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"Reach heaven through violence."
"The king of all creation fell out of heaven, usurped by a seven headed beast. But the old king shall choose a new, and he will ignite the third conquest. He will be flanked by a white and a black flame, his coming will be followed by 108 burning stars. He will bear the terrible heat of the voice in his brow, the mark of his lordliness. He will face the beast - and he will annihilate it. He will wield the terrible blade of want, and the pillars of heaven will quake with his coming. And his name - his name will be - Kill Six Billion Demons."
— Prophecy of the Successor

Kill Six Billion Demons is a 2013 New Weird fantasy webcomic written and illustrated by Tom Bloom (née Parkinson-Morgan), also known as Abbadon.

God Is Dead. Far beyond Earth, The Multiverse is in chaos as criminals rule and callous kings maintain a fragile peace. One day, a mysterious and bloody figure appears to a barista named Allison Wanda Ruth, and bestows her with an Ancient Artifact known as the Key of Kings. In the process, Allison finds herself suddenly transported to the final resting place of the gods in the exact center of the multiverse, the red city of Throne. Allison must now travel through Throne and the 777,777 universes of creation to save her kidnapped boyfriend (even if he is a creep) and stop the plans of the stone angels, masked devils, and mad god-kings that want her Key for themselves — or, as is often the case, want to use Allison herself without touching the accursed thing.

  • Book 1: Kill Six Billion Demons
  • Book 2: Wielder of Names
  • Book 3: Seeker of Thrones
  • Book 4: King of Swords
  • Book 5: Breaker of Infinities
  • Book 6: Wheel Smashing Lord

Books 1-4 have physical editions released by Image Comics. Now has a character sheet.

Abbadon also developed Broken Worlds, The Role-Playing Game based on the setting using the Powered by the Apocalypse system and released it via Patreon.


Yisun Atru Vyam. Forgive me for these tropes I am about to list:

  • Accomplice by Inaction:
    • In Solomon David's backstory, the Monks of the Silent Voice earned his undying hatred after they stood by and allowed the Demiurge Yemmod to pillage Rayuba despite their Ki Rata enabling them to defeat him easily because their teachings forbade them from intervening.
    • Gog-Agog becomes one to Jagganoth during the Discordance of Demiurges by first sitting back and refusing to help until forced into it by Solomon, then leaving the battlefield at a crucial moment because she felt underappreciated, allowing Jagganoth to gain the upper hand and proceed with his multiversal purge.
  • Achievements in Ignorance:
    • Pree Aesma managed to defeat the three greatest disciples of YISUN, the Masters of Space, Aesthetics and Ethics, essentially by being too ignorant to learn their teachings and throwing violent temper tantrums whenever she got frustrated. It is because of her scheming, vile, ignorant nature — and because she is always trying to improve herself, unlike YISUN's more self-satisfied disciples — that YISUN names Aesma their greatest disciple, the Master of Want.
    • Aesma also survived the first time seeing the True Shape of the Universe unscathed because she was so obsessed with beating the Master of Space at the time that she didn't bother to comprehend what she was looking at, and could only remember it as 'vaguely wheel-shaped'. Things did not go so well for her the second time.
    • Intra, King of Swords, managed to kill a Ya-At (beings renowned for their fighting abilities) with a single stroke of a sword where his betters failed to in hundreds. When he was asked how a unknown untrained man did this, he told everyone that the blow was that of an idiot, and he had no technique. He went on to become one of the most powerful swordsmen in Throne.
    • Allison successfully re-binding Vladok by shoving a mask on its not-face and shouting names at it, to the utter shock of everyone present, also stands out.
      Allison: I'm drunk as hell and have no idea what I'm doing.
    • Judging by some of the passages under the comic, this is actually how the comic's universe works. If you're ignorant and strong willed enough, you can readily break established ideas as to what's possible.
    • The inverse is also true. The more you know, the more absolutely powerless you are. King Zoss says that he cannot break the Wheel and avert the universe's fate to fall into ruin because he has mastered it. Likewise, Jadis, who is omniscient, is completely unable to do anything with that omniscience. She knows exactly what's going to happen for the entirety of time, which means that a) nothing actually is happening to her because she perceives every moment simultaneously, b) she can't make any choices because to her they've all been made already.
  • Admiring the Abomination: The Knights Belligerent worship Jagganoth, the most powerful and violent of the Demiurges.
    When a core part of your knightly creed includes the phrase 'If it has a pulse – remove its skull!', what can you do about a thirty foot immortal monstrosity impervious to physical harm and with complete mastery over space-time?
    Worship it, of course.
  • All There in the Manual: A large amount of setting info is located in the alternate sections of the site, including the Psalms and Spasms that make up significant part of the in-universe faith (located below the pages and under the Daemoniac and Liturgy tabs). There is also the artist's Tumblr accounts, the Alt Text of the pages, and sometimes the comment sections of the pages due to the inclusion of reader-submitted content.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: Devils were created as a force of pure destruction, and, even when bound, they remain perpetually self-serving and egotistical. Helping others is against their very nature, and the closest to a good devil we've seen throughout the story went through extreme self-rejection and still manages to be neutral at best.
  • Always Lawful Good: Angels were intended to be that but, due to how easily they are left astray and their propensity for failure when they're doing what's right, it's not very likely. It's implied that White Chain is the only one alive that still acts the part.
    • Kind People are a species created to work as guards and couriers that have a very complicated code of ethics and severely look down on ambition and greed, with those who show these qualities becoming an outcast among their entire kind. Mammon is one of them and became a Demiurge after slaughtering his whole family for looking down on his greed, though he later came to regret doing so.
  • Ambiguous Gender: Angels are normally sexless and genderless, though typically referred to with male pronouns. White Chain is regularly assumed to be female; however, in their first appearance they bluntly correct someone who refers to them as such. For an angel, having a gender is too human and is punishable by being banished to the Void.
    • White Chain's armorless form in the Void averts this, clearly appearing as female. Her gender identity matches. 6 Juggernaut Star's armorless form when White Chain temporarily brings them to the Void also appears female, while White Chain's form after shattering her armor averts the trope completely.
  • Arc Number
    • Seven:
      • After YISUN split into YIS and UN, the two warred for 7 years and then made love for 7 hours. They gave birth to 777,777 gods who created the 777,777 universes, which were split evenly among the 7 remaining Demiurges after the Conquering King was defeated. Throne is now "ruled by seven black kings from seven towers."
      • In the story of Prim and the Mendicant Knight, the knight tells Prim that he performed seven times seven tasks for the grand artificer in seven times seven days.
    • There is also the titular six billion. As emphasized on the alt-text of Wielder of names, 5-96 which is "1/6,000,000,000"
  • Arc Symbol: Wheels, likely due to its importance to the Dharmic religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism) that inspired the comic's cosmology.
    • Throne is shown to be wheel-shaped, and so is the Universe itself (provided you do not look too closely). Throne is the spoke of the Universe.
    • Wheels represent cycles and stagnancy, and the importance of breaking out of them.
    • The Demiurges are known as 'wheel-turners' both in the sense that they control the universe and are the source of much of its suffering. One of Jagganoth's titles is "Wheel-Turning King", representing that he embodies the nature of Demiurges as rulers and destroyers both.
    • The universe itself is trapped in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, repeating itself endlessly.
  • Arc Words
    • The title itself - the phrase "Kill Six Billion Demons" is the Successor's prophesized name.
    • "Reach Heaven Through Violence"
    • "The Wheel" shows up very often in various contexts, primarily as a name for the multiverse but with the creation and ending of cycles being a theme.
    • METATRON LIVES
  • Armor-Piercing Question:
    • Aesma once delivered one of these to YISUN by throwing a tantrum and demanding to know what Creation was if not a self-evident truth. YISUN had to actually hesitate and think before answering.
    "My opinion", said YISUN, finally.
    • From Seeker of Thrones: Nyave questions White Chain's unwillingness to face Character Development, which ends up promoting it, instead.
      White Chain: Humans ruined everything with their foolish dreams. Give up yours before they hurt someone.
      Nyave: When did you give up yours?
    • From Breaker of Infinities: "Twenty five years. FOR WHAT?" The question causes Solomon David to realise that he's broken the social contract by failing to protect his people despite his overbearing demands of them, snapping him out of his funk and causing him to engage Jagganoth single-handedly in a Self-Destructive Charge.
    • In the backstory, Mathangi Mantra was on the path to becoming ruler of the universe, one of the most powerful demiurges in existence. Then she went to see her mentor Meti, and Meti asked her a single question so devastating that Mathangi cast her sword and crown aside and settled in a quiet world to build a family.
      Maya: It was precisely then that she completely and utterly broke my will. She asked the question. For a short while, I did not realized I had been crushed like an insect. I argued with her. And then.... the enormity of what she had said caught up to me. And I fled.
  • Armor-Piercing Response: Allison finally answers Maya's Catchphrase question, "What do you think about death?", with "Actually, I don't really think about it at all". Maya stares wide-eyed, then bows.
  • The Artifact: Thorn Angels were set up early on as a major player in Throne, but almost immediately after the prologue, it was revealed that 2 Michael, leader of the Root Angels, is working with the Thorns as well; they persist as a different style of antagonist Angel but their distinctiveness is mostly a remnant of their earlier (now redundant) role.
  • Artifact of Doom:
    • The key-like object that is shoved into Allison's skull is called a Magus Gate or a Key of Kings, and seems to have been what granted her the ability to travel to Throne, among a number of other abilities. However, it's the kind of power that can get her in a lot of trouble. She only gets away with it because she doesn't know how to use any of it.
    • Cio stole part of Mammon's Key back when she was an immeasurably powerful Ebon Devil. Unfortunately, she got the mask keeping her in our reality shattered as a result, and was only able to be summoned back as a lowly De-Powered Blue Devil, the second weakest type in existence.
  • Artifact Title: Of sorts- KSBD originated as an MSPA forum-based webcomic, wherein the plot involved Allison literally having to kill a total of 6,000,000,000 demons over the course of the story- when the comic was rewritten, "Kill Six Billion Demons" was remade into the title of the Rising King. While Demons are part of the challenges Allison faces, they're by no means the only ones.
  • As You Know: When she agrees to the drinking contest, Allison gets a glowing spot on her wrist. This calls forth a sarcastic comment from a bystander:
    Magister: A devil's kiss. A parasitic piece of the pure hot black flame. Granter of the art. Mark of a contract. But surely you know this, Magister Usagi.
  • Axis Mundi: The Creation Myth holds that The Multiverse radiates outward from Throne, an extradimensional World in the Sky with a vast central tower. For aeons it was populated only by angels and dead gods; since the Multiversal Conqueror Zoss made it his base of operations, it became a City of Adventure.
    Cio: For all creation is akin to a burning wheel. The Flame Immortal is its axle. Throne its hub. Its spokes — the great flames of the Gods. The heat that nourishes their creation... and its heirs.
  • Badass Creed:
    • Whenever it's time to use violence, White Chain recites "Forgive me for this violence I am about to inflict."
    • The slogan of the aptly-named Belligerent Knights: "Let us cut God to see if he bleeds!"
    • The Night Curse, invoked by devils before a major operation:
      "If any knave oppose our wicked will, let him run now. Let all the vile and suppurating venoms of the night spit in the eye of God and blind her to our evil. Our will is sealed."
