Literature / Pale

"Something terrible happened, of a scale that words cannot easily convey. We need you to look into it. No need to solve it. Simply... look into it."

Pale is the fifth Web Serial Novel written by Wildbow, following Ward, and was first published on May 5, 2020. It is set in the Otherverse alongside his 2013-2015 web serial Pact and takes place about six years later, but is not a narrative sequel.

There are three methods of becoming a practitioner: being part of a family of practitioners, stumbling across knowledge belonging to Others by chance, and finally, making direct deals with Others in order to gain their knowledge. The third happens to be the oldest, and the road our protagonists end up going down. Three teenagers, Verona, Lucy, and Avery, are awakened as practitioners in order to solve a mystery in the town of Kennet, Ontario.

As of October 12, 2023, Pale is complete, to be followed by a new work set in a whole new universe, Claw. It can be read here.

Tropes include:

• Above Good and Evil: The Carmine Beast is described as such- she handled matters concerning war, murder, carnage, blood, execution and justice, but acted out of necessity.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Verona's father is very emotionally and verbally abusive.
  • The Graubard family take draconian measures when it comes to disciplining their children. Kids who screw up enough get turned into dolls, which are human enough to practice but Other enough that they have to follow orders.
  • A.J. Musser's father wouldn't accept his son not being amongst the best in their school, and forced him to swear that he'd get top marks, with the alternative being death. Knowing that he didn't have the brains to do so, A.J. killed his roommate, who was very intelligent, in order to take his intelligence.
  • The Hennigar family cement their methods of practice by forcing their children to each take an innocent life. In addition, they raise their children in such a way that they have no idea how to take care of themselves, even with basic things like hygiene, so the kids are forced to be dependent on them and making it harder for them to leave.
  • Angie Demarest's father used her and her siblings as guinea pigs to try new kinds of practice on. Most of them lost themselves as a result.
  • The Kim family doesn't even give its children names until and unless they manage to pass a test that involves being turned into a Horror. Those who fail the test are abandoned to a life of insanity and suffering, being an object lesson to those who come after them of what happens to those who disappoint the family.
• Always a Bigger Fish:
  • Invoked by Charles in Gone and Done It 17.z: Musser and his people have been claiming every bit of the Roles' territories that they can as their Lordships and then passing it to various lesser members of the group to hold... so Charles creates a bunch of strong, vicious Others and has them kill the Lords and take their territories. Verona puts it plainly:
    Verona: So that's a thing. You get exactly what you wanted, either way. The strong prevail. Except, uh, you aren't the strongest, turns out.
  • In the final epilogue it's revealed that Gerhild the Redcap Queen has been killed by a much stronger being.
• Ambiguous Situation: The exact identity of the unnamed Behaim woman who's part of the Ottawa council. They're implied to originally be from Jacob's Bell rather than elsewhere (As they mention their concerns regarding the Carmine conspiracy and its allies, namely the now Abyssal blood goddess Maricica poking around their hometown, which is potentially a massive Abyssal hole in reality, to an unknown person). The usage of candles would suggest Ainsley Behaim, who specialized in using them in her practice, and they appear to be around the age Ainsley would be by the time of Pale, but there's no direct confirmation on whether it's her or just some other member of the family with a similar specialty.
• And Then What?:
  • Lucy mulls over this trope a fair bit after the Carmine Contest. The vast majority of the story was building up to the fight for the Throne, with everyone praying that John would win... and then he lost and Charles has taken over, so what the hell do they do now?
  • Jessica Casabien's goal as a practitioner was to find the echo that her cousin lost and restore it to him. Once she actually does that, she isn't sure what to do now.
• And You Thought It Was a Game: Gabe initially believes that the Hungry Choir's ritual is along the lines of the SCP Foundation- a very detailed project with a lot of people working on it. Unfortunately for him, it's not.
• Animal Motif: Verona wears a cat mask, Lucy a fox mask, and Avery a deer mask while in their practitioner garb. During the awakening ritual, they each talk about why they relate to their chosen animal.
• All There in the Manual: There are extra materials beyond the standard chapters featuring in-universe material, like a brochure for the town and the notes Lucy took after the Awakening ceremony.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Sprites and fairies (as opposed to fae) are individually not that intelligent, but together their intelligence coalesces and they can scheme just as well as individual fae can, having ensnared Francis and four other children for years.
• Big Bad: Charles Abrams is the creator of the Hungry Choir, the original mastermind behind the conspiracy to murder the Carmine Beast, and the undisputed ringleader of the culprits even after Maricica usurps the plot so that his Forsworn status won't ruin it. Upon ascending into the Carmine Exile, Charles begins a campaign to tear down the practitioner establishment and all of its injustices, but his cruel methods—enabling Musser's conquests and Maricica's ascension into an Abyssal blood goddess, creating monstrous Others that butcher their way to power in Lordships throughout the Manitoba-Ontario region, and forming a volatile army of ex-Forsworn and child soldiers to enforce his will—make him a far more depraved threat. His actions culminate in an alliance with the Aurum Coil to create a ritual incarnate that will exterminate nearly every practitioner in the region, fueling the rise of a god-sorcerer willing to use whatever reckless, ruinous means necessary to remake the world in Charles' vision.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Kim family are fucked up even by Otherverse standards: they're a family of practitioners focusing on horror practices. Each child has to go through a ritual/test before they become a full member of the family, and so many of those children fail that the family has as many children as possible in the hope that some will make it through. The children don't get a name unless they succeed, to stop the parents from getting attached to kids who might not survive. And the ritual? The children are locked up in a tomb specially made for each child and made to turn themselves into horrors. Their practitioners aren't people who can turn into horrors; they're horrors wearing people suits. The ones who failed are left in their tombs without food or water, dying slowly, but the death could take anywhere up to thirty thousand years.
• Bittersweet Ending: The end of Gone Ahead, which is the culmination of the Bristow/Alexander fight arc: Nobody really wins. Bristow gives himself to the brownies rather than give up the school and his tenants. Ray ousts Alexander as the headmaster and tries to pulls things together. John simplifies things by killing Alexander before he can come after the trio. But, Bristow's Aware now have no guidance, Alexander managed to throw some spanners in the works before he died, relations between Lucy and John have cooled, and the repercussions are coming in hard. The trio become very unpopular after Bristow is ousted and Alexander vanishes, and they have to leave the BHI early because although Alexander was willing to waive their tuition fees, whoever the new headmaster turns out to be won't, and the trio can't otherwise afford to pay them.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: Arguably the Bristow/Alexander conflict. Alexander barely manages to pull the trope out of Evil vs. Evil territory by being personable, charismatic and somewhat reasonable, but at the end of the day, both men are petty, scheming, self-serving bastards who'd sell their own mothers to the Dark Spring for an advantage.
