History Literature / SecondApocalypse

** Kellhus. He never, ever tells anyone to do his bidding "because I want to". Kellhus can find out everyone's innermost desire or motivation, and then appeal to that. Cnaiür scarily describes Kellhus' and his father's powers of manipulation by shouting "They make us love!".

* OurElvesAreBetter: The Nonmen are similar to Elves: immortal and wisest of all living creatures. They were more intelligent and beautiful than humans, but also much worse in anger or jealousy. However, when we finally get detailed physical descriptions of a Nonman in ''The Judging Eye'', the "beautiful" aspect starts to get subverted: for example, their teeth are fused together, they don't have a single hair on their body (not even eyelashes), their skin is marble-white, and the repulsive beauty of Sranc is borrowed from the appearance of Nonmen.

* BigBadDuumvirate: Aurang and Aurax, with the No-God as the BiggerBad they're trying to summon.

*** As mentioned under OurOrcsAreDifferent, the Inchoroi genetically engineered the Sranc to have Nonman faces, just like Melkor created the Orcs as cruel parodies of the Elves.

[[caption-width-right:255:More {{God Emperor}}s, aliens and/or demons. Less [[TabletopGame/WarHammer40000 overpriced merchandise]].]]

* NeverLiveItDown: Mimara takes an initial liking to Somandutta, but during their flight from Cil-Aujas, he sprints in front of her rather than help her rescue Achamian. She forgives him, but notes that their friendship will never recover from his display of cowardice.

The first series, ''The Prince of Nothing'', tells the tale of a son searching for his father during a Holy War, in a medieval world where FunctionalMagic exists and an obscure AncientConspiracy, ShroudedInMyth, is plotting TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. The characters who are embroiled in this conflict include a tired BadassBookworm sorcerer, a cunning [[HookerWithAHeartOfGold prostitute]], and a mentally unstable barbarian chieftain.

But in the midst of the Holy War arrives a wandering monk, Anasûrimbor Kellhus. He is the scion of an isolated sect who have spent millennia making themselves into beings of pure logic. Leaving his sect for the first time to answer his father's summons, Kellhus is completely ignorant about the outside world. At the same time, his astounding mental and physical abilities, untainted by emotion or morality, are like nothing the world has ever seen. Will Kellhus find his father, and what will he impact along the way?

* MindScrew: [[spoiler:The journey through Cil-Aujas. It starts off unsettling but straightforward, then... hordes of Sranc out of nowhere? Then a guy with an eye in his ''heart''? Then a Nonman King who's trapped in Hell, can only speak through unconscious people, possesses Cleric, and dreams that he's a hungry god? And, in a superbly baffling moment that is still a CrowningMomentOfAwesome, Mimara somehow banishes the Nonman King with a Chorae that shuts the Gates of Hell. It's a MindScrew for the characters, too: Sarl's sanity doesn't fare too well.]]

* {{Precursors}}:
** Nonmen essentially fill this role in Earwa. They are an ancient, dying race that inhabited the continent before Men. Because they are now all male, they are doomed to go extinct and relinquish the world to Men.
*** Averted, actually. There are still Nonmen around, but [[{{HumansAreBastards}} thanks to humans]] and the Inchoroi, all but one of their Mansions are destroyed and empty. The one Mansion that's inhabited, Ishterebinth, is in the far northwest, and cut off from the human world. In the Three Seas, Nonmen are effectively thought of as extinct because they tend to avoid humans, especially after Cil-Aujas (one of only two Mansions to survive the first invasions of Men) was destroyed in the aftermath of the Apocalypse.
** [[spoiler:The Mutilated imply that the Inchoroi are the creation of another race, or the Ark itself, leaving the builders of the Ark a mystery]].

* {{Precursors}}: Averted, actually. There are still Nonmen around, but [[{{HumansAreBastards}} thanks to humans]] and the Inchoroi, all but one of their Mansions are destroyed and empty. The one Mansion that's inhabited, Ishterebinth, is in the far northwest, and cut off from the human world. In the Three Seas, Nonmen are effectively thought of as extinct because they tend to avoid humans, especially after Cil-Aujas (one of only two Mansions to survive the first invasions of Men) was destroyed in the aftermath of the Apocalypse.