    • The slogan of the devil gang Badstar:
      "Money and Power through Homicide!"
    • The one rule that devils follow:
    • The Sword Law Mantra of the Knights Belligerent:
      "If it has a pulse,
      Take its skull!
      If it builds a house,
      Smash it flat!
      Strength is my God,
      The God of Shapes,
      If my God should fail me,
      I will kill him too."
  • Badass Pacifist: Exaggerated. The monks of the Ki Rata style are the most powerful martial artists in the multiverse, capable of vaporizing a man with even their simplest of techniques. The monks are absolute pacifists, to the point that they allow their beautiful world to be conquered and despoiled rather than fight back. They only ever use their abilities to kill people who discover the secrets of Ki Rata on their own.
  • Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: A non-sexual example. As part of her Affably Evil act, Queen Mottom has Allison bathed and dressed up in courtly finery before granting her audience (see No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine below). Although it should be noted that the clothes chosen for Allison are very similar to some Earth cultures' bridal dresses...
  • Battle Aura: Battle auras are a manifestation of the wilder's Atum, and the stronger the person's Flame Of Life the more powerful the aura. All Demiurges and particularly powerful martial artists (which includes all angels) can manifest them. A Demiurge's aura is hot enough to set them on fire and burn those close to them, Jagganoth's can boil people's blood at a distance, and YISUN's aura is said to have encompassed all of creation with a heat akin to the surface of a star.
  • Battle in the Center of the Mind: Allison undergoes one in Seeker of Thrones, fighting with Incubus' 'gift' over control of her body. She eventually wins by embracing the parts of herself she dislikes, accepting them back as parts of herself instead of trying to seal them away.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For:
    Allison: I've been trying my whole boring mundane fucking life to escape being a nobody, but you know what? Now I want it back.
  • BFS: The sword Allison picks up off the floor during the fight in Hell 71 is almost as long as she is tall, as seen here. She finally puts it to use for the first time days later, when breaking into Mammon's infinite vault.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Cio has a knack for this, pulling it off during the fight in Hell 71, when she surfs White Chain's empty armor into the crowd to save Allison; and again when she arrives just in time to save Allison from Mottom.
    • Brutally subverted in Breaker of Infinities however. Cio steps up and stabs Incubus In the Back as he's about to cut off Allison's head...but he barely even notices and proceeds to kill Cio to make a point while Allison is too in shock to take the opportunity to escape. Played straight moments later, when Maya steps in and deflects Incubus' blade just before he would have killed Allison.
  • The Big Damn Kiss: A highly dramatic kiss occurs in Seeker of Thrones between Cio and Allison.
  • Big Eater: The downside to practicing the martial art style Demon Flips the Cart is that you have to eat three or four times as much as normal, or you spontaneously combust.
  • Bigger on the Inside: Mammon's stronghold, the Treasure Fortress of Yre, is described as a fractal with infinite space inside.
  • Bizarre Alien Biology: All over the place with the non-human characters.
    • Humans' lack of being The Ageless is unique among other intelligent races.
    • Some notable examples include minor characters INGSVLD, a Geas Knight whose head is a floating book; and Etlin Da, better known as the harp-headed woman.
  • Bizarre Alien Psychology: The psychology of angels is occasionally talked about. All are bound by the Old Law, which is a set of unexplained rules chiseled into their being, and those that understand it can commit evil acts through Loophole Abuse. They see fighting evil and staring into the void as equally noble tasks. Rank is determined by length of their previous incarnation, regardless of how many preceded it, so the Prime Angels that did nothing but maintain a shield around Throne for several kalpa automatically outrank all other angels from the void if they reincarnate.
  • Black Magic: Although not explicitly described as such, White Chain is initially worried that Allison is a vatra, a practitioner of the White Art of Division and the Red Art of Dominion, which is forbidden.
  • Black Speech: Devils speak their own language called "Black Speech" amongst themselves, which is translated as a slang-ridden form of English with a lot of unusual grammar rules and a lot of invective tossed in. This is further translated into modern English by notes in the comic, often through a Tactful Translation.
  • Blade Run:
    • Pulled off by 82 White Chain on KILLBOSS during King of Swords.
    • Allison learns this move from White Chain and pulls it off herself on Eris Lo-Kai later in King of Swords.
    • Incubus pulls this move off against Jagganoth in Breaker of Infinities, running down the latter's BFS.
  • Blade Spam: Anyone sufficiently trained in Sword Law can do this. Jagganoth, a particularly keen student, developed a move that allows them to strike 80,000 blows at the same time. Defied by those who learn the art of Cutting, however, who see it as wasteful to ever use more than a single blow.
  • Blasphemous Boast: from the Sword Law Mantra of the Knights Belligerent:
    If my God should fail me,
    I will kill him too.
  • Blood Knight: The whole point of the Knights Belligerent. Their creed includes key phrases such as "If it has a pulse – remove its skull!" and "let us cut God to see if He bleeds!"
  • Body Horror:
    • Allison teleports to Throne via Division magic, which visibly separates out all of her organ systemsinvoked and reassembles them once she has reached her destination - skeleton first.
    • Due to being fed blue devil liquor, she grows horns. White Chain assures her they are merely temporary.
    • More or less everything Mottom does carries an element of Body Horror. Probably one of her most notable moments is transforming Pryan Sor into an immortal plum tree.
    • Mottom is also attacked by an assassin at one point, prompting her to simply blow on the attacker, who then graphically disintegrates into peach petals.
  • Body in a Breadbox: Pryan Sor throws Mottom a box of human skulls (and other bones) as his "offering" for sending a horde of merciless raiders to his home planet. It did not end well.
    Sor: Here is your offering, WITCH!
  • Boss Subtitles: Each of the Demiurges gets one of these when they're properly introduced for the first time, showing their full list of titles and their name as written in the old speech. Those of Jagganoth and Jadis are conspicuously absent for most of the comic. Jagganoth's is only revealed during the Discordance of the Demiurges when he reveals his full power and nature. Jadis's eventually reveals she has lost her divine word, and presumably her status as a god with it. She is now Bearer of the Shape (of the multiverse) rather than the word Mind. And of course, when Allison is revealed to be a demiurge in Breaker Of Infinities, she gets one of them as well.
  • Both Sides Have a Point: During the tournament arc, tensions grow between White Chain and Allison, culminating in a huge fight where White Chain kicks Allison's ass. Afterwards, however, both realize they were wrong in their own way (Allison for being too reckless, White Chain for not believing in her and being too inflexible) and mutually apologize.
  • Break His Heart to Save Him: When the reconstituted, apparently amnesiac Cio appears, collecting the last part of Cio's mask, Allison immediately threatens to kill her if she ever sees her again. It's fairly clear that Allison is doing this to keep Cio away as Allison can't bear to see her get hurt again.
  • Bury Your Gays: Cio is killed by Incubus in Breaker of Infinities. The author has expressed distaste for this trope in the past, and requested on his twitter that readers be patient with the comic despite the apparent use of this trope. (It should also be noted that devils don't really "die" so much as get discorporated and can be resummoned; however, depending on the color of mask and amount of names used, this may involve a serious personality shift.).
  • The Call Knows Where You Live: And it will break down your wall and kidnap your boyfriend...
  • Call-Back:
  • Calling Your Attacks:
  • The Caper: The third book, Seeker of Thrones, is structured as a heist story, focusing on the Allison and her team trying to recover her boyfriend from Mammon's vaults.
  • Caper Crew: When preparing for the heist on Mammon's vaults, the author ran a contest where fans contributed ideas for the Caper Crew, referencing each of the traditional roles by name.
  • Caps Lock:
    • Remember to engage it before writing YISUN's name, or the name of their two halves, YIS and UN.
    • Zoss, when speaking to Allison, calls her Alice-UN.
    • Minor character INGSVLD, Geas Knight.
  • Cardboard Prison: The jails of Throne have turned into this as things decayed; the prisons are all rotted, and the judges have all fled. White Chain keeps delivering prisoners to them anyway.
  • Carnival of Killers: The Pursuers, an unaffiliated mob of 108 Guild mercenaries and independent warriors hunting the Magus Gate lodged in Allison's head.
  • Cast Full of Gay: Not immediately obvious in the first two volumes, but more explicitly made clear later: White Chain's plot arc has centered around their gender, Cio is bisexual, and Allison herself is Ambiguously Gay, while Incubus has been confirmed to be "gay, but ... gay for ambition the most of all".
  • Casual Danger Dialogue: Allison and Cio have a serious talk about their relationship and related issues...in the middle of a massive Battle Royale.
  • Celestial Paragons and Archangels: The Prime Angels of Throne, the first angels to come into existence, who guarded Throne for thirty kalpa after the death of the gods. Zoss killed all of them when he arrived to Throne (except for Metatron). The only one to reincarnate in the time since that was 2 Michael.
  • Central Theme: Several of them. One of the major ones is that suffering and tyranny, despite what many characters ardently believe, is not the natural order of things. The demiurges have the literal power of God, with unlimited power over 111,111 universes each, and the only reason the world sucks as much as it does is because those Demiurges refuse to do anything about it. They could quite easily create a utopia, if they weren't such utter dicks.
    Meti ten Ryo: Behold! The awesome fires of God. The limitless power of pure creation itself. Look carefully. Observe how it is used for the same purpose a man might use an especially sharp rock.
  • Cessation of Existence: According to Jadis, there is no afterlife in the multiverse, just nothing. She forces Allison to accept this fact.
  • Chainsaw Good: Many of the Followers of the Holy Count seem to favor chainsaws mounted on the end of polearms for their weapons.
  • Chariot Pulled by Cats: Traders on the King's Road Portal Network use Robots, animalistic bound devils, or necromantically transformed shades to pull their vehicles. Justified because animal souls are too weak to survive the Void Between the Worlds.
  • Chekhov's Skill: Allison's sorority background seems mostly insignificant in a world of gun-witches and nuclear martial-arts angels... until a somewhat unfortunate devil challenges her to a drinking contest.
  • Chest Monster: The Fortress of Yre is full of hostile creatures disguised as coins, armchairs, secretaries and such. They nearly wipe out the Caper Crew at the very beginning of their infiltration.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Is it any surprise that a Caper Crew full of devils would be full of people like this? Seeker of Thrones is essentially one long lesson in Devils are Bastards. When Suuz attempts to immediately kill Allison to get a bigger share of the loot and she's forced to kill her in retaliation, the rest of the crew only comments "it was a bit early, wasn't it"?
  • Classical Mythology: The religion espoused in the comic appears to be a blend of Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, Valentinian Gnosticism, and Existentialist philosophy... but with a heavy heaping of extra violence.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe: A core part of the setting's metaphysics: Existence is stated to be a story told by a very good liar, and any sufficiently skilled storyteller or strong enough will can successfully change Their opinion on what, if anything, should currently be happening.
  • Clean Cut: Maya uses this to slice 6 Juggernaut in half. Vertically.
  • Clothing-Concealed Injury: The friendly old "Auntie Maya" usually wears voluminous robes and styles her hair to hide extensive burns and scarring. Unknown to her traveling companions, she used to be a God-Emperor and Master Swordsman in the Universal War.
  • Coitus Interruptus: Allison is dragged into the Throne just as she's about to have sex with her boyfriend for the first time.