• Book Ends: The story begins with Louise and Kennet's Others gathered to see the corpse of the Carmine Beast, and the final chapter has Louise and the Kennet powers gather to see the corpse of a freshly killed being associated with red, but this time it's Gerhild the Redcap Queen.
• Booked Full of Mooks: Avery and Clem have a meeting with Samaniego, leader of the Lighthouse Witch Hunters, at a restaurant. Samaniego calls Avery complacent and shows his control over the situation by moving his chair, revealing that every guest in the restaurant except for Avery and Clem are actually his fellow Witch Hunters. Avery's bracelet that tracks attention being paid to her doesn't activate until the reveal, showing the folly of her over-reliance on it.
• Breaking Old Trends: Pale is the first major work written by Wildbow to be written from a third person perspective as opposed to a first person one, and to have the POV constantly shift between protagonists rather than a single main one with occasional interludes.
• Breaking the Fellowship: After the events of Summer Break. The trio are still friends, but Avery now lives in Thunder Bay and Verona is more focused on Kennet's undercity than the actual Kennet. Crooked Rook outright states that 'the practitioners of Kennet' is no longer a term that applies.
• Call on Me: After their meeting, John gives the trio dog tags from his fallen comrades and tells them that if they go into battle and throw them down on the ground, he will be right behind them.
• Calling Out for Not Calling: Lucy calls out Wallace for not calling her after his surgery. He admits that he was at fault, having missed the chance to reply because his anxiety overwhelmed him.
• Canon Immigrant: The Forest Ribbon Trail mentioned by Maricica to Avery first appeared in a document for Pact Dice.
• The Conspiracy: There's one in Kennet that was responsible for killing the Carmine Beast. As of One After Another, we know that there's at least three people involved (at least one man and one woman), at least one of them is a practitioner or picked up enough knowledge to fake it, there's at least one Fae and one goblin involved, their aim seems to be taking the Carmine Beast's seat for some reason, and they don't want this to result in any more casualties than necessary. The only ones we know for sure aren't involved are John, Toadswallow, Miss and Alpeana. It eventually is revealed that the main conspirators are Edith, Charles and Maricica, and Bluntmunch, and that Cig and Lis were brought into Kennet as allies.
• Continuity Nod: A few to Pact, though it's not a direct sequel:
  • Maricica mentions Grey Isbolde, a Dark Fall fairy cursed to carry rats in her womb who got banished to Canada. According to Word of God, this fairy became the Winter court fairy Arthild that Johannes used during his demesne challenge in Pact against Faysal.
  • In 21.4 Liberty mentions a spot in eastern Ontario that's filled with "real Abyssal shit." It's implied that she's referring to the remnants of Jacob's Bell that fell into the Abyss during Pact's climax.
  • In 23.z, Maricica mentions "[a Fae] pretending to be a girl, dancing the edge of darkest dark and bloodiest ends." This description is a dead ringer for Padraic, masking as Maggie Holt during the battle for Lordship of Toronto.
  • One of the Behaim family (an unnamed woman) is part of the Council in Ottawa, and there's an oblique reference to her uncle (Most likely Laird) feeling put out that the Belangers wouldn't allow any Behaims to attend the Blue Heron Institute despite their minor working relationship.
• Contrasting Sequel Protagonist: Our protagonists to Blake and Rose at the start of Pact:
  • Blake and Rose were grown adults, while the Pale trio are young teenagers.
  • Blake and Rose were part of a practitioner family (Albeit one separated from the practice), which the Pale trio are wild practitioners with Other patrons.
  • Blake and Rose were stuck as diabolists, which the Pale trio are not.
  • Blake and Rose had to essentially forge their own path with only books for guidance, while the Pale trio have no books, but a group of more-or-less friendly Others helping.
  • Blake and Rose started in a town full of practitioners, while the Pale trio start in a town which only had one other practitioner prior to his foreswearing.
  • Blake and Rose had nearly the entire town against them from the start, while the Pale trio have no apparent enemies in the beginning.
  • Blake in particular had a tendency to be self-destructive and had issues getting along with Rose, whereas the trio get along with each other just fine and are defined by their unity.
• Creepy Child:
  • The Hungry Choir is comprised of hundreds of cannibalistic children.
  • To outsiders, the Kennet Witches fall under this trope as well- they're three children with incredible power, who aren't associated with a major family and are under the auspices of Other patrons.
• Dark Secret: Practitioners of the Kim family use the practice to turn themselves into horrors that can shift into people. They use this practice to evade things like curses and repercussions for their actions, and have to keep it secret from the spirits so they won't suffer the consequences of their actions.
• Dark World: Undercities in a nutshell, they can be dark reflections of cities with the worst aspects taken and exaggerated. This doesn't just mean wrecked buildings but morally inverted residents who liberally murder each other in the street. Kennet's is no exception.
• Deader than Dead: Those who die in the fight for the Carmine Throne as contestants don't just die, they're completely unmade. The same holds true for any loser of a Judge challenge.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • Louise makes a deal with a mysterious man named Matthew in which in return for getting more time to live, she helps some people with their questions. Downplayed in that the deal appears to have been entirely fair.
  • Charles Abrams, the former sole practitioner in Kennet, made a deal with a group of Others for protection after he became Forsworn in which any magic with negative effects has its downsides transferred to him.
• Deconstruction: The St. Victor's practitioners and their teachers are serving as a pretty good deconstruction of the Evil Knockoff trope, specifically in how effective it is. The St. Victor's kids aren't all friends and don't mesh well, so they don't work together and support each other as well as the Kennet Witches do. Their dynamic is constantly being shaken up because Maricica wants them to keep bringing in new people, which makes it harder for them to be effective because they have to keep adjusting to new variables. Like the Kennet Others, the Unforsworn are powerful and diverse, but they all have a ton of serious baggage from their past as Forsworn, which isn't the ideal state for a teacher. Some of them aren't especially good teachers (Freeman) and others probably shouldn't be allowed to be teachers (Seth, Griffin, and Lenard). In the end, while the group is quite powerful, they're not nearly as good as they could be.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Several times the trio make a friend of someone who's initially their enemy, after they win.
  • They start out clashing with Nicolette and many other characters during the Blue Heron arc, but after the arc wraps up, they're on good terms with all of them.