** Nonmen essentially fill this role in Earwa. They are an ancient, dying race that inhabited the continent before Men. Because they are now all male, they are doomed to go extinct and relinquish the world to Men.

** Why are the Consult trying to slaughter the human species? [[spoiler:To save their own souls. The metaphysics of the universe are such that objective morality exists, along with redemption and (more importantly) damnation. The Inchoroi effectively crossed the Moral Event Horizon long ago and are wholly damned. However, as the Consult discovered, the reduction of the number of "ensouled" beings below a certain number - 144,000 souls - plus some additional work in the form of the No-God, serves to completely sever the world from the Outside, thus saving their souls from damnation.]]

** And in ''The Judging Eye'' (fittingly), one of the many horrific things awaiting trespassers in [[spoiler: the Nonman ruins of Cil-Aujas - growing a fully functional eye in ''the middle of your fucking heart.'']]

* ForeverWar: The Nameless War, which has gone on for thousands of years. It began in Eärwa when the alien Inchoroi started a genocidal war against the Nonmen shortly after their ship crashed into northern Eärwa. Achamian sees a Nonman wall carving, thousands of years old, that depicts the first battle - and he realizes that war is still ongoing to this day.

* GrimUpNorth: Golgotterath. To a lesser extent, the entirety of the Ancient North, which is infested with Sranc. Only a handful of ragged bands of human survivors and two deeply isolated cities - Sakarpus and Atrithau - dwell in its lands.

* LoveMakesYouCrazy: A rare positive example. The perfectly rational thing to do - the ''Dûnyain'' thing to do - might be to help the Consult plan succeed. At the end of ''The Thousandfold Thought'', Kellhus says he believes that, given time, [[spoiler:Moënghus would have done exactly that.]] As of ''The Great Ordeal'', though, [[spoiler:Kellhus seems to have chosen the irrational course - protecting humanity - out of love for Esmenet.]] Even he says he's gone mad.

* MoralEventHorizon: The march of the Vulgar Holy War was a definite crossing of the MoralEventHorizon for Emperor Xerius, both in-universe and out. Basically, he arranged for over a hundred thousand old men, women and orphans to march into enemy lands and get slaughtered - only so Xerius could prove a point to his "allies" and advance a political agenda he didn't even believe in.

* PsychicDreamsForEveryone: [[spoiler:The ruins of Mengedda, which make people dream of all the people who died there across the ages. Also, the Mandate sorcerers, who willingly undergo a procedure that makes them dream each night of the horrific events that happened during their founder's life. It's also implied that the "Mop" - a forest that the Skin Eaters pass through on the path to Sauglish - does this to the characters.]]

* ShoutOut: A subtle one in ''The Thousandfold Thought.'' One character, ruminating on a birdlike abomination, speaks of "nepenthe," cries out "Bird! Devil!" and comments that the bird is like a "demon dreaming" - all lines from Poe's "The Raven."

** Using... elipses... and ''italics'', often in conjunction with repetition - ''repetition!'' - to convey profound or ecstatic dialogue.

** Bakker very frequently uses the word "for" to indicate causation, such as saying someone is "blinded for anger."
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: Highly cynical. Religious hatred, racism and violent misogyny are rampant in this world - Bakker has stated more than once that he aims to portray the Dark Ages world realistically.

** There are a few references to TheBible:

->''"The surviving heathens were strung from trees, and in the evening light they hanged, like drowned men floating up from the deeps. And though years passed, none dared touch them. They sagged from the nails that fixed them, collapsed into heaps at the trunks. And to anyone who listened, the bones would whisper a revelation...the secret of battle. Indomitable conviction. Unconquerable belief."''

* MoralDissonance: Kellhus commits multiple atrocities for "the greater good", such as [[spoiler:sacrificing Serwë's life]] and [[spoiler:ordering the massacre of twenty thousand Kianene civilians]], not to mention his early betrayal of [[spoiler: Leweth]], who saved his life.

** '''The Mandate''': Based out of the island fortress of Atyersus, their mission is to guard against the return of the Consult. They are the only School to maintain knowledge of the Gnosis, a fact which earns them envy from other Schools (who simultaneously look down on them as delusional conspiracy-theorists). ''The Aspect-Emperor'' introduces the Swayal Sisterhood, who are the DistaffCounterpart of the Mandate.
** '''The Scarlet Spires''': The most powerful Anagogic School, they are the true power behind the throne of High Ainon and their leaders dream of extending their power across the Three Seas. Some Scarlet Schoolmen are the only sorcerers known to practice [[SummonMagic the Daimos]].