  • Colony Drop: Mottom performs an especially brutal one while searching for Allison in a rage, by crashing the burning remains of her floating city-palace into Mammon's Fractal Fortress of Yre. While standing on the front of it.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Devils are categorized by the colour of their mask, which determines how powerful they are. From weakest to strongest, the categories are: pale, blue, red, green, gold, and ebon. This also defines their personalities, with pale devils having none (they are barely sentient, mute, and closer to insects than humans), blue being trickster imps, red beastly prone to rage, green cunning and contemplating, and gold noble and most dangerous, with the exception of ebon devils, which are extremely rare and closest to a devil's normal state of being.
  • Common Tongue: Universal Metaconstant, the language of Throne. The writings (or at least names) in U.M. shown in the comic can be transliterated into the Latin alphabet more or less consistently. All the characters are assumed to speak U.M. through Translation Convention, with Blue Devil Liquor allowing drinkers to speak and understand it. Cio at one point mentions she tried to learn English to speak to Allison in her native tongue, but it was too complex for her.
  • Conspicuous in the Crowd: Maya's Establishing Character Moment has her continue to eat her noodles while a pitched battle rages around her. That everyone who gets too close to her dies brutally is an early hint that she's an ex-Demiurge and one of the greatest Master Swordsmen in the multiverse.
  • Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Invoked in-universe by Zoss, the former king of The Multiverse, when choosing Allison to take his place. She's the opposite gender, her name starts with a letter at the complete opposite end of the alphabet with an A rather than a Z, and she's a completely ignorant Action Survivor instead of The Philosopher King.
  • Cosmic Keystone: The Magus Keys and especially the Master Key. Their exact power isn't fully explained, but basically there were once 777,777 gods of Creation, who had each inherited a portion of YISUN The Creator's power. They each used their voice to tell a story that spoke one of the 777,777 universes into being. Although the gods are all dead, their voices are not, and the Magus Keys (who were created by the Demiurges to make use of said voices) are each a tuning fork to a specific one of God's voices. The Key allows its wielder to tap into the power of the universe that voice spoke into being, including controlling travel to and from it. The Master Key that belonged to Zoss tunes all of the voices and is therefore as powerful as all the 777,777 other keys combined; this is the Key that Allison possesses.
  • Crapsack World: The multiverse is ruled over by 7 mad god kings who visit ruin and/or tyranny over their subjects. Crime and rot is rampant. The people who understand the true nature of the universe best are complete nihilists and usually want to burn it all down. The dominant religion claims that violence and lies are an inherent and fundamental aspect of reality, and worst of all, it appears to be right.
  • Cursed with Awesome: Some call mortality humanity's greatest gift, since their finite lives also give them limitless potential.
  • Dare to Be Badass: A frequently used speech in the series.
  • Darkest Hour: In Breaker of Infinites, Allison, Cio, White Chain and the Demi-urges lose against Jagganoth after Gog-Agog abandons them. Aspected Chaos is undone, both Allison and Cio lose their right arm and eye and are in terrible shape, White Chain is nowhere to be seen, Mammon is beheaded and has his key absorbed by Jagganoth, and the whole planet is on fire or has its land destroyed. Then Cio gets killed by Incubus, Allison basically goes catatonic, and the volume ends.
  • Deal with the Devil:
    • Rather than risking grievous harm and death by grinding her way through the Void to get to the Seven Kings, Allison decides to try skipping the whole mess by making a deal with the most powerful devil in the area, a black-masked devil named Vladok. Cio immediately points out how jaw-droppingly stupid this is, but by then it's too late...
    • Subverted. Vladok agrees to do what Allison wants, if she can beat him in a Drinking Contest and if she'll wager her Key of Kings on the outcome. She actually manages to out-drink him, but he refuses to go through with his end of the bargain, choosing to break the contract - which literally destroys his sanity (and Power Limiter mask) - rather than help Allison. Vladok thought Allison was cheating, because that's what devils do. Cio did try to help Allison cheat. Cio was a bit surprised when she realized Allison won without cheating.
    • Allison continues this dumbass trend of accepting power for great debt by accepting a deal with Incubus, who offers unfettered power and resolve in exchange for her fealty, at least for now. As in, one of her nemeses, who now has partial access to the Master Key in her skull.
    • She later makes a deal with Himself, the King of all Devils, for a Caper Crew in order to rob Mammon. Subverted so far in that all the Devil asked for was for Allison to 'spare a thought for the poor Devil' when Zoss' throne is offered to her, which is probably going to have no bad long-term consequences at all.
  • Death Glare:
    • When Cio uses her paper magic to shut up Mottom in mid-spell, the demiurge responds with a look so full of loathing AM himself would find it difficult to put into words.
    • 10 Vigilant Gaze Purges the Horizon shoots 6 Juggernaut Star Scours the Universe a nasty look during the latter's first appearance. As one of the oldest Knights of the Concordance and Knights of the Thorn respectively, there is likely little love lost between them.
  • Death Trap: Mammon's Fortress of Yre is explicitly called out as being this in its entirety; there is no functional purpose to most of it except to kill any would-be thieves and intruders. One would think this is to protect the gold and vast riches held within that form the basis of Mammon's universe-spanning bank. It instead exists to protect the now enfeebled Mammon from the other six Demiurges who all vastly out-rank him in strength. Even Jadis, who has become a shriveled corpse entombed in a massive crystal after learning the secrets of the universes, could easily kill him.
  • Decompressed Comic: some pages are tightly packed with small panels and dialogue, but the comic largely consists of drawn-out, cinematic Scenery Porn and explosive, detailed action sequences. Allison being separated from Zaid and warped to Throne, an event that appears to unfold in about thirty seconds of real time, is told across nine pages, three of which are splash panels.
  • Defiant to the End: The king of a recently conquered world decides that it is worth dying to show Mottom exactly what he thinks of her. Instructed to bring her tribute, he brings her the thousands of skulls of his people who died from famine and insults her to her face in open court. She responds with her form of justice: since he cares so much about famine, she turns him into an immortal peach tree that will feed others forever.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: The teachings of YISUN praise violence, deception, ignorance and want, in contrast with nearly every other values system in existence.
    • Subverted in that, while this is the most natural way to interpret them as presented and viewed uncritically, they are actually also consistent with an Anti-Nihilist philosophy of constructing meaning where there is none, self improvement, and refusing to accept the status quo merely because change seems impossible.
  • Dem Bones: Throne holds a large population of the skeletal living dead, but they just act as beggars and vagabonds for the most part.
  • Demon Lords and Archdevils: The Council of Thirteen, the thirteen most powerful Ebon Devils in existence, who keep Himself imprisoned and relay his commands to devilkind. They are the highest governing body of all devils save for Himself.
  • Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: The reason the Goddess Prim became slave to the road, wondering if she would ever find an end to it. Many of the ends she discovered were completely without meaning, causing her to hurry away from them.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: In one of the religious texts of the setting Hansa, the god of cynics, allows his pipe smoke to befoul the air in another god's home. This enrages his host, who kills Hansa. This is considered to be tragic but clearly justified. The killer's archons then going after Hansa's estate, murdering all his retainers and servants and tormenting his innocent daughter, on the other hand... that went a bit too far even by divine standards (and the perpetrators got a Fate Worse than Death out of it: to be flayed alive for all eternity).
  • Difficult, but Awesome: Cio's Coat of Arms is "completely useless in the wrong hands, and completely and utterly devastating in the right ones." Cio had a bit of an advantage in mastering it, of course... Yabalchoath had multiple arms.
  • Distressed Damsel: Although Allison does initially play this role, it's actually her boyfriend that gets kidnapped.
  • Divine Right of Kings: Used with a twist: The Divine Right of Kings is the in-universe name for the concept of Might Makes Right. The Demiurges are divine through their supreme talent for violence and remain the royalty of the world (if not actual Royalty) by virtue of strength. A piece in The Rant mentions that kings who cloaked themselves in ermine and drove golden-wheeled chariots were all overthrown by the ones who wore battle armour and drove chariots clad in iron.
  • Double Standard: Angels have one, as pointed out by 82 White Chain. In theory, they reject all gender, but they become much more invested in this when the gender being rejected is female - for example, they have no problem with calling themselves a "brotherhood".
  • Dramatic Irony: Everyone—even the people who know the most about the prophecy—is so hung up on the pronoun "he" that they fail to realize Allison is in fact the actual heir and her having the Key is entirely on purpose, despite the increasingly obvious signs this is the case (like the fact her two closest companions are literally made out of white flame and black flame).
  • Dungeon Crawling: The third book, Seeker of Thrones, is a mix of this and The Caper, as Cio and Allison have to traverse a giant fortress filled with monsters, death traps, fanatical cultists, and more to reach the largest treasure hoard in the multiverse.
    • Mottom, on the other hand, pulls a spectacular Dungeon Bypass by ramming her flying palace into the fortress, directly into the vault.
  • Dwindling Party: The Heist on Mammon's vault proceeds this way, with the devils dying off one by one.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: Cio had insect-limbs in her first appearance. The author has admitted this was an error, or rather, the non-insect arms were an error that stuck.
    • Cio in general has probably had the most drastic appearance changes from her introduction. She went from being a witchy, insectoid, four-armed imp with massive Eye Glasses and More Teeth than the Osmond Family to borderlining on Cute Monster Girl between books 1 and 2. The author has been gradually re-adding some more elements of her earlier character design, including the carapacian body, but she's still far more traditionally attractive now than when she was introduced.
    • The comic was originally in black and white, with a few large-page spreads in color. This changed pretty early on in book 1, and entire pages were tweaked, redrawn, and recolored to match the style update.
    • White Chain's original color palette was a dull slate grey before the blue accents were added. When the comic transitioned to full color and old pages had color added to them, White Chain was given her current palette, but her old palette can still be seen on certain pages that were done after the transition to full color, but before the redraws.
    • White Chain also had extendable horns that folded out into the shape of a halo when she was initiating combat. She doesn't often do this anymore. And now that she has a human head, can't do it at all.
    • 6 Juggernaut Star originally rode in on a large, skull-faced beast, because Abbadon hadn't come up with their much more iconic skeleton bike yet.
    • Number 1 looks and acts more like a blue devil despite technically having a red mask because the Devil archetypes didn't exist when he was introduced. The author later added the concept of 'Demi-Imps' (red devils who have shrunk to the size of blue ones due to not having made any pacts in a while) to account for the discrepancy.
  • Eldritch Abomination:
    • Unmasked devils. When bound by a summoner and given a mask, a devil takes on a fixed shape, a name and a personality, and many of them come across as fairly human-like. Should it lose that mask (like by breaking a contract), it reverts to a force of mindless primal chaotic destruction, with far too many teeth and eyes and disturbing wriggly bits.
    • The angels are no slouches in this department, either, and it’s clear they take after the more… unusual aspects of Biblical angel lore. They vary wildly in form and appearance, but common elements include wings, often far too many of them and in odd arrangements, eyes where there really shouldn’t be eyes, and copious amounts of holy fire.
  • Eldritch Location: Throne itself, a floating city made out of the bodies of dead gods in the center of the multiverse. Below it sits the Void, an endless plain of ash between universes covered in disintegrating reflections of buildings and the fading souls of the dead.
  • The Empire: There are seven of them, each of which has claim to a seventh of the multiverse. Notably, only one of them is a functioning nation-state. Two are marauding armies, two are hedonistic and wasteful, one is a cult, and the last one is a bank which protects a hidden kingdom.