  • Raquel Musser starts out as their enemy out of loyalty to her uncle, but is slowly brought around by Avery and is on friendly terms with them after Musser's first push for Kennet fails.
  • Anthem Tedd arrives in Kennet as an enemy and fights their side. After he is defeated by Guilherme and Lucy on his way out, he reconnects with his daughters as a result and later fights alongside the trio as an ally.
• Department of Redundancy Department: At one point when Verona is confronting challenges for her demesne, we get this gem (though the redundancy perhaps makes sense in a world where it can't be assumed):
  The next contender was a pigeon the size of a pigeon, wearing a rat mask.
• Detonation Moon: When Miss dives down from the Stuck-In Place to create Kennet Found, she breaks through the Moon while doing so.
• Digital Abomination: Nex Machina are a type of abstract Other spawned by the Internet that specialize in hunting those who've cut themselves off from the non-digital world, and often exhibit phenomena such as "glitching out" or tuning screens to static. Variant include the God in the Machine, a literal Deus est Machina formed from people "worshipping" a computer, to Ghosts in the Machine which are formed from the echoes of those who died near technology.
• Distant Finale: Epilogue E.6 takes place three years after the final battle.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: In the April Fools' Day chapter, it's revealed that the masterminds behind the murder are Cherrypop and... Clem's truck. Not Clem herself, her truck. Fortunately, it is All Just a Dream.
• Double Entendre: Wye's remark on Mr. Howes and Ms. Arland, two Lords of a remote portion of Ontario north of Toronto.
  That would be Mr. Howes visiting Ms. Arland. Again. Which was fair. They were heading two very remote Lordships to the north of Toronto, with very little to do except each other.
• The Dreaded:
  • A challenge is opened to determine who sits upon the Carmine Throne. The Carmine Throne deals in acts of violence and brutality; therefore the contest to decide who is worthy of it takes the form of a "last man standing" series of battle in which the consequence for losing is being unmade. The nature of the contest tends to attract pretty horrible and violent participants. But, when the group realize that one of the contestants has demonic influence (it isn't even a demon itself, just tainted by one), they all immediately drop any humor or excitement, and team up to kill that thing right now. In fact, it's the cannibalistic goblin who states, "All of us need to do our part to put things like that down".
  • The Wolf is feared by everyone on the Paths, Lost and practitioner alike, for how dangerous they are. Avery and the Garricks are willing to brave danger and possible death in any number of ways on the Paths, but when they get a warning the Wolf will soon arrive on the Promenade, they immediately start pulling back to get out in time.
• Dream Land: The Crucible simulates a world to test practitioners caught in it. The trio are initially separated upon entering but are able to find each other, indicating it is a shared dream space.
• Driving Question: Who killed the Carmine Beast, and why?
• Dug Too Deep: Bristow mentions having met a tribe of Oddfolk or "Subhumans" descended from miners who found fossils related to "practices [not taught] at the Blue Heron Institute"^note Implied to be demon-related, but it's never directly stated. deep underground and were twisted by them.
• Dying Town: A constant danger in the background is Kennet becoming this. The Carmine Beast's death has led to Knotting that could slowly lock Kennet from the outside world, cutting the ski town off from their needed tourist trade.
• Dysfunction Junction: Almost all the Witch Hunters- they became Aware by being preyed on by Others, leaving quite a few of them with deep-seated issues as a result.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Toadswallow first appeared in Poke under his real goblin name, Sir Turdswallow, as did the Milkmaid and Deedee.
• Eldritch Location:
  • The Carmine Beast's domain. It takes a day to get there no matter how far or fast you go, you have to be travelling away from civilization, you have to follow an injured animal to get there, and the entire place is covered in blood. Kennet starts to take on these traits after Charles becomes the new Carmine and makes it part of his domain. The day's travel requirement is said to be true of all the Judge's domains for practitioners and Others.
  • The Forest Ribbon Trail, one of the Paths, realms which have become untethered from pretty much everything, unrecoverable even to the Abyss, and home to a dangerous Other known as the Wolf. It actually happens to be one of the safer Paths, and is the most common one used as a first path for North American practitioners due to being well explored.
  • The location where the Hungry Choir hold their rituals is described as a version of Kennet with some of the details changed- rooms in houses aren't what they should be, the moon flickers, there's four hands on the clock, etc.
• Equippable Ally: All goblins have the ability to become a weapon based on their theme. While they can alter the form their weapon takes, it's something that is done with great difficultly.
• Everyone Has Standards: Charles previously agreed to stand down as Kennet's resident practitioner and let some new ones take over; however, he is absolutely appalled when the chosen new ones turn out to be three young teenagers, says that he would never have agreed if he'd known that the Others had chosen children, and repeatedly urges the girls to walk away and not take the deal.
• Everyone Is a Suspect: A major part of the series, and a major hang-up in the Trio's relationships with the Others of Kennet, is that anyone might be the Carmine Beast's killer and Trio are sworn to deal with the culprit. Though as the story goes on, the suspects are gradually whittled down, though sometimes only the audience knows a suspect has been cleared thanks to Dramatic Irony.
• Evil Knockoff: The St. Victor's practitioners to the Kennet trio, very deliberately. Like the trio, they're a group of teenagers who go to the same school and were chosen to Awaken by powerful Others. Like the trio, they have strong teachers and guides and they all specialise in different areas of practice. But unlike the trio, the St. Victor's kids aren't close, don't work together well, and don't seem to get along well.
• Exact Words:
  • As the page quote says, the trio were Awakened specifically to investigate the Carmine Beast's murder. While the trio interpret that as 'do everything in your power to find out what happened and apprehend the culprit', some of the Others (those involved with the conspiracy) interpreted it as 'investigate, but don't put yourselves out trying to solve it', and become angry when the trio actually try to solve the murder and learn more about practicing to help with that.
  • Alexander scries the trio and learns that they've told the Others that came with them that they can leave. At no point in his narration does the term "bound" come into play when describing the Others, causing him to overlook the fact that the Others are not under the control of the trio, so his death at John's hands completely blindsides him.
  • Everyone the trio ask says they didn't kill the Beast. It turns out that despite Maricica blinding her and the Choir mauling her, it was the Carmine Beast herself who decided to tear open her own throat, making it technically true that none of them were directly responsible for killing her.
• The Faceless: Miss, one of the Others- there's always something conveniently covering her face and hands, and even her fellow Others can't see past it. Matthew doesn't even seem to know what type of Other she is.
