“We heard you’re leading our flocks astray with sin and free magic!” — Spoilers for Nowhere to Run follow.
A list of various tropes which can be found in the Wandering Monsters stories by Elliott Kay.
The tropes are primarily cross-referenced to Tropedia. Tropes that are present in two or more works are only listed under § General. The list of tropes is conservative because of the general vagueness in definitions that many trope sites have. Off-page tropes are normally not included.
Tropes[]
- Aerith and Bob: The adversarial adventurers are named Rothgar, Kiana, Mishael, Geoffrey, and Lawrence.
- Ancestral Weapon: Teryn’s elven bow, inherited from her great-grandfather.[1]
- Boring but Practical: Scar’s plan to escape the forces besieging them in the tomb: to stay put until the besieging lord ran out of money to his mercenaries.[2]
- Demonic Possessions: The Devourer in Shadow possesses several people in order to influence events and fully break through.[3]
- Dungeon Crawling: The entire premise of Run Like Hell: to get out of the dungeon, going from top to bottom, with adventurers on your trail.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Devourer in Shadow. “You’ve got your undead, your dragons, your evil wizards, your personal feuds… and he said any of it is better than this sort of extradimensional tentacle shit.”[4]
- Fantastic Racism: A big driver of the plot is King Dostin’s edict of expulsion against the goblin races and orcs.
- Feuding Families: The Hayhursts and the Mellers.[5]
- Five-Token Band: A male half-orc, a male gnoll, a male goblin, a female bugbear, a person stitched together using magic from various bodies, and a female human.
- Functional Magic: This being inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, you can find inherited gifts, theurgy, rule magic, and device magic.
- Garden of Evil: The foul willow grove on the south edge of Zition, due to a semi-open transdimensional portal.[6]
- Half-Human Hybrid: Scars, a half-orc and the only son of Kyerva the Slayer (orc) and Mitchell Brightsong (human).
- Healing Hands: War Cloud is a paladin and a capable healer.
- The Infiltration: The crew infiltrating the base for the invaders of the northern valley.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Karana, the self-made mayor of Zition.
- Rebellious Princess: Teryn, oldest daughter of King Dostin, and self-described as “more of a political insurgent”.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Ghouls have red eyes, and so does some other types of evil. However, ¶ glowing green eyes are worse.[7]
- Shovel Strike: After finding the magical shovel artifact, this is DigDig’s favorite way of fighting.
- Sickly Green Glow: Both War Cloud and Yargol are dismayed about hearing that the undead dwarf nearby has eyes glowing green, calling it “really evil”.[7]
- Stealth Pun: Chatter the Troll. Who is a troll.
- Supernatural Sensitivity: War Cloud can sense demonic incursions and hearths in the vicinity. Yargol can identify most forms of magic.
- Super Senses: Shady Tooth has extremely sensitive senses of hearing and smell. It usually means she notices things she’d rather not.[8]
- Utility Magic: Yargol uses this extensively to remove tracks, keep clothes clean, or repair broken things.[9]
References[]
- ↑ Run Like Hell, chapter 4
- ↑ “Strictly Business”
- ↑ Nowhere to Run, chapter 2
- ↑ Nowhere to Run, chapter 8
- ↑ “The Mediator”
- ↑ Run Like Hell, chapter 8
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Run Like Hell, chapter 6
- ↑ “Don’t Overthink It”
- ↑ Run Like Hell, chapter 5