  • Empty Shell: Undisclosed horrible processes are used by devils to turn slaves into these in large numbers, for use in Demonic Possession. This is because, ironically, Demonic Possession is very dangerous for the devil if attempted on a healthy human. This version doesn't give them the full benefits of a Devilskin Warrior, but it is still a useful upgrade.
  • Enlightenment Superpowers: Mixed to varying extents with Charles Atlas Superpower by the setting's various Supernatural Martial Arts to the point where the distinction blurs or disappears.
  • Enlightened Antagonist: Several, which is unsurprising due to the prevalence of Enlightenment Superpowers in the setting. Notably there are Jagganoth and 6 Juggernaut Star, who are said by Word of God to know more about the world's true nature than most of the other characters and want to destroy it.
  • Establishing Character Moment: Each of the demiurges gets one in the scene where their Boss Subtitles appear, such as Mottom callously turning a man into a tree, or the revelation of Mammon's true state.
  • Eternal Recurrence: Zoss chooses an heir to his empire. Zoss is killed and turns into a ghost in the key or something. The heir undergoes the hero's journey, kills the demiurges, and takes over Heaven. Then Metatron forces/manipulates Zoss to use his key to reset the multiverse. Rinse, repeat, let the unfortunates who remember the cycles go insane.
  • The Everyman: Allison.
  • Evil Weapon: Implied with Allison's sword. After three chapters, she finally uses it for the first time during the infiltration of Yre to slice a "mimic" in half. The page is accompanied by a rather ominous Alt Text:
    ONCE UNSHEATHED, IT MUST TASTE BLOOD
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Princess wears a top that says "top".
  • Exposition Fairy: When not kicking ass and taking names, White Chain spends the first chapter explaining the world's mythology and backstory to Allison. Cio takes this duty over later on, but her temper and impatience means she tends to not be very good at it.
  • Extradimensional Emergency Exit: Allison first uses the Key of Kings for Dimensional Travel in midair after Cio defenestrates her. Cio banked on the threat of imminent death focusing Allison's desire to go home enough to activate the Key.
  • Faceless Mooks: the guards at Mottom's palace initially avoid this trope, but when the alarm is sounded they rush in with gas masks and goggles on.
  • Fan Disservice:
    • Allison appears completely naked in the void at the end of the first volume . . . but with featureless bluish-purple skin, strange wounds bleeding ghostly white light, and slightly-off proportions. Likewise, when she gets home, we get a shower scene that focuses on the filth she's washing off of herself and her horrified expression at what she just went through.
    • Likewise, Jagganoth often appears wearing very little or nothing but a well-placed Scenery Censor, but he also looks exactly like you'd expect someone who's spent his life both dealing out and taking incredible violence to look—ie, scarred up and murderous.
  • Fanfic: Cio's history of Allison, "The Chronicle of the Rising King", is based on various writings by fans of works they love, with overly embellished details like a Star-Crossed Lovers romance subplot between Allison and Cio herself.
    Pangoxes, Meta-historian of the Retroactive Record Monks, Circa 35 Third Conquest: It is unfortunate that the only near-complete and exquisitely detailed chronicle of the Rising King was so elaborately embellished. [21]  
  • Fantastic Drug: Black Glass, which is mined from veins in the bones of petrified dead gods. It's a universal intoxicant across all species, in addition to being horrifically illegal and sacrilegious due to its origins.
  • Fantastic Racism: The angels are very prejudiced towards humans (and presumably devils and servants too). Some of them are very... dogmatic about this and openly disdainful towards non-angels, others are more casually racist in the "some of my best friends are human so I'm not prejudiced" sense.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Religion: The multiverse is clearly very heavily inspired by Hinduism, with a multitude of gods that are technically the same being, themes of balance and mirrored forces, and so on. At the same time, it is not actually attempting to be Hinduism, as it's based on dualism, which is a feature more associated with Daoism. It does have a few Christian elements, with angels as upholders of the Law and devils as powerful tricksters that exist outside it. Metatron is directly out of Jewish mysticism, where he was the highest-ranked of angels and the emissary/secretary of God. Zoss, the conquering king, is implied to have inspired Zeus/Jupiter on our Earth. Similarly, Solomon David is hinted to be the inspiration behind those two Old Testament kings.
  • Feminist Fantasy: On both a superficial and a deeper level; the primary protagonists are three women (well, two women and one "slightly feminine" angel) but delved into more seriously with Allison's character arc, because as much as she struggles with understanding the very different Throne, she struggles with internalized misogyny and self-worth issues and how she actually becomes a hero. Most tellingly, after a long Ground Hog Day Loop of King Zoss picking billions if not trillions of male successors, they would travel the Hero's Journey only for every single one of them to fail. It is only after circumstances force him to pick a girl that anything starts to change.
  • Fictional Document: A few pop up here and there, such as the Manual of Hands and Feet, a work on the various mortal and supernatural martial arts of the setting.
  • Fish out of Water: Allison is heavily reliant on her companions to explain how the world works.
  • The Flame of Life: The four races each have a distinct "soul flame" that defines their intrinsic nature — human souls are mutable and ephemeral; devil souls are destructive and parasitic; angel souls are rigidly orderly; and Servant souls are stable. Individuals can stoke their own souls to an incredible magnitude through Enlightenment Superpowers. In general, the Atru religion conceptualizes the entire multiverse as the eternal fire of the Top God.
    2 Michael: All life... is fundamentally fire. The Flame Immortal, the infinite and sustained essence of YISUN. Worked by the gods Koss... and Aesma.
  • Foe-Tossing Charge: Any time an angel or demiurge goes against an army of normals, they're going to go flying!
  • Foreshadowing: A few examples:
    • The cover of book two indicates that Oskar from the forum version will make an appearance.
    • Mottom revealing to Allison the location of her boyfriend hints that Mammon will probably be the Big Bad of book three.
    • 6 Juggernaut's introduction page has the Alt Text "Woe be he that mistakes the rider for the steed." Sure enough, 6 Juggernaut's body isn't the skeleton riding the motorcycle, but the front wheel of the motorcycle itself.
  • Frame Break: Exaggerated in Breaker of Infinities 139-140 when Allison gets a look at the Shape of the Universe. Its enormity breaks out of the comic panels, breaks out of the comic page itself, and fills the entire webpage its on. It even became the background of the entire website that hosts the webcomic, effectively breaking into all the past pages, on its premiere in July 2022.
  • Funny Background Event:
    • On this page you can see what looks like two women hung upside down and bleeding away as two characters make their escape through the rooms of a brothel. This later turns out to be fridge horror. Not only are those women likely slaves (and thus unlikely to be consenting) but they are very likely being bled for drinks.
    • In the first panel of this page there's a book flying through the air behind White Chain. That's actually the head of INGSVLD, a Geas Knight who had the misfortune of being in between White Chain and Allison. The rest of him is to the lower left.
  • Fusion Dance:
    • It transpires that this has been attempted many a time, with a devil fused to a human, binding each to one another and resulting in a much stronger being possessed of the will of both. This rarely goes well, even if the human in question has been hollowed into an Empty Shell, because those wills are rarely in tune with one another. When it does, though, the results are rather spectacular, especially if the human is possessed of a Key.
    • Pushed up another notch in Breaker of Infinites with 3 beings fusing: White Chain joins in Allison and Cio's fusion to form the 18-foot-tall six armed Human / Devil / Angel hybrid The Fool: Aspected Chaos.
  • Gaia's Lament: Mykos used to be a beautiful world, covered in luminous dark woods, and home to a people who lived in splendid, intricately-carved wagons. The Queen Mottom took a liking to the local fruit, and, well...
  • Gargle Blaster: Is it any surprise that a devil drinking contest will be filled with these? The first four drinks are called Flameblood Ale, Dead Head Rum, Ichor Pale Ale, and Lymphatic Sweet Wine. And it only gets weirder (and more potent) from there.
  • Gas Mask Mooks: Mottom's soldiery seems to follow a WW1 aesthetic, with gas masks, trench coats and bayonets, belt-fed machine guns, and (during Mottom's attack on Yre) trench warfare.
  • God: YISUN. A being said to be the god of the Omniverse in all dimensions. Granted, it can't quite be called God anymore, because YISUN committed holy suicide, tired of a circular existence in eternity.
  • God Is Dead: YISUN grew weary of having an infinite existence, and thus committed suicide by splitting itself into many lesser aspects. In White Chain's words, "It was a wretched life, without meaning or perception. Imagine infinite stories to tell, Allison, and nobody to tell them to."
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: Jadis used to be the second most powerful Demiurge until she tried looking at the entire multiverse sideways. Now she's reduced to a decaying, insane corpse entombed inside a block of glass, alone with her terrible, perfect knowledge of all that is. Her most sincere wish is to die.
    • It should be noted that the previous person to try what Jadis did, Aesma, a goddess, got her eyes boiled out of their sockets in the process.
  • Gone Horribly Right: The tale of Aesma and the Red-Eyed King. After causing a massive amount of damage in one of her (rather common) world-shaking tantrums, some monks tell Aesma to go find a husband. To everyone's surprise, she does. The monks are initially happy to hear the news . . . until they see her would-be husband is the titular Red-Eyed King.
  • "Groundhog Day" Loop: The world has been trapped in one of these thanks to Zoss, who has been repeatedly rewinding causality and retrying his succession process for unknown reasons.
  • Half the Man He Used to Be: Happens to 6 Juggernaut Star, courtesy of Auntie Maya. For bonus points, she bisects them vertically with a single stroke.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: Zoss specifically warns Allison of this:
    Zoss: Take care of slaying dragons, Alice, lest ye become one.
  • The Hero's Journey: The Monomyth is referenced in the final book, Breaker of Infinities: Every time Zoss has picked a Successor before Allison, he has picked a young man who has gone through a traditional Hero's Journey with Zoss as The Mentor, crossing the Threshold into Throne, gathering allies, losing Zoss and defeating the Demiurges. After coming into his full power, the Successor meets Metatron 1 and then something happens that breaks the Journey — Jagganoth is not exactly clear on whether it's being defeated by Jagganoth, or by some consequence of defeating Jagganoth — and time being reset. While Allison goes through a Hero's Journey of her own, hers is massively off-script from the normal proceedure, to the point that Jagganoth jump-starts Armageddon because he sees this divergence as his best possible chance of killing Metatron and ending the cycle. It should be noted that in The Hero with a Thousand Faces The Hero is presented as Always Male.
  • Healing Spring: Downplayed- the waters of Throne used to act as this, but not anymore.
  • Heroic BSoD: As of Seeker of Thrones, White Chain is undergoing a massive identity crisis following her meeting Juggernaut Star and Metatron, and witnessing the uncaring nature of her fellow angels.
    Nyave: It's so strange to have met you. The guardian of stone and flame. The keeper of the law. I read many stories about your kind as a small girl. I love them still.
    White Chain: The law is broken. And we are false guardians. Attachment to your childish fantasies will only result in pain.
    • Appears to be a theme for Seeker of Thrones, seeing as Cio is also undergoing one of these and believes she can never escape being Yabalchoath.
    Cio: Devils are solitary creatures, Allison. We are pure desire. We have nothing else in our hearts. No comrades. No family. And no friends. Thank you for reminding me of that.
  • Hollywood History: Cio seems to write it:
    Cio: And yes, before tha asks, I am a history writer. Better history! Blastier! Messier! Sexier!