• Fairyland: Blue Heron Institute students go to one of the Faerie Courts as part of a class trip. Various flashbacks explore the disparate courts inside and the wilds outside of them.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • Forsworn practitioners are actively treated as Butt-Monkeys by the Universe. Food and drinks spontaneously spoil or have bugs inside on the way to their mouths, wounds fester and are easy to acquire, anything they do will have the worst possible outcome for them, and they're prevented from killing themselves because that would relieve their torment.
  • Horrors are essentially Eldritch Abominations, and a person can be turned into one by accident or on purpose. The subject also can potentially see all of reality and history at once and Go Mad from the Revelation.
  • Children of the Kim family who fail their trial become horrors and are stuck in their boxes for thousands of years, unable to sleep or die.
  • Guilherme poisons Maricica with a thrown spear, locks her in a box and has the box buried in the depths of the Winter Court. She won't die, but she'll be in twisted agony for three hundred years, and she'll lose everything she loves.
• Feather Fall: The boon of the Stuck-In Place is surviving what would be otherwise lethal falls from any height, as Avery finds out when the Path drops her back to Earth from at least hundreds of feet up after solving it.
• Fisher Kingdom: The Roles help keep things stable and balanced in the areas they rule over. With the Carmine Beast dead and her seat unfilled, things are getting steadily more out of whack in Kennet.
• Foreshadowing: In Gone Ahead 7.5, Musette, the ghoul who befriends dying children, manifests and then immediately stares at Laila. A few chapters later, Laila dies, though Musette's not around at that point.
• The Four Gods: Matthew briefly mentions that an equivalent to the Judge system governing Kennet and the surrounding areas outside of the control of Lords in the East is none other than the Azure Dragon, the Vermilion Bird, the White Tiger, and the Black Tortoise.
• Freak Out: After entering his home unannounced, John freaks out and holds Verona at knifepoint and Lucy at gunpoint. Once things are cleared up, he's quite polite and is no threat to the trio, but Lucy is understandably very shaken up afterwards.
• Friendly Enemy: After Charles becomes the new Carmine, he becomes this to the trio: he genuinely likes them and doesn't want to hurt them, but they are on opposite sides and he understands why they hate him.
• Gone Horribly Right: The trio are Awakened because the Kennet Others needed to have someone investigate the Carmine Beast's disappearance. However, although the trio are told that they don't need to solve the disappearance and can take all the time they like, they investigate it very seriously and thoroughly. Several of the Kennet Others aren't very pleased with their diligence, and don't seem happy with having practitioners around again.
• Hate Sink:
  • Verona's father, Brett Hayward. Multiple readers have noted that he's a far more effective villain than whoever was behind the murder of the Carmine Beast despite not being an especially big part of the narrative, because he's a narcissistic, abusive arsehole who constantly emotionally and verbally abuses Verona while whining about how hard his life is.
  • Musser becomes this starting in Reid's Interlude due to him being a petty, misogynistic Jerkass and having a practice that revolves around stealing the implements, familiars, and demesnes from practitioners he deems unworthy of them. Goes up to eleven once he starts his brutal colonizing of lord-less areas of Ontario.
• Hope Spot:
  • The trio befriend one of the people trying to survive the Hungry Choir's rituals, Reagan, and wind up talking with her. Reagan winds up blind after another participant wins, but the trio are prepared to keep helping her and even have a necklace of eyes they picked up. Unfortunately, Nicolette Belanger interferes with Avery's attempt to walk the Forest Ribbon Trail, which throws all their plans into disarray. The trio can't go to the ritual, and all the participants lose and become waifs.
  • During the Blue Heron arc, the students on Alexander's side are trying to buy time and do their best to survive and fight back without getting thrown out until Alexander comes back. It looks like they'll almost make it out OK... and then Kevin Noone kills Laila, and though Alexander does return, the trio wind up as his enemies. Then John kills Alexander, which opens a whole new can of worms for everyone.
  • During the battle for the Carmine Throne Avery throws the ring used to control the Hungry Choir to John, only for a glamour bird to take it, sealing John's unmaking at the hands of Charles.
• Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: Tashlit, an Other, was born of the union of a human labourer and a sea serpent Other whose mind had been swapped with that of a highborn lady.
• I'm a Humanitarian: This trope comes up a lot in the Vanishing Points arc. Bristow's fate at the hands of the brownies is unknown, but there's a very strong possibility that they're cutting off parts of him and incorporating him into the food they're serving everyone in the BHI. Because it's impossible to verify whether this is happening or not, a lot of people in the BHI have gone off the food there.
• Immortal Life Is Cheap: John Stiles is constantly tossing himself in front of various dangers because his nature as a Dog of War that revives upon being killed means that he can come back from such damage whereas the Kennet Witches can't.
• Interspecies Romance: Matthew Moss, a human practitioner, fell in love with and married the Girl by Candlelight/Edith James, a composite spirit possessing a human body.
• It's a Wonderful Plot: The Judges create a scenario in which the trio never met each other when they challenge Musser, with the implied Point of Divergence being the nonexistence of Kennet's Others.
• It's All About Me: Asher Hodgston, a practitioner, decides that he wants to get married and have a family. Fine, except that he wants a perfect family, and marrying a normal woman and having children with her would mean that they wouldn't be perfect. So instead, he crafted them out of divine clay and brought them to life with the aid of the Other mentioned in Back Away 5.5 that needs 7119 marked people to manifest, not caring that in the process, he was contributing to the future deaths of millions. Once he's found out, he offers no apologies and won't even admit that he was wrong to do it, and worse, he was in the process of creating twins despite already having five children.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: An alcazar ritual turns an object into a place that can be explored to examine the subject's history and present state. When used on a living person or animal, it is effectively this.
• Karmic Death:
  • Alexander is so focused on trying to destroy his human enemies and inconvenience his former allies at Blue Heron that he fails to notice a non-human one sneaking up behind him. Bonus points for him only moments before viewing a scene 20 years ago where he told a story about almost being killed by an Other because of his tunnel vision.
  • The Witch Hunters storm Kennet wanting revenge for Raphael's death and target every practitioner and Other they can find, without stopping to find out whether any of them were A, responsible for his death, or B, evil/a threat. Most of the group then decide to go interfere with the fight for the Carmine Throne despite not understanding what it is or the consequences, while maintaining an attitude of "we're not Others or practitioners so fuck you, we can do what we want and you can't stop us", including trying to shoot the Roles. Almost all of the group who try to interfere wind up dead or very badly hurt.
• Kid Detective: The trio (all in their early teens) are tasked with looking into the disappearance/murder of the Carmine Beast. Lucy in particular takes this very seriously from the start and compiles detailed notes of all the attendees at their Awakening ceremony to act as a suspect list (and a convenient character list for readers to refer to).