* OurElvesAreBetter: The Nonmen are similar to Elves, immortal and wisest of all living creatures. They were more intelligent and beautiful than humans, but also much worse in anger or jealousy. However, when we finally get detailed physical descriptions of a Nonman in ''The Judging Eye'', the "beautiful" aspect starts to get subverted: for example, their teeth are fused together, they don't have a single hair on their body (not even eyelashes), their skin is marble-white, and the repulsive beauty of Sranc is borrowed from the appearance of Nonmen.

But in the midst of the Holy War arrives a wandering monk, Anasûrimbor Kellhus. He is the scion of an isolated sect who have spent millennia making themselves into beings of pure logic. Leaving his sect for the first time to answer is father's summons, Kellhus is completely ignorant about the outside world. At the same time, his astounding mental and physical abilities, untainted by emotion or morality, are like nothing the world has ever seen. Will Kellhus find his father, and what will he impact along the way?

* MeaningfulName: Golgotterath, the stronghold of the Consult, sounds a lot like "Golgotha," which is another work name for Calvary and derives from the Hebrew word for ''skull''.

*** In ''The White-Luck Warrior'', Achamian and Cleric's confrontation with [[spoiler:Wutteät, the Father of Dragons,]] resembles a certain key scene in TheHobbit.

* ''The No-God'' -- Previously referred to by Bakker as "The Series That Shall Not Be Named" in many interviews before confirming the title. It series was originally planned as two books but may be three books.

* AlienInvasion: [[spoiler:The Inchoroi who crashed on Eärwa with their spaceship many thousands of years ago.

** Malowebi, who ends up [[spoiler:disembodied and trapped inside a severed head hanging from the hip of a statue of salt.]]

* ArmoredClosetGay: [[spoiler:The source of all of Cnaiür's shame is being seduced by Moënghus into killing his father. He's entirely unable to handle the fact that he loves/loved Moënghus. He is attracted to women as well, however, so he's apparently somewhere toward the middle of the Kinsey scale]].

* ArtificialIntelligence: [[spoiler:The Mutilated Dunyain reveal that the Inchoroi were originally ruled by their Ark before it crashed into Earwa. It may have even created them]].

* [[spoiler:AlienInvasion]]: [[spoiler:The Inchoroi who crashed on Eärwa with their spaceship many thousands of years ago.
* [[spoiler:AliensAreBastards]]: [[spoiler:The Inchoroi describe themselves as a "race of lovers." They're a race of voracious sexual deviants.]]

* ''The No-God'' -- Previously referred to as "The Series That Shall Not Be Named" by R. Scott Bakker in many interviews before confirming the title. This series was originally planned on being a Duology but may be a Trilogy.

* AfterTheEnd: The series takes place nearly two thousand years after a catastrophic conflict that destroyed the entire northern civilization of Eärwa and resulted in all new births being born stillborn for eleven years.
* AlienInvasion: The Inchoroi who crashed on Eärwa with their spaceship many thousands of years ago.
* AliensAreBastards: The Inchoroi describe themselves as a "race of lovers." They're basically a whole race of voracious sexual deviants.

* DarkFantasy: The series is unrelenting in its darkness. The world is in a constant struggle involving religious zealots, insane immortals, ruthless sorcerers and [[ItMakesSenseInContext intergalactic sex-demons]]. WarIsHell, and is described in horrific detail. Plagues, infighting, wide-spread slavery, casual cruelty and rape are so common they become background scenery. The setting's already been brutalized in the past by a world-ending apocalypse that came dangerously close to driving humans to extinction, and all the warning signs for the second are already here.\\

* AGodAmI:
** Kellhus comes to believe that [[spoiler:he is the direct agent of God, and he manages to convince the Three Seas that he is their messiah]].
** This is the recurring fantasy of Ikurei Conphas (and his uncle).

* AGodAmI: [[spoiler:Kellhus becomes inhabited by Ajokli, the god of deceit, and announces that he will reign over humanity. Cnaiur is also inhabited by gods at different points]].

** Cnaiür is often described as having intensely blue eyes. At one point they're even described as turquoise. They make his insanity all the more apparent.