes sense of what the soul knows. That here, creation has suffered a glimpse of what it is to be damned."
— Thalia
Legio Arcana
is an ongoing contemporary urban fantasy set in Seattle.
After a spate of deaths in their ranks, Tim is recruited by members of the Legion, an ancient order whose mission it is to protect the general population from the supernatural. Tim, Nolan, Thalia, Oded, Lucy, and Marianne take on werewolves, demons, threats from beyond the grave, and a nefarious coven.
Legio Arcana provides examples of:
- Affably Evil: Eve is remarkably polite and charming even when she’s withering flowers with her hands, threatening members of the Legion, and performing a vivisection on a pig.
- And I Must Scream: The demonically possessed Nolan sheds tears believing that he has killed Thalia with her own sword. In the same chapter, he also tears an innocent bystander in half
- April Fools' Day: The splash page released on April 1st 2019 for chapter 5 revealed a love triangle plot complete with Thalia sweeping Tim off his feet
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Eve has no qualms about torturing pigs
- Caught Monologuing: The heroes are able to get a few shots in as the demon in chapter 4 cannot resist gloating
- Continuity Nod: In chapter 3, one of the sleeves on Tim’s jacket is bitten through by a werewolf. At the end of chapter 4, Tim is seen wearing the same jacket with a patch over that spot on the sleeve.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Marianne is a human soul trapped in a dog’s body. Clearly, something is going on there. Chapter 5 hints at one for Oded. Tim had a difficult relationship with his mother who put him into a mental institution. His younger brother Jonah passed away ten years before the start of the series.
- Deadly Deferred Conversation: Nolan promises to call Ana after he’s done checking in on an incident to let her know he’s okay. Subverted when he is revived.
- Fighting from the Inside:
- Jay in werewolf form seems to respond to Tim’s encouragement for him to regain control of his human mental faculties
- Possessed by a demon, Nolan breaks through, pleads for the priest to continue with the exorcism, and completes a prayer.
- Friendship Moment: Thalia reveals a more tender side when she hugs Nolan, relieved to find that he is alright
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Lucy and Marianne pull this routine with Lucy being rather pleasant and Marianne emitting a threatening aura, snarling, and baring teeth against a man Obfuscating Stupidity
- Gory Discretion Shot: We are spared the images of a monster tearing into and eating a woman alive.
- Heroic BSoD: Chapter 4 ends with Nolan in a wheelchair unresponsive to his girlfriend and his friends after surviving a demonic possession.
- Hope Spot:
- Just as the demon possessing Tony begins to tempt and attack Nolan, Thalia and Lucy arrive, drive the demon out of Tony and seal it away. The seal does not hold.
- Nolan is demonically possessed in chapter 4. After wreaking havoc on his friends, they are able to trap him and have a priest perform an exorcism. Nolan is able to pray along with the priest and is freed from the demon however, he succumbs to his injuries a moment later. Subverted when Tim and Barry intervene to bring him back.
- How We Got Here: Chapter 4 opens with Tim chasing and shooting arrows at a bleeding Nolan before the comic picks up 79 minutes earlier.
- I Cannot Self-Terminate: Nolan findsMaya, the werewolf the Legion had been tracking, in the forest bleeding out from her gunshot wounds. She begs him to end it.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Subverted. Just as Thalia gets the upper hand and is prepared to stab the demonically possessed Nolan with a sword, Nolan regains his normal appearance and calls out to her to stop. The demon takes advantage of her hesitance to attack and nearly kills her.
- Impersonating an Officer: Nolan does this to get information on the werewolf attacks
- Joggers Find Death: Invoked within the first few panels
- Lampshade Hanging: The Legion are trying to take out an Asura in chapter 1. Unable to actually kill it, they decide to bind it to a Christmas cactus with the binding spell written in marker on the clay pot. Marianne suggests they take the price tag off of it first.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: The Lamia uses this against its victims in chapter 5. It uses a youth outreach group to lure troubled teens in before feasting on them. Disturbingly enough, the staff members are in on it in exchange for an escape into illusions of the life they wish they had.
- Mysterious Protector: Barry shows up at the beginning of chapter 4. Oded remarks that he hasn’t aged in 22 years and that they don’t know much about him. Barry disappears after somehow healing Thalia, preventing her from dying from her wounds, playing a role in reviving Nolan, and dropping Thalia and Tony off at the hospital
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Legion manage to find and subdue the werewolves until the armed agents of the Strategic Administration of Research and Science (SARS), directed by Agent Clara Heath burst in on the scene. Multiple people are shot in the chaos and the werewolf gets away.
- Noodle Incident: Lucy references one involving a ritual at someone’s grave that Marianne won’t let her live down.
- Oh, Crap!: Lucy has one when the meteor hammer containing the sealed demon inside it cracks.
- Precision F-Strike: Thalia gets one when an armed SARS agent shoots Tim with a tranquilizerThalia: Son of a bitch! What d’you think you’re doing?!
- Refuge in Audacity: With two members of the Legion out of commission and having not slept in two days, the overworked Tim drags the bodies out the brood of vampires he wiped out into the backyard and sets them on fire in an effort to clean up after himself and save time. The sensational and contradictory nature of the witness accounts allows Tim to get away with it.
- That Came Out Wrong: Lucy accidentally makes a pass at Tim in chapter 2.
- The Lost Lenore: A wedding photograph and his reaction to it reveals that Oded has one
- Tracking Spell: An unusual variant in that the tracking spell is actually the spirit of a deceased member of the Legion bound to a coin worn around Marianne’s neck that serves as a sort of compass to where the source of the necromancy is.
- Voice of the Legion: The demonically possessed characters have this, illustrated by distorted, black speech bubbles