  • Holy Halo: Halos seem to naturally appear over the heads of those with exceptional wills. The strongest have them on 24/7, while the rest manifest them during moments of great resolve or intent.
  • How the Mighty Have Fallen: Cio once bore an ebon mask, the highest-ranking in the devils' hierarchy, and the single name Yabalchoath, marking her as one of the most powerful of her kind. She was even able to steal a Key of Kings at one point. However, by the time Allison meets Cio, she has fallen to the rank of a blue mask, the second least powerful kind of devil, and has been reduced to working at a brothel as a paper-pusher.
  • Humans Are Flawed: It seems to be a theme that humans have the potential for incredible power without foresight (see: the fact that we both banished angels from physical form, then promptly turned around and built new ones for them).
  • Humongous Mecha: Made weirder in true New Weird fashion. Several guilds own "battle angels", i.e. the colossal corpses of the Prime Angels hollowed out, furnished with various mechanisms to make them move, and outfitted with a Devil Drive. At least one of these serves as a bus around Throne.
  • I Know Your True Name:
    • When binding a devil — that is, coaxing out a bit of the formless Hot Black Flame — one must apply a mask to it as well as a name. The more names, the weaker the devil. Just ask the puny blue Princess Mamoru Moonshine Jagermeister Jack Jack Daniels Timothy Tim Bill Freddy Mercury Blueberry Luna, Esquire, formerly the mighty Ebon devil Vladok.
    • Inverted in the sense that every bound devil tries to find its own true name in the form of its ebon/black name. These are unique to each devil and can never be identical to another devil's name, though it is implied that these can "wear out" over time.
    • Aside from devils, there is also power in understanding the secret names of YISUN, especially YISUN's truest name: I.
  • I'm Dying, Please Take My MacGuffin: Only they didn't say please; to kick the plot off, Allison got the Key of Kings shoved into her skull by a dying armoured figure before she had any idea of what was going on.
  • Immediate Self-Contradiction: Maya says that the Maybe Sword is an awful, cursed weapon and Allison shouldn't bother asking Maya to teach her to use it, because the answer is no. Allison asks her anyway, and Maya says "very well".
  • Immortality Immorality: White Chain attributes the immortality of the many races of Throne as one of the reasons that it has fallen to ruin - if they did not live so long, perhaps they would not have lived to grow bored of their prosperity and ruin it with their lust, greed and vindictiveness.
  • Immune to Bullets: Angels and Devils are both immune to regular bullets: Being made of the Hot Flame Immortal without a separate body, bullets simply pass through them dealing no damage. Bullets made of Puresilver, meanwhile, detonate on contact with devil bodies and eject angels from their shells as long as the bullet is stuck in the body.
  • Immune to Drugs: Devils are immune to the negative side effects of drugs (at least partly because they're essentially a cancer on Creation), which is why so many of them are seen smoking and drinking. Devils can get drunk, but it takes a lot.
  • Important Haircut: Word of God states that "...haircuts are somewhat significant in this comic for some reason":
    • At the start of Book 3, having just punched Mottom on the face, Allison cuts her hair short as she demands her companions explain themselves.
    • Meti demanded that Maya shave off all her own hair with a rusty sword in order to become Meti's apprentice. When Allison becomes Maya's apprentice, Maya shaves Allison's head for her and then her own, similarly to her own apprenticeship under Meti.
  • Impossible Task: Before Meti would accept Maya as an apprentice, she demanded that Maya shave off all her hair with a rusty, pitted, useless sword.
    • Mammon struggles with a self imposed one, compulsively trying to finish counting his endless vault. He has long since forgotten why any of it ever mattered to him.
    • Solomon David sets one as the goal for the Ring of Power. The best fighters in the multiverse gather, and battle each other for the privilege of fighting Solomon David himself. Anyone who draws a single drop of blood can ask him for literally anything. No challenger has ever even come close.
  • Ironic Echo: Early in the Vault of Yre, Allison declares that nobody can tell her that a normal girl from LA can't kill a dragon. The Alt Text has fun with this; when she actually sees how huge the dragon in question is, it reads "It was at that exact moment that Allison realized that a normal girl from LA may not, in fact, be able to slay a dragon." And later, once she actually talks to him and realizes he's just a kindly, senile old grandpa, it reads "It was then that Allison realized a normal girl from L.A. really, REALLY couldn't slay a dragon."
  • Ironic Name: Lucky Felicia is one of the first to die in the Vault of Yre. Subverted when it's revealed she somehow survived, sans her left arm.
  • Kneel Before Zod: Allison infiltrates a group of girls who are to be presented as tribute to Mottom, the absolute ruler of 111,111 universes. Their guide tells them "When she rises, you will prostrate yourselves." (Emphasis in original.)
  • Know When to Fold 'Em: In King of Swords, Solomon enters every survivor of his tournament's Battle Royale into a final round and offers them two choices - standing still and doing absolutely nothing, and winning a prize just for that... or attacking Solomon directly for the chance to spill a drop of Solomon's blood and become the tournament's winner. A few entrants immediately go for the former and sit down or walk away rather than face him. True to his word, Solomon doesn't touch any of them even as he uses a Speed Blitz to pureé everyone in the arena with a raised weapon.
  • Koan: The liturgy features a lot of them.
  • Kryptonite Factor: Puresilver, both in the form of bullets and in the form of Vacus Needles, can force devils and angels into the void. It's also highly effective against anyone else who relies heavily on their Atum burning particularly bright, such as inexperienced key-wielders like Allison.
  • Layered Metropolis: The central sections of Throne have developed into this.
  • "Leave Your Quest" Test: The second half of Breaker of Infinities is this, with Jadis trying to convince Allison to give up and rest because nothing matters.
  • Lipstick-and-Load Montage: In this episode Allison puts on her lipstick before heading into danger. She says it calms her down.
  • Loophole Abuse: The Thorn Knights manage this on a cosmic scale thanks to Metatron's comprehensive knowledge of the Old Law, which might explain how they, as angels and vessels of the Law, can try to destroy the Multiverse in the name of serving and protecting Creation.
  • Ludicrous Gibs: What else would you expect from a comic called "Kill Six Billion Demons"?
  • Madness Mantra: The alt-text on page 7-63 starts by introducing the cast of the Gog-Agog show, which features Gog-Agog, is written and directed by Gog-Agog, and eventually devolves into simply repeating Gog-Agog over and over and over again 30 more times.
  • Magical Incantation: The first demonstration of proper magic in the comic, courtesy of Cio: "My paper soldiers form a wall / five paces thick and twice as tall." If you look closely, you can actually see her sewing the words into the paper soldiers to make them come alive.
  • Magikarp Power: Human souls lack the raw power of Demon souls and the stability of Servant and Angel souls, making them the weakest race by default. However, they also have the most adaptability and potential. Most humans will never reach their peak, but out of the few who do, there is a good reason most of the demiurges are humans.
  • Magitek: Several modes of transportation, such as flying ships and the husks of the Prime Angels, are powered by "devil drives", which run on the essence of captive unbound devils.
  • Malevolent Architecture: Mammon's fractal fortress of Yre has an infinitely large interior, most of which serves no purpose but to kill anybody who trespasses. The remainder houses Mammon's Cult and the Scaled God of the Deeps himself, who also kill anybody who trespasses, albeit much more slowly and creatively.
  • Maneki Neko: Lucky Felicia, the so-called "lockpicker" of Oscar's heist party, is modeled after one.
  • Many-Faced Divinity: The creator god Yisun draws inspiration from Vedic imagery of deities having many faces and exaggerates it by having entire alternate bodies radiating out from their center. This is to signify that Yisun was an infinite being who contained all possibilities (and impossibilities) within themself.
  • Master-Apprentice Chain: Several characters of a skill take on the surname of their master in a patronymic fashion. Maya, who was trained by the Master Swordsman Meti, is known as "Mathangi ten Meti" (Mathangi being her full name), while Meti herself was known as "Meti ten Ryo", by the armsmaster who trained her.
  • Meaningful Name: See Names to Run Away from Really Fast below.
  • Medieval Stasis: Higher technology from all across the multiverse exists but is forbidden in Throne as a means of control by its seven rulers. Also, the Art trumps most types of technology, so only Jagganoth and his forces care about military tech.
  • Mega City: The Red City of Throne has a population of roughly 800 million souls, which would make it the third most populous country on modern-day Earth on its own. It is also home to an unknown number of dead and soul-less, making its potential total population much bigger.
  • Men Are Generic, Women Are Special: All Angels have No Biological Sex and are officially androgynous, but in practice they treat each other as male, considering femininity to be too human and deviant.
  • Multiple-Choice Chosen: In each iteration of the Time Loop, Zoss chooses a The Chosen Zero who undergoes the hero's journey, kills the Demiurges, and takes over Heaven, and then their entire journey is reset as Zoss either chooses them again or moves on to another pick. In this particular iteration, Zoss decided to choose a candidate that didn't fit Metatron's list of requirements (namely, Allison is female) in an attempt to Screw Destiny.
  • Multiversal Conqueror: The multiverse has already been conquered. If there aren't endless inhuman sorcerous armies or undefeatable gods appearing on your world to subdue it, it is only because there are so many worlds that they haven't bothered to pay attention to you yet. Notably, the multiverse is vast enough and the residents of Throne are so powerful that even minor criminal syndicates and mercenary companies are able to conquer multiple worlds for their demiurge masters.
  • The Multiverse: The story takes place in an alternate realm called Throne, which connects thousands of other universes; 777,777, to be exact.
  • Mundane Utility: At least one battle angel (i.e. the hollowed-out, mechanized corpse of a colossal Prime Angel) is used as a bus in Throne.
    • The alt-text for King of Swords 10-148;
    "Angels, despite their size and their armored shell being extremely heavy, can move incredibly quietly when they need to. This incredible agility was purportedly granted to them by the god Koss in order to better apprehend evildoers, but angels most often use it to try and not disturb people when walking up and down stairs and on wood floors."
  • Musical Episode: Taking part in a devil drinking contest forces you to start singing all your dialogue, as Alice finds out on her second visit to Throne.
  • Mystical 108:
    • On Page 4-78 we are told this about the new King of All Creation:
    Translated Prophecy: He will be flanked by a white and a black flame. His coming will be followed by 108 burning stars.
    • Allison is indeed followed by The Pursuers, a loose coalition of mercenaries out to try and get her Key of Kings. Word of God states that there are indeed always 108 of them, and after yet another chaotic and backstabbing melee they erupt into claims some lives, more join up to refill the number up to 108 once more.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
    • White Chain's full name is "82 White Chain Born in Emptiness Returns to Subdue Evil". Obviously, it is not used very often.
    • The Demiurges all have the names associated with legendary demons, heroes, holy lands, and so forth: Jagganoth. Jadis. Mammon. Mottom. Gog-Agog. Solomon. Incubus.
    • The last name of the fat noodle-eating woman Allison meets in Hell 71 is Murder the Gods and Topple their Thrones.
    • Allison, of all people, gets one. According to the prophecy of The Successor, she will eventually take the name "Kill Six Billion Demons". And if you're paying attention, her name sounds a lot like Al-YISUN.
  • Name That Unfolds Like Lotus Blossom:
    • The angels have particularly grandiose names with a number tacked on to signify how many times they’ve reincarnated, such as 82 White Chain Born in Emptiness Returns to Subdue Evil, or 6 Juggernaut Star Scours the Universe.