• Klingon Promotion: Suggested in Lost For Words 1.3 as the reason the Carmine Beast was killed—her absence leaves a role that needs to be filled, so it's possible that whoever had her killed did so with the intention of taking her role. With the discovery that the masterminds took her meat and fur, Miss and the protagonists theorize that they intend to use her remains to take the role by force. Later arcs confirm this, as the culprits are attempting to make the furs into a garment that they can wear to give them precedence as her successor.
• Language Barrier:
  • While traveling a Path, Avery meets a Finder and an Other she's with, only to have issues communicating because they both only speak Punjabi and don't understand English.
  • Defied at Wonderkand's headquarters, as they've grounded a Path in order to serve as a universal translator.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Since part of the deal Louise made was that she'd forget about her meeting with Matthew and his party until the time was right, she immediately forgets about making the deal in the first place.
• Last One's Ploy: Discussed when the Kennet trio are planning to audit the Alabaster Doe on her behavior as a Judge, an action they're aware has the possibility of killing her when Alabasters are already rare Others to begin with as a result of people killing and skinning them. Avery is somewhat reticent, but Lucy compares the act to killing an endangered species that just so happens to be trying to shoot you, making it self-defense. In the end, they choose to go through with their plan and the resulting audit ends with the Doe dead and the Alabaster Assembly taking her place as Judge.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to Pact, the previous story in this setting. Most of the characters share at least broad goals, most of the Others are introduced as allies, and there is much more focus on learning the Practice and doing cool things with it, as opposed to the struggle for survival Blake and Rose had to go through. The setting still has a definite dark side to it, but there's more emphasis on how people are able to carve out reasonable lives in it.
• Lineage Ladder: Historic practice works by focusing on patterns in groups over time, including families such as the first son of a first son of a first son and so on, to track rituals accidentally caused by non-practitioners, or people who aren't "Awakened".
• Loophole Abuse: By winning the Hungry Choir's ritual, the winner can eat whatever they like, and the choir cannot deny them their prize. As such, a winner can interfere with a ritual by simply saying that they're intending to get something to eat, and the waifs can't stop them or interfere with them. A winner can also eat the leader of the Choir, and the leader can't even fight back.
• A Magic Contract Comes with a Kiss: The Ending of Blood Run Cold 0.0 has Matthew kiss Louise to finish their deal; she'll forget seeing the murder of the Carmine Beast in exchange for taking away her pain and thus extending her life.
• Magical Underpinnings of Reality: Via the Paths one can find their way to the very workings of reality itself, but save for potentially Hazel, although there are Finders that have observed them, no one else has ever managed to directly visit them.
• Make Way for the New Villains: After being talked about and built up over the course of Pact and Pale, Gerhild the Redcap Queen is unceremoniously killed off by the New Fae in the final epilogue of Pale.
• Masquerade Enforcer: Like Pact itself this shows up, every practitioner is bound to do this to protect Innocence, but the higher you climb in the power hierarchy the more you're obligated to do so. This is especially true for Judges such as the former Carmine Beast.
• Meaningful Name: Helen Kim is implied to have named herself after Helen from Twig, which is a movie series in the Otherverse, and like her this Helen is also an inhuman monster taking on a human shape.
• Medium Blending: The Extra Materials for 2.9 and 7.3 are told in the form of comics.
• Monster Rights Movement: Part of why the Kennet trio were recruited by Miss, as a return to the old ways where Others and humans could work with each other instead of practitioners dominating things. Played With in that the girls aren't completely trusting of all Others and won't help those who are obvious misanthropists.
• Moral Myopia:
  • Francis is furious that the rest of the Carmine Throne contestants don't care that his fellow Witch Hunters were messily killed, even though the Witch Hunters were intending to kill all of the contestants, and would have done so in a heartbeat if they'd met under different circumstances.
  • A lot of the practitioners who invade Kennet as part of Musser's entourage act as though Kennet are evil and wrong for defending themselves against invading enemies.
  • When the trio confront and eventually kill the Alabaster Doe, the reactions of her flock are essentially 'We don't care that she was doing a terrible job and that untold numbers of people who needed her help didn't get it, she did the bare minimum and that should be enough, and besides, we're fine, so what's your problem?'
• Mystical City Planning: Something Elizabeth Driscoll is doing pioneering studies of at the Blue Heron Institute. Cities all around the world buck trends and are way more profitable and/or peaceful then they should be and part of her research is proving this. Undercities can be set up like this, to heighten the attitudes or mystical talents of innocents, as Charles does with Kennet Below.
• Mythology Gag: The arc in which the trio end up visiting the general region in which Pact takes place (though they don't actually enter Toronto or what's left of Jacob's Bell) is called "In Absentia", fitting with Pact's legal terminology theming for chapters.
• Never My Fault:
  • Mr. Hayward's MO. Whatever happens, he's always the victim and everyone else is doing him down.
  • Edith spends most of Dash to Pieces 11.4 refusing to acknowledge that she destroyed her own marriage with her misdeeds; the trio simply told Matthew what was happening.
• The New '20s: According to the brochure for Kennet, the story begins in 2020, placing it around six years after Pact concluded. The story proper takes place mostly from Spring 2020 to early 2021, with five of the epilogue chapters roughly taking place over the course of January to Fall 2021, and the sixth and final taking place around 2024.
• Non-Malicious Monster: The Carmine Beast's appearance (to Louise, a non-practitioner) in the prologue has many of the tropes typically associated with the rising of some Eldritch Abomination (bigger than most buildings, defies standard laws of reality, causes eyes to start bleeding when it's looked at, revelation linked with madness, etc.) but it is so obviously wounded and in pain that Louise reacts with sympathy rather than terror. Soon after starting their investigation, the trio get told that the Beast tended to mete out the bloodier form of justice in disputes, but was generally considered a necessary semi-evil.
• Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: Kennet is a small town of around five thousand people, the main industry is ski tourism in the winter, and it has very little going for it the rest of the time, according to Verona.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore:
  • After the events of Summer Break: Charles is the new Carmine. John is dead, Guilherme has fallen to Winter, and while Matthew was forced to let Edith go free, their relationship is in tatters. Kennet is getting even more knotted, a large portion of the town has left, and a whole undercity has formed. Avery now lives in Thunder Bay and Verona is focusing on the undercity, so the trio's friendship has become even more strained. Nobody, practitioner or Other, seems to really know what to do now.
  • Following the events of the epilogues: Charles and the Aurum are locked in combat against one another, effectively abdicating their Judge positions, the girls have become effectively a regional power, and Kennet has turned into a shelter for those trying to avoid the worst of practitioner society.