    • Humans get in on the act, too. These include Mathangi Ten Meti "Maya" Mantra, whose surname apparently means "Murder the Gods and Topple Their Thrones", and Allison herself, who will eventually take the name Kill Six Billion Demons.
    • Queen Nadia Om, the Blood Flower, Imperatrix of the Gates of Fire. Bearer of the word Glory, and Goddess of the Seven Part World. Overlaps with Try to Fit That on a Business Card, as only Nadia Om is her "name".
    • Probably the ultimate example in the comic is YISUN themself, whose seven-syllable name, YS ATUN VRAMA PRESH, can translate either to "The Glory, The Tower, The Flame, The Diamond, The Blade, The Mind, The Beast" or to three entire chapters of religious scripture. One doesn't get much more grandiose than that.
  • Negatives as a Positive: The goddess Ys Pree Ashma, also known as Aesma, is reckless, impulsive, stupidly strong, and prone to violence. It's these qualities that mark her as one of YISUN's greatest disciples, as it means she is never content with the state of things and always strives for greater.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: All over the place. It would be easier to list characters who don't fit this trope. Some of the best examples:
    • Angels, "controlled nuclear explosions" contained within humanoid stone shells adept in aeons-old martial arts - oh, and they explode upon death.
    • 6 Juggernaut Star Scours the Universe, a flaming red skeleton angel who rides a motorcycle made of the souls of sinners. And she's actually the wheel, not the armor that rides it.
    • Mammon, an alien dragon who runs the greatest bank in the multiverse, and is served by a fanatical cult of chainsaw-wielding clerk-priests.
    • Mammon's emissary, 00001, a Knight Templar version of the Virgin Mary wielding a gigantic poleaxe made of fire and clad head to toe in bondage gear.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Mottom and Gog-Agog each do this in their own way to screw up the spear attack against Jagganoth. Gog-Agog demands to be told she's important before she'll help, and Mottom, instead of just sucking it up and spitting out something nice, yells at her. This means Gog-Agog splits, the spear fails, and Jagganoth blows apart all of Rayuba, plus Aspected Chaos, which nearly kills Allison, Cio, and (off-screen) White Chain.
  • No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: Mottom, naturally enough, pulls this when Allison confronts her.
  • Non-Lethal K.O.: As pointed out by White Chain following a beat down, getting banished to the Void is this for demons ("They will return"), so it's still a Technical Pacifist thing even if it looks terribly violent.
  • Not Quite Dead: Much to Oscar (and the reader's) surprise, Felicia not only survived being fed to the door inside the vault, but she's out for blood in revenge for the betrayal.
  • Offerings to the Gods: Mottom's cult teaches that all good and beauty flow from her and will ultimately return to her, so her Decadent Court receives a steady flow of the choicest treasures from her conquered worlds. A lot of them end up in the palace storerooms, untouched.
  • Offhand Backhand: White Chain disposes of one of her opponents in the tournament like this, here.
  • Off with His Head!: The first decapitation occurs here. There have been several more.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • White Chain, upon noticing that Allison has a Magus Gate.
    White Chain: By the Tower and the secret name of God.
  • One-Man Army: Several.
    • Angels are this by default, being made specifically to uphold the law in Throne. In their debut, White Chain effortlessly slaughters an entire Guild with their bare hands - keep in mind that they're one of the weaker angels in the setting.
    • The legendary swordswoman Meti once fought ten thousand men, completely naked, armed with only a single sword. She won.
    • Meti's only apprentice, Auntie Maya, also qualifies. We've only seen her in a remotely prolonged fight twice so far, but both times were all out gang-wars, and she came out without a scratch. During the fight in Hell 71, she killed people without standing up from a noodle vendor's stand or even turning around to face them.
    • According to Word of God, all Red Devils are this.
    Anonymous: So red devils are summoned as body-guards or warriors. How would your average red devil do in say World War 2, or in the middle east?
    Abaddon: They don’t need to eat or sleep, they are very jolly about horrific violence, and they can weigh up to 800-1000 pounds and rip a man’s head from his shoulders, so I imagine probably the same as if you armed up a grizzly bear that happened to like smoking a pipe.
    • Zoss, the Conquering King is probably one of the best examples of this. Upon arriving to Throne, he found the entire place guarded by the Prime Angels, so he killed every single one (except Metatron) with his own two hands.
    • The Seven are all this, thanks either to their innate power (you don't become a Demiurge without having the ability to kill an existing one, and all but one of the Seven obtained their first key(s) through Regicide) or by owning a Magus Key that grants them unspecific powers on a cosmic scale. Mottom can literally speak people dead with a word, Mammon can exhale an endless stream of liquid metal (implied to be gold) on top of being a giant dragon, Solomon David can kill hundreds of people before they can even react, and Gog-Agog and Jagganoth pack enough destructive power to level continents on their own. With the implication that Magus Keys grant you the ability to move or destroy suns (although not as a battle move), they perhaps better classify as 'walking apocalypses'.
  • Only Mostly Dead: Lucky Felicia reappears in Mammon's vault, sans one arm, to blow a hole in Oscar.
  • Orcus on His Throne: The Seven are all this in regards to Allison, at least at first. At the point the comic's story starts they've enjoyed near-unchecked power since the end of the Universal War and the signing of the Pact of the Seven-Part World, which happened centuries ago. When they are informed that The Successor has arrived in the form of Zaid and that the Master Key is in play, none of them seem particularly willing to change their routines to stop it, despite knowing through a prophecy that both will be instrumental to their defeat. Mostly this comes down to the Pact of the Seven-Part World and the Demiurges' inability to cooperate making all of them extremely unwilling to make an unsanctioned move, lest the Universal War starts again. Most of the Seven also don't believe Allison (or, for that matter, Zaid) are the real deal and keep expecting Zoss to have a plan B they just cannot see yet, and Jagganoth's growing power overshadows whatever threat Allison could possibly pose. Jagganoth ultimately blows up the Pact — and the comic's Status Quo — when he attacks Rayuba in King of Swords and ends the era of the Demiurges being inactive recluses.
  • Overly Long Name: Allison renames a devil to Princess Mamoru Moonshine Jagermeister Jack Jack Daniels Timothy Tim Bill Freddy Mercury Blueberry Luna, Esquire. She had intended to just call it Princess, but found out that one name was not enough, and had to make the others up on the spot.
  • Our Angels Are Different:
    • The being which the main character is traveling with in the Throne is an angel, mostly in name and temperament only. Appearance-wise, they are a statuesque being, riddled with holes which emit green flames with numerous eyes in them.
    • The angels seem to condense with age: Plasma, Vapor, Liquid, Solid (Igneous or Metamorphic), Crystal, and Neutron. We've only seen one Neutron Angel, that being 1 Metatron.
    • An alt text describes angels as somewhat like tanks, but instead of "an armored shell protecting a core of weak flesh and razor sharp reason" they are "a fired stone or metal shell protecting a controlled nuclear explosion skilled in millennia old martial arts".
    • Angels Cannot Tell a Lie. If they do, their shell becomes fractured and it seems to cause them pain. One of White Chain's eyes is seen only after they tell a lie.
    • Angels all appear to be androgynous. Some have varying opinions on gender: White Chain wants to be feminine but represses it, Delicious flaunts femininity, 2 Michael thinks that being too human (such as being gendered) is disgusting, while some angels consider each other "brothers".
    • The angels do possess wings, and they have eyes on them.
    • Another angel, 10 Vigilant Gaze Purges the Horizon, appears as a horse that has a metal ring encircled with eyes in place of a head.
    • The angel 12 Questioning Fate is a free-floating purple rhombicuboctahedron with a halo.
  • Our Demons Are Different: Devils come from the Void between worlds, where they were all previously banished by the gods as the Hot Black Flame, a formless chaos. Humans and Demiurges gave the devils form by naming them individually and bestowing upon them masks, allowing them entry into Throne. They are "born" with a large number of names and come in six kinds, based on how many names they have shorn off, which changes the color of their mask:
    • Pale devils, mute and insectlike, have the most names. They generally seem to do simple labor for other devils. They have grey fur and multiple arms, and their mask is the least humanoid, with no mouth or features save a number of randomly-arranged eyeholes.
    • Blue devils are small and imp-like, with tall, straight horns. They apparently tend towards kleptomania and are fond of vice and liquor.
    • Red devils have large horns and tend to be very hairy. They are the most aggressive and warlike, often summoned to act as enforcers, warriors and guards, which they'll gladly do in exchange for alcohol and trinkets until they find a loophole in their contract and dismember their summoner.
    • Green devils have skull-like masks, resemble reptiles and are often winged. They are slow and sluggish in their movements, something that belies a thoughtful and manipulative nature. They deal in secrets and are skilled liars.
    • Gold devils have creepily human-like masks and dress in rags or finery. They are extremely intelligent and have perfect memories, coupled with a great love of wealth and a profound sense of malice. They are the most dangerous devil one is likely to encounter, and attempting to bind them is extremely inadvisable.
    • Finally, Ebon devils have managed to shear off all their names but one, their “black” name. They are very wily and very dangerous, even more so than Gold devils, and there are only a few dozen in the entire multiverse.
    • There’s also the King of the Devils, simply named Himself. Little to nothing is known of him, but he seems to be an exception of sorts from the normal devil ranking system.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: The term "dragon" in the KSBD universe is usually used as an alternate name for the Kind People, a Servant race of scaled, four-eyed quadrupedal beings looking like a cross between arachnids and pack animals.
  • Our Goblins Are Different: In the KSBD setting, goblins like the guildmaster Omun Vash are grey-skinned humanoids with crested heads and multiple rows of slits in place of eyes and a nose- these slits act as extremely sensitive nostrils, and goblins sense the world primarily by smell instead of sight.
  • Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Almost any fight scene is guaranteed to be filled with gallons and gallons of blood.
  • Painted Tunnel, Real Train: Xand, per the Alt Text in her introduction, paints a door realistic enough to fool the reader into thinking that they're guarding something important.
  • Painting the Medium: Most uses of Division (or Cutting) involve literally channeling nothingness, and are thus colored a pure white, the same kind the comic uses to divide panel borders. When used dramatically, it gives the effect that the characters in question are so strong the usual layouts of the comic can't contain them.
    • Exaggerated in this page, in which Allison's view of The Wheel becomes the actual background of the comic's website, where before it was just uniformly black.
  • Paper Master: Cio uses the Art in this way, by transforming sheets of paper into various magical items such as spinning walls, a little amulet that absorbs alcohol for you, and in - at least one case - a giant paper bird the size of a dragon.
  • Parrying Bullets: Auntie Maya "Murder the Gods and Topple Their Thrones" deflects a bullet with her mind. After impact, the bullet falls in half.
  • Planet Looters: Most of the Demiurges, to one degree or another, with Mottom and Gog-Agog being the most rapacious. Even worlds incorporated into Solomon David's Celestial Empire, making them the best conquered worlds to live in that we know of, are still part of a tyrannical, hegemonic empire.
  • Portal Crossroad World: Throne has several portals called King's Gates. Each of these connects to a paired gate on the King's Road in the Void (where distance is meaningless), which has a second set of gates (or an alternate way or using one of the previous two) on it that lead to each universe.