• Not Hyperbole: John Stiles, a spirit of war, gives the trio some dog tags that came from his fallen comrades as a way to call for his aid. Should they need his help, they can use one to call him and he will be right behind them. Literally, right behind them:
  "They're connected to me. Throw one down, stride forward into conflict without looking back... I'll be right behind you."
  "Like..."
  "No more than five steps behind, armed. I'll give it back to you after, or give you another one, provided you aren't being frivolous in calling me there."
• Not Quite the Right Thing:
  • Musser intends to claim Kennet and install a Lordship. The trio obviously don't want this to happen, so their method of countering it is to start making connections and agreements, with the aim of giving Kennet allies and contracts that Musser either can't, won't, or will find too difficult to maintain in the hope that he'll give in and back off. His response is basically "OK, you've made it too complicated, but I don't need to maintain everything- I'll just burn everything down and rule over the ashes." Crooked Rook puts it plainly afterwards:
    Crooked Rook: A man like Musser, left with no good way to get what he wants, will not give up what he wanted. He will give up "good".
  • Verona shows Kira-Lynn a video of Chase after he took on the horror traits that had been inflicted on Gillian. When Kira-Lynn refuses to look, Verona asks her how she can think that she'll be a ruthless practitioner queen if she can't even look at it. Kira-Lynn's response is to get one of her cohorts to remove her mercy and compassion.
• The Oathbreaker:
  • Charles is forsworn, due to being provoked into accidentally breaking a sloppily-worded promise of hospitality ^note  he gave Alexander Belanger the standard pledge of not doing him any harm while in his house, but didn't specify for how long this pledge would hold. Years later, the acquaintance got him drunk and provoked him into an argument, where Charles threw a glass against a wall, and while shoving the man out of his house accidentally pushed him onto the broken glass. The cut feet Alexander got was enough for him to declare Charles in violation of his oath. . His story serves as an early warning for the trio of just how careful they need to be with promises they make.
  • Alexander Belanger later forswears Seth Belanger for not living up to an oath he made to his dying grandmother that he'd do his best to better himself, as retaliation for not choosing a side in the Belanger/Bristow war. Griffin's Interlude reveals that Alexander would forswear someone every few years, usually a student.
  • The Allaire family would introduce outsiders to the practice, awaken them, teach them a little practice to get them to let their guard down, and then forswear them with the intent of forcing them to become the family's slaves. By the time Charles intervenes, the patriarch of the family has thirteen forsworn slaves, four more that his mother forswore are alive, and his daughter had just brought in her first.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • One from Musser of all people when the Witch Hunter's answer to his magical bullet-catching glove is to pull out and fire a cannon at him.
  • After Lauren Snyder is abruptly shot in the head, the reason for her condition is revealed: her familiar got tainted by something and she bound it inside herself to contain it. The something is implied to be some kind of demon, and the horror that was fighting her is so freaked out at the prospect of fighting a demon that it forfeits the contest immediately and accepts its own death as a result.
  • Verona has this reaction at the end of Gone and Done It 17.9, when Musser makes his Lordship claim over Kennet, with the specific intention of taking everything that Kennet has.
• Outside-Context Problem:
  • The Forest Ribbon Trail has a lot of rules about what those traversing it can and can't do. However, it has absolutely no rules or guidelines for what to do or what will happen if a complete outsider decides to intervene in someone's attempt to traverse it and leaves them stranded there. Thankfully, Avery makes it out OK.
  • Practitioners and Others can't lie. Snowdrop can only lie (though from her perspective, she's telling the truth), so anyone who's not aware of this can easily be deceived.
  • The Station Promenade is a Path with strict rules about how Finders and Others traversing it can move, using tile patterns and only moving when the clocks around the Path aren't stopped. But then the Wolf from the Forest Ribbon Trail appears, and it can move when the clocks have stopped...
• Painting the Medium:
  • Each chapter has a specific piece of art featuring the trio with one of the girls highlighted, to show who the viewpoint character is. Interludes have one of the art pieces, but without the girls. The Break chapters all use Lucy's art, but the art gets darker and a crack in the background becomes more visible as the fight for the Carmine Throne wears on (compare Break 1's art to Break 4's). In Summer Break, Lucy's art breaks in half when she finds out John is gone forever, and Charles is the new Carmine Judge.
  • Following the events of the battle for the Carmine Throne, the Fall Out arc has each of the trio by themselves in a separate piece of art, reflecting both their physical and mental isolation from one another, as Avery has moved to Thunder Bay, and while Verona and Lucy stay in Kennet, they've somewhat drifted apart in the aftermath.
    • Arc 21, In Absentia, shows the other two fading back in to represent them coming back together.
  • Interlude 18.y's banner is a collage of all three banners to represent Lis' omniscience over most of Kennet.
  • Interlude 20.z's banner is Verona's, but flipped to represent the viewpoint character- Verona's fetch, Julette.
  • 21.4 has the cracked variant of Lucy's banner to represent Charles' influence as the Carmine Exile.
  • In 22.2 a banner with Avery's silhouette missing visualizes Verona's unspoken belief that Avery has died. When Lucy convinces her to believe Avery survived and is only out of reach, the banner returns to normal.
• Parents as People:
  • Avery's parents love her, but they're busy and part of a big family (themselves, five children and the kids' elderly grandfather), so she gets overlooked a lot. Connor Kelly also seems to subscribe to the "keep the peace over actually solving problems between the kids" school of parenting, which, while understandable considering how loud and hectic his family is, doesn't help when the problems need a lot more than that. It gets better after the trio have to come clean to their parents, because it's pretty obvious then that although Kelsey and Connor are justifiably worried about Avery's safety, they come to see just how responsible, mature and accomplished she is.
  • Kira-Lynn's parents have no ambition and put very little effort into their lives. They're not hungry or lacking shelter or medical care, but the sheer mediocrity of their lives and their unwillingness to put in the effort to improve anything makes Kira-Lynn despise them.
• Passing the Torch: Pale's protagonists were picked by Others to take up the role of the resident practitioners in Kennet, after the last one became Forsworn.
• Poke in the Third Eye: A nettlewisp is a trap that launches needles at the target when it's sprung. The trio use it to screw with augurs trying to scry on them.
• Production Throwback: A few cameo references are made to Wildbow's earlier works:
  • While Avery and Nora are Christmas shopping they make references to Worm as a movie series. A jigsaw puzzle they pick out depicts a scene from Twig.
  • Snowdrop meets a Lost named Fugly Bob on the Promenade.
• Proportional Aging: Being an Other doesn't necessarily mean being immortal or even long lived. Opossums only have an average lifespan of two years, maybe up to four if they're very lucky, and a view of a potential future where Avery's older but Snowdrop's not present makes Avery realize that she has to do something if she wants Snowdrop to stick around.
• Purple Is Powerful: An Incarnation of Authority Lis observes is clad in all purple in a literal example of the trope representing power.
• Reality Is Out to Lunch: The Paths are a network of realms/pathways on the fringes of reality that each operate by their own rules.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: John gives Edith a scathing one when he discovers her role in the Carmine Beast's murder, and what she helped do to Yalda.
• Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: Reconstructed—young teenagers are more malleable to outside influences but also easily underestimated. Further, Miss, the recruiter, has inherent abilities in seeing someone's inner character which aids her in making the choices. The final decision was also made based on who could work together as a group with complementary strengths.
• Ret-Gone: The fate of anyone who fails the Hungry Choir's ritual is implied to be the destruction of their connections as they become a waif. Gabe falls victim to this in Interlude 1.z, as does Reagan in between Out On A Limb 3.1 and 3.2. It does leave some discrepancies, as Sharon finds out through talking with Mr. Lai that his books didn't add up to how classes were balanced. Zed also mentions at one point that when Brie lost both feet to the waifs, her family duly believed that she'd always lacked feet, but couldn't explain why she'd never owned a wheelchair.
• Rousing Speech: Toadswallow gives an emotional speech in memory of John Stiles to rouse the goblins, some of whom are not local and otherwise wouldn't be invested, to make a last push against the Carmine Exile.
• Rule of Three:
  • As in Pact, three remains a very powerful magical number.
    • Deliberately invoked by the Others who chose the Pale trio to awaken, as three is a powerful number in practitioner rituals.
  • The epilogue chapters time skip in threes, with the first taking place 3 hours after the last main chapter, and the following epilogues skipping ahead to 3 days, weeks, months, seasons, and years afterwards.
• Sanity Slippage: Griffin Lyttle, one of the Unforsworn, lost a lot of his sanity over time due to being forsworn. Even after Charles saved him, he's still not certain if the situation he's now in is actually real, and lives in fear that he'll suddenly wake up and find that it was all a dream and he's still forsworn.
• Sealed Evil in a Duel: Discussed in Finish Off 24.17, where the Aurum remembers reading about certain sealing practices in which a being too powerful to subdue otherwise would be sealed with an opponent that's either just as strong, or weaker but effectively unkillable, so that they'd be too focused on fighting them to be able to apply their full power to breaking the wards and seals. It's what ultimately ends up happening to him and Charles, as they're locked in a duel against one another.
• Shared Universe: Takes place in the same universe as Pact as part of the Otherverse, but is not a narrative sequel, though some hanging threads from the previous serial are alluded to.
• Shout-Out:
  • Wildbow confirmed on the Parahumans Discord that various incarnations of the Forest Ribbon Trail referenced The Path.
  • Snowdrop's shirts reference various opossum memes, such as 'scream at own ass' and the screaming opossum.
  • The April Fools Day chapter is one long shout out to The Avengers, with Nicolette as Hawkeye, Guilherme as a combination of the Winter Soldier and the Hulk, Zed as Iron Man, Edith as the Black Widow, Lucy as the Scarlet Witch, John as Captain America, and Snowdrop as Rocket Raccoon.
• Small, Secluded World:
  • When she was ten, Thea and her friend group accidentally threw themselves into a pocket dimension, which is how she was introduced to magic, and now she specializes in building such spaces.
  • An Other in Kennet Found once lived in a small world that consists of a boarding school, a world she believes was built by the school's headmaster.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: Thankfully averted; after the incident with Verona's father in Shaking Hands 9.9, Canada's child services get called on him.
• Stay on the Path: One of the (many) rules of the Forest Ribbon Trail is that if you leave the path or turn back, you become Lost and turn into an Other, trapped there forever.
• Super-Sargasso Sea: Pale introduces the Paths, which are home to things that have been forgotten even by the Abyss, including Others that predate the Seal of Solomon.
• Talking in Your Dreams: Alpeana's gift to the trio is to facilitate communication with each other and with other people through dreams. She also has a colleague who works with erotic dreams instead of nightmares who is tapped for this service once.
• Teacher/Student Romance:
  • Avery initially wants to have one with her teacher, Ms. Hardy, but Lucy and Verona tell her that it's a terrible idea and she doesn't have a chance, even if they waited until Avery was 18 and had graduated.
  • In the 7.3 Extra Materials, Alexander implies that Bristow was in a relationship with a 19 year old student of his at one time.
  • Let Slip 20.8 reveals that Seth is in a relationship with his student, Cameron. The chapter concedes that there's only a two year age gap between them, but he's still in a position of power over her.
• Threshold Guardian: Trussed are this as a profession. They're basically centuries-old wardens who are so old they've fused into the background. In Millicent Legendre's Interlude, an example named Talbot shows up: he's dedicated himself to keeping some horrible goblin poison from escaping and killing the earth.
• Time Skip:
  • There's one of about five weeks in between Interlude 3.z and Leaving a Mark 4.1.
  • Fallout 14.1 skips ahead to about a week after Summer Break.
  • Interlude 18.y and 18.z have an almost three month gap, placing the latter sometime around Christmas.
  • The last few epilogues have time skips between them of three weeks, three seasons, and three years.
• Title Drop: As Alexander Belanger says in the 7.3 Borrowed Eyes Comic:
  Alexander: And now you know. I've told you, impressions are dangerous when you're an Augur. We seek verifiable Truth. Those precious futures and realities that can be described as fixed by the Threads, by the Hours, by the Blade, by the Bough, and by the Pale.
• Transformation Name Announcement: At the end of any Contest for a Judge seat, such as the Carmine Contest, the winner must announce what they'll call themselves, so Charles Abrams calls himself the Carmine Exile.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour: Although ten-year-old boys being douchebags is hardly uncommon, Declan Kelly's behaviour has worsened to the point that after Dash to Pieces 11.10, Avery has a fight with her father over how bad Declan's misogyny has become and how lacklustre Connor's response has been, and multiple readers were expressing their concerns in the comments.
• Truce Zone: As the Blue Heron Institute is considered a neutral zone for practitioners, it is exempt from being taken up by a Lordship as that would defeat its very purpose.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Verona considers her father to be this, as his reaction to her thinking in advance about all the chores he might ask her to do and doing them to a very high standard is to give her more with no thanks or even acknowledgment that she did a good job. He seems to think this of her (and possibly the world in general,) as when she calls him out on this he simply says that nobody ever praises or thanks him for his daily grind.