  • The Power of Friendship:
    • Incubus mocks the idea here; when Allison asks him if she's strong, he responds with an outrageously insincere statement that they're friends (which they are not) and that that's the true power (when Incubus is entirely defined by his belief that the only true power is the ability to kill people.)
    • It is played much straighter in the case of Allison and her travelling companions; one of Allison's only advantages from her relative lack of power is that she is able to meet her companions as an equal and form genuine bonds with them; the Demiurges, meanwhile, have all stopped cooperating long ago. They are all Lonely at the Top and view each other as tenuous allies at best and outright rivals at worst (to say nothing of what they think of their subjects); Mammon was the only one of them who seemed to genuinely think they were friends with some of them and who genuinely cares about the lives of his followers; both of them are implied to be because of his senility having tempered his greed.
    • According to Zoss, the only way to break the wheel is to share one's burdens with companions, which he calls 'strength beyond strength'.
  • The Power of Language: Existence is a story told by a very good liar. Each of the universes are similarly a story told by one of the gods, explaining why they are so different. The power of storytelling and speech is tightly tied into The Power of Belief, and the Magus Keys are all tuning forks for the voices of God.
  • Pre Ass Kicking One Liner:
    • "I have a name!"
    • "I choose King." Right before Allison permakills Mottom's Eldritch Abomination husband.
    • "Forgive me for this violence I am about to inflict" is used by the more well-meaning Angels, like 82 White Chain, before kicking the crap out of criminals.
    • "What do you think about death?" seems to be dropped by Maya right before she ends up cutting quite a few people apart.
  • Precision F-Strike: When Allison finally has had enough of being confused and yelled at.
  • Protagonist Title: "Kill Six Billion Demons" is not a command, but a name, one which has been carried by many in the past, and throughout most of the book there is some confusion as to whether it currently belongs to Allison, Zaid or someone else. However, as of Breaker of Infinities, it's been confirmed that not only does the books' main title belong to Allison, but so do the names of each and every chapter of the book so far.
  • The Prophecy: The Prophecy of the Successor, courtesy of Jadis.
    Prophecy: The king of creation fell out of heaven, usurped by a seven headed beast. But the old king shall choose a new, and he will ignite the third conquest. He will be flanked by a white and a black flame, his coming will be followed by 108 burning stars. He will bear the terrible heat of the voice in his brow, the mark of his lordliness. He will face the beast - and he will annihilate it. He will wield the terrible blade of want, and the pillars of heaven will quake with his coming. And his name - his name will be - Kill Six Billion Demons.
  • Prophecy Twist: Kill Six Billion Demons isn't necessarily a "he", leaving the door open to Allison - or even a demon or angel - to become the Successor to Zoss.
  • Razor-Sharp Hand: The basic premise of the martial arts style Patram Sword Hand, most notably practiced by the Thorn Knight known as 6 Juggernaut Star Scours the Universe.
  • Reincarnation: Zig-zagged. According to lore, Angels always reincarnate when they die, resurrecting them with some form of memory and power loss. Supposedly, Servant souls reincarnate normally. Humans completely avert this - their souls are made of divine flames, which are snuffed when they die.
  • Religion of Evil: While not a religion in the traditional sense, the teachings of YISUN can easily be interpreted this way, as they tend to espouse the virtues of violence, deception and ignorance over such things as peace, truth and enlightenment.
  • Retcon: Some dialogue in Book 1 was tweaked as the story was developed. Initially, White Chain's reaction to Allison implied that she couldn't conceive of how Allison had no knowledge of YISUN, Throne, or the teachings of Atru, presumably because the concept of the King's Gates hadn't yet been developed.
    • White Chain became just a teeny bit less standoffish and her dialogue less cryptic, while Allison was given some brief moments of calm rather than being hysterical for almost the entirety of Book 1.
    • Some pages were also retroactively added to Book 1 to explain more about the world and it's inhabitants.
    • More recently, the dialogue on this page was changed. Maya initially commented on 6 Juggernaut's changing face, to which 6 Juggernaut roared "WHAT FACE?!" According to the author, this was modified because it made 6 Juggernaut come off as petulant, which wasn't intended, and accidentally implied that 6 Juggernaut had awareness of the brief shift, which they (probably) didn't.
  • Rhyming Wizardry: Cio recite one of these spells in an attempt to make Allison (who, by this point in the story, is still getting over the fact that demons exist) avert Can't Hold Her Liquor during a Drinking Contest. Because of the way magic works in this setting, Allison simply hating herself and believing she could outdrink a demon allowed her to win without the charm, which she was supposed to consume.
    Cio: Though she standeth two and five, she drinketh all the oceans wide.
  • Right Under Their Noses: In 4-79 Kill Six Billion Demons is apparently watching nearby from the void outside reality as the Demiurges discuss their coming destroyer. This is reflected meta-textually by the link to their page being hidden right under the page of the Demiurges' meeting hall.
    Prophecy: And his name - his name will be - Kill Six Billion Demons.
    Kill Six Billion Demons: Don't wear it out.
  • Rocketless Reentry: During Breaker of Infinities, Allison, Cio, Mottom, Incubus and Solomon experience to this thanks to Jagganoth. All of them survive, though Allison almost passes out from blood loss and drowns, Solomon is knocked unconscious, Incubus is forced to regenerate his body back, and Mottom is crippled. Unfortunately, Jagganoth follows them down planetside by voluntarily jumping down from low orbit.
  • Rousing Speech:
  • Running Gag: Mottom gets a lot of mileage out of exploding Gog-Agog’s head, given that she can just grow a new one at will.
  • Scene of Wonder: Allison's first moments Trapped in Another World are too hectic to appreciate. Then she gets some coffee and a panoramic view of where she is: the Absurdly Cool City at the centre of The Multiverse, built on the corpses of gods and populated by more species than she ever imagined existed.
    Allison: This can't be real.
    White Chain: A narrow concept. This is Throne, domain of kings.
  • Scenery Porn: There is a lot of detailed artwork, all in full colour.
  • Schizo Tech: Some worlds are overall primitive, but will still have a few modern forms of technology like televisions.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: At the Discordance of the Demiurges, Allison gates out because she knows that despite the strength of her Key, she cannot stand up to what's going down. Shame Jagganoth stops her.
    • Omun Vash's enforcer/bodyguard Kill Boss has one when he realizes he's up against an angel: "I ain't being paid enough for this shit."
  • Shoo Out the Clowns: Cio drops her comical Black Speech dialect (or at least severely dials it down) whenever the mood turns darker or more serious. This is especially notable when she gives Allison a pep talk early into Seeker of Thrones. Later into the chapter when her Heroic BSoD peaks, she speaks entirely without the accent.
  • Shout-Out: Now has its own page.
  • Side Effects Include...: Blue devil liquor can increase one's healing abilities and allow them to understand demonic speech, but it also causes people to grow horns and also a small devil to gestate inside their bodies. Fortunately, these effects are temporary: the horns disappear, and the devil is eventually regurgitated without lasting harm. That said, a drinker must then eat the devil to retain the effects.
  • Silver Has Mystic Powers: Puresilver is a rare, magical metal that is harmful to beings who are normally unbothered by physical damage, including gods like Aesma. Oscar carries a gun with puresilver bullets which are much more dangerous to devils than regular ones, and needles made of it can be used to both bind devils into their masks and banish angels into the void.
  • Single-Stroke Battle: Auntie Maya vs. 6 Juggernaut Star. She slices them in half, vertically, with a single cut.
  • Slap-Slap-Kiss: The origin myths of Throne feature a Slap-Slap-Kiss of cosmic proportions between the primordial deities YIS and UN:
    White Chain: In fact, they were so horrified at each other's abject hideousness that they warred for seven years. And after, made love for seven hours.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Averted in that the author has said that Mottom, the first demiurge Allison faces, isn't the weakest of the seven.
  • Soul Eating: Devils get access to human or Servant soul flames through pacts, usually through a symbiosis that only consumes the soul after death. Some devils, like Cio's previous incarnation as Yabalchoath, eschew the pact and chow down on body and soul together.
  • Speaking Simlish: The ascended speech sounds like this to Allison before she drinks Blue Devil Liquor.
  • Special Person, Normal Name:
    • Our heroine Allison is in line to become one of the most special people in the multiverse. (Although in-setting her name is a bit special, in that it contains the syllables for YISUN.)
    • The God Empress Mottom has a very long and imposing title, but her personal name is Nadia.
  • Speed Blitz: Used by Solomon David during King of Swords, when he decides to kill all the washouts of his tournament to psyche out White Chain. He later uses it during the arc's final duel and during Breaker of Infinities, but White Chain is able to temporarily match his speed through pure willpower, and Jagganoth is able to endure an unending amount of them.
  • Spikes of Villainy: Exactly how villainous the Thorn Angels really are hasn't been revealed yet (although White Chain definitely considers them evil), but their spiky armour certainly looks the part.
  • Strange-Syntax Speaker: Several of the lesser demons speak in a nigh-incomprehensible dialect that can be difficult to understand. When two have to speak to each other like this, their dialogue is subtitled.
  • Stumbling in the New Form: When Allison and Cio fused into Allicio for the first time, there was a fair bit of tripping over one another at first, a matter complicated by the fact that they were in the middle of a fight.
  • Suicidal Pacifism: Inverted. The Silent Monks of Ki Rata are the practitioners of the most powerful Fist Art in the multiverse - so powerful, in fact, that they refuse to ever use it practically. When their homeworld was attacked by the Demiurge, Yemmod, they refused to even lift a finger to help their people. Everyone on their homeworld died. Even the sun was destroyed. Solomon David took exception to this.
  • Sunken Face: Allison reacts to a surprise encounter with Gog-Agog by punching a hole into her face. Being The Worm That Walks, she's unharmed, but is a bit annoyed to be the butt of yet another Amusing Injury.
    Gog-Agog: owie zowie! nobody gives me a fair shake!! [pops her nose back out]
  • Supernaturally-Validated Trans Person: 82 White Chain and Delicious, two angels that secretly and openly identify as women, have forms in the Void that reflect this, reminiscent of female humanoids. When White Chain later becomes human due to shenanigans, her new form is that of a human woman (although her genitals are obscured, which according to Word of God is to avoid alienating trans persons in the audience).
  • Taking You with Me:
    • When the Ebon Devil Vladok is defeated in a drinking contest, he decides that he would rather break his own mask - reverting into a mindless unbound devil and dragging everyone around him into the Void - than to honor his pact with Allison.
    • Angels also have a predisposition for this trope; when their stone armor is breached, they go off like a bomb as the cold white fire of their bodies is shunted back to the Void, generally destroying whoever defeated them.
      The Rant: "I wasted five hours of hard fighting and a hundred and fifty of my best men bringing it down. Then it exploded." — General Yross of the Yellow Moon Brood, on fighting angels
  • Talking Is a Free Action: When a law-enforcing angel begins a fight, they will usually start off with a prayer and limit their actions to defending themselves until done. Some criminals think that they can use this time to inflict some damage, but angels are far ahead enough of most people to get away with it.
  • Tarot Motifs:
    • Book Four is titled King of Swords. In chapter 10, page 141 alone contains what seem to be references to the Wheel of Fortune, the Ten of Swords and possibly the Hanged Man (Metatron hanging upside down)
      • The King of Swords represents the archetype of The Philosopher King. Solomon David is named after two of these from the bible, and tries to embody it, though he falls short due to his own pride. Incubus embodies it in a more literal way, being a leader and a great swordsman, though hardly a philosopher. Only Zoss is the true king of swords, as he embodies every aspect of it, to the point where he has realized that he must put down his blade and pass his title to another.