• Utility Magic: Combines a bit with Mundane Utility, with practitioners and some Others using magic to make their lives easier.
  • In Leaving a Mark 4.9, Verona uses a darkness rune attached to her towel to keep herself from getting tanned.
  • Specific rituals are referenced that give practitioners perks like not having to worry about eating, the ability to spell a name the right way the first time after hearing it, or to protect themselves from loud noises, explosions, or whatever element they work with.
• Vagueness Is Coming: At various points during the Blue Heron arc, Bristow and his supporters say that some kind of threat will hit Canada at some point in the future, but we're not given any more details. When Miss and Toadswallow discuss it in Summer Break 13.6 they think it was an excuse for Bristow to seize power rather than having an actual threat in mind.
• Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World: The trio have to balance investigating the Carmine Beast's murder and their duties to Kennet with things like school and their familial duties. It gets difficult.
• Was Once a Man:
  • Matthew is a former practitioner who is now more Other than human; Edith is a composite spirit who possessed the body of a woman who tried to commit suicide.
  • It's mentioned by Zed that a result of practice going wrong is practitioners becoming an Other that is in some way related to their practice, such as Collectors becoming Graspings and war mages becoming strong Dog of War subvariants.
  • The horror who takes part in the fight for the Carmine Throne was a practitioner whose practice went horribly wrong. Similarly, Cagerattler used to be a practitioner, but was warped by the Abyss.
  • Gilkey is the trace remainder of the Self of an alchemist whose lab exploded with him in it, and is now a poison elemental.
  • The Aurum Coil was a practitioner who merged with his familiar upon taking the throne.
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • Avery had a best friend before the serial started, Olivia, but Olivia transferred to another school and had no time for Avery after that.
  • Gone Ahead 7.x has a flashback to just after the Blue Heron Throne god was taken down, with Alexander, Bristow, Charles, Musser, Raymond, Durocher, and Crowe unwinding in a bar together. Crowe left the group because she didn't like how cut-throat they were, Bristow and Alexander fell out, Musser sided with Bristow, and Alexander forswore Charles.
• Wham Episode:
  • Shaking Hands 9.9. Verona's father targets the one thing he sees that makes Verona happy - her bag with all her magic supplies - and breaks everything inside in a fit of pique, causing her to flee the house as a cat. The trio find the depression in Kennet's spiritual landscape - with the furs at its epicenter. The chapter ends with Verona taking out her frustration on the security measures keeping the furs undetected - alone in the room with every ward the culprits put up collapsing around her.
  • Summer Break (the chapter, not the arc): John loses the fight for the Carmine Throne. Charles wins and styles himself the Carmine Exile. The girls have lost, Musser walks away scot-free, and Kennet becoming knotted is not getting better because Charles is making it his new seat of power.
  • Gone and Done It 17.15: The trio have to come clean to Jasmine, Connor, and Kelsey about the practice and what they've been up to.
  • Let Slip 20.z: Charles and the St. Victor's kids kill Edith, and the trio's efforts to intervene result in their being driven out of Kennet.
• Wham Line:
  • In False Moves 12.z, Miss uses one of these in-universe to catch Reid, Wye, and Raquel's attention: "Solomon was forsworn in the end."
  • At the end of Left in the Dust 16.10, Anthem Tedd breaks the news that Musser has taken Toronto and its surrounding regions, and half of the remaining free areas have capitulated.
  • At the end of Gone and Done It 17.9, Musser officially makes a Lordship claim in Kennet.
    Musser: Practitioners and Others of Kennet, murderers of Milo Songetay, enemies of the Seal, and all who have colluded with the Carmine Exile, I intend to take all you have.
• With a Friend and a Stranger: Verona and Lucy have known each other since early childhood, but Avery is a newcomer to their dynamic prior to all three being Awakened.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: A constant theme of the story is practitioners forcibly binding Others to their service and using them as power batteries regardless of whether or not they pose an immediate threat to innocents, mainly on the basis that they're not human, which clashes with the trio finding such attitudes an offensive mindset to have regarding sapient beings. The fear of such happening to them is the main reason why the Kennet Others don't want practitioners apart from the main trio around.
• Where It All Began: The battle for the Carmine Throne takes place in the very arena where the Carmine Beast died at the start of the story.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Kennet is located somewhere along Lake Superior's eastern shore, with the closest known RL city being Thunder Bay. It's also south of Swanson, which may put it in the stretch between Pukaskwa National Park and Michipicoten.
• Winter of Starvation: In a vision Verona sees of Crooked Rook's past, the latter once killed two practitioners but spared their fourteen-year-old daughter and her 10 younger siblings, only to leave them to starve in the dead of winter since the prior fight left only enough food stores to feed Rook and her allied Others, and the daughter refused to be turned by Rook into an Other so that it would be easier for her to hunt in the two weeks it would take help to arrive.
• The Wonderland: The Paths are each an example of this trope. Historically they've been confused with dream worlds because of how the laws of physics bend and break inside them. In truth, they are simply outside of reality, as opposed to places like the Abyss which are under it. A Path is accessed by some nonsense arrangement of items done in a way no one person would reasonably set up in real life. They have denizens of their own who are similarly out there.
• The Worm That Walks: One of Bristow's tenants is a swarm of vermin turned Other that takes on a humanoid shape in order to serve as tech support. Unlike most examples it is friendly, if standoffish.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside:
  • It's implied through Hazel's journey through the Paths that time doesn't pass at the same rate while traveling through them, as she's surprised when she meets a Lost that tells her it's been decades since she first entered.
  • The three children the Beorgmann releases haven't aged in the eight years they were stolen.
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: Despite the girls' efforts throughout the story, they are unable to stop the Carmine's killer from entering the arena wearing the furs.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: The brownies deliver the trio three perfectly cooked and chosen meals the day after Bristow goes with them. The trio reject the meals and Verona later throws up from stress.
• Your Days Are Numbered:
  • In Blood Run Cold 0.0, Louise is established as slowly dying from complications brought on by diabetes.
  • Reagan is fully aware that she likely won't survive the Hungry Choir's rituals. She's unfortunately right.
• Zen Survivor: Guilherme has an air of having survived and endured heartbreak and conflict his entire life—and wants to pass on the wisdom he's accrued through the most vague, bullshit doublespeak imaginable. Almost the quintessential Zen Survivor, which is the form he eventually takes upon falling to Winter and permanently losing the ability to grow or change forevermore.