      • The Wheel of Fortune represents the inevitability of fate and the cycles of life, reflecting how the universe is stuck in a Vicious Cycle.
      • The Hanged Man represents a man in deep thought and serenity, reflecting how Metatron is The Chessmaster behind everything.
      • Ten of Swords represents the end of good things, crisis and despair. Exactly how Zoss felt after realizing his lot in the universe as Metatron's pawn.
    • Mammon's word of Royalty is Tower and he dwells in a literal tower; Book Three ends with said tower being broken and cast down.
    • In Breaker of Infinities, White Chain, Allison and Cio combine to become The Fool: Aspected Chaos. The Fool represents someone favored by the gods, for whom it will always work out for in the end if they only follow their own path. The protagonist, essentially.
  • Test of Pain: One God-Emperor's Praetorian Guard only accepted men who could withstand a two-hour flogging. It doubled as a Secret Test of Character: men who stayed completely silent throughout were too dangerous to keep.
    Au Vam did not trust any man who had become so intimate with pain. A man like that must be fed with blood.
  • Theme Naming:
    • The Demiurges are all named of biblical or other religious heroes, demons, places etc. note 
    • Judging from the two Prime Angels shown so far (Michael and Metatron), all Prime Angels seem to be named after biblical archangels.
  • These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: The dominant religion, Atru, praises the virtue of ignorance. When you see the Straw Nihilist attitude of those who understand the true nature of this Crapsack World best, it's not hard to see why.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: When Vladok decides he'd rather shatter his mask and drag everyone into the Void rather than honour his contract, there's a Beat Panel, a nigh-audible Record Needle Scratch as the singing breaks off, and some very evocative expressions of mute dismay.
  • Time Abyss: White Chain's boss, 2 Michael, guarded Throne for "over thirty kalpa." It sounds like a made up unit of time, but it's an actual measure in Buddhism, which is more or less only conveyed as really god damn long. Buddha himself came up with several examples, and doing the math on one shows the example to last approximately two octillion, four hundred thirteen septillion years, and still not encompass a kalpa's totality. 2 Michael has existed for at least thirty of these.
  • Timeskip:
    • One year passes between the end of Book 3 and the beginning of Book 4.
    • Another Time Skip occurs during Breaker of Infinities, with Allison being forced to reconvalesce after the Discordance. Three years, if Jadis is to be believed.
  • Title Drop: Old man Zoss seems to be in charge of these. So far, every one of his speeches to Allison have led to him strategically dropping the book's title:
    • Book One: "Alice. Kill Six Billion Demons."
    • Book Two: "Fate is not a cage except for those who fear it. A true ruler is the wielder of names."
    • Book Three: "So you seek the throne then. I thought this cycle might bear out differently."
    • Book Four: "The king of swords must cast aside his blade and let his burden be taken by another." note 
    • Book Five brings us a combined title drop when Allison snaps out of her Achilles in His Tent funk, rejects Jadis's idea that she should stop fighting, and takes up her power, getting her own demiurge title card: Kill Six Billion Demons, the Heir, Wielder of Names, Seeker of Thrones, King of Swords, Breaker of Infinities, Wheel Smashing Lord. Incidentally, that last one is Book 6's title.
  • Time Stands Still: The higher level Ki Rata techniques all seem to have this characteristic, which Solomon David employs to devastating effect against the Ring of Power contestants as well as White Chain. Not so much against Jagganoth, unfortunately.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Solomon offers all of the competitors in his tournament a chance to spill a drop of his blood or automatically get great rewards for doing nothing. The majority of the competitors take him up on his challenge, and the Alt Text lampshades that there are always fools who think they can win, having failed to have noticed that countless warriors over many generations have already died trying. Sure enough, Solomon renders them completely helpless via Time Stands Still and slaughters the lot of them.
  • Tournament Arc: King of Swords is halfway made up of one. At one point this is gleefully lampshaded by the author in The Rant, who mentions that with all the anime tropes he'd been using a tournament arc was pretty much inevitable.
  • Translation: "Yes" / Tactful Translation: In the subtitles of this page.
    Cio: Blasted poxerly vacuous gaperly whoreson! [What?]
    Cio: Wretchly malodorous molleycoddle! Tha fumorous discharge! [I am discontent with this news!]
  • Translator Microbes: Blue Devil Liquor allows one to understand the Universal Language of Throne, although it has fairly dramatic side-effects; see Side Effects Include... above.
  • Transmutation: Transmutation is integral to the "Art of Lying to the Face of God", or magic. The Red Art of Dominion empowers a practitioner to convince the universe that one form of physical matter is actually another form, like creating fruit out of thin air. The White Art of Division can transform the self, like traveling across dimensions. Combined, they can transmute others, like turning a human into a tree.
  • Undressing the Unconscious: Allison wakes up in White Chain's apartment with a fresh set of clothes after first being catapulted into Throne, crashing into a gang fight, and passing out. It contributes to her Rage Breaking Point when White Chain ignores her questions and starts interrogating her.
    Allison: I'm exhausted, my face is on fire, and I'm pretty sure you've seen me naked—you, a person made of stone who is lecturing me in a different language which somehow I understand. What the fuck is going on?!
  • Unusual Halo: Halos are a manifestation of the bearer's soul flame and range from a mote of light to a full-body Battle Aura. The God Emperors have even more distinct ones:
    • Mottom's halo looks like gold filigree, and sometimes appears to be incorporated into her elaborate outfits.
    • Solomon David has a large, purple halo that splits into concentric rings when he manifests his power.
    • Gog-Agog's halo doesn't hold its shape and appears to be made of a pallid, dribbling goo.
    • When Mammon finally gets dangerous, he manifests a large halo of yellow fire to match his Breath Weapon.
    • Incubus often limits his halo to a small flame, but it sometimes flares up out of his eyes or forms into a trio of stars to match his forehead implants.
    • For the Final Battle, Jagganoth's halo transforms into a pillar of fire from his head, throwing off concentric rings.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The early comic consists of Allison constantly bewildered by her surroundings, while White Chain treats them as entirely normal.
    White Chain: Do not give money to the dead. It is against city ordinance.
  • Villain with Good Publicity: When she was young, Maya had been told epics about the demiurges and their heroic deeds and wanted to become like them. But while this had once been true, evil people with sweet words had long since joined their ranks. When Meti showed Maya the real thing, she realized that she had been lied to, and the demiurges were little more than violent lunatics with an insatiable urge to Rape, Pillage, and Burn.
  • Violence is the Only Option: Made into a religious tenet! "Violence is inescapable" is one of the core truths of Atru, the comic's main faith.
  • Violence Really Is the Answer: In one particular myth (Aesma and the Three Masters), violence is called the universal art.
  • Visual Pun: The idea that the secret name of God is "I" is because The Multiverse is shaped like a wheel and if you turn it sideways it looks like a letter I. YISUN demonstrates his secret name to Aesma by doing exactly that.
    • Cio has a Coat of Arms. It's a bulky coat she put on when she wanted to do something very fast, because it literally gave her six extra arms to do work with.
  • Voice of the Legion: Rare visual-only example; Aspected Chaos, the fusion of Allison, Cio, and White Chain has speech bubbles with three tails, representing this.
  • Waking Up Elsewhere: Happens in almost every single Book to date:
    • In Kill Six Billion Demons, Allison wakes back up in her bed on Earth after being ejected from Throne by Cio.
    • In Wielder of Names, Allison wakes up on a ship (the Yamga) after her expedition to Mottom's palace, missing several pints of blood and with severe damage to her arms.
    • In Seeker of Thrones, Allison wakes up on the Yamga again after her foray into the fortress of Yre, this time slightly less mortally wounded.
    • King of Swords is the only one to avert this; while Allison is thrown in a cell by Solomon at one point she's still cognizant at the time it happens.
    • In Breaker of Infinities, Allison wakes up in Jadis' realm after the Discordance of the Demiurges.
  • Waterfall into the Abyss: Water endlessly flows out from the Red City into emptiness at the Edge Falls that surround Throne.
  • Wave-Motion Gun: The prophesied "Blade of Want" apparently takes the form of a searing white beam of energy that burns everything in its path to ash. Allison uses it to kill the ex-Demiurge Hastet Om with a single strike.
  • Wax On, Wax Off:
    • Subverted with Meti's Sword Manual, which instructs would-be sword-masters to learn a bunch of daily-life skills, then ends with "When you have mastered all these things you must master building a house. Once your house is built, you have no further need for a sword, since it is an ugly piece of metal and its adherents idiots."
    • Meti played it straight (possibly) when she insisted that Maya cut off every hair on her head with a rusty, pitted sword to become her student, since that meant learning how to care for a sword first. Of course, she also wanted to teach the lesson that swords are ugly pieces of metal and their adherents idiots.
  • Wham Line: In Wheel-Smashing Lord, Gog-Agog gets to deliver one to Allison, once and for all confirming that the multiverse and entire setting of Kill Six Billion Demons is stuck in an Eternal Recurrence thanks to Zoss repeatedly pushing the Reset Button, and furthermore that she is perfectly aware of it and has been trapped in that time loop for Jadis-only-knows how many repetitions.
    Allison: You sound like Jagganoth. You think the world is being reset?
    Gog-Agog: -huh? don't confuse me with that LOSER. i KNOW the world is being reset. i've BEEN THERE.
  • Wham Shot:
    • The Dramatic Unmask of the armored figure who gave Allison her key, revealing that he's the Conquering King.
    • On Mykos, 6 Juggernaut Star confronts Maya after she cut it in half, and ends up briefly revealing a surprisingly humanoid face for someone who hates humans.
    • When Jagganoth reveals his true form.
    • Breaker of Infinities 139-140 features a splash page that for the first time in the comic's history replaces the black background of the site with a psychedelic splash of colour and light, with a tiny Allison near the centre that scrolls with the user, giving the illusion that she is falling. The splash page is so magnificent that all previous pages of the comic had, at the time of writing, this splash page as their background.
  • Weird Sun: The sun in Throne is "broken", meaning it no longer moves; as a result, part of the city is cast in eternal day, and part is in eternal night. Notably, both sides are equally dangerous.
  • Working with the Ex: When the gang needs to steal from Mammon's vaults, Cio calls on her ex-boyfriend, Oscar, for help.
  • World of Badass: When even the Ink Makers' Guild consists of trained killers, you know you're dealing with this trope.
  • Wrestler in All of Us: Princess, in red devil form, performs a brutal inverted suplex to dispatch one of Mammon's priests. As the alt text says: "As god is my witness, that man was broken in half!"
  • You Can Barely Stand: Mother Om taunts Allison, with a variation: not only can't she stand, our heroine is so frightened she can hardly speak. And yet...
  • You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!: Meti ten Ryo strongly believes this in regards to the Demiurges, who carry the power of god and use it to kill each other.
    Meti: Behold! The awesome fires of God. The limitless power of pure creation itself. Look carefully. Observe how it is used for the same purpose a man might use an especially sharp rock.
  • You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Allison points out that Mottom can't kill her during their confrontation; if Mottom kills her, then Mottom will have to take Allison's Key Of Kings, which would disrupt the fragile alliance the other demiurges have against Jagganoth.